Tiffany Aching Complete Collection: 5 Books
Author: Terry Pratchett
Date: 2015-09-01 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Juvenile Fiction; Fantasy & Magic; Action & Adventure; General; Girls & Women; Humorous Stories
Description: This collection includes all five Tiffany Aching novels in Terry Pratchett's beloved and bestselling Discworld series, including the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown. The Wee Free Men : Armed with only a frying pan and her common sense, young witch-to-be Tiffany Aching must defend her home against the monsters of Fairyland. Luckily she has some very unusual help: the local Nac Mac Feegle—aka the Wee Free Men. A Hat Full of Sky : Tiffany Aching is ready to begin her apprenticeship in magic. She expects spells and magic—not chores and ill-tempered nanny goats! Surely there must be mor
Publisher: HarperCollins

Contents

The Wee Free Men

A Hat Full of Sky

Wintersmith

I Shall Wear Midnight

The Shepherd’s Crown

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About the Author

Books by Terry Pratchett

About the Publisher

CONTENTS

1. Chapter 1        A Clang Well Done
2. Chapter 2        Miss Tick
3. Chapter 3        Hunt the Hag
4. Chapter 4        The Wee Free Men
5. Chapter 5        The Green Sea
6. Chapter 6        The Shepherdess

7. Chapter 7        First Sight and Second Thoughts

8. Chapter 8        Land of Winter
9. Chapter 9        Lost Boys
10. Chapter 10      Master Stroke
11. Chapter 11      Awakening
12. Chapter 12      Jolly Sailor
13. Chapter 13      Land Under Wave
14. Chapter 14      Small, Like Oak Trees
15. Author’s Note
16. Credits
17. Copyright

Guide

1. Cover
2. Contents
3. Chapter 1

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CHAPTER 1

A Clang Well Done

Some things start before other things.

It was a summer shower but didn’t appear to know it, and it was pouring rain as fast as a winter storm.

Miss Perspicacia Tick sat in what little shelter a raggedy hedge could give her and explored the universe. She didn’t notice the rain. Witches dried out quickly.

The exploring of the universe was being done with a couple of twigs tied together with string, a stone with a hole in it, an egg, one of Miss Tick’s stockings (which also had a hole in it), a pin, a piece of paper, and a tiny stub of pencil. Unlike wizards, witches learn to make do with a little.

The items had been tied and twisted together to make a . . . device. It moved oddly when she prodded it. One of the sticks seemed to pass right through the egg, for example, and came out the other side without leaving a mark.

“Yes,” she said quietly, as rain poured off the rim of her hat. “There it is. A definite ripple in the walls of the world. Very worrying. There’s probably another world making contact. That’s never good. I ought to go there. But . . . according to my left elbow, there’s a witch there already.”

“She’ll sort it out, then,” said a small and, for now, mysterious voice from somewhere near her feet.

“No, it can’t be right. That’s chalk country over that way,” said Miss Tick. “You can’t grow a good witch on chalk. The stuff’s barely harder than clay. You need good hard rock to grow a witch, believe me.” Miss Tick shook her head, sending raindrops flying. “But my elbows are generally very reliable.”*

“Why talk about it? Let’s go and see,” said the voice. “We’re not doing very well around here, are we?”

That was true. The lowlands weren’t good to witches. Miss Tick was making pennies by doing bits of medicine and misfortune-telling,** and slept in barns most nights. She’d twice been thrown into ponds.

“I can’t barge in,” she said. “Not on another witch’s territory. That never, ever works. But . . .” She paused. “Witches don’t just turn up out of nowhere. Let’s have a look. . . .”

She pulled a cracked saucer out of her pocket and tipped into it the rainwater that had collected on her hat. Then she took a bottle of ink out of another pocket and poured in just enough to turn the water black.

She cupped it in her hands to keep the raindrops out and listened to her eyes.

Tiffany Aching was lying on her stomach by the river, tickling trout. She liked to hear them laugh. It came up in bubbles.

A little way away, where the riverbank became a sort of pebble beach, her brother, Wentworth, was messing around with a stick, and almost certainly making himself sticky.

Anything could make Wentworth sticky. Washed and dried and left in the middle of a clean floor for five minutes, Wentworth would be sticky. It didn’t seem to come from anywhere. He just got sticky. But he was an easy child to mind, provided you stopped him from eating frogs.

There was a small part of Tiffany’s brain that wasn’t too certain about the name Tiffany. She was nine years old and felt that Tiffany was going to be a hard name to live up to. Besides, she’d decided only last week that she wanted to be a witch when she grew up, and she was certain Tiffany just wouldn’t work. People would laugh.

Another and larger part of Tiffany’s brain was thinking of the word susurrus. It was a word that not many people have thought about, ever. As her fingers rubbed the trout under its chin, she rolled the word round and round in her head.

Susurrus . . . according to her grandmother’s dictionary, it meant “a low soft sound, as of whispering or muttering.” Tiffany liked the taste of the word. It made her think of mysterious people in long cloaks whispering important secrets behind a door: susurrusssusurrusss . . .

She’d read the dictionary all the way through. No one told her you weren’t supposed to.

As she thought this, she realized that the happy trout had swum away. But something else was in the water, only a few inches from her face.

It was a round basket, no bigger than half a coconut shell, coated with something to block up the holes and make it float. A little man, only six inches high, was standing up in it. He had a mass of untidy red hair into which a few feathers, beads, and bits of cloth had been woven. He had a red beard, which was pretty much as bad as the hair. The rest of him that wasn’t covered with blue tattoos was covered with a tiny kilt. And he was waving a fist at her and shouting:

“Crivens! Gang awa’ oot o’ here, ye daft wee hinny! ’Ware the green heid!”

With that he pulled at a piece of string that was hanging over the side of his boat, and a second red-headed man surfaced, gulping air.

“Nae time for fishin’!” said the first man, hauling him aboard. “The green heid’s coming!”

“Crivens!” said the swimmer, water pouring off him. “Let’s offski!”

And with that he grabbed one very small oar and, with rapid back and forth movements, made the basket speed away.

“Excuse me!” Tiffany shouted. “Are you fairies?”

But there was no answer. The little round boat had disappeared in the reeds.

Probably not, Tiffany decided.

Then, to her dark delight, there was a susurrus. There was no wind, but the leaves on the alder bushes by the riverbank began to shake and rustle. So did the reeds. They didn’t bend, they just blurred. Everything blurred, as if something had picked up the world and was shaking it. The air fizzed. People whispered behind closed doors. . . .

The water began to bubble, just under the bank. It wasn’t very deep here—it would only have reached Tiffany’s knees if she’d waded—but it was suddenly darker and greener and, somehow, much deeper. . . .

She stood and took a couple of steps backward just before long skinny arms fountained out of the water and clawed madly at the bank where she had been. For a moment she saw a thin face with long sharp teeth, huge round eyes, and dripping green hair like waterweed, and then the thing plunged back into the depths.

By the time the water closed over it, Tiffany was already running along the bank to the little beach where Wentworth was making frog pies. She snatched up the child just as a stream of bubbles came around the curve in the bank. Once again the water boiled, the green-haired creature shot up, and the long arms clawed at the mud. Then it screamed and dropped back into the water.

“I wanna go-a toy-lut!” screamed Wentworth.

Tiffany ignored him. She was watching the river with a thoughtful expression.

I’m not scared at all, she thought. How strange. I ought to be scared, but I’m just angry. I mean, I can feel the scared, like a red-hot ball, but the angry isn’t letting it out. . . .

“Wenny wanna wanna wanna go-a toy-lut!” Wentworth shrieked.

“Go on, then,” said Tiffany absentmindedly. The ripples were still sloshing against the bank.

There was no point in telling anyone about this. Everyone would just say, “What an imagination the child has,” if they were feeling in a good mood, or, “Don’t tell stories!” if they weren’t.

She was still very angry. How dare a monster turn up in the river? Especially one so . . . so . . . ridiculous! Who did it think she was?

This is Tiffany, walking back home. Start with the boots. They are big and heavy boots, much repaired by her father, and they belonged to various sisters before her; she wears several pairs of socks to keep them on. They are big. Tiffany sometimes feels she is nothing more than a way of moving boots around.

Then there is the dress. It has been owned by many sisters as well and has been taken up, taken out, taken down, and taken in by her mother so many times that it really ought to have been taken away. But Tiffany rather likes it. It comes down to her ankles and, whatever color it had been to start with, is now a milky blue that is, incidentally, exactly the same color as the butterflies skittering beside the path.

Then there is Tiffany’s face. Light pink, with brown eyes, and brown hair. Nothing special. Her head might strike anyone watching—in a saucer of black water, for example—as being just slightly too big for the rest of her, but perhaps she’ll grow into it.

And then go farther up, and farther, until the track becomes a ribbon and Tiffany and her brother two little dots, and there is her country.

They call it the Chalk. Green downlands roll under the hot midsummer sun. From up here the flocks of sheep, moving slowly, drift over the short turf like clouds on a green sky. Here and there sheepdogs speed over the grass like shooting stars.

And then, as the eyes pull back, it is a long green mound, lying like a great whale on the world . . .

. . . surrounded by the inky rainwater in the saucer.

Miss Tick looked up.

“That little creature in the boat was a Nac Mac Feegle!” she said. “The most feared of all the fairy races! Even trolls run away from the Wee Free Men! And one of them warned her!”

“She’s the witch, then, is she?” said the voice.

“At that age? Impossible!” said Miss Tick. “There’s been no one to teach her! There’re no witches on the Chalk! It’s too soft. And yet . . . she wasn’t scared. . . .”

The rain had stopped. Miss Tick looked up at the Chalk, rising above the low, wrung-out clouds. It was about five miles away.

“This child needs watching,” she said. “But chalk’s too soft to grow a witch on. . . .”

Only the mountains were higher than the Chalk. They stood sharp and purple and gray, streaming long trails of snow from their tops even in summer. “Brides o’ the sky,” Granny Aching had called them once, and it was so rare that she ever said anything at all, let alone anything that didn’t have to do with sheep, that Tiffany had remembered it. Besides, it was exactly right. That’s what the mountains looked like in the winter, when they were all in white and the snow streams blew like veils.

Granny used old words and came out with odd, old sayings. She didn’t call the downland the Chalk, she called it “the wold.” Up on the wold the wind blows cold, Tiffany had thought, and the word had stuck that way.

She arrived at the farm.

People tended to leave Tiffany alone. There was nothing particularly cruel or unpleasant about this, but the farm was big and everyone had their jobs to do, and she did hers very well and so she became, in a way, invisible. She was the dairymaid, and good at it. She made better butter than her mother did, and people commented about how good she was with cheese. It was a talent. Sometimes, when the wandering teachers came to the village, she went and got a bit of education. But mostly she worked in the dairy, which was dark and cool. She enjoyed it. It meant she was doing something for the farm.

It was actually called the Home Farm. Her father rented it from the Baron, who owned the land, but there had been Achings farming it for hundreds of years and so, her father said (quietly, sometimes, after he’d had a beer in the evenings), as far as the land knew, it was owned by the Achings. Tiffany’s mother used to tell him not to speak like that, although the Baron was always very respectful to Mr. Aching since Granny had died two years ago, calling him the finest shepherd in these hills, and was generally held by the people in the village to be not too bad these days. It paid to be respectful, said Tiffany’s mother, and the poor man had sorrows of his own.

But sometimes her father insisted that there had been Achings (or Akins, or Archens, or Akens, or Akenns—spelling had been optional) mentioned in old documents about the area for hundreds and hundreds of years. They had these hills in their bones, he said, and they’d always been shepherds.

Tiffany felt quite proud of this, in an odd way, because it might also be nice to be proud of the fact that your ancestors moved around a bit, too, or occasionally tried new things. But you’ve got to be proud of something. And for as long as she could remember, she’d heard her father, an otherwise quiet, slow man, make the Joke, the one that must have been handed down from Aching to Aching for hundreds of years.

He’d say, “Another day of work and I’m still Aching,” or “I get up Aching and I go to bed Aching,” or even “I’m Aching all over.” They weren’t particularly funny after about the third time, but she’d miss it if he didn’t say at least one of them every week. They didn’t have to be funny—they were father jokes. Anyway, however they were spelled, all her ancestors had been Aching to stay, not Aching to leave.

There was no one around in the kitchen. Her mother had probably gone up to the shearing pens with a bite of lunch for the men, who were shearing this week. Her sisters Hannah and Fastidia were up there too, rolling fleeces and paying attention to some of the younger men. They were always quite eager to work during shearing.

Near the big black stove was the shelf that was still called Granny Aching’s Library by her mother, who liked the idea of having a library. Everyone else called it Granny’s Shelf.

It was a small shelf, since the books were wedged between a jar of crystallized ginger and the china shepherdess that Tiffany had won at a fair when she was six.

There were only five books if you didn’t include the big farm diary, which in Tiffany’s view didn’t count as a real book because you had to write it yourself. There was the dictionary. There was the Almanack, which got changed every year. And next to that was Diseases of the Sheep, which was fat with the bookmarks that her grandmother had put there.

Granny Aching had been an expert on sheep, even though she called them “just bags of bones, eyeballs, and teeth, lookin’ for new ways to die.” Other shepherds would walk miles to get her to come and cure their beasts of ailments. They said she had the Touch, although she just said that the best medicine for sheep or man was a dose of turpentine, a good cussin’, and a kick. Bits of paper with Granny’s own recipes for sheep cures stuck out all over the book. Mostly they involved turpentine, but some included cussin’.

Next to the book on sheep was a thin little volume called Flowers of the Chalk. The turf of the downs was full of tiny, intricate flowers, like cowslips and harebells, and even smaller ones that somehow survived the grazing. On the Chalk flowers had to be tough and cunning to survive the sheep and the winter blizzards.

Someone had colored in the flowers a long time ago. On the flyleaf of the book was written in neat handwriting Sarah Grizzel, which had been Granny’s name before she was married. She had probably thought that Aching was at least better than Grizzel.

And finally there was The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales, so old that it belonged to an age when there were far more e’s around.

Tiffany stood on a chair and took it down. She turned the pages until she found the one she was looking for and stared at it for a while. Then she put the book back, replaced the chair, and opened the crockery cupboard.

She found a soup plate, went over to a drawer, took out the tape measure her mother used for dressmaking, and measured the plate.

“Hmm,” she said. “Eight inches. Why didn’t they just say?”

She unhooked the largest frying pan, the one that could cook breakfast for half a dozen people all at once, and took some candies from the jar on the dresser and put them in an old paper bag. Then, to Wentworth’s sullen bewilderment, she took him by a sticky hand and headed back down toward the stream.

Things still looked very normal down there, but she was not going to let that fool her. All the trout had fled, and the birds weren’t singing.

She found a place on the riverbank with the right-sized bush. Then she found a stone and hammered a piece of wood into the ground as hard as she could, close to the edge of the water, and tied the bag of sweets to it. Tiffany was the kind of child who always carried a piece of string.

“Candy, Wentworth,” she shouted.

She gripped the frying pan and stepped smartly behind the bush.

Wentworth trotted over to the sweets and tried to pick up the bag. It wouldn’t move.

“I wanna go-a toy-lut!” he yelled, because it was a threat that usually worked. His fat fingers scrabbled at the knots.

Tiffany watched the water carefully. Was it getting darker? Was it getting greener? Was that just waterweed down there? Were those bubbles just a trout, laughing?

No.

She ran out of her hiding place with the frying pan swinging like a bat. The screaming monster, leaping out of the water, met the frying pan coming the other way with a clang.

It was a good clang, with the oiyoiyoioioioioioinnnnnggggggg that is the mark of a clang well done.

The creature hung there for a moment, a few teeth and bits of green weed splashing into the water, then slid down slowly and sank with some massive bubbles.

The water cleared and was once again the same old river, shallow and icy cold and floored with pebbles.

“Wanna wanna sweeties!” screamed Wentworth, who never noticed anything else in the presence of sweets.

Tiffany undid the string and gave them to him. He ate them far too quickly, as he always did with sweets. She waited until he was sick, then went back home in a thoughtful state of mind.

In the reeds, quite low down, small voices whispered:

“Crivens, Wee Bobby, did yer no’ see that?”

“Aye. We’d better offski an’ tell the Big Man we’ve found the hag.”

Miss Tick was running up the dusty road. Witches don’t like to be seen running. It looks unprofessional. It’s also not done to be seen carrying things, and she had her tent on her back.

She was also trailing clouds of steam. Witches dry out from the inside.

“It had all those teeth!” said the mystery voice, this time from her hat.

“I know!” snapped Miss Tick.

“And she just hauled off and hit it!”

“Yes. I know.”

“Just like that!”

“Yes. Very impressive,” said Miss Tick. She was getting out of breath. Besides, they were already on early slopes of the downs now, and she wasn’t good on chalk. A wandering witch likes firm ground under her, not a rock so soft you could cut it with a knife.

“Impressive?” said the voice. “She used her brother as bait!”

“Amazing, wasn’t it?” said Miss Tick. “Such quick thinking . . . oh, no . . .” She stopped running and leaned against a field wall as a wave of dizziness hit her.

“What’s happening? What’s happening?” said the voice from the hat. “I nearly fell off!”

“It’s this wretched chalk! I can feel it already! I can do magic on honest soil, and rock is always fine, and I’m not too bad on clay, even . . . but chalk’s neither one thing nor the other! I’m very sensitive to geology, you know.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” said the voice.

“Chalk . . . is a hungry soil. I don’t really have much power on chalk.”

The owner of the voice, who was hidden, said: “Are you going to fall over?”

“No, no! It’s just the magic that doesn’t work.”

Miss Tick did not look like a witch. Most witches don’t, at least the ones who wander from place to place. Looking like a witch can be dangerous when you walk among the uneducated. And for that reason she didn’t wear any occult jewelry, or have a glowing magical knife or a silver goblet with a pattern of skulls all around it, or carry a broomstick with sparks coming out of it, all of which are tiny hints that there may be a witch around. Her pockets never carried anything more magical than a few twigs, maybe a piece of string, a coin or two, and, of course, a lucky charm.

Everyone in the country carried lucky charms, and Miss Tick had worked out that if you didn’t have one, people would suspect that you were a witch. You had to be a bit cunning to be a witch.

Miss Tick did have a pointy hat, but it was a stealth hat and pointed only when she wanted it to.

The one thing in her bag that might have made anyone suspicious was a very small, grubby booklet entitled An Introduction to Escapology, by the Great Williamson. If one of the risks of your job is being thrown into a pond with your hands tied together, then the ability to swim thirty yards underwater, fully clothed, plus the ability to lurk under the weeds breathing air through a hollow reed, count as nothing if you aren’t also amazingly good with knots.

“You can’t do magic here?” said the voice in the hat.

“No, I can’t,” said Miss Tick.

She looked up at the sounds of jingling. A strange procession was coming up the white road. It was mostly made up of donkeys pulling small carts with brightly painted covers on them. People walked alongside the carts, dusty to the waist. They were all men, they wore bright robes—or robes, at least, that had been bright before being trailed through mud and dust for years—and every one of them wore a strange black square hat.

Miss Tick smiled.

They looked like tinkers, but there wasn’t one among them, she knew, who could mend a kettle. What they did was sell invisible things. And after they’d sold what they had, they still had it. They sold what everyone needed but often didn’t want. They sold the key to the universe to people who didn’t even know it was locked.

“I can’t do,” said Miss Tick, straightening up. “But I can teach!”

Tiffany worked for the rest of the morning in the dairy. There was cheese that needed doing.

There was bread and jam for lunch. Her mother said, “The teachers are coming to town today. You can go, if you’ve done your chores.”

Tiffany agreed that, yes, there were one or two things she’d quite like to know more about.

“Then you can have half a dozen carrots and an egg. I daresay they could do with an egg, poor things,” said her mother.

Tiffany took them with her after lunch and went to get an egg’s worth of education.

Most boys in the village grew up to do the same jobs as their fathers or, at least, some other job somewhere in the village where someone’s father would teach them as they went along. The girls were expected to grow up to be somebody’s wife. They were also expected to be able to read and write, those being considered soft indoor jobs that were too fiddly for the boys.

However, everyone also felt that there were a few other things that even the boys ought to know, to stop them wasting time wondering about details like “What’s on the other side of the mountains?” and “How come rain falls out of the sky?”

Every family in the village bought a copy of the Almanack every year, and a sort of education came from that. It was big and thick and printed somewhere far off, and it had lots of details about things like phases of the moon and the right time to plant beans. It also contained a few prophesies about the coming year, and mentioned faraway places with names like Klatch and Hersheba. Tiffany had seen a picture of Klatch in the Almanack. It showed a camel standing in a desert. She’d only found out what both those names were because her mother had told her. And that was Klatch, a camel in a desert. She’d wondered if there wasn’t a bit more to it, but it seemed that “Klatch = camel, desert” was all anyone knew.

And that was the trouble. If you didn’t find some way of stopping it, people would go on asking questions.

The teachers were useful there. Bands of them wandered through the mountains, along with the tinkers, portable blacksmiths, miracle medicine men, cloth peddlers, fortune-tellers, and all the other travelers who sold things the people didn’t need every day but occasionally found useful.

They went from village to village delivering short lessons on many subjects. They kept apart from the other travelers and were quite mysterious in their ragged robes and strange square hats. They used long words, like corrugated iron. They lived rough lives, surviving on what food they could earn from giving lessons to anyone who would listen. When no one would listen, they lived on baked hedgehog. They went to sleep under the stars, which the math teachers would count, the astronomy teachers would measure, and the literature teachers would name. The geography teachers got lost in the woods and fell into bear traps.

People were usually quite pleased to see them. They taught children enough to shut them up, which was the main thing, after all. But they always had to be driven out of the villages by nightfall in case they stole chickens.

Today the brightly colored little booths and tents were pitched in a field just outside the village. Behind them small square areas had been fenced off with high canvas walls and were patrolled by apprentice teachers looking for anyone trying to overhear Education without paying.

The first tent Tiffany saw had a sign that read:

JOGRAFFY! JOGRAFFY! JOGRAFFY!
FOR TODAY ONLY:
ALL MAJOR LAND MASSES AND OCEANS
PLUS EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNO
ABOUT GLASSIERS!
ONE PENNY, OR ALL MAJOR VEJTABLES
ACSEPTED!

Tiffany had read enough to know that, while he might be a whiz at major land masses, this particular teacher could have done with some help from the man running the stall next door:

THE WONDERS OF PUNCTUATION AND SPELLING

1    ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY ABOUT THE COMMA!

2    I BEFORE E COMPLETELY SORTED OUT!

3    THE MYSTERY OF THE SEMICOLON REVEALED!!!

4    SEE THE AMPERSAND! (SMALL EXTRA CHARGE)

5    FUN WITH BRACKETS!

** WILL ACCEPT VEGETABLES, EGGS, AND CLEAN USED CLOTHING **

The next stall along was decorated with scenes out of history, generally of kings cutting one another’s heads off and similar interesting highlights. The teacher in front was dressed in ragged red robes with rabbit-skin trimmings and wore an old top hat with flags stuck in it. He had a small megaphone that he aimed at Tiffany.

“The Death of Kings Through the Ages?” he said. “Very educational, lots of blood!”

“Not really,” said Tiffany.

“Oh, you’ve got to know where you’ve come from, miss,” said the teacher. “Otherwise how will you know where you’re going?”

“I come from a long line of Aching people,” said Tiffany. “And I think I’m moving on.”

She found what she was looking for at a booth hung with pictures of animals including, she was pleased to see, a camel. The sign said:

USEFUL CREATURES—TODAY: OUR FRIEND THE HEDGEHOG!

She wondered how useful the thing in the river had been, but this looked like the only place to find out. A few children were waiting on the benches inside the booth for the lesson to begin, but the teacher was still standing out in front, in the hope of filling up the empty spaces.

“Hello, little girl,” he said, which was only his first big mistake. “I’m sure you want to know all about hedgehogs, eh?”

“I did this one last summer,” said Tiffany.

The man looked closer, and his grin faded. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I remember. You asked all those . . . little questions.”

“I would like a question answered today,” said Tiffany.

“Provided it’s not the one about how you get baby hedgehogs,” said the man.

“No,” said Tiffany patiently. “It’s about zoology.”

“Zoology, eh? That’s a big word, isn’t it.”

“No, actually it isn’t,” said Tiffany. “Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.”

The teacher’s eyes narrowed further. Children like Tiffany were bad news. “I can see you’re a clever one,” he said. “But I don’t know any teachers of zoology in these parts. Vetin’ry, yes, but not zoology. Any particular animal?”

“Jenny Green-Teeth. A water-dwelling monster with big teeth and claws and eyes like soup plates,” said Tiffany.

“What size of soup plates? Do you mean big soup plates, a whole full-portion bowl with maybe some biscuits, possibly even a bread roll, or do you mean the little cup you might get if, for example, you just ordered soup and a salad?”

“The size of soup plates that are eight inches across,” said Tiffany, who’d never ordered soup and a salad anywhere in her life. “I checked.”

“Hmm, that is a puzzler,” said the teacher. “Don’t think I know that one. It’s certainly not useful, I know that. It sounds made-up to me.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” said Tiffany. “But I’d still like to know more about it.”

“Well, you could try her. She’s new.”

The teacher jerked his thumb toward a little tent at the end of the row. It was black and quite shabby. There weren’t any posters, and absolutely no exclamation marks.

“What does she teach?” Tiffany asked.

“Couldn’t say,” said the teacher. “She says it’s thinking, but I don’t know how you teach that. That’ll be one carrot, thank you.”

When she went closer, Tiffany saw a small notice pinned to the outside of the tent. It said, in letters that whispered rather than shouted:

I CAN TEACH YOU A LESSON YOU WON’T FORGET IN A HURRY.

CHAPTER 2

Miss Tick

Tiffany read the sign and smiled.

“Aha,” she said. There was nothing to knock on, so she added “Knock, knock” in a louder voice.

A woman’s voice from within said: “Who’s there?”

“Tiffany,” said Tiffany.

“Tiffany who?” said the voice.

“Tiffany who isn’t trying to make a joke.”

“Ah. That sounds promising. Come in.”

She pushed aside the flap. It was dark inside the tent, as well as stuffy and hot. A skinny figure sat behind a small table. She had a very sharp, thin nose and was wearing a large black straw hat with paper flowers on it. It was completely unsuitable for a face like that.

“Are you a witch?” said Tiffany. “I don’t mind if you are.”

“What a strange question to spring on someone,” said the woman, looking slightly shocked. “Your Baron bans witches in this country, you know that, and the first thing you say to me is ‘Are you a witch?’ Why would I be a witch?”

“Well, you’re wearing all black,” said Tiffany.

“Anyone can wear black,” said the woman. “That doesn’t mean a thing.”

“And you’re wearing a straw hat with flowers in it,” Tiffany went on.

“Aha!” said the woman. “That proves it, then. Witches wear tall pointy hats. Everyone knows that, foolish child.”

“Yes, but witches are also very clever,” said Tiffany calmly. There was something about the twinkle in the woman’s eyes that told her to continue. “They sneak about. Probably they often don’t look like witches. And a witch coming here would know about the Baron, and so she’d wear the kind of hat that everyone knows witches don’t wear.”

The woman stared at her. “That was an incredible feat of reasoning,” she said at last. “You’d make a good witch finder. You know they used to set fire to witches? Whatever kind of hat I’ve got on, you’d say it proves I’m a witch, yes?”

“Well, the frog sitting on your hat is a bit of a clue, too,” said Tiffany.

“I’m a toad, actually,” said the creature, which had been peering at Tiffany from between the paper flowers.

“You’re very yellow for a toad.”

“I’ve been a bit ill,” said the toad.

“And you talk,” said Tiffany.

“You only have my word for it,” said the toad, disappearing into the paper flowers. “You can’t prove anything.”

“You don’t have matches on you, do you?” said the woman to Tiffany.

“No.”

“Fine, fine. Just checking.”

Again there was a pause while the woman gave Tiffany a long stare, as if making up her mind about something.

“My name,” she said at last, “is Miss Tick. And I am a witch. It’s a good name for a witch, of course.”

“You mean blood-sucking parasite?” said Tiffany, wrinkling her forehead.

“I’m sorry?” said Miss Tick, coldly.

“Ticks,” said Tiffany. “Sheep get them. But if you use turpentine—”

“I meant that it sounds like ‘mystic,’” said Miss Tick.

“Oh, you mean a pune, or play on words,” said Tiffany.* “In that case it would be even better if you were Miss Teak, a dense foreign wood, because that would sound like ‘mystique,’ or you could be Miss Take, which would—”

“I can see we’re going to get along like a house on fire,” said Miss Tick. “There may be no survivors.”

“You really are a witch?”

“Oh, puh-lease,” said Miss Tick. “Yes, yes, I am a witch. I have a talking animal, a tendency to correct other people’s pronunciation—it’s pun, by the way, not ‘pune’—and a fascination for poking my nose into other people’s affairs and, yes, a pointy hat.”

“Can I operate the spring now?” said the toad.

“Yes,” said Miss Tick, her eyes still on Tiffany. “You can operate the spring.”

“I like operating the spring,” said the toad, crawling around to the back of the hat.

There was a click, and a slow thwap-thwap noise, and the center of the hat rose slowly and jerkily up out of the paper flowers, which fell away.

“Er . . .” said Tiffany.

“You have a question?” said Miss Tick.

With a last thwop, the top of the hat made a perfect point.

“How do you know I won’t run away right now and tell the Baron?” said Tiffany.

“Because you haven’t the slightest desire to do so,” said Miss Tick. “You’re absolutely fascinated. You want to be a witch, am I right? You probably want to fly on a broomstick, yes?”

“Oh, yes!” She’d often dreamed of flying. Miss Tick’s next words brought her down to earth.

“Really? You like having to wear really, really thick pants? Believe me, if I’ve got to fly, I wear two pairs of woolen ones and a canvas pair on the outside which, I may tell you, are not very feminine no matter how much lace you sew on. It can get cold up there. People forget that. And then there’s the bristles. Don’t ask me about the bristles. I will not talk about the bristles.”

“But can’t you use a keeping-warm spell?” said Tiffany.

“I could. But a witch doesn’t do that sort of thing. Once you use magic to keep yourself warm, then you’ll start using it for other things.”

“But isn’t that what a witch is supposed to—” Tiffany began.

“Once you learn about magic, I mean really learn about magic, learn everything you can learn about magic, then you’ve got the most important lesson still to learn,” said Miss Tick.

“What’s that?”

“Not to use it. Witches don’t use magic unless they really have to. It’s hard work and difficult to control. We do other things. A witch pays attention to everything that’s going on. A witch uses her head. A witch is sure of herself. A witch always has a piece of string—”

“I always do have a piece of string!” said Tiffany. “It’s always handy!”

“Good. Although there’s more to witchcraft than string. A witch delights in small details. A witch sees through things and around things. A witch sees farther than most. A witch sees things from the other side. A witch knows where she is, who she is, and when she is. A witch would see Jenny Green-Teeth,” she added. “What happened?”

“How did you know I saw Jenny Green-Teeth?”

“I’m a witch. Guess,” said Miss Tick.

Tiffany looked around the tent. There wasn’t much to see, even now that her eyes were getting accustomed to the gloom. The sounds of the outside world filtered through the heavy material.

“I think—”

“Yes?” said the witch.

“I think you heard me telling the teacher.”

“Correct. I just used my ears,” said Miss Tick, saying nothing at all about saucers of ink. “Tell me about this monster with eyes the size of the kind of soup plates that are eight inches across. Where do soup plates come into it?”

“The monster is mentioned in a book of stories I’ve got,” explained Tiffany. “It said Jenny Green-Teeth has eyes the size of soup plates. There’s a picture, but it’s not a good one. So I measured a soup plate, so I could be exact.”

Miss Tick put her chin on her hand and gave Tiffany an odd sort of smile.

“That was all right, wasn’t it?” said Tiffany.

“What? Oh, yes. Yes. Um . . . yes. Very . . . exact. Go on.”

Tiffany told her about the fight with Jenny, although she didn’t mention Wentworth in case Miss Tick got funny about it. Miss Tick listened carefully.

“Why the frying pan?” she said. “You could’ve found a stick.”

“A frying pan just seemed a better idea,” said Tiffany.

“Hah! It was. Jenny would’ve eaten you up if you’d used a stick. A frying pan is made of iron. Creatures of that kidney can’t stand iron.”

“But it’s a monster out of a storybook!” said Tiffany. “What’s it doing turning up in our little river?”

Miss Tick stared at Tiffany for a while and then said: “Why do you want to be a witch, Tiffany?”

It had started with The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales. Actually, it had probably started with a lot of things, but the stories most of all.

Her mother had read them to her when she was little, and then she’d read them to herself. And all the stories had, somewhere, the witch. The wicked old witch.

And Tiffany had thought, Where’s the evidence?

The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you had no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch.

If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about “a handsome prince” . . . was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called him handsome? As for “a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long” . . . well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories didn’t want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told. . . .

And you were told that the old witch lived all by herself in a strange cottage that was made of gingerbread or ran around on giant hen’s feet, and talked to animals, and could do magic.

Tiffany only ever knew one old woman who lived all alone in a strange cottage. . . .

Well, no. That wasn’t quite true. But she had only ever known one old woman who lived in a strange house that moved about, and that was Granny Aching. And she could do magic, sheep magic, and she talked to animals and there was nothing wicked about her. That proved you couldn’t believe the stories.

And there had been the other old woman, the one who everyone said was a witch. And what had happened to her had made Tiffany very . . . thoughtful.

Anyway, she preferred the witches to the smug handsome princes and especially to the stupid smirking princesses, who didn’t have the sense of a beetle. They had lovely golden hair, too, and Tiffany didn’t. Her hair was brown, plain brown. Her mother called it chestnut, or sometimes auburn, but Tiffany knew it was brown, brown, brown, just like her eyes. Brown as earth. And did the book have any adventures for people who had brown eyes and brown hair? No, no, no . . . it was the blond people with blue eyes and the redheads with green eyes who got the stories. If you had brown hair you were probably just a servant or a woodcutter or something. Or a dairymaid. Well, that was not going to happen, even if she was good at cheese. She couldn’t be the prince, and she’d never be a princess, and she didn’t want to be a woodcutter, so she’d be the witch and know things, just like Granny Aching—

“Who was Granny Aching?” said a voice.

Who was Granny Aching? People would start asking that now. And the answer was: What Granny Aching was, was there. She was always there. It seemed that the lives of all the Achings revolved around Granny Aching. Down in the village decisions were made, things were done, life went on in the knowledge that in her old wheeled shepherding hut on the hills Granny Aching was there, watching.

And she was the silence of the hills. Perhaps that’s why she liked Tiffany, in her awkward, hesitant way. Her older sisters chattered, and Granny didn’t like noise. Tiffany didn’t make noise when she was up at the hut. She just loved being there. She’d watch the buzzards and listen to the noise of the silence.

It did have a noise, up there. Sounds, voices, animal noises floating up onto the downs somehow made the silence deep and complex. And Granny Aching wrapped this silence around herself and made room inside it for Tiffany. It was always too busy on the farm. There were a lot of people with a lot to do. There wasn’t enough time for silence. There wasn’t time for listening. But Granny Aching was silent and listened all the time.

“What?” said Tiffany, blinking.

“You just said, ‘Granny Aching listened to me all the time,’” said Miss Tick.

Tiffany swallowed. “I think my grandmother was slightly a witch,” she said, with a touch of pride.

“Really? How do you know.”

“Well, witches can curse people, right?” said Tiffany.

“So it is said,” said Miss Tick diplomatically.

“Well, my father said Granny Aching cussed the sky blue,” said Tiffany.

Miss Tick coughed. “Well, cussing, now, cussing isn’t like genuine cursing. Cussing’s more like dang and botheration and darned and drat, you know? Cursing is more on the lines of ‘I hope your nose explodes and your ears go flying away.’”

“I think Granny’s cussing was a bit more than that,” said Tiffany, in a very definite voice. “And she talked to her dogs.”

“And what kind of things did she say to them?” said Miss Tick.

“Oh, things like ‘come by’ and ‘away to me’ and ‘that’ll do,’” said Tiffany. “They always did what she told them.”

“But those are just sheepdog commands,” said Miss Tick dismissively. “That’s not exactly witchcraft.”

“Well, that still makes them familiars, doesn’t it?” Tiffany retorted, feeling annoyed. “Witches have animals they can talk to, called familiars. Like your toad there.”

“I’m not familiar,” said a voice from among the paper flowers. “I’m just slightly presumptuous.”

“And she knew about all kinds of herbs,” Tiffany persisted. Granny Aching was going to be a witch even if Tiffany had to argue all day. “She could cure anything. My father said she could make a shepherd’s pie stand up and baa.” Tiffany lowered her voice. “She could bring lambs back to life. . . .”

You hardly ever saw Granny Aching indoors in the spring and summer. She spent most of the year sleeping in the old wheeled hut, which could be dragged across the downs after the flocks. But the first time Tiffany could remember seeing the old woman in the farmhouse, she was kneeling in front of the fire, putting a dead lamb in the big black oven.

Tiffany had screamed and screamed. And Granny had gently picked her up, a little awkwardly, and sat her on her lap and shushed her and called her “my little jiggit,” while on the floor her sheepdogs, Thunder and Lightning, watched her in doggish amazement. Granny wasn’t particularly at home around children, because they didn’t baa.

