The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett [86]
More memories poured into her mind.
There’s always been someone watching the borders. They didn’t decide to. It was decided for them. Someone has to care. Sometimes they have to fight. Someone has to speak for that which has no voice….
She opened her eyes. She was still lying in the mud, and the Queen was laughing at her, and overhead the storm still raged.
But she felt warm. In fact, she felt hot, red-hot with anger…anger at the bruised turf, anger at her own stupidity, anger at this beautiful creature whose only talent was control.
This…creature was trying to take her world.
All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!
I have a duty!
The anger overflowed. She stood up, clenched her fists, and screamed at the storm, putting into the scream all the rage that was inside her.
Lightning struck the ground on either side of her. It did so twice.
And it stayed there, crackling, and two dogs formed.
Steam rose from their coats, and blue light sparked from their ears as they shook themselves. They looked attentively at Tiffany.
The Queen gasped and vanished.
“Come by, Lightning!” shouted Tiffany. “Away to me, Thunder!” And she remembered the time when she’d run across the downs, falling over, shouting all the wrong things, while the two dogs had done exactly what needed to be done.
Two streaks of black and white sped away across the turf and up toward the clouds.
They herded the storm.
Clouds panicked and scattered, but always there was a comet streaking across the sky and they were turned. Monstrous shapes writhed and screamed in the boiling sky, but Thunder and Lightning had worked many flocks; there was an occasional snap of lightning-sparked teeth, and a wail. Tiffany stared upward, rain pouring off her face, and shouted commands that no dog could possibly have heard.
Jostling and rumbling and screaming, the storm rolled off the hills and away toward the mountains, where there were deep canyons that could pen it.
Out of breath, glowing with triumph, Tiffany watched until the dogs came back and settled, once again, on the turf. And then she remembered something else: It didn’t matter what orders she gave those dogs. They were not her dogs. They were working dogs.
Thunder and Lightning didn’t take orders from a little girl.
And the dogs weren’t looking at her.
They were looking just behind her.
She’d have turned if someone had told her a horrible monster was behind her. She’d have turned if they’d said it had a thousand teeth. She didn’t want to turn around now. Forcing herself was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
She was not afraid of what she might see. She was terribly, mortally frightened, afraid to the center of her bones of what she might not see. She shut her eyes while her cowardly boots shuffled her around and then, after a deep breath, she opened them again.
There was a gust of Jolly Sailor tobacco, and sheep, and turpentine.
Sparkling in the dark, light glittering off the white shepherdess dress and every blue ribbon and silver buckle of it, was Granny Aching, smiling hugely, radiant with pride. In one hand she held the huge ornamental crook, hung with blue bows.
She pirouetted slowly, and Tiffany saw that while she was a brilliant, sparkling shepherdess from hat to hem, she still had her huge old boots on.
Granny Aching took her pipe out of her mouth and gave Tiffany the little nod that was, from her, a round of applause. And then—she wasn’t.
Real starlit darkness covered the turf, and the nighttime sounds filled the air. Tiffany didn’t know if what had just happened was a dream or had happened somewhere that wasn’t quite here or had happened