The Wee Free Men Chapter 3 Summary

Hunt the Hag

  • When Tiffany's left, Miss Tick and the toad discuss how she's going to be a witch. Miss Tick is confused because chalk is a very hard place to do magic on.
  • It is also revealed that people make up monsters when they tell stories—the Jenny Green-Teeth is apparently something that people use to scare their kids.
  • Miss Tick decides that she's going to have to go get some help, even though it will take a couple days; the toad, on the other hand, will stay behind with Tiffany.
  • Tiffany goes to bed and remembers Thunder and Lightning, her grandma's dogs, when a storm starts to rage on outside.
  • When she wakes up, she hears strange little voices talking to each other about looking for a "hag." Tiffany is curious, but she drifts back to sleep anyway.
  • She wakes up again to the voices underneath her bed, talking about how they've run into "soldiers"… which Tiffany immediately realizes means that they're fighting her toys.
  • Tiffany coughs and the little men scamper off. She goes to the privy (toilet) to get some privacy and read her book of fairy tales.
  • The stories in the fairy tales make her angry because she hates how moralistic they are, but she likes the drawings—especially one drawing where the picture looks exactly like the angry little blue men she saw in the boat.
  • But then Tiffany hears some noise, so she rushes outside, showing up just in time to stop the little blue men from stealing a sheep and eggs from them. She chases them off.
  • In the morning she sees the tiny blue dudes watching her. Tiffany goes about all her farm chores, which include collecting eggs, fetching water, and churning butter.
  • As she's in the barn though, she hears a slopping noise behind her and turns around to find that all six buckets have been filled with water. The little men are obviously sorry.
  • Tiffany wants to know what the little men are, so she decides to set off to go talk to Miss Tick. On the way, though, she feels a susurrus and walks by a headless horseman. Um… yikes.
  • The little men scare off the horseman, and Tiffany carries on down the road. When she gets to the site, all the teachers' tents are gone—but the talking toad remains.
  • The toad explains that the little blue men are the Nac Mac Feegles, otherwise known as pictsies or the Wee Free Men.
  • They have to hurry home because apparently another world is colliding with theirs, which could spell rather bad news.