Nice! I think the Tiffany Aching books might be my favorite from discworld, I thought it fitting Pratchett got to wrap that storyline up just months before his death.
Naturally I have made bottles of "Granny's Special Sheep Liniment" and a Nac Mac Feegle scotch with a special Rob Anybody commemorative bottle.
“Tell me, is your father a drinking man?”
“He has a beer sometimes,” said Tiffany. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Only beer?”
“Well, I’m not supposed to know about what my father calls the Special Sheep Liniment,” said
Tiffany. “Granny Aching used to make it in the old cowshed.”
“Strong stuff, is it?”
“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?”
“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.
“Tell the wee hag who we are, lads,” said the helmet twiddler.
There was the scrape of many small swords being drawn and thrust into the air.
“Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna
be fooled again!”
Tiffany stared at them. They were all watching her to see what she was going to do next, and the
longer she said nothing, the more worried they become. They lowered their swords, looking
embarrassed.
“But we wouldna dare deny a powerful hag, except mebbe for strong drink,” said the twiddler,
his helmet spinning desperately in his hands and his eyes on the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment.
“Will ye no’ help us?”
“Help you?” said Tiffany. “I want you to help me! Someone has taken my brother in broad
daylight.”
“Oh waily, waily waily!” said the helmet twiddler. “She’s come, then. She’s come a-fetchin’.
We’re too late! It’s the Quin!”
“What, there were four of them?” said Tiffany.
“They mean the Queen,” said the toad. “The Queen of the—”
“Hush yer gob!” shouted the helmet twiddler, but his voice was lost in the wails and groans of
the Nac Mac Feegle. They were pulling at their hair and stamping on the ground and shouting,
“Alackaday!” and “Waily waily waily!” and the toad was arguing with the helmet twiddler and
everyone was getting louder to make themselves heard—
Tiffany stood up. “Everybody shut up right now!” she said.
Silence fell, except for a few sniffs and faint wailys from the back.
“We wuz only dreeing our weird, mistress,” said the helmet twiddler, almost crouching in fear.
“But not in here!” snapped Tiffany, shaking with anger. “This is a dairy! I have to keep it clean!”
“Er…dreeing your weird means ‘facing your fate,’” said the toad.
“’Cause if the Quin is here, then it means our kelda is weakenin’ fast,” said the helmet twiddler.
“An’ we’ll ha’ naeone tae look after us.”
No one to look after us, thought Tiffany. Hundreds of tough little men who could each win the
Worst Broken Nose Contest need someone to look after them?
She took a deep breath.
“My mother’s in the house crying,” she said, “and…” I don’t know how to comfort her, she
added to herself. I’m no good at this sort of thing, I never know what I should be saying. Out loud she
said: “And she wants him back. Er. A lot.” She added, hating to say it, “He’s her favorite.”
She pointed to the helmet twiddler, who backed away.
“First of all,” she said, “I can’t keep thinking of you as the helmet twiddler, so what is your
name?”
A gasp went up from the Nac Mac Feegle, and Tiffany heard one of them murmur, “Aye, she’s the
hag, sure enough. That’s a hag’s question!”
The helmet twiddler looked around at them as if seeking help.
“We dinna give oour names,” he muttered. But another Feegle, somewhere safe at the back said,
“Wheest! You canna refuse a hag!”
The little man looked up, very worried.
“I’m the Big Man o’ the clan, mistress,” he said. “An’ my name it is…” He swallowed. “Rob
Anybody Feegle, mistress. But I beg ye not to use it agin me!”
The toad was ready for this.
“They think names have magic in them,” he 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.
“They think written words are even more powerful,” whispered the toad. “They think all writing
is magic. Words worry them. See their swords? They glow blue in the presence of lawyers.”
“All right,” said Tiffany. “We’re getting somewhere. I promise not to write his name down.
Now tell me about this Queen who’s taken Wentworth. Queen of what?”
“Canna say it aloud, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. “She hears her name wherever it’s said, and
she comes callin’.”
“Actually, that’s true,” said the toad. “You do not want to meet her, ever.”
“She’s bad?”
“Worse. Just call her the Queen.”
“Aye, the Quin,” said Rob Anybody. He looked at Tiffany with bright, worried eyes. “Ye dinna
ken o’ the Quin? An’ you the wean o’ Granny Aching, who had these hills in her bones? Ye dinna ken
the ways? She did not show ye the ways? Ye’re no’ a hag? How can this be? Ye slammered Jenny
Green-Teeth and stared the Heidless Horseman in the eyes he hasna got, and you dinna ken?”
Tiffany gave him a brittle smile and then whispered to the toad, “Who’s Ken? And what about
his dinner? And what’s a wean of Granny Aching?”
“As far as I can make out,” said the toad, “they’re amazed that you don’t know about the Queen
and…er, the magical ways, what with you being a child of Granny Aching and standing up to the
monsters. Ken means ‘know.’”
“And his dinner?”
“Forget about his dinner for now,” said the toad. “They thought Granny Aching told you her
magic. Hold me up to your ear, will you?” Tiffany did so, and the toad whispered, “Best not to
disappoint them, eh?”
She swallowed. “But she never told me about any magic—” she began. And stopped. It was
true. Granny Aching hadn’t told her about any magic. But she showed people magic every day.
which is awesome to age with and I highly recommend it if you can find some. I also recommend using fruit wood.
Pratchett did say this about the hangover
