The Wee Free Men

Terry Pratchett

Summary

There's trouble on the Aching farm -- a monster in the river, a headless horseman in the driveway and nightmares spreading down from the hills. And now Tiffany Aching's little brother has been stolen by the Queen of the Fairies (although Tiffany doesn't think this is entirely a bad thing).

Tiffany's got to get him back. To help her, she has a weapon (a frying pan), her granny's magic book (well, Diseases of the Sheep, actually) and--

--oh, yes. She's also got the Nac Mac Feegle, the Wee Free Men, the fightin', thievin', tiny blue-skinned pictsies who were thrown out of Fairyland for being Drunk and Disorderly...

A wise, witty, and wonderfully inventive adventure set on the Discworld.

Quotes

People say things like "listen to your heart", but witches learn to listen to other things too. It's amazing what your kidneys can tell you.

Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what's going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular.

She'd read the dictionary all the way through. No one told her you weren't supposed to.

Start with the boots. They are big and heavy boots, much repaired by her father and they'd belonged to various sisters before her; she wore several pairs of socks to keep them on. They are big. TIffany sometimes feels she is nothing more than a way of moving boots around.

There were only five books if you didn't include the big farm diary, which in Tiffany's view didn't count as a real book because you had to write it yourself.

Bits of paper with Granny's own recipes for sheep cures stuck out all over the book. Mostly they involved turpentine, but some included cussin'.

And finally there was The Goode Childe's Booke of Faerie Tales, so old that it belonged to an age when there were far more 'e's around.

She ran out of her hiding place with the frying pan swinging like a bat. The screaming monster, leaping out of the water, met the frying pan coming the other way with a clang.

It was a good clang, with the oiyoiyoioioioioioinnnnnggggggg that is the mark of a clang well done.

Everyone in the country carried lucky charms, and Miss TIck had worked out that if you didn't have one people would suspect that you were a witch.

"I can't do," said Miss TIck, straightening up. "But I can teach!"

They went to sleep under the stars, which the maths teachers would count, the astronomy teachers would measure and the literature teachers would name. The geography teachers got lost in the woods and fell into bear traps.

The next stall along was decorated with scenes out of history, generally of kings cutting one another's heads off and similar interesting highlights.

"Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it."

"No, actually it isn't," said TIffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short."

Tiffany: "You're very yellow for a toad."
Toad: "I've been a bit ill."
Tiffany: "And you talk."
Toad: "You only have my word for it."

"I can see we're going to get along like a house on fire," said Miss Tick. "There may be no survivors."

Miss Tick: "You want to be a witch, am I right? You probably want to fly on a broomstick, yes?"
Tiffany: "Oh, yes!"
Miss Tick: "Really? You like having to wear really, really thick pants? Believe me, if I've got to fly I wear two pairs of woollen ones and a canvas pair on the outside which, I may tell you, are not very feminine no matter how much lace you sew on. It can get cold up there. People forget that. And then there's the bristles. Don't ask me about the bristles. I will not talk about the bristles."

Her mother had read them [fairy tales] to her when she was little, and then she'd read them to herself. And all the stories had, somewhere, the witch. The wicked old witch.

And Tiffany had thought: Where's the evidence?

And did the book have any adventures for people who had brown eyes and brown hair? No, no, no... it was the blond people with blue eyes and the redheads with green eyes who got the stories.

Tiffany: "Witches have animals they can talk to, called familiars. like your toad there."
Toad: "I'm not familiar. I'm just slightly presumptuous."

...it didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.

"I think she was just a sick old lady who was no use to anyone and smelled a bit and looked odd because she had no teeth," said Tiffany. "She just looked like a witch in a story. Anyone with half a mind could see that."

Miss Tick sighed. "Yes. But sometimes it's so hard to find half a mind when you need one."

"A unicorn is nothing more than a big horse that comes to a point, anyway."

Miss Tick sniffed. "You could say this advice is priceless," she said. "Are you listening?"

"Yes," said Tiffany.

"Good. Now... if you trust in yourself..."

"Yes?"

"...and believe in your dreams..."

"Yes?"

