“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 lighthouse!” she said, pointing. “Can you see it? A lighthouse so ships don’t run into the rocks! Right? Understand? This is a trap made just for you! The Queen’s still around!”
“Mebbe just can we go down and look inside one wee ship?” said Rob Anybody wistfully.
“No! Because”—Tiffany looked up; a gleam had caught her eye—“because…the sea…is…coming…back…” she said.
What looked like a cloud on the horizon was getting bigger, and glittering as it came. Tiffany could already hear the roar.
She ran back up the beach and got her hands under Roland’s armpits, so that she could drag him to the lighthouse. She looked back, and the pictsies were still watching the huge, surging wave.
And there was Wentworth, watching the wave happily, and bending down slightly so that, if they stood on tiptoe, he could hold hands with two Feegles.
The image branded itself on her eyes. The little boy, and the pictsies, all with their backs to her, and all staring with interest at the rushing, glittering, sky-filling wall of water.
“Come on!” Tiffany yelled. “I was wrong, this isn’t the tide, this is the Queen—”
Sunken ships were lifted up and spun around in the hissing mountain of surf.
“Come on!”
Tiffany managed to haul Roland across her shoulder and, staggering across the rocks, made it to the lighthouse door as the water crashed behind her—
—for a moment the world was full of white light—
—and snow squeaked underfoot.
It was the silent, cold land of the Queen. There was no one around and nothing to see except snow and, in the distance, the forest. Black clouds hovered over it.
Ahead of her, and only just visible, was a picture in the air. It showed some turf, and a few stones, lit with moonlight.