Then, suddenly, there were noises from the lighthouse. Tiffany heard muffled shouts, and thuds, and once or twice the sound of breaking glass. At one point there was a noise like something heavy falling down a long spiral staircase and hitting every step on the way.

The door opened. The Nac Mac Feegles came out. They looked satisfied.

‘Nae problemo,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘No one there.’

‘But there was a lot of noise!’

‘Oh, aye. We had to make sure,’ said Daft Wullie.

‘Wee wee men!’ shouted Wentworth.

‘I’ll wake up when I go through the door,’ said Tiffany, pulling Roland out of the boat. ‘I always have. It must work. This is my dream.’ She hauled the boy upright and turned to the nearest Feegle. ‘Can you bring Wentworth?’

‘Aye.’

‘And you won’t get lost or, or drunk or anything?’

Rob Anybody looked offended. ‘We ne’er get lost!’ he said. ‘We always ken where we are! It’s just sometimes mebbe we aren’t sure where everything else is, but it’s no’ our fault if everything else gets lost! The Nac Mac Feegle are never lost!’

‘What about drunk?’ said Tiffany, dragging Roland towards the lighthouse.

‘We’ve ne’er been lost in oour lives! Is that no’ the case, lads?’ said Rob Anybody. There was a murmur of resentful agreement. ‘The words “lost” and “Nac Mac Feegle” shouldnae turn up in the same sen-tence!’

‘And drunk?’ said Tiffany again, laying Roland down on the shingle.

‘Gettin’ lost is something that happens to other people!’ declared Rob Anybody. ‘I want to make that point perrrfectly clear!’

‘Well, at least there shouldn’t have been anything to drink in a lighthouse,’ said Tiffany. She laughed. ‘Unless you drank the lamp oil, and no one would dare do that!’

The pictsies suddenly fell silent.

‘What would that be, then?’ said Daft Wullie, in a slow, careful voice. ‘Would it be the stuff in a kind o’ big bottle kind o’ thingie?’

‘Wi’ a wee skull and crossbones on it?’ said Rob Anybody.

‘Yes, probably, and it’s horrible stuff,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’d make you terribly ill if you drank it.’

‘Really?’ said Rob Anybody, thoughtfully. That’s verra… interesting. What sort o’ ill would that be, kind o’ thing?’

‘I think you’d probably die,’ said Tiffany.

‘We’re already dead,’ said Rob Anybody.

‘Well, you’d be very, very sick, then,’ said Tiffany. She gave him a strong look. ‘It’s inflammable, too. It’s a good job you didn’t drink it, isn’t it…’

Daft Wullie belched loudly. There was a strong smell of paraffin.

‘Aye,’ he said.

Tiffany went and fetched Wentworth. Behind her, she heard some muffled whispering as the pictsies went into a huddle.

‘I told yez the wee skull on it meant we shouldnae touch it!’

‘Big Yan said that showed it wuz strong stuff! An’ things ha’ come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off’f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!’

‘What’s inflammable mean?’

‘It means it catches fire!’

‘OK, OK, dinnae panic. No belchin’, and none of youse is to tak’ a leak anywhere near any naked flames, OK? And act nat’ral.’

Tiffany smiled to herself. Pictsies seemed very hard to kill. Perhaps believing you were already dead made you immune. She turned and looked towards the lighthouse door. She had never actually seen it opened in her dream. She’d always thought that the lighthouse was full of light, on the basis that on the farm the cowshed was full of cows and the woodshed was full of wood.

‘All right, all right,’ she said, looking down at Rob Anybody. ‘I’m going to carry Roland, and I want you to bring Wentworth.’

‘Don’t you want to carry the wee lad?’ said Rob.

‘Weewee man!’ shouted Wentworth.

‘You bring him,’ said Tiffany shortly. She meant: I’m not sure this is going to work, and he might be safer with you than with me. I hope I’m going to wake up in my bedroom. Waking up in my bedroom would be nice…

Of course, if everyone else wakes up there, too, there might be some difficult questions asked, but anything’s better than the Queen—

There was a rushing, rattling noise behind her. She turned, and saw the sea disappearing, very quickly. It was pulling back down the shore. As she watched, rocks and clumps of seaweed rose above the surf and then were suddenly high and dry.

‘Ah,’ she said, after a moment. ‘It’s all right. I know what this is. It’s the tide. The sea does this. It goes in and out every day.’

‘Aye?’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Amazin’. It looks like it’s pourin’ awa’ though a hole…’

About fifty yards away the last rivulets of sea water were disappearing over an edge, and some of the pictsies were already heading towards it.

Tiffany suddenly had a moment of something that wasn’t exactly panic. It was a lot slower and nastier than panic. It began with just a nagging little doubt, that said: isn’t the tide a bit slower?

The teacher (Wonders of the Nattral Wurld, One Apple) hadn’t gone into much detail. But there were fish flapping on the exposed sea bed, and surely the fish in the sea didn’t die every day?

‘Er, I think we’d better be careful.’ she said, trailing after Rob Anybody.

‘Why? It’s nae as though the water’s risin’,’ he said. ‘When does the tide come back?’

‘Um, not for hours, I think,’ said Tiffany, feeling the slow, nasty panic getting bigger. ‘But I’m not sure this—’

‘Tons o’ time, then,’ said Rob Anybody.

They’d reached the edge, where the rest of the pictsies were lined up. A little bit of water still trickled over their feet, pouring down into the gulf beyond.

It was like looking down into a valley. At the far side, miles and miles away, the retreating sea was just a gleaming line.

Below them, though, were the shipwrecks. There were a lot of them. Galleons and schooners and clippers, masts broken, rigging hanging, hulls breached, lay strewn across the puddles in what had been the bay.

The Nac Mac Feegles, as one pictsie, sighed happily.

‘Sunken treasure!’

‘Aye! Gold!’

‘Bullion!’

‘Jools!’

‘What makes you think they’ve got treasure in?’ said Tiffany.

The Nac Mac Feegles looked amazed, as if she’d suggested that rocks could fly.

‘There’s got to be treasure in ‘em,’ said Daft Wullie. ‘Otherwise what’s the point of lettin’ ‘em sink?’

‘That’s right,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘There’s got t’be gold in sunken ships, otherwise it wouldnae be worth fighting all them sharkies and octopussies and stuff. Stealin’ treasure fra’ the ocean’s bed, that’s aboout the biggest, best thievin’ ever!’

And now what Tiffany felt was real, honest panic.

‘That’s a lighthouse!’ she said, pointing. ‘Can you see it? A lighthouse so ships don’t run into the rocks! Right? Understand? This is a trap made just for you! The Queen’s still around!’

‘Mebbe just can we go down and look inside one wee ship?’ said Rob Anybody, meekly.

‘No! Because—’ Tiffany looked up. A gleam had caught her eye. ‘Because… the sea… is… coming… back…’ she said.

What looked like a cloud on the horizon was getting bigger, and glittering as it came. Tiffany could already hear the roar.

She ran back up the beach and got her hands under Roland’s armpits, so that she could drag him to the lighthouse. She looked back, and the pictsies were still watching the huge, surging wave.

And there was Wentworth, watching the wave happily, and bending down slightly so that, if they stood on tiptoe, he could hold hands with two Feegles.

The image branded itself on her eyes. The little boy, and the pictsies, all with their backs to her, and all staring with interest at the rushing, glittering, sky-filling wall of water.