The Wee Free Men (Discworld 30)

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody.

“But the sea feels…real. It’s salty and wet and cold. It’s not like paint! I didn’t dream it salty or so cold!”

“Nae kiddin’? Then it’s a picture on the outside, and it’s real on the inside.” Rob nodded. “Ye ken, we’ve been robbin’ and running aroound on all kinds o’ worlds for a lang time, and I’ll tell ye this: The universe is a lot more comp-li-cated than it looks from the ooutside.”

Tiffany took the grubby label out of her pocket and stared at it again. There was the life preserver, and the lighthouse. But the Jolly Sailor himself wasn’t there. What was there, so tiny as to be little bigger than a dot on the printed sea, was a tiny rowboat.

She looked up. There were storm clouds in the sky in front of the huge, hazy life preserver. They were long and ragged, curling as they came.

“It didna take her long to find a way in,” muttered William.

“No,” said Tiffany, “but this is my dream. I know how it goes. Keep rowing!”

Tangling and tumbling, some of the clouds passed overhead and then swooped toward the sea. They vanished beneath the waves like a waterspout in reverse.

It began to rain hard, so hard that a haze of mist rose over the sea.

“Is that it?” Tiffany wondered. “Is that all she can do?”

“I doot it,” said Rob Anybody. “Bend them oars, lads!”

The boat shot forward, bouncing through the rain from wavetop to wavetop.

But, against all normal rules, it was now trying to go uphill. The water was mounding up and up, and the boat washed backward in the streaming surf.

Something was rising. Something white was pushing the seas aside. Great waterfalls poured off the shining dome that climbed toward the storm sky.

It rose higher, and still there was more. And eventually there was an eye. It was tiny compared to the mountainous head above it, and it rolled in its socket and focused on the tiny boat.

o;I’ve got nowhere to run to!” said Tiffany.

She heard a high-pitched noise, a sort of chittering, insect noise, coming from the forest. The pictsies had drawn together. Usually they grinned like anything if they thought a fight was coming up, but this time they looked deadly serious.

“Ach, she’s a bad loser, the Quin,” said Rob.

Tiffany turned to look at the horizon behind her. The boiling blackness was there, too, a ring that was closing in from all sides.

Doors everywhere, she thought. The old kelda said there’s doors everywhere. I must find a door. But there’s just snow and a few trees….

The pictsies drew their swords.

“What, er, kind of nightmares are coming?” said Tiffany.

“Ach, long-leggity things with muckle legs and huge teeth, and flappy wings and a hundred eyes, that kinda stuff,” said Daft Wullie.

“Aye, and wuss than that,” said Rob Anybody, staring at the speeding dark.

“What’s worse than that?” said Tiffany.

“Normal stuff gone wrong,” said Rob.

Tiffany looked blank for a moment, and then shuddered. Oh yes, she knew about those nightmares. They didn’t happen often, but they were horrible when they did. She’d woken up once shaking at the thought of Granny Aching’s boots, which had been chasing her, and another time it was a box of sugar. Anything could be a nightmare.

She could put up with monsters. But she didn’t want to face mad boots.

“Er…I have an idea,” she said.

“So do I,” said Rob Anybody. “Dinna be here—that’s my idea!”