'And I am the Kelda,' said their kelda, and one of the hiddlins of keldaring is to use your voice like that: hard, cold, sharp, cutting the air like a dagger of ice. 'And I tell you men to go back doon the hole and dinnae show you faces back up here until I say. Not you, Rob Anybody Feegle! You stay here until I tell ye!'
'Oh waily waily-' Daft Wullie began, but Big Yan clapped a hand over his mouth and dragged him away quickly. When they were alone, and scraps of cloud were beginning to mass around the moon, Rob Anybody hung his head. 'I willnae go, Jeannie, if you say,' he said. 'Ach, Rob, Rob,' said Jeannie, beginning to cry. 'Ye dinnae understand. I want no
harm to come to the big wee girl, truly I don't. But I cannae face thinkin' o' you out there fightin' this monster that cannae be killed! It's you I'm worried aboot, can ye no' seel' Rob put his arm around her. 'Aye, I see,' he said. 'I'm your wife, Rob, askin' ye not to go!'
'Aye, aye. I'll stay,' said Rob. Jeannie looked up to him. Tears shone in the moonlight. 'Ye mean it?'
'I never braked my word yet,' said Rob. 'Except to polis'men and other o' that kidney, ye ken, and they dinnae count.'
'Yell stay? Yell abide by my word?' said Jeannie, sniffing. Rob sighed. 'Aye. I will.' Jeannie was quiet for a while, and then said, in the sharp cold voice of a kelda: 'Rob Anybody Feegle, I'm tellin' ye now to go and save the big wee hag.'
'Whut?' said Rob Anybody, amazed. 'Jus' noo ye said I was tae stay-'
'That was as your wife, Rob. Now I'm telling you as your kelda.' Jeannie stood up, chin out and looking determined. 'If ye dinnae heed the word o' yer kelda, Rob Anybody Feegle, ye can be banished fra' the clan. Ye ken that. So you'll listen t' me guid. Tak' what men you need afore it's too late, and go to the mountains, and see that the big wee girl comes tae nae harm. And come back safe yoursel'. That is an order! Nay, 'tis more'n an order. 'Tis a geas I'm laying on ye! That cannae be brake!'
'But I-' Rob began, completely bewildered. 'I'm the kelda, Rob,' said Jeannie. 'I cannae run a clan with the Big Man pinin'. And the hills of our children need their hag. Everyone knows the land needs someone tae tell it whut it is.' There was something about the way Jeannie had said 'children'. Rob Anybody was not the fastest of thinkers, but he always got there in the end. 'Aye, Rob,' said Jeannie, seeing his expression. 'Soon I'll be birthing seven sons.'
'Oh,' said Rob Anybody. He didn't ask how she knew the number. Keldas just knew. 'That's greatV he said. 'And one daughter, Rob.' Rob blinked. 'A daughter? This soon?'
'Aye,' said Jeannie. 'That's wonderful good luck for a clan!' said Rob. 'Aye. So you've got something to come back safe to me for, Rob Anybody. An' I beg ye to use your heid for somethin' other than nuttin' folk.'
'I thank ye, Kelda,' said Rob Anybody. 'I'll do as ye bid. I'll tak' some lads and find the big wee hag, for the good o' the hills. It cannae be a good life for the puir wee big wee thing, all alone and far fra' home, among strangers.'
'Aye,' said Jeannie, turning her face away. 'I ken that, too.' Chapter 4 PLAN
At dawn Rob Anybody, watched with awe by his many brothers, wrote the word: PLN ... on a scrap of paper bag. Then he held it up. 'Plan, ye ken,' he said to the assembled Feegles. 'Now we have a Plan, all we got tae do is work out what tae do. Yes, Wullie?'
'Whut was that about this geese Jeannie hit ye with?' said Daft Wullie, lowering his hand. 'Not geese, geas,' said Rob Anybody. He sighed. 'I told yez. That means it's serious. It means I got tae bring back the big wee hag, an' no excuses, otherwise my soul gaes slam-bang intae the big cludgie in the sky. It's like a magical order. 'Tis a heavy thing, tae be under a geas.'
'Well, they're big birds,' said Daft Wullie. 'Wullie,' said Rob, patiently, 'ye ken I said I would tell ye when there wuz times you should've kept your big gob shut?'
'Aye, Rob.'
'Weel, that wuz one o' them times.' He raised his voice. 'Now, lads, ye ken all aboot hivers. They cannae be killed! But 'tis oor duty to save the big wee hag, so this is, like, a sooey-side mission and yell probably all end up back in the land o' the living doin' a borin' wee job. So . . . I'm askin' for volunteers!' Every Feegle over the age of four automatically put his hand up. 'Oh, come on,' said Rob. 'You cannae all come! Look, I'll tak' . . . Daft Wullie, Big Yan and . . . you, Awf'ly Wee Billy Bigchin. An' I'm takin' no weans, so if yez under three inches high ye're not comin'! Except for ye, o'course, Awf'ly Wee Billy. As for the rest of youse, we'll settle this the traditional Feegle way. I'll tak' the last fifty men still standing!' He beckoned the chosen three to a place in the corner of the mound while the rest of the crowd squared up cheerfully. A Feegle liked to face enormous odds all by himself, because it meant you didn't have to look where you were hitting. 'She's more'n a hundret miles awa',' said Rob as the big fight started. 'We cannae run it, 'tis too far. Any of youse scunners got any ideas?'
