The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett [51]
This died away, a cloud of dust dropped from the roof, and there was silence.
“Let’s gae!” cried Rob Anybody.
As one Feegle, the pictsies swarmed down the galleries and across the floor and up the slope to the hole. In a few seconds the chamber was empty, except for the gonnagle and Fion.
“Where have they gone?” said Tiffany.
“Ach, they just go,” said Fion, shrugging. “I’m going tae stay here and look after the fire. Someone ought to act like a proper kelda.” She glared at Tiffany.
“I do hope you find a clan for yourself soon, Fion,” said Tiffany sweetly. The pictsie scowled at her.
“They’ll run arroond for a while, mebbe stun a few bunnies and fall over a few times,” said William. “They’ll slow down when they find oout they don’t ken what they’re supposed to do yet.”
“Do they always just run off like this?” said Tiffany.
“Ach, well, Rob Anybody disna want too much talk about marryin’,” said William, grinning.
“Yes, we have a lot in common in that respect,” said Tiffany.
She pulled herself out of the hole and found the toad waiting for her.
“I listened in,” he said. “Well done. Very clever. Very diplomatic.”
Tiffany looked around. There were a few hours to sunset, but the shadows were already lengthening.
“We’d better be going,” she said, tying on her apron. “And you’re coming, toad.”
“Well, I don’t know much about how to get into—” the toad began, trying to back away. But toads can’t back up easily, and Tiffany grabbed him and put him in her apron pocket.
She headed for the mounds and stones. My brother will never grow up, she thought, as she ran across the turf. That’s what the old lady said. How does that work? What kind of a place is it where you never grow up?
The mounds got nearer. She saw William and Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock running along beside her, but there was no sign of the rest of the Nac Mac Feegle.
And then she was among the mounds. Her sisters had told her that there were more dead kings buried under there, but it had never frightened her. Nothing on the downs had ever frightened her.
But it was cold here. She’d never noticed that before.
Find a place where the time doesn’t fit. Well, the mounds were history. So were the old stones. Did they fit here? Well, yes, they belonged to the past, but they’d ridden on the hills for thousands of years. They’d grown old here. They were part of the landscape.
The low sun made the shadows lengthen. That was when the Chalk revealed its secrets. At some places, when the light was right, you could see the edges of old fields and tracks. The shadows showed up what brilliant noonlight couldn’t see.
Tiffany had made up noonlight.
She couldn’t even see hoof prints. She wandered around the trilithons, which looked a bit like huge stone doorways, but even when she tried walking through them both ways, nothing happened.
This wasn’t according to plan. There should have been a magic door. She was sure of that.
A bubbling feeling in her ear suggested that someone was playing the mousepipes. She looked around and saw William the gonnagle standing on a fallen stone. His cheeks were bulging, and so was the bag of the mousepipes.
She waved at him. “Can you see anything?” she called.
William took the pipe out of his mouth, and the bubbling stopped. “Oh, aye,” he said.
“The way to the Queen’s land?”
“Oh, aye.”
“Well, would you care to tell me?”
“I dinna need to tell a kelda,” said William. “A kelda would see the clear way hersel’.”
“But you could tell me!”
“Aye, and you coulda said please,” said William. “I’m ninety-six years old. I’m nae a dolly in yer dolly hoose. Yer granny was a fiiine wuman, but I’ll no’ be ordered about by a wee chit of a girl.”
Tiffany stared for a moment and then lifted the toad out of her apron pocket.
“Chit?” she said.
“It means something very small,” said the toad. “Trust me.”
“He’s calling me small!”
“I’m biggerrr on the inside!” said William. “And I daresay your da’ wouldna be happy if a big giant of a wee girl came stampin’ aroound ordering him aboout!”
“The old kelda ordered people