She stopped churning. She had a feeling that eyes were watching her, a lot of eyes.
‘Er . . . thank you,’ she said. No, that wasn’t right. She sounded nervous. She let go of the butter paddle and stood up, trying to look as fierce as possible.
‘And what about our sheep?’ she said. I won’t believe you’re really sorry until I see the sheep come back!’
There was a bleating from the paddock. She ran out to the bottom of the garden and looked through the hedge.
The sheep was coming back, backwards and at high speed. It jerked to a halt a little way from the hedge and dropped down as the little men let it go. One of the red-headed men appeared for a moment on its head. He huffed on a horn, polished it with his kilt, and vanished in a blur.
Tiffany walked back to the dairy looking thoughtful.
Oh, and when she got back the butter had been churned. Not just churned, in fact, but patted into a dozen fat golden oblongs on the marble she used when she did it. There was even a sprig of parsley on each one.
Are they brownies? she wondered. According to the Faerie Tales, brownies hung around the house doing chores in exchange for a saucer of milk. But in the picture they’d been cheery little creatures with long pointy hoods. The red-haired men didn’t look as if they’d ever drunk milk in their lives, but perhaps it was worth a try.
‘Well,’ she said aloud, still aware of the hidden watchers. That’ll do. Thank you. I’m glad you’re sorry for what you did.’
She took one of the cat’s saucers from the pile by the sink, washed it carefully, filled it with milk from today’s churn, then put it down on the floor and stood back. ‘Are you brownies?’ she said.
The air blurred. Milk splashed across the floor and the saucer spun round and round.
‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ said Tiffany. ‘So what are you?’
There were unlimited supplies of no answer at all.
She lay down and looked under the sink, and then peered behind the cheese shelves. She stared up into the dark, spidery shadows of the room. It felt empty.
And she thought: I think I need a whole egg’s worth of education, in a hurry . . .
Tiffany had walked along the steep track from the farm down into the village hundreds of times. It was less than half a mile long, and over the centuries the carts had worn it down so that it was more like a gully in the chalk and ran like a milky stream in wet weather.
She was halfway down when the susurrus started. The hedges rustled without a wind. The skylarks stopped singing and, while she hadn’t really noticed their song, their silence was a shock. Nothing’s louder than the end of a song that’s always been there.
When she looked up at the sky it was like looking through a diamond. It sparkled, and the air went cold so quickly that it was like stepping into an icy bath.
Then there was snow under foot, snow on the hedges. And the sound of hooves.
They were in the field beside her. A horse was galloping through the snow, behind the hedge that was now, suddenly, just a wall of white.
The hoofbeats stopped. There was a moment of silence and then a horse landed in the lane, skidding on the snow. It pulled itself upright, and the rider turned it to face Tiffany.
The rider himself couldn’t face Tiffany. He had no face. He had no head to hang it on.
She ran. Her boots slipped on the snow as she moved, but suddenly her mind was cold as the ice.
She had two legs, slipping on ice. A horse had twice as many legs to slip. She’d seen horses try to tackle this hill in icy weather. She had a chance.
She heard a breathy, whistling noise behind her, and a whinny from the horse. She risked a glance. The horse was coming after her, but slowly, half walking and half sliding. Steam poured off it.
About halfway down the slope the lane passed under an arch of trees, looking like crashed clouds now under their weight of snow. And beyond them, Tiffany knew, the lane flattened out. The headless man would catch her on the flat. She didn’t know what would happen after that, but she was sure it would be unpleasantly short.
Flakes of snow dropped on her as she passed under the trees, and she decided to make a run for it. She might reach the village. She was good at running.
But if she got there, then what? She’d never reach a door in time. And people would shout, and run about. The dark horseman didn’t look like someone who’d take much notice of that. No, she had to deal with it.
If only she’d brought the frying pan.
‘Here, wee hag! Stannit ye still, right noo!’
She stared up.
A tiny blue man had poked his head up out of the snow on top of the hedge.
‘There’s a headless horseman after me!’ she shouted.
‘He’ll no make it, hinny. Stand ye still! Look him in the eye!’
‘He hasn’t got any eyes!’
‘Crivens! Are ye a hag or no’? Look him in the eyes he hasnae got!’
The blue man disappeared into the snow.
Tiffany turned round. The horseman was trotting under the trees now, the horse more certain as the ground levelled. He had a sword in his hand, and he was looking at her, with the eyes he didn’t have. There was the breathy noise again, not good to hear.
The little men are watching me, she thought. I can’t run. Granny Aching wouldn’t have run from a thing with no head.
She folded her arms and glared.
The horseman stopped, as if puzzled, and then urged the horse forward.
A blue and red shape, larger than the other little men, dropped out of the trees. He landed on the horse’s forehead, between its eyes, and grabbed an ear in both hands.
Tiffany heard the man shout: ‘Here’s a face full o’ dandruff for ye, yer bogle, courtesy of Big Yan!’ and then the man hit the horse between the eyes with his head.
To her amazement the horse staggered sideways.
‘Aw right?’ shouted the tiny fighter. ‘Big toughie, is ye? Once more wi’ feelin’!’
This time the horse danced uneasily the other way, and then its back legs slid from under it and it collapsed in the snow.
Little blue men erupted from the hedge. The horseman, trying to get to his feet, disappeared under a blue and red storm of screaming creatures—
And vanished. The snow vanished. The horse vanished.
The blue men, for a moment, were in a pile on the hot, dusty road. One of them said, ‘Aw, crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!’ And then they, too, vanished, but for a moment Tiffany saw blue and red blurs disappearing into the hedge.
Then the skylarks were back. The hedges were green and full of flowers. Not a twig was broken, not a flower disturbed. The sky was blue, with no flashes of diamond.
Tiffany looked down. On the toes of her boots, snow was melting. She was, strangely, glad about that. It meant that what had just happened was magical, not madness. Because, if she closed her eyes, she could still hear the wheezy breathing of the headless man.
What she needed right now was people, and ordinary things happening. But more than anything else, she wanted answers.
Actually, what she wanted more than anything else was not to hear the wheezy breathing when she shut her eyes . . .
The tents had gone. Except for a few pieces of broken chalk, apple cores, some stamped-down grass and, alas, a few chicken feathers, there was nothing at all to show that the teachers had ever been there.
A small voice said, ‘Psst!’
She looked down. A toad crept out from under a dock leaf.
‘Miss Tick said you’d be back,’ it said. ‘I expect there’re some things you need to know, right?’
‘Everything,’ said Tiffany. ‘We’re swamped with tiny men! I can’t understand half of what they say! They keep calling me a hag!’
‘Ah, yes,’ said the toad. ‘You’ve got Nac Mac Feegles!’
‘It snowed, and then it hadn’t! I was chased by a horseman with no head.’ And one of the . . . what did you say they were?’
‘Nac Mac Feegles,’ said the toad. ‘Also known as pictsies. They call themselves the Wee Free Men.’
‘Well, one of them head-butted the horse! It fell over! It was a huge horse, too!’
‘Ah, that sounds like a Feegle,’ said the toad.
‘I gave them some milk and they tipped it over!’