When Tiffany had stopped crying out of sheer lack of breath, Granny had put her down on the rug and opened the oven, and Tiffany had watched the lamb come alive again.

When Tiffany got a little older, she found out that jiggit meant “twenty” in the Yan Tan Tethera, the ancient counting language of the shepherds. The older people still used it when they were counting things they thought of as special. She was Granny Aching’s twentieth grandchild.

And when she was older still, she also understood all about the warming oven, which never got more than, well, warm. Her mother would let the bread dough rise in it, and Ratbag the cat would sleep in it, sometimes on the dough. It was just the place to revive a weak lamb that had been born on a snowy night and was near death from the cold. That was how it worked. No magic at all. But that time it had been magic. And it didn’t stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.

“Good, but still not exactly witchcraft,” said Miss Tick, breaking the spell again. “Anyway, you don’t have to have a witch ancestor to be a witch. It helps, of course, because of heredity.”

“You mean like having talents?” said Tiffany, wrinkling her brow.

“Partly, I suppose,” said Miss Tick. “But I was thinking of pointy hats, for example. If you have a grandmother who can pass on her pointy hat to you, that saves a great deal of expense. They are incredibly hard to come by, especially ones strong enough to withstand falling farmhouses. Did Mrs. Aching have anything like that?”

“I don’t think so,” said Tiffany. “She hardly ever wore a hat except in the very cold weather. She wore an old grain sack as a sort of hood. Um . . . does that count?”

For the first time, Miss Tick looked a little less flinty. “Possibly, possibly,” she said. “Do you have any brothers and sisters, Tiffany?”

“I have six sisters,” said Tiffany. “I’m the youngest. Most of them don’t live with us now.”

“And then you weren’t the baby anymore because you had a dear little brother,” said Miss Tick. “The only boy, too. That must have been a nice surprise.”

Suddenly, Tiffany found Miss Tick’s faint smile slightly annoying.

“How do you know about my brother?” she said.

The smile faded. Miss Tick thought: This child is sharp. “Just a guess,” she said. No one likes admitting to spying.

“Are you using persykology on me?” said Tiffany hotly.

“I think you mean psychology,” said Miss Tick.

“Whatever,” said Tiffany. “You think I don’t like him because my parents make a fuss of him and spoil him, yes?”

“Well, it did cross my mind,” said Miss Tick, and gave up worrying about the spying. She was a witch, and that was all there was to it. “I think it was the bit when you used him as bait for a slobbering monster that gave me a hint,” she added.

“He’s just a nuisance!” said Tiffany. “He takes up my time and I’m always having to look after him and he always wants sweets. Anyway,” she added, “I had to think fast.”

“Quite so,” said Miss Tick.

“Granny Aching would have done something about monsters in our river,” said Tiffany, ignoring that. “Even if they are out of books.” And she’d have done something about what happened to old Mrs. Snapperly, she added to herself. She’d have spoken up, and people would have listened. . . . They always listened when Granny spoke up. Speak up for those who don’t have voices, she always said.

“Good,” said Miss Tick. “So she should. Witches deal with things. You said the river was very shallow where Jenny leaped up? And the world looked blurred and shaky? Was there a susurrus?”

Tiffany beamed. “Yes, there certainly was!”

“Ah. Something bad is happening.”

Tiffany looked worried.

“Can I stop it?”

“And now I’m slightly impressed,” said Miss Tick. “You said, ‘Can I stop it?’ and not ‘Can anyone stop it?’ or ‘Can we stop it?’ That’s good. You accept responsibility. That’s a good start. And you keep a cool head. But no, you can’t stop it.”

“I walloped Jenny Green-Teeth!”

“Lucky hit,” said Miss Tick. “There are worse than her on the way, believe me. I believe an incursion of major proportions is going to start here, and clever though you are, my girl, you have as much chance as one of your lambs on a snowy night. You keep clear. I’ll try to fetch help.”

“What, from the Baron?”

“Good gracious, no. He’d be no use at all.”

“But he protects us,” said Tiffany. “That’s what my mother says.”

“Does he?” said Miss Tick. “Who from? I mean, from whom?”

“Well, from, you know . . . attack, I suppose. From other barons, my father says.”

“Has he got a big army?”

“Well, er, he’s got Sergeant Roberts, and Kevin and Neville and Trevor,” said Tiffany. “We all know them. They mostly guard the castle.”

“Any of them got magical powers?” said Miss Tick.

“I saw Neville do card tricks once,” said Tiffany.

“A wow at parties, but probably not much use even against something like Jenny,” said Miss Tick. “Are there no oth— Are there no witches here at all?”

Tiffany hesitated.

“There was old Mrs. Snapperly,” she said. Oh, yes. She’d lived all alone in a strange cottage, all right. . . .

“Good name,” said Miss Tick. “Can’t say I’ve heard it before, though. Where is she?”

“She died in the snow last winter,” said Tiffany slowly.

“And now tell me what you’re not telling me,” said Miss Tick, sharp as a knife.

“Er . . . she was begging, people think, but no one opened their doors to her and, er . . . it was a cold night, and . . . she died.”

“And she was a witch, was she?”

“Everyone said she was a witch,” said Tiffany. She really did not want to talk about this. No one in the villages around here wanted to talk about it. No one went near the ruins of the cottage in the woods, either.

“You don’t think so?”

“Um . . .” Tiffany squirmed. “You see . . . the Baron had a son called Roland. He was only twelve, I think. And he went riding in the woods by himself last summer and his dogs came back without him.”

“Mrs. Snapperly lived in those woods?” said Miss Tick.

“Yes.”

“And people think she killed him?” said Miss Tick. She sighed. “They probably think she cooked him in the oven, or something.”

“They never actually said,” said Tiffany. “But I think it was something like that, yes.”

“And did his horse turn up?” said Miss Tick.

“No,” said Tiffany. “And that was strange, because if it’d turned up anywhere along the hills, the people would have noticed it. . . .”

Miss Tick folded her hands, sniffed, and smiled a smile with no humor in it at all.

“Easily explained,” she said. “Mrs. Snapperly must have had a really big oven, eh?”

“No, it was really quite small,” said Tiffany. “Only ten inches deep.”

“I bet Mrs. Snapperly had no teeth and talked to herself, right?” said Miss Tick.

“Yes. And she had a cat. And a squint,” said Tiffany. And it all came out in a rush: “And so after he vanished, they went to her cottage and they looked in the oven and they dug up her garden and they threw stones at her old cat until it died and they turned her out of her cottage and piled up all her old books in the middle of the room and set fire to them and burned the place to the ground and everyone said she was an old witch.”

“They burned the books,” said Miss Tick in a flat voice.

“Because they said they had old writing in them,” said Tiffany. “And pictures of stars.”

“And when you went to look, did they?” said Miss Tick.

Tiffany suddenly felt cold. “How did you know?” she said.

“I’m good at listening. Well, did they?”

Tiffany sighed. “Yes, I went to the cottage next day, and some of the pages, you know, had kind of floated up in the heat? And I found a part of one, and it had all old lettering and gold and blue edging. And I buried her cat.”

“You buried the cat?”

“Yes! Someone had to!” said Tiffany hotly.

“And you measured the oven,” said Miss Tick. “I know you did, because you just told me what size it was.” And you measure soup plates, Miss Tick added to herself. What have I found here?

“Well, yes. I did. I mean . . . it was tiny! And if she could magic away a boy and a whole horse, why didn’t she magic away the men who came for her? It didn’t make any sense!”

Miss Tick waved her into silence. “And then what happened?”

“Then the Baron said no one was to have anything to do with her,” said Tiffany. “He said any witches found in the country would be tied up and thrown in the pond. Er, you could be in danger,” she added, uncertainly.

“I can untie knots with my teeth and I have a Gold Swimming Certificate from the Quirm College for Young Ladies,” said Miss Tick. “All that practice at jumping into the swimming pool with my clothes on was time well spent.” She leaned forward.

“Let me guess what happened to Mrs. Snapperly,” she said. “She lived from the summer until the snow, right? She stole food from barns, and probably women gave her food at the back door if the men weren’t around? I expect the bigger boys threw things at her if they saw her.”

“How do you know all this?” said Tiffany.

“It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination, believe me,” said Miss Tick. “And she wasn’t a witch, was she?”

“I think she was just a sick old lady who was no use to anyone and smelled a bit and looked odd because she had no teeth,” said Tiffany. “She just looked like a witch in a story. Anyone with half a mind could see that.”

Miss Tick sighed. “Yes. But sometimes it’s so hard to find half a mind when you need one.”

“Can’t you teach me what I need to know to be a witch?” said Tiffany.

“Tell me why you still want to be a witch, bearing in mind what happened to Mrs. Snapperly.”

“So that sort of thing doesn’t happen again,” said Tiffany.

She even buried the old witch’s cat, thought Miss Tick. What kind of child is this?

“Good answer. You might make a decent witch one day,” she said. “But I don’t teach people to be witches. I teach people about witches. Witches learn in a special school. I just show them the way, if they’re any good. All witches have special interests, and I like children.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re much easier to fit in the oven,” said Miss Tick.

But Tiffany wasn’t frightened, just annoyed.

“That was a nasty thing to say,” she said.

“Well, witches don’t have to be nice,” said Miss Tick, pulling a large black bag from under the table. “I’m glad to see you pay attention.”

“There really is a school for witches?” said Tiffany.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” said Miss Tick.

“Where?”

“Very close.”

“It is magical?”

“Very magical.”

“A wonderful place?”

“There’s nowhere quite like it.”

“Can I go there by magic? Does, like, a unicorn turn up to carry me there or something?”

“Why should it? A unicorn is nothing more than a big horse that comes to a point, anyway. Nothing to get so excited about,” said Miss Tick. “And that will be one egg, please.”

“Exactly where can I find the school?” said Tiffany, handing over the egg.

“Aha. A root vegetable question, I think,” said Miss Tick. “Two carrots, please.”

Tiffany handed them over.

“Thank you. Ready? To find the school for witches, go to a high place near here, climb to the top, open your eyes . . .” Miss Tick hesitated.

“Yes?”

“. . . and then open your eyes again.”

“But—” Tiffany began.

“Got any more eggs?”

“No, but—”

“No more education, then. But I have a question to ask you.”

“Got any eggs?” said Tiffany, instantly.

“Hah! Did you see anything else by the river, Tiffany?”

Silence suddenly filled the tent. The sound of bad spelling and erratic geography filtered through from outside as Tiffany and Miss Tick stared into each other’s eyes.

“No,” lied Tiffany.

“Are you sure?” said Miss Tick.

“Yes.”

They continued the staring match. But Tiffany could outstare a cat.

“I see,” said Miss Tick, looking away. “Very well. In that case, please tell me . . . when you stopped outside my tent just now, you said ‘aha’ in what I considered to be a smug tone of voice. Were you thinking, ‘This is a strange little black tent with a mysterious little sign on the door, so going inside could be the start of an adventure,’ or were you thinking, ‘This could be the tent of some wicked witch like they thought Mrs. Snapperly was, who’ll put some horrible spell on me as soon as I go in’? It’s all right, you can stop staring now. Your eyes are watering.”

“I thought both those things,” said Tiffany, blinking.

“But you came in anyway. Why?”

“To find out.”

“Good answer. Witches are naturally nosy,” said Miss Tick, standing up. “Well, I must go. I hope we shall meet again. I will give you some free advice, though.”

“Will it cost me anything?”

“What? I just said it was free!” said Miss Tick.

“Yes, but my father said that free advice often turns out to be expensive,” said Tiffany.

Miss Tick sniffed. “You could say this advice is priceless,” she said. “Are you listening?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany.

“Good. Now . . . if you trust in yourself . . .”

“Yes?”

“. . . and believe in your dreams . . .”

“Yes?”

“. . . and follow your star . . .” Miss Tick went on.

“Yes?”

“. . . you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. Good-bye.”

The tent seemed to grow darker. It was time to leave. Tiffany found herself back in the square where the other teachers were taking down their stalls.

She didn’t look around. She knew enough not to look around. Either the tent would still be there, which would be a disappointment, or it would have mysteriously disappeared, and that would be worrying.

She headed home and wondered if she should have mentioned the little red-haired men. She hadn’t for a whole lot of reasons. She wasn’t sure, now, that she’d really seen them, she had a feeling that they wouldn’t have wanted her to, and it was nice to have something Miss Tick didn’t know. Yes. That was the best part. Miss Tick was a bit too clever, in Tiffany’s opinion.

On the way home she climbed to the top of Arken Hill, which was just outside the village. It wasn’t very big, not even as high as the downs above the farm and certainly nothing like as high as the mountains.

The hill was more . . . modest. There was a flat place at the top where nothing ever grew, and Tiffany knew there was a story that a hero had once fought a dragon up there and its blood had burned the ground where it fell. There was another story that said there was a heap of treasure under the hill, defended by the dragon, and another story that said a king was buried there in armor of solid gold. There were lots of stories about the hill; it was surprising it hadn’t sunk under the weight of them.

Tiffany stood on the bare soil and looked at the view.

She could see the village and the river and Home Farm and the Baron’s castle, and beyond the fields she knew, she could see gray woods and heathlands.

She closed her eyes and opened them again. And blinked, and opened them again.

There was no magic door, no hidden building revealed, no strange signs.

For a moment, though, the air buzzed and smelled of snow.

When she got home, she looked up incursion in the dictionary. It meant “invasion.”

An incursion of major proportions, Miss Tick had said.

And now little unseen eyes watched Tiffany from the top of the shelf. . . .

CHAPTER 3

Hunt the Hag

Miss Tick removed her hat, reached inside, and pulled a piece of string. With little clicks and flapping noises the hat took up the shape of a rather elderly straw hat. She picked up the paper flowers from the ground and stuck them on, carefully.

Then she said: “Phew!”

“You can’t just let the kid go like that,” said the toad, who was sitting on the table.

“Like what?”

“She’s clearly got First Sight and Second Thoughts. That’s a powerful combination.”

“She’s a little know-it-all,” said Miss Tick.

“Right. Just like you. She impressed you, right? I know she did because you were quite nasty to her, and you always do that to people who impress you.”

“Do you want to be turned into a frog?”

“Well, now, let me see . . .” said the toad sarcastically. “Better skin, better legs, likelihood of being kissed by a princess one hundred percent improved . . . why, yes. Whenever you’re ready, madam.”

“There’re worse things than being a toad,” said Miss Tick darkly.

“Try it sometime,” said the toad. “Anyway, I rather liked her.”

“So did I,” said Miss Tick briskly. “She hears about an old lady dying because these idiots thought she was a witch, and she decides to become a witch so that they don’t try that again. A monster roars up out of her river, and she bashes it with a frying pan! Have you ever heard the saying ‘The land finds its witch’? It’s happened here, I’ll bet. But a chalk witch? Witches like granite and basalt, hard rock all the way down! Do you know what chalk is?”

“You’re going to tell me,” said the toad.

“It’s the shells of billions and billions of tiny, helpless little sea creatures that died millions of years ago,” said Miss Tick. “It’s . . . tiny, tiny bones. Soft. Soggy. Damp. Even limestone is better than that. But . . . she’s grown up on chalk and she is hard, and sharp, too. She’s a born witch. On chalk! Which is impossible!”

“She bashed Jenny!” said the toad. “The girl has got talent!”

“Maybe, but she needs more than that. Jenny isn’t clever,” said Miss Tick. “She’s only a Grade 1 Prohibitory Monster. And she was probably bewildered to find herself in a stream, when her natural home is in stagnant water. There’ll be much, much worse than her.”

“What do you mean, ‘a Grade 1 Prohibitory Monster’?” asked the toad. “I’ve never heard her called that.”

“I am a teacher as well as a witch,” said Miss Tick, adjusting her hat carefully. “Therefore I make lists. I make assessments. I write things down in a neat, firm hand with pens of two colors. Jenny is one of a number of creatures invented by adults to scare children away from dangerous places.” She sighed. “If only people would think before they make up monsters.”

“You ought to stay and help her,” said the toad.

“I’ve got practically no power here,” said Miss Tick. “I told you. It’s the chalk. And remember the redheaded men. A Nac Mac Feegle spoke to her! Warned her! I’ve never seen one in my life! If she’s got them on her side, who knows what she can do?”

She picked up the toad. “D’you know what’ll be turning up?” she continued. “All the things they locked away in those old stories. All those reasons why you shouldn’t stray off the path, or open the forbidden door, or say the wrong word, or spill the salt. All the stories that gave children nightmares. All the monsters from under the biggest bed in the world. Somewhere, all stories are real and all dreams come true. And they’ll come true here if they’re not stopped. If it wasn’t for the Nac Mac Feegle, I’d be really worried. As it is, I’m going to try and get some help. That’s going to take me at least two days without a broomstick!”

“It’s unfair to leave her alone with them,” said the toad.

“She won’t be alone,” said Miss Tick. “She’ll have you.”

“Oh,” said the toad.

Tiffany shared a bedroom with Fastidia and Hannah. She woke up when she heard them come to bed, and she lay in the dark until she heard their breathing settle down and they started to dream of young sheep shearers with their shirts off.

Outside, summer lightning flashed around the hills, and there was a rumble of thunder. . . .

Thunder and Lightning. She knew them as dogs before she knew them as the light and sound of a storm. Granny always had her sheepdogs with her, indoors and out. One moment they would be black-and-white streaks across the distant turf, and then they were suddenly there, panting, eyes never leaving Granny’s face. Half the dogs on the hills were Lightning’s puppies, trained by Granny Aching.

Tiffany had gone with the family to the big Sheepdog Trials. Every shepherd on the Chalk went to them, and the very best entered the arena to show how well they could work their dogs. The dogs would round up sheep, separate them, drive them into the pens—or sometimes run off, or snap at one another, because even the best dog can have a bad day. But Granny never entered with Thunder and Lightning. She’d lean on the fence with the dogs lying in front of her, watching the show intently and puffing her foul pipe. And Tiffany’s father had said that after each shepherd had worked his dogs, the judges would look nervously across at Granny Aching to see what she thought. In fact all the shepherds watched her. Granny never, ever entered the arena, because she was the Trials. If Granny thought you were a good shepherd—if she nodded at you when you walked out of the arena, if she puffed at her pipe and said, “That’ll do”—you walked like a giant for a day, you owned the Chalk. . . .

When she was small and up on the wold with Granny, Thunder and Lightning would baby-sit Tiffany, lying attentively a few feet away as she played. And she’d been so proud when Granny had let her use them to round up a flock. She’d run about excitedly in all directions, shouting “Come by!” and “There!” and “Walk up!” and, glory be, the dogs had worked perfectly.

She knew now that they’d have worked perfectly whatever she’d shouted. Granny was just sitting there, smoking her pipe, and by now the dogs could read her mind. They only ever took orders from Granny Aching. . . .

The storm died down after a while, and there was the gentle sound of rain.

At some point Ratbag the cat pushed open the door and jumped onto the bed. He was big to start with, but Ratbag flowed. He was so fat that, on any reasonably flat surface, he gradually spread out in a great puddle of fur. He hated Tiffany but would never let personal feelings get in the way of a warm place to sleep.

She must have slept, because she woke up when she heard the voices.

They seemed very close but, somehow, very small.

“Crivens! It’s a’ verra well sayin’ ‘find the hag,’ but what should we be lookin’ for, can ye tell me that? All these bigjobs look just the same tae me!”

“Not-totally-wee Geordie doon at the fishin’ said she was a big, big girl!”

“A great help that is, I dinna think! They’re all big, big girls!”

“Ye paira dafties! Everyone knows a hag wears a pointy bonnet!”

“So they canna be a hag if they’re sleepin’, then?”

“Hello?” whispered Tiffany.

There was silence, embroidered with the breathing of her sisters. But in a way Tiffany couldn’t quite describe, it was the silence of people trying hard not to make any noise.

She leaned down and looked under the bed. There was nothing there but the guzunder.

The little man in the river had talked just like that.

She lay back in the moonlight, listening until her ears ached.

Then she wondered what the school for witches would be like and why she hadn’t seen it yet.

She knew every inch of the country for two miles around. She liked the river best, with the backwaters where striped pike sunbathed just above the weeds and the banks where kingfishers nested. There was a heronry a mile or so upriver, and she liked to creep up on the birds when they came down here to fish in the reeds, because there’s nothing funnier than a heron trying to get airborne in a hurry.

She drifted off to sleep again, thinking about the land around the farm. She knew all of it. There were no secret places that she didn’t know about.

But maybe there were magical doors. That’s what she’d make, if she had a magical school. There should be secret doorways everywhere, even hundreds of miles away. Look at a special rock by, say, moonlight, and there would be yet another door.

But the school, now, the school. There would be lessons in broomstick riding and how to sharpen your hat to a point, and magical meals, and lots of new friends.

“Is the bairn asleep?”

“Aye, I canna hear her movin’.”

Tiffany opened her eyes in the darkness. The voices under the bed had a slightly echoey edge. Thank goodness the guzunder was nice and clean.

“Right, let’s get oot o’ this wee pot, then.”

The voices moved off across the room. Tiffany’s ears tried to swivel to follow them.

“Hey, see here, it’s a hoose! See, with wee chairies and things!”

They’ve found the doll’s house, Tiffany thought.

It was quite a large one, made by Mr. Block the farm carpenter when Tiffany’s oldest sister, who already had two babies of her own now, was a little girl. It wasn’t the most fragile of items. Mr. Block did not go in for delicate work. But over the years the girls had decorated it with bits of material and some rough-and-ready furniture.

By the sound of it the owners of the voices thought it was a palace.

“Hey, hey, hey, we’re in the cushy stuff noo! There’s a beid in this room. Wi’ pillows!”

“Keep it doon—we don’t want any o’ them to wake up!”

“Crivens, I’m as quiet as a wee moose! Aargh! There’s sojers!”

“Whut d’ye mean, sojers?”

“There’s redcoats in the room!”

They’ve found the toy soldiers, thought Tiffany, trying not to breathe loudly.

Strictly speaking, they had no place in the doll’s house, but Wentworth wasn’t old enough for them, and so they’d got used as innocent bystanders back in those days when Tiffany had made tea parties for her dolls. Well, what passed for dolls. Such toys as there were in the farmhouse had to be tough to survive intact through the generations and didn’t always manage it. Last time Tiffany had tried to arrange a party, the guests had been a rag doll with no head, two wooden soldiers, and three quarters of a small teddy bear.

Thuds and bangs came from the direction of the doll’s house.

“I got one! Hey, pal, can yer mammie sew? Stitch this! Aargh! He’s got a heid on him like a tree!”

“Crivens! There’s a body here wi’ no heid at a’!”

“Aye, nae wonder, ’cause here’s a bear! Feel ma boot, ye washoon!”

It seemed to Tiffany that although the owners of the three voices were fighting things that couldn’t possibly fight back, including a teddy bear with only one leg, the fight still wasn’t going all one way.

“I got ’im! I got ’im! I got ’im! Yer gonna get a gummer, ye wee hard disease!”

“Someone bit ma leg! Someone bit ma leg!”

“Come here! Ach, yer fightin’ yersels, ye eejits! Ah’m fed up wi’ the pairy yees!”

Tiffany felt Ratbag stir. He might be fat and lazy, but he was lightning fast when it came to leaping on small creatures. She couldn’t let him get the . . . whatever they were, however bad they sounded.

She coughed loudly.

“See?” said a voice from the doll’s house. “Yer woked them up! Ah’m offski!”

Silence fell again, and this time, Tiffany decided after a while, it was the silence of no one there rather than the silence of people being incredibly quiet. Ratbag went back to sleep, twitching occasionally as he disemboweled something in his fat cat dreams.

Tiffany waited a little while and then got out of bed and crept toward the bedroom door, avoiding the two squeaky floorboards. She went downstairs in the dark, found a chair by moonlight, fished the book of fairy tales off Granny’s shelf, then lifted the latch on the back door and stepped out into the warm midsummer night.

There was a lot of mist around, but a few stars were visible overhead and there was a gibbous moon in the sky. Tiffany knew it was gibbous because she’d read in the Almanack that gibbous meant what the moon looked like when it was just a bit fatter than half full, and so she made a point of paying attention to it around those times just so that she could say to herself: “Ah, I see the moon’s very gibbous tonight. . . .”

It’s possible that this tells you more about Tiffany than she would want you to know.

Against the rising moon the downs were a black wall that filled half the sky. For a moment she looked for the light of Granny Aching’s lantern. . . .

Granny never lost a lamb. That was one of Tiffany’s first memories: of being held by her mother at the window one frosty night in early spring, with a million brilliant stars glinting over the mountains and, on the darkness of the downs, the one yellow star in the constellation of Granny Aching zigzagging through the night. She wouldn’t go to bed while a lamb was lost, however bad the weather. . . .

There was only one place where it was possible for someone in a large family to be private, and that was in the privy. It was a three-holer, and it was where everyone went if they wanted to be alone for a while.

There was a candle in there, and last year’s Almanack hanging on a string. The printers knew their readership and printed the Almanack on soft, thin paper.

Tiffany lit the candle, made herself comfortable, and looked at the book of fairy tales. The moon gibbous’d at her through the crescent-shaped hole cut in the door.

She’d never really liked the book. It seemed to her that it tried to tell her what to do and what to think. Don’t stray from the path, don’t open that door, but hate the wicked witch because she is wicked. Oh, and believe that shoe size is a good way of choosing a wife.

A lot of the stories were highly suspicious, in her opinion. There was the one that ended when the two good children pushed the wicked witch into her own oven. Tiffany had worried about that after all that trouble with Mrs. Snapperly. Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She’d read that one and thought, Excuse me? No one has an oven big enough to get a whole person in, and what made the children think they could just walk around eating people’s houses in any case? And why does some boy too stupid to know a cow is worth a lot more than five beans have the right to murder a giant and steal all his gold? Not to mention commit an act of ecological vandalism? And some girl who can’t tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family. The stories weren’t real. But Mrs. Snapperly had died because of stories.

She flicked past page after page, looking for the right picture. Because although the stories made her angry, the pictures, ah, the pictures were the most wonderful things she’d ever seen.

She turned a page and there it was.

Most of the pictures of fairies were not very impressive. Frankly, they looked like a small girls’ ballet class that’d just had to run through a bramble patch. But this one . . . was different. The colors were strange, and there were no shadows. Giant grasses and daisies grew everywhere, so the fairies must have been quite small, but they looked big. They looked like rather strange humans. They certainly didn’t look much like fairies. Hardly any of them had wings. They were odd shapes, in fact. In fact, some of them looked like monsters. The girls in the tutus wouldn’t have stood much chance.

And the odd thing was that, alone of all the fairy pictures in the book, this one looked as if it had been done by an artist who had painted what was in front of him. The other pictures, the ballet girls and the romper-suit babies, had a made-up, syrupy look. This one didn’t. This one said that the artist had been there . . .

. . . at least in his head, Tiffany thought.

She concentrated on the bottom left-hand corner, and there it was. She’d seen it before, but you had to know where to look. It was definitely a little red-haired man, naked except for a kilt and a skinny vest, scowling out of the picture. He looked very angry. And . . . Tiffany moved the candle to see more clearly . . . he was definitely making a gesture with his hand.

Even if you didn’t know it was a rude one, it was easy to guess.

She heard voices. She pushed the door open with her foot to hear them better, because a witch always listens to other people’s conversations.

The sound was coming from the other side of the hedge, where there was a field that should have been full of nothing but sheep waiting to go to market. Sheep are not known for their conversation. She snuck out carefully in the misty dawn and found a small gap that had been made by rabbits, which just gave her a good enough view.

There was a ram grazing near the hedge, and the conversation was coming from it or, rather, somewhere in the long grass underneath it. There seemed to be at least four speakers, who sounded bad-tempered.

“Crivens! We wanna coo beastie, no’ a ship beastie!”

“Ach, one’s as goo’ as t’other! C’mon, lads, a’ grab aholt o’ a leg!”

“Aye, all the coos are inna shed, we tak what we can!”

“Keep it doon, keep it doon, will ya!”

“Ach, who’s listenin’? Okay, lads—yan . . . tan . . . teth’ra!”

The sheep rose a little in the air, and bleated in alarm as it started to go across the field backward. Tiffany thought she saw a hint of red hair in the grass around its legs, but that vanished as the ram was carried away into the mist.

She pushed her way through the hedge, ignoring the twigs that scratched at her. Granny Aching wouldn’t have let anyone get away with stealing a sheep, even if they were invisible.

But the mist was thick, and now Tiffany heard noises from the henhouse.

The disappearing-backward sheep could wait. Now the hens needed her. A fox had got in twice in the last two weeks, and the hens that hadn’t been taken were barely laying.

Tiffany ran through the garden, catching her nightdress on pea sticks and gooseberry bushes, and flung open the henhouse door.

There were no flying feathers, and nothing like the panic a fox would cause. But the chickens were clucking excitedly, and Prunes, the cockerel, was strutting nervously up and down. One of the hens looked a bit embarrassed. Tiffany lifted it up quickly.

There were two tiny blue, red-haired men underneath. They were each holding an egg clasped in their arms. They looked up with very guilty expressions.

“Ach, no!” said one. “It’s the bairn! She’s the hag . . .”

“You’re stealing our eggs,” said Tiffany. “How dare you! And I’m not a hag!”

The little men looked at one another, and then at the eggs.

“Whut eiggs?” said one.

“The eggs you are holding,” said Tiffany meaningfully.

“Whut? Oh, these? These are eiggs, are they?” said the one who’d spoken first, looking at the eggs as if he’d never seen them before. “There’s a thing. And there was us thinking they was, er, stones.”

“Stones,” said the other one nervously.

“We crawled under yon chookie for a wee bitty warmth,” said the first one. “And there was all these things, we though’ they was stones, which was why the puir fowl was clucking all the time . . .”

“Clucking,” said the second one, nodding vigorously.

“. . . so we took pity on the puir thing and—”

“Put . . . the . . . eggs . . . back,” said Tiffany slowly.

The one who hadn’t been doing much talking nudged the other one. “Best do as she says,” he said. “It’s a’ gang agley. Ye canna cross an Aching, an’ this one’s a hag. She dinged Jenny, an’ no one ha’ ever done that afore.”

“Aye, I didna think o’ that. . . .”

Both of the tiny men put the eggs back very carefully. One of them even breathed on the shell of his and made a show of polishing it with the ragged hem of his kilt.

“No harm done, mistress,” he said. He looked at the other man. And then they vanished. But there was a suspicion of a red blur in the air, and some straw by the henhouse door flew up in the air.

“And I’m a miss!” shouted Tiffany. She lowered the hen back onto the eggs and went to the door. “And I’m not a hag! Are you fairies of some sort? And what about our ship? I mean, sheep?” she added.

There was no answer but a clanking of buckets near the house, which meant that other people were getting up.

She rescued the fairy tales, blew out the candle, and made her way into the house. Her mother was lighting the fire and asked what she was doing up, and she said that she’d heard a commotion in the henhouse and had gone out to see if it was the fox again. That wasn’t a lie. In fact, it was completely true.

Tiffany was on the whole quite a truthful person, but it seemed to her that there were times when things didn’t divide easily into “true” and “false,” but instead could be things that people needed to know at the moment and things that they didn’t need to know at the moment.

Besides, she wasn’t sure what she knew at the moment.

There was porridge for breakfast. She ate it hurriedly, meaning to get back out into the paddock and see about that sheep. There might be tracks in the grass, or something. . . .

She looked up, not knowing why.

Ratbag had been asleep in front of the oven. Now he was sitting up, alert. Tiffany felt a prickling on the back of her neck and tried to see what the cat was looking at.

On the dresser was a row of blue-and-white jars that weren’t very useful for anything. They’d been left to her mother by an elderly aunt, and she was proud of them because they looked nice but were completely useless. There was little room on the farm for useless things that looked nice, so they were treasured.

Ratbag was watching the lid of one of them. It was rising very slowly, and under it was a hint of red hair and two beady, staring eyes.

It lowered again when Tiffany gave it a long stare. A moment later she heard a faint rattle, and when she looked up, the pot was wobbling back and forth and there was a little cloud of dust rising along the top of the dresser. Ratbag was looking around in bewilderment.

They certainly were very fast.

She ran out into the paddock and looked around. The mist was off the grass now, and skylarks were rising on the downs.

“If that sheep doesn’t come back this minute,” she shouted at the sky, “there will be a reckoning!”

The sound bounced off the hills. And then she heard, very faint but close by, the sound of small voices:

“Whut did the hag say?” said the first voice.

“She said there’d be a reck’ning’!”

“Oh, waily, waily, waily! We’re in trouble noo!”

Tiffany looked around, face red with anger.

“We have a duty,” she said, to the air and the grass.

It was something Granny Aching had said once, when Tiffany had been crying about a lamb. She’d said: “We are as gods to the beasts o’ the field, my jiggit. We order the time o’ their birth and the time o’ their death. Between times, we ha’ a duty.”

“We have a duty,” Tiffany repeated, more softly. She glared around the field. “I know you can hear me, whoever you are. If that sheep doesn’t come back, there will be . . . trouble. . . .”

The larks sang over the sheepfolds, making the silence deeper.

Tiffany had to do the chores before she had any more time to herself. That meant feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs, and feeling slightly proud of the fact that there were two more than there might otherwise have been. It meant fetching six buckets of water from the well and filling the log basket by the stove, but she put those jobs off because she didn’t like doing them much. She did quite like churning butter, though. It gave her time to think.

When I’m a witch with a pointy hat and a broomstick, she thought as she pumped the handle, I’ll wave my hand and the butter will come just like that. And any little red-headed devils who even think about taking our beasts will be—

There was a slopping sound behind her, where she’d lined up the six buckets to take to the well.

One of them was now full of water, which was still sloshing backward and forward.

She went back to the churning as if nothing had happened but stopped after a while and went over to the flour bin. She took a small handful of flour and dusted it over the doorstep, and then went back to the churning.

A few minutes later there was another watery sound behind her. When she turned around, there was, yes, another full bucket. And in the flour on the stone doorstep were just two lines of footprints, one leading out of the dairy and one coming back.

It was all Tiffany could do to lift one of the heavy wooden buckets when it was full.

So, she thought, they are immensely strong as well as being incredibly fast. I’m really being very calm about this.

She looked up at the big wooden beams that ran across the room, and a little dust fell down, as if something had quickly moved out of the way.

I think I ought to put a stop to this right now, she thought. On the other hand, there’s no harm in waiting until all the buckets are filled up.

“And then I’ll have to fill the log box in the scullery,” she said aloud. Well, it was worth a try.

She went back to the churning and didn’t bother to turn her head when she heard four more sloshes behind her. Nor did she look around when she heard little whooshwhoosh noises and the clatter of logs in the box. She turned to see only when the noise stopped.

The log box was full up to the ceiling, and all the buckets were full. The patch of flour was a mass of footprints.

She stopped churning. She had a feeling that eyes were watching her, a lot of eyes.

“Er . . . thank you,” she said. No, that wasn’t right. She sounded nervous. She let go of the butter paddle and stood up, trying to look as fierce as possible.

“And what about our sheep?” she said. “I won’t believe you’re really sorry until I see the sheep come back!”

There was a bleating from the paddock. She ran out to the bottom of the garden and looked through the hedge.

The sheep was coming back, backward and at high speed. It jerked to a halt a little way from the hedge and dropped down as the little men let it go. One of the red-headed men appeared for a moment on its head. He huffed on a horn, polished it with his kilt, and vanished in a blur.

Tiffany walked back to the dairy looking thoughtful.

When she got back, the butter had been churned. Not just churned, in fact, but patted into a dozen fat golden oblongs on the marble she used when she did it. There was even a sprig of parsley on each one.

Are they brownies? she wondered. According to the Faerie Tales, brownies hung around the house doing chores in exchange for a saucer of milk. But in the picture they’d been cheery little creatures with long pointy hoods. The red-haired men didn’t look as if they’d ever drunk milk in their lives, but perhaps it was worth a try.

“Well,” she said aloud, still aware of the hidden watchers. “That’ll do. Thank you. I’m glad you’re sorry for what you did.”

She took one of the cat’s saucers from the pile by the sink, washed it in the sink, filled it with milk from today’s churn, then put it down on the floor and stood back. “Are you brownies?” she said.

The air blurred. Milk splashed across the floor, and the saucer spun around and around.

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” said Tiffany. “So what are you?”

There were unlimited supplies of no answer at all.

She lay down and looked under the sink, and then peered behind the cheese shelves. She stared up into the dark, spidery shadows of the room. It felt empty.

And she thought: I think I need a whole egg’s worth of education, in a hurry.

Tiffany had walked along the steep track from the farm into the village hundreds of times. It was less than half a mile long, and over the centuries the carts had worn it down so that it was more like a gully in the chalk and ran like a milky stream in wet weather.

She was halfway down when the susurrus started. The hedges rustled without a wind. The skylarks stopped singing, and while she hadn’t really noticed their song, their silence was a shock. Nothing’s louder than the end of a song that’s always been there.

When she looked up at the sky, it was like looking through a diamond. It sparkled, and the air went cold so quickly that it was like stepping into an icy bath.

Then there was snow underfoot, snow on the hedges. And the sound of hooves.

