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December 19, 2024 - January 3, 2025
The Nac Mac Feegle are the most dangerous of the fairy races, particularly when drunk. They love drinking, fighting, and stealing, and will in fact steal anything that is not nailed down. If it is nailed down, they will steal the nails as well.
That’s why she’d been worried about the new straw hat, but it had simply gone through the pointy hat as if it wasn’t there. This was because, in a way, it wasn’t. It was invisible, except in the rain. Sun and wind went straight through, but rain and snow somehow saw it, and treated it as if it was real. She’d been given it by the greatest witch in the world, a real witch with a black dress and a black hat and eyes that could go through you like turpentine goes through a sick sheep. It had been a kind of reward. Tiffany had done magic, serious magic. Before she had done it she hadn’t known that
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Witches were a bit like cats. They didn’t much like one another’s company, but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them. And what you might need them for was to tell you, as a friend, that you were beginning to cackle.
The Nac Mac Feegle were immensely strong and fearless and incredibly fast, but they weren’t good at understanding that what people said often wasn’t what they meant. One day, in the dairy, Tiffany had said, “I wish I had a sharper knife to cut this cheese,” and her mother’s sharpest knife was quivering in the table beside her almost before she’d got the words out.
Traditionally, both the bride and the groom should jump over the broomstick, but equally traditionally, no self-respecting Feegle would be sober on his wedding day.
Yet they must have known horses, owned horses, seen them every day, and they weren’t stupid people just because they lived a long time ago.
He beamed at his name: ЯOB NybO D
He hadn’t been a husband for very long, but upon marriage men get a whole lot of extra senses bolted into their brain, and one is there to tell a man that he’s suddenly neck deep in real trouble.
She said: “See me.” . . . and stepped out of herself and walked away toward Miss Tick and Miss Level, in her invisible ghost body. She didn’t dare look down, in case she saw her feet weren’t there. When she turned and looked back at her solid body, she saw it standing demurely by the holly bushes, clearly too far away to be listening to anyone’s conversation.
Tiffany never forgot that ride, though she often tried to. They flew just above the ground, which was the blur just below her feet. Every time they came to a fence or a hedge, Miss Level would jump it with a cry of “Here we go!” or “Ups-a-daisy!” which was probably meant to make Tiffany feel better. It didn’t. She threw up twice.
Tiffany leaned back and screamed, and went on screaming as the broomstick tilted in the air and climbed up the waterfall. She’d known the word, certainly, but the word hadn’t been so big, so wet, and above all it hadn’t been so loud.
Tiffany still had ears that worked and a mind that, however much she tried, wouldn’t stop thinking. And it thought: That cheerfulness has got cracks around the edges. Something isn’t right here. . . .
There had been something scary about Miss Level’s expression. It was sort of hungry and hopeful and pleading and frightened, all at once.
As an experiment she took the candlestick off the bedside table, put it on the chest of drawers, and stood back. More nothing happened.
The garden was full of ornaments. They were rather sad, cheap ones—bunny rabbits with crazy grins, pottery deer with big eyes, gnomes with pointy red hats and expressions that suggested they were on bad medication.
She was holding up a weed triumphantly. “Everyone thinks it’s another toothache cure, but just look at the cut root by stored moonlight, using my blue magnifying glass. . . .” Tiffany tried it, and read: “GoOD F4r Colds May cors drowsniss Do nOt oprate heavE mashinry.”
Hivers were formed in the first seconds of Creation. They are not alive but they have, as it were, the shape of life. They have no body, brain, or thoughts of their own, and a naked hiver is a sluggish thing indeed, tumbling gently through the endless night between the worlds. According to Poledread, most end up at the bottoms of deep seas, or in the bellies of volcanoes, or drifting through the hearts of stars. Poledread was a very inferior thinker compared to myself, but in this case he is right.
Why did the jar you found the plans in have the words “Do Not Open Under Any Circumstances!” engraved in fifteen ancient languages on the lid? they said.
The moon was on the way to being full. A gibbous moon, it’s called. It’s one of the duller phases of the moon and seldom gets illustrated. The full moon and the crescent moon get all the publicity.
She waved the cup under Rob’s nose. He sighed and looked away. Jeannie stood up quickly. “Wullie! Big Yan! Come quick!” she yelled. “He willna tak’ a drink! I think he’s deid!”
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.
“Oh, no,” said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. “You can’t not help people just because they’re stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone’s poor around here. If I don’t help them, who will?”
“We do what can be done. Mistress Weatherwax said you’ve got to learn that witchcraft is mostly about doing quite ordinary things.”
“Mistress Weatherwax is the head witch, then, is she?” “Oh no!” said Miss Level, looking shocked. “Witches are all equal. We don’t have things like head witches. That’s quite against the spirit of witchcraft.” “Oh, I see,” said Tiffany. “Besides,” Miss Level added, “Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing.”
“Ach, an’ I’m fed up wi’ the stomach complainin’, too!”
“Sorry aboot this,” it said. “I talk to my knees, but they dinna listen to me.”
Strange images were floating around Tiffany’s mind. There were scraps of voices, fragments of memories . . . and one little voice that was her own, small and defiant and getting fainter: You’re not me. You just think you are! Someone help me!
She grabbed the stick, swung a leg over it—and found that her other foot stuck to the ground as though nailed there. The broomstick swung around wildly as she tried to pull it up, and, when the boot was finally tugged off the ground, the stick turned over so that Tiffany was upside down. This is not the best position in which to make a grand exit.
Rob gave him a look. “Er . . . wuz that one o’ those times when I shouldna open my big fat mouth?” said Wullie. “Aye. It wuz,” said Rob.
