The Wee Free Men
Chapters - Terry Pratchett, Paul Kidby
Section: Miss Tick's Discovery
Miss Tick, a wandering witch, detects a magical disturbance on the Chalk using a makeshift divination device. Through a saucer of inky water she observes nine-year-old Tiffany Aching, a farm girl and dairymaid, lying by the river tickling trout while minding her small brother Wentworth. A tiny red-haired man in a round boat - a Nac Mac Feegle - warns Tiffany of danger before paddling away.
Moments later, Jenny Green-Teeth, a water monster with eyes the size of soup plates and long clawed arms, bursts from the river. Tiffany snatches Wentworth to safety just in time. Back at the farmhouse, she consults her late grandmother's books - including a dictionary she has read cover to cover - and finds a picture of Jenny in The Goode Childes Booke of Faerie Tales. With practical determination, she measures a soup plate, arms herself with the largest frying pan, and returns to the river using sweets tied to a stake as bait for Wentworth.
When Jenny erupts from the water again, Tiffany meets her with a mighty swing of the frying pan. The iron pan connects with a ringing clang and the creature sinks back into the depths. Hidden in the reeds, two Feegles whisper that they have found "the hag" and must tell the Big Man. Miss Tick, hurrying towards the Chalk, is astonished but finds her magic weakening on the soft chalk ground.
On page: Miss Tick, Tiffany Aching, Wentworth Aching, The Toad, Jenny Green-Teeth·Mentioned: Granny Aching
Section: The Witch in the Tent
Tiffany walks to the village where travelling teachers have set up their stalls. She asks about Jenny Green-Teeth but the zoology teacher cannot help and directs her to a small, shabby black tent at the end of the row. Inside she finds Miss Tick, a thin-nosed woman in a black straw hat decorated with paper flowers, accompanied by a talking toad who claims to have once been human, transformed by a fairy godmother.
Tiffany impresses Miss Tick with her reasoning - deducing the woman is a witch despite her disguise - and her precise, measured approach to the world. Miss Tick reveals she is indeed a witch but explains that real witchcraft is about paying attention, using your head, and knowing when not to use magic. She warns Tiffany of an "incursion of major proportions" coming to the Chalk but insists Tiffany cannot handle it alone.
When Miss Tick asks if Tiffany saw anything else by the river, Tiffany lies about the Nac Mac Feegles, enjoying knowing something the witch does not. Miss Tick tells Tiffany how to find the school for witches: go to a high place, open your eyes, and then open them again. That evening Tiffany climbs Arken Hill but sees nothing magical - only feels a momentary buzz in the air and a scent of snow. She looks up 'incursion' in the dictionary: it means invasion.
On page: Tiffany Aching, Miss Tick, The Toad·Mentioned: Granny Aching, Jenny Green-Teeth
Section: Hunt the Hag
Miss Tick and the toad discuss Tiffany. Miss Tick is grudgingly impressed: the girl has First Sight and Second Thoughts, she bashed Jenny Green-Teeth with a frying pan, and she comes from a line of chalk shepherds. Yet Miss Tick insists chalk cannot produce a witch. She leaves the toad behind to watch Tiffany and sets off to fetch help from other witches.
That night, Tiffany is woken by tiny voices under her bed - Nac Mac Feegles searching for "the hag". They discover the dolls' house and get into a noisy brawl with toy soldiers and a one-legged teddy bear. In the pre-dawn mist, Tiffany witnesses them stealing a sheep from the paddock, carrying it backwards across the field. She confronts two Feegles red-handed in the henhouse, each clutching an egg, and forces them to put the eggs back.
Walking to the village, the world suddenly turns cold and snowy. A headless horseman on a massive horse charges down the lane towards her. A Feegle called Big Yan drops from the trees onto the horse's head and head-butts it between the eyes, bringing the horse down. Dozens of Feegles swarm the fallen horseman until he vanishes along with the snow. Tiffany finds the toad where Miss Tick left him. He identifies her visitors as Nac Mac Feegles - the most feared of all fairy races, also called pictsies or the Wee Free Men - rebels against everyone and everything.
On page: Tiffany Aching, Miss Tick, The Toad, Big Yan, Daft Wullie·Mentioned: Rob Anybody
Section: The Wee Free Men
Wentworth vanishes from the shearing pens in broad daylight, sending the whole farm into a frantic search. Tiffany suspects magic and confronts the toad, who reluctantly confirms that another world is colliding with this one and all the old monsters are returning. Tiffany declares she will deal with it herself.