They were in the field beside her. A horse was galloping through the snow, behind the hedge that was now, suddenly, just a wall of white.

The hoofbeats stopped. There was a moment of silence and then a horse landed in the lane, skidding on the snow. It pulled itself upright, and the rider turned it to face Tiffany.

The rider himself couldn’t face Tiffany. He had no face. He had no head to hang it on.

She ran. Her boots slipped on the snow as she moved, but suddenly her mind was cold as the ice.

She had two legs, slipping on ice. A horse had twice as many legs to slip. She’d seen horses try to tackle this hill in icy weather. She had a chance.

She heard a breathy, whistling noise behind her, and a whinny from the horse. She risked a glance. The horse was coming after her, but slowly, half walking and half sliding. Steam poured off it.

About halfway down the slope the lane passed under an arch of trees, looking like crashed clouds now under their weight of snow. And beyond them, Tiffany knew, the lane flattened out. The headless man would catch her on the flat. She didn’t know what would happen after that, but she was sure it would be unpleasantly short.

Flakes of snow dropped on her as she passed under the trees, and she decided to make a run for it. She might reach the village. She was good at running.

But if she got there, then what? She’d never reach a door in time. And people would shout, and run about. The dark horseman didn’t look like someone who’d take much notice of that. No, she had to deal with it.

If only she’d brought the frying pan.

“Here, wee hag! Stannit ye still, right noo!”

She stared up.

A tiny blue man had poked his head up out of the snow on top of the hedge.

“There’s a headless horseman after me!” she shouted.

“He’ll no’ make it, hinny. Stand ye still! Look him in the eye!”

“He hasn’t got any eyes!”

“Crivens! Are ye a hag or no’? Look him in the eyes he hasna got!”

The blue man disappeared into the snow.

Tiffany turned around. The horseman was trotting under the trees now, the horse more certain as the ground leveled. He had a sword in his hand, and he was looking at her, with the eyes he didn’t have. There was the breathy noise again, not good to hear.

The little men are watching me, she thought. I can’t run. Granny Aching wouldn’t have run from a thing with no head.

She folded her arms and glared.

The horseman stopped, as if puzzled, and then urged the horse forward.

A blue-and-red shape, larger than the other little men, dropped out of the trees. He landed on the horse’s forehead, between its eyes, and grabbed an ear in each hand.

Tiffany heard the man shout: “Here’s a face full o’ dandruff for ye, yer bogle, courtesy of Big Yan!” and then the man hit the horse between the eyes with his head.

To her amazement the horse staggered sideways.

“Aw right?” shouted the tiny fighter. “Big toughie, is ye? Once more wi’ feelin’!”

This time the horse danced uneasily the other way, and then its back legs slid from under it and it collapsed in the snow.

Little blue men erupted from the hedge. The horseman, trying to get to his feet, disappeared under a blue-and-red storm of screaming creatures—

And vanished. The snow vanished. The horse vanished.

The blue men, for a moment, were in a pile on the hot, dusty road. One of them said, “Aw, crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!” And then they, too, vanished, but for a moment Tiffany saw blue-and-red blurs disappearing into the hedge.

Then the skylarks were back. The hedges were green and full of flowers. Not a twig was broken, not a flower disturbed. The sky was blue, with no flashes of diamond.

Tiffany looked down. On the toes of her boots, snow was melting. She was, strangely, glad about that. It meant that what had just happened was magical, not madness. Because if she closed her eyes, she could still hear the wheezy breathing of the headless man.

What she needed right now was people, and ordinary things happening. But more than anything else, she wanted answers.

Actually, what she wanted more than anything else was not to hear the wheezy breathing when she shut her eyes. . . .

The tents had gone. Except for a few pieces of broken chalk, apple cores, some stamped-down grass, and, alas, a few chicken feathers, there was nothing at all to show that the teachers had ever been there.

A small voice said, “Psst!”

She looked down. A toad crept out from under a dock leaf.

“Miss Tick said you’d be back,” it said. “I expect there’s some things you need to know, right?”

“Everything,” said Tiffany. “We’re swamped with tiny men! I can’t understand half of what they say! They keep calling me a hag!”

“Ah, yes,” said the toad. “You’ve got Nac Mac Feegles!”

“It snowed, and then it hadn’t! I was chased by a horseman with no head! And one of the . . . what did you say they were?”

“Nac Mac Feegles,” said the toad. “Also known as pictsies. They call themselves the Wee Free Men.”

“Well, one of them head-butted the horse! It fell over! It was a huge horse, too!”

“Ah, that sounds like a Feegle,” said the toad.

“I gave them some milk and they tipped it over!”

“You gave the Nac Mac Feegle milk?”

“Well, you said they’re pixies!”

“Not pixies, pictsies. They certainly don’t drink milk!”

“Are they from the same place as Jenny?” Tiffany demanded.

“No. They’re rebels,” said toad.

“Rebels? Against who?”

“Everyone. Anything,” said the toad. “Now pick me up.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s a woman at the well over there giving you a funny look. Put me in your apron pocket, for goodness’ sake.”

Tiffany snatched up the toad and smiled at the woman. “I’m making a collection of pressed toads,” she said.

“That’s nice, dear,” said the woman, and hurried away.

“That wasn’t very funny,” said the toad from her apron.

“People don’t listen anyway,” said Tiffany.

She sat down under a tree and took the toad out of her pocket.

“The Feegles tried to steal some of our eggs and one of our sheep,” she said. “But I got them back.”

“You got something back from the Nac Mac Feegle?” said the toad. “Were they ill?”

“No. They were a bit . . . well, sweet, actually. They even did the chores for me.”

“The Feegle did chores?” said the toad. “They never do chores! They’re not helpful at all!”

“And then there was the headless horseman!” said Tiffany. “He had no head!”

“Well, that is the major job qualification,” said the toad.

“What’s going on, toad?” said Tiffany. “Is it the Feegles who are invading?”

The toad looked a bit shifty. “Miss Tick doesn’t really want you to handle this,” it said. “She’ll be back soon with help—”

“Is she going to be in time?” Tiffany demanded.

“I don’t know. Probably. But you shouldn’t—”

“I want to know what is happening!”

“She’s gone to get some other witches,” said the toad. “Uh . . . she doesn’t think you should—”

“You’d better tell me what you know, toad,” said Tiffany. “Miss Tick isn’t here. I am.”

“Another world is colliding with this one,” said the toad. “There. Happy now? That’s what Miss Tick thinks. But it’s happening faster than she expected. All the monsters are coming back.”

“Why?”

“There’s no one to stop them.”

There was silence for a moment.

“There’s me,” said Tiffany.

CHAPTER 4

The Wee Free Men

Nothing happened on the way back to the farm. The sky stayed blue, none of the sheep in the home paddocks appeared to be traveling backward very fast, and an air of hot emptiness lay over everything.

Ratbag was on the path leading up to the back door, and he had something trapped in his paws. As soon as he saw Tiffany, he picked it up and exited around the corner of the house urgently, legs spinning in the high-speed slink of a guilty cat. Tiffany was too good a shot with a clod of earth.

But at least there wasn’t something red-and-blue in his mouth.

“Look at him,” she said. “Great cowardly blob! I really wish I could stop him catching baby birds—it’s so sad!”

“You haven’t got a hat you can wear, have you?” said the toad, from her apron pocket. “I hate not being able to see.”

They went into the dairy, which Tiffany normally had to herself for most of the day.

In the bushes by the door there was a muffled conversation. It went like this:

“Whut did the wee hag say?”

“She said she wants yon cat to stop scraffin’ the puir wee burdies.”

“Is that a’? Crivens! Nae problemo!”

Tiffany put the toad on the table as carefully as possible.

“What do you eat?” she said. It was polite to offer guests food, she knew.

“I’ve got used to slugs and worms and stuff,” said the toad. “It wasn’t easy. Don’t worry if you don’t have any. I expect you weren’t expecting a toad to drop in.”

“How about some milk?”

“You’re very kind.”

Tiffany fetched some and poured it into a saucer. She watched while the toad crawled in.

“Were you a handsome prince?” she asked.

“Yeah, right, maybe,” said the toad, dribbling milk.

“So why did Miss Tick put a spell on you?”

“Her? Huh, she couldn’t do that,” said the toad. “It’s serious magic, turning someone into a toad but leaving them thinking they’re human. No, it was a fairy godmother. Never cross a woman with a star on a stick, young lady. They’ve got a mean streak.”

“Why did she do it?”

The toad looked embarrassed. “I don’t know,” it said. “It’s all a bit . . . foggy. I just know I’ve been a person. At least, I think I know. It gives me the willies. Sometimes I wake up in the night and I think, was I ever really human? Or was I just a toad that got on her nerves and she made me think I was human once? That’d be a real torture, right? Supposing there’s nothing for me to turn back into?” The toad turned worried yellow eyes on her. “After all, it can’t be very hard to mess with a toad’s head, yeah? It must be much simpler than turning, oh, a one-hundred-and-sixty-pound human into eight ounces of toad, yes? After all, where’s the rest of the mass going to go, I ask myself? Is it just sort of, you know, left over? Very worrying. I mean, I’ve got one or two memories of being a human, of course, but what’s a memory? Just a thought in your brain. You can’t be sure it’s real. Honestly, on nights when I’ve eaten a bad slug, I wake up screaming, except all that comes out is a croak. Thank you for the milk, it was very nice.”

Tiffany stared in silence at the toad.

“You know,” she said, “magic is a lot more complicated than I thought.”

“Flappitty-flappitty flap! Cheep, cheep! Ach, poor wee me, cheepitty-cheep!”

Tiffany ran over to the window.

There was a Feegle on the path. It had made itself some crude wings out of a piece of rag, and a kind of beaky cap out of straw, and was wobbling around in a circle like a wounded bird.

“Ach, cheepitty-cheep! Fluttery-flutter! I certainly hope dere’s no’ a pussycat aroound! Ach, dearie me!” it yelled.

And down the path Ratbag, archenemy of all baby birds, slunk closer, drooling. As Tiffany opened her mouth to yell, he leaped and landed with all four feet on the little man.

Or at least where the little man had been, because he had somersaulted in midair and was now right in front of Ratbag’s face and had grabbed a cat ear with each hand.

“Ach, see you, pussycat, scunner that y’are!” he yelled. “Here’s a giftie from the t’ wee burdies, yah schemie!”

He butted the cat hard on the nose. Ratbag spun in the air and landed on his back with his eyes crossed. He squinted in cold terror as the little man leaned down at him and shouted, “CHEEP!”

Then he levitated in the way that cats do and became a ginger streak, rocketing down the path through the open door, and shooting past Tiffany to hide under the sink.

The Feegle looked up, grinning, and saw Tiffany.

“Please don’t go—” she began quickly, but he went, in a blur.

Tiffany’s mother was hurrying down the path. Tiffany picked up the toad and put it back in her apron pocket just in time. The door was flung open.

“Where’s Wentworth? Is he here?” her mother asked urgently. “Did he come back? Answer me!”

“Didn’t he go up to the shearing with you, Mum?” said Tiffany, suddenly nervous. She could feel the panic pouring off her mother like steam.

“We can’t find him!” There was a wild look in her mother’s eyes. “I turned my back for only a minute! Are you sure you haven’t seen him?”

“But he couldn’t come all the way back here—”

“Go and look in the house! Go on!”

Mrs. Aching hurried away. Hastily, Tiffany put the toad on the floor and urged him under the sink. She heard him croak, and Ratbag, mad with fear and bewilderment, came out from under the sink in a whirl of legs and rocketed out of the door.

She stood up. Her first, shameful thought was: He wanted to go up to watch the shearing. How could he get lost? He went with Mum and Hannah and Fastidia!

And how closely would Fastidia and Hannah watch him with all those young men up there?

She tried to pretend she hadn’t thought that, but she was treacherously good at spotting when she was lying. That’s the trouble with a brain—it thinks more than you sometimes want it to.

But he’s never interested in moving far away from people! It’s half a mile up to the shearing pens! And he doesn’t move that fast. After a few feet he flops down and demands sweets!

But it would be a bit more peaceful around here if he did get lost. . . .

There it went again, a nasty, shameful thought, which she tried to drown out by getting busy. But first she took some candy out of the jar, as bait, and rustled the bag as she ran from room to room.

She heard boots in the yard as some of the men came down from the shearing sheds, but she got on with looking under beds and in cupboards, even ones so high that a toddler couldn’t possibly reach them, and then looked again under beds that she’d already looked under, because it was that kind of search. It was the kind of search where you go and look in the attic, even though the door is always locked.

After a few minutes there were two or three voices outside, calling for Wentworth, and she heard her father say, “Try down by the river!”

. . . and that meant he was frantic too, because Wentworth would never walk that far without a bribe. He was not a child who was happy away from people with sweets.

It’s your fault.

The thought felt like a piece of ice in her mind.

It’s your fault because you didn’t love him very much. He turned up and you weren’t the youngest anymore, and you had to have him trailing around after you, and you kept wishing, didn’t you, that he’d go away.

“That’s not true!” Tiffany whispered to herself. “I . . . quite liked him. . . .”

Not very much, admittedly. Not all the time. He didn’t know how to play properly, and he never did what he was told. You thought it would be better if he did get lost.

Anyway, she added in her head, you can’t love people all the time when they have a permanently runny nose. And anyway . . . I wonder . . .

“I wish I could find my brother,” she said aloud.

This seemed to have no effect. But the house was full of people, opening and shutting doors and calling out and getting in one another’s way, and the . . . Feegles were shy, despite many of them having faces like a hatful of knuckles.

Don’t wish, Miss Tick had said. Do things.

She went downstairs. Even some of the women who’d been packing fleeces up at the shearing had come down. They were clustered around her mother, who was sitting at the table crying. No one noticed Tiffany. That often happened.

She slipped into the dairy, closed the door carefully behind her, and leaned down to peer under the sink.

The door burst open again and her father ran in. He stopped. Tiffany looked up guiltily.

“He can’t be under there, girl!” her father said.

“Well, er . . .” said Tiffany.

“Did you look upstairs?”

“Even the attic, Dad—”

“Well.” Her father looked panicky and impatient at the same time. “Go and . . . do something!”

“Yes, Dad.”

When the door had shut, Tiffany peered under the sink again.

“Are you there, toad?”

“Very poor pickings under here,” the toad answered, crawling out. “You keep it very clean. Not even a spider.”

“This is urgent!” snapped Tiffany. “My little brother has gone missing. In broad daylight! Up on the downs, where you can see for miles!”

“Oh, croap,” said the toad.

“Pardon?” said Tiffany.

“Er, that was, er, swearing in Toad,” said the toad. “Sorry, but—”

“Has what’s going on got something to do with magic?” said Tiffany. “It has, hasn’t it . . . ?”

“I hope it hasn’t,” said the toad, “but I think it has.”

“Have those little men stolen Wentworth?”

“Who, the Feegles? They don’t steal children!”

There was something in the way the toad said it. They don’t steal . . .

“Do you know who has taken my brother, then?” Tiffany demanded.

“No. But . . . they might,” said the toad. “Look, Miss Tick told me that you were not to—”

“My brother has been stolen,” said Tiffany sharply. “Are you going to tell me not to do anything about it?”

“No, but—”

“Good! Where are the Feegles now?”

“Lying low, I expect. The place is full of people searching, after all, but—”

“How can I bring them back? I need them!”

“Um, Miss Tick said—”

“How can I bring them back?”

“Er . . . you want to bring them back, then?” said the toad, looking mournful.

“Yes!”

“It’s just that’s something not many people have ever wanted to do,” said the toad. “They’re not like brownies. If you get Nac Mac Feegle in the house, it’s usually best to move away.” He sighed. “Tell me, is your father a drinking man?”

“He has a beer sometimes,” said Tiffany. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Only beer?”

“Well, I’m not supposed to know about what my father calls the Special Sheep Liniment,” said Tiffany. “Granny Aching used to make it in the old cowshed.”

“Strong stuff, is it?”

“It dissolves spoons,” said Tiffany. “It’s for special occasions. Father says it’s not for women because it puts hairs on your chest.”

“Then if you want to be sure of finding the Nac Mac Feegle, go and fetch some,” said the toad. “It will work, believe me.”

Five minutes later Tiffany was ready. Few things are hidden from a quiet child with good eyesight, and she knew where the bottles were stored and she had one now. The cork was hammered in over a piece of rag, but it was old and she was able to lever it out with the tip of a knife. The fumes made her eyes water.

She went to pour some of the golden-brown liquid into a saucer—

“No! We’ll be trampled to death if you do that,” said the toad. “Just leave the cork off.”

Fumes rose from the top of the bottle, wavering like the air over rocks on a hot day.

She felt it—a sensation, in the dim, cool room, of riveted attention.

She sat down on a milking stool and said, “All right, you can come out now.”

There were hundreds. They rose up from behind buckets. They lowered themselves on string from the ceiling beams. They sidled sheepishly from behind the cheese racks. They crept out from under the sink. They came out of places where you’d think a man with hair like an orange gone nova couldn’t possibly hide.

They were all about six inches tall and mostly colored blue, although it was hard to know if that was the actual color of their skins or just the dye from their tattoos, which covered every inch that wasn’t covered with red hair. They wore short kilts, and some wore other bits of clothing too, like skinny vests. A few of them wore rabbit or rat skulls on their heads, as a sort of helmet. And every single one of them carried, slung across his back, a sword nearly as big as he was.

However, what Tiffany noticed more than anything else was that they were scared of her. Mostly they were looking at their own feet, which was no errand for the faint-hearted because their feet were large, dirty, and half tied up with animal skins to make very bad shoes. None of them wanted to look her in the eye.

“You were the people who filled the water buckets?” she said.

There was a lot of foot shuffling and coughing and a chorus of ayes.

“And the wood box?”

There were more ayes.

Tiffany glared at them.

“And what about the sheep?”

This time they all looked down.

“Why did you steal the sheep?”

There was a lot of muttering and nudging, and then one of the tiny men removed his rabbit-skull helmet and twiddled it nervously in his hands.

“We wuz hungerin’, mistress,” he muttered. “But when we kenned it was thine, we did put the beastie back in the fold.”

They looked so crestfallen that Tiffany took pity on them.

“I expect you wouldn’t have stolen it if you weren’t so hungry, then,” she said.

There were several hundred astonished looks.

“Oh, we would, mistress,” said the helmet twiddler.

“You would?”

Tiffany sounded so surprised that the twiddler looked around at his colleagues for support. They all nodded.

“Yes, mistress. We have tae. We are a famously stealin’ folk. Aren’t we, lads? Whut’s it we’re famous for?”

“Stealin’!” shouted the blue men.

“And what else, lads?”

“Fightin’!”

“And what else?”

“Drinkin’!”

“And what else?”

There was a certain amount of thought about this, but they all reached the same conclusion.

“Drinkin’ and fightin’!”

“And there was summat else,” muttered the twiddler. “Ach, yes. Tell the hag, lads!”

“Stealin’ an’ drinkin’ an’ fightin’!” shouted the blue men cheerfully.

“Tell the wee hag who we are, lads,” said the helmet twiddler.

There was the scrape of many small swords being drawn and thrust into the air.

“Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna be fooled again!”

Tiffany stared at them. They were all watching her to see what she was going to do next, and the longer she said nothing, the more worried they become. They lowered their swords, looking embarrassed.

“But we wouldna dare deny a powerful hag, except mebbe for strong drink,” said the twiddler, his helmet spinning desperately in his hands and his eyes on the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment. “Will ye no’ help us?”

“Help you?” said Tiffany. “I want you to help me! Someone has taken my brother in broad daylight.”

“Oh waily, waily waily!” said the helmet twiddler. “She’s come, then. She’s come a-fetchin’. We’re too late! It’s the Quin!”

“What, there were four of them?” said Tiffany.

“They mean the Queen,” said the toad. “The Queen of the—”

“Hush yer gob!” shouted the helmet twiddler, but his voice was lost in the wails and groans of the Nac Mac Feegle. They were pulling at their hair and stamping on the ground and shouting, “Alackaday!” and “Waily waily waily!” and the toad was arguing with the helmet twiddler and everyone was getting louder to make themselves heard—

Tiffany stood up. “Everybody shut up right now!” she said.

Silence fell, except for a few sniffs and faint wailys from the back.

“We wuz only dreeing our weird, mistress,” said the helmet twiddler, almost crouching in fear.

“But not in here!” snapped Tiffany, shaking with anger. “This is a dairy! I have to keep it clean!”

“Er . . . dreeing your weird means ‘facing your fate,’” said the toad.

“’Cause if the Quin is here, then it means our kelda is weakenin’ fast,” said the helmet twiddler. “An’ we’ll ha’ naeone tae look after us.”

No one to look after us, thought Tiffany. Hundreds of tough little men who could each win the Worst Broken Nose Contest need someone to look after them?

She took a deep breath.

“My mother’s in the house crying,” she said, “and . . .” I don’t know how to comfort her, she added to herself. I’m no good at this sort of thing, I never know what I should be saying. Out loud she said: “And she wants him back. Er. A lot.” She added, hating to say it, “He’s her favorite.”

She pointed to the helmet twiddler, who backed away.

“First of all,” she said, “I can’t keep thinking of you as the helmet twiddler, so what is your name?”

A gasp went up from the Nac Mac Feegle, and Tiffany heard one of them murmur, “Aye, she’s the hag, sure enough. That’s a hag’s question!”

The helmet twiddler looked around at them as if seeking help.

“We dinna give oour names,” he muttered. But another Feegle, somewhere safe at the back said, “Wheest! You canna refuse a hag!”

The little man looked up, very worried.

“I’m the Big Man o’ the clan, mistress,” he said. “An’ my name it is . . .” He swallowed. “Rob Anybody Feegle, mistress. But I beg ye not to use it agin me!”

The toad was ready for this.

“They think names have magic in them,” he murmured. “They don’t tell them to people in case they are written down.”

“Aye, an’ put upon comp-li-cated documents,” said a Feegle.

“An’ summonses and such things,” said another.

“Or ‘Wanted’ posters!” said another.

“Aye, an’ bills an’ affidavits,” said another.

“Writs of distrainment, even!” The Feegles looked around in panic at the very thought of written-down things.

“They think written words are even more powerful,” whispered the toad. “They think all writing is magic. Words worry them. See their swords? They glow blue in the presence of lawyers.”

“All right,” said Tiffany. “We’re getting somewhere. I promise not to write his name down. Now tell me about this Queen who’s taken Wentworth. Queen of what?”

“Canna say it aloud, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. “She hears her name wherever it’s said, and she comes callin’.”

“Actually, that’s true,” said the toad. “You do not want to meet her, ever.”

“She’s bad?”

“Worse. Just call her the Queen.”

“Aye, the Quin,” said Rob Anybody. He looked at Tiffany with bright, worried eyes. “Ye dinna ken o’ the Quin? An’ you the wean o’ Granny Aching, who had these hills in her bones? Ye dinna ken the ways? She did not show ye the ways? Ye’re no’ a hag? How can this be? Ye slammered Jenny Green-Teeth and stared the Heidless Horseman in the eyes he hasna got, and you dinna ken?”

Tiffany gave him a brittle smile and then whispered to the toad, “Who’s Ken? And what about his dinner? And what’s a wean of Granny Aching?”

“As far as I can make out,” said the toad, “they’re amazed that you don’t know about the Queen and . . . er, the magical ways, what with you being a child of Granny Aching and standing up to the monsters. Ken means ‘know.’”

“And his dinner?”

“Forget about his dinner for now,” said the toad. “They thought Granny Aching told you her magic. Hold me up to your ear, will you?” Tiffany did so, and the toad whispered, “Best not to disappoint them, eh?”

She swallowed. “But she never told me about any magic—” she began. And stopped. It was true. Granny Aching hadn’t told her about any magic. But she showed people magic every day.

There was the time when the Baron’s champion hound was caught killing sheep. It was a hunting dog, after all, but it had got out onto the downs and, because sheep run, it had chased. . . .

The Baron knew the penalty for sheep worrying. There were laws on the Chalk, so old that no one remembered who made them, and everyone knew this one: Sheep-killing dogs were killed.

But this dog was worth five hundred gold dollars, and so—the story went—the Baron sent his servant up onto the downs to Granny’s hut on wheels. She was sitting on the step, smoking her pipe and watching the flocks.

The man rode up on his horse and didn’t bother to dismount. That was not a good thing to do if you wanted Granny Aching to be your friend. Iron-shod hooves cut the turf. She didn’t like that.

He said: “The Baron commands that you find a way to save his dog, Mistress Aching. In return, he will give you a hundred silver dollars.”

Granny had smiled at the horizon, puffed at her pipe for a while, and replied: “A man who takes arms against his lord, that man is hanged. A starving man who steals his lord’s sheep, that man is hanged. A dog that kills sheep, that dog is put to death. Those laws are on these hills and these hills are in my bones. What is a baron, that the law be brake for him?”

She went back to staring at the sheep.

“The Baron owns this country,” said the servant. “It is his law.”

The look Granny Aching gave him turned the man’s hair white. That was the story, anyway. But all stories about Granny Aching had a bit of fairy tale about them.

“If it is, as ye say, his law, then let him break it and see how things may then be,” she said.

A few hours later the Baron sent his bailiff, who was far more important but had known Granny Aching for longer. He said: “Mrs. Aching, the Baron requests that you use your influence to save his dog. He will happily give you fifty gold dollars to help ease this difficult situation. I am sure you can see how this will benefit everyone concerned.”

Granny smoked her pipe and stared at the new lambs and said: “Ye speak for your master, your master speaks for his dog. Who speaks for the hills? Where is the Baron, that the law be brake for him?”

They said that when the Baron was told this, he went very quiet. But although he was pompous, and often unreasonable, and far too haughty, he was not stupid. In the evening he walked up to the hut and sat down on the turf nearby. After a while Granny Aching said: “Can I help you, my lord?”

“Granny Aching, I plead for the life of my dog,” said the Baron.

“Bring ye siller? Bring ye gilt?” said Granny Aching.

“No silver. No gold,” said the Baron.

“Good. A law that is brake by siller or gilt is no worthwhile law. And so, my lord?”

“I plead, Granny Aching.”

“Ye try to break the law with a word?”

“That’s right, Granny Aching.”

Granny Aching, the story went, stared at the sunset for a while and then said: “Then be down at the little old stone barn at dawn tomorrow, and we’ll see if an old dog can learn new tricks. There will be a reckoning. Good night to ye.”

Most of the village was hanging around the old stone barn the next morning. Granny arrived with one of the smaller farm wagons. It held a ewe with her newborn lamb. She put them in the barn.

Some of the men turned up with the dog. It was nervous and snappy, having spent the night chained up in a shed, and kept trying to bite the men who were holding it by two leather straps. It was hairy. It had fangs.

The Baron rode up with the bailiff. Granny Aching nodded at them and opened the barn door.

“You’re putting the dog into the barn with a sheep, Mrs. Aching?” said the bailiff. “Do you want it to choke to death on lamb?”

This didn’t get much of a laugh. No one liked the bailiff much.

“We shall see,” said Granny. The men dragged the dog to the doorway, threw it inside the barn, and slammed the door quickly. People rushed to the little windows.

There was the bleating of the lamb, a growl from the dog, and then a baa from the lamb’s mother. But this wasn’t the normal baa of a sheep. It had an edge to it.

Something hit the door and it bounced on its hinges. Inside, the dog yelped.

Granny Aching picked up Tiffany and held her to a window.

The shaken dog was trying to get to its feet, but it didn’t manage it before the ewe charged again, seventy pounds of enraged sheep slamming into it like a battering ram.

Granny lowered Tiffany again and lit her pipe. She puffed it peacefully as the building behind her shook and the dog yelped and whimpered.

After a couple of minutes she nodded at the men. They opened the door.

The dog came out limping on three legs, but it hadn’t managed to get more than a few feet before the ewe shot out behind it and butted it so hard that it rolled over.

It lay still. Perhaps it had learned what would happen if it tried to get up again.

Granny Aching had nodded to the men, who picked the sheep up and dragged it back into the barn.

The Baron had been watching with his mouth open.

“He killed a wild boar last year!” he said. “What did you do to him?”

“He’ll mend,” said Granny Aching, carefully ignoring the question. “’Tis mostly his pride that’s hurt. But he won’t look at a sheep again, you have my thumb on that.” And she licked her right thumb and held it out.

After a moment’s hesitation, the Baron licked his thumb, reached down, and pressed it against hers. Everyone knew what it meant. On the Chalk, a thumb bargain was unbreakable.

“For you, at a word, the law was brake,” said Granny Aching. “Will ye mind that, ye who sit in judgment? Will ye remember this day? Ye’ll have cause to.”

The Baron nodded to her.

“That’ll do,” said Granny Aching, and their thumbs parted.

Next day the Baron technically did give Granny Aching gold, but it was only the gold-colored foil on an ounce of Jolly Sailor, the cheap and horrible pipe tobacco that was the only one Granny Aching would ever smoke. She was always in a bad mood if the peddlers were late and she’d run out. You couldn’t bribe Granny Aching for all the gold in the world, but you could definitely attract her attention with an ounce of Jolly Sailor.

Things were a lot easier after that. The bailiff was a little less unpleasant when rents were late, the Baron was a little more polite to people, and Tiffany’s father said one night after two beers that the Baron had been shown what happens when sheep rise up, and things might be different one day, and her mother hissed at him not to talk like that because you never knew who was listening.

And one day Tiffany heard him telling her mother, quietly: “’Twas an old shepherds’ trick, that’s all. An old ewe will fight like a lion for her lamb, we all know that.”

That was how it worked. No magic at all. But that time it had been magic. And it didn’t stop being magic just because you found out how it was done. . . .

The Nac Mac Feegle were watching Tiffany carefully, with occasional longing glances at the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment.

I haven’t even found the witches’ school, she thought. I don’t know a single spell. I don’t even have a pointy hat. My talents are an instinct for making cheese and not running around panicking when things go wrong. Oh, and I’ve got a toad.

And I don’t understand half of what these little men are saying. But they know who’s taken my brother.

Somehow I don’t think the Baron would have a clue how to deal with this. I don’t, either, but I think I can be clueless in more sensible ways.

“I . . . remember a lot of things about Granny Aching,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

“The kelda sent us,” said Rob Anybody. “She sensed the Quin comin’. She kenned there wuz going to be trouble. She tole us, it’s gonna be bad, find the new hag who’s kin to Granny Aching, she’ll ken what to do.”

Tiffany looked at the hundreds of expectant faces. Some of the Feegle had feathers in their hair and necklaces of mole teeth. You couldn’t tell someone with half his face dyed dark blue and a sword as big as he was that you weren’t really a witch. You couldn’t disappoint someone like that.

“And will you help me get my brother back?” she said. The Feegles’ expressions didn’t change. She tried again. “Can you help me steal my brother back from the Quin?”

Hundreds of small yet ugly faces brightened up considerably.

“Ach, noo yer talkin’ oour language,” said Rob Anybody.

“Not . . . quite,” said Tiffany. “Can you all just wait a moment? I’ll just pack some things,” she said, trying to sound as if she knew what she was doing. She put the cork back on the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment. The Nac Mac Feegle sighed.

She darted back into the kitchen, took some bandages and ointments out of the medicine box, put the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment into her apron pocket, because her father said it always did him good, and, as an afterthought, added the book Diseases of the Sheep and picked up the frying pan. Both might come in useful.

The little men were nowhere to be seen when she went back into the dairy.

She knew she ought to tell her parents what was happening. But it wouldn’t work. It would be “telling stories.” Anyway, with any luck she could get Wentworth back before she was even missed. But, just in case . . .

She kept a diary in the dairy. Cheese needed to be kept track of, and she always wrote down details of the amount of butter she’d made and how much milk she’d been using.

She turned to a fresh page, picked up her pencil, and, with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, began to write.

The Nac Mac Feegle gradually reappeared. They didn’t obviously step out from behind things, and they certainly didn’t pop magically into existence. They appeared in the same way that faces appear in clouds and fires; they seemed to turn up if you just looked hard enough and wanted to see them.

They watched the moving pencil in awe, and she could hear them murmuring.

“Look at that writin’ stick noo, will ye, bobbin’ along. That’s hag business.”

“Ach, she has the kenning o’ the writin’, sure enough.”

“But you’ll no’ write doon oour names, eh, mistress?”

“Aye, a body can be put in the pris’n if they have written evidence.”

Tiffany stopped writing and read the note:

Dear Mum and Dad, I have gone to look for Wentworth. I am perfectly probably quite safe, because I am with some friends acquaintances people who knew Granny. PS The cheeses on rack three will need turning tomorrow if I’m not back.

Love, Tiffany

Tiffany looked up at Rob Anybody, who had shinned up the table leg and was watching the pencil intently, in case it wrote something dangerous.

“You could have just come and asked me right at the start,” she said.

“We didna ken it was thee we were lookin’ for, mistress. Lots of bigjob women walkin’ aroond this farm. We didna ken it was thee until you caught Daft Wullie.”

It might not be, thought Tiffany.

“Yes, but stealing the sheep and the eggs, there was no need for that,” she said sternly.

“But they wasna nailed doon, mistress,” said Rob Anybody, as if that was an excuse.

“You can’t nail down an egg!” snapped Tiffany.

“Ach, well, you’d have the kennin’ o’ wise stuff like that, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. “I see you’s done wi’ the writin’, so we’d best be goin’. Ye hae a besom?”

“Broomstick,” murmured the toad.

“Er, no,” said Tiffany. “The important thing about magic,” she added haughtily, “is to know when not to use it.”

“Fair enough,” said Rob Anybody, sliding back down the table leg. “Come here, Daft Wullie.” One of the Feegles who looked very much like that morning’s egg thief came and stood by Rob Anybody, and they both bent over slightly. “If you’d care to step on us, mistress,” said Rob Anybody.

Before Tiffany could open her mouth, the toad said out of the corner of its mouth, and being a toad that means quite a lot of corner, “One Feegle can lift a grown man. You couldn’t squash one if you tried.”

“I don’t want to try!”

Tiffany very cautiously raised a big boot. Daft Wullie ran underneath it, and she felt the boot being pushed upward. She might as well have trodden on a brick.

“Now t’other wee bootie,” said Rob Anybody.

“I’ll fall over!”

“Nae, we’re good at this. . . .”

And then Tiffany was standing up on two pictsies. She felt them moving backward and forward underneath her, keeping her balanced. She felt quite secure, though. It was just like wearing really thick soles.

“Let’s gae,” said Rob Anybody, down below. “An’ don’t worry about yon pussycat scraffin’ the wee burdies. Some of the lads is stayin’ behind to mind things!”

Ratbag crept along a branch. He wasn’t a cat who was good at changing the ways he thought. But he was good at finding nests. He’d heard the cheeping from the other end of the garden, and even from the bottom of the tree he’d been able to see three little yellow beaks in the nest. Now he advanced, drooling. Nearly there . . .

Three Nac Mac Feegle pulled off their straw beaks and grinned happily at him.

“Hello, Mister Pussycat,” said one of them. “Ye dinna learn, do ye? Cheep!”

CHAPTER 5

The Green Sea

Tiffany flew a few inches above the ground, standing still. Wind rushed around her as the Feegles sped out of the farmyard’s top gate and onto the turf of the downs. . . .

This is the girl, flying. At the moment there’s a toad on her head, holding on to her hair.

Pull back, and here is the long green whaleback of the downs. Now she’s a pale-blue dot against the endless grass, mowed by the sheep to the height of a carpet. But the green sea isn’t unbroken. Here and there humans have been.

Last year Tiffany had spent three carrots and an apple on half an hour of geology, although she’d been refunded a carrot after explaining to the teacher that ‘Geology’ shouldn’t be spelled on his sign as “G olly G.” He said that the chalk had been formed underwater millions of years before from tiny seashells.

That made sense to Tiffany. Sometimes you found little fossils in the chalk. But the teacher didn’t know much about the flint. You found flints, harder than steel, in chalk, the softest of rocks. Sometimes the shepherds chipped the flints, one flint against another, into knives. Not even the best steel knives could take an edge as sharp as flint.

And men in what was called on the Chalk “the olden days” had dug pits for it. They were still there, deep holes in the rolling green, filled with thickets of thorn and brambles.

Huge, knobbly flints still turned up in the village gardens. Sometimes they were larger than a man’s head. They often looked like heads, too. They were so melted and twisted and curved that you could look at a flint and see almost anything—a face, a strange animal, a sea monster. Sometimes the more interesting ones would be put on garden walls, for show.

The old people called those calkins, which meant “chalk children.” They’d always seemed . . . odd to Tiffany, as if the stone was striving to become alive. Some flints looked like bits of meat, or bones, or something off a butcher’s slab. In the dark, under the sea, it looked as though the chalk had been trying to make the shapes of living creatures.

There weren’t just the chalk pits. Men had been everywhere on the Chalk. There were stone circles, half fallen down, and burial mounds like green pimples where, it was said, chieftains of the olden days had been buried with their treasure. No one fancied digging into them to find out.

There were odd carvings in the chalk, too, which the shepherds sometimes weeded when they were out on the downs with the flocks and there was not a lot to do. The chalk was only a few inches under the turf. Hoofprints could last a season, but the carvings had lasted for thousands of years. They were pictures of horses and giants, but the strange thing was that you couldn’t see them properly from anywhere on the ground. They looked as if they’d been made for viewers in the sky.