"...and follow your star..." Miss Tick went on.

"Yes?"

"...you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. Goodbye."

"She's impressed you, right? I know she did because you were quite nasty to her, and you always do that to people who impress you."

"Do you want to be turned into a frog?"

"Well, now, let me see..." said the toad sarcastically. "Better skin, better legs, likelihood of being kissed by a princess one hundred per cent improved... why, yes. Whenever you're ready, madam."

At some point Ratbag the cat pushed open the door and jumped onto the bed. He was big to start with, but Ratbag flowed. He was so fat that, on any reasonably flat surface, he gradually spread out in a great puddle of fur.

There was a lot of mist around, but a few stars were visible overhead and there was a gibbous moon in the sky. Tiffany knew it was gibbous because she'd read in the Almanack that "gibbous" meant what the moon looked like when it was just a bit fatter than half full, and so she made a point of paying attention to it around those times just so that she could say to herself: "Ah, I see the moon's very gibbous tonight..."

It's possible that this tells you more about Tiffany than she would want you to know.

There was a candle in [the privy], and last year's Almanack hanging on a string. The printers knew their readership, and printed the Almanack on soft thin paper.

Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She'd read that [fairy tale] and thought, Excuse me? No one has an oven big enough to get a whole person in, and what made the children think they could just walk around eating people's houses in any case? And why does some boy too stupid to know a cow is worth a lot more than five beans have the right to murder a giant and steal all his gold? Not to mention commit an act of ecological vandalism? And some girl who can't tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family.

Most of the pictures of fairies were not very impressive. Frankly, they looked like a small girls' ballet class that'd just had to run through a bramble patch.

It was definitely a little red-haired man, naked except for a kilt and a skinny waistcoat, scowling out of the picture. He looked very angry. And... Tiffany moved the candle to see more clearly... he was definitely making a gesture with his hand.

Even if you didn't know it was a rude one, it was easy to guess.

Tiffany was on the whole quite a truthful person, but it seemed to her that there were times when things didn't divide easily into "true" and "false", but instead could be "things that people needed to know at the moment" and "things that they didn't need to know at the moment".

"Aw, crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!"

Tiffany: "...what did you say they were?"
Toad: "Nac Mac Feegles. Also known as pictsies. They call themselves the Wee Free Men."
Tiffany: "Well, one of them head-butted the horse! It fell over! It was a huge horse, too!"
Toad: "Ah, that sounds like a Feegle."

"And then there was the headless horseman!" said Tiffany. "He had no head!"

"Well, that is the major job qualification," said the toad.

"Sometimes I wake up in the night and I think, was I ever really human? Or was I just a toad that got on her nerves and she made me think I was human once? That'd be a real torture, right? Supposing there's nothing for me to turn back into?" The toad turned worried yellow eyes on her. "After all, it can't be very hard to mess with a toad's head, yeah? It must be much simpler that turning, oh, a one-hundred-and-sixty-pound human into eight ounces of toad, yes?"

She tried to pretend she hadn't thought that, but she was treacherously good at spotting when she was lying. That's the trouble with a brain: it thinks more than you sometimes want it to.

It was the kind of search where you go and look in the attic, even though the door is always locked.

"If you get Nac Mac Feegles in the house, it's usually best to move away."

"Whut's it we're famous for?"

"Stealin'!" shouted the blue men.

"And what else, lads?"

"Fightin'!"

"And what else?"

"Drinkin'!"

"And what else?"

There was a certain amount of thought about this, but they all reached the same conclusion.

"Drinkin' and fightin'!"

"And there was summat else," muttered the twiddler. "Ach, yes. Tell the hag, lads!"

"Stealin' an' drinkin' an' fightin'!" shouted the blue men cheerfully.

Hundreds of tough little men who could each win the Worst Broken Nose Contest need someone to look after them?

"They think names have magic in them," [the toad] murmured. "They don't tell them to people in case they are written down."

"Aye, an' put upon comp-li-cated documents," said a Feegle.

"An' summonses and such things," said another.

"Or 'Wanted' posters!" said another.

"Aye, an' bills an' affidavits," said another.