Using a bottle of her late grandmother Granny Aching's fearsome Special Sheep Liniment - so strong it dissolves spoons - Tiffany lures hundreds of Nac Mac Feegles out of hiding in the dairy. Their leader, Rob Anybody Feegle, introduces himself and his clan. The Feegles are famously stealin', fightin' and drinkin' folk who carry swords nearly as big as themselves and are tattooed blue from head to foot.
Rob Anybody explains that their kelda sent them to find the "new hag" who is kin to Granny Aching, because the Queen is coming. The Feegles wail in terror at the mention of the Queen - a being from another world whose realm of perpetual winter is bleeding into the Chalk. Tiffany realises the Queen has taken Wentworth. She rallies the Feegles by reframing the mission: they will steal her brother back. This language the Feegles understand perfectly. She writes a note to her parents, packs a sack with bandages, the frying pan, Diseases of the Sheep and the Liniment, and sets off with the clan.
On page: Tiffany Aching, The Toad, Rob Anybody, Daft Wullie, Hamish the Pictsie, William the Gonnagle·Mentioned: Wentworth Aching, Granny Aching
Section: The Shepherdess
Tiffany travels with the Nac Mac Feegles across the Chalk towards the Queen's doorway. Rob Anybody tells her about their kelda - the clan mother who is old and ailing. Each clan has one kelda who gives birth to mostly sons; a new kelda must come from outside the clan. They take Tiffany to their underground mound where she meets the elderly kelda, who lies on a bed of moss surrounded by flickering light.
The kelda recognises Tiffany as Granny Aching's granddaughter and tells her the Chalk remembers those who care for it. She reveals that Granny Aching was the true guardian of this land, a shepherd who watched over everything - not just sheep. The kelda explains that the Queen steals children because she collects things but cannot create, and that Wentworth was taken because the barriers between worlds are weakening.
Before dying peacefully, the kelda tells Tiffany she must be the new hag of the Chalk, and names Fion - a young kelda from another clan - as her successor to lead the Feegles. Tiffany also meets Daft Wullie, Rob Anybody's brother who is well-meaning but spectacularly dim, and learns about Hamish the aviator, who flies on the back of a trained buzzard.
On page: Tiffany Aching, Rob Anybody, Fion, Daft Wullie, Hamish the Pictsie·Mentioned: Granny Aching
Section: Finding the Door
Tiffany and the Nac Mac Feegles search for the doorway into the Queen's realm. The toad provides guidance, explaining that the entrance is wherever the Queen's power pushes through. On the downs, snow begins to form unnaturally - not falling but rising from the ground - and the air shimmers like a diamond.
Three grimhounds - massive black dogs with eyes of flame and teeth of razor blades - materialise from the spreading snow. Tiffany realises these creatures are nightmares made real by the Queen's magic. She runs for the edge of the snow, reasoning that the monsters cannot survive in the real world. When a grimhound follows her onto warm turf, it goes blind and its razor teeth cut its own mouth. She finishes it with the frying pan.
Rob Anybody rallies the Feegles with his battle plan: "As soon as we see somethin, well attack it." Big Yan and the clan fight the remaining grimhounds in the snow. Tiffany discovers that the Feegles are already dead - they believe they lived in a paradise and were kicked out for being drunk and disorderly, and that the living world is in fact the afterlife. This is why they fear nothing. The doorway into the Queen's land opens before them.
On page: Tiffany Aching, Rob Anybody, The Toad, Big Yan, Daft Wullie
Section: Land of Winter
Tiffany and the Nac Mac Feegles enter the Queen's realm - a land of perpetual white winter stretching in every direction. The light is flat and strange, with no shadows. Rob Anybody warns Tiffany that nothing here is what it seems and that the Queen controls everything in her domain.
They encounter dromes - creatures that trap people in dreams, feeding on their happiness while slowly draining them. Tiffany falls into a drome's illusion, finding herself in a warm kitchen where Granny Aching is alive and well, smoking her pipe by the fire with Thunder and Lightning at her feet. The dream is seductive and Tiffany almost surrenders to it, but her Second Thoughts notice things are wrong: the light is too perfect, the colours too bright, and Granny is saying things she would never say.
Tiffany forces herself awake by focusing on what is real and what is not, shattering the drome's illusion. The Feegles, who are immune to dromes because their dreams consist entirely of fighting and drinking, have been battling the creature from outside. Daft Wullie accidentally helps by head-butting things at random. They press deeper into the Queen's territory, where the landscape shifts and changes around them.
