The Wee Free Men (Discworld 30)

“Listen, the Feegle think they’re in heaven! They think they died and came here!”

“And?” said the toad.

“Well, that can’t be right! You’re supposed to be alive here and then die and end up in some heaven somewhere else!”

“Well, that’s just saying the same thing in a different way, isn’t it? Anyway, lots of warrior tribes think that when they die, they go to a heavenly land somewhere,” said the toad. “You know, where they can drink and fight and feast forever? So maybe this is theirs.”

“But this is a real place!”

“So? It’s what they believe. Besides, they’re only small. Maybe the universe is a bit crowded and they have to put heavens anywhere there’s room? I’m a toad, so you’ll appreciate that I’m having to guess a lot here. Maybe they’re just wrong. Maybe you’re just wrong. Maybe I’m just wrong.”

A small foot kicked Tiffany on the boot.

“We’d best be moving on, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. He had a dead Feegle over his shoulder. Quite a few of the others were carrying bodies, too.

“Er…are you going to bury them?” said Tiffany.

“Aye, they dinna need these ol’ bodies noo, an’ it’s no’ tidy to leave ’em lyin’ aboot,” said Rob Anybody. “Besides, if the bigjobs find little wee skulls and bones aroound, they’ll start to wonder, and we don’t want anyone pokin’ aboot. Savin’ your presence, mistress,” he added.

“No, that’s very, er…practical thinking,” said Tiffany, giving up.

The Feegle pointed to a distant mound with a thicket of thorn trees growing on it. A lot of the mounds had thickets on them. The trees took advantage of the deeper soil. It was said to be unlucky to cut them down.

“It’s nae very far noo,” he said.

“You live in one of the mounds?” Tiffany asked. “I thought they were, you know, the graves of ancient chieftains?”

“Ach, aye, there’s some ol’ dead kingie in the chamber next door, but he’s nae trouble,” said Rob. “Dinna fret, there’s nae skelingtons or any such in oour bit. It’s quite roomy, we’ve done it up a treat.”

Tiffany looked up at the endless blue sky over the endlessly green downland. It was all so peaceful again, a world away from headless men and big savage dogs.

What if I hadn’t taken Wentworth down to the river? she thought. What would I be doing now? Getting on with the cheese, I suppose….

I never knew about all this. I never knew I lived in heaven, even if it’s only heaven to a clan of little blue men. I didn’t know about people who flew on buzzards.

I never killed monsters before.

“Where do they come from?” she said. “What’s the name of the place the monsters come from?”

“Ach, ye prob’ly ken the place well,” said Rob Anybody. As they grew nearer to the mound, Tiffany thought she could smell smoke in the air.

“Do I?” she said.

“Aye. But it’s no’ a name I’ll say in open air. It’s a name to be whispered in a safe place. I’ll no’ say it under this sky.”

It was too big to be a rabbit hole and badgers didn’t live up here, but the entrance to the mound was tucked among the thorn roots, and no one would have thought it was anything but the home of some kind of animal.

Tiffany was slim, but even so she had to take off her apron and crawl on her stomach under the thorns to reach it, dragging the apron behind her. And it still needed several Feegles to push her through.

At least it didn’t smell bad and, once you were through the hole, it opened up a lot. Really, the entrance was just a disguise. Underneath, the space was the size of quite a large room, open in the center but with Feegle-sized galleries around the walls from floor to ceiling. They were crowded with pictsies of all sizes, washing clothes, arguing, sewing and, here and there, fighting, and doing everything as loudly as possible. Some had hair and beards tinged with white. Much younger ones, only a few inches tall, were running around with no clothes on, and yelling at one another at the tops of their little voices. After a couple of years of helping to bring up Wentworth, Tiffany knew what that was all about.

There were no girls, though. No Wee Free Women.

No…there was one.

The squabbling, bustling crowds parted to let her through. She came up to Tiffany’s ankle. She was prettier than the male Feegles, although the world was full of things prettier than, say, Daft Wullie. But, like them, she had red hair and an expression of determination.

She curtsied, then said, “Are ye the bigjob hag, mistress?”