“And she takes children,” said Tiffany.
“Aye. Your wee brother’s not the first,” said Rob Anybody. “There’s no’ a lot of fun and laughter here, ye ken. She thinks she’s good wi’ children.”
“The old kelda said she wouldn’t harm him,” said Tiffany. “That’s true, isn’t it?”
You could read the Nac Mac Feegle like a book. And it would be a big, simple book with pictures of Spot the Dog and a Big Red Ball and one or two short sentences on each page. What they were thinking turned up right there on their faces, and now they were all wearing a look that said: Crivens, I hope she disna ask us the question we dinna want tae answer….
“That is true, isn’t it?” she said.
“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody, slowly. “She didna lie to ye there. The Quin’ll try to be kind to him, but she disna know how. She’s an elf. They’re no’ very good at thinking of other people.”
“What will happen to him if we don’t get him back?”
Again there was that “we dinna like the way this is going” look.
“I said—” Tiffany repeated.
“I darrresay she’ll send him back, in due time,” said William. “An’ he willna be any olderr. Nothing grows old here. Nothing grows. Nothing at all.”
“So he’ll be all right?”
Rob Anybody made a noise in his throat. It sounded like a voice that was trying to say aye but was being argued with by a brain that knew the answer was no.
“Tell me what you’re not telling me,” said Tiffany.
Daft Wullie was the first to speak. “That’s a lot o’ stuff,” he said. “For example, the meltin’ point o’ lead is—”
“Time passes slower the deeper you go intae this place,” said Rob Anybody quickly. “Years pass like days. The Quin’ll get tired o’ the wee lad after a coupla months, mebbe. A coupla months here, ye ken, where the time is slow an’ heavy. But when he comes back into the mortal world, you’ll be an old lady, or mebbe you’ll be deid. So if youse has bairns o’ yer own, you’d better tell them to watch out for a wee sticky kid wanderin’ the hills shoutin’ for sweeties, ’cause that’ll be their Uncle Wentworth. That wouldna be the worst o’ it, neither. Live in dreams for too long and ye go mad—ye can never wake up prop’ly, ye can never get the hang o’ reality again.”
Tiffany stared at him.
“It’s happened before,” said William.
“I will get him back,” said Tiffany quietly.
“We doon’t doubt it,” said Rob Anybody. “An’ where’er ye go, we’ll come with ye. The Nac Mac Feegle are afeared o’ nothing!”
A cheer went up, but it seemed to Tiffany that the blue shadows sucked all the sound away.
“Aye, nothin’ exceptin’ lawyers mmph mmph,” Daft Wullie tried to say, before Rob managed to shut him up.
Tiffany turned back to the line of hoofprints and began to walk.
The snow squeaked unpleasantly underfoot.
She went a little way, watching the trees get realer as she approached them, and then looked around.
All the Nac Mac Feegle were creeping along behind her. Rob Anybody gave her a cheery nod. And all her footprints had become holes in the snow, with grass showing through.
The trees began to annoy her. The way things changed was more frightening than any monster. You could hit a monster, but you couldn’t hit a forest. And she wanted to hit something.
She stopped and scraped some snow away from the base of a tree, and just for a moment there was nothing but grayness where it had been. As she watched, the bark grew down to where the snow was. Then it just stayed there, pretending it had been there all the time.
It was a lot more worrying than the grimhounds. They were just monsters. They could be beaten. This was…frightening.
She was second thinking again. She felt the fear grow, she felt her stomach become a red hot lump, she felt her elbows begin to sweat. But it was…not connected. She watched herself being frightened, and that meant that there was still this part of herself, the watching part, that wasn’t.
The trouble was, it was being carried on legs that were. It had to be very careful.