‘Aye, Big Yan, point well made. But ye gotta know where ye’re just gonna rush in. Ye cannae just rush in anywhere. It looks bad, havin’ to rush oout again straight awa’.’
Tiffany saw that all the Feegles were staring intently upwards, and paying her no attention at all.
Angry and puzzled, she sat down on one of the rusty wheels and looked at the sky. It was better than looking around. There was Granny Aching’s grave somewhere around here, although you couldn’t find it now, not precisely. The turf had healed.
There were a few little clouds above her and nothing else at all, except the distant circling dots of the buzzards.
There were always buzzards over the Chalk. The shepherds had taken to calling them Granny Aching’s chickens, and some of them called clouds like those up there today ‘Granny’s little lambs’. And Tiffany knew that even her father called the thunder ‘Granny Aching cussin”.
And it was said that some of the shepherds, if wolves were troublesome in the winter, or a prize ewe had got lost, would go to the site of the old hut in the hills and leave an ounce of Jolly Sailor tobacco, just in case . . .
Tiffany hesitated. Then she shut her eyes. I want that to be true, she whispered to herself. I want to know that other people think she hasn’t really gone, too.
She looked under the wide rusted rim of the wheels and shivered. There was a brightly coloured little packet there.
She picked it up. It looked quite fresh, so it had probably been there for only a few days. There was the Jolly Sailor on the front, with his big grin and big yellow rain hat and big beard, with big blue waves crashing behind him.
Tiffany had learned about the sea from the Jolly Sailor wrappings. She’d heard it was big, and roared. There was a tower in the sea, which was a lighthouse that carried a big light on it at night to stop boats crashing into the rocks. In the pictures the beam of the lighthouse was a brilliant white. She knew about it so well she’d dreamed about it, and had woken up with the roar of the sea in her ears.
She’d heard one of her uncles say that if you looked at the tobacco label upside down then part of the hat and the sailor’s ear and a bit of his collar made up a picture of a woman with no clothes on, but Tiffany had never been able to make it out and couldn’t see what the point would be in any case.
She carefully pulled the label off the packet, and sniffed at it. It smelled of Granny. She felt her eyes begin to fill with tears. She’d never cried for Granny Aching before, never. She’d cried for dead lambs and cut fingers and for not getting her own way, but never for Granny. It hadn’t seemed right.
And I’m not crying now, she thought, carefully putting the label in her apron pocket. Not for Granny being dead . . .
It was the smell. Granny Aching smelled of sheep, turpentine and Jolly Sailor tobacco. The three smells mixed together and became one smell which was, to Tiffany, the smell of the Chalk. It followed Granny Aching like a cloud, and it meant warmth, and silence, and a space around which the whole world revolved . . .
A shadow passed overhead. A buzzard was diving down from the sky towards the Nac Mac Feegle.
She leaped up and waved her arms. ‘Run away! Duck! It’ll kill you!’
They turned and looked at her for a moment as though she’d gone mad.
‘Dinnae fash yersel’, mistress,’ said Rob Anybody. The bird curved up at the bottom of its dive and as it climbed again a dot dropped from it. As it fell it seemed to grow two wings and start to spin like a sycamore bract, which slowed down the fall somewhat.
It was a pictsie, still spinning madly when he hit the turf a few feet away, where he fell over. He got up, swearing loudly, and fell over again. The swearing continued.
‘A good landin’, Hamish,’ said Rob Anybody. The spinnin’ certainly slows ye doon. Ye didnae drill right into the ground this time hardly at al’.’
Hamish got up more slowly this time, and managed to stay upright. He had a pair of goggles over his eyes.
‘I dinna think I can tak’ much more o’ this,’ he said, trying to untie a couple of thin bits of wood from his arms. ‘I feel like a fairy wi’ the wings on.’
‘How can you survive that?’ Tiffany asked.
The very small pilot tried to look her up and down, but only managed to look her up and further up.
‘Who’s the wee bigjob who knows sich a lot about aviation?’ he said.