And then there were the weird places, like Old Man’s Forge, which was just four big flat rocks placed so they made a kind of half-buried hut in the side of a mound. It was only a few feet deep. It didn’t look like anything special, but if you shouted your name into it, it was several seconds before the echo came back.

There were signs of people everywhere. The Chalk had been important.

Tiffany left the shearing sheds way behind. No one was watching. Sheared sheep took no notice at all of a girl moving without her feet touching the ground.

The lowlands dropped away behind her, and now she was properly on the downs. Only the occasional baa of a sheep or scream of a buzzard disturbed a busy silence, made up of bee buzzes and breezes and the sound of a ton of grass growing every minute.

On either side of Tiffany the Nac Mac Feegle ran in a spread-out ragged line, staring grimly ahead.

They passed some of the mounds without stopping, and ran up and down the sides of shallow valleys without a pause. And it was then that Tiffany saw a landmark ahead.

It was a small flock of sheep. There were only a few, freshly sheared, but there were always a handful of sheep at this place. Strays would turn up there, and lambs would find their way to it when they’d lost their mothers.

This was a magic place.

There wasn’t much to see now, just the iron wheels sinking into the turf and the pot-bellied stove with its short chimney. . . .

On the day Granny Aching died, the men had cut and lifted the turf around the hut and stacked it neatly some way away. Then they’d dug a deep hole in the chalk, six feet deep and six feet long, lifting out the chalk in great damp blocks.

Thunder and Lightning had watched them carefully. They didn’t whine or bark. They seemed more interested than upset.

Granny Aching had been wrapped in a woolen blanket, with a tuft of raw wool pinned to it. That was a special shepherd thing. It was there to tell any gods who might get involved that the person being buried there was a shepherd, and spent a lot of time on the hills, and what with lambing and one thing and another couldn’t always take much time out for religion, there being no churches or temples up there, and therefore it was generally hoped that the gods would understand and look kindly on them. Granny Aching, it had to be said, had never been seen to pray to anyone or anything in her life, and it was agreed by all that, even now, she wouldn’t have any time for a god who didn’t understand that lambing came first.

The chalk had been put back over her, and Granny Aching, who always said that the hills were in her bones, now had her bones in the hills.

Then they burned the hut. That wasn’t usual, but her father had said that there wasn’t a shepherd anywhere on the Chalk who’d use it now.

Thunder and Lightning wouldn’t come when he called, and he knew better than to be angry, so they were left sitting quite contentedly by the glowing embers of the hut.

Next day, when the ashes were cold and blowing across the raw chalk, everyone went up onto the downs and with very great care put the turf back, so all that was left to see were the iron wheels on their axles, and the pot-bellied stove.

At which point—so everyone said—the two sheepdogs had looked up, their ears pricking, and had trotted away over the turf and were never seen again.

The pictsies carrying her slowed down gently, and Tiffany flailed her arms as they dropped her onto the grass. The sheep lumbered away slowly, then stopped and turned to watch her.

“Why’re we stopping? Why’re we stopping here? We’ve got to catch her!”

“Got to wait for Hamish, mistress,” said Rob Anybody.

“Why? Who’s Hamish?”

“He might have the knowin’ of where the Quin went with your wee laddie,” said Rob Anybody soothingly. “We canna just rush in, ye ken.”

A big, bearded Feegle raised his hand. “Point ’o order, Big Man. Ye can just rush in. We always just rush in.”

“Aye, Big Yan, point well made. But ye gotta know where ye’re just gonna rush in. Ye canna just rush in anywhere. It looks bad, havin’ to rush oout again straight awa’.”

Tiffany saw that all the Feegles were staring intently upward and paying her no attention at all.

Angry and puzzled, she sat down on one of the rusty wheels and looked at the sky. It was better than looking around. There was Granny Aching’s grave somewhere around here, although you couldn’t find it now, not precisely. The turf had healed.

There were a few little clouds above her and nothing else at all, except the distant circling dots of the buzzards. There were always buzzards over the Chalk.

The shepherds had taken to calling them Granny Aching’s chickens, and some of them called clouds like those up there today “Granny’s little lambs.” And Tiffany knew that even her father called the thunder “Granny Aching cussin’.”

And it was said that some of the shepherds, if wolves were troublesome in the winter, or a prize ewe had got lost, would go to the site of the old hut in the hills and leave an ounce of Jolly Sailor tobacco, just in case. . . .

Tiffany hesitated. Then she shut her eyes. I want that to be true, she whispered to herself. I want to know that other people think she hasn’t really gone too.

She looked under the wide rusted rim of the wheels and shivered. There was a brightly colored little packet there.

She picked it up. It looked quite fresh, so it had probably been there for only a few days. There was the Jolly Sailor on the front, with his big grin and big yellow rain hat and big beard, with big blue waves crashing behind him.

Tiffany had learned about the sea from Granny Aching and the Jolly Sailor wrappings. She’d heard it was big, and roared. There was a tower in the sea, which was a lighthouse that carried a big light on it at night to stop boats from crashing into the rocks. In the pictures the beam of the lighthouse was a brilliant white. She knew about it so well, she’d dreamed about it, and had woken up with the roar of the sea in her ears.

She’d heard one of her uncles say that if you looked at the tobacco label upside down, then part of the hat and the sailor’s ear and a bit of his collar made up a picture of a woman with no clothes on, but Tiffany had never been able to make it out and couldn’t see what the point would be in any case.

She carefully pulled the label off the packet and sniffed at it. It smelled of Granny. She felt her eyes begin to fill with tears. She’d never cried for Granny Aching before, never. She’d cried for dead lambs and cut fingers and for not getting her own way, but never for Granny. It hadn’t seemed right.

And I’m not crying now, she thought, carefully putting the label in her apron pocket. Not for Granny being dead. . . .

It was the smell. Granny Aching smelled of sheep, turpentine, and Jolly Sailor tobacco. The three smells mixed together and become one smell, which was, to Tiffany, the smell of the Chalk. It followed Granny Aching like a cloud, and it meant warmth, and silence, and a space around which the whole world revolved. . . .

A shadow passed overhead. A buzzard was diving down from the sky toward the Nac Mac Feegle.

She leaped up and waved her arms. “Run away! Duck! It’ll kill you!”

They turned and looked at her for a moment as though she’d gone mad.

“Dinna fash yersel’, mistress,” said Rob Anybody.

The bird curved up at the bottom of its dive, and as it climbed again a dot dropped from it. As it fell, it seemed to grow two wings and started to spin like a sycamore leaf, which slowed down the fall somewhat.

It was a pictsie, still spinning madly when he hit the turf a few feet away, where he fell over. He got up, swearing loudly, and fell over again. The swearing continued.

“A good landin’, Hamish,” said Rob Anybody. “The spinnin’ certainly slows ye doon. Ye didna drill right into the ground this time hardly at a’.”

Hamish got up more slowly this time and managed to stay upright. He had a pair of goggles over his eyes.

“I dinna think I can tak’ much more o’ this,” he said, trying to untie a couple of thin bits of wood from his arms. “I feel like a fairy wi’ the wings on.”

“How can you survive that?” Tiffany asked.

The very small pilot tried to look her up and down, but only managed to look her up and farther up.

“Who’s the wee bigjob who knows sich a lot aboot aviation?” he said.

Rob Anybody coughed. “She’s the hag, Hamish. Spawn o’ Granny Aching.”

Hamish’s expression changed to a look of terror. “I didna mean to speak out o’ turn, mistress,” he said, backing away. “O’ course, a hag’d have the knowing of anythin’. But ’tis nae as bad as it looks, mistress. I allus make sure I lands on my heid.”

“Aye, we’re very resilient in the heid department,” said Rob Anybody.

“Have you seen a woman with a small boy?” Tiffany demanded. She hadn’t much liked being called “spawn.”

Hamish gave Rob Anybody a panicky look, and Rob nodded.

“Aye, I did,” said Hamish. “Onna black horse. Riding up from the lowlan’s goin’ hell for—”

“We dinna use bad language in front o’ a hag!” Rob Anybody thundered.

“Begging your pardon, mistress. She was ridin’ heck for leather,” said Hamish, looking more sheepish than the sheep. “But she kenned I was spyin’ her and called up a mist. She’s gone to the other side, but I dinna ken where.”

“’Tis a perilous place, the other side,” said Rob Anybody slowly. “Evil things there. A cold place. Not a place to tak’ a wee babbie.”

It was hot on the downs, but Tiffany felt a chill. However bad it is, she thought, I’m going to have to go there. I know it. I don’t have a choice.

“The other side?” she said.

“Aye. The magic world,” said Rob Anybody. “There’s . . . bad things there.”

“Monsters?” said Tiffany.

“As bad as ye can think of,” said Rob Anybody. “Exactly as bad as ye can think of.”

Tiffany swallowed hard and closed her eyes. “Worse than Jenny? Worse than the headless horseman?” she said.

“Oh, aye. They were wee pussycats compared to the scunners over there. ’Tis an ill-fared country that’s come callin’, mistress. ’Tis a land where dreams come true. That’s the Quin’s world.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound too—” Tiffany began. Then she remembered some of the dreams she’d had, the ones where you were so glad to wake up. . . . “We’re not talking about nice dreams, are we?” she said.

Rob Anybody shook his head. “Nay, mistress. The other kind.”

And me with my frying pan and Diseases of the Sheep, thought Tiffany. And she had a mental picture of Wentworth among horrible monsters. They probably wouldn’t have any sweeties at all.

She sighed. “All right,” she said. “How do I get there?”

“Ye dinna ken the way?” said Rob Anybody.

It wasn’t what she’d been expecting. What she had been expecting was more like “Ach, ye canna do that, a wee lass like you, oh deary us no!” She wasn’t so much expecting that as hoping it, in fact. But, instead, they were acting as if it was a perfectly reasonable idea. . . .

“No!” she said. “I don’t dinna any ken at all! I haven’t done this before! Please help me!”

“That’s true, Rob,” said a Feegle. “She’s new to the haggin’. Tak’ her to the kelda.”

“Not e’en Granny Aching ever went to see the kelda in her ain cave!” snapped Rob Anybody. “It’s no a—”

“Quiet!” hissed Tiffany. “Can’t you hear that?”

The Feegles looked around.

“Hear what?” said Hamish.

“It’s a susurration!”

The turf was trembling. The sky looked as though Tiffany was inside a diamond. And there was the smell of snow.

Hamish pulled a pipe out of his waistcoat and blew it. Tiffany couldn’t hear anything, but there was a scream from high above.

“I’ll let ye know what’s happenin’!” cried the pictsie, and started to run across the turf. As he ran, he raised his arms over his head.

He was moving fast by then, but the buzzard sped down and across the turf even faster and plucked him neatly into the air. As it beat at the air to rise again, Tiffany saw Hamish climbing up through the feathers.

The other Feegles had formed a circle around Tiffany, and this time they’d drawn their swords.

“Whut’s the plan, Rob?” said one of them.

“Okay, lads, this is what we’ll do. As soon as we see somethin’, we’ll attack it. Right?”

This caused a cheer.

“Ach, ’tis a good plan,” said Daft Wullie.

Snow formed on the ground. It didn’t fall, it . . . did the opposite of melting, rising up fast until the Nac Mac Feegle were waist deep, and then buried up to their necks. Some of the smaller ones began to disappear, and there was muffled cursing from under the snow.

And then the dogs appeared, lumbering toward Tiffany with a nasty purpose. They were big, black, and heavily built, with orange eyebrows, and she could hear the growling from where she stood.

She plunged her hand into her apron pocket and pulled out the toad. It blinked in the sharp light.

“Wazzup?”

Tiffany turned him around to face the things. “What are these?” she said.

“Oh, doak! Grimhounds! Bad! Eyes of fire and teeth of razor blades!”

“What should I do about them?”

“Not be here?”

“Thank you! You’ve been very helpful!” Tiffany dropped him back in her pocket and gripped the frying pan.

It wasn’t going to be good enough, she knew that. The black dogs were big, and their eyes were flames, and when they opened their mouths to snarl, she could see the light glint on steel. She’d never been afraid of dogs, but these dogs weren’t from anywhere outside of a nightmare.

There were three of them, but they circled so that no matter how she turned, she could only see two at once. She knew it would be the one behind her that attacked first.

“Tell me something more about them!” she said, turning the other way to the circle so that she could watch all three.

“Said to haunt graveyards!” said a voice from her apron.

“Why is there snow on the ground?”

“This has become the Queen’s land. It’s always winter there! When she puts out her power, it comes here too!”

But Tiffany could see green some way off, beyond the circle of snow.

Think, think . . .

The Queen’s land. A magical place where there really were monsters. Anything you could dream of in nightmares. Dogs with eyes of flame and teeth of razors, yes. You didn’t get them in the real world, they wouldn’t work. . . .

They were drooling now, red tongues hanging out, enjoying her fear. And part of Tiffany thought: It’s amazing their teeth don’t rust. . . .

. . . and took charge of her legs. She dived between two of the dogs and ran toward the distant green.

There was a growl of triumph behind her, and she heard the crunch of paws on snow.

The green didn’t seem to be getting nearer.

She heard yells from the pictsies and a snarl that turned into a wail, but there was something behind her as she jumped over the last of the snow and rolled on the warm turf.

A grimhound leaped after her. She jerked herself away as it snapped, but it was already in trouble.

No eyes of fire, no teeth of razors. Not here, not in the real world, on the home turf. It was blind here and blood was already dripping from its mouth. You shouldn’t jump with a mouthful of razors. . . .

Tiffany almost felt sorry for it as it whined in pain, but the snow was creeping toward her and she hit the dog with the frying pan. It went down heavily and lay still.

There was a fight going on back in the snow, which was flying up like a mist, but she could see two dark shapes in the middle, spinning around and snapping.

She banged on the pan and shouted, and a grimhound sprang from the whirling snow and landed in front of her, a Feegle hanging from each ear.

The snow flowed toward Tiffany. She backed away, watching the advancing, snarling dog. She held the pan like a bat.

“Come on,” she whispered. “Jump!”

The eyes flamed at her, and then the dog looked down at the snow.

And vanished. The snow sank into the ground. The light changed.

Tiffany and the Wee Free Men were alone on the downs. Feegles were picking themselves up around her.

“Are you fine, mistress?” said Rob Anybody.

“Yes!” said Tiffany. “It’s easy! If you get them off the snow, they’re just dogs!”

“We’d best move on. We lost some of the lads.”

The excitement drained away.

“You mean they’re dead?” Tiffany whispered. The sun was shining brightly again, the skylarks were back . . . and people were dead.

“Ach, no,” said Rob. “We’re the one’s who’s deid. Did ye not know that?”

CHAPTER 6

The Shepherdess

“You’re dead?” said Tiffany. She looked around. Feegles were picking themselves up and grumbling, but no one was going “Waily waily waily.” And Rob Anybody wasn’t making any sense at all.

“Well, if you think you’re dead, then what are they?” she went on, pointing to a couple of small bodies.

“Oh, they’ve gone back to the land o’ the livin’,” said Rob Anybody cheerfully. “It’s nae as good as this one, but they’ll bide fine and come back before too long. No sense in grievin’.”

The Achings were not very religious, but Tiffany thought she knew how things ought to go, and they started out with the idea that you were alive and not dead yet.

“But you are alive!” she said.

“Ach, no, mistress,” said Rob, helping another pictsie to his feet. “We wuz alive. And we wuz good boys back in the land o’ the livin’, and so when we died there, we wuz borned into this place.”

“You mean . . . you think . . . that you sort of died somewhere else and then came here?” said Tiffany. “You mean this is like . . . heaven?”

“Aye! Just as advertised!” said Rob Anybody. “Lovely sunshine, good huntin’, nice pretty flowers, and wee burdies goin’ cheep.”

“Aye, and then there’s the fightin’,” said another Feegle. And then they all joined in.

“An’ the stealin’!”

“An’ the drinkin’ and fightin’!”

“An’ the kebabs!” said Daft Wullie.

“But there’s bad things here!” said Tiffany. “There’s monsters!”

“Aye,” said Rob, beaming happily. “Grand, isn’t it? Everythin’ you could ever ask for, even things to fight!”

“But we live here!” said Tiffany.

“Ach, well, mebbe all you humans wuz good in the Last World, too,” said Rob Anybody generously. “I’ll just round up the lads, mistress.”

Tiffany reached into her apron and pulled out the toad as Rob walked away.

“Oh. We survived,” it said. “Amazing. There are very definite grounds for an action against the owner of those dogs, by the way.”

“What?” said Tiffany, frowning. “What are you talking about?”

“I . . . I . . . don’t know,” said the toad. “The thought just popped into my head. Perhaps I knew something about dogs when I was human?”

“Listen, the Feegle think they’re in heaven! They think they died and came here!”

“And?” said the toad.

“Well, that can’t be right! You’re supposed to be alive here and then die and end up in some heaven somewhere else!”

“Well, that’s just saying the same thing in a different way, isn’t it? Anyway, lots of warrior tribes think that when they die, they go to a heavenly land somewhere,” said the toad. “You know, where they can drink and fight and feast forever? So maybe this is theirs.”

“But this is a real place!”

“So? It’s what they believe. Besides, they’re only small. Maybe the universe is a bit crowded and they have to put heavens anywhere there’s room? I’m a toad, so you’ll appreciate that I’m having to guess a lot here. Maybe they’re just wrong. Maybe you’re just wrong. Maybe I’m just wrong.”

A small foot kicked Tiffany on the boot.

“We’d best be moving on, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. He had a dead Feegle over his shoulder. Quite a few of the others were carrying bodies, too.

“Er . . . are you going to bury them?” said Tiffany.

“Aye, they dinna need these ol’ bodies noo, an’ it’s no’ tidy to leave ’em lyin’ aboot,” said Rob Anybody. “Besides, if the bigjobs find little wee skulls and bones aroound, they’ll start to wonder, and we don’t want anyone pokin’ aboot. Savin’ your presence, mistress,” he added.

“No, that’s very, er . . . practical thinking,” said Tiffany, giving up.

The Feegle pointed to a distant mound with a thicket of thorn trees growing on it. A lot of the mounds had thickets on them. The trees took advantage of the deeper soil. It was said to be unlucky to cut them down.

“It’s nae very far noo,” he said.

“You live in one of the mounds?” Tiffany asked. “I thought they were, you know, the graves of ancient chieftains?”

“Ach, aye, there’s some ol’ dead kingie in the chamber next door, but he’s nae trouble,” said Rob. “Dinna fret, there’s nae skelingtons or any such in oour bit. It’s quite roomy, we’ve done it up a treat.”

Tiffany looked up at the endless blue sky over the endlessly green downland. It was all so peaceful again, a world away from headless men and big savage dogs.

What if I hadn’t taken Wentworth down to the river? she thought. What would I be doing now? Getting on with the cheese, I suppose. . . .

I never knew about all this. I never knew I lived in heaven, even if it’s only heaven to a clan of little blue men. I didn’t know about people who flew on buzzards.

I never killed monsters before.

“Where do they come from?” she said. “What’s the name of the place the monsters come from?”

“Ach, ye prob’ly ken the place well,” said Rob Anybody. As they grew nearer to the mound, Tiffany thought she could smell smoke in the air.

“Do I?” she said.

“Aye. But it’s no’ a name I’ll say in open air. It’s a name to be whispered in a safe place. I’ll no’ say it under this sky.”

It was too big to be a rabbit hole and badgers didn’t live up here, but the entrance to the mound was tucked among the thorn roots, and no one would have thought it was anything but the home of some kind of animal.

Tiffany was slim, but even so she had to take off her apron and crawl on her stomach under the thorns to reach it, dragging the apron behind her. And it still needed several Feegles to push her through.

At least it didn’t smell bad and, once you were through the hole, it opened up a lot. Really, the entrance was just a disguise. Underneath, the space was the size of quite a large room, open in the center but with Feegle-sized galleries around the walls from floor to ceiling. They were crowded with pictsies of all sizes, washing clothes, arguing, sewing and, here and there, fighting, and doing everything as loudly as possible. Some had hair and beards tinged with white. Much younger ones, only a few inches tall, were running around with no clothes on, and yelling at one another at the tops of their little voices. After a couple of years of helping to bring up Wentworth, Tiffany knew what that was all about.

There were no girls, though. No Wee Free Women.

No . . . there was one.

The squabbling, bustling crowds parted to let her through. She came up to Tiffany’s ankle. She was prettier than the male Feegles, although the world was full of things prettier than, say, Daft Wullie. But, like them, she had red hair and an expression of determination.

She curtsied, then said, “Are ye the bigjob hag, mistress?”

Tiffany looked around. She was the only person in the cavern who was over seven inches tall.

“Er, yes,” she said. “Er . . . more or less. Yes.”

“I am Fion. The kelda says to tell you the wee boy will come to nae harm yet.”

“She’s found him?” said Tiffany quickly. “Where is he?”

“Nae, nae, but the kelda knows the way of the Quin. She didna want you to fash yersel’ on that score.”

“But she stole him!”

“Aye. ’Tis comp-li-cate-ed. Rest a wee while. The kelda will see you presently. She is . . . not strong now.”

Fion turned around with a swirl of skirts, strode back across the chalk floor as if she was a queen herself, and disappeared behind a large round stone that leaned against the far wall.

Tiffany, without looking down, carefully lifted the toad out of her pocket and held it close to her lips. “Am I fashing myself?” she whispered.

“No, not really,” said the toad.

“You would tell me if I was, wouldn’t you?” said Tiffany urgently. “It’d be terrible if everyone could see I was fashing and I didn’t know.”

“You haven’t a clue what it means, have you . . . ?” said the toad.

“Not exactly, no.”

“She just doesn’t want you to get upset, that’s all.”

“Yes, I thought it was probably something like that,” lied Tiffany. “Can you sit on my shoulder? I think I might need some help here.”

The ranks of the Nac Mac Feegle were watching her with interest, but at the moment it appeared that she had nothing to do but hurry up and wait. She sat down carefully, drumming her fingers on her knees.

“Whut d’ye think of the wee place, eh?” said a voice from below. “It’s great, yeah?”

She looked down. Rob Anybody Feegle and a few of the pictsies she’d already met were lurking there, watching her nervously.

“Very . . . cozy,” said Tiffany, because that was better than saying “how sooty” or “how delightfully noisy.” She added: “Do you cook for all of you on that little fire?”

The big space in the center held a small fire, under a hole in the roof that let the smoke get lost in the bushes above and in return brought in a little extra light.

“Aye, mistress,” said Rob Anybody.

“The small stuff, bunnies an’ that,” added Daft Wullie. “The big stuff we roasts in the chalk pi— mmph mmph . . .”

“Sorry, what was that?” said Tiffany.

“What?” said Rob Anybody innocently, his hand firmly over the mouth of the struggling Wullie.

“What was Wullie saying about roasting ‘big stuff’?” Tiffany demanded. “You roast ‘big stuff’ in the chalk pit? Is this the kind of big stuff that goes ‘baa’? Because that’s the only big stuff you’ll find in these hills!”

She knelt down on the grimy floor and brought her face to within an inch of Rob Anybody’s face, which was grinning madly and sweating.

“Is it?”

“Ach . . . ah . . . weel . . . in a manner o’ speakin’ . . .”

“It is?”

“’Tis not thine, mistress!” shrieked Rob Anybody. “We ne’er took an Aching ship wi’out the leave o’ Granny!”

“Granny Aching let you have sheep?”

“Aye, she did, did, did that! As p-payment!”

“Payment? For what?”

“No Aching ship ever got caught by wolves!” Rob Anybody gabbled. “No foxes took an Aching lamb, right? Nor no lamb e’er had its een pecked out by corbies, not wi’ Hamish up in the sky!”

Tiffany looked sideways at the toad.

“Crows,” said the toad. “They sometimes peck out the eyes of—”

“Yes, yes, I know what they do,” said Tiffany. She calmed down a little. “Oh. I see. You kept away the crows and wolves and foxes for Granny, yes?”

“Aye, mistress! No’ just kept ’em awa’, neither!” said Rob Anybody triumphantly. “There’s good eatin’ on a wolf.”

“Aye, they kebabs up a treat, but they’re no’ as good as a ship, tho . . . mmph mmph . . .” Wullie managed, before a hand was clamped over his mouth again.

“From a hag ye only tak’ what ye’s given,” said Rob Anybody, holding his struggling brother firmly. “Since she’s gone, though, weel . . . we tak’ the odd old ewe that would’ve deid anywa’, but ne’er one wi’ the Aching mark, on my honor.”

“On your honor as a drunken rowdy thief?” said Tiffany.

Rob Anybody beamed. “Aye!” he said. “An’ I got a lot of good big reputation to protect there! That’s the truth o’ it, mistress. We keeps an eye on the ships of the hills, in mem’ry o’ Granny Aching, an’ in return we tak’ what is hardly worth a thing.”

“And the baccy too, o’ course . . . mmph mmph . . .” and then, once again, Daft Wullie was struggling to breathe.

Tiffany took a deep breath, not a wise move in a Feegle colony. Rob Anybody grinned nervously.

“You take the tobacco? The tobacco the shepherds leave for . . . my grandmother?”

“Ach, I forgot about that,” squeaked Rob Anybody. “But we allus wait a few days in case she comes to collect it hersel’. Ye can ne’er tell wi a hag, after all. And we do mind the ships, mistress. And she wouldna grudge us, mistress! Many’s a night she’d share a pipe wi’ the kelda outside o’ her house on the wheelies! She’d not be one to let good baccy get all rainy! Please, mistress!”

Tiffany felt intensely angry, and what made it worse was that she was angry with herself.

“When we find lost lambs and suchlike, we drives ’em here for when the shepherds come lookin’,” Rob Anybody added anxiously.

What did I think happened? Tiffany thought. Did I think she’d come back for a packet of Jolly Sailor? Did I think she was still somehow walking the hills, looking after the sheep? Did I think she . . . was still here, watching for lost lambs?

Yes! I want that to be true. I don’t want to think she’s just . . . gone. Someone like Granny Aching can’t just . . . not be there anymore. And I want her back so much, because she didn’t know how to talk to me and I was too scared to talk to her, and so we never talked and we turned silence into something to share.

I know nothing about her. Just some books, and some stories she tried to tell me, and things I didn’t understand, and I remember big red soft hands and that smell. I never knew who she really was. I mean, she must have been nine too, once. She was Sarah Grizzel. She got married and had children, two of them in the shepherding hut. She must’ve done all sorts of things I don’t know about.

And into Tiffany’s mind, as it always did sooner or later, came the figure of the blue-and-white china shepherdess, swirling in red mists of shame. . . .

Tiffany’s father took her to the fair at the town of Yelp one day not long before her seventh birthday, when the farm had some rams to sell. That was a ten-mile journey, the farthest she’d ever been. It was off the Chalk. Everything looked different. There were far more fenced fields and lots of cows and the buildings had tiled roofs instead of thatch. She considered that this was foreign travel.

Granny Aching had never been there, said her father on the way. She hated leaving the Chalk, he said. She said it made her dizzy.

It was a great day. Tiffany was sick on cotton candy, had her fortune told by a little old lady who said that many, many men would want to marry her, and won the shepherdess, which was made of china painted white and blue.

She was the star prize on the hoop-la stall, but Tiffany’s father had said that it was all cheating, because the base was so wide that not one throw in a million could ever drop the hoop right over it.

She’d thrown the ring any old how, and it had been the one in a million. The stall holder hadn’t been very happy about it landing over the shepherdess rather than the gimcrack rubbish in the rest of the stall. He handed it over when her father spoke sharply to him, though, and she’d hugged it all the way home on the cart, while the stars came out.

Next morning she’d proudly presented it to Granny Aching. The old woman had taken it very carefully in her wrinkled hands and stared at it for some time.

Tiffany was sure, now, that it had been a cruel thing to do.

Granny Aching had probably never heard of shepherdesses. People who cared for sheep on the Chalk were all called shepherds, and that was all there was to it. And this beautiful creature was as much unlike Granny Aching as anything could be.

The china shepherdess had an old-fashioned long dress, with the bulgy bits at the side that made it look as though she had saddlebags in her knickers. There were blue ribbons all over the dress, and all over the rather showy straw bonnet, and on the shepherd’s crook, which was a lot more curly than any crook Tiffany had ever seen.

There were even blue bows on the dainty foot poking out from the frilly hem of her dress.

This wasn’t a shepherdess who’d ever worn big old boots stuffed with wool and tramped the hills in the howling wind with the sleet being driven along like nails. She’d never tried in that dress to pull out a ram who’d got his horns tangled in a thorn patch. This wasn’t a shepherdess who’d kept up with the champion shearer for seven hours, sheep for sheep, until the air was hazy with grease and wool and blue with cussing, and the champion gave up because he couldn’t cuss sheep as well as Granny Aching. No self-respecting sheepdog would ever “come by” or “walk up” for a simpering girl with saddlebags in her pants. It was a lovely thing but it was a joke of a shepherdess, made by someone who’d probably never seen a sheep up close.

What had Granny Aching thought about it? Tiffany couldn’t guess. She’d seemed happy, because it’s the job of grandmothers to be happy when grandchildren give them things. She’d put it up on her shelf and then taken Tiffany on her knee and called her “my little jiggit” in a nervous sort of way, which she did when she was trying to be grandmotherly.

Sometimes, in the rare times Granny was down at the farm, Tiffany would see her take down the statue and stare at it. But if she saw Tiffany watching, she’d put it back quickly and pretend she’d meant to pick up the sheep book.

Perhaps, Tiffany thought wretchedly, the old lady had seen it as a sort of insult. Perhaps she thought she was being told that this was what a shepherdess should look like. She shouldn’t be an old lady in a muddy dress and big boots, with an old sack around her shoulders to keep the rain off. A shepherdess should sparkle like a starry night. Tiffany hadn’t meant to, she’d never meant to, but perhaps she had been telling Granny that she wasn’t . . . right.

And then a few months after that Granny had died, and in the years since then everything had gone wrong. Wentworth had been born, and then the Baron’s son had vanished, and then there had been that bad winter when Mrs. Snapperly died in the snow.

Tiffany kept worrying about the statue. She couldn’t talk about it. Everyone else was busy, or not interested. Everyone was edgy. They’d have said that worrying about a silly statue was . . . silly.

Several times she nearly smashed the shepherdess, but she didn’t because people would notice.

She wouldn’t have given something as wrong as that to Granny Aching now, of course. She’d grown up.

She remembered that the old lady would smile oddly, sometimes, when she looked at the statue. If only she’d said something. But Granny liked silence.

And now it turned out that she made friends with a lot of little blue men, who walked the hills looking after the sheep, because they liked her, too. Tiffany blinked.

It made a kind of sense. In memory of Granny Aching, the men left the tobacco. And in memory of Granny Aching, the Nac Mac Feegle minded the sheep. It all worked, even if it wasn’t magic. But it took Granny away.

“Daft Wullie?” she said, staring hard at the struggling pictsie and trying not to cry.

“Mmph?”

“Is it true what Rob Anybody told me?”

“Mmph!” Daft Wullie’s eyebrows went up and down furiously.

“Mr. Feegle, you can please take your hand away from his mouth,” said Tiffany. Daft Wullie was released. Rob Anybody had looked worried, but Daft Wullie was terrified. He dragged his hat off and stood holding it in his hands, as if it was some kind of shield.

“Is all that true, Daft Wullie?” said Tiffany.

“Oh waily waily—”

“Just a simple yes or—a simple aye or nay, please.”

“Aye! It is!” blurted out Daft Wullie. “Oh waily waily—”

“Yes, thank you,” said Tiffany, sniffing and trying to blink the tears away. “All right. I understand.”

The Feegles eyed her cautiously.

“Ye’re nae gonna get nasty aboot it?” said Rob Anybody.

“No. It all . . . works.”

She heard it echo around the cavern, the sound of hundreds of little men sighing with relief.

“She didna turn me intae a pismire!” said Daft Wullie, grinning happily at the rest of the pictsies. “Hey, lads, I talked wi’ the hag and she didna e’en look at me crosswise! She smiled at me!” He beamed at Tiffany and went on: “An’ d’ye ken, mistress, that if’n you hold the baccy label upside-doon, then part o’ the sailor’s bonnet and his ear became a lady wi’ nae mmph mmph . . .”

“Ach, there I goes again, accidentally nearly throttlin’ ye,” said Rob Anybody, his hand clamping over Wullie’s mouth.

Tiffany opened her mouth, but stopped when her ears tickled strangely.

In the roof of the cave, several bats woke up and hastily flew out of the smoke hole.

Some of the Feegles were busy on the far side of the chamber. What Tiffany had thought was a strange round stone was being rolled aside, revealing a large hole.

Now her ears squelched and felt as though all the wax was running out. The Feegles were forming up in two rows, leading to the hole.

Tiffany prodded the toad. “Do I want to know what a pismire is?” she whispered.

“It’s an ant,” said the toad.

“Oh? I’m . . . slightly surprised. And this sort of high-pitched noise?”

“I’m a toad. We’re not good at ears. But it’s probably him over there.”

There was a Feegle walking out of the hole from which came, now that Tiffany’s eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, a faint golden light.

The newcomer’s hair was white instead of red, and while he was tall for a pictsie, he was as skinny as a twig. He was holding some sort of fat skin bag, bristling with pipes.

“Now there’s a sight I don’t reckon many humans have seen and lived,” said the toad. “He’s playing the mousepipes!”

“They make my ears tingle!” Tiffany tried to ignore the two little ears still on the bag of pipes.

“High-pitched, see?” said the toad. “Of course, the pictsies hear sounds differently than humans do. He’s probably their battle poet, too.”

“You mean he makes up heroic songs about famous battles?”

“No, no. He recites poems that frighten the enemy. Remember how important words are to the Nac Mac Feegle? Well, when a well-trained gonnagle starts to recite, the enemy’s ears explode. Ah, it looks as though they’re ready for you.”

In fact Rob Anybody was tapping politely on Tiffany’s toecap. “The kelda will see you now, mistress,” he said.

The piper had stopped playing and was standing respectfully beside the hole. Tiffany felt hundreds of bright little eyes watching her.

“Special Sheep Liniment,” whispered the toad.

“Pardon?”

“Take it in with us,” the toad said insistently. “It’d be a good gift!”

The pictsies watched her carefully as she lay down again and crawled through the hole behind the stone, the toad hanging on tightly. As she got closer, she realized that what she’d thought was a stone was an old round shield, green-blue and corroded with age. The hole it had covered was indeed wide enough for her to go through, but she had to leave her legs outside because it was impossible to get all of her into the room beyond. One reason was the bed, small though it was, which held the kelda. The other reason was that what the room was mostly full of, piled up around the walls and spilling across the floor, was gold.

CHAPTER 7

First Sight and Second Thoughts

Glint, glisten, glitter, gleam . . .

Tiffany thought a lot about words, in the long hours of churning butter. Onomatopoeic, she’d discovered in the dictionary, meant words that sounded like the noise of the thing they were describing, like cuckoo. But she thought there should be a word meaning a word that sounds like the noise a thing would make if that thing made a noise even though, actually, it doesn’t, but would if it did.

Glint, for example. If light made a noise as it reflected off a distant window, it’d go glint! And the light of tinsel, all those little glints chiming together, would make a noise like glitterglitter. Gleam was a clean, smooth noise from a surface that intended to shine all day. And glisten was the soft, almost greasy sound of something rich and oily.

The little cave contained all of these at once. There was only one candle, which smelled of sheep fat, but gold plates and cups gleamed, glistened, glinted, and glittered the light back and forth until the one little flame filled the air with a light that even smelled expensive.

The gold surrounded the bed of the kelda, who was sitting up against a pile of pillows. She was much, much fatter than the male pictsies; she looked as if she’d been made of round balls of slightly squashy dough, and was the color of chestnuts.

Her eyes were closed as Tiffany slid in, but they flicked open the moment she’d stopped pulling herself forward. They were the sharpest eyes she’d ever seen, much sharper even than Miss Tick’s.

“Soo . . . you’ll be Sarah Aching’s wee girl?” said the kelda.

“Yes. I mean, aye,” said Tiffany. It wasn’t very comfortable lying on her stomach. “And you’re the kelda?”

“Aye. I mean, yes,” said the kelda, and the round face became a mass of lines as the kelda smiled. “What was your name, now?”

“Tiffany, er, kelda.” Fion had turned up from some other part of the cave and was sitting down on a stool by the bed, watching Tiffany intently with a disapproving expression.

“A good name. In our tongue you’d be Tir-far-thóinn, Land Under Wave,” said the kelda. It sounded like “Tiffan.”

“I don’t think anyone meant to name—”

“Ach, what people mean to do and what is done are two different things,” said the kelda. Her little eyes shone. “Your wee brother is . . . safe, child. Ye could say he’s safer where he is noo than he has ever been. No mortal ills can touch him. The Quin wouldna harm a hair o’ his heid. And there’s the evil o’ it. Help me up here, girl.”

Fion leaped up immediately and helped the kelda struggle up higher among her cushions.

“Where wuz I?” the kelda continued. “Ah, the wee laddie. Aye, ye could say he bides well where he is, in the Quin’s own country. But I daresay there’s a mother grievin’?”

“And our father, too,” said Tiffany.

“An’ his wee sister?” said the kelda.

