‘Remember, I want you to keep it in one piece,’ she was saying sternly.
Then, within minutes, it was a mêlée. In fact, a mêlée of mêlées. There was a sting in the air and Tiffany recognized the surge of static electricity. How could the elves be so stupid, she thought, as to attack in the midst of a storm? Did they not remember how she had used thunder and lightning to defeat them before? The sky was crackling. The hairs on her head tingled. She could see signs of a coming downpour happening everywhere, could recognize the build-up to an enormous storm.
As Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin’s mousepipes screeched out a battle hymn, pitched perfectly to assault the elven ears, there was a distant scream from a train at Twoshirts. A roar of iron and steel, a bellow that shouted: This is no world for elves!
Feegles and elves were fighting now, with no quarter given on either side. Tiffany could see that the Feegles were dealing with things in their own special way — which included getting into the elves’ clothing and fighting them from within. If there was something that an elf really hated, it was to have their clothing torn, and a black eye didn’t do much for the image either. You can’t be suave with a black eye, Tiffany thought.
She suddenly burst out laughing. It had been a long time since she had set eyes on Horace the Cheese,[54] but now she saw him rolling heavily over every fallen elf, and when they were flattened the younger Feegles got to work as well, mostly with their heavy boots, but also with their double-the-fun clubs that curled in the air, clonking elves on the head and then coming joyfully back for another go. And yes, there was Maggie in their midst — a Feegle daughter fighting alongside her brothers! And indeed fighting even more furiously than her brothers. Tiffany thought, She’s like a small Ynci. The Feegle maid had been waiting for something like this to prove herself, so woe betide any elf who got in her way. It was one small step for a Feegle lassie — but a giant step for all Feegle womenfolk!
Miss Tick was flying overhead now, the strange rope-net hanging beneath her broomstick filled with young Feegles. As she pulled at one knot after another, the Wee Free Men were tumbling out to fall smack on the heads of the elves below. Crash! Whack! Crump! Followed by Aargh! from the elves.
And the witch had small bottles with her too — concoctions mixed in her caravan that she was now gleefully emptying over the heads of the elves’ horses as she swooped above them. There was a moment’s pause as each horse absorbed the mixture, then its eyes crossed, followed rapidly by its hooves, and it toppled to the ground, losing its footing, hurling its rider onto the earth to be quickly covered by Feegles.
Letitia had arrived now, summoned by Hamish, and was tumbling from her horse, determination in her face, borrowed chainmail over her dress. She somehow flowed through the elves — there was a certain magic to it as if she were some goddess of water, streaming everywhere: no thought to it, but no stopping it either. Suddenly the elvish horses still standing were bogged down in a quagmire, and the Feegles were there on hand to keep them in the mire.
Nevertheless, it looked as if the Feegles, Miss Tick and Letitia were really not getting the better of the elves. Despite the Wee Free Men’s pouring into elvish underwear and tearing it up, Tiffany realized that the Nac Mac Feegles were actually in danger of losing.
Nightshade pointed out Peaseblossom sitting on a black charger, and Tiffany flew down to confront the leader of the elves. His minions scattered as she arrived — they had seen the expression on Tiffany’s face.
Peaseblossom was laughing. ‘Ah, the little country girl. How pleased I am to see you!’
She felt the tug of his glamour but rage was a useful tool, and she hated that grinning face. It was so self-centred. It loved itself beyond any other thing.
‘Peaseblossom is a very stupid name for an elf of your size,’ she said rather childishly.
And then, suddenly, the elf had sprung from his horse to stand before her, a sabre in his hands, and his laughter was gone, only evil in his eyes.
A voice said, ‘Don’t touch her, Peaseblossom.’
And Nightshade was stepping forward, her glamour fully restored and shining gloriously, her hair streaked silver with the moonlight, her new wings resplendent. She held herself like a queen again, her gaze slowly moving over the warriors behind her treacherous lord, and such was the power of her presence that even the Feegles paused in the frozen silence.
‘Why do you follow this … perfidious elf?’ the Queen demanded of the elves. ‘I am your rightful queen, and I say that you do not have to do this. There are … other ways.’ She spun on the spot, her velvet robes spiralling around her slim body. ‘I have learned this. And this girl’ — she pointed at Tiffany — ‘is my friend.’
Tiffany couldn’t stop what happened next.
‘Friend?’ Peaseblossom spat. ‘There are no friends for elves.’
He raised his arm and his sabre tore through Nightshade with a terrible swishing sound. The elf Queen fell, crumpling to the ground at Tiffany’s feet, where she writhed for a moment that seemed to last a lifetime, myriad faces and shapes appearing and disappearing, flickering in and out of substance, before finally lying still, a forlorn heap. Tiffany reeled back in shock. Peaseblossom had killed the Queen of the Fairies!
Worse, he had killed her friend.
Peaseblossom, revelling, turned to Tiffany, his face sharp and merciless. ‘You have no friend now!’
Suddenly the air was full of ice. ‘You killed one of your own to get to me, you cursed elf,’ Tiffany said, her voice cold, red-hot anger boiling inside her. ‘She wanted to explore a new way, an alliance of humans and elves, and now you have killed her.’
‘You stupid little girl!’ Peaseblossom taunted. ‘You think you can stand against me? What a fool you are! We elves knew well of the witch who once walked the edges of this world … but you, you are just a child, filled with pride because you were once lucky against a failing queen’ — he glanced contemptuously down at the little heap that had once been the Queen of Fairyland — ‘and now I will see you dead, alongside your friend.’ He spat out the last word, and his glamour snaked towards her, creeping into her head, into her thoughts.
Tiffany recoiled, a memory of Nanny Ogg’s voice suddenly saying to her: Granny Weatherwax said to me as you is the one who’s to deal with the future. An’ bein’ young means you’ve got a lot of future. Well, it looked like Granny Weatherwax might have been wrong. She didn’t have much future to come.
She had failed everyone.
She had tried to be the witch for two steadings. And let everyone down …
She had gone to see the King of the Elves. He had turned her away …
She had made a friend of Nightshade. Now the elf Queen was dead …
She was facing a powerful elf lord who would kill her …
She deserved to die …
She was alone …
Then it came to her. She did not deserve to die. And she was not alone. She never would be. Not while her land was beneath her boots. Her land. The land of the Achings.
She was Tiffany Aching. Not Granny Weatherwax, but a witch in her own right. A witch who knew exactly who she was and how she wanted to do things. Her way. And she had not failed, because she had barely begun …
She stood tall. Frosty. Furious. ‘You called me a country girl,’ she said, ‘and I will see to it that the country will see you dead.’