"Writs of distrainment, even!" The Feegles looked around in panic at the very thought of written-down things.

Somehow I don't think the Baron would have a clue how to deal with this. I don't, either, but I think I can be clueless in more sensible ways.

Rob Anybody: "We cannae just rush in, ye ken."
Big Yan: "Point o' order, Big Man. Ye can just rush in. We always just rush in."
Rob Anybody: "Aye, Big Yan, point well made. But ye gotta know where ye're just gonna rush in. Ye cannae just rush in anywhere. It looks bad, havin' to rush oout again straight awa'."

-- Nac Mac Feegle tactics

There were always buzzards over the Chalk. The shepherds had taken to calling them Granny Aching's chickens, and some of them called clouds like those up there today "Granny's little lambs". And Tiffany knew that even her father called the thunder "Granny Aching cussin".

Tiffany: "How can you survive that [fall]?"
Hamish: "...tis nae as bad as it looks, mistress. I allus make sure I lands on my heid."

"'TIs an ill-fared country that's come callin', mistress. 'Tis a land where dreams come true. That's the Quin's world."

"Well, that doesn't sound too--" Tiffany began. Then she remembered some of the dreams she'd had, the ones where you were so glad to wake up...

She sighed. "All right," she said, "how do I get there?"

"Ye dinnae ken the way?" said Rob Anybody.

It wasn't what she'd been expecting. What she had been expecting was more like "Ach, ye cannae do that, a wee ]ass like you, oh dearie us no!" She wasn't so much expecting that as hoping it, in fact.

"Whut's the plan, Rob?" said one of them.

"OK, lads, this is what we'll do. As soon as we see somethin', we'll attack it. Right?"

This caused a cheer.

"Ach, 'tis a good plan," said Daft Wullie.

-- Nac Mac Feegle tactics, part 2

Tiffany: "What are these?"
Toad: "Oh, doak! Grimhounds! Bad! Eyes of fire and teeth of razor blades!"
Tiffany: "What should I do about them?"
Toad: "Not be here?"

No eyes of fire, no teeth of razors. Not here, not in the real world, on the home turf. It was blind here and blood was already dripping from its mouth. You shouldn't jump with a mouthful of razors...

The Achings were not very religious, but Tiffany thought she knew how things ought to go, and they started out with the idea that you were alive and not dead yet.

"You mean ... you think... that you sort of died somewhere else and then came here?" said Tiffany. "You mean this is like... heaven?"

"Aye! Just as advertised!" said Rob Anybody. "Lovely sunshine, good huntin', nice pretty flowers and wee burdies goin' cheep."

"Aye, and then there's the fightin'," said another Feegle. And then they all joined in.

"An' the stealin'!"

"An' the drinkin' an' fightin'!"

"An' the kebabs!" said Daft Wullie.

"But there's bad things here!" said Tiffany. "There's monsters!"

"Aye," said Rob, beaming happily. "Grand, isn't it? Every thin' laid on, even things to fight!"

"But we live here!" said Tiffany.

"Ach, well, mebbe all you humans wuz good in the Last World, too," said Rob Anybody generously.

Tiffany: "Listen, the Feegles think they're in heaven! They think they died and came here!"
Toad: "And?"
Tiffany: "Well, that can't be right! You're supposed to be alive here and then die and end up in some heaven somewhere else!"
Toad: "Well, that's just saying the same thing in a different way, isn't it?"

"Maybe the universe is a bit crowded and they have to put heavens anywhere there's room?"

She was prettier than the male Feegles, although the world was full of things prettier than, say, Daft Wullie.

"Very... cosy," said Tiffany, because that was better than saying "How sooty" or "How delightfully noisy".

Tiffany took a deep breath, not a wise move in a Feegle colony.

"Ach, there I goes again, accidentally nearly throttlin' ye," said Rob Anybody, his hand clamping over Wullie's mouth.

"'Tis the First Sight and Second Thoughts ye have, and 'tis a wee gift an' a big curse to ye. You see and hear what others canna', the world opens up its secrets to ye, but ye're always like the person at the party with the wee drink in the I corner who cannae join in. There's a little bitty bit inside ye that willnae melt and flow."