Tiffany felt the words yes, of course trot automatically onto her tongue. She also knew that it would be very stupid to let them go any further. The little old woman’s dark eyes were seeing right into her head.

“Aye, you’re a born hag, right enough,” said the kelda, holding her gaze. “Ye got that little bitty bit inside o’ you that holds on, right? The bitty bit that watches the rest o’ ye. ’Tis the First Sight and Second Thoughts ye have, and ’tis a wee gift an’ a big curse to ye. You see and hear what others canna, the world opens up its secrets to ye, but ye’re always like the person at the party with the wee drink in the corner who canna join in. There’s a little bitty bit inside ye that willna melt and flow. Ye’re Sarah Aching’s line, right enough. The lads fetched the right one.”

Tiffany didn’t know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything. The kelda watched her, eyes twinkling, until Tiffany felt awkward.

“Why would the Queen take my brother?” she asked eventually. “And why is she after me?”

“Ye think she is?”

“Well, yes, actually! I mean, Jenny might have been a coincidence, but the horseman? And the grimhounds? And taking Wentworth?”

“She’s bending her mind to ye,” said the kelda. “When she does, something of her world passes into this one. Mebbe she just wants to test you.”

“Test me?”

“To see how good you are. Ye’re the hag noo, the witch who guards the edges and the gateways. So wuz yer granny, although she wouldna ever call hersel’ one. And so wuz I until noo, and I’ll pass the duty to ye. She’ll ha’ to get past ye, if she wants this land. Ye have the First Sight and the Second Thoughts, just like yer granny. That’s rare in a bigjob.”

“Don’t you mean second sight?” Tiffany asked. “Like people who can see ghosts and stuff?”

“Ach, no. That’s typical bigjob thinking. First Sight is when you can see what’s really there, not what your heid tells you ought to be there. Ye saw Jenny, ye saw the horseman, ye saw them as real thingies. Second sight is dull sight, it’s seeing only what you expect to see. Most bigjobs ha’ that. Listen to me, because I’m fadin’ noo and there’s a lot you dinna ken. Ye think this is the whole world? That is a good thought for sheep and mortals who dinna open their eyes. Because in truth there are more worlds than stars in the sky. Understand? They are everywhere, big and small, close as your skin. They are everywhere. Some ye can see an’ some ye canna, but there are doors, Tiffan. They might be a hill or a tree or a stone or a turn in the road, or they might e’en be a thought in yer heid, but they are there, all aroound ye. You’ll have to learn to see ’em, because you walk among them and dinna know it. And some of them . . . is poisonous.”

The kelda stared at Tiffany for a moment and then continued: “Ye asked why the Quin should take your boy. The Quin likes children. She has none o’ her own. She dotes on them. She’ll give the wee boy everything he wants, too. Only what he wants.”

“He only wants sweets!” said Tiffany.

“Is that so? An’ did ye gi’ them to him?” asked the kelda, as if she was looking into Tiffany’s mind. “But what he needs is love an’ care an’ teachin’ an’ people sayin’ no to him sometimes an’ things o’ that nature. He needs to be growed up strong. He willna get that fra’ the Quin. He willna grow up. He’ll get sweeties. Forever.”

Tiffany wished the kelda would stop looking at her like that.

“But I see he has a sister willin’ to take any pains to bring him back,” said the little old woman, taking her eyes away from Tiffany. “What a lucky wee boy he is, to be so fortunate. Ye ken how to be strong, do ye?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Good. D’ye ken how to be weak? Can ye bow to the gale, can ye bend to the storm?” The kelda smiled again. “Nay, ye needna answer that. The wee burdie always has tae leap from the nest to see if it can fly. Anyway, ye have the feel o’ Sarah Aching about ye, and no word e’en o’ mine could turn her once she had set her mind to something. Ye’re no’ a woman yet, and that’s no’ bad thing, because where ye’ll be goin’ is easy for children, hard for adults.”

“The world of the Queen?” ventured Tiffany, trying to keep up.

“Aye. I can feel it noo, lyin’ over this one like a fog, as far awa’ as the other side o’ a mirror. I’m weakenin’, Tiffan. I canna defend this place. So here is my bargain, child. I’ll point ye toward the Quin an’, in return, ye’ll tak’ over as kelda.”

That surprised Fion as much as Tiffany. Her head shot up sharply and her mouth opened, but the kelda had raised a wrinkled hand.

“When ye are a kelda somewhere, my girl, ye’ll expect people to do your biddin’. So dinna give me the argument. That’s my offer, Tiffan. Ye won’t get a better.”

“But she canna—” Fion began.

“Can she not?” said the kelda.

“She’s nae a pictsie, mother!”

“She’s a bit on the large side, aye,” said the kelda. “Dinna fret, Tiffan. It willna be for long. I just need ye to mind things for a wee while. Mind the land like yer granny did, and mind my boys. Then when yer wee boy is back home, Hamish’ll fly up to the mountains and let it be known that the Chalk Hill clan has want o’ a kelda. We’ve got a good place here, and the girls’ll come flockin’. What d’ye say?”

“She disna know our ways!” Fion protested. “Ye’re overtired, mother!”

“Aye, I am,” said the kelda. “But a daughter canna run her mother’s clan, ye know that. Ye’re a dutiful girl, Fion, but it’s time ye were picking your bodyguard and going awa’ seeking a clan of your own. Ye canna stay here.” The kelda looked up at Tiffany again. “Will ye, Tiffan?” She held up a thumb the size of a match head and waited.

“What will I have to do?” said Tiffany.

“The thinkin’,” said the kelda, still holding up her thumb. “My lads are good lads, there’s none braver. But they think their heids is most useful as weapons. That’s lads for ye. We pictsies aren’t like you big folk, ye ken. Ye have many sisters? Fion here has none. She’s my only daughter. A kelda might be blessed wi’ only one daughter in her whole life, but she’ll have hundreds and hundreds o’ sons.”

“They are all your sons?” said Tiffany, aghast.

“Oh aye,” said the kelda, smiling. “Oh, dinna look so astonished. The bairns are really wee when they’re borned, like little peas in a pod. And they grow up fast.” She sighed. “But sometimes I think all the brains is saved for the daughters. They’re good boys, but they’re no’ great thinkers. You’ll have to help them help ye.”

“Mother, she canna carry oot the duties o’ a kelda!” Fion protested.

“I don’t see why not, if they’re explained to me,” said Tiffany.

“Oh, do you not?” said Fion sharply. “Weel, that’s gonna be most interesting!”

“I recall Sarah Aching talkin’ aboot ye,” said the kelda. “She said ye were a strange wee one, always watchin’ and listenin’. She said ye had a heid full o’ words that ye ne’er spoke aloud. She wondered what’d become o’ ye. Time for ye to find oot, aye?”

Aware of Fion glaring at her, and maybe because of Fion glaring at her, Tiffany licked her thumb and touched it gently against the kelda’s tiny thumb.

“It is done, then,” said the kelda. She lay back suddenly, and just as suddenly seemed to shrink. There were more lines in her face now. “Never let it be said I left my sons wi’oot a kelda to mind them,” she muttered. “Now I can go back to the Last World. Tiffan is the kelda for now, Fion. In her hoose, ye’ll do what she says.”

Fion looked down at her feet. Tiffany could see that she was angry.

The kelda lay back. She beckoned Tiffany closer, and in a weaker voice said: “There. ’Tis done. And now for my part o’ the bargain. Listen. Find . . . the place where the time disna fit. There’s the way in. It’ll shine out to ye. Bring him back to ease yer puir mother’s heart and mebbe also your ain head—”

Her voice faltered, and Fion leaned quickly toward the bed.

The kelda sniffed.

She opened one eye.

“Not quite yet,” she murmured to Fion. “Do I smell a wee drop of Special Sheep Liniment on ye, kelda?”

Tiffany looked puzzled for a moment and then said: “Oh, me. Oh. Yes. Er . . . here. . . .”

The kelda struggled to sit up again. “The best thing humans ever made,” she said. “I’ll just have a large wee drop, Fion.”

“It puts hairs on your chest,” Tiffany warned.

“Ach, weel, for a drop of Sarah Aching’s Special Sheep Liniment I’ll risk a curl or two,” said the old kelda. She took from Fion a leather cup about the size of a thimble and held it up.

“I dinna think it would be good for ye, mother,” said Fion.

“I’ll be the judge o’ that at this time,” said the kelda. “One drop afore I go, please, Kelda Tiffan.”

Tiffany tipped the bottle slightly. The kelda shook the cup irritably.

“It was a larger drop I had in mind, kelda,” she said. “A kelda has a generous heart.”

She took something too small to be a gulp but too large to be a sip.

“Aye, it’s a lang time since I tasted this brose,” she said. “Your granny and I used to ha’ a sip or two in front o’ the fire on cold nights. . . .”

Tiffany saw it clearly in her head, Granny Aching and this little fat woman, sitting around the pot-bellied stove in the hut on wheels, while the sheep grazed under the stars.

“Ah, ye can see it,” said the kelda. “I can feel yer eyes on me. That’s the First Sight workin’.” She lowered the cup. “Fion, go and fetch Rob Anybody and William the gonnagle.”

“The bigjob is blockin’ the hole,” said Fion sulkily.

“I daresay there’s room to wriggle past,” said the old kelda in the kind of calm voice that said a stormy voice could follow if people didn’t do what they were told.

With a smoldering glance at Tiffany, Fion squeezed past.

“Ye ken anyone who keeps bees?” said the kelda. When Tiffany nodded, the little old woman went on, “Then you’ll know why we dinna have many daughters. You canna ha’ two quins in one hive wi’oot a big fight. Fion must take her pick o’ them that will follow her and seek a clan that needs a kelda. That is our way. She thinks there’s another way, as gels sometimes do. Be careful o’ her.”

Tiffany felt something move past her, and Rob Anybody and the bard came into the room. There was more rustling and whispering, too. An unofficial audience was gathering outside.

When things had settled down a little, the old kelda said: “It is a bad thing for a clan to be left wi’oot a kelda to watch o’er it e’en for an hour. So Tiffan will be your kelda until a new one can be fetched.”

There was a murmur beside and behind Tiffany. The old kelda looked at William the gonnagle.

“Am I right that this has been done before?” she said.

“Aye. The songs say twice before,” said William. He frowned, and added: “Or you could say it was three times if you include the time when the Quin was—”

He was drowned out by the cry that went up behind Tiffany:

“Nae quin! Nae king! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna be fooled again!”

The old kelda raised a hand. “Tiffan is the spawn of Granny Aching,” she said. “Ye all ken of her.”

“Aye, and ye saw the wee hag stare the heidless horseman in the eyes he hasna got,” said Rob Anybody. “Not many people can do that!”

“And I have been your kelda for seventy years and my words canna be gainsaid,” said the old kelda. “So the choice is made. I tell ye, too, that ye’ll help her steal back her wee baby brother. That is the fate I lay on you all in memory of me and Sarah Aching.”

She lay back in her bed and in a quieter voice added, “An’ now I would have the gonnagle play ‘The Bonny Flowers,’ and hope to see yez all again in the Last World. To Tiffan I say be wary.” The kelda took a deep breath. “Somewhere, a’ stories are real, a’ songs are true. . . .”

The old kelda fell silent. William the gonnagle inflated the bag of his mousepipes and blew into one of the tubes. Tiffany felt the bubbling in her ears of music too high-pitched to hear.

After a few moments Fion leaned over the bed to look at her mother, then started to cry.

Rob Anybody turned and looked up at Tiffany, his eyes running with tears. “Could I just ask ye to go out intae the big chamber, kelda?” he said, quietly. “We ha’ things to do, ye ken how it is. . . .”

Tiffany nodded and, with great care, feeling pictsies scuttle out of her way, backed out of the room. She found a corner where she didn’t seem to be in anyone’s way and sat there with her back to the wall.

She’d expected a lot of “waily waily waily,” but it seemed the death of the kelda was too serious for that. Some Feegles were crying, and some were staring at nothing, and as the news spread, the tiered hall filled up with a wretched, sobbing silence. . . .

. . . The hills had been silent on the day Granny Aching died.

Someone went up every day with fresh bread and milk and scraps for the dogs. It didn’t need to be quite so often, but Tiffany had heard her parents talking and her father had said, “We ought to keep an eye on Mam now.”

Today had been Tiffany’s turn, but she’d never thought of it as a chore. She liked the journey.

But she’d noticed the silence. It was no longer the silence of many little noises, but a dome of quiet all around the hut.

She knew then, even before she went in at the open door and found Granny lying on the narrow bed.

She’d felt coldness spread though her. It even had a sound—it was like a thin, sharp musical note. It had a voice, too. Her own voice. It was saying: It’s too late, tears are no good, no time to say anything, there are things to be done.

And . . . then she fed the dogs, who were waiting patiently for their breakfast. It would have helped if they’d done something soppy, like whine or lick Granny’s face, but they hadn’t. And still Tiffany heard the voice in her mind: No tears, don’t cry. Don’t cry for Granny Aching.

Now, in her head, she watched the slightly smaller Tiffany move around the hut like a little puppet.

She’d tidied up the hut. Besides the bed and the stove there really wasn’t much there. There was the clothes sack and the big water barrel and the food box, and that was it. Oh, stuff to do with sheep was all over the place—pots and bottles and sacks and knives and shears—but there was nothing there that said a person lived here, unless you counted the hundreds of blue-and-yellow Jolly Sailor wrappers pinned on one wall.

She’d taken one of them down—it was still underneath her mattress at home—and remembered the Story.

It was very unusual for Granny Aching to say more than a sentence. She used words as if they cost money. But there’d been one day when she’d taken food up to the hut, and Granny had told her a story. A sort of a story. She’d unwrapped the tobacco, and looked at the wrapper, and then looked at Tiffany with that slightly puzzled look she used, and said: “I must’ve looked at a thousand o’ these things, and I never once saw his bo-ut.” That was how she pronounced boat.

Of course Tiffany had rushed to have a look at this label, but she couldn’t see any boat, any more than she could see the naked lady.

“That’s ’cause the bo-ut is just where you can’t see it,” Granny had said. “He’s got a bo-ut for chasin’ the great white whale fish on the salt sea. He’s always chasing it, all round the world. It’s called Mopey. It’s a beast like a big cliff of chalk, I heard tell. In a book.”

“Why’s he chasing it?” Tiffany had asked.

“To catch it,” Granny had said. “But he never will, the reason being, the world is round like a big plate and so is the sea, and so they’re chasing one another, so it is almost like he is chasing hisself. Ye never want to go to sea, jiggit. That’s where worse things happen. Everyone says that. You stop along here, where’s the hills is in yer bones.”

And that was it. It was one of the very few times Granny Aching had ever said anything to Tiffany that wasn’t, in some way, about sheep. It was the only time she ever acknowledged that there was a world beyond the Chalk. Tiffany used to dream about the Jolly Sailor chasing the whale fish in his boat. And sometimes the whale fish would chase her, but the Jolly Sailor always arrived in his mighty ship just in time and their chase would start again.

Sometimes she’d run to the lighthouse, and wake up just as the door swung open. She’d never seen the sea, but one of the neighbors had an old picture on the wall that showed a lot of men clinging to a raft in what looked like a huge lake full of waves. She hadn’t been able to see the lighthouse at all.

And Tiffany had sat by the narrow bed and thought about Granny Aching, and about the little girl Sarah Grizzel very carefully painting the flowers in the book, and about the world losing its center.

She missed the silence. What there was now wasn’t the same kind of silence there had been before. Granny’s silence was warm, and brought you inside. Granny Aching might sometimes have had trouble remembering the difference between children and lambs, but in her silence you were welcome and belonged. All you had to bring was a silence of your own.

Tiffany wished that she’d had a chance to say sorry about the shepherdess.

Then she’d gone home and told everyone that Granny was dead. She was seven, and the world had ended.

Someone was tapping politely on her boot. She opened her eyes and saw the toad. It was holding a small rock in its mouth. It spat it out.

“Sorry about that,” it said. “I’d have used my arms, but we’re a very soggy species.”

“What am I supposed to do?” said Tiffany.

“Well, if you hit your head on this low ceiling, you would have a definite claim for damages,” said the toad. “Er . . . did I just say that?”

“Yes, and I hope you wish you hadn’t,” said Tiffany. “Why did you say it?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” moaned the toad. “Sorry, what were we talking about?”

“I meant what do the pictsies want me to do now?”

“Oh, I don’t think it works like that,” said the toad. “You’re the kelda. You say what’s to be done.”

“Why can’t Fion be kelda? She’s a pictsie!”

“Can’t help you there,” said the toad.

“Can I be of serrrvice?” said a voice by Tiffany’s ear.

She turned her head and saw, on one of the galleries that ran around the cave, William the gonnagle.

Up close, he was noticeably different from the other Feegles. His hair was neater, and braided into one pigtail. He didn’t have as many tattoos. He spoke differently too, more clearly and slowly than the others, sounding his Rs like a drumroll.

“Er, yes,” said Tiffany. “Why can’t Fion be kelda here?”

William nodded. “A good question,” he said politely. “But, ye ken, a kelda cannot wed her brrrrotherrrr. She must go to a new clan and wed a warrrrior there.”

“Well, why couldn’t that warrior come here?”

“Because the Feegles here would not know him. They’d have no rrrrespect for him.” William made ‘respect’ sound like an avalanche.

“Oh. Well . . . what was that about the Queen? You were going to say something and they stopped you.”

William looked embarrassed. “I don’t think I can tell you aboot—”

“I am the temporary kelda,” said Tiffany stiffly.

“Aye. Well . . . there was a time when we lived in the Queen’s world and served her, before she grew so cold. But she tricked us, and we rrrrebelled. It was a dark time. She does not like us. And that is all I will say,” William added.

Tiffany watched Feegles going in and out of the kelda’s chamber. Something was going on in there.

“They’re burying her in the other part of the mound,” said William without being asked. “Wi’ the other keldas o’ this clan.”

“I thought they would be more . . . noisy,” said Tiffany.

“She was their motherrr,” said William. “They do not want to shout. Their hearts are too full for worrrrds. In time we will hold a wake to help her back to the land o’ the living, and that’ll be a loud one, I can promise ye. We’ll dance the FiveHundredAndTwelvesome Reel to the tune o’ ‘The Devil Among The Lawyers’ and eat and drink, and I daresay my nephews will ha’ headaches the size o’ a sheep.” The old Feegle smiled briefly. “But for now, each Feegle remembers her in silence. We dinna mourn like ye do, ye ken. We mourn for them that has tae stay behind.”

“Was she your mother too?” said Tiffany quietly.

“Nay. She was my sister. Did she no’ tell ye that when a kelda goes to a new clan, she takes a few o’ her brothers with her? To be alone among strangers would be too much for a heart to bear.” The gonnagle sighed. “Of course, in time, after the kelda weds, the clan is full of her sons and is no’ so lonely for her.”

“It must be for you, though,” said Tiffany.

“You’re a quick one, I’ll grant ye that,” said William. “I am the last o’ those who came. When this is o’er, I’ll seek the leave of the next kelda to return to my ain folk in the mountains. This is a fiiine fat country and this is a fiiine bonny clan my nephews have, but I would like to die in the heather where I was borrrned. If you will excuse me, kelda . . .”

He walked away and was lost in the shadows of the mound.

Tiffany suddenly wanted to go home. Perhaps it was just William’s sadness, but now she felt shut up in the mound.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” she muttered.

“Good idea,” said the toad. “You’ve got to find the place where the time is different, for one thing.”

“But how can I do that?” wailed Tiffany. “You can’t see time!”

She stuck her arms through the entrance hole and pulled herself up into the fresh air.

There was a big old clock in the farmhouse, and the time on it got set once a week. That is, when her father went to the market in Creel Springs, he made a note of the position of the hands on the big clock there, and when he got home, he moved the hands on their clock to the same position. It was really just for show, anyway. Everyone took their time from the sun, and the sun couldn’t go wrong.

Now Tiffany lay among the trunks of the old thorn bushes, whose leaves rustled continuously in the breeze. The mound was like a little island in the endless turf; late primroses and even a few ragged foxgloves grew up here in the shelter of the thorn roots.

“She could have just told me where to look,” she said.

“But she didn’t know where it would be,” said the toad. “She just knew the signs to look for.”

Tiffany rolled over carefully and stared up at the sky between the low branches. It’ll shine out, the kelda had said. . . .

“I think I ought to talk to Hamish,” she said.

“Right ye are, mistress,” said a voice by her ear. She turned her head.

“How long have you been there?” she said.

“A’ the time, mistress,” said the pictsie. Others poked their heads around the trees and out from under leaves. There were at least twenty on the mound.

“You’ve been watching me all the time?”

“Aye, mistress. ’Tis oour task to watch o’er our kelda. I’m up here most o’ the time anyway, because I’m studying to become a gonnagle.” The young Feegle flourished a set of mousepipes. “An’ they willna let me play doon there on account o’ them sayin’ my playin’ sounds like a spider tryin’ to fart through its ears, mistress.”

“But what happens if I want to spend a— have a— go to the— what happens if I say I don’t want you to guard me?”

“If it’s a wee call o’ nature ye’re talkin’ aboout, mistress, the cludgie is o’er there in the chalk pit. Ye’ll just sing oot to us where ye’re goin’ and no one’ll go peeking, ye’ll have oour word on it,” said the attendant Feegle.

Tiffany glared at him as he stood in the primroses, beaming with pride and anxious duty. He was younger than most of them, without as many scars and lumps. Even his nose wasn’t broken.

“What’s your name, pictsie?” she said.

“No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress. There’s no’ that many Feegle names, ye ken, so we ha’ to share.”

“Well, Not-as-big-as-Little-Jock—” Tiffany began.

“That’d be Medium-Sized Jock, mistress,” said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock.

“Well, Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock, I can—”

“That’s No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress,” said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. “Ye were one jock short,” he added helpfully.

“You wouldn’t be happier with, say, Henry?” said Tiffany, helplessly.

“Ach, nay, mistress.” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock wrinkled his face. “There’s nay history tae the name, ye ken. But there have been a number o’ brave warriors called No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. Why, ’tis nearly as famous a name as Wee Jock itself! An’, o’ course, should Wee Jock hisself be taken back to the Last World, then I’ll get the name o’ Wee Jock, which isna to say that I mislike the name o’ No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, ye ken. There’s been many a fine story o’ the exploits o’ No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock,” the pictsie added, looking so earnest that Tiffany didn’t have the heart to say that they must have been very long stories.

Instead she said: “Well, er, please, I want to talk to Hamish the aviator.”

“Nae problem,” said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. “He’s up there right noo.”

He vanished. A moment later Tiffany heard—or, rather, felt with her ears—the bubbling sensation of a Feegle whistle.

Tiffany pulled Diseases of the Sheep, which was now looking very battered, out of her apron. There was a blank page at the back. She tore it out, feeling like a criminal for doing so, and took out her pencil.

“Dear Mum and Dad,” she wrote carefully. “How are you, I am well. Wentworth is also well but I have to go and fetch him from the Qu where he is staying. Hope to be back soon, Tiffany. PS I hope the cheese is all right.”

She was just considering this when she heard a rush of wings overhead. There was a whirring noise, a moment of silence, and then a small, weary, and rather muffled voice said: “Ach, crivens . . .”

She looked out onto the turf. The body of Hamish was upside down a few feet away. His arms with their twirlers were still outstretched.*

It took some time to get him out. If he landed headfirst and spinning, Tiffany was told, he had to be unscrewed in the opposite direction so that his ears wouldn’t come off.

When he was upright and swaying unsteadily, Tiffany said: “Can you wrap this letter in a stone and drop it in front of the farmhouse where people will see it?”

“Aye, mistress.”

“And . . . er . . . does it hurt when you land headfirst like that?”

“Nay, mistress, but it is awfu’ embarrassing.”

“Then there’s a sort of toy we used to make that might help you,” said Tiffany. “You make a kind of . . . bag of air—”

“Bag o’ air?” said the aviator, looking puzzled.

“Well, you know how things like shirts billow out on a clothesline when it’s windy? Well, you just make a cloth bag and tie some strings to it and a stone to the strings, and when you throw it up, the bag fills with air and the stone floats down.”

Hamish stared at her.

“Do you understand me?” said Tiffany.

“Oh, aye. I wuz just waitin’ to see if you wuz goin’ to tell me anything else,” said Hamish politely.

“Do you think you could, er, borrow some fine cloth?”

“Nay, mistress, but I ken well where I can steal some,” said Hamish.

Tiffany decided not to comment on this. She said: “Where was the Queen when the mist came down?”

Hamish pointed. “Aboot a half mile yonder, mistress.”

In the distance Tiffany could see some more mounds, and a few stones from the old days.

Trilithons, they were called, which just meant “three stones.” The only stones found naturally on the downs were flints. But the giant stones of the trilithons had been dragged from at least ten miles away, and were stacked like a child stacks toy bricks. Here and there the big stones had been stood in circles; sometimes one stone had been placed all alone. It must have taken a lot of people a long time to do all that. Some people said there’d been human sacrifices up there. Some said they were part of some old religion. Some said they marked ancient graves.

Some said they were a warning: Avoid this place.

Tiffany hadn’t. She’d been there with her sisters a few times, as a dare, just in case there were any skulls. But the mounds around the stones were thousands of years old. All that you found there now were rabbit holes.

“Anything else, mistress?” said Hamish politely. “Nay? Then I’ll just be goin’. . . .”

He raised his arms over his head and started to run across the turf. Tiffany jumped as the buzzard skimmed down a few feet away from her and snatched him back up into the sky.

“How can a man six inches high train a bird like that?” she asked as the buzzard circled again for height.

“Ach, all it takes is a wee drop o’ kindness, mistress,” said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock.

“Really?”

“Aye, an’ a big dollop o’ cruelty,” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock said. “Hamish trains ’em by runnin’ aroound in a rabbit skin until a bird pounces on him.”

“That sounds awful!” said Tiffany.

“Ach, he’s not too nasty aboot it. He just knocks them out wi’ his heid, and then he’s got a special oil he makes which he blows up their beak,” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock went on. “When they wakes up, they thinks he’s their mammy and’ll do his biddin’.”

The buzzard was already a distant speck.

“He hardly seems to spend any time on the ground!” said Tiffany.

“Oh, aye. He sleeps in the buzzard’s nest at night, mistress. He says it’s wunnerfully warm. An’ he spends all his time in the air,” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock added. “He’s ne’er happy unless he’s got the wind under his kilt.”

“And the birds don’t mind?”

“Ach, no, mistress. All the birds and beasts up here know it’s good luck to be friends wi’ the Nac Mac Feegle, mistress.”

“They do?”

“Well, to tell ye the truth, mistress, it’s more that they know it’s unlucky not to be friends wi’ the Nac Mac Feegle.”

Tiffany looked at the sun. It was only a few hours away from setting.

“I must find the way in,” she said. “Look, Not-as-small-as—”

“No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress,” said the pictsie, patiently.

“Yes, yes, thank you. Where is Rob Anybody? Where is everybody, in fact?”

The young pictsie looked a bit embarrassed.

“There’s a bit o’ a debate goin’ on down below, mistress,” he said.

“Well, we have got to find my brother, okay? I am the kelda in this vicinity, yes?”

“It’s a wee bit more comp-li-cat-ed than that, mistress. They’re, er, discussin’ ye . . .”

“Discussing what about me?”

Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock looked as if he really didn’t want to be standing there.

“Um, they’re discussing . . . er . . . they . . .”

Tiffany gave up. The pictsie was blushing. Since he was blue to begin with, this turned him an unpleasant violet color. “I’ll go back down the hole. Give my boots a push, will you, please?”

She slid down the dry dirt, and Feegles scattered in the cave below as she landed.

When her eyes got accustomed to the gloom once more, she saw that the galleries were crowded with pictsies again. Some of them were in the middle of washing, and many of them had, for some reason, smoothed down their red hair with grease. They all stared at her as if caught in the act of something dreadful.

“We ought to be going if we’re to follow the Queen,” she said, looking down at Rob Anybody, who’d been washing his face in a basin made of half a walnut shell. Water dripped off his beard, which he’d braided up. There were three braids in his long hair now too. If he turned suddenly, he could probably whip somebody to death.

“Ach, weel,” he said, “there’s a wee matter we got tae sort oout, kelda.” He twiddled the tiny washcloth in his hands. When Rob Anybody twiddled, he was worried.

“Yes?” said Tiffany.

“Er . . . will ye no ha’ a cup o’ tea?” said Rob Anybody, and a pictsie staggered forward with a big gold cup that must have been made for a king.

Tiffany took it. She was thirsty, after all. There was a sigh from the crowd when she sipped the tea. It was actually quite good.

“We stole a bag o’ it fra’ a peddler who was asleep down by the high road,” said Rob Anybody. “Good stuff, eh?” He patted down his hair with his wet hands.

Tiffany’s cup stopped halfway to her lips. Perhaps the pictsies didn’t realize how loudly they whispered, because her ear was on a level with a conversation.

“Ach, she’s a bit on the big side, no offense to her.”

“Aye, but a kelda has to be big, ye ken, to have lots of wee babbies.”

“Aye, fair enough, big wimmin is a’ very well, but if a laddie was tae try tae cuddle this one, he’d have tae leave a chalk mark to show where he left off yesterday.”

“An’ she’s a bit young.”

“She needna have any babbies yet, then. Or mebbe not too many at a time, say. Nae more than ten, mebbe.”

“Crivens, lads, what’re ye talkin’ aboout? ’Tis Rob Anybody she’ll choose anyway. Ye can see the big man’s poor wee knees knocking fra’ here!”

Tiffany lived on a farm. Any little beliefs that babies are delivered by storks or found under bushes tend to get sorted out early on if you live on a farm, especially when a cow is having a difficult calving in the middle of the night. And she’d helped with the lambing, when small hands could be very useful in difficult cases. She knew all about the bags of red chalk the rams had strapped to their chests, and why you knew later on that the ewes with the red smudges on their backs were going to be mothers in the spring. It’s amazing what a child who is quiet and observant can learn, and this includes things people don’t think she is old enough to know.

Her eye spotted Fion, on the other side of the hall. She was smiling, in a worrying way.

“What’s happening, Rob Anybody?” she said, laying the words down carefully.

“Ah, weel . . . it’s the clan rules, ye ken,” said the Feegle awkwardly. “Ye being the new kelda an’, an’, weel, we’re bound to ask ye, see, nae matter what we feel, we gotta ask ye mutter mutter mutter . . .” He stepped back quickly.

“I didn’t quite catch that,” said Tiffany.

“We’ve scrubbed up nice, ye ken,” Rob Anybody said. “Some o’ the lads actually had a bath in the dewpond, e’en though ’tis only May, and Big Yan washed under his arms for the first time ever, and Daft Wullie has picked ye a bonny bunch of flowers . . .”

Daft Wullie stepped forward, swollen with nervous pride, and thrust the aforesaid bouquet into the air. They probably had been nice flowers, but he didn’t have much idea of what a bunch was or how you picked one. Stems and leaves and dropping petals stuck out of his fist in all directions.

“Very nice,” said Tiffany, taking another sip of the tea.

“Guid, guid,” said Rob Anybody, wiping his forehead. “So mebbe you’d like tae tell us mutter mutter mutter . . .”

“They want to know which one of them you’re going to marry,” said Fion loudly. “It’s the rules. Ye have to choose, or quit as kelda. Ye have to choose yer man an’ name the day.”

“Aye,” said Rob Anybody, not meeting Tiffany’s eye.

Tiffany held the cup perfectly steady, but only because suddenly she couldn’t move a muscle. She was thinking: Aaargh! This is not happening to me! I can’t—he couldn’t—we wouldn’t—they’re not even—this is ridiculous! Run away!

But she was aware of hundreds of nervous faces in the shadows. How you deal with this is going to be important, said her Second Thoughts. They’re all watching you. And Fion wants to see what you’ll do. You really oughtn’t to dislike a girl four feet shorter than you, but you do.

“Well, this is very unexpected,” she said, forcing herself to smile. “A big honor, of course.”

“Aye, aye,” said Rob Anybody, looking at the floor.

“And there’s so many of you, it’d be so hard to choose,” Tiffany went on, still smiling. And her Second Thoughts said: He’s not happy about it either!

“Aye, it will that,” said Rob Anybody.

“I’d just like to have a little fresh air while I think about it,” said Tiffany, and didn’t let the smile fade until she was out on the mound again.

She crouched down and peered among the primrose leaves. “Toad!” she yelled.

The toad crawled out, chewing something. “Hm?” it said.

“They want to marry me!”

“Mm phmm ffm mm?”

“What are you eating?”

The toad swallowed. “A very undernourished slug,” it said.

“I said they want to marry me!”

“And?”

“And? Well, just—just think!”

“Oh, right, yeah, the height thing,” said the toad. “It might not seem much now, but when you’re five feet seven he’ll still be six inches high—”

“Don’t laugh at me! I’m the kelda!”

“Well, of course, that’s the point, isn’t it,” said the toad. “As far as they’re concerned, there’s rules. The new kelda marries the warrior of her choice and settles down and has lots and lots of Feegles. It’d be a terrible insult to refuse—”

“I am not going to marry a Feegle! I can’t have hundreds of babies! Tell me what to do!”

“Me? Tell the kelda what to do? I wouldn’t dare,” said the toad. “And I don’t like being shouted at. Even toads have their pride, you know.” He crawled back into the leaves.

Tiffany took a deep breath, ready to shout, and then closed her mouth.

The old kelda must’ve known about this, she thought. So . . . she must have thought I’d be able to deal with it. It’s just the rules, and they didn’t know what to do about them. None of them wanted to marry a big girl like her, even if none of them would admit it. It was just the rules.

There must be a way round it. There had to be. But she had to accept a husband and she had to name the day. They’d told her that.

She stared at the thorn trees for a moment. Hmm, she thought.

She slid back down the hole.

The pictsies were waiting nervously, every scarred and bearded face watching hers.

“I accept you, Rob Anybody,” she said.

Rob Anybody’s face became a mask of terror. She heard him mutter, “Aw crivens!” in a tiny voice.

“But of course, it’s the bride who names the day, isn’t it?” said Tiffany cheerfully. “Everyone knows that.”

“Aye,” Rob Anybody quavered. “That’s the tradition, right enough.”

“Then I shall.” Tiffany took a deep breath. “At the end of the world is a great big mountain of granite rock a mile high,” she said. “And every year, a tiny bird flies all the way to the rock and wipes its beak on it. Well, when the little bird has worn the mountain down to the size of a grain of sand . . . that’s the day I’ll marry you, Rob Anybody Feegle!”

Rob Anybody’s terror turned to outright panic, but then he hesitated and, very slowly, started to grin.

“Aye, guid idea,” he said slowly. “It doesna do tae rush these things.”

“Absolutely,” said Tiffany.

“And that’d gi’ us time tae sort oout the guest list an a’ that,” the pictsie went on.

“That’s right.”

“Plus there’s a’ that business wi’ the wedding dress and buckets o’ flowers and a’ that kind of stuff,” said Rob Anybody, looking more cheerful by the second. “That sort thing can tak’ forever, ye ken.”

“Oh yes,” said Tiffany.

“But she’s really just said no!” Fion burst out. “It’d take millions of years for the bird to—”

“She said aye!” Rob Anybody shouted. “Ye a’ heard her, lads! An’ she’s named the day! That’s the rules!”

“Nae problem aboot the mountain, neither,” said Daft Wullie, still holding out the flowers. “Just ye tell us where it is and I reckon we could ha’ it doon a lot faster than any wee burdie—”

“It’s got to be the bird!” yelled Rob Anybody desperately. “Okay? The wee burdie! Nae more arguin’! Anyone feelin’ like arguin’ will feel ma boot! Some o’ us ha’ got a wee laddie to steal back fra’ the Quin!” He drew his sword and waved it in the air. “Who’s coming wi’ me?”

That seemed to work. The Nac Mac Feegle liked clear goals. Hundreds of swords and battle-axes, and one bunch of battered flowers in the case of Daft Wullie, were thrust into the air, and the war cry of the Nac Mac Feegle echoed around the chamber. The period of time it takes a pictsie to go from normal to mad fighting mood is so tiny, it can’t be measured on the smallest clock.

Unfortunately, since the pictsies were very individualistic, each one had his own cry and Tiffany could only make out a few over the din:

“They can tak’ oour lives but they canna tak’ oour troousers!”

“Ye’ll tak’ the high road an’ I’ll tak’ yer wallet!”

“There can only be one t’ousand!”

“Ach, stick it up yer trakkans!”

But the voices gradually came together in one roar that shook the walls:

“Nae King! Nae Quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna be fooled again!”

This died away, a cloud of dust dropped from the roof, and there was silence.

“Let’s gae!” cried Rob Anybody.

As one Feegle, the pictsies swarmed down the galleries and across the floor and up the slope to the hole. In a few seconds the chamber was empty, except for the gonnagle and Fion.

“Where have they gone?” said Tiffany.

“Ach, they just go,” said Fion, shrugging. “I’m going tae stay here and look after the fire. Someone ought to act like a proper kelda.” She glared at Tiffany.

“I do hope you find a clan for yourself soon, Fion,” said Tiffany sweetly. The pictsie scowled at her.