On page: Tiffany Aching, Rob Anybody, Daft Wullie, Hamish the Pictsie, William the Gonnagle·Mentioned: Granny Aching, Nightshade
Section: The Queen's Bower
Tiffany and the Feegles reach the Queen's castle, a place of frozen beauty that shifts like a dream. Inside they discover Roland, the Baron's missing son, trapped in an enchanted sleep. He has been here for months, lost in pleasant dreams while the Queen keeps him as a trophy.
Tiffany finds Wentworth in a candied wonderland, surrounded by sweets that are actually made of snow and glamour. He is sticky as ever but enchanted, barely recognising his sister. The Queen has been feeding him dreams of endless sweets.
Rob Anybody and the Feegles create a diversion while Tiffany confronts the situation. She must wake both boys and get them out before the Queen returns. She manages to reach Wentworth by offering him a real sweet from her pocket - a grubby humbug that tastes of genuine sugar rather than illusion. The contrast between real and fake begins to break the enchantment on the toddler.
On page: Tiffany Aching, Rob Anybody, Wentworth Aching, Roland de Chumsfanleigh, Nightshade
Section: The Jolly Sailor
The Queen's power closes in as Tiffany tries to escape with Wentworth and Roland. She is pulled into another drome - this time dreaming she is back home, that everything is normal, that her adventure was just a dream. She lives through days of cheese-making and ordinary farm life.
But Tiffany's Second Thoughts keep working even inside the dream, noticing small wrongnesses. She realises she is being tested - the Queen wants her to give up and accept a comfortable illusion. Her Third Thoughts (the thoughts that watch the thoughts that watch the thoughts) help her see through the layers of deception.
Rob Anybody manages to get a message through to her inside the dream, and the Feegles fight to break her free from the outside. Tiffany wakes to find herself in the Queen's realm, still clutching Wentworth. The Jolly Sailor tobacco tin - Granny Aching's brand - becomes a talisman, its mundane realness cutting through the Queen's glamour like iron through fairy magic.
On page: Tiffany Aching, Rob Anybody, Wentworth Aching, Hamish the Pictsie, William the Gonnagle·Mentioned: Granny Aching, Nightshade
Section: Land Under Wave
Tiffany faces the Queen in a final confrontation. The Queen is beautiful and terrible, a creature of glamour and cold power who has ruled her frozen realm for millennia. She tries to overwhelm Tiffany with raw magic, projecting visions of fear and offering seductive dreams of power.
Tiffany stands her ground using everything she has learned. She draws on the memory of Granny Aching - not the magic of spells, but the magic of knowing the land, of caring for things, of standing firm when everyone else runs. She remembers that Granny Aching's power came from the Chalk itself, from the bones of billions of tiny sea creatures, and realises that the Chalk is not weak at all. It is made of the shells of creatures that lived and died, and all those tiny lives have power.
With the strength of the land behind her, Tiffany defeats the Queen by refusing to be afraid and by seeing through every illusion. Rob Anybody and the Feegles fight the Queen's remaining forces. The Queen's realm begins to collapse as Tiffany forces her back, and the doorway between worlds starts to close.
On page: Tiffany Aching, Rob Anybody, Nightshade·Mentioned: Granny Aching
Section: Small Like Oak Trees
Tiffany returns home to the Chalk with Wentworth and Roland, who remembers nothing of his captivity. The Baron is overjoyed to have his son back. The village is amazed but Tiffany offers no dramatic explanations - she simply gets on with things, which is the witchiest thing of all.
Miss Tick returns, having failed to bring help in time, and is astonished to find that Tiffany has handled everything herself. She arranges for Tiffany to eventually train with real witches in the mountains, mentioning Granny Weatherwax as someone Tiffany might learn from one day.
Rob Anybody and the Nac Mac Feegles celebrate with a spectacular ceilidh. Fion takes her place as the new kelda of the clan. The toad stays with Tiffany, who goes back to making cheese in the dairy. She knows now that she is the witch of the Chalk - not because of spells or broomsticks, but because she pays attention, she cares, and she will not let harm come to those she watches over. She is, as Granny Aching was, small like the flowers of the chalk - small like oak trees, which start as small as nothing but grow strong and endure.
On page: Tiffany Aching, Wentworth Aching, Roland de Chumsfanleigh, Miss Tick, Rob Anybody, Fion, The Toad, The Baron, William the Gonnagle·Mentioned: Granny Aching, Esmerelda Weatherwax