"Don't you mean second sight?" Tiffany queried. "Like people who can see ghosts and stuff?"

"Ach, no. That's typical bigjob thinking. First Sight is when you can see what's really there, not what your heid tells you ought to be there."

Kelda: "Ye ken how to be strong, do ye?"
Tiffany: "Yes, I think so."
Kelda: "Good. D'ye ken how to be weak? Can ye bow to the gale, can ye bend to the storm?"

"My lads are good lads, there's none braver. But they think their heids is most useful as weapons. That's lads for ye."

"I'm up here most o' the time anyway, because I'm studying to become a gonnagle." The young Feegle flourished a set of mousepipes. "An' they willnae let me play doon there on account o' them sayin' my playin' sounds like a spider tryin' to fart through its ears, mistress."

"What's your name, pictsie?" she said.

"No'-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress. There's no' that many Feegle names, ye ken, so we ha' to share."

Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-jock-Jock wrinkled his face. "There's nay history tae the name, ye ken. But there have been a number 0' brave warriors called No'-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. Why 'tis nearly as famous a name as Wee Jock itself! An', 0' course, should Wee Jock hisself be taken back to the Last World then I'll get the name 0' Wee Jock, which isnae to say that I mislike the name 0' No'-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, ye ken. There's been many a fine story 0' the exploits 0' No'-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock," the pictsie added, looking so earnest that Tiffany didn't have the heart to say that they must have been very long stories.

No words could describe what a Feegle in a kilt looks like upside down, so they won't try.

"All the birds and beasts up here know it's good luck to be friends wi' the Nac Mac Feegle, mistress."

"They do?"

"Well, to tell ye the truth, mistress, it's more that they know it's unlucky not to be friends wi' the Nac Mac Feegle."

"Aye, fair enough, big wimmin is a' very well, but if a laddie was to try tae cuddle this one he'd had tae leave a chalk mark to show where he left off yesterday."

Tiffany lived on a farm. Any little beliefs that babies are delivered by storks or found under bushes tend to get sorted out early on if you live on a farm, especially when a cow is having a difficult calving in the middle of the night.

It's amazing what a child who is quiet and observant can learn, and this includes things people don't think she is old enough to know.

The period of time it takes a Pictsie to go from normal to mad fighting mood is so tiny it can't be measured on the smallest clock.

"They can tak' oour lives but they cannae tak' oour troousers!"

"Bang went saxpence!"

"Ye'll tak' the high road an' I'll tak' yer wallet!"

"There can only be one t'ousand!"

"Ach, stick it up yer trakkans!"

-- Battle cries of the Nac Mac Feegle

"Recommended treatment is daily dosing with turpentine until there is no longer either any trembling, or turpentine, or sheep."

Wentworth loved the teddy-bear sweets. They tasted like glue mixed with sugar and were made of 100% Artificial Additives.

"That was great, al' that reading' ye did!" said Rob Anybody. "I didnae understand a single word o' it!"

"What's magic, eh? Just wavin' a stick an' sayin' a few wee magical words. An' what's so clever aboot that, eh? But lookin' at things, really lookin' at 'em, and then workin' 'em oout, now, that's a real skill."

"I've seen pictures! Fairyland is... is all trees and flowers and sunshine and, and tinklyness! Dumpy little babies in romper suits with horns! People with wings! Er... and weird people! I've seen pictures!"

Rob Anybody: "Wullie, you ken I said there wuz times you should think before opening yer big fat gob?"
Daft Wullie: "Aye, Rob."
Rob Anybody: "Wed, that wuz one o' them times."

The Nac Mac Feegle would fight and steal, certainly, but who wanted to fight the weak and steal from the poor?

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.

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--"

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.

Tiffany: "So how can anyone get out [of the dream]?"
Rob Anybody: "The best way is to find the drome. It'll be in the dream with you, in disguise. Then ye just gives it a good kickin'."
Tiffany: "By kicking you mean--?"
Rob Anybody: "Choppin' its heid off generally works."

