The Wee Free Men

the fury dying away, it was hard looking at things here without her head aching. Things that seemed far off got closer too quickly, trees changed shape as she passed them.
    Almost unreal, William had said. Nearly a dream. This world didn’t have enough reality in it for distances and shapes to work properly. Once again the magic artist was painting madly. If she looked hard at a tree, it changed and became more treelike and less like something drawn by Wentworth with his eyes shut.
    This is a made-up world, Tiffany thought. Almost like a story. The trees don’t have to be very detailed because who looks at trees in a story?
    She stopped in a small clearing and stared hard at a tree. It seemed to know it was being watched. It became more real. The bark roughened, and proper twigs grew on the ends of the branches.
    The snow was melting around her feet, too. Although melting was the wrong word. It was just disappearing, leaving leaves and grass.
    If I was a world that didn’t have enough reality to go around, Tiffany thought, then snow would be quite handy. It doesn’t take a lot of effort. It’s just white stuff. Everything looks white and simple. But I can make it complicated. I’m more real than this place.
    She heard a buzzing overhead and looked up.
    And suddenly the air was filling with small people, smaller than the Feegle, with wings like dragonflies’. There was a golden glow around them. Tiffany, entranced, reached out a hand—
    At the same moment what felt like the entire clan of Nac Mac Feegle landed on her back and sent her sliding into a snowdrift.
    When she struggled out, the clearing was a battlefield. The pictsies were jumping and slashing at the flying creatures, which buzzed around them like wasps. As she stared, two of them dived onto Rob Anybody and lifted him off his feet by his hair.
    He rose in the air, yelling and struggling. Tiffany leaped up and grabbed him around the waist, flailing at the creatures with her other hand. They let go of the pictsie and dodged easily, zipping through the air as fast as hummingbirds. One of them bit her on the finger before buzzing away.
    Somewhere a voice went: “Oooooooooooooeeerrrrrr…”
    Rob struggled in Tiffany’s grip. “Quick, put me doon!” he yelled. “There’s gonna be poetry!”

CHAPTER 9
    Lost Boys
    T he moan rolled around the clearing, as mournful as a month of Mondays.
    “…rrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaoooooooo…”
    It sounded like some animal in terrible pain. But it was, in fact, Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, who was standing on a snowdrift with one hand pressed to his heart and the other outstretched, very theatrically.
    He was rolling his eyes, too.
    “…oooooooooooooooooooooo…”
    “Ach, the muse is a terrible thing to have happen to ye,” said Rob Anybody, putting his hands over his ears.
    “…oooooiiiiiit is with grreat lamentation and much worrying dismay,” the pictsie groaned, “That we rrregard the doleful prospect of Fairyland in considerrrable decay…”
    In the air the flying creatures stopped attacking and began to panic. Some of them flew into one another.
    “…With quite a large number of drrrrrrreadful incidents happening everrry day,” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock recited, “Including, I am sorrrry to say, an aerial attack by the otherwise quite attractive fey…”
    The fliers screeched. Some crashed into the snow, but the ones still capable of flight swarmed off among the trees.
    “…Witnessed by all of us at this time, and celebrated in this hasty rhyme!” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock shouted after them.
    And they were gone.
    Feegles were picking themselves up off the ground. Some were bleeding where the fairies had bitten them. Several were lying curled up and groaning.
    Tiffany looked at her own finger. The bite of the fairy had left two tiny holes.
    “It isna too bad,” Rob Anybody shouted up from below. “No one taken by them, just a few cases where the lads didna put their hands o’er their ears in time.”
    “Are they all right?”
    “Oh, they’ll be fine wi’ counsellin’.”
    On the mound of snow William clapped Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock on the shoulder in a friendly way.
    “That, lad,” he said proudly, “was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul. The last couple of lines need