“That’s yer little people wi’ wings,” said Rob, as Tiffany sucked at her finger. “Are ye happier now?”
“Why were they trying to carry you away?”
“Ach, they carries their victims off to their nest, where their young ones—”
“Stop!” said Tiffany. “This is going to be horrible, right?”
“Oh, aye. Gruesome,” said Rob, grinning.
“And you used to live here?”
“Ah, but it wasna so bad then. It wasna perfect, mark you, but the Quin wasna as cold in them days. The King was still aroound. She was always happy then.”
“What happened? Did the King die?”
“No. They had words, if ye tak’ my meanin’,” said Rob.
“Oh, you mean like an argument—”
“A bit, mebbe,” said Rob. “But they was magical words. Forests destroyed, mountains explodin’, a few hundred deaths, that kind of thing. And he went off to his own world. Fairyland was never a picnic, ye ken, even in the old days. But it was fine if you kept alert, an’ there was flowers and burdies and summertime. Now there’s the dromes and the hounds and the stinging fey and such stuff creepin’ in from their own worlds, and the whole place has gone doon the tubes.”
Things taken from their own worlds, thought Tiffany, as she tramped through the snow. Worlds all squashed together like peas in a sack, or hidden inside one another like bubbles inside other bubbles.
She had a picture in her head of things creeping out of their own world and into another, in the same way that mice invaded the larder. Only there were worse things than mice.
What would a drome do if it got into our world? You’d never know it was there. It’d sit in the corner and you’d never see it, because it wouldn’t let you. And it’d change the way you saw the world, give you nightmares, make you want to die.
hing wasn’t just trying to kill her, it was insulting her.
William was watching her.
“Aye, ye’re lookin’ mighty fierce,” he said. “Ye must love your wee brother to face a’ these monsters for him.”
And Tiffany couldn’t stop her thoughts. I don’t love him. I know I don’t. He’s just so…sticky, and can’t keep up, and I have to spend too much time looking after him, and he’s always screaming for things. I can’t talk to him. He just wants all the time.
But her Second Thinking said: He’s mine. My place, my home, my brother! How dare anything touch what’s mine!
She’d been brought up not to be selfish. She knew she wasn’t, not in the way people meant. She tried to think of other people. She never took the last slice of bread. This was a different feeling.
She wasn’t being brave or noble or kind. She was doing this because it had to be done, because there was no way that she could not do it. She thought of:
…Granny Aching’s light, weaving slowly across the downs, on freezing, sparkly nights or in storms like a raging war, saving lambs from the creeping frost or rams from the precipice. She froze and struggled and tramped through the night for idiot sheep that never said thank you and would be just as stupid tomorrow, and get into the same trouble again. And she did it because not doing it was unthinkable.
There had been the time when they met the peddler and the donkey in the lane. It was a small donkey and could hardly be seen under the pack piled on it. And the peddler was thrashing it because it had fallen over.
Tiffany had cried to see that, and Granny had looked at her and then said something to Thunder and Lightning.
The peddler had stopped when he heard the growling. The sheepdogs had taken up positions on either side of the man, so that he couldn’t quite see them both at once. He raised his stick as if to hit Lightning, and Thunder’s growl grew louder.
“I’d advise ye not to do that,” said Granny.
He wasn’t a stupid man. The eyes of the dogs were like steel balls. He lowered his arm.
“Now throw down the stick,” said Granny. The man did so, dropping it into the dust as though it had suddenly grown red-hot.
Granny Aching walked forward and picked it up. Tiffany remembered that it was a willow twig, long and whippy.
Suddenly, so fast that her hand was a blur, Granny sliced it across the man’s face twice, leaving two long red marks. He began to move, and some desperate thought must have saved him, because now the dogs were almost frantic for the command to leap.