“They’ll run arroond for a while, mebbe stun a few bunnies and fall over a few times,” said William. “They’ll slow down when they find oout they don’t ken what they’re supposed to do yet.”

“Do they always just run off like this?” said Tiffany.

“Ach, well, Rob Anybody disna want too much talk about marryin’,” said William, grinning.

“Yes, we have a lot in common in that respect,” said Tiffany.

She pulled herself out of the hole and found the toad waiting for her.

“I listened in,” he said. “Well done. Very clever. Very diplomatic.”

Tiffany looked around. There were a few hours to sunset, but the shadows were already lengthening.

“We’d better be going,” she said, tying on her apron. “And you’re coming, toad.”

“Well, I don’t know much about how to get into—” the toad began, trying to back away. But toads can’t back up easily, and Tiffany grabbed him and put him in her apron pocket.

She headed for the mounds and stones. My brother will never grow up, she thought, as she ran across the turf. That’s what the old lady said. How does that work? What kind of a place is it where you never grow up?

The mounds got nearer. She saw William and Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock running along beside her, but there was no sign of the rest of the Nac Mac Feegle.

And then she was among the mounds. Her sisters had told her that there were more dead kings buried under there, but it had never frightened her. Nothing on the downs had ever frightened her.

But it was cold here. She’d never noticed that before.

Find a place where the time doesn’t fit. Well, the mounds were history. So were the old stones. Did they fit here? Well, yes, they belonged to the past, but they’d ridden on the hills for thousands of years. They’d grown old here. They were part of the landscape.

The low sun made the shadows lengthen. That was when the Chalk revealed its secrets. At some places, when the light was right, you could see the edges of old fields and tracks. The shadows showed up what brilliant noonlight couldn’t see.

Tiffany had made up noonlight.

She couldn’t even see hoofprints. She wandered around the trilithons, which looked a bit like huge stone doorways, but even when she tried walking through them both ways, nothing happened.

This wasn’t according to plan. There should have been a magic door. She was sure of that.

A bubbling feeling in her ear suggested that someone was playing the mousepipes. She looked around and saw William the gonnagle standing on a fallen stone. His cheeks were bulging, and so was the bag of the mousepipes.

She waved at him. “Can you see anything?” she called.

William took the pipe out of his mouth, and the bubbling stopped. “Oh, aye,” he said.

“The way to the Queen’s land?”

“Oh, aye.”

“Well, would you care to tell me?”

“I dinna need to tell a kelda,” said William. “A kelda would see the clear way hersel’.”

“But you could tell me!”

“Aye, and you coulda said please,” said William. “I’m ninety-six years old. I’m nae a dolly in yer dolly hoose. Yer granny was a fiiine wuman, but I’ll no’ be ordered about by a wee chit of a girl.”

Tiffany stared for a moment and then lifted the toad out of her apron pocket.

“Chit?” she said.

“It means something very small,” said the toad. “Trust me.”

“He’s calling me small!”

“I’m biggerrr on the inside!” said William. “And I daresay your da’ wouldna be happy if a big giant of a wee girl came stampin’ aroound ordering him aboout!”

“The old kelda ordered people about!”

“Aye! Because she’d earned rrrespect!” The gonnagle’s voice seemed to echo around the stones.

“Please, I don’t know what to do!” wailed Tiffany.

William stared at her. “Ach, weel, yer no’ doin’ too badly so far,” he said, in a nicer tone of voice. “Ye got Rob Anybody out of marryin’ ye wi’oout breakin’ the rules, and ye’re a game lass, I’ll gi’ ye that. Ye’ll find the way if ye tak’ yer time. Just don’t stamp yer foot and expect the world to do yer biddin’. A’ ye’re doing is shoutin’ for sweeties, ye ken. Use yer eyes. Use yer heid.”

He put the pipe back in his mouth, puffed his cheeks until the skin bag was full, and made Tiffany’s ears bubble again.

“What about you, toad?” said Tiffany.

“You’re on your own, I’m afraid,” said the toad. “Whoever I used to be, I didn’t know much about finding invisible doors. And I resent being press-ganged, too, I may say.”

“But . . . I don’t know what to do! Is there a magic word I should say?”

“I don’t know, is there a magic word you should say?” said the toad, and turned over.

Tiffany was aware that the Nac Mac Feegle were turning up. They had a nasty habit of being really quiet when they wanted to.

Oh, no, she thought. They think I know what to do! This isn’t fair! I haven’t got any training for this. I haven’t been to the witch school! I can’t even find that! The opening must be somewhere around here, and there must be clues, but I don’t know what they are!

They’re watching me to see if I’m any good. And I’m good at cheese, and that’s all. But a witch deals with things. . . .

She put the toad back in her pocket and felt the weight of the book Diseases of the Sheep.

When she pulled it out, she heard a sigh go up from the assembled pictsies.

They think words are magical. . . .

She opened the book at random, and frowned.

“Cloggets,” she said aloud. Around her, the pictsies nodded their heads and nudged one another.

“Cloggets are a trembling of the greebs in hoggets,” she read, “which can lead to inflammation of the lower pasks. If untreated, it may lead to the more serious condition of Sloke. Recommended treatment is the daily dosing with turpentine until there is no longer either any trembling, or turpentine, or sheep.”

She risked looking up. Feegles were watching her from every stone and mound. They looked impressed.

However, the words in Diseases of the Sheep cut no ice with magic doorways.

“Scrabbity,” said Tiffany. There was a ripple of anticipation.

“Scrabbity is a flaky skin condition, particularly around the lollets. Turpentine is a useful remedy—”

And then she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the teddy bear.

It was very small, and the kind of red you don’t quite get in nature. Tiffany knew what it was. Wentworth loved the teddy-bear candies. They tasted like glue mixed with sugar and were made of 100% Artificial Additives.

“Ah,” she said aloud. “My brother was certainly brought here . . .”

This caused a stir.

She walked forward, reading aloud about Garget of the Nostrils and the Staggers but keeping an eye on the ground. And there was another teddy bear, green this time and quite hard to see against the turf.

O-kay, Tiffany thought.

There was one of the three-stone arches a little way away; two big stones with another one laid across the top of them. She’d walked through it before and nothing had happened.

But nothing should happen, she thought. You can’t leave a doorway into your world that anyone can walk through, otherwise people would wander in and out by accident. You’d have to know it was there.

Perhaps that’s the only way it would work.

Fine. Then I’ll believe that this is the entrance.

She stepped through and saw an astonishing sight: green grass, blue sky becoming pink around the setting sun, a few little white clouds late for bed, and a general warm, honey-colored look to everything. It was amazing that there could be a sight like this. The fact that Tiffany had seen it nearly every day of her life didn’t make it any less fantastic. As a bonus, you didn’t even have to look through any kind of stone arch to see it. You could see it by standing practically anywhere.

Except . . .

. . . something was wrong. Tiffany walked through the arch several times and still wasn’t quite sure. She held up a hand at arm’s length, trying to measure the sun’s height against the horizon.

And then she saw the bird. It was a swallow, hunting flies, and a swoop took it behind the stones.

The effect was . . . odd, and almost upsetting. It passed behind the stone and she felt her eyes move to follow the swoop . . . but it was late. There was a moment when the swallow should have appeared, and it didn’t.

Then it passed across the gap and for a moment was on both sides of the other stone at the same time.

Seeing it made Tiffany feel that her eyeballs had been pulled out and turned around.

Look for a place where the time doesn’t fit. . . .

“The world seen through that gap is at least one second behind the time here,” she said, trying to sound as certain as possible. “I thi— I know this is the entrance.”

There was some whooping and clapping from the Nac Mac Feegle, and they surged across the turf toward her.

“That was great, a’ that reading’ ye did!” said Rob Anybody. “I didna understand a single word o’ it!”

“Aye, it must be powerful language if you canna make oout what the heel it’s goin’ on aboot!” said another pictsie.

“Ye definitely ha’ got the makin’s of a kelda, mistress,” said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock.

“Aye!” said Daft Wullie. “It was smashin’ the way you spotted them candies and didna let on! We didna think you’d see the wee green one, too!”

The rest of the pictsies stopped cheering and glared at him.

“What did I say? What did I say?” he said.

Tiffany sagged. “You all knew that was the way through, didn’t you,” she said.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody. “We ken that kind of stuff. We used tae live in the Quin’s country, ye ken, but we rebelled against her evil rule—”

“And we did that, an’ then she threw us oout on account o’ bein’ drunk an’ stealin’ and fightin’ a’ the time,” said Daft Wullie.

“It wasna like that at a’!” roared Rob Anybody.

“And you were waiting to see if I could find the way, right?” said Tiffany, before a fight could start.

“Aye. Ye did well, lassie.”

Tiffany shook her head. “No, I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t do any real magic. I don’t know how. I just looked at things and worked them out. It was cheating, really.”

The pictsies looked at one another.

“Ah, weel,” said Rob Anybody. “What’s magic, eh? Just wavin’ a stick an’ sayin’ a few wee magical words. An’ what’s so clever aboot that, eh? But lookin’ at things, really lookin’ at ’em, and then workin’ ’em oout, now, that’s a real skill.”

“Aye, it is,” said William the gonnagle, to Tiffany’s surprise. “Ye used yer eyes and used yer heid. That’s what a real hag does. The magicking is just there for advertisin’.”

“Oh,” said Tiffany, cheering up. “Really? Well, then . . . there’s our door, everyone!”

“Right,” said Rob Anybody. “Now show us the way through.”

Tiffany hesitated and then thought: I can feel myself thinking. I’m watching the way I’m thinking. And what am I thinking? I’m thinking: I walked through this arch before, and nothing happened.

But I wasn’t looking then. I wasn’t thinking, either. Not properly.

The world I can see through the arch isn’t actually real. It just looks as though it is. It’s a sort of . . . magical picture, put there to disguise the entrance. And if you don’t pay attention, well, you just walk in and out of it and you don’t realize it.

Aha . . .

She walked through the arch. Nothing happened. The Nac Mac Feegle watched her solemnly.

Okay, she thought. I’m still being fooled, aren’t I? . . .

She stood in front of the stones and stretched out her hands on either side of her, and shut her eyes. Very slowly she stepped forward . . .

Something crunched under her boots, but she didn’t open her eyes until she couldn’t feel the stones anymore. When she did open them . . .

. . . it was a black-and-white landscape.

CHAPTER 8

Land of Winter

“Aye, she’s got First Sight, sure enough,” said William’s voice behind Tiffany as she stared into the world of the Queen. “She’s seein’ what’s really there. . . .”

Snow stretched away under a sky so dirty white that Tiffany might have been standing inside a Ping-Pong ball. Only black trunks and scribbly branches of the trees, here and there, told her where the land stopped and the sky began.

Those, and, of course, the hoofprints. They stretched away toward a forest of black trees, boughed with snow.

The cold was like little needles all over her skin.

She looked down and saw the Nac Mac Feegle pouring through the gate, waist deep in the snow. They spread out without speaking. Some of them had drawn their swords.

They weren’t laughing and joking now. They were watchful.

“Right, then,” said Rob Anybody. “Well done. You wait here for us and we’ll get your wee brother back, nae problemo—”

“I’m coming too!” snapped Tiffany.

“Nay, the kelda disna—”

“This one dis!” said Tiffany, shivering. “I mean does! He’s my brother. And where are we?”

Rob Anybody glanced up at the pale sky. There was no sun anywhere. “Ye’re here noo,” he said, “so mebbe there’s nae harm in tellin’ ye. This is what ye call Fairyland.”

“Fairyland? No, it’s not! I’ve seen pictures! Fairyland is . . . is all trees and flowers and sunshine and, and tinklyness! Dumpy little babies in romper suits with horns! People with wings! Er . . . and weird people! I’ve seen pictures!”

“It isna always like this,” said Rob Anybody shortly. “An’ ye canna come wi’ us because ye ha’ nae weapon, mistress.”

“What happened to my frying pan?” said Tiffany.

Something bumped against her heels. She looked around and saw Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock hold up the pan triumphantly.

“Okay, ye have the pan,” said Rob Anybody, “but what ye need here is a sword of thunderbolt iron. That’s like the, you know, official weapon for invadin’ Fairyland. . . .”

“I know how to use the pan,” said Tiffany. “And I’m—”

“Incomin’!” yelled Daft Wullie.

Tiffany saw a line of black dots in the distance and felt someone climb up her back and stand on her head.

“It’s the black dogs,” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock announced. “Dozens o’ ’em, Big Man.”

“We’ll never outrun the dogs!” Tiffany cried, grabbing her pan.

“Dinna need to,” said Rob Anybody. “We got the gonnagle wi’ us this time. Ye might like to stick yer fingers in yer ears, though.”

William, with his eyes fixed on the approaching pack, was unscrewing some of the pipes from the mousepipes and putting them in a bag he carried hanging from his shoulder.

The dogs were much closer now. Tiffany could see the razor teeth and the burning eyes.

Slowly William took out some much shorter, smaller pipes that had a silvery look to them and screwed them into place. He had the look of someone who wasn’t going to rush.

Tiffany gripped the handle of her pan. The dogs weren’t barking. It would have been slightly less scary if they were.

William swung the mousepipes under his arm and blew into one until the bag bulged.

“I shall play,” he announced, as the dogs got close enough for Tiffany to see the drool, “that firrrrm favorite, ‘The King Underrrr Waterrrr.’”

As one pictsie, the Nac Mac Feegle dropped their swords and put their hands over their ears.

William put the mouthpiece to his lips, tapped his foot once or twice, and, as a dog gathered itself to leap at Tiffany, began to play.

A lot of things happened at more or less the same time. All Tiffany’s teeth started to buzz. The pan vibrated in her hands and dropped onto the snow. The dog in front of her went cross-eyed and, instead of leaping, tumbled forward.

The grimhounds paid no attention to the pictsies. They howled. They spun around. They tried to bite their own tails. They stumbled and ran into one another. The line of panting death broke into dozens of desperate animals, twisting and writhing and trying to escape from their own skins.

The snow was melting in a circle around William, whose cheeks were red with effort. Steam was rising.

He took the pipe from his mouth. The grimhounds, struggling in the slush, raised their heads. And then, as one dog, they put their tails between their legs and ran like greyhounds back across the snow.

“Weel, they ken we’re here noo,” said Rob Anybody, wiping tears from his eyes.

“Ot aggened?” said Tiffany, touching her teeth to check that they were all still there.

“He played the notes o’ pain,” Rob Anybody explained. “Ye canna hear ’em ’cause they’re pitched so high, but the doggies can. Hurts ’em in their heids. Now we’d better get movin’ before she sends somethin’ else.”

“The Queen sent them? But they’re like something out of nightmares!” said Tiffany.

“Oh aye,” said Rob Anybody. “That’s where she got them.”

Tiffany looked at William the gonnagle. He was calmly replacing the pipes. He saw her staring at him, looked up, and winked.

“The Nac Mac Feegle tak’ music verrrrrra seriously,” he said. And then he nodded at the snow near Tiffany’s foot.

There was a sugary yellow teddy bear in the snow, made of 100% Artificial Additives.

And the snow, all around Tiffany, was melting away.

Two pictsies carried Tiffany easily. She skimmed across the snow, the clan running beside her.

No sun in the sky. Even on the dullest days you could generally see where the sun was, but not here. And there was something else that was strange, something she couldn’t quite give a name to. This didn’t feel like a real place. She didn’t know why she felt that, but something was wrong with the horizon. It looked close enough to touch, which was silly.

And things were not . . . finished. Like the trees in the forest they were heading toward, for example. A tree is a tree, she thought. Close up or far away, it’s a tree. It has bark and branches and roots. And you know they’re there, even if the tree is so far away that it’s a blob.

The trees here, though, were different. She had a strong feeling that they were blobs, and were growing the roots and twigs and other details as she got closer, as if they were thinking, “Quick, someone’s coming! Look real!”

It was like being in a painting where the artist hadn’t bothered much with the things in the distance, but quickly rushed a bit of realness anywhere you were looking.

The air was cold and dead, like the air in old cellars.

The light grew dimmer as they reached the forest. In between the trees it became blue and eerie.

No birds, she thought.

“Stop,” she said.

The pictsies lowered her to the ground, but Rob Anybody said: “We shouldna hang aroound here too long. Heids up, lads.”

Tiffany lifted out the toad. It blinked at the snow.

“Oh, shoap,” it muttered. “This is not good. I should be hibernating.”

“Why is everything so . . . strange?”

“Can’t help you there,” said the toad. “I just see snow, I just see ice, I just see freezing to death. I’m listening to my inner toad here.”

“It’s not that cold!”

“Feels cold . . . to . . . me. . . .” The toad shut his eyes. Tiffany sighed and lowered him into her pocket.

“I’ll tell ye where ye are,” said Rob Anybody, his eyes still scanning the blue shadows. “Ye ken them wee bitty bugs that cling on to the sheeps and suck theirsel’ full o’ blood and then drop off again? This whole world is like one o’ them.”

“You mean like a, a tick? A parasite? A vampire?”

“Oh, aye. It floats aroound until it finds a place that’s weak on a world where no one’s payin’ attention, and opens a door. Then the Quin sends in her folk. For the stealin’, ye ken. Raidin’ o’ barns, rustlin’ of cattle —”

“We used to like stealin’ the coo beasties,” said Daft Wullie.

“Wullie,” said Rob Anybody, pointing his sword, “you ken I said there wuz times you should think before opening yer big fat gob?”

“Aye, Rob.”

“Weel, that wuz one o’ them times.” Rob turned and looked up at Tiffany rather bashfully. “Aye, we wuz wild champion robbers for the Quin,” he said. “People wouldna e’en go a-huntin’ for fear o’ little men. But ’twas ne’er enough for her. She always wanted more. But we said it’s no’ right to steal an ol’ lady’s only pig, or the food from them as dinna ha’ enough to eat. A Feegle has nae worries about stealin’ a golden cup from a rich bigjob, ye ken, but takin’ awa’ the—”

—cup an old man kept his false teeth in made them feel ashamed, they said. The Nac Mac Feegle would fight and steal, certainly, but who wanted to fight the weak and steal from the poor?

Tiffany listened, at the end of the shadowy wood, to the story of a little world where nothing grew, where no sun shone, and where everything had to come from somewhere else. It was a world that took, and gave nothing back except fear. It raided—and people learned to stay in bed when they heard strange noises at night, because if anyone gave her trouble, the Queen could control their dreams.

Tiffany couldn’t quite pick up how she did this, but that’s where things like the grimhounds and the headless horseman came from. These dreams were . . . more real. The Queen could take dreams and make them more . . . solid. You could step inside them and vanish. And you didn’t wake up just as the monsters caught up with you.

The Queen’s people wouldn’t just take food. They’d take people, too—

“—like pipers,” said William the gonnagle. “Fairies can’t make music, ye ken. She’ll steal a man awa’ for the music he makes.”

“And she takes children,” said Tiffany.

“Aye. Your wee brother’s not the first,” said Rob Anybody. “There’s no’ a lot of fun and laughter here, ye ken. She thinks she’s good wi’ children.”

“The old kelda said she wouldn’t harm him,” said Tiffany. “That’s true, isn’t it?”

You could read the Nac Mac Feegle like a book. And it would be a big, simple book with pictures of Spot the Dog and a Big Red Ball and one or two short sentences on each page. What they were thinking turned up right there on their faces, and now they were all wearing a look that said: Crivens, I hope she disna ask us the question we dinna want tae answer. . . .

“That is true, isn’t it?” she said.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody, slowly. “She didna lie to ye there. The Quin’ll try to be kind to him, but she disna know how. She’s an elf. They’re no’ very good at thinking of other people.”

“What will happen to him if we don’t get him back?”

Again there was that “we dinna like the way this is going” look.

“I said—” Tiffany repeated.

“I darrresay she’ll send him back, in due time,” said William. “An’ he willna be any olderr. Nothing grows old here. Nothing grows. Nothing at all.”

“So he’ll be all right?”

Rob Anybody made a noise in his throat. It sounded like a voice that was trying to say aye but was being argued with by a brain that knew the answer was no.

“Tell me what you’re not telling me,” said Tiffany.

Daft Wullie was the first to speak. “That’s a lot o’ stuff,” he said. “For example, the meltin’ point o’ lead is—”

“Time passes slower the deeper you go intae this place,” said Rob Anybody quickly. “Years pass like days. The Quin’ll get tired o’ the wee lad after a coupla months, mebbe. A coupla months here, ye ken, where the time is slow an’ heavy. But when he comes back into the mortal world, you’ll be an old lady, or mebbe you’ll be deid. So if youse has bairns o’ yer own, you’d better tell them to watch out for a wee sticky kid wanderin’ the hills shoutin’ for sweeties, ’cause that’ll be their Uncle Wentworth. That wouldna be the worst o’ it, neither. Live in dreams for too long and ye go mad—ye can never wake up prop’ly, ye can never get the hang o’ reality again.”

Tiffany stared at him.

“It’s happened before,” said William.

“I will get him back,” said Tiffany quietly.

“We doon’t doubt it,” said Rob Anybody. “An’ where’er ye go, we’ll come with ye. The Nac Mac Feegle are afeared o’ nothing!”

A cheer went up, but it seemed to Tiffany that the blue shadows sucked all the sound away.

“Aye, nothin’ exceptin’ lawyers mmph mmph,” Daft Wullie tried to say, before Rob managed to shut him up.

Tiffany turned back to the line of hoofprints and began to walk.

The snow squeaked unpleasantly underfoot.

She went a little way, watching the trees get realer as she approached them, and then looked around.

All the Nac Mac Feegle were creeping along behind her. Rob Anybody gave her a cheery nod. And all her footprints had become holes in the snow, with grass showing through.

The trees began to annoy her. The way things changed was more frightening than any monster. You could hit a monster, but you couldn’t hit a forest. And she wanted to hit something.

She stopped and scraped some snow away from the base of a tree, and just for a moment there was nothing but grayness where it had been. As she watched, the bark grew down to where the snow was. Then it just stayed there, pretending it had been there all the time.

It was a lot more worrying than the grimhounds. They were just monsters. They could be beaten. This was . . . frightening.

She was second thinking again. She felt the fear grow, she felt her stomach become a red hot lump, she felt her elbows begin to sweat. But it was . . . not connected. She watched herself being frightened, and that meant that there was still this part of herself, the watching part, that wasn’t.

The trouble was, it was being carried on legs that were. It had to be very careful.

And that was where it went wrong. Fear gripped her, all at once. She was in a strange world, with monsters, being followed by hundreds of little blue thieves. And . . . black dogs. Headless horsemen. Monsters in the river. Sheep whizzing backward across fields. Voices under the bed . . .

The terror took her. But because she was Tiffany, she ran toward it, raising the pan. She had to get through the forest, find the Queen, get her brother, leave this place!

Somewhere behind her, voices started to shout—

She woke up.

There was no snow, but there was the whiteness of the bedsheet and the plaster ceiling of her bedroom. She stared at it for a while, then leaned down and peered under the bed.

There was nothing there but the guzunder. When she flung open the door of the doll’s house, there was no one inside but the two toy soldiers and the teddy bear and the headless dolly.

The walls were solid. The floor creaked as 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 drainboard 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 could see the door actually shaking on its 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 off the hinges and slid across the floor.

“Dinna 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 around at the sink was not even human but just . . . stuff, no more human than a gingerbread man, gray as old dough, changing shape as it lumbered toward 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 outward, into the gloom among the tree trunks.

There was . . . stuff in the trees. Lumps of stuff. It was gray, and it 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, ye ken, and therrre again, it wasna. . . .”

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 kidnaped 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 didna 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 anything in the dream, ye’ll never want tae’ 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 hasna 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 dinna see,” said William. “An’ ye did well. Ye were fightin’ it. Ye knew it wasna 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 be just as stupid tomorrow, and get into the same trouble again. And she did it because not doing it was unthinkable.

There had been the time when they met the peddler and the donkey in the lane. It was a small donkey and could hardly be seen under the pack piled on it. And the peddler was thrashing it because it had fallen over.

Tiffany had cried to see that, and Granny had looked at her and then said something to Thunder and Lightning.

The peddler had stopped when he heard the growling. The sheepdogs had taken up positions on either side of the man, so that he couldn’t quite see them both at once. He raised his stick as if to hit Lightning, and Thunder’s growl grew louder.

“I’d advise ye not to do that,” said Granny.

He wasn’t a stupid man. The eyes of the dogs were like steel balls. He lowered his arm.

“Now throw down the stick,” said Granny. The man did so, dropping it into the dust as though it had suddenly grown red-hot.

Granny Aching walked forward and picked it up. Tiffany remembered that it was a willow twig, long and whippy.

Suddenly, so fast that her hand was a blur, Granny sliced it across the man’s face twice, leaving two long red marks. He began to move, and some desperate thought must have saved him, because now the dogs were almost frantic for the command to leap.

“Hurts, don’t it?” said Granny, pleasantly. “Now, I knows who you are, and I reckon you knows who I am. You sell pots and pans and they ain’t bad, as I recall. But if I put out the word, you’ll have no business in my hills. Be told. Better to feed your beast than whip it. You hear me?”

With his eyes shut and his hands shaking, the man nodded.

“That’ll do,” said Granny Aching, and instantly the dogs became, once more, two ordinary sheepdogs, who came and sat on either side of her with their tongues hanging out.

Tiffany watched the man unpack some of the load and strap it to his own back and then, with great care, urge the donkey on along the road. Granny watched him go while filling her pipe with Jolly Sailor. Then, as she lit it, she said, as if the thought had just occurred to her:

“Them as can do has to do for them as can’t. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.”

Tiffany thought: Is this what being a witch is? It wasn’t what I expected! When do the good bits happen?

She stood up. “Let’s keep going,” she said.

“Aren’t ye tired?” said Rob.

“We’re going to keep going!”

“Aye? Weel, she’s probably headed for her place beyond the wood. If we dinna carry ye, it’ll tak’ aboout a coupla hours—”

“I’ll walk!” The memory of the huge dead face of the drome was trying to come back into her mind, but fury gave it no space. “Where’s the frying pan? Thank you! Let’s go!”

She set off through the strange trees. The hoofprints almost glowed in the gloom. Here and there other tracks crossed them, tracks that could have been bird feet, rough round footprints that could have been made by anything, squiggly lines that a snake might make, if there were such things as snow snakes.

The pictsies were running in line with her on either side.

Even with the edge of the fury dying away, it was hard looking at things here without her head aching. Things that seemed far off got closer too quickly, trees changed shape as she passed them.

Almost unreal, William had said. Nearly a dream. This world didn’t have enough reality in it for distances and shapes to work properly. Once again the magic artist was painting madly. If she looked hard at a tree, it changed and became more treelike and less like something drawn by Wentworth with his eyes shut.

This is a made-up world, Tiffany thought. Almost like a story. The trees don’t have to be very detailed because who looks at trees in a story?

She stopped in a small clearing and stared hard at a tree. It seemed to know it was being watched. It became more real. The bark roughened, and proper twigs grew on the ends of the branches.

The snow was melting around her feet, too. Although melting was the wrong word. It was just disappearing, leaving leaves and grass.

If I was a world that didn’t have enough reality to go around, Tiffany thought, then snow would be quite handy. It doesn’t take a lot of effort. It’s just white stuff. Everything looks white and simple. But I can make it complicated. I’m more real than this place.

She heard a buzzing overhead and looked up.

And suddenly the air was filling with small people, smaller than the Feegle, with wings like dragonflies’. There was a golden glow around them. Tiffany, entranced, reached out a hand—

At the same moment what felt like the entire clan of Nac Mac Feegle landed on her back and sent her sliding into a snowdrift.

When she struggled out, the clearing was a battlefield. The pictsies were jumping and slashing at the flying creatures, which buzzed around them like wasps. As she stared, two of them dived onto Rob Anybody and lifted him off his feet by his hair.

He rose in the air, yelling and struggling. Tiffany leaped up and grabbed him around the waist, flailing at the creatures with her other hand. They let go of the pictsie and dodged easily, zipping through the air as fast as hummingbirds. One of them bit her on the finger before buzzing away.

Somewhere a voice went: “Oooooooooooooeeerrrrrr . . .”

Rob struggled in Tiffany’s grip. “Quick, put me doon!” he yelled. “There’s gonna be poetry!”

CHAPTER 9

Lost Boys

The moan rolled around the clearing, as mournful as a month of Mondays.

“. . . rrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaoooooooo . . .”

It sounded like some animal in terrible pain. But it was, in fact, Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, who was standing on a snowdrift with one hand pressed to his heart and the other outstretched, very theatrically.

He was rolling his eyes, too.

“. . . oooooooooooooooooooooo . . .”

“Ach, the muse is a terrible thing to have happen to ye,” said Rob Anybody, putting his hands over his ears.

“. . . oooooiiiiiit is with grreat lamentation and much worrying dismay,” the pictsie groaned, “That we rrregard the doleful prospect of Fairyland in considerrrable decay . . .”

In the air the flying creatures stopped attacking and began to panic. Some of them flew into one another.

“. . . With quite a large number of drrrrrrreadful incidents happening everrry day,” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock recited, “Including, I am sorrrry to say, an aerial attack by the otherwise quite attractive fey . . .”

The fliers screeched. Some crashed into the snow, but the ones still capable of flight swarmed off among the trees.

“. . . Witnessed by all of us at this time, and celebrated in this hasty rhyme!” Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock shouted after them.

And they were gone.

Feegles were picking themselves up off the ground. Some were bleeding where the fairies had bitten them. Several were lying curled up and groaning.

Tiffany looked at her own finger. The bite of the fairy had left two tiny holes.

“It isna too bad,” Rob Anybody shouted up from below. “No one taken by them, just a few cases where the lads didna put their hands o’er their ears in time.”

“Are they all right?”

“Oh, they’ll be fine wi’ counsellin’.”

On the mound of snow William clapped Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock on the shoulder in a friendly way.

“That, lad,” he said proudly, “was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul. The last couple of lines need some work, but ye has the groanin’ off fiiine. All in all, a verrry commendable effort! We’ll make a gonnagle out of ye yet!”

Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock blushed happily.

In Fairyland words really have power, Tiffany thought. And I am more real. I’ll remember that.

The pictsies assembled into battle order again, although it was pretty disorderly, and set off. Tiffany didn’t rush too far ahead this time.

“That’s yer little people wi’ wings,” said Rob, as Tiffany sucked at her finger. “Are ye happier now?”

“Why were they trying to carry you away?”

“Ach, they carries their victims off to their nest, where their young ones—”

“Stop!” said Tiffany. “This is going to be horrible, right?”

“Oh, aye. Gruesome,” said Rob, grinning.

“And you used to live here?”

“Ah, but it wasna so bad then. It wasna perfect, mark you, but the Quin wasna as cold in them days. The King was still aroound. She was always happy then.”

“What happened? Did the King die?”

“No. They had words, if ye tak’ my meanin’,” said Rob.

“Oh, you mean like an argument—”

“A bit, mebbe,” said Rob. “But they was magical words. Forests destroyed, mountains explodin’, a few hundred deaths, that kind of thing. And he went off to his own world. Fairyland was never a picnic, ye ken, even in the old days. But it was fine if you kept alert, an’ there was flowers and burdies and summertime. Now there’s the dromes and the hounds and the stinging fey and such stuff creepin’ in from their own worlds, and the whole place has gone doon the tubes.”

Things taken from their own worlds, thought Tiffany, as she tramped through the snow. Worlds all squashed together like peas in a sack, or hidden inside one another like bubbles inside other bubbles.

She had a picture in her head of things creeping out of their own world and into another, in the same way that mice invaded the larder. Only there were worse things than mice.

What would a drome do if it got into our world? You’d never know it was there. It’d sit in the corner and you’d never see it, because it wouldn’t let you. And it’d change the way you saw the world, give you nightmares, make you want to die.

Her Second Thoughts added: I wonder how many have got in already and we don’t know?

And I’m in Fairyland, where dreams can hurt. Somewhere all stories are real, all songs are true. I thought that was a strange thing for the kelda to say. . . .

Tiffany’s Second Thoughts said: Hang on, was that a First Thought?

And Tiffany thought: No, that was a Third Thought. I’m thinking about how I think about what I’m thinking. At least, I think so.

Her Second Thoughts said: Let’s all calm down, please, because this is quite a small head.

The forest went on. Or perhaps it was a small forest and, somehow, moved around them as they walked. This was Fairyland, after all. You couldn’t trust it.

And the snow still vanished where Tiffany walked, and she had only to look at a tree for it to smarten up and make an effort to look like a real tree.

The Queen is . . . well, a queen, Tiffany thought. She’s got a world of her own. She could do anything with it. And all she does is steal things, mess up people’s lives . . .

There was the thud of hoofbeats in the distance.

It’s her! What shall I do? What shall I say?

The Nac Mac Feegles leaped behind the trees.

“Come away oot o’ the path!” whispered Rob Anybody.

“She might still have him!” said Tiffany, gripping the pan handle nervously and staring at the blue shadows between the trees.

“So? We’ll find a wa’ to steal him! She’s the Quin! Ye canna beat the Quin face-to-face!”

The hoofbeats were louder, and now it sounded as though there was more than one animal.

A stag appeared through the trees, steam pouring off it. It stared at Tiffany with wild red eyes and then, bunching up, leaped over her. She smelled the stink of it as she ducked, she felt its sweat on her neck.

It was a real animal. You couldn’t imagine a reek like that.

And here came the dogs.

The first one she caught with the edge of the pan, bowling it over. The other turned to snap at her, then looked down in amazement as pictsies erupted from the snow under each paw. It was hard to bite anyone when all four of your feet were moving away in different directions, and then other pictsies landed on its head and biting anything ever again soon became . . . impossible. The Nac Mac Feegle hated grimhounds.

Tiffany looked up at a white horse. That was real, too, as far as she could tell. And there was a boy on it.

“Who are you?” he said. He made it sound like “What sort of thing are you?”

“Who are you?” said Tiffany, pushing her hair out of her eyes. It was the best she could do right now.

“This is my forest,” said the boy. “I command you to do what I say!”

Tiffany peered at him. The dull, secondhand light of Fairyland was not very good, but the more she looked, the more certain she was. “Your name is Roland, isn’t it?” she said.

“You will not speak to me like that!”

“Yes, it is. You’re the Baron’s son!”

“I demand that you stop talking!” The boy’s expression was strange now, creased up and pink, as if he was trying not to cry. He raised his hand with a riding whip in it—

There was a very faint thwap. Tiffany glanced down. The Nac Mac Feegle had formed a pile under the horse’s belly, and one of them, climbing up on their shoulders, had just cut through the saddle girth.

She held up a hand quickly. “Stand still!” she shouted, trying to sound commanding. “If you move, you’ll fall off your horse!”

“Is that a spell? Are you a witch?” The boy dropped the whip and pulled a long dagger from his belt. “Death to witches!”

He urged the horse forward with a jerk, and then there was one of those long moments, a moment when the whole universe said, “Uh-oh” and, still holding the dagger, the boy swiveled around the horse and landed in the snow.

Tiffany knew what would happen next. Rob Anybody’s voice echoed among the trees:

“You’re in trouble noo, pal! Get him!”

“No!” Tiffany yelled. “Get away from him!”

The boy scrambled backward, staring at Tiffany in horror.

“I do know you,” she said. “Your name is Roland. You’re the Baron’s son. They said you’d died in the forest—”

“You mustn’t talk about that!”

“Why not?”

“Bad things happen!”

“They’re already happening,” said Tiffany. “Look, I’m here to rescue my—”

But the boy had got to his feet and was running back through the forest. He turned and shouted, “Stay away from me!”

Tiffany ran after him, jumping over snow-covered logs, and saw him ahead, dodging from tree to tree. Then he paused and looked back.

She ran up to him, saying, “I know how to get you out—”

—and danced.

She was holding the hand of a parrot or, at least someone with the head of a parrot.

Her feet moved under her, perfectly. They twirled her around, and this time her hand was caught by a peacock, or at least someone with the head of a peacock. She glanced over his shoulder and saw that she was now in a room, no, a ballroom full of masked people, dancing.

Ah, she thought. Another dream. I should have looked where I was going.

The music was strange. There was a kind of rhythm to it, but it sounded muffled and odd, as if it was being played backward, underwater, by musicians who’d never seen their instruments before.

And she hoped the dancers were wearing masks. She realized she was looking out through the eyeholes of one and wondered what she was. She was also wearing a long dress, which glittered.

O-kay, she thought carefully. There was a drome there, and I didn’t stop to look. And now I’m in a dream. But it’s not mine. It must make use of what it finds in your head, and I’ve never been to anything like this.

“Fwa waa fwah waa wha?” said the peacock. The voice was like the music. It sounded almost like a voice, but it wasn’t.

“Oh, yes,” said Tiffany. “Fine.”

“Fwaa?”

“Oh. Er . . . wuff fawf fwaff ?”

This seemed to work. The peacock-headed dancer bobbed a little bow, said “Mwa waf waf” sadly, and wandered off.

Somewhere in here is the drome, said Tiffany to herself. And it must be a pretty good one. This is a big dream.

Little things were wrong, though. There were hundreds of people in the room, but the ones in the distance, although they were moving about in quite a natural way, seemed the same as the trees—blobs and swirls of color. You had to look hard to notice this, though.

First Sight, Tiffany thought.