Rob Anybody coughed. ‘She’s the hag, Hamish. Spawn o’ Granny Aching.’
Hamish’s expression changed to a look of terror. ‘I didnae mean to speak out o’ turn, mistress,’ he said, backing away. ‘O’ course, a hag’d have the knowing of anythin’. But ‘tis nae as bad as it looks, mistress. I allus make sure I lands on my he id.’
‘Aye, we’re very resilient in the heid department,’ said Rob Anybody.
‘Have you seen a woman with a small boy?’ Tiffany demanded. She hadn’t much liked ‘spawn’.
Hamish gave Rob Anybody a panicky look, and Rob nodded.
‘Aye, I did,’ said Hamish. ‘Onna black horse. Riding up from the lowlan’s goin’ hell for—’
‘We dinnae use bad language in front o’ a hag!’ Rob Anybody thundered.
‘Begging your pardon, mistress. She was ridin’ heck for leather,’ said Hamish, looking more sheepish than the sheep. ‘But she kenned I was spyin’ her and called up a mist. She’s gone to the other side, but I dinnae ken where.’
“Tis a perilous place, the other side,’ said Rob Anybody, slowly. ‘Evil things there. A cold place. Not a place to tak’ a wee babbie.’
It was hot on the downs, but Tiffany felt a chill. However bad it is, she thought, I’m going to have to go there. I know it. I don’t have a choice.
‘The other side?’ she said.
‘Aye. The magic world,’ said Rob Anybody. There’s . . . bad things there.’ ‘Monsters?’ said Tiffany.
‘As bad as ye can think of,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Exactly as bad as ye can think of.’
Tiffany swallowed hard, and closed her eyes. ‘Worse than Jenny? Worse than the headless horseman?’ she said.
‘Oh, aye. They were wee pussycats compared to the scunners over there. ‘Tis an ill-fared country that’s come callin’, mistress. Tis a land where dreams come true. That’s the Quin’s world.’
‘Well, that doesn’t sound too—’ Tiffany began. Then she remembered some of the dreams she’d had, the ones where you were so glad to wake up . . . ‘We’re not talking about nice dreams, are we?’ she said.
Rob Anybody shook his head. ‘Nay, mistress. The other kind.’
And me with my frying pan and Diseases of the Sheep, thought Tiffany. And she had a mental picture of Wentworth among horrible monsters. They probably wouldn’t have any sweeties at all.
She sighed. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘how do I get there?’
‘Ye dinnae ken the way?’ said Rob Anybody.
It wasn’t what she’d been expecting. What she had been expecting was more like ‘Ach, ye cannae do that, a wee lass like you, oh dearie us no!’ She wasn’t so much expecting that as hoping it, in fact. But, instead, they were acting as if it were a perfectly reasonable idea—
‘No!’ she said. ‘I don’t dinnae any ken at all! I haven’t done this before! Please help me!’
‘That’s true, Rob,’ said a Feegle. ‘She’s new to the haggin’. Tak’ her to the kelda.’
‘Not e’en Granny Aching ever went to see the kelda in her ain cave!’ snapped Rob Anybody. ‘It’s no a—’
‘Quiet!’ hissed Tiffany. ‘Can’t you hear that?’
The Feegles looked around.
‘Hear what?’ said Hamish.
‘It’s a susurration!’
It felt as though the turf was trembling. The sky looked as though Tiffany was inside a diamond. And there was the smell of snow.
Hamish pulled a pipe out of his waistcoat and blew it. Tiffany couldn’t hear anything, but there was a scream from high above.
‘I’ll let ye know what’s happenin’!’ cried the pictsie, and started to run across the turf. As he ran, he raised his arms over his head.
He was moving fast by then but the buzzard sped down and across the turf even faster and plucked him neatly into the air. As it beat at the air to rise again, Tiffany saw Hamish climbing up through the feathers.
The other Feegles had formed a circle around Tiffany, and this time they’d drawn their swords.
‘Whut’s the plan, Rob?’ said one of them.