A Hat Full Of Sky - Terry Pratchett [68]
“Shame on ye!” screamed Awf’ly Wee Billy, letting the pipe drop out of his mouth. “Shame on ye! Traitors! Betrayers! Ye shame hearth and hame! Your hag is fightin’ for her verra soul! Have ye no honor?” He flung down the mousepipes, which wailed into silence. “I curse my feets that let me stand here in front o’ ye! Ye shame the verrae sun shinin’ on ye! Ye shame the kelda that birthed ye! Traitors! Scuggans! What ha’ I done to be among this parcel o’ rogues? Any man here want tae fight? Then fight me! Aye, fight me! An’ I swear by the harp o’ bones I’ll tak’ him tae the deeps o’ the sea an’ then kick him tae the craters o’ the moon an’ see him ride tae the Pit o’ Heel itself on a saddle made o’ hedgehogs! I tell ye, my rage is the strength of the storm that tears mountains intae sand! Who among ye will stand agin me?”
Big Yan, who was almost three times the size of Awf’ly Wee Billy, cowered back as the little gonnagle stood in front of him. Not a Feegle would have raised a hand at that moment, for fear of his life. The rage of a gonnagle was a dreadful thing to see. A gonnagle could use words like swords.
Daft Wullie shuffled forward.
“I can see ye’re upset, gonnagle,” he mumbled. “’Tis me that’s at fault, on account o’ being daft. I shoulda remembered aboout us and pubs.”
He looked so dejected that Awf’ly Wee Billie calmed down a little.
“Very well then,” he said, but rather coldly because you can’t lose that much anger all at once. “We’ll not talk aboout this again. But we will remember it, right?” He pointed to the sleeping shape of Tiffany. “Now pick up that wool, and the tobacco, and the turpentine, understand? Someone tak’ the top off the turpentine bottle and pour a wee drop onto a bit o’ cloth. And no one, let me mak’myself clear, is tae drink any of it!”
The Feegles fell over themselves to obey. There was a ripping noise as the “bit o’ cloth” was obtained from the bottom of Miss Level’s dress.
“Right,” said Awf’ly Wee Billy. “Daft Wullie, you tak’ all the three things and put them up on the big wee hag’s chest, where she can smell them.”
“How can she smell them when she’s oout cold like that?” asked Wullie.
“The nose disna sleep,” said the gonnagle flatly.
The three smells of the shepherding hut were laid reverentially just below Tiffany’s chin.
“Noo we wait,” said Awf’ly Wee Billy. “We wait, and hope.”
It was hot in the little bedroom with the sleeping witches and a crowd of Feegles. It wasn’t long before the smells of sheep’s wool, turpentine, and tobacco rose and twined and filled the air….
Tiffany’s nose twitched.
The nose is a big thinker. It’s good at memory—very good. So good that a smell can take you back in memory so hard that it hurts. The brain can’t stop it. The brain has nothing to do with it. The hiver could control brains, but it couldn’t control a stomach that threw up when it was flown on a broomstick. And it was useless at noses….
The smell of sheeps’ wool, turpentine, and Jolly Sailor tobacco could carry a mind away, all the way to a silent place that was warm and safe and free from harm…
The hiver opened its eyes and looked around.
“The shepherding hut?” it said.
It sat up. Red light shone in through the open door, and between the trunks of the saplings growing everywhere. Many of them were quite big now and cast long shadows, putting the setting sun behind bars. Around the shepherding hut, though, they had been cut down.
“This is a trick,” it said. “It won’t work. We are you. We think like you. We’re better at thinking like you than you are.”
Nothing happened.
The hiver looked like Tiffany, although here it was slightly taller because Tiffany thought she was slightly taller than she really was. It stepped out of the hut and onto the turf.
“It’s getting late,” it said to the silence. “Look at the trees! This place is dying. We don’t have to escape. Soon all of this will be part of us. Everything that you really could be. You’re proud of your little piece of ground. We can remember when there were no worlds! We—you could change things with a wave of your