People in brilliant costumes and still more masks walked arm in arm past her, as if she was just another guest. Those who weren’t joining the new dance were heading for the long tables at one side of the hall, which were piled with food.

Tiffany had seen such food only in pictures. People didn’t starve on the farm, but even when food was plentiful, at Hogswatch or after harvest, it never looked like this. The farm food was mostly shades of white or brown. It was never pink and blue, and never wobbled.

There were things on sticks, and things that gleamed and glistened in bowls. Nothing was simple. Everything had cream on it, or chocolate whirls, or thousands of little colored balls. Everything was spun or glazed or added to or mixed up. This wasn’t food—it was what food became if it had been good and had gone to food heaven.

It wasn’t just for eating, it was for show. It was piled up against mounds of greenery and enormous arrangements of flowers. Here and there huge transparent carvings were landmarks in this landscape of food. Tiffany reached up and touched a glittering cockerel. It was ice, damp under her fingertips. There were others, too—a jolly fat man, a bowl of fruits all carved in ice, a swan.

Tiffany was, for a moment, tempted. It seemed a very long time since she had eaten anything. But the food was too obviously not food at all. It was bait. It was supposed to say: Hello, little kiddie. Eat me.

I’m getting the hang of this, thought Tiffany. Good thing it didn’t think of cheese—

—and there was cheese. Suddenly, cheese had always been there.

She’d seen pictures of lots of different cheeses in the Almanack. She was good at cheese and had always wondered what the others tasted like. They were faraway cheeses with strange-sounding names, cheeses like Treble Wibbley, Waney Tasty, Old Argg, Red Runny, and the legendary Lancre Blue, which had to be nailed to the table to stop it attacking other cheeses.

Just a taste wouldn’t hurt, surely. It wasn’t the same as eating, was it? After all, she was in control, wasn’t she? She’d seen right through the dream straight away, hadn’t she? So it couldn’t have any effect, could it?

And . . . well, cheese was hardly temptation for anyone.

Okay, the drome must’ve put the cheese in as soon as she’d thought of it, but . . .

She was already holding the cheese knife. She didn’t quite remember picking it up.

A drop of cold water landed on her hand. It made her glance up at the nearest glittering ice carving.

It showed a shepherdess, with a saddlebag dress and a big bonnet. Tiffany was sure it had been a swan when she’d looked at it before.

The anger came back. She’d nearly been fooled! She looked at the cheese knife. “Be a sword,” she said. After all, the drome was making her dream, but she was doing the dreaming. She was real. Part of her wasn’t asleep.

There was a clang.

“Correction,” said Tiffany. “Be a sword that isn’t so heavy.” And this time she got something she could actually hold.

There was a rustling in the greenery and a red-haired face poked out.

“Psst,” it whispered. “Dinna eat the canapés!”

“You’re a bit late!”

“Ach, weel, it’s a cunnin’ ol’ drome ye’re dealin’ with here,” said Rob Anybody. “The dream wouldna let us in unless we wuz properly dressed.”

He stepped out, looking very sheepish in a black suit with a bow tie. There was more rustling and other pictsies pushed their way out of the greenery. They looked a bit like redheaded penguins.

“Properly dressed?” said Tiffany.

“Aye,” said Daft Wullie, who had a piece of lettuce on his head. “An’ these troosers are a wee bit chafin’ around the nethers, I don’t mind tellin’ ye.”

“Have ye spotted the creature yet?” said Rob Anybody.

“No! It’s so crowded!”

“We’ll help ye look,” said Rob Anybody. “The thing canna hide if ye’re right up close. Be careful, mind you! If it thinks ye’re gonna whap it one, there’s nae tellin’ what it’ll try! Spread oot, lads, and pretend ye’re enjoying the cailey.”

“Whut? D’ye mean get drunk and fight an’ that?” said Daft Wullie.

“Crivens, ye wouldna believe it,” said Rob Anybody, rolling his eyes. “Nae, ye pudden! This is a posh party, ye ken? That means ye mak’ small talk an’ mingle!”

“Ach, I’m a famous mingler! They won’t even know we’re here!” said Daft Wullie. “C’mon!”

Even in a dream, even at a posh ball, the Nac Mac Feegle knew how to behave. You charged in madly, and you screamed . . . politely.

“Lovely weather for the time o’ year, is it not, ye wee scunner!”

“Hey, jimmy, ha’ ye no got a pommes frites for an ol’ pal?”

“The band is playin’ divinely, I dinna think!”

“Make my caviar deep fried, wilya?”

There was something wrong with the crowd. No one was panicking or trying to run away, which was certainly the right response to an invasion of Feegles.

Tiffany set off again through the crowd. The masked people at the party paid her no attention either. And that’s because they’re background people, she thought, just like the background trees. She walked along the room to a pair of double doors and pulled them open.

There was nothing but blackness beyond it.

So . . . the only way out was to find the drome. She hadn’t really expected anything else. It could be anywhere. It could be behind a mask, it could be a table. It could be anything.

Tiffany stared at the crowd. And it was then she saw Roland.

He was sitting at a table by himself. It was spread with food, and he had a spoon in his hand.

She ran over and knocked it onto the floor. “Haven’t you got any sense at all?” she said, pulling him upright. “Do you want to stay here forever?”

And then she felt the movement behind her. Later on, she was sure she hadn’t heard anything. She’d just known. It was a dream, after all.

She glanced around, and there was the drome. It was almost hidden behind a pillar.

Roland just stared at her.

“Are you all right?” said Tiffany desperately, trying to shake him. “Have you eaten anything?”

“Fwa fwa faff,” murmured the boy.

Tiffany turned back to the drome. It was moving toward her, but very slowly, trying to stay in the shadows. It looked like a little snowman made of dirty snow.

The music was getting louder. The candles were getting brighter. Out on the huge dance floor the animal-headed couples whirled faster and faster. And the floor shook. The dream was in trouble.

The Nac Mac Feegles were running to her from every part of the floor, trying to be heard above the din.

The drome was lurching toward her, pudgy white fingers grasping the air.

“First Sight,” breathed Tiffany.

She cut Roland’s head off.

The snow had melted all across the clearing, and the trees looked real and properly treelike.

In front of Tiffany the drome fell backward. She was holding the old frying pan in her hand, but it had cut beautifully. Odd things, dreams.

She turned and faced Roland, who was staring at her with a face so pale, he might as well have been a drome.

“It was frightened,” she said. “It wanted me to attack you instead. It tried to look like you and made you look like a drome. But it didn’t know how to speak. You do.”

“You might have killed me!” he said hoarsely.

“No,” said Tiffany. “I just explained. Please don’t run away. Have you seen a baby boy here?”

Roland’s face wrinkled. “What?” he said.

“The Queen took him,” said Tiffany. “I’m going to fetch him home. I’ll take you too, if you like.”

“You’ll never get away,” whispered Roland.

“I got in, didn’t I?”

“Getting in is easy. No one gets out!”

“I mean to find a way,” said Tiffany, trying to sound a lot more confident than she felt.

“She won’t let you!” Roland started to back away again.

“Please don’t be so . . . so stupid,” said Tiffany. “I’m going to find the Queen and get my brother back, whatever you say. Understand? I’ve got this far. And I’ve got help, you know.”

“Where?” said Roland.

Tiffany looked around. There was no sign of the Nac Mac Feegle.

“They always turn up,” she said. “Just when I need them.”

It struck her that there was suddenly something very . . . empty about the forest. It seemed colder, too.

“They’ll be here any minute,” she added, hopefully.

“They got trapped in the dream,” said Roland flatly.

“They can’t have. I killed the drome!”

“It’s more complicated than that,” said the boy. “You don’t know what it’s like here. There’s dreams inside dreams. There’s . . . other things that live inside dreams, horrible things. You never know if you’ve really woken up. And the Queen controls them all. They’re fairy people, anyway. You can’t trust them. You can’t trust anyone. I don’t trust you. You’re probably just another dream.”

He turned his back and walked away, following the line of hoofprints.

Tiffany hesitated. The only other real person was going away, leaving her here with nothing but the trees and the shadows.

And, of course, anything horrible that was running toward her through them.

“Er . . .” she said. “Hello? Rob Anybody? William? Daft Wullie?”

There was no reply. There wasn’t even an echo. She was alone, except for her heartbeats.

Well, of course she’d fought things and won, hadn’t she? But the Nac Mac Feegle had been there and, somehow, that’d made it easy. They never gave up, they’d attack absolutely anything, and they didn’t know the meaning of the word fear.

Tiffany, who had read her way through the dictionary, had a Second Thought there. Fear was only one of thousands of words the pictsies probably didn’t know the meaning of. Unfortunately, she did know what it meant. And the taste and feel of fear, too. She felt it now.

She gripped the pan. It didn’t seem quite such a good weapon anymore.

The cold blue shadows between the trees seemed to be spreading out. They were darkest ahead of her, where the hoofprints led. Strangely enough, the wood behind her seemed almost light and inviting.

Someone doesn’t want me to go on, she thought. That was . . . quite encouraging. But the twilight was misty and shimmered unpleasantly. Anything could be waiting.

She was waiting, too. She realized that she was waiting for the Nac Mac Feegle, hoping against hope that she’d hear a sudden cry, even of “Crivens!” (She was sure it was a swearword.)

She pulled out the toad, which lay snoring on the palm of her hand, and gave it a prod.

“Whp?” it croaked.

“I’m stuck in a wood of evil dreams and I’m all alone and I think it’s getting darker,” said Tiffany. “What should I do?”

The toad opened one bleary eye and said: “Leave.”

“That is not a lot of help!”

“Best advice there is,” said the toad. “Now put me back—the cold makes me lethargic.”

Reluctantly, Tiffany put the creature back in her apron pocket, and her hand touched Diseases of the Sheep.

She pulled it out and opened it at random. There was a cure for the Steams, but it had been crossed out in pencil. Written in the margin, in Granny Aching’s big, round, careful handwriting was:

This dunt work. One desert spoonfull of terpentine do.

Tiffany closed the book with care and put it back gently so as not to disturb the sleeping toad. Then, gripping the pan’s handle tightly, she stepped into the long blue shadows.

How do you get shadows when there’s no sun in the sky? she thought, because it was better to think about things like this than all the other, much worse things that were on her mind.

But these shadows didn’t need light to create them. They crawled around on the snow of their own accord, and backed away when she walked toward them. That, at least, was a relief.

They piled up behind her. They were following her. She turned and stamped her foot a few times, and they scurried off behind the trees, but she knew they were flowing back when she wasn’t looking.

She saw a drome in the distance ahead of her, standing half hidden behind a tree. She screamed at it and waved the pan threateningly, and it lumbered off quickly.

When she looked around, she saw two more behind her, a long way back.

The track led uphill a little, into what looked like a much thicker mist. It glowed faintly. She headed for it. There was no other way to go.

When she reached the top of the rise, she looked down into a shallow valley.

There were four dromes in it—big ones, bigger than any she’d seen so far. They were sitting down in a square, their dumpy legs stretched out in front of them. Each one had a gold collar around its neck, attached to a chain.

“Tame ones?” Tiffany wondered, aloud. “But—”

Who could put a collar around the neck of a drome? Only someone who could dream as well as they could.

We tamed the sheepdogs to help us herd sheep, she thought. The Queen uses dromes to herd dreams.

In the center of the square formed by the dromes the air was full of mist. The hoof tracks, and the tracks of Roland, led down past the tame dromes and into the cloud.

Tiffany spun around. The shadows darted back.

There was nothing else nearby. No birds sang, nothing moved in the woods. But she could make out three more dromes now, their big round soggy faces peering at her around tree trunks.

She was being herded.

At a time like this it would be nice to have someone around to say something like “No! It’s too dangerous! Don’t do it!”

Unfortunately, there wasn’t. She was going to commit an act of extreme bravery and no one would know if it all went wrong. That was frightening, but also . . . annoying. That was it—annoying. This place annoyed her. It was all stupid and strange.

It was the same feeling she’d had when Jenny had leaped out of the river. Out of her river. And the Queen had taken her brother. Maybe it was selfish to think like that, but anger was better than fear. Fear was a damp cold mess, but anger had an edge. She could use it.

They were herding her! Like a—a sheep!

Well, an angry sheep could send a vicious dog away, whimpering.

So . . .

Four big dromes, sitting in a square.

It was going to be a big dream.

Raising the pan to shoulder height, to swipe at anything that came near, and suppressing a dreadful urge to go to the toilet, Tiffany walked slowly down the slope, across the snow, through the mist . . .

. . . and into summer.

CHAPTER 10

Master Stroke

The heat struck like a blowtorch, so sharp and sudden that she gasped.

She’d had sunstroke once, up on the downs, when she’d gone without a bonnet. And this was like that; the world around here was in worrying shades of dull green, yellow, and purple, without shadows. The air was so full of heat that she felt she could squeeze smoke out of it.

She was in . . . reeds, they looked like, much taller than her . . .

. . . with sunflowers growing in them, except . . .

. . . the sunflowers were white . . .

. . . because they weren’t, in fact, sunflowers at all.

They were daisies. She knew it. She’d stared at them dozens of times, in that strange picture in the Faerie Tales. They were daisies, and these weren’t giant reeds around her, they were blades of grass and she was very, very small.

She was in the weird picture. The picture was the dream, or the dream was the picture. Which way around didn’t matter, because she was right in the middle of it. If you fell off a cliff, it wouldn’t matter if the ground was rushing up or you were rushing down. You were in trouble either way.

Somewhere in the distance there was a loud crack! and a ragged cheer. Someone clapped and said, in a sleepy sort of voice, “Well done. Good man. Ver’ well done.”

With some effort Tiffany pushed her way between the blades of grass.

On a flat rock a man was cracking nuts half as big as he was, with a two-handed hammer. He was being watched by a crowd of people. Tiffany used the word people because she couldn’t think of anything else that was suitable, but it was stretching the word a bit to make it fit all the . . . people.

They were different sizes, for one thing. Some of the men were taller than her, even if you allowed for the fact that everyone was shorter than the grass. But others were tiny. Some of them had faces that you wouldn’t look at twice. Others had faces that no one would want to look at even once.

This is a dream, after all, Tiffany told herself. It doesn’t have to make sense, or be nice. It’s a dream, not a daydream. People who say things like “May all your dreams come true” should try living in one for five minutes.

She stepped out into the bright, stiflingly hot clearing just as the man raised his hammer again, and said, “Excuse me?”

“Yes?” he said.

“Is there a Queen around here?” said Tiffany.

The man wiped his forehead and nodded toward the other side of the clearing.

“Her Majesty has gone to her bower,” he said.

“That being a nook or resting place?” said Tiffany.

The man nodded and said, “Correct again, Miss Tiffany.”

Don’t ask how he knows your name, Tiffany told herself.

“Thank you,” she said, and because she had been brought up to be polite, she added, “Best of luck with the nut cracking.”

“This one’s the toughest yet,” said the man.

Tiffany walked off, trying to look as if this collection of strange nearly-people was just another crowd. Probably the scariest ones were the big women, two of them.

Big women were valued on the Chalk. Farmers liked big wives. Farmwork was hard, and there was no call for a wife who couldn’t carry a couple of piglets or a bale of hay. But these two could have carried a horse each. They stared haughtily at her as she walked past.

They had tiny, stupid little wings on their backs.

“Nice day for watching nuts being cracked!” said Tiffany cheerfully as she went past. Their huge pale faces wrinkled, as if they were trying to work out what she was.

Sitting down near them, watching the nut cracker with an expression of concern, was a little man with a large head, a fringe of white beard, and pointy ears. He was wearing very old-fashioned clothes, and his eyes followed Tiffany as she went past.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Sneebs!” he said, and in her head appeared the words: “Get away from here!”

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Sneebs!” said the man, wringing his hands. And the words appeared, floating in her brain: “It’s terribly dangerous!”

He waved a pale hand as if to brush her away. Shaking her head, Tiffany walked on.

There were lords and ladies, people in fine clothes and even a few shepherds. But some of them had a pieced-together look. They looked, in fact, like a picture book back in her bedroom.

It was made of thick card, its edges worn raggedy by generations of Aching children. Each page showed a character, and each was cut into four strips that could be turned over independently. The point of the whole thing was that a bored child could turn over parts of the pages and change the way the characters were dressed. You could end up with a soldier’s head on a baker’s chest wearing a maid’s dress and a farmer’s big boots.

Tiffany had never been bored enough. She considered that even things that spend their whole lives hanging from the undersides of branches would never be bored enough to spend more than five seconds with that book.

The people around here looked as though they’d either been taken from that book or had dressed for a fancy-dress party in the dark. One or two of them nodded to her as she passed but didn’t seem surprised to see her.

She ducked under a round leaf much bigger than she was and took out the toad again.

“Whap? It’s sti’ cooold,” said the toad, hunching down on her hand.

“Cold? The air’s baking!”

“There’s just snow,” said the toad. “Put me back, I’m freezing!”

Just a minute, thought Tiffany. “Do toads dream?” she said.

“No!”

“Oh . . . so it’s not really hot?”

“No! You just think it is!”

“Psst,” said a voice.

Tiffany put the toad away and wondered if she dared to turn her head.

“It’s me!” said the voice.

Tiffany turned toward a clump of daisies twice the height of a man. “That’s not a lot of help.”

“Are you crazy?” said the daisies.

“I’m looking for my brother,” said Tiffany sharply.

“The horrible child who screams for candy all the time?”

The daisy stems parted and the boy Roland darted out and joined her under the leaf.

“Yes,” she said, edging away and feeling that only a sister has a right to call even a brother like Wentworth horrible.

“And threatens to go to the toilet if he’s left alone?” said Roland.

“Yes! Where is he?”

“That’s your brother? The one who’s permanently sticky?”

“I told you!”

“And you really want him back?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

He’s my brother, Tiffany thought. What’s why got to do with it?

“Because he’s my brother! Now tell me where he is?”

“Are you sure you can get out of here?” said Roland.

“Of course,” Tiffany lied.

“And you can take me with you?”

“Yes.” Well, she hoped so.

“All right. I’ll let you do that,” said Roland, relaxing.

“Oh, you’ll let me, will you?” said Tiffany.

“Look, I didn’t know what you were, all right?” said Roland. “There’s always weird things in the forest. Lost people, bits of dreams that’re still lying around . . . you have to be careful. But if you really know the way, then I ought to get back before my father worries too much.”

Tiffany felt the Second Thoughts starting. They said: Don’t change your expression. Just . . . check.

“How long have you been here?” she asked carefully. “Exactly?”

“Well, the light doesn’t really change much,” said the boy. “It feels like I’ve been here . . . oh, hours. Maybe a day.”

Tiffany tried hard not to let her face give anything away, but it didn’t work. Roland’s eyes narrowed.

“I have, haven’t I?” he said.

“Er . . . why do you ask?” said Tiffany, desperately.

“Because in a way it . . . feels like . . . longer. I’ve only been hungry two or three times, and been to the . . . you know . . . twice, so it can’t be very long. But I’ve done all kinds of things . . . it’s been a busy day. . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Um. You’re right,” said Tiffany. “Time goes slowly here. It’s been . . . a bit longer.”

“A hundred years? Don’t tell me it’s a hundred years! Something magical has happened and it’s a hundred years, yes?”

“What? No! Um . . . nearly a year.”

The boy’s reaction was surprising. This time he looked really frightened. “Oh, no! That’s worse than a hundred years!”

“How?” said Tiffany, bewildered.

“If it was a hundred years, I wouldn’t get a thrashing when I got home!”

Hmm, thought Tiffany. “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” she said aloud. “Your father has been very miserable. Besides, it’s not your fault you were stolen by the Queen—” She hesitated, because this time it was his expression that gave it all away. “Was it?”

“Well, there was this fine lady on a horse with bells all over its harness, and she galloped past me when I was out hunting and she was laughing, so of course I spurred my horse and chased after her, and . . .” He fell silent.

“That probably wasn’t a good decision,” said Tiffany.

“It’s not . . . bad here,” said Roland. “It just keeps changing. There’s . . . doorways everywhere. I mean, entrances into other places . . .” His voice tailed off.

“You’d better start at the beginning,” said Tiffany.

“It was great at first,” said Roland. “I thought it was, you know, an adventure? She fed me sweetmeats—”

“What are they, exactly?” said Tiffany. Her dictionary hadn’t included that one. “Are they like sweetbreads?”

“I don’t know. What are sweetbreads?”

“The pancreas or thymus gland of a cow,” said Tiffany. “Not a very good name, I think.”

Roland’s face went red with the effort of thought. “These were more like nougat.”

“Right. Go on,” said Tiffany.

“And then she told me to sing and dance and skip and play,” said Roland. “She said that’s what children were supposed to do.”

“Did you?”

“Would you? I’d feel like an idiot. I’m twelve, you know.” Roland hesitated. “In fact, if what you say is true, I’m thirteen now, right?”

“Why did she want you to skip and play?” said Tiffany, instead of saying, “No, you’re still twelve and act like you’re eight.”

“She just said that’s what children do,” said Roland.

Tiffany wondered about this. As far as she could see, children mostly argued, shouted, ran around very fast, laughed loudly, picked their noses, got dirty, and sulked. Any seen dancing and skipping and singing had probably been stung by a wasp.

“Strange,” she said.

“And then when I wouldn’t, she gave me more sweets.”

“More nougat?”

“Sugarplums,” said Roland. “They’re like plums. You know? With sugar on? She’s always trying to feed me sugar! She thinks I like it!”

A small bell rang in Tiffany’s memory. “You don’t think she’s trying to fatten you up before she bakes you in an oven and eats you, do you?”

“Of course not. Only wicked witches do that.”

Tiffany’s eyes narrowed. “Oh yes,” she said carefully. “I forgot. So you’ve been living on sweeties?”

“No, I know how to hunt! Real animals get in here. I don’t know how. Sneebs thinks they find the doorways in by accident. And then they starve to death, because it’s always winter here. Sometimes the Queen sends out robbing parties if a door opens into an interesting world, too. This whole place is like . . . a pirate ship.”

“Yes, or a sheep tick,” said Tiffany, thinking aloud.

“What’re they?”

“They’re insects that bite sheep and suck blood and don’t drop off until they’re full,” said Tiffany.

“Yuck. I suppose that’s the kind of thing peasants have to know about,” said Roland. “I’m glad I don’t. I’ve seen through the doorways to one or two worlds. They wouldn’t let me out, though. We got potatoes from one, and fish from another. I think they frighten people into giving them stuff. Oh, and there was the world where the dromes come from. They laughed about that and said if I wanted to go in there, I was welcome. I didn’t! It’s all red, like a sunset. A great huge sun on the horizon, and a red sea that hardly moves, and red rocks, and long shadows. And those horrible creatures sitting on the rocks. They live off crabs and spidery things and little scribbity creatures. It was awful. There was this sort of ring of little claws and shells and bones around every one of them.”

“Who are they?” said Tiffany, who had noted the word peasants.

“What do you mean?”

“You keep talking about ‘they,’” said Tiffany. “Who do you mean? The people out there?”

“Those? Most of them aren’t even real,” said Roland. “I mean the elves. The fairies. That’s who she’s queen of. Didn’t you know?”

“I thought they were small!”

“I think they can be any size they like,” said Roland. “They’re not exactly real. They’re like . . . dreams of themselves. They can be thin as air or solid as a rock. Sneebs says.”

“Sneebs?” said Tiffany. “Oh . . . the little man that just says sneebs but real words turn up in your head?”

“Yes, that’s him. He’s been here for years. That’s how I knew about the time being wrong. Sneebs got back to his own world once, and it was all different. He was so miserable, he found another doorway and came straight back.”

“He came back?” said Tiffany, astonished.

“He said it was better to belong where you don’t belong than not to belong where you used to belong, remembering when you used to belong there,” said Roland. “At least, I think that’s what he said. He said it’s not too bad here if you keep out of the Queen’s way. He says you can learn a lot.”

Tiffany looked back at the hunched figure of Sneebs, who was still watching the nut cracking. He didn’t look as though he was learning anything. He just looked like someone who’d been frightened for so long, it had become part of his life, like freckles.

“But you mustn’t make the Queen angry,” said Roland. “I’ve seen what happens to people who make her angry. She sets the Bumblebee women on them.”

“Are you talking about those huge women with the tiny wings?”

“Yes! They’re vicious. And if the Queen gets really angry with someone, she just stares at them, and . . . they change.”

“Into what?”

“Other things. I don’t want to have to draw you a picture.” Roland shuddered. “And if I did, I’d need a lot of red and purple crayon. Then they get dragged off and left for the dromes.” He shook his head. “Listen, dreams are real here. Really real. When you’re inside them you’re not . . . exactly here. The nightmares are real, too. You can die.”

This doesn’t feel real, Tiffany told herself. This feels like a dream. I could almost wake up from it.

I must always remember what’s real.

She looked down at her faded blue dress, with the bad stitching around the hem caused by it being let out and taken in as its various owners had grown. That was real.

And she was real. Cheese was real. Somewhere not far away was a world of green turf under a blue sky, and that was real.

The Nac Mac Feegle were real, and once again she wished they were here. There was something about the way they shouted “Crivens!” and attacked everything in sight that was so very comforting.

Roland was probably real.

Almost everything else was really a dream, in a robber world that lived off the real worlds and where time nearly stood still and horrible things could happen at any moment. I don’t want to know anything more about it, she decided. I just want to get my brother and go home, while I’m still angry.

Because when I stop being angry, that’ll be the time to get frightened again, and I’ll be really frightened this time. Too frightened to think. As frightened as Sneebs. And I must think. . . .

“The first dream I fell into was like one of mine,” she said. “I’ve had dreams where I wake up and I’m still asleep. But the ballroom, I’ve never—”

“Oh, that was one of mine,” said Roland. “From when I was young. I woke up one night and went down to the big hall and there were all these people with masks on, dancing. It was just so . . . bright.” He looked wistful for a moment. “That was when my mother was still alive.”

“This one’s a picture from a book I’ve got,” said Tiffany. “She must have got that from me—”

“No, she often uses it,” said Roland. “She likes it. She picks up dreams from everywhere. She collects them.”

Tiffany stood and picked up the frying pan again. “I’m going to see the Queen,” she said.

“Don’t,” said Roland. “You’re the only other real person here except Sneebs, and he’s not very good company.”

“I’m going to get my brother and go home,” said Tiffany flatly.

“I’m not going to come with you, then,” said Roland. “I don’t want to see what she turns you into.”

Tiffany stepped out into the heavy, shadowless light and followed the path up the slope. Giant grasses arched overhead. Here and there more strangely dressed, strangely shaped people turned to watch her but then acted as though she was just a passing wanderer, of no interest whatsoever.

She glanced behind her. In the distance the nut cracker had found a bigger hammer and was getting ready to strike.

“Wanna wanna wanna sweetie!”

Tiffany’s head shot around like a weathercock in a tornado. She ran along the path, head down, ready to swing the pan at anything that stood in her way, and burst through a clump of grass into a space lined with daisies. It could well have been a bower. She didn’t bother to check.

Wentworth was sitting on a large, flat stone, surrounded by sweets. Many of them were bigger than he was. Smaller ones were in piles, large ones lay like logs. And they were in every color sweets can be, such as Not-Really-Raspberry Red, Fake-Lemon Yellow, Curiously-Chemical Orange, Some-Kind-of-Acidy Green, and Who-Knows-What Blue.

Tears were falling off his chin in blobs. Since they were landing among the sweets, serious stickiness was already taking place.

Wentworth howled. His mouth was a big red tunnel with the wobbly thing that no one knows the name of bouncing up and down in the back of his throat. He stopped crying only when it was time to either breathe in or die, and even then it was only for one huge sucking moment before the howl came back again.

Tiffany knew what the problem was immediately. She’d seen it before, at birthday parties. Her brother was suffering from tragic sweet deprivation. Yes, he was surrounded by sweets. But the moment he took any sweet at all, said his sugar-addled brain, that meant he was not taking all the rest. And there were so many sweets he’d never be able to eat them all. It was too much to cope with. The only solution was to burst into tears.

The only solution at home was to put a bucket over his head until he calmed down, and to take almost all the sweets away. He could deal with a few handfuls at a time.

Tiffany dropped the pan and swept him up in her arms. “It’s Tiffy,” she whispered. “And we’re going home.”

And this is where I meet the Queen, she thought. But there was no scream of rage, no explosion of magic . . . nothing.

There was just the buzz of bees in the distance, and the sound of wind in the grass, and the gulping of Wentworth, who was too shocked to cry.

She could see now that the far side of the bower contained a couch of leaves, surrounded by hanging flowers. But there was no one there.

“That’s because I’m behind you,” said the voice of the Queen in her ear.

Tiffany turned around quickly.

There was no one there.

“Still behind you,” said the Queen. “This is my world, child. You’ll never be as fast as me, or as clever as me. Why are you trying to take my boy away?”

“He isn’t yours! He’s ours!” said Tiffany.

“You never loved him. You have a heart like a little snowball. I can see it.”

Tiffany’s forehead wrinkled. “Love?” she said. “What’s that got to do with it? He’s my brother! My brother!”

“Yes, that’s a very witchy thing, isn’t it,” said the voice of the Queen. “Selfishness? Mine, mine, mine? All a witch cares about is what’s hers.”

“You stole him!”

“Stole? You mean you thought you owned him?”

Tiffany’s Second Thoughts said: She’s finding your weaknesses. Don’t listen to her.

“Ah, you have Second Thoughts,” said the Queen. “I expect you think that makes you very witchy, do you?”

“Why won’t you let me see you?” said Tiffany. “Are you frightened?”

“Frightened?” said the voice of the Queen. “Of something like you?”

And the Queen was there, in front of her. She was much taller than Tiffany, but just as slim; her hair was long and black, her face pale, her lips cherry red, her dress black and white and red. And it was all, very slightly, wrong.

Tiffany’s Second Thoughts said: It’s because she’s perfect. Completely perfect. Like a doll. No one real is as perfect as that.

“That’s not you,” said Tiffany, with absolute certainty. “That’s just your dream of you. That’s not you at all.”

The Queen’s smile disappeared for a moment and came back all edgy and brittle.

“Such rudeness, and you hardly know me,” she said, sitting down on the leafy seat. She patted the space beside her.

“Do sit down,” she said. “Standing there like that is so confrontational. I will put your bad manners down to simple disorientation.” She gave Tiffany a beautiful smile.

Look at the way her eyes move, said Tiffany’s Second Thoughts. I don’t think she’s using them to see you with. They’re just beautiful ornaments.

“You have invaded my home, killed some of my creatures, and generally acted in a mean and despicable way,” said the Queen. “This offends me. However, I understand that you have been badly led by disruptive elements—”

“You stole my brother,” said Tiffany, holding Wentworth tightly. “You steal all sorts of things.” But her voice sounded weak and tinny in her ears.

“He was wandering around lost,” said the Queen calmly. “I brought him home and comforted him.”

And what there was about the Queen’s voice was this: It said, in a friendly, understanding way, that she was right and you were wrong. And this wasn’t your fault, exactly. It was probably the fault of your parents, or your food, or something so terrible you’ve completely forgotten about it. It wasn’t your fault, the Queen understood, because you were a nice person. It was just such a terrible thing that all these bad influences had made you make the wrong choices. If only you’d admit that, Tiffany, then the world would be a much happier place—

—this cold place, guarded by monsters, in a world where nothing grows older, or up, said her Second Thoughts. A world with the Queen in charge of everything. Don’t listen.

She managed to take a step backward.

“Am I a monster?” said the Queen. “All I wanted was a little bit of company.”

And Tiffany’s Second Thoughts, quite swamped by the Queen’s wonderful voice, said: Miss Female Infant Robinson . . .

She’d come to work as a maid at one of the farms many years ago. They said that she’d been brought up in a Home for the Destitute in Yelp. They said she’d been born there after her mother had arrived during a terrible storm and the master had written in his big black diary: “To Miss Robinson, female infant,” and her young mother hadn’t been very bright and was dying in any case and had thought that was the baby’s name. After all, it had been written down in an official book.

Miss Robinson was quite old now, never said much, never ate much, but you never saw her not doing something. No one could scrub a floor like Miss Female Infant Robinson. She had a thin, wispy face with a pointed red nose, and thin, pale hands with red knuckles, which were always busy. Miss Robinson worked hard.

Tiffany hadn’t understood a lot of what was going on when the crime happened. The women talked about it in twos and threes at garden gates, their arms folded, and they’d stop and look indignant if a man walked past.

She picked up bits of conversation, though sometimes they seemed to be in a kind of code, like: “Never really had anyone of her own, poor old soul. Wasn’t her fault she was skinnier’n a rake,” and “They say that when they found her, she was cuddling it and said it was hers,” and “The house was full of baby clothes she’d knitted!” That last one had puzzled Tiffany at the time, because it was said in the same tone of voice that someone’d use to say, “And the house was full of human skulls!”

But they all agreed on one thing: We can’t have this. A crime’s a crime. The Baron’s got to be told.

Miss Robinson had stolen a baby, Punctuality Riddle, who had been much loved by his young parents even though they’d named him Punctuality (reasoning that if children could be named after virtues like Patience, Faith, and Prudence, what was wrong with a little good timekeeping?).

He’d been left in his crib in the yard and had vanished. And there had been all the usual searchings and weepings, and then someone had mentioned that Miss Robinson had been taking home extra milk.

It was kidnaping. There weren’t many fences on the Chalk, and very few doors with locks. Theft of all kinds was taken very seriously. If you couldn’t turn your back on what was yours for five minutes, where would it all end? The law’s the law. A crime’s a crime.

Tiffany had overheard bits of arguments all over the village, but the same phrases cropped up over and over again. Poor thing never meant no harm. She was a hard worker, never complained. She’s not right in the head. The law’s the law. A crime’s a crime.

And so the Baron was told, and he held a court in the Great Hall, and everyone who wasn’t wanted up on the hills turned up, including Mr. and Mrs. Riddle, she looking worried, he looking determined, and Miss Robinson, who just stared at the ground with her red-knuckled hands on her knees.

It was hardly a trial. Miss Robinson was confused about what she was accused of, and it seemed to Tiffany that so was everyone else. They weren’t certain why they were there, and they’d come to find out.

The Baron had been uneasy, too. The law was clear. Theft was a dreadful crime, and stealing a human being was much worse. There was a prison in Yelp, right beside the Home for the Destitute; some said there was even a connecting door. That was where thieves went.

And the Baron wasn’t a big thinker. His family had held the Chalk by not changing their mind about anything for hundreds of years. He sat and listened and drummed his fingers on the table and looked at people’s faces and acted like a man sitting on a very hot chair.

Tiffany was in the front row. She was there when the man started to give his verdict, umming and ahhing, trying not to say the words he knew he’d have to say, when the door at the back of the hall opened and the sheepdogs Thunder and Lightning trotted in.

They came down the aisle between the rows of benches and sat down in front of the Baron, looking bright-eyed and alert.

Only Tiffany craned to see back up the aisle. The doors were still slightly ajar. They were far too heavy even for a strong dog to push them open. And she could just make out someone looking through the crack.

The Baron stopped and stared. He, too, looked at the other end of the hall.

And then, after a few moments, he pushed the law book aside and said: “Perhaps we should do this a different way.”

And there was a different way, involving people paying a little more attention to Miss Robinson. It wasn’t perfect, and not everyone was happy, but it worked.

Tiffany smelled the scent of Jolly Sailor outside the hall when the meeting was over, and thought about the Baron’s dog. “Remember this day,” Granny Aching had said, and, “Ye’ll have cause to.”

Barons needed reminding.

“Who will speak up for you?” Tiffany said aloud.

“Speak up for me?” answered the Queen, her fine eyebrows arching.

And Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Watch her face when she is worried.

“There isn’t anyone, is there?” said Tiffany, backing away. “Is there anyone you’ve been kind to? Anyone who’ll say you’re not just a thief and a bully? Because that’s what you are. You’ve got a . . . You’re like the dromes, you’ve just got one trick.”

And there it was. Now she could see what her Third Thoughts had spotted. The Queen’s face flickered for a moment.

“And that’s not your body,” said Tiffany, plunging on. “That’s just what you want people to see. It’s not real. It’s just like everything else here, it’s hollow and empty—”

The Queen ran forward and slapped her much harder than a dream should be able to. Tiffany landed in the moss and Wentworth rolled away, yelling, “Wanna go-a toy-lut!”

Good, said Tiffany’s Third Thoughts.

“Good?” said Tiffany aloud.

“Good?” said the Queen.

Yes, said her Third Thoughts, because she doesn’t know you can have Third Thoughts and your hand is only a few inches from the frying pan and things like her hate iron, don’t they? She’s angry. Now make her furious, so that she doesn’t think. Hurt her.

“You just live here in a land full of winter and all you do is dream of summers,” said Tiffany. “No wonder the king went away.”

The Queen stood still for a moment, like the beautiful statue she so much resembled. Again, the walking dream flickered and Tiffany thought she saw . . . something. It was not much bigger than her, and almost human, and a little shabby and, just for a moment, shocked. Then the Queen was back, tall and angry, and she drew a deep breath—

Tiffany grabbed the pan and swung it as she rolled onto her feet. It hit the tall figure only a glancing blow, but the Queen wavered like air over a hot road, and screamed.

Tiffany didn’t wait to see what else was going to happen. She grabbed her brother again, and ran away, down through the grass, past the strange figures looking around at the sound of the Queen’s anger.

