“It dissolves spoons,” said Tiffany. “It’s for special occasions. Father says it’s not for women because it puts hairs on your chest.”
“Then if you want to be sure of finding the Nac Mac Feegle, go and fetch some,” said the toad. “It will work, believe me.”
Five minutes later Tiffany was ready. Few things are hidden from a quiet child with good eyesight, and she knew where the bottles were stored and she had one now. The cork was hammered in over a piece of rag, but it was old and she was able to lever it out with the tip of a knife. The fumes made her eyes water.
She went to pour some of the golden-brown liquid into a saucer—
“No! We’ll be trampled to death if you do that,” said the toad. “Just leave the cork off.”
Fumes rose from the top of the bottle, wavering like the air over rocks on a hot day.
She felt it—a sensation, in the dim, cool room, of riveted attention.
She sat down on a milking stool and said, “All right, you can come out now.”
There were hundreds. They rose up from behind buckets. They lowered themselves on string from the ceiling beams. They sidled sheepishly from behind the cheese racks. They crept out from under the sink. They came out of places where you’d think a man with hair like an orange gone nova couldn’t possibly hide.
They were all about six inches tall and mostly colored blue, although it was hard to know if that was the actual color of their skins or just the dye from their tattoos, which covered every inch that wasn’t covered with red hair. They wore short kilts, and some wore other bits of clothing too, like skinny vests. A few of them wore rabbit or rat skulls on their heads, as a sort of helmet. And every single one of them carried, slung across his back, a sword nearly as big as he was.
However, what Tiffany noticed more than anything else was that they were scared of her. Mostly they were looking at their own feet, which was no errand for the faint-hearted because their feet were large, dirty, and half tied up with animal skins to make very bad shoes. None of them wanted to look her in the eye.
“You were the people who filled the water buckets?” she said.
There was a lot of foot shuffling and coughing and a chorus of ayes.
“And the wood box?”
There were more ayes.
Tiffany glared at them.
“And what about the sheep?”
This time they all looked down.
“Why did you steal the sheep?”
There was a lot of muttering and nudging, and then one of the tiny men removed his rabbit-skull helmet and twiddled it nervously in his hands.
“We wuz hungerin’, mistress,” he muttered. “But when we kenned it was thine, we did put the beastie back in the fold.”
They looked so crestfallen that Tiffany took pity on them.
“I expect you wouldn’t have stolen it if you weren’t so hungry, then,” she said.
There were several hundred astonished looks.
“Oh, we would, mistress,” said the helmet twiddler.
“You would?”
Tiffany sounded so surprised that the twiddler looked around at his colleagues for support. They all nodded.
“Yes, mistress. We have tae. We are a famously stealin’ folk. Aren’t we, lads? Whut’s it we’re famous for?”
“Stealin’!” shouted the blue men.
“And what else, lads?”