A Hat Full Of Sky - Terry Pratchett [27]
A hand touched him lightly on the shoulder.
“’Tis not like ye to let someone creep up on ye, Rob Anybody,” said Jeannie, sitting down beside him.
Rob Anybody sighed.
“Daft Wullie was telling me ye havena been eatin’ your meals,” said Jeannie carefully.
Rob Anybody sighed.
“And Big Yan said when ye wuz out huntin’ today, ye let a fox go past wi’out gieing it a good kickin’?”
Rob sighed again.
There was a faint pop followed by a glugging noise. Jeannie held out a tiny wooden cup. In her other hand was a small leather bottle.
Fumes from the cup wavered in the air.
“This is the last o’ the Special Sheep Liniment your big wee hag gave us at our wedding,” said Jeannie. “I put it safely by for emergencies.”
“She’s no’ my big wee hag, Jeannie,” said Rob, without looking at the cup. “She’s oor big wee hag. An’ I’ll tell ye, Jeannie, she has it in her tae be the hag o’ hags. There’s power in her she doesna dream of. But the hiver smells it.”
“Aye, well, a drink’s a drink, whomsoever ye call her,” said Jeannie soothingly. She waved the cup under Rob’s nose.
He sighed and looked away.
Jeannie stood up quickly. “Wullie! Big Yan! Come quick!” she yelled. “He willna tak’ a drink! I think he’s deid!”
“Ach, this is no’ the time for strong licker,” said Rob Anybody. “My heart is heavy, wumman.”
“Quickly now!” Jeannie shouted down the hole. “He’s deid and still talkin’!”
“She’s the hag o’ these hills,” said Rob, ignoring her. “Just like her granny. She tells the hills what they are, every day. She has them in her bones. She holds ’em in her heart. Wi’out her, I dinna like tae think o’ the future.”
The other Feegles had come scurrying out of the hole and were looking uncertainly at Jeannie.
“Is somethin’ wrong?” said Daft Wullie.
“Aye!” snapped the kelda. “Rob willna tak’ a drink o’ Special Sheep Liniment!”
Wullie’s little face screwed up in instant grief. “Ach, the Big Man’s deid!” he sobbed. “Oh waily waily waily—”
“Will ye hush yer gob, ye big mudlin!” shouted Rob Anybody, standing up. “I am no’ deid! I’m trying to have a moment o’ existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it’s a puir lookout if a man canna feel the chilly winds o’ fate lashing aroound his nethers wi’out folks telling him he’s deid, eh?”
“Ach, and I see ye’ve been talking to the toad again, Rob,” said Big Yan. “He’s the only one aroound here that used them lang words that tak’ all day to walk the length of….” He turned to Jeannie. “It’s a bad case o’ the thinkin’ he’s caught, missus. When a man starts messin’ wi’ the readin’ and the writin’, then he’ll come doon with a dose o’ the thinkin’ soon enough. I’ll fetch some o’ the lads and we’ll hold his heid under water until he stops doin’ it—’tis the only cure. It can kill a man, the thinkin’.”
“I’ll wallop ye and ten like ye!” yelled Rob Anybody in Big Yan’s face, raising his fists. “I’m the Big Man in this clan and—”
“And I am the kelda,” said their kelda, and one of the hiddlins of keldaring is to use your voice like that: hard, cold, sharp, cutting the air like a dagger of ice. “And I tell you men to go back doon the hole and dinna show your faces back up here until I say. Not you, Rob Anybody Feegle! You stay here until I tell ye!”
“Oh waily waily—” Daft Wullie began, but Big Yan clapped a hand over his mouth and dragged him away quickly.
When they were alone, and scraps of cloud were beginning to mass around the moon, Rob Anybody hung his head.
“I willna go, Jeannie, if you say,” he said.
“Ach, Rob, Rob,” said Jeannie, beginning to cry. “Ye dinna understand. I want no harm to come to the big wee girl, truly I don’t. But I canna face thinkin’ o’ you out there fightin’ this monster that canna be killed! It’s you I’m worried aboot, can ye no’ see?”
Rob put his arm around her. “Aye, I see,” he said.
“I’m your wife, Rob, askin’ ye not to go!”
“Aye, aye. I’ll stay,” said Rob.
Jeannie looked up to him. Tears shone in the moonlight. “Ye mean it?”
“I never braked my word yet,” said Rob. “Except