Now shadows moved in the shadowless grasses. Some of the people—the joke people, the ones that looked like a flap-the-pages picture book—changed shape and started to move after Tiffany and her screaming brother.

There was a booming noise on the other side of the clearing. The two huge creatures that Roland had called the Bumblebee women were rising off the ground, their tiny wings blurring with the effort.

Somebody grabbed her and pulled her into the grasses. It was Roland.

“Can you get out now?” he demanded, his face red.

“Er . . .” Tiffany began.

“Then we’d better just run,” he said. “Give me your hand. Come on!”

“Do you know a way out?” Tiffany panted, as they dashed through giant daisies.

“No,” Roland panted back. “There isn’t one. You saw . . . the dromes outside . . . this is a really strong dream.”

“Then why are we running?”

“To keep out of her way. If you hide long enough . . . Sneebs says she . . . forgets.”

I don’t think she’s going to forget me very quickly, Tiffany thought.

Roland had stopped, but she pulled her hand away and ran onward, with Wentworth clinging to her in silent amazement.

“Where are you going?” shouted Roland behind her.

“I really want to keep out of her way!”

“Come back! You’re running right back!”

“No I’m not! I’m running in a straight line!”

“This is a dream!” Roland shouted, but it was louder now because he was catching up to her. “You’re running right around—”

Tiffany burst into a clearing . . .

. . . the clearing.

The Bumblebee women landed on either side of her, and the Queen stepped forward.

“You know,” said the Queen, “I really expected better of you, Tiffany. Now, give me back the boy, and I shall decide what to do next.”

“It’s not a big dream,” mumbled Roland behind her. “If you go too far, you end up coming back—”

“I could make a dream for you that’s even smaller than you are,” said the Queen pleasantly. “That can be quite painful!”

The colors were brighter. And sounds were louder. Tiffany could smell something, too, and what was strange about that was that up until now there had been no smells.

It was a sharp, bitter smell that you never forgot. It was the smell of snow. And underneath the insect buzzings in the grass, she heard the faintest of voices.

“Crivens! I canna find the way oot!”

CHAPTER 11

Awakening

On the other side of the clearing, where the nut-cracking man had been at work, was the last nut, half as high as Tiffany. And it was rocking gently. The cracker took a swipe at it with the hammer, and it rolled out of the way.

See what’s really there, said Tiffany to herself, and laughed.

The Queen gave her a puzzled look. “You find this funny?” she demanded. “What’s funny about this? What is amusing about this situation?”

“I just had a funny thought,” said Tiffany. The Queen glared, as people without a sense of humor do when they’re confronted with a smile.

You’re not very clever, thought Tiffany. You’ve never needed to be. You can get what you want just by dreaming it. You believe in your dreams, so you never have to think.

She turned and whispered to Roland, “Crack the nut! Don’t worry about what I do, crack the nut!” The boy looked at her blankly.

“What did you say to him?” snapped the Queen.

“I said good-bye,” said Tiffany, holding on tightly to her brother. “I’m not handing my brother over, no matter what you do!”

“Do you know what color your insides are?” said the Queen.

Tiffany shook her head mutely.

“Well, now you’ll find out,” said the Queen, smiling sweetly.

“You’re not powerful enough to do anything like that,” said Tiffany.

“You know, you are right,” said the Queen. “That kind of physical magic is, indeed, very hard. But I can make you think I’ve done the most . . . terrible things. And that, little girl, is all I need to do. Would you like to beg for mercy now? You may not be able to later.”

Tiffany paused. “No-o,” she said at last. “I don’t think I will.”

The Queen leaned down. Her gray eyes filled Tiffany’s world. “People here will remember this for a long time,” she said.

“I hope so,” said Tiffany. “Crack . . . the . . . nut.”

For a moment the Queen looked puzzled again. She was not good at dealing with sudden changes. “What?”

“Eh? Oh. Right,” muttered Roland.

“What did you say to him?” the Queen demanded, as the boy ran toward the hammer man.

Tiffany kicked her on the leg. It wasn’t a witch thing. It was so nine years old, and she wished she could have thought of something better. On the other hand, she had hard boots and it was a good kick.

The Queen shook her. “Why did you do that?” she said. “Why won’t you do what I say? Everyone could be so happy if only they’d do what I say!”

Tiffany stared at the woman’s face. The eyes were gray now, but the pupils were like silver mirrors.

I know what you are, said her Third Thoughts. You’re something that’s never learned anything. You don’t know anything about people. You’re just . . . a child that’s got old.

“Want a sweetie?” she whispered.

There was a shout behind her. She twisted in the Queen’s grip and saw Roland fighting for the hammer. As she watched, he turned desperately and raised the heavy thing over his head, knocking over the elf behind him.

The Queen pulled her around savagely as the hammer fell. “Sweetie?” she hissed. “I’ll show you swe—”

“Crivens! It’s the Quin! An’ she’s got oour kelda, the ol’ topher!”

“Nae Quin! Nae Laird! Wee Free Men!”

“I could murrrder a kebab!”

“Get her!”

Tiffany might have been the only person, in all the worlds that there are, to be happy to hear the sound of the Nac Mac Feegle.

They poured out of the smashed nut. Some were still wearing bow ties. Some were back in their kilts. But they were all in a fighting mood and, to save time, were fighting with one another to get up to speed.

The clearing . . . cleared. Real or dreams, the people could see trouble when it rolled toward them in a roaring, cursing, red-and-blue tide.

Tiffany ducked out of the Queen’s grasp and hurried into the grasses to watch.

Big Yan ran past, carrying a struggling full-sized elf over his head. Then he stopped suddenly and tossed it high over the clearing.

“An’ away he goes, right on his heid!” he yelled, then turned and ran back into the battle.

The Nac Mac Feegle couldn’t be trodden on or squeezed. They worked in groups, running up one another’s backs to get high enough to punch an elf or, preferably, bash it with their heads. And once anyone was down, it was all over bar the kicking.

There was some method in the way the Nac Mac Feegle fought. For example, they always chose the biggest opponent because, as Rob Anybody said later, “It makes them easier to hit, ye ken.” And they simply didn’t stop. It was that which wore people down. It was like being attacked by wasps with fists.

It took them a little while to realize that they’d run out of people to fight. They went on fighting one another for a bit anyway, since they’d come all this way, and then settled down and began to go through the pockets of the fallen in case there was any loose change.

Tiffany stood up.

“Ach, weel, no’ a bad job though I says it mysel’,” said Rob Anybody, looking around. “A very neat fight, an’ we didna e’en ha’ to resort to usin’ poetry.”

“How did you get into the nut?” said Tiffany. “I mean, it was . . . a nut!”

“Only way we could find in,” said Rob Anybody. “It’s got to be a way that fits. ’Tis difficult work, navigatin’ in dreams.”

“Especially when ye’re a wee bittie sloshed,” said Daft Wullie, grinning broadly.

“What? You’ve been . . . drinking?” said Tiffany. “I’ve been facing the Queen and you’ve been in a pub?”

“Ach, no!” said Rob Anybody. “Ye ken that dream wi’ the big party? When you had the pretty frock an’ a’? We got stuck in it.”

“But I killed the drome!”

Rob looked a little shifty. “Weeeel,” he said, “we didna get oout as easily as you. It took us a wee while.”

“Until we finished all the drink,” said Daft Wullie helpfully.

Rob glared at him. “Ye didna ha’ to put it like that!” he snapped.

“You mean the dream keeps on going?” said Tiffany.

“If ye’re thirsty enough,” said Daft Wullie. “An’ it wasna just the drink—there was can-a-pays as well.”

“But I thought if you ate or drank in a dream, you stayed there!” said Tiffany.

“Aye, for most creatures,” said Rob Anybody. “Not for us, though. Hooses, banks, dreams, ’tis a’ the same to us. There’s nothing we canna get in or oot of.”

“Except maybe pubs,” said Big Yan.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody cheerfully. “Gettin’ oot o’ pubs sometimes causes us a cerrr-tain amount o’ difficulty, I’ll grant ye that.”

“And where did the Queen go?” she said.

“Ach, she did an offski as soon as we arrived,” said Rob Anybody. “An’ so should we, kelda, afore the dream changes.” He nodded at Wentworth. “Is this the wee bairn? Ach, what a noseful o’ bogeys!”

“Wanna sweetie!” shouted Wentworth, on automatic candy pilot.

“Weeel, ye canna ha’ none!” shouted Rob Anybody. “An’ stop snivelin’ and come awa’ wi’ us and stop bein’ a burden to your wee sister!”

Tiffany opened her mouth to protest—and shut it again when Wentworth, after a moment of shock, chuckled.

“Funny!” he said. “Wee man! Weewee man!”

“Oh dear,” said Tiffany. “You’ve got him started now.”

But she was very surprised, nonetheless. Wentworth never showed this much interest in anyone who wasn’t a jelly baby.

“Rob, we’ve got a real one here,” a pictsie called out. To her horror, Tiffany saw that several of the Nac Mac Feegle were holding up Roland’s unconscious head. He was full length on the ground.

“Ah, that was the laddie who wuz rude to ye,” said Rob. “An’ he tried to hit Big Yan wi’ a hammer, too. That wasna a clever thing to try. What shall we do with him?”

The grasses trembled. The light was fading from the sky. The air was growing colder, too.

“We can’t leave him here!” said Tiffany.

“Okay, we’ll drag him along,” said Rob Anybody. “Let’s move right noo!”

“Wee wee man! Wee wee man!” shouted Wentworth gleefully.

“He’ll be like this all day, I’m afraid,” said Tiffany. “Sorry.”

“Run for the door,” said Rob Anybody. “Can ye no’ see the door?”

Tiffany looked around desperately. The wind was bitter now.

“See the door!” Rob Anybody commanded. She blinked and spun around.

“Er . . . er . . .” she said. The sense of a world beneath that had come to her when she was frightened of the Queen did not turn up so easily now. She tried to concentrate. The smell of snow . . .

It was ridiculous to talk about the smell of snow. It was just pure frozen water. But Tiffany always knew, when she woke up, if it had snowed in the night. Snow had a smell like the taste of tin. Tin did have a taste, although admittedly it tasted like the smell of snow.

She thought she heard her brain creak with the effort of thinking. If she was in a dream, she had to wake up. But it was no use running. Dreams were full of running. But there was one direction that looked . . . thin, and white.

She shut her eyes and thought about snow, crisp and white as fresh bed sheets. She concentrated on the feel of it under her feet. All she had to do was wake up. . . .

She was standing in snow.

“Right,” said Rob Anybody.

“I got out!” said Tiffany.

“Ach, sometimes the door’s in yer ain heid,” said Rob Anybody. “Noo let’s move!”

Tiffany felt herself lifted into the air. Nearby, a snoring Roland rose up on dozens of small blue legs as the Feegles got underneath him.

“Nae stoppin’ until we get right oout o’ here!” said Rob Anybody. “Feegles wha hae!”

They skimmed over the snow, with parties of Feegles running on ahead. After a minute or two Tiffany looked behind them and saw the blue shadows spreading. They were getting darker, too.

“Rob—” she said.

“Aye, I ken,” said Rob. “Run, lads!”

“They’re moving fast, Rob!”

“I ken that, too!”

Snow stung Tiffany’s face. Trees blurred with the speed. The forest sped past. But the shadows were spreading across the path ahead, and every time the party ran through them, they seemed to have a certain solidity, like fog.

Now the shadows behind were night black in the middle.

But the pictsies has passed the last tree, and the snowfields stretched ahead.

They stopped, so quickly that Tiffany almost toppled into the snow.

“What’s happened?”

“Where’s all oour old footprints gone?” said Daft Wullie. “They wuz there a moment ago! Which way noo?”

The trampled track, which had led them on like a line, had vanished.

Rob Anybody spun around and looked back at the forest. Darkness curled above it like smoke, spreading along the horizon.

“She’s sendin’ nightmares after us,” he growled. “This is gonna be a toughie, lads.”

Tiffany saw shapes in the spreading night. She hugged Wentworth tightly.

“Nightmares,” repeated Rob Anybody, turning to her. “Ye wouldna want to know about them. We’ll hold ’em off. Ye must mak’ a run for it. Get awa’ wi’ ye, noo!”

“I’ve got nowhere to run to!” said Tiffany.

She heard a high-pitched noise, a sort of chittering, insect noise, coming from the forest. The pictsies had drawn together. Usually they grinned like anything if they thought a fight was coming up, but this time they looked deadly serious.

“Ach, she’s a bad loser, the Quin,” said Rob.

Tiffany turned to look at the horizon behind her. The boiling blackness was there, too, a ring that was closing in from all sides.

Doors everywhere, she thought. The old kelda said there’s doors everywhere. I must find a door. But there’s just snow and a few trees. . . .

The pictsies drew their swords.

“What, er, kind of nightmares are coming?” said Tiffany.

“Ach, long-leggity things with muckle legs and huge teeth, and flappy wings and a hundred eyes, that kinda stuff,” said Daft Wullie.

“Aye, and wuss than that,” said Rob Anybody, staring at the speeding dark.

“What’s worse than that?” said Tiffany.

“Normal stuff gone wrong,” said Rob.

Tiffany looked blank for a moment, and then shuddered. Oh yes, she knew about those nightmares. They didn’t happen often, but they were horrible when they did. She’d woken up once shaking at the thought of Granny Aching’s boots, which had been chasing her, and another time it was a box of sugar. Anything could be a nightmare.

She could put up with monsters. But she didn’t want to face mad boots.

“Er . . . I have an idea,” she said.

“So do I,” said Rob Anybody. “Dinna be here—that’s my idea!”

“There’s a clump of trees over there,” said Tiffany.

“So what?” said Rob. He was staring at the line of nighmares. Things were visible in it now—teeth, claws, eyes, ribs. From the way he was glaring, it was obvious that whatever happened later, the first few monsters were going to face a serious problem. If they had faces, anyway.

“Can you fight nightmares?” said Tiffany. The chittering noise was getting a lot louder.

“There’s no’ a thing we canna fight,” growled Big Yan. “If it’s got a heid, we can gie it a faceful o’ dandruff. If it disna have a heid, it’s due a good kickin’!”

Tiffany stared at the onrushing . . . things.

“Some of them have got more than one head!” she said.

“It’s oour lucky day, then,” said Daft Wullie.

The pictsies shifted their weight, ready to fight.

“Piper,” said Rob Anybody to William the gonnagle, “play us a lament. We’ll fight to the sound of the mousepipes—”

“No!” said Tiffany. “I’m not standing for this! The way to fight nightmares is to wake up! I am your kelda! This is an order! We’re heading for those trees right now! Do what I say!”

“Weewee man!” yelled Wentworth.

The pictsies glanced at the trees and then at Tiffany.

“Do it!” she yelled, so loudly that some of them flinched. “Right now! Do what I tell you! There’s a better way!”

“Ye canna cross a hag, Rob,” muttered William.

“I’m going to get you home!” snapped Tiffany. I hope, she added to herself. But she’d seen a small, round, pale face staring at them around a tree trunk. There was a drome in those trees.

“Ach, aye, but—” Rob Anybody glanced past Tiffany and added: “Aw no, look at that . . .”

There was a pale dot in front of the racing line of monstrousness.

Sneebs was making a break for it. His arms pumped like pistons. His little legs seemed to spin. His cheeks were like balloons.

The tide of nightmares rolled over him and kept coming.

Rob sheathed his sword. “Ye heard oour kelda, lads!” he shouted. “Grab her! We’rrre offski!”

Tiffany was lifted up. Feegles raised the unconscious Roland. And everyone ran for the trees.

Tiffany pulled her hand out of her apron pocket and looked at the crumpled wrapper of Jolly Sailor tobacco. It was something to focus on, to remind her of a dream . . .

People said you could see the sea from the very top of the downs, but Tiffany had stared hard on a fine winter’s day, when the air was clear, and seen nothing but the hazy blue of distance. But the sea on the Jolly Sailor packet was deep blue, with white crests on the waves. It was the sea, for Tiffany.

It had looked like a small drome in the trees. That meant it wasn’t very powerful. She hoped so. She had to hope so. . . .

The trees got closer. So did the ring of nightmares. Some of the sounds were horrible, of cracking bones and crushing rocks and stinging insects and screaming cats, getting nearer and nearer and nearer.

CHAPTER 12

Jolly Sailor

There was sand around her, and white waves crashing, and water draining off the pebble beach and sounding like an old woman sucking a hard mint.

“Crivens! Where are we noo?” said Daft Wullie.

“Aye, and why’re we all lookin’ like yellow mushrooms?” Rob Anybody added.

Tiffany looked down and giggled. Every pictsie was wearing a Jolly Sailor outfit, with an oilskin coat and a huge yellow oilskin rain hat that covered most of his face. They started to wander about, bumping into one another.

My dream! Tiffany thought. The drome uses what it can find in your head . . . but this is my dream. I can use it.

Wentworth had gone quiet. He was staring at the waves.

There was a boat pulled up on the beach. As one pictsie, or small yellow mushroom, the Nac Mac Feegle were flocking toward it and clambering up the sides.

“What are you doing?” said Tiffany.

“Best if we wuz leavin’,” said Rob Anybody. “It’s a good dream ye’ve found us, but we canna stay here.”

“But we should be safe here!”

“Ach, the Quin finds a way in everywhere,” said Rob, as a hundred pictsies raised an oar. “Dinna fash yersel’, we know all about boats. Did ye no’ see Not-totally-wee-Georgie pike fishin’ wi’ Wee Bobby in the stream the other day? We is no strangers to the piscatorial an’ nautical arts, ye ken.”

And they did indeed seem to know about boats. The oars were heaved into the oarlocks, and a party of Feegles pushed the boat down the stones and into the waves.

“Now you just hand us the wee bairn,” shouted Rob Anybody from the stern. Uncertainly, her feet slipping on the wet stones, Tiffany waded through the cold water and handed Wentworth over.

He seemed to think it was very funny.

“Weewee mens!” he yelled as they lowered him into the boat. It was his only joke, so he wasn’t going to stop.

“Aye, that’s right,” said Rob Anybody, tucking him under the seat. “Noo just you bide there like a good boy and no yellin’ for sweeties or Uncle Rob’ll gie ye a skelpin’ across the earhole, okay?”

Wentworth chuckled.

Tiffany ran back up the beach and hauled Roland to his feet. He opened his eyes and looked blearily at her.

“Wha’s happening?” he said. “I had this strange drea—” and then he shut his eyes again and sagged.

“Get in the boat!” Tiffany shouted, dragging him across the shingle.

“Crivens, are we takin’ this wee streak o’ uselessness?” said Rob, grabbing Roland’s trousers and heaving him aboard.

“Of course!” Tiffany hauled herself in afterward and landed in the bottom of the boat as a wave took it. The oars creaked and splashed, and the boat jerked forward. It jolted once or twice, as more waves hit it, and then began to plunge across the sea. The pictsies were strong, after all. Even though each oar was a battleground as pictsies hung from it, or piled up on one another’s shoulders or just heaved anything they could grasp, both oars were almost bending as they were dragged through the water.

Tiffany picked herself up and tried to ignore the sudden uncertain feeling in her stomach.

“Head for the lighthouse!” she said.

“Aye, I ken that,” said Rob Anybody. “It’s the only place there is! And the Quin disna like light.” He grinned. “It’s a good dream, lady. Have ye no’ looked at the sky?”

“It’s just a blue sky,” said Tiffany.

“It’s no’ exactly a sky,” said Rob Anybody. “Look behind ye.”

Tiffany turned. It was a blue sky. Very blue. But above the retreating beach, halfway up the sky, was a band of yellow. It looked a long way away, and hundreds of miles across. And in the middle of it, looming over the world as big as a galaxy and gray-blue with distance, was a life preserver.

On it, in letters larger than the moon, were the words:

“We are in the label?” said Tiffany.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody.

“But the sea feels . . . real. It’s salty and wet and cold. It’s not like paint! I didn’t dream it salty or so cold!”

“Nae kiddin’? Then it’s a picture on the outside, and it’s real on the inside.” Rob nodded. “Ye ken, we’ve been robbin’ and running aroound on all kinds o’ worlds for a lang time, and I’ll tell ye this: The universe is a lot more comp-li-cated than it looks from the ooutside.”

Tiffany took the grubby label out of her pocket and stared at it again. There was the life preserver, and the lighthouse. But the Jolly Sailor himself wasn’t there. What was there, so tiny as to be little bigger than a dot on the printed sea, was a tiny rowboat.

She looked up. There were storm clouds in the sky in front of the huge, hazy life preserver. They were long and ragged, curling as they came.

“It didna take her long to find a way in,” muttered William.

“No,” said Tiffany, “but this is my dream. I know how it goes. Keep rowing!”

Tangling and tumbling, some of the clouds passed overhead and then swooped toward the sea. They vanished beneath the waves like a waterspout in reverse.

It began to rain hard, so hard that a haze of mist rose over the sea.

“Is that it?” Tiffany wondered. “Is that all she can do?”

“I doot it,” said Rob Anybody. “Bend them oars, lads!”

The boat shot forward, bouncing through the rain from wavetop to wavetop.

But, against all normal rules, it was now trying to go uphill. The water was mounding up and up, and the boat washed backward in the streaming surf.

Something was rising. Something white was pushing the seas aside. Great waterfalls poured off the shining dome that climbed toward the storm sky.

It rose higher, and still there was more. And eventually there was an eye. It was tiny compared to the mountainous head above it, and it rolled in its socket and focused on the tiny boat.

“Now, that’s a heid that’d be a day’s work e’en for Big Yan,” said Rob Anybody. “I reckon we’d have to come back tomorrow! Row, boys!”

“It’s a dream of mine,” said Tiffany, as calmly as she could manage. “It’s the whale fish.”

I never dreamed the smell, though, she added to herself. But here it is, a huge, solid, world-filling smell of salt and water and fish and ooze—

“Whut does it eat?” Daft Wullie asked.

“Ah, I know that,” said Tiffany, as the boat rocked on the swell. “Whales aren’t dangerous, because they just eat very small things . . .”

“Row like the blazes, lads!” Rob Anybody yelled.

“How d’ye ken it only eats wee stuff ?” said Daft Wullie as the whale fish’s mouth began to open.

“I paid a whole cucumber once for a lesson on beasts of the deep,” said Tiffany as a wave washed over them. “Whales don’t even have proper teeth!”

There was a creaking sound and a gust of fishy halitosis about the size of a typhoon, and the view was full of enormous, pointy teeth.

“Aye?” said Wullie. “Weel, no offense meant, but I dinna think this beastie went to the same school as ye!”

The surge of water was pushing them away. And Tiffany could see the whole of the head now, and in a way she couldn’t possibly describe, the whale looked like the Queen. The Queen was there, somewhere.

The anger came back.

“This is my dream,” she shouted at the sky. “I’ve dreamed it dozens of times! You’re not allowed in here! And whales don’t eat people! Everyone who isn’t very stupid knows that!”

A tail the size of a field rose and slapped down on the sea. The whale shot forward.

Rob Anybody threw off his yellow hat and drew his sword.

“Ach, weel, we tried,” he said. “This wee beastie’s gonna get the worst belly ache there ever wuz!”

“Aye, we’ll cut oour way out!” shouted Daft Wullie.

“No, keep rowing!” said Tiffany.

“It’s ne’er been said that the Nac Mac Feegle turned their back on a foe!” Rob yelled.

“But you’re rowing facing backward!” Tiffany pointed out.

The pictsie looked crestfallen. “Oh, aye, I hadna thought o’ it like that,” he said, sitting down again.

“Just row!” Tiffany insisted. “We’re nearly at the lighthouse!”

Grumbling, because even if they were facing the right way, they were still going the wrong way, the pictsies hauled on the oars.

“That’s a great big heid he’s got there, ye ken,” said Rob Anybody. “How big would you say that heid is, gonnagle?”

“Ach, I’d say it’s verrra big, Rob,” said William, who was with the team on the other oar. “Indeed, I might commit myself to sayin’ it’s enorrrrmous.”

“Ye’d go as far as that, would ye?”

“Oh, aye. Enorrrrmous is fully justified.”

It’s nearly on us, Tiffany thought.

This has got to work. It’s my dream. Any moment. Any moment now . . .

“An’ how near us would you say it is, then?” asked Rob conversationally, as the boat wallowed and jerked just ahead of the whale.

“That’s a verrra good question, Rob,” said William. “And I’d answer it by sayin’ it’s verrra close indeed.”

Any moment now, thought Tiffany. I know Miss Tick said you shouldn’t believe in your dreams, but she meant you shouldn’t just hope.

Er . . . any moment now, I . . . hope. He’s never missed. . . .

“In fact I’d go so farrr as to say exceedingly close—” William began.

Tiffany swallowed and hoped that the whale wouldn’t. There was only about thirty yards of water between the teeth and the boat.

And then it was filled with a wooden wall that blurred as it went past, making a zipzipzip noise.

Tiffany looked up, her mouth open. White sails flashed across the storm clouds, pouring rain like waterfalls. She looked up at rigging and ropes and sailors lined up on the spars, and cheered.

And then the stern of the Jolly Sailor’s ship was disappearing into the rain and mist, but not before Tiffany saw the big bearded figure at the wheel, dressed in yellow oilskins. He turned and waved just once, before the ship vanished into the murk.

She managed to stand up again, as the boat rocked in the swell, and yelled at the towering whale: “You’ve got to chase him! That’s how it has to work! You chase him, he chases you! Granny Aching said so!You can’t not do it and still be the whale fish! This is my dream! My rules! I’ve had more practice at it than you!”

“Big fishy!” yelled Wentworth.

That was more surprising than the whale. Tiffany stared at her little brother as the boat rocked again.

“Big fishy!” said Wentworth again.

“That’s right!” Tiffany said, delighted. “Big fishy! And what makes it particularly interesting is that a whale isn’t a fish! It is in fact a mammal, just like a cow!”

Did you just say that? said her Second Thoughts, as all the pictsies stared at her and the boat spun in the surf. The first time he’s ever said anything that wasn’t about sweeties or weewee and you just corrected him?

Tiffany looked at the whale. It was having trouble. But it was the whale, the whale she’d dreamed about many times after Granny Aching had told her that story, and not even the Queen could control a story like that.

It turned reluctantly in the water and dived in the wake of the Jolly Sailor’s ship.

“Big fishy gone!” said Wentworth.

“No, it’s a mammal—” Tiffany’s mouth said, before she could stop it.

The pictsies were still staring at her.

“It’s just that he ought to get it right,” she mumbled, ashamed of herself. “It’s a mistake lots of people make. . . .”

You’re going to turn into somebody like Miss Tick, said her Second Thoughts. Do you really want that?

“Yes,” said a voice, and Tiffany realized that it was hers again. The anger rose up, joyfully. “Yes! I’m me! I am careful and logical and I look up things I don’t understand! When I hear people use the wrong words, I get edgy! I am good with cheese. I read books fast! I think! And I always have a piece of string! That’s the kind of person I am!”

She stopped. Even Wentworth was staring at her now. He blinked.

“Big water cow gone,” he suggested meekly.

“That’s right! Good boy!” said Tiffany. “When we get home, you can have one sweet!”

She saw the massed ranks of the Nac Mac Feegle still looking at her with worried expressions.

“Is it okay wi’ you if we get on?” asked Rob Anybody, holding up a nervous hand. “Before yon whale fi—before yon whale cow comes back?”

Tiffany looked past them. The lighthouse wasn’t far. A little jetty stretched out from its tiny island.

“Yes, please. Er . . . thank you,” she said, calming down a bit. The ship and the whale had vanished into the rain, and the sea was merely lapping at the shore.

A drome was sitting on the rocks with its pale, fat legs sticking out in front of it. It was staring out to sea and didn’t appear to notice the approaching boat. It thinks it’s home, Tiffany thought. I’ve given it a dream it likes.

Pictsies poured onto the jetty and tied up the boat.

“Okay, we’re here,” said Rob Anybody. “We’ll just chop yon creature’s heid off and we’ll be right oout o’ here . . .”

“Don’t!” said Tiffany.

“But it—”

“Leave it alone. Just . . . leave it alone, all right? It’s not interested.” And it knows about the sea, she added to herself. It’s probably homesick for the sea. That’s why it’s such a real dream. I’d have never have got it right by myself.

A crab crawled out of the surf by the drome’s feet and settled down to dream crab dreams.

It looks as though a drome can get lost in its own dream, she thought. I wonder if it’ll ever wake up?

She turned to the Nac Mac Feegle. “In my dream I always wake up when I reach the lighthouse,” she said.

The pictsies looked up at the red-and-white tower and, as one Feegle, drew their swords.

“We dinna trust the Quin,” said Rob. “She’ll let ye think ye’re safe, and just when ye’ve dropped your guard, she’ll leap oout. She’ll be waitin’ behind the door, ye can bet on it. Ye’ll let us go in first.”

It was an instruction, not a question. Tiffany nodded and watched the Nac Mac Feegle swarm over the rocks toward the tower.

Alone on the jetty, except for Wentworth and the unconscious Roland, she lifted the toad out of her pocket. It opened its yellow eyes and stared at the sea.

“Either I’m dreaming or I’m on a beach,” it said. “And toads don’t dream.”

“In my dream they can,” said Tiffany. “And this is my dream.”

“Then it is an extremely dangerous one!” said the toad ungratefully.

“No, it’s lovely,” said Tiffany. “It’s wonderful. Look at the way the light dances on the waves.”

“Where are the notices warning people they could drown?” complained the toad. “No life preservers or shark nets. Oh, dear. Do I see a qualified lifeguard? I think not. Supposing someone was to—”

“It’s a beach,” said Tiffany. “Why are you talking like this?”

“I—I don’t know,” said the toad. “Can you put me down, please? I feel a headache coming on.”

Tiffany put it down, and it shuffled into some seaweed. After a while she heard it eating something.

The sea was calm.

It was peaceful.

It was exactly the moment anyone sensible should distrust.

But nothing happened. It was followed by nothing else happening. Wentworth picked up a pebble from the beach and put it in his mouth, on the basis that anything might be a candy.

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 Feegle 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.

“Weewee men!” shouted Wentworth.

“I’ll wake up when I go through the door,” said Tiffany, pulling Roland out of the boat. “I always do. It must work. This is my dream.” She hauled the boy upright. “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 toward 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 shouldna turn up in the same sentence!”

“And drunk?” said Tiffany again, laying Roland down on the beach.

“Gettin’ lost is something that happens to other people!” declared Rob Anybody. “I want to make that point perfectly 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 flammable, too. It’s a good thing you didn’t drink it, isn’t it?”

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

“Aye,” he said.

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

“I told yez the wee skull on it meant we shouldna 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 flammable mean?”

“It means it catches fire!”

“Okay, okay, dinna panic. No belchin’, and none of youse is to tak’ a leak anywhere near any naked flames, okay? 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 toward 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. In 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 seawater were disappearing over an edge, and some of the pictsies were already heading toward 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 seabed, 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 Feegle, as one pictsie, sighed happily.

“Sunken treasure!”

“Aye! Gold!”

“Bullion!”

“Jools!”

“What makes you think they’ve got treasure in them?” said Tiffany.

The Nac Mac Feegle 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 wouldna 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 wistfully.

“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.

“Come on!” Tiffany yelled. “I was wrong, this isn’t the tide, this is the Queen—”

Sunken ships were lifted up and spun around in the hissing mountain of surf.

“Come on!”

Tiffany managed to haul Roland across her shoulder and, staggering across the rocks, made it to the lighthouse door as the water crashed behind her—

—for a moment the world was full of white light—

—and snow squeaked underfoot.

It was the silent, cold land of the Queen. There was no one around and nothing to see except snow and, in the distance, the forest. Black clouds hovered over it.

Ahead of her, and only just visible, was a picture in the air. It showed some turf, and a few stones, lit with moonlight.

It was the other side of the door back home.

She turned around desperately.

“Please!” she shouted. It wasn’t a request to anyone special. She just needed to shout. “Rob? William? Wullie? Wentworth?”

Away toward the forest there was the barking of the grimhounds.

“Got to get out,” muttered Tiffany. “Got to get away.”

She grabbed Roland by the collar and dragged him toward the door. At least he slid better on snow.

No one and nothing tried to stop her. The snow spilled a little way through the doorway between the stones and onto the turf, but the air was warm and alive with nighttime insect noises. Under a real moon, under a real sky, she pulled the boy over to a fallen stone and sat him up against it. She sat down next to him, exhausted to the bone, and tried to get her breath back.

Her dress was soaked and smelled of the sea.

She could hear her own thoughts, a long way off:

They could still be alive. It was a dream, after all. There must be a way back. All I have to do is find it. I’ve got to go back in there.

The dogs sounded very loud.

She stood up again, although what she really wanted to do was sleep.

The three stones of the door were a black shape against the stars.

And as she watched, they fell down. The one on the left slipped over, slowly, and the other two ended up leaning against it.

She ran over and hauled at the tons of stone. She prodded the air around them in case the doorway was still there. She squinted madly, trying to see it.

Tiffany stood under the stars, alone, and tried not to cry.

“What a shame,” said the Queen. “You’ve let everybody down, haven’t you?”

CHAPTER 13

Land Under Wave

The Queen walked over the turf toward Tiffany. Where she’d trodden, frost gleamed for a moment. The little part of Tiffany that was still thinking thought:That grass will be dead in the morning. She’s killing my turf.

“The whole of life is but a dream, when you come to think of it,” said the Queen in the same infuriatingly calm, pleasant voice. She sat down on the fallen stones. “You humans are such dreamers. You dream that you’re clever. You dream that you’re important. You dream that you’re special. You know, you’re almost better than dromes. You’re certainly more imaginative. I have to thank you.”

“What for?” said Tiffany, looking at her boots. Terror clamped her body in red-hot wires. There wasn’t anywhere to run to.

“I never realized how wonderful your world is,” said the Queen. “I mean, the dromes . . . well, they’re not much more than a kind of walking sponge, really. Their world is ancient. It’s nearly dead. They’re not really creative anymore. With a little help from me, your people could be a lot better. Because, you see, you dream all the time. You, especially, dream all the time. Your picture of the world is a landscape with you in the middle of it, isn’t it? Wonderful. Look at you, in that rather horrible dress and those clumpy boots. You dreamed you could invade my world with a frying pan. You had this dream about Brave Girl Rescuing Little Brother. You thought you were the heroine of a story. And then you left him behind. You know, I think being hit by a billion tons of seawater must be like having a mountain of iron drop on your head, don’t you?”

Tiffany couldn’t think. Her head was full of hot, pink fog. It hadn’t worked.

Her Third Thoughts were somewhere in the fog, trying to make themselves heard.

“Got Roland out,” she muttered, still staring at her boots.

“But he’s not yours,” said the Queen. “He is, let us face it, a rather stupid boy with a big red face and brains made of pork, just like his father. You left your little brother behind with a bunch of little thieves and you rescued a spoiled little fool.”

There was no time! shrieked Tiffany’s Third Thoughts. You wouldn’t have got to him and got back to the lighthouse! You nearly didn’t get away as it was! You got Roland out! It was the logical thing to do! You don’t have to be guilty about it! What’s better, to try to save your brother and be brave, courageous, stupid, and dead, or save the boy and be brave, courageous, sensible, and alive?

But something kept saying that stupid and dead would have been more . . . right.

Something kept saying: Would you say to Mum that you could see there wasn’t time to rescue your brother so you rescued someone else instead? Would she be pleased that you’d worked that out? Being right doesn’t always work.

It’s the Queen! yelled her Third Thoughts. It’s her voice! It’s like hypnotism! You’ve got to stop listening!

“I expect it’s not your fault you’re so cold and heartless,” said the Queen. “It’s probably all to do with your parents. They probably never gave you enough time. And having Wentworth was a very cruel thing to do—they really should have been more careful. And they let you read too many books. It can’t be good for a young brain, knowing words like paradigm and eschatological. It leads to behavior such as using your own brother as monster bait.” The Queen sighed. “Sadly, that kind of thing happens all the time. I think you should be proud of not being worse than just deeply introverted and socially maladjusted.”

She walked around Tiffany.

“It’s so sad,” she continued. “You dream that you are strong, sensible, logical . . . the kind of person who always has a bit of string. But that’s just your excuse for not being really, properly human. You’re just a brain, no heart at all. You didn’t even cry when Granny Aching died. You think too much, and now your precious thinking has let you down. Well, I think it’s best if I just kill you, don’t you?”

Find a stone! her Third Thoughts screamed. Hit her!

Tiffany was aware of other figures in the gloom. There were some of the people from the summer pictures, but there were also dromes and the headless horseman and the Bumblebee women.

Around her, frost crept over the ground.

“I think we’ll like it here,” said the Queen.

Tiffany felt the cold creeping up her legs. Her Third Thoughts, hoarse with effort, shouted: Do something!

She should have been better organized, she thought dully. She shouldn’t have relied on dreams. Or . . . perhaps I should have been a real human being. More . . . feeling. But I couldn’t help not crying! It just wouldn’t come! And how can I stop thinking? And thinking about thinking? And even thinking about thinking about thinking?

She saw the smile in the Queen’s eyes, and thought:Which one of all those people doing all that thinking is me?

Is there really any me at all?

Clouds poured across the sky like a stain