Miss Level started to breathe very fast. “She walked out of her own body! There’s not one—” “—witch in a hundred who can do that!” she said. “That’s Borrowing, that is! It’s better than any circus trick! It’s putting—” “—your mind somewhere else! You have to—” “—learn how to protect yourself before you ever try it! And she just invented it because she didn’t have a mirror? The little fool, why didn’t she—” “—say? She walked out of her own body and left it there for anything to take over! I wonder what—” “—she thought she was—” “—doing?” After a while Rob Anybody gave a polite cough. “We’re
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It thought it was Tiffany. It could remember everything—nearly everything—about being Tiffany. It looked like Tiffany. It even thought like Tiffany, more or less. It had everything it needed to be Tiffany . . . . . . except Tiffany. Except the tiny part of her that was . . . her.
A lawn meant you were posh enough to afford to give up valuable potato space.
Upstairs, an old woman, all in faded black, is lying on a narrow bed. But you wouldn’t think she was dead, because there is a big card on a string around her neck that reads: I ATE’NT DEAD . . . and you have to believe it when it’s written down like that.
Miss Level nodded both heads. It was true, but it was hard to look at the assembled ranks of the Nac Mac Feegle and remember that they were, technically, fairies. It was like watching penguins swimming underwater and having to remember that they were birds.
“You looked at her diary?” said Miss Level, horrified. “Why?” Really, she thought later, she should have expected the answer. “’Cuz it wuz locked,” said Daft Wullie.
But being a witch and wearing the big black hat was like being a policeman. People saw the uniform, not you. When the mad axeman was running down the street, you weren’t allowed to back away, muttering, “Could you find someone else? Actually, I mostly just do, you know, stray dogs and road safety. . . .” You were there, you had the hat, you did the job. That was a basic rule of witchery: It’s up to you.
From Fairies and How to Avoid Them by Miss Perspicacia Tick: No one knows exactly how the Nac Mac Feegle step from one world to another. Those who have seen Feegles actually travel this way say that they apparently throw back their shoulders and thrust out one leg straight ahead of them. Then they wiggle their foot and are gone. This is known as “the crawstep,” and the only comment on the subject by a Feegle is “It’s all in the ankle movement, ye ken.” They appear to be able to travel magically between worlds of all kinds but not within a world. For this purpose, they assure people, they have
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There was, indeed, no life. Stillness and silence ruled here. In fact Tiffany, who cared a lot about getting words right, would have said it was a hush, which is not the same as silence. A hush is what you get in cathedrals at midnight.
“Daft Wullie!” snapped Rob, without taking his eyes off the strange landscape. The singing stopped. “Aye, Rob?” said Daft Wullie from behind him. “Ye ken I said I’d tell ye when ye wuz guilty o’ stupid and inna-pro-pree-ate behavior?” “Aye, Rob,” said Daft Wullie. “That wuz another one o’ those times, wuz it?” “Aye.”
Awf’ly Wee Billy looked up at the chalked words: SHEEPS WOOL TURPENTINE JOLLY SAILOR
Rob hesitated, but only for a moment. “Aye, Daft Wullie, ye are right in whut ye say. It was unricht o’ me to say that. It was the heat o’ the moment, an’ I am full sorry for it. As I stand here before ye now, I will say: Daft Wullie, ye do hae the brains o’ a beetle, an’ I’ll fight any scunner who says different!”
“Shame on ye!” screamed Awf’ly Wee Billy, letting the pipe drop out of his mouth. “Shame on ye! Traitors! Betrayers! Ye shame hearth and hame! Your hag is fightin’ for her verra soul! Have ye no honor?” He flung down the mousepipes, which wailed into silence. “I curse my feets that let me stand here in front o’ ye! Ye shame the verrae sun shinin’ on ye! Ye shame the kelda that birthed ye! Traitors! Scuggans! What ha’ I done to be among this parcel o’ rogues? Any man here want tae fight? Then fight me! Aye, fight me! An’ I swear by the harp o’ bones I’ll tak’ him tae the deeps o’ the sea an’
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The rage of a gonnagle was a dreadful thing to see. A gonnagle could use words like swords.
Tiffany’s nose twitched. The nose is a big thinker. It’s good at memory—very good. So good that a smell can take you back in memory so hard that it hurts. The brain can’t stop it. The brain has nothing to do with it. The hiver could control brains, but it couldn’t control a stomach that threw up when it was flown on a broomstick. And it was useless at noses. . . .
Rob Anybody returned, followed by . . . well, everyone. “Ye canna die,” he yelled. “But we’ll make ye wish ye could!” They charged.
They fought— —and the ground shook so suddenly that even the hiver lost its footing. The shepherding hut creaked and began to settle into the turf, which opened up around it as easily as butter. The saplings trembled and began to fall over, one after the other, as if their roots were being cut under the grass. The land . . . rose.
What’s your name, pictsie?” “Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle, mistress.” “You’re very small, aren’t you?” “Only for my height, mistress.”
“What does your name mean in the Old Speech of the Nac Mac Feegle, Tiffany? Think . . .” It rose from the depths of her mind, trailing the fog behind it. It came up through the clamoring voices and lifted her beyond the reach of ghostly hands. Ahead, the clouds parted. “My name is Land Under Wave,” said Tiffany, and slumped forward. “No, no, none of that, we can’t have that,” said the figure holding her.
The black-dressed figure holding her wasn’t tall, but she was so good at acting as if she was that it tended to fool most people. “Oh . . . you’re . . . Mistress Weatherwax?” Mistress Weatherwax pushed her down gently into a chair.
So this is witchcraft too, Tiffany thought. It’s like Granny Aching talking to animals. It’s in the voice! Sharp and soft by turns, and you use little words of command and encouragement and you keep talking, making the words fill the creature’s world, so that the sheepdogs obey you and the nervous sheep are calmed. . . .
