The Wee Free Men

sound—it was like a thin, sharp musical note. It had a voice, too. Her own voice. It was saying: It’s too late, tears are no good, no time to say anything, there are things to be done.
    And…then she fed the dogs, who were waiting patiently for their breakfast. It would have helped if they’d done something soppy, like whine or lick Granny’s face, but they hadn’t. And still Tiffany heard the voice in her mind: No tears, don’t cry. Don’t cry for Granny Aching.
    Now, in her head, she watched the slightly smaller Tiffany move around the hut like a little puppet.
    She’d tidied up the hut. Besides the bed and the stove there really wasn’t much there. There was the clothes sack and the big water barrel and the food box, and that was it. Oh, stuff to do with sheep was all over the place—pots and bottles and sacks and knives and shears—but there was nothing there that said a person lived here, unless you counted the hundreds of blue-and-yellow Jolly Sailor wrappers pinned on one wall.
    She’d taken one of them down—it was still underneath her mattress at home—and remembered the Story.
    It was very unusual for Granny Aching to say more than a sentence. She used words as if they cost money. But there’d been one day when she’d taken food up to the hut, and Granny had told her a story. A sort of a story. She’d unwrapped the tobacco, and looked at the wrapper, and then looked at Tiffany with that slightly puzzled look she used, and said: “I must’ve looked at a thousand o’ these things, and I never once saw his bo-ut.” That was how she pronounced boat.
    Of course Tiffany had rushed to have a look at this label, but she couldn’t see any boat, any more than she could see the naked lady.
    “That’s ’cause the bo-ut is just where you can’t see it,” Granny had said. “He’s got a bo-ut for chasin’ the great white whale fish on the salt sea. He’s always chasing it, all round the world. It’s called Mopey. It’s a beast like a big cliff of chalk, I heard tell. In a book.”
    “Why’s he chasing it?” Tiffany had asked.
    “To catch it,” Granny had said. “But he never will, the reason being, the world is round like a big plate and so is the sea, and so they’re chasing one another, so it is almost like he is chasing hisself. Ye never want to go to sea, jiggit. That’s where worse things happen. Everyone says that. You stop along here, where’s the hills is in yer bones.”
    And that was it. It was one of the very few times Granny Aching had ever said anything to Tiffany that wasn’t, in some way, about sheep. It was the only time she ever acknowledged that there was a world beyond the Chalk. Tiffany used to dream about the Jolly Sailor chasing the whale fish in his boat. And sometimes the whale fish would chase her, but the Jolly Sailor always arrived in his mighty ship just in time and their chase would start again.
    Sometimes she’d run to the lighthouse, and wake up just as the door swung open. She’d never seen the sea, but one of the neighbors had an old picture on the wall that showed a lot of men clinging to a raft in what looked like a huge lake full of waves. She hadn’t been able to see the lighthouse at all.
    And Tiffany had sat by the narrow bed and thought about Granny Aching, and about the little girl Sarah Grizzel very carefully painting the flowers in the book, and about the world losing its center.
    She missed the silence. What there was now wasn’t the same kind of silence there had been before. Granny’s silence was warm, and brought you inside. Granny Aching might sometimes have had trouble remembering the difference between children and lambs, but in her silence you were welcome and belonged. All you had to bring was a silence of your own.
    Tiffany wished that she’d had a chance to say sorry about the shepherdess.
    Then she’d gone home and told everyone that Granny was dead. She was seven, and the world had ended.
    Someone was tapping politely on her boot. She opened her eyes and saw the toad. It was holding a small rock in its mouth. It spat it out.
    “Sorry about that,” it said. “I’d have used my arms, but we’re a very soggy species.”
    “What am I supposed to do ?” said Tiffany.
    “Well, if you hit your head on this low ceiling, you would have a definite claim for damages,” said the toad. “Er…did I just say that?”
    “Yes, and I hope you wish you hadn’t,” said Tiffany. “Why did you say it?”
    “I don’t