The Wee Free Men (Discworld 30)

There was some whooping and clapping from the Nac Mac Feegle, and they surged across the turf toward her.

“That was great, a’ that reading’ ye did!” said Rob Anybody. “I didna understand a single word o’ it!”

“Aye, it must be powerful language if you canna make oout what the heel it’s goin’ on aboot!” said another pictsie.

“Ye definitely ha’ got the makin’s of a kelda, mistress,” said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock.

“Aye!” said Daft Wullie. “It was smashin’ the way you spotted them candies and didna let on! We didna think you’d see the wee green one, too!”

The rest of the pictsies stopped cheering and glared at him.

“What did I say? What did I say?” he said.

Tiffany sagged. “You all knew that was the way through, didn’t you,” she said.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody. “We ken that kind of stuff. We used tae live in the Quin’s country, ye ken, but we rebelled against her evil rule—”

“And we did that, an’ then she threw us oout on account o’ bein’ drunk an’ stealin’ and fightin’ a’ the time,” said Daft Wullie.

“It wasna like that at a’!” roared Rob Anybody.

“And you were waiting to see if I could find the way, right?” said Tiffany, before a fight could start.

“Aye. Ye did well, lassie.”

Tiffany shook her head. “No, I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t do any real magic. I don’t know how. I just looked at things and worked them out. It was cheating, really.”

The pictsies looked at one another.

“Ah, weel,” said Rob Anybody. “What’s magic, eh? Just wavin’ a stick an’ sayin’ a few wee magical words. An’ what’s so clever aboot that, eh? But lookin’ at things, really lookin’ at ’em, and then workin’ ’em oout, now, that’s a real skill.”

“Aye, it is,” said William the gonnagle, to Tiffany’s surprise. “Ye used yer eyes and used yer heid. That’s what a real hag does. The magicking is just there for advertisin’.”

“Oh,” said Tiffany, cheering up. “Really? Well, then…there’s our door, everyone!”

“Right,” said Rob Anybody. “Now show us the way through.”

Tiffany hesitated and then thought: I can feel myself thinking. I’m watching the way I’m thinking. And what am I thinking? I’m thinking: I walked through this arch before, and nothing happened.

But I wasn’t looking then. I wasn’t thinking, either. Not properly.

The world I can see through the arch isn’t actually real. It just looks as though it is. It’s a sort of…magical picture, put there to disguise the entrance. And if you don’t pay attention, well, you just walk in and out of it and you don’t realize it.

Aha…

She walked through the arch. Nothing happened. The Nac Mac Feegle watched her solemnly.

Okay, she thought. I’m still being fooled, aren’t I?…

She stood in front of the stones and stretched out her hands on either side of her, and shut her eyes. Very slowly she stepped forward…

Something crunched under her boots, but she didn’t open her eyes until she couldn’t feel the stones anymore. When she did open them…

hen she was among the mounds. Her sisters had told her that there were more dead kings buried under there, but it had never frightened her. Nothing on the downs had ever frightened her.

But it was cold here. She’d never noticed that before.

Find a place where the time doesn’t fit. Well, the mounds were history. So were the old stones. Did they fit here? Well, yes, they belonged to the past, but they’d ridden on the hills for thousands of years. They’d grown old here. They were part of the landscape.