The Wee Free Men

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This is part of The Cathedral of Terry Pratchett

The basic story is one that is familiar to all Prattchet readers; a small magical world has attached itself to the discworld, like a parasite and must be removed. Except there are no witches, wizards or ancient warriors to help. There's only a trainee witch, called Tiffany and a group of very small blue kilt wearing, beard growing, swearing, fighting pictsies (sic) called the Nac Mac Feegles, who think they're already in the afterlife.

The girl, Tiffany, is unique, being a witch raised on chalk. Chalk normally prevents magic, but this girl has found ways around that, and besides, magic is for dress wearing wizards, not witches. Tiffany also prefers a frying pan to magic. It's more useful and you can hit things with it.

The Queen can read people's thoughts, but Tiffany has the second thought, a gift that allows her to analyse her own thoughts at the same time as she is thinking them. It is this that allows her to defeat the queen just before the "cavalry" arrives in the form of ...Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and ...

The pictsies were employed by the queen to raid nearby worlds for food and anything else they could find, but they rebelled. The queen, being lonely from time to time, steals children. The baron's son has been trapped in the queen's world for a year, but it has seemed like much shorter for him. The queen steals Tiffany's brother, and gives him what he most desires, which is sweets. She finds him surrounded by sweets crying, because although he could eat one sweet, he would not be able to eat all the others at the same time. He's only three.

Characters

  • Tiffany Aching1 - a trainee witch and temporary kelda3 of the clan
  • Rob Anybody
  • Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock
  • Ratbag the cat.
  • Roland - the baron's son.
  • The Queen

Battle cries include:

  • "They can take oor lives but they'll never take oor trousers!"
  • "Ach, crivens!"
  • "Hoots wahey!"
  • The main one is "Nae laird, nae master, nae king, nae queen, we willnae be fooled again!"
1Don't make any jokes, she doesn't like them2.2Jokes like her father made: "I'm Aching all over.", "I'm an Aching man.", etc.3Spiritual leader and mother to most of them.

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