The Wee Free Men

strong look. “It’s flammable, too. It’s a good thing you didn’t drink it, isn’t it?”
    Daft Wullie belched loudly. There was a strong smell of kerosene.
    “Aye,” he said.
    Tiffany went and fetched Wentworth. Behind her, there was some muffled whispering as the pictsies went into a huddle.
    “I told yez the wee skull on it meant we shouldna touch it!”
    “Big Yan said that showed it wuz strong stuff! An’ things ha’ come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off ’f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!”
    “What’s flammable mean?”
    “It means it catches fire!”
    “Okay, okay, dinna panic. No belchin’, and none of youse is to tak’ a leak anywhere near any naked flames, okay? And act nat’ral.”
    Tiffany smiled to herself. Pictsies seemed very hard to kill. Perhaps believing you were already dead made you immune.
    She turned and looked toward the lighthouse door. She had never actually seen it opened in her dream. She’d always thought that the lighthouse was full of light, on the basis that on the farm the cowshed was full of cows and the woodshed was full of wood.
    “All right, all right,” she said, looking down at Rob Anybody. “I’m going to carry Roland, and I want you to bring Wentworth.”
    “Don’t you want to carry the wee lad?” said Rob.
    “Weewee man!” shouted Wentworth.
    “You bring him,” said Tiffany shortly. She meant: I’m not sure this is going to work, and he might be safer with you than with me. I hope I’m going to wake up in my bedroom. Waking up in my bedroom would be nice….
    Of course, if everyone else wakes up there, too, there might be some difficult questions asked, but anything’s better than the Queen—
    There was a rushing, rattling noise behind her. She turned and saw the sea disappearing, very quickly. It was pulling back down the shore. As she watched, rocks and clumps of seaweed rose above the surf and then were suddenly high and dry.
    “Ah,” she said, after a moment. “It’s all right. I know what this is. It’s the tide. The sea does this. In goes in and out every day.”
    “Aye?” said Rob Anybody. “Amazin’. It looks like it’s pourin’ awa’ though a hole….”
    About fifty yards away the last rivulets of seawater were disappearing over an edge, and some of the pictsies were already heading toward it.
    Tiffany suddenly had a moment of something that wasn’t exactly panic. It was a lot slower and nastier than panic. It began with just a nagging little doubt that said: Isn’t the tide a bit slower?
    The teacher (Wonders of the Nattral Wurld, One Apple) hadn’t gone into much detail. But there were fish flapping on the exposed seabed, and surely the fish in the sea didn’t die every day?
    “Er, I think we’d better be careful,” she said, trailing after Rob Anybody.
    “Why? It’s nae as though the water’s risin’,” he said. “When does the tide come back?”
    “Um, not for hours, I think,” said Tiffany, feeling the slow, nasty panic getting bigger. “But I’m not sure this—”
    “Tons o’ time, then,” said Rob Anybody.
    They’d reached the edge, where the rest of the pictsies were lined up. A little bit of water still trickled over their feet, pouring down into the gulf beyond.
    It was like looking down into a valley. At the far side, miles and miles away, the retreating sea was just a gleaming line.
    Below them, though, were the shipwrecks. There were a lot of them. Galleons and schooners and clippers, masts broken, rigging hanging, hulls breached, lay strewn across the puddles in what had been the bay.
    The Nac Mac Feegle, as one pictsie, sighed happily.
    “Sunken treasure!”
    “Aye! Gold!”
    “Bullion!”
    “Jools!”
    “What makes you think they’ve got treasure in them?” said Tiffany.
    The Nac Mac Feegle looked amazed, as if she’d suggested that rocks could fly.
    “There’s got to be treasure in ’em,” said Daft Wullie. “Otherwise what’s the point of lettin’ ’em sink?”
    “That’s right,” said Rob Anybody. “There’s got t’be gold in sunken ships, otherwise it wouldna be worth fighting all them sharkies and octopussies and stuff. Stealin’ treasure fra’ the ocean’s bed, that’s aboout the biggest, best thievin’ ever !”
    And now what Tiffany felt was real, honest panic.
    “That’s a