And they did indeed seem to know about boats. The oars were heaved into the rowlocks, and a party of Feegles pushed it down the stones and into the waves.
‘Now you just hand us the wee bairn,’ shouted Rob Anybody from the stern. Uncertainly, her feet slipping on the wet stones, Tiffany waded through the cold water and handed Wentworth over.
He seemed to think it was very funny.
‘Weewee mens!’ he yelled, as they lowered him into the boat. It was his only joke, so he wasn’t going to stop.
‘Aye, that’s right,’ said Rob Anybody, tucking him under the seat. ‘Noo just you bide there like a good boy and no yellin’ for sweeties or Uncle Rob’ll gi’ ye a skelpin’ across the earhole, OK?’
Wentworth chuckled.
Tiffany ran back up the beach and hauled Roland to his feet. He opened his eyes and looked blearily at her.
‘W’a’s happening?’ he said. ‘I had this strange drea—’ and then he shut his eyes again, and sagged.
‘Get in the boat!’ Tiffany shouted, dragging him across the shingle.
‘Crivens, are we takin’ this wee streak o’ useless-ness?’ said Rob, grabbing Roland’s trousers and heaving him aboard.
‘Of course!’ Tiffany hauled herself in afterwards, and landed in the bottom of the boat as a wave took it. The oars creaked and splashed, and the boat jerked forward. It jolted once or twice as more waves hit it, and then began to plunge across the sea. The pictsies were strong, after all. Even though each oar was a battleground as pictsies hung from it, or piled up on one another’s shoulders or just heaved anything they could grasp, both oars were almost bending as they were dragged through the water.
Tiffany picked herself up, and tried to ignore the sudden uncertain feeling in her stomach.
‘Head for the lighthouse!’ she said.
‘Aye, I ken that,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘It’s the only place there is! And the Quin disnae like light.’ He grinned. ‘It’s a good dream, lady. Have ye no’ looked at the sky?’
‘It’s just a blue sky,’ said Tiffany.
‘It’s no’ exactly a sky,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Look behind ye.’
Tiffany turned. It was a blue sky. Very blue. But above the retreating beach, halfway up the sky, was a band of yellow. It looked a long way away, and hundreds of miles across. And in the middle of it, looming over the world as big as a galaxy and grey-blue with distance, was a lifebelt.
On it, but spelled backwards in letters larger than the moon, were the words:
R O L I A S Y L L O J
‘We are in the label?’ said Tiffany.
‘Oh, aye,’ said Rob Anybody.
‘But the sea feels . . . real. It’s salty and wet and cold. It’s not like paint! I didn’t dream it salty or so cold!’
‘Nae kiddin’? Then it’s a picture on the outside, and it’s real on the inside.’ Rob nodded. ‘Ye ken, we’ve been robbin’ an’ runnin’ aroound on all kinds o’ worlds for a lang time, and I’ll tell ye this: the universe is a lot more comp-li-cated than it looks from the ooutside.’
Tiffany took the grubby label out of her pocket and stared at it again. There was the lifebelt, and the lighthouse. But the Jolly Sailor himself wasn’t there. What was there, so tiny as to be little bigger than a dot on the printed sea, was a tiny rowing boat.
She looked up. There were storm clouds in the sky, in front of the huge, hazy lifebelt. They were long and ragged, curling as they came.
‘It didnae take her long to find a way in,’ muttered William.
‘No,’ said Tiffany, ‘but this is my dream. I know how it goes. Keep rowing!’
Tangling and tumbling, some of the clouds passed overhead and then swooped towards the sea. They vanished beneath the waves like a waterspout in reverse.
It began to rain hard, so hard that a haze of mist rose over the sea.
‘Is that it?’ Tiffany wondered. ‘Is that all she can do?’
‘I doot it,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Bend them oars, lads!’
The boat shot forward, bouncing through the rain from wavetop to wave top.
But, against all normal rules, it was now trying to go uphill. The water was mounding up and up, and the boat washed backwards in the streaming surf.
Something was rising. Something white was pushing the seas aside. Great waterfalls poured off the shining dome that climbed towards the storm sky.
