He put the pipe back in his mouth, puffed his cheeks until the skin bag was full, and made Tiffany’s ears bubble again.
‘What about you, toad?’ said Tiffany, looking into the apron pocket.
‘You’re on your own, I’m afraid,’ said the toad. ‘Whoever I used to be, I didn’t know much about finding invisible doors. And I resent being press-ganged, too, I may say.’
‘But. . . I don’t know what to do! Is there a magic word I should say?’
‘I don’t know, is there a magic word you should say?’ said the toad, and turned over.
Tiffany was aware that the Nac Mac Feegle were turning up. They had a nasty habit of being really quiet when they wanted to.
Oh, no, she thought. They think I know what to do! This isn’t fair! I’ve not got any training for this. I haven’t been to the witch school! I can’t even find that! The opening must be somewhere around here and there must be dues but I don’t know what they are!
They’re watching me to see if I’m any good. And I’m good at cheese, and that’s all. But a witch Deals With Things . . .
She put the toad back in her pocket and felt the weight of the book Diseases of the Sheep.
When she pulled it out, she heard a sigh go up from the assembled pictsies.
They think words are magical. . .
She opened the book at random, and frowned.
‘Cloggets,’ she said aloud. Around her, the pictsies nodded their heads and nudged one another.
‘Cloggets are a trembling of the greebs in hoggets,’ she read, ‘which can lead to inflammation of the lower pasks. If untreated, it may lead to the more serious condition of Sloke. Recommended treatment is daily dosing with turpentine until there is no longer either any trembling, or turpentine, or sheep.’
She risked looking up. Feegles were watching her from every stone and mound. They looked impressed.
However, the words in Diseases of the Sheep cut no ice with magic doorways.
‘Scrabbity,’ read Tiffany. There was a ripple of anticipation.
‘Scrabbity is a flaky skin condition, particularly around the lollets. Turpentine is a useful remedy—’
And then she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the teddy bear.
It was very small, and the kind of red you don’t quite get in nature. Tiffany knew what it was. Wentworth loved the teddy-bear sweets. They tasted like glue mixed with sugar and were made of 100% Artificial Additives.
‘Ah,’ she said aloud. ‘My brother was certainly brought here.’
This caused a stir.
She walked forward, reading aloud about Garget of the Nostrils and the Staggers but keeping an eye on the ground. And there was another teddy-bear sweet, green this time and quite hard to see against the turf.
O-K, Tiffany thought.
There was one of the three-stone arches a little way away; two big stones with another one laid across the top of them. She’d walked through it before, and nothing had happened,
But nothing should happen, she thought. You can’t leave a doorway into your world that anyone can walk through, otherwise people would wander in and out by accident. You’d have to know it was there.
Perhaps that’s the only way it would work.
Fine. Then I’ll believe that this is the entrance.
She stepped through, and saw an astonishing sight: green grass, blue sky becoming pink around the setting sun, a few little white clouds late for bed, and a general warm, honey-coloured look to everything. It was amazing that there could be a sight like this. The fact that Tiffany had seen it nearly every day of her life didn’t make it any less fantastic. As a bonus, you didn’t even have to look through any kind of stone arch to see it. You could see it by standing practically anywhere.
Except . . .
. . . something was wrong. Tiffany walked through the arch several times, and still wasn’t quite sure. She held up a hand at arm’s length, trying to measure the sun’s height against the horizon.
And then she saw the bird. It was a swallow, hunting flies, and a swoop took it behind the stones.
The effect was . . . odd, and almost upsetting. It passed behind the stone and she felt her eyes move to follow the swoop . . . but it was late. There was a moment when the swallow should have appeared, and it didn’t.
Then it passed across the gap and for a moment was on both sides of the other stone at the same time.
Seeing it made Tiffany feel that her eyeballs had been pulled out and turned round.
Look for a place where the time doesn’t fit. . .
The world seen through that gap is at least one second behind the time here,’ she said, trying to sound as certain as possible. ‘I thi— I know this is the entrance.’
There was some whooping and clapping from the Nac Mac Feegles, and they surged across the turf towards her.
‘That was great, al’ that reading’ ye did!’ said Rob Anybody. I didnae understand a single word o’ it!’
‘Aye, it must be powerful language if you cannae make oout what the heel it’s goin’ on aboot!’ said another pictsie.
‘Ye definitely ha’ got the makin’s of a kelda,
mistress,’ said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock.
‘Aye!’ said Daft Wullie. ‘It was smashin’ the way you spotted them sweeties and didnae let on! We didnae think you’d see the wee green one, too!’
The rest of the pictsies stopped cheering and glared at him.
‘What did I say? What did I say?’ he said. Tiffany sagged. ‘You all knew that was the way through, didn’t you?’ she said.
‘Oh, aye,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘We ken that kind of stuff. We used tae live in the Quin’s country, ye ken, but we rebelled against her evil rule—’
‘An’ we did that, an’ then she threw us oout on account o’ bein’ drunk an’ stearin’ and fightin’ al’ the time,’ said Daft Wullie.
‘It wasnae like that at all’ roared Rob Anybody. ‘And you were waiting to see if I could find the way, right?’ said Tiffany, before a fight could start. ‘Aye. Ye did well, lassie.’
Tiffany shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do any real magic. I don’t know how. I just looked at things and worked them out. It was cheating, really.’
The pictsies looked at one another. ‘Ah, weel,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘What’s magic, eh? Just wavin’ a stick an’ sayin’ a few wee magical words. An’ what’s so clever aboot that, eh? But lookin’ at things, really lookin’ at ‘em, and then workin’ ‘em oout, now, that’s a real skill.’
‘Aye, it is,’ said William the gonnagle, to Tiffany’s surprise. ‘Ye used yer eyes and used yer heid. That’s what a real hag does. The magicking is just there for advertisin’.’
‘Oh,’ said Tiffany, cheering up. ‘Really? Well, then . . . there’s our door, everyone!’
‘Right,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Now show us the way through.’
Tiffany hesitated and then thought: I can feel myself thinking. I’m watching the way I’m thinking. And what am I thinking? I’m thinking: I walked through this arch before, and nothing happened.
But I wasn’t looking then. I wasn’t thinking, either. Not properly.
The world I can see through the arch isn’t actually real. It just looks as though it is. It’s a sort of . . . magical picture, put there to disguise the entrance. And if you don’t pay attention, well, you just walk in and out of it and you don’t realize it.
Aha . . .
She walked through the arch. Nothing happened. The Nac Mac Feegles watched her solemnly.
O-K, she thought. I’m still being fooled, aren’t I. . .?
She stood in front of the stones, and stretched out her hand on either side of her, and shut her eyes. Very slowly she stepped forward . . .
Something crunched under her boots, but she didn’t open her eyes until she couldn’t feel the stones any more. When she did open them . . .
. . . it was a black and white landscape.
Chapter 8
Land Of Winter
‘Aye, she’s got First Sight, sure enough,’ said William’s voice behind Tiffany as she stared into the world of the Queen. ‘She’s seein’ what’s really there.’
Snow stretched away under a sky so dirty white that Tiffany might have been standing inside a ping-pong ball. Only black trunks and scribbly branches of the trees, here and there, told her where the land stopped and the sky began . . .
. . . those, and of course, the hoofprints. They stretched away towards a forest of black trees, boughed with snow.
The cold was like little needles all over her skin.
She looked down, and saw the Nac Mac Feegles pouring through the gate, waist deep in the snow. They spread out, without speaking. Some of them had drawn their swords.