Tiffany: "And this is Fairyland?"
William: "Aye. Ye could say it's the bit the tourists dinnae see."

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.

"Them as can do, has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices."

"That, lad," he said proudly, "was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul. The last couple of lines need some work but ye has the groanin' off fiiine. A' in a', a verrry commendable effort! We'll make a gonnagle out of ye' yet!"

And I'm in Fairyland, where dreams can hurt. Somewhere all stories are real, all songs are true. I thought that was a strange thing for the kelda to say...

Tiffany's Second Thoughts said: Hang on, was that a First Thought?

And Tiffany thought: No, that was a Third Thought. I'm thinking about how I think about what I'm thinking. At least, I think so.

Her Second Thoughts said: Let's all calm down, please, because this is quite a small head.

It was a real animal. You couldn't imagine a reek like that.

It was hard to bite anyone when all four of your feet were moving away in different directions...

The music was strange. There was a kind of rhythm to it, but it sounded muffled and odd, as if it was being played backwards, underwater, by musicians who'd never seen their instruments before.

Everything had cream on it, or chocolate whirls, or thousands of little coloured balls. Everything was spun or glazed or added to or mixed up. This wasn't food; it was what food became if it had been good and had gone to food heaven.

But the food was too obviously not food at all. It was bait. It was supposed to say: Hello, little kiddie. Eat me.

They were faraway cheeses with strange sounding names, cheeses like Treble Wibbley, Waney Tastey, Old Argg, Red Runny and the legendary Lancre Blue, which had to be nailed to the table to stop it attacking other cheeses.

The anger came back. She'd nearly been fooled! She looked at the cheese knife. "Be a sword," she said...

There was a clang.

"Correction," said Tiffany. "Be a sword that isn't so heavy."

Even in a dream, even at a posh ball, the Nac Mac Feegle knew how to behave. You charged in madly, and you screamed... politely.

"Make my caviar deep-fried, willya?"

There was something wrong with the crowd. No one was panicking or trying to run away, which was certainly the right response to an invasion of Feegles.

[The Nac Mac Feegle] never gave up, they'd attack absolutely anything and they didn't know the meaning of the word "fear".

Tiffany, who had read her way through the dictionary, had a Second Thought there. "Fear" was only one of thousands of words the pictsies probably didn't know the meaning of. Unfortunately, she did know what it meant. And the taste and feel of fear, too.

Tiffany: "I'm stuck in a wood of evil dreams and I'm all alone and I think it's getting darker. What should I do?"
Toad: "Leave."
Tiffany: "That is not a lot of help!"
Toad: "Best advice there is."

Some of them had faces that you wouldn't look at twice. Others had faces that no one would want to look at even once.

People who say things like "may all your dreams come true" should try living in one for five minutes.

The point of the [book] was that a bored child could turn over parts of the pages and change the way the characters were dressed. You could end up with a soldier's head on a baker's chest wearing a maid's dress and a farmer's big boots.

Tiffany had never been bored enough. She considered that even things that spend their whole lives hanging from the underside of branches would never be bored enough to spend more than five seconds with that book.

"That's your brother? The one who's permanently sticky?"

"Why did she want you to skip and play?" said Tiffany...

"She just said that's what children do," said Roland.

Tiffany wondered about this. As far as she could see, children mostly argued, shouted, ran around very fast, laughed loudly, picked their noses, got dirty and sulked. Any seen dancing and skipping and SingIng had probably been stung by a wasp.

Roland: "...if the Queen gets really angry with someone, she just stares at them, and... they change."
Tiffany: "What into?"
Roland: "Other things. I don't want to have to draw you a picture. And if I did, I'd need a lot of red and purple crayons."

Wentworth was sitting on a large, flat stone, surrounded by sweets. Many of them were bigger than he was. Smaller ones were in piles, large ones lay like logs. And they were in every colour sweets can be, such as Not-Really-Raspberry Red, Fake-Lemon Yellow, Curiously-Chemical Orange, Some-Kind-of-Acidy Green and Who-Knows-What Blue.