It rose higher, and still there was more. And, eventually, there was an eye. It was tiny compared to the mountainous head above it, and it rolled in its socket and focused on the tiny boat.
‘Now, that’s a heid that be a day’s work e’en for Big Yan,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘I reckon we’d have to come back tomorrow! Row, boys!’
‘It’s a dream of mine,’ said Tiffany, as calmly as she could manage. ‘It’s the whale fish.’
I never dreamed the smell, though, she added to herself. But here it is, a huge, solid, world-filling smell of salt and water and fish and ooze—
‘Whut does it eat?’ Daft Wullie asked.
‘Ah, I know that,’ said Tiffany, as the boat rocked on the swell. ‘Whales aren’t dangerous, because they just eat very small things . . .’
‘Row like the blazes, lads!’ Rob Anybody yelled.
‘How d’ye ken it only eats wee stuff?’ said Daft Wullie as the whale fish’s mouth began to open.
‘I paid a whole cucumber once for a lesson on Beasts of the Deep,’ said Tiffany, as a wave washed over them. ‘Whales don’t even have proper teeth!’
There was a creaking sound and a gust of fishy halitosis about the size of a typhoon, and the view was full of enormous, pointy teeth.
‘Aye?’ said Wullie. ‘Weel, no offence meant, but I dinnae think this beastie went to the same school as ye!’
The surge of water was pushing them away. And Tiffany could see the whole of the head now and, in a way she couldn’t possibly describe, the whale looked like the Queen. The Queen was there, somewhere.
The anger came back.
‘This is my dream,’ she shouted at the sky. I’ve dreamed it dozens of times! You’re not allowed in here! And whales don’t eat people! Everyone who isn’t very stupid knows that!’
A tail the size of a field rose and slapped down on the sea. The whale shot forward.
Rob Anybody threw off his yellow hat and drew his sword.
‘Ach, weel, we tried,’ he said. ‘This wee beastie’s gonna get the worst belly ache there ever wuz!’
‘Aye, we’ll cut oour way out!’ shouted Daft Wullie.
‘No, keep rowing!’ said Tiffany.
‘It’s ne’er been said that the Nac Mac Feegle turned their back on a foe!’ Rob yelled.
‘But you’re rowing facing backwards!’ Tiffany pointed out.
The pictsie looked crestfallen. ‘Oh, aye, I hadnae thought o’ it like that,’ he said, sitting down again.
‘Just row!’ Tiffany insisted. ‘We’re nearly at the lighthouse!’
Grumbling, because even if they were facing the right way they were still going the wrong way, the pictsies hauled on the oars.
‘That’s a great big heid he’s got there, ye ken,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘How big would you say that heid is, gonnagle?’
‘Ach, I’d say it’s verrra big, Rob,’ said William, who was with the team on the other oar. ‘Indeed, I might commit myself to sayin’ it’s enorrrrmous.’
‘Ye’d go as far as that, would ye?’
‘Oh, aye. Enorrrrmous is fully justified . . .’
It’s nearly on us, Tiffany thought.
This has got to work. It’s my dream. Any moment. Any moment now . . .
‘An’ how near us would you say it is, then?’ asked Rob conversationally, as the boat wallowed and jerked just ahead of the whale.
‘That’s a verrra good question, Rob,’ said William. ‘And I’d answer it by sayin’ it’s verrra close indeed.’
Any moment now, thought Tiffany. I know Miss Tick said you shouldn’t believe in your dreams, but she meant you shouldn’t just hope.
Er . . . any moment now, I . . . hope. He’s never missed . . .
‘In fact I’d go so farrr as to say exceedingly close—’ William began.
Tiffany swallowed, and hoped that the whale wouldn’t. There was only about thirty yards of water between the teeth and the boat.
And then it was filled with a wooden wall that blurred as it went past, making a zipzipzip noise.
Tiffany looked up, her mouth open. White sails flashed across the storm clouds, pouring rain like waterfalls. She looked up at rigging and ropes and sailors lined up on the spars, and cheered.
And then the stern of the Jolly Sailor’s ship was disappearing into the rain and mist, but not before Tiffany saw the big bearded figure at the wheel, dressed in yellow oilskins. He turned and waved just once, before the ship vanished into the murk.