The Wee Free Men

line of hoofprints and began to walk.
    The snow squeaked unpleasantly underfoot.
    She went a little way, watching the trees get realer as she approached them, and then looked around.
    All the Nac Mac Feegle were creeping along behind her. Rob Anybody gave her a cheery nod. And all her footprints had become holes in the snow, with grass showing through.
    The trees began to annoy her. The way things changed was more frightening than any monster. You could hit a monster, but you couldn’t hit a forest. And she wanted to hit something .
    She stopped and scraped some snow away from the base of a tree, and just for a moment there was nothing but grayness where it had been. As she watched, the bark grew down to where the snow was. Then it just stayed there, pretending it had been there all the time.
    It was a lot more worrying than the grimhounds. They were just monsters. They could be beaten. This was…frightening.
    She was second thinking again. She felt the fear grow, she felt her stomach become a red hot lump, she felt her elbows begin to sweat. But it was…not connected. She watched herself being frightened, and that meant that there was still this part of herself, the watching part, that wasn’t.
    The trouble was, it was being carried on legs that were. It had to be very careful.
    And that was where it went wrong. Fear gripped her, all at once. She was in a strange world, with monsters, being followed by hundreds of little blue thieves. And…black dogs. Headless horsemen. Monsters in the river. Sheep whizzing backward across fields. Voices under the bed…
    The terror took her. But because she was Tiffany, she ran toward it, raising the pan. She had to get through the forest, find the Queen, get her brother, leave this place!
    Somewhere behind her, voices started to shout—
    She woke up.
    There was no snow, but there was the whiteness of the bedsheet and the plaster ceiling of her bedroom. She stared at it for a while, then leaned down and peered under the bed.
    There was nothing there but the guzunder. When she flung open the door of the doll’s house, there was no one inside but the two toy soldiers and the teddy bear and the headless dolly.
    The walls were solid. The floor creaked as it always did. Her slippers were the same as they always were: old, comfortable, and with all the pink fluff worn off.
    She stood in the middle of the floor and said, very quietly, “Is there anybody there?”
    Sheep baa’d on the distant hillside, but they probably hadn’t heard her.
    The door squeaked open and the cat, Ratbag, came in. He rubbed up against her legs, purring like a distant thunderstorm, and then went and curled up on her bed.
    Tiffany got dressed thoughtfully, daring the room to do something strange.
    When she got downstairs, breakfast was cooking. Her mother was busy at the sink.
    Tiffany darted out through the scullery and into the dairy. She scrambled on hands and knees around the floor, peering under the sink and behind cupboards.
    “You can come out now, honestly,” she said.
    No one came. She was alone in the room. She’d often been alone in the room, and had enjoyed it. It was almost her private territory. But now, somehow, it was too empty, too clean.
    When she wandered back into the kitchen, her mother was still standing by the sink, washing dishes, but a plate of steaming porridge had been put down in the one set place on the table.
    “I’ll make some more butter today,” said Tiffany carefully, sitting down. “I might as well, while we’re getting all this milk.”
    Her mother nodded and put a plate on the drainboard beside the sink.
    “I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?” said Tiffany.
    Her mother shook her head.
    Tiffany sighed. “And then she woke up and it was all a dream.” It was just about the worst ending you could have to any story. But it had all seemed so real . She could remember the smoky smell in the pictsies’ cave, and the way…who was it…oh, yes, he’d been called Rob Anybody…the way Rob Anybody had always been so nervous about talking to her.
    It was strange, she thought, that Ratbag had rubbed up against her. He’d sleep on her bed if he could get away with it, but during the day he kept well out of Tiffany’s way. How odd.
    There was a rattling noise near the mantelpiece. The china shepherdess on Granny’s shelf was moving sideways of its own accord, and as Tiffany watched with her porridge spoon halfway to her mouth, it slid off and smashed on the