'Hamish can get there on his buzzard,' said Big Yan, stepping aside as a cluster of punching, kicking Feegles rolled past. 'Aye, and he'll come wi' us, but he cannae tak' more'n one passenger,' shouted Rob over the din. 'Can we swim it?' said Daft Wullie, ducking as a stunned Feegle hurtled over his head. The others looked at him. 'Swim it? How can we swim there fra' here, yer daftie?' said Rob Anybody. 'It's just worth consid'ring, that's all,' said Wullie, looking hurt. 'I wuz just tryin' to make a contribution, ye ken? Just wanted to show willin'.'
'The big wee hag left in a cart,' said Big Yan. 'Aye, so what?' said Rob.
'Weel, mebbe we could?'
'Ach, no!' said Rob. 'Showin' oursels tae hags is one thing, but not to other folks! You remember what happened a few years back when Daft Wullie got spotted by that lady who wuz painting the pretty pictures doon in the valley? I dinnae want to have them Folklore Society bigjobs pokin' aroound again!'
'I have an idea, Mister Rob. It's me, Awf'ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle. We could disguise oursels.' Awf'ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle always announced himself in full. He seemed to feel that if he didn't tell people who he was, they'd forget about him and he'd disappear. When you're half the size of most grown pictsies you're really short; much shorter and you'd be a hole in the ground. He was the new gonnagle. A gonnagle is the clan's bard and battle poet, but they don't spend all their lives in the same clan. In fact, they're a sort of clan all by themselves. Gonnagles move around among the other clans, making sure the songs and stories get spread around all the Feegles. Awf'ly Wee Billy had come with Jeannie from the Long Lake clan, which often happens. He was very young for a gonnagle, but as Jeannie had said, there was no age limit to gonnagling. If the talent was in you, you gonnagled. And Awf'ly Wee Billy knew all the songs and could play the mousepipes so sadly that outside it would start to rain. 'Aye, lad?' said Rob Anybody kindly. 'Speak up, then.'
'Can we get hold o' some human clothes?' said Awf'ly Wee Billy. 'Because there's an old story about the big feud between the Three Peaks clan and the Windy River clan and the Windy River boys escaped by making a tattie-bogle walk, and the men o' Three Peaks thought it was a bigjob and kept oot o' its way.' The others looked puzzled, and Awf'ly Wee Billy remembered that they were men of the Chalk and had probably never seen a tattie-bogle. 'A scarecrow?' he said. 'It's like a bigjob made o' sticks, wi' clothes on, for to frighten away the birdies fra' the crops? Now, the song says the Windy River's kelda used magic to make it walk, but I reckon it was done by cunnin' and strength.' He sang about it. They listened. He explained how to make a human that would walk. They looked at one another. It was a mad, desperate plan, which was very dangerous and risky and would require tremendous strength and bravery to make it work. Put like that, they agreed to it instantly. Tiffany found that there was more than chores and the research, though. There was what Miss Level called 'filling what's empty and emptying what's full'. Usually only one of Miss Level's bodies went out at a time. People thought Miss Level was twins, and she made sure they continued to do so, but she found it a little bit safer all round to keep the bodies apart. Tiffany could see why. You only had to watch both of Miss Level when she was eating. The bodies would pass plates to one another without saying a word, sometimes they'd eat off one another's forks, and it was rather strange to see one person burp and the other one say 'Oops, pardon me'. 'Filling what's empty and emptying what's full' meant wandering round the local
villages and the isolated farms and, mostly, doing medicine. There were always bandages to change or expectant mothers to talk to. Witches did a lot of midwifery, which is a kind of 'emptying what's full', but Miss Level, wearing her pointy hat, had only to turn up at a cottage for other people to suddenly come visiting, by sheer accident. And there was an awful lot of gossip and tea-drinking. Miss Level moved in a twitching, living world of gossip, although Tiffany noticed that she picked up a lot more than she passed on. It seemed to be a world made up entirely of women, but occasionally, out in the lanes, a man would strike up a conversation about the weather and somehow, by some sort of code, an ointment or a potion would get handed over. Tiffany couldn't quite work out how Miss Level got paid. Certainly the basket she carried filled up more than it emptied. They'd walk past a cottage and a woman would come scurrying out with a fresh-baked loaf or a jar of pickles, even though Miss Level hadn't stopped there. But they'd spend an hour somewhere else, stitching up the leg of a farmer who'd been careless with an axe, and get a cup of tea and a stale biscuit. It didn't seem fair. 'Oh, it evens out,' said Miss Level, as they walked on through the woods. 'You do what you can. People give what they can, when they can. Old Slapwick there, with the leg, he's as mean as a cat, but there'll be a big cut of beef on my doorstep before the week's end, you can bet on it. His wife will see to it. And pretty soon people will be killing their pigs for the winter, and I'll get more brawn, ham, bacon and sausages turning up than a family could eat in a year.'
'You do? What do you do with all that food?'
'Store it,' said Miss Level. 'But you-'
'I store it in other people. It's amazing what you can store in other people.' Miss Level laughed at Tiffany's expression. 'I mean, I take what I don't need round to those who don't have a pig, or who're going through a bad patch, or who don't have anyone to remember them.'
'But that means they'll owe you a favour!'
'Right! And so it just keeps on going round. It all works out.'