Wentworth howled. His mouth was a big red tunnel with the wobbly thing that no one knows the name of bouncing up and down in the back of his throat.

Miss Robinson had stolen a baby, Punctuality Riddle, who had been much loved by his young parents even though they'd named him "Punctuality" (reasoning that if children could be named after virtues like Patience, Faith and Prudence, what was wrong with a little good timekeeping?).

Tiffany kicked her on the leg. It wasn't a witch thing. It was so nine years old, and she wished she could have thought of something better. On the other hand, she had hard boots and it was a good kick.

Some [Nac Mac Feegles] were still wearing bow ties. Some were back in their kilts. But they were all in a fighting mood and, to save time, were fighting with one another to get up to speed.

There was some method in the way the Nac Mac Feegle fought. For example, they always chose the biggest opponent because, as Rob Anybody said later, "It makes them easier to hit, ye ken."

It took them a little while to realize that they'd run out of people to fight. They carried on fighting one another for a bit anyway, since they'd come all this way, and then settled down and began to go through the pockets of the fallen in case there was any loose change.

Rob Anybody: "There's nothing we cannae get in or oot of."
Big Yan: "Except maybe pubs."
Rob Anybody: "Oh, aye. Gettin' oot o' pubs sometimes causes us a cerrrtain amount o' difficulty, I'll grant ye that."

From the way he was glaring it was obvious that, whatever happened later, the first few monsters were going to face a serious problem. If they had faces, anyway.

Tiffany: "Can you fight nightmares?"
Big Yan: "There's no' a thing we cannae fight. If it's got a heid, we can gi' it a faceful o' dandruff. If it disnae have a heid, it's due a good kickin'!"
Tiffany: "Some of them have got more than one head!"
Daft Wullie: "It's oour lucky day, then."

Tiffany: "We are in the label?"
Rob Anybody: "Oh, aye."
Tiffany: "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!"
Rob Anybody: "Nae kiddin'? Then it's a picture on the outside, and it's real on the inside. Ye ken, we've been robbin' an' runnin' 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."

"Whut does [the great whale] eat?"

"Ah, I know that. Whales aren't dangerous, because they just eat very small things..."

"Row like the blazes, lads!"

-- Size is relative

"This is my dream! My rules! I've had more practice at it than you!"

Tiffany: "And you won't get lost or, or drunk or anything?"
Rob Anybody: "We ne'er get lost! We always ken where we are! It's just sometimes mebbe we aren't sure where everything else is, but it's no' our fault if everything else gets lost! The Nac Mac Feegle are never lost!"
Tiffany: "What about drunk?"
Rob Anybody: "We've ne' er been lost in oour lives! Is that no' the case, lads?"
Tiffany: "And drunk?"
Rob Anybody: "Gettin' lost is something that happens to other people! I want to make that point perrrfectly clear!"

"I told yez the wee skull on it meant we shouldnae touch it!"

"Big Yan said that showed it wuz strong stuff! An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"

"What's inflammable mean?"

"It means it catches fire!"

"OK, OK, dinnae panic. No belchin', and none of youse is to tak' a leak anywhere near any naked flames, OK?"

Pictsies seemed very hard to kill. Perhaps believing you were already dead made you immune.

"There's got t'be gold in sunken ships, otherwise it wouldnae be worth fighting all them sharkies and octopussies and stuff."

"It can't be good for a young brain, knowing words like paradigm and eschatological. It leads to behaviour such as using your own brother as monster bait."

All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany's Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!

I have a duty!

"We have heard a list of criminal and civil charges totalling nineteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty-three separate offences--"

"We wasnae there!" yelled Rob Anybody desperately. "Isn't that right, lads?"

"--including more than two thousand cases of Making an Affray, Causing a Public Nuisance, Being Found Drunk, Being Found Very Drunk, Using Offensive Language (taking into account ninety-seven counts of Using Language That Was Probably Offensive If Anyone Else Could Understand It), Committing a Breach of the Peace, Malicious Lingering--"

"Defence?" said Rob Anybody. "Are you tellin' me we could get awa' wi' it ' cos of a tishoo o' lies?"

"Certainly," said the toad. "And with all the treasure you've stolen you can pay enough to be very innocent indeed. My fee will be--"

It gulped as a dozen glowing swords were swung towards him.

"I've just remembered why that fairy godmother turned me into a toad," it said. "So, in the circumstances, I'll take this case pro bono publico."

Rob Anybody: "How come ye're a lawyer an' a toad?"
Toad: "Oh, well, it was just bit of an argument. A fairy godmother gave my client three wishes -- the usual health, wealth and happiness package -- and when my client woke up one wet morning and didn't feel particularly happy she got me to bring an action for breach of contract. It was a definite first in the history of fairy godmothering. Unfortunately, as it turned out, so was turning the client into a small hand mirror and her lawyer, as you see before you, into a toad. I think the worst part was when the judge applauded."

"Hey, youse scunners, we got a cheap lawyer and we no' afraid tae use him wi' prejudice!"

Rob Anybody: "What does all that Viznee-facey-em stuff mean, my learned friend?"
Toad: "Vis-ne faciem capite repletam. It was the best I could do in a hurry, but it means, approximately, 'would you like a face which is full of head?'"
Rob Anybody: "And tae think we didnae know legal talkin' was that simple."

"Twelve hundred angry men!"

"I never cried for Granny because there was no need to," she said. "She has never left me!"

I'll never again feel as tall as the sky and as old as the hills and as strong as the sea. I've been given something for a while, and the price of it is that I have to give it back.

And the reward is giving it back, too. No human could live like this. You could spend a day looking at a flower to see how wonderful it is, and that wouldn't get the milking done. No wonder we dream our way through our lives. To be awake, and see it all as it really is... no one could stand that for long.

Tiffany: "How did you get away from the huge wave?"
Rob Anybody: "Ach, we're fast movers. An' it was a strong lighthoose. 0' course, the water came up pretty high."
Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock: "A few sharks were involved, that kind of thing."
Rob Anybody: "Oh, aye, a few sharkies. And one o' them octopussies--"
William: "It was a giant squid."
Daft Wullie: "Aye, well, it was a kebab pretty quickly."

The Nac Mac Feegles held up wonderful jewels and big gold coins.

"But that's just dream treasure, surely?" said Tiffany. "Fairy gold! It'll turn into rubbish in the morning!"

"Aye?" said Rob Anybody. He glanced at the horizon. "OK, ye heard the kelda, lads! We got mebbe half an hour to sell it to someone!"

"You can't give lessons on witchcraft. Not properly. It's all about how you are... you, I suppose."

"...there's magic, too. You'll pick that up. It don't take much intelligence, otherwise wizards wouldn't be able to do it."

Granny Weatherwax: "But do you know anything about medicines? Midwifery? That's a good portable skill."
Tiffany: "Well, I've helped deliver difficult lambs. And I saw my brother being born. They didn't bother to turn me out. It didn't look too difficult. But I think cheese is probably easier, and less noisy."

"There're a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong... an' they need watchin'. We watch' em, we guard the sum of things."

Tiffany: "But, er..."
Nanny Ogg: "Yes?"
Tiffany: "I don't have to dance around with no clothes on or anything like that, do I? Only I heard rumours--"
Nanny Ogg: "Well, that procedure does have something to recommend it--"
Granny Weatherwax: "No, you don't have to! No cottage made of sweets, no cackling and no dancing!"
Nanny Ogg: "Unless you want to."

Granny Weatherwax: "Will you get into trouble, do you think?"
Tiffany: "I might do."
Granny Weatherwax: "Do you want any help?"
Tiffany: "If it's my trouble, I'll get out of it."

"The thing about witchcraft," said Mistress Weatherwax, "is that it's not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterwards you spend years findin' out how you passed it. It's a bit like life in that respect."

Granny Weatherwax: "It's virtually a pointy hat. No one else will know it's there. It might be a comfort."
Tiffany: "You mean it just exists in my head?"
Granny Weatherwax: "You've got lots of things in your head. That doesn't mean they aren't real."

Things would be different one day.

But you had to start small, like oak trees.