The Wee Free Men

frightening, but also…annoying. That was it— annoying . This place annoyed her. It was all stupid and strange.
    It was the same feeling she’d had when Jenny had leaped out of the river. Out of her river. And the Queen had taken her brother. Maybe it was selfish to think like that, but anger was better than fear. Fear was a damp cold mess, but anger had an edge. She could use it.
    They were herding her! Like a—a sheep!
    Well, an angry sheep could send a vicious dog away, whimpering.
    So…
    Four big dromes, sitting in a square.
    It was going to be a big dream.
    Raising the pan to shoulder height, to swipe at anything that came near, and suppressing a dreadful urge to go to the toilet, Tiffany walked slowly down the slope, across the snow, through the mist…
    …and into summer.

CHAPTER 10
    Master Stroke
    T he heat struck like a blowtorch, so sharp and sudden that she gasped.
    She’d had sunstroke once, up on the downs, when she’d gone without a bonnet. And this was like that; the world around here was in worrying shades of dull green, yellow, and purple, without shadows. The air was so full of heat that she felt she could squeeze smoke out of it.
    She was in…reeds, they looked like, much taller than her…
    …with sunflowers growing in them, except…
    …the sunflowers were white…
    …because they weren’t , in fact, sunflowers at all.
    They were daisies. She knew it. She’d stared at them dozens of times, in that strange picture in the Faerie Tales . They were daisies, and these weren’t giant reeds around her, they were blades of grass and she was very, very small.
    She was in the weird picture. The picture was the dream, or the dream was the picture. Which way around didn’t matter, because she was right in the middle of it. If you fell off a cliff, it wouldn’t matter if the ground was rushing up or you were rushing down. You were in trouble either way.
    Somewhere in the distance there was a loud crack! and a ragged cheer. Someone clapped and said, in a sleepy sort of voice, “Well done. Good man. Ver’ well done.”
    With some effort Tiffany pushed her way between the blades of grass.
    On a flat rock a man was cracking nuts half as big as he was, with a two-handed hammer. He was being watched by a crowd of people. Tiffany used the word people because she couldn’t think of anything else that was suitable, but it was stretching the word a bit to make it fit all the…people.
    They were different sizes, for one thing. Some of the men were taller than her, even if you allowed for the fact that everyone was shorter than the grass. But others were tiny. Some of them had faces that you wouldn’t look at twice. Others had faces that no one would want to look at even once.
    This is a dream, after all, Tiffany told herself. It doesn’t have to make sense, or be nice. It’s a dream, not a daydream. People who say things like “May all your dreams come true” should try living in one for five minutes.
    She stepped out into the bright, stiflingly hot clearing just as the man raised his hammer again, and said, “Excuse me?”
    “Yes?” he said.
    “Is there a Queen around here?” said Tiffany.
    The man wiped his forehead and nodded toward the other side of the clearing.
    “Her Majesty has gone to her bower,” he said.
    “That being a nook or resting place?” said Tiffany.
    The man nodded and said, “Correct again, Miss Tiffany.”
    Don’t ask how he knows your name, Tiffany told herself.
    “Thank you,” she said, and because she had been brought up to be polite, she added, “Best of luck with the nut cracking.”
    “This one’s the toughest yet,” said the man.
    Tiffany walked off, trying to look as if this collection of strange nearly-people was just another crowd. Probably the scariest ones were the big women, two of them.
    Big women were valued on the Chalk. Farmers liked big wives. Farmwork was hard, and there was no call for a wife who couldn’t carry a couple of piglets or a bale of hay. But these two could have carried a horse each. They stared haughtily at her as she walked past.
    They had tiny, stupid little wings on their backs.
    “Nice day for watching nuts being cracked!” said Tiffany cheerfully as she went past. Their huge pale faces wrinkled, as if they were trying to work out what she was.
    Sitting down near them, watching the nut cracker with an expression of concern, was a little man with a large head, a fringe of white beard, and pointy ears. He was wearing