The walls were solid. The floor creaked like it always did. Her slippers were the same as they always were: old, comfortable and with all the pink fluff worn off.

She stood in the middle of the floor and said, very quietly, ‘Is there anybody there?’

Sheep baa’d on the distant hillside, but they probably hadn’t heard her.

The door squeaked open and the cat Ratbag came in. He rubbed up against her legs, purring like a distant thunderstorm, and then went and curled up on her bed.

Tiffany got dressed thoughtfully, daring the room to do something strange.

When she got downstairs, breakfast was cooking. Her mother was busy at the sink.

Tiffany darted out through the scullery and into the dairy. She scrambled on hands and knees around the floor, peering under the sink and behind cupboards.

‘You can come out now, honestly,’ she said.

No one came. She was alone in the room. She’d often been alone in the room, and had enjoyed it. It was almost her private territory. But now, somehow, it was too empty, too clean…

When she wandered back into the kitchen her mother was still standing by the sink, washing dishes, but a plate of steaming porridge had been put down in the one set place on the table.

I’ll make some more butter today,’ said Tiffany carefully, sitting down. ‘I might as well while we’re getting all this milk.’

Her mother nodded, and put a plate on the draining board beside the sink.

‘I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?’ said Tiffany.

Her mother shook her head.

Tiffany sighed. ‘And then she woke up and it was all a dream.’ It was just about the worst ending you could have to any story. But it had all seemed so real. She could remember the smoky smell in the pictsies’ cave, and the way… who was it?… oh, yes, he’d been called Rob Anybody… the way Rob Anybody had always been so nervous about talking to her.

It was strange, she thought, that Ratbag had rubbed up against her. He’d sleep on her bed if he could get away with it, but during the day he kept well out of Tiffany’s way. How odd…

There was a rattling noise near the mantelpiece. The china shepherdess on Granny’s shelf was moving sideways of its own accord and, as Tiffany watched with her porridge spoon halfway to her mouth, it slid off and smashed on the floor.

The rattling went on. Now it was coming from the big oven. She should see the door actually shaking on the hinges.

She turned to her mother, and saw her put another plate down by the sink. But it wasn’t being held in a hand…

The oven door burst open and slid across the floor.

‘Dinnae eat the porridge!’

Nac Mac Feegles spilled out into the room, hundreds of them, pouring across the tiles.

The walls were shifting. The floor moved. And now the thing turning round at the sink was not even human but just… stuff, no more human than a gingerbread man, grey as old dough, changing shape as it lumbered towards Tiffany.

The pictsies surged past her in a flurry of snow.

She looked up at the thing’s tiny black eyes.

The scream came from somewhere deep inside. There was no Second Thought, no first thought, just a scream. It seemed to spread out as it left Tiffany’s mouth until it became a black tunnel in front of her, and as she fell into it she heard, in the commotion behind her:

‘Who d’yer think ye’re lookin’ at, pal? Crivens, but ye’re gonna get sich a kickin’!’

Tiffany opened her eyes.

She was lying on damp ground in the snowy, gloomy wood. Pictsies were watching her carefully but, she saw, there were others behind them staring outwards, into the gloom amongst the tree trunks.

There was… stuff in the trees. Lumps of stuff. It was grey, and hung there like old cloth.

She turned her head and saw William standing beside her, looking at her with concern.

‘That was a dream, wasn’t it…?’ she said.

‘Weel noo,’ said William, ‘it was, and therrre again, it wasnae…’

Tiffany sat up suddenly, causing the pictsies to leap back.

‘But that… thing was in it, and then you all came out of the oven!’ she said. ‘You were in my dream! What is—was that creature?’

William the gonnagle stared at her as if trying to make up his mind.

‘That was what we call a drome,’ he said. ‘Nothing here really belongs here, remember? Everything is a reflection from outside, or something kidnapped from another worrrld, or mebbe something the Quin has made outa magic. It was hidin’ in the trees, and ye was goin’ so fast ye didnae see it. Ye ken spiders?’

‘Of course!’

‘Well, spiders spin webs. Dromes spin dreams. It’s easy in this place. The world you come from is nearly real. This place is nearly unreal, so it’s almost a dream anywa’. And the drome makes a dream for ye, wi’ a trap in it. If ye eats anythin’ in the dream, ye’ll never wanta’ leave it.’

He looked as though Tiffany should have been impressed.

‘What’s in it for the drome?’ she asked.

‘It likes watchin’ dreams. It has fun watching ye ha’ fun. An’ it’ll watch ye eatin’ dream food, until ye starve to death. Then the drome’ll eat ye. Not right away, o’ course. It’ll wait until ye’ve gone a wee bit runny, because it hasnae teeth.’

‘So how can anyone get out?’

The best way is to find the drome,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘It’ll be in the dream with you, in disguise. Then ye just gives it a good kickin’.’

‘By kicking you mean—?’

‘Choppin’ its heid off generally works.’

Now, Tiffany thought, I am impressed. I wish I wasn’t. ‘And this is Fairyland?’ she said.

‘Aye. Ye could say it’s the bit the tourists dinnae see,’ said William. ‘An’ ye did well. Ye were fightin’ it. Ye knew it wasnae right.’

Tiffany remembered the friendly cat, and the falling shepherdess. She’d been trying to send messages to herself. She should have listened.

‘Thank you for coming after me,’ she said, meekly. ‘How did you do it?’

‘Ach, we can generally find a way intae anywhere, even a dream,’ said William, smiling. ‘We’re a stealin’ folk, after all.’ A piece of the drome fell out of the tree and flopped onto the snow.

‘One of them won’t get me again!’ said Tiffany.

‘Aye. I believe you. Ye have murrrder in yer eyes,’ said William, with a touch of admiration. ‘If I was a drome I’d be pretty fearful noo, if I had a brain. There’ll be more of them, mark you, and some of ‘em are cunning. The Quin uses ‘em as guards.’

‘I won’t be fooled!’ Tiffany remembered the horror of the moment when the thing had lumbered around changing shape. It was worse because it was in her house, her place. She’d felt real terror as the big shapeless thing crashed across the kitchen, but the anger had been there too. It was invading her place.

The thing wasn’t just trying to kill her, it was insulting her…

William was watching her.

‘Aye, ye’re lookin’ mighty fierce,’ he said. ‘Ye must love your wee brother to face a’ these monsters for him…’

And Tiffany couldn’t stop her thoughts. I don’t love him. I know I don’t. He’s just so… sticky, and can’t keep up, and I have to spend too much time looking after him, and he’s always screaming for things. I can’t talk to him. He just wants all the time.

But her Second Thinking said: He’s mine. My place, my home, my brother! How dare anything touch what’s mine!

She’d been brought up not to be selfish. She knew she wasn’t, not in the way people meant. She tried to think of other people. She never took the last slice of bread. This was a different feeling.

She wasn’t being brave or noble or kind. She was doing this because it had to be done, because there was no way that she could not do it. She thought of:

…Granny Aching’s light, weaving slowly across the downs, on freezing, sparkly nights or in storms like a raging war, saving lambs from the creeping frost or rams from the precipice. She froze and struggled and tramped through the night for idiot sheep that never said thank you and would probably be just as stupid tomorrow, and get into the same trouble again. And she did it because not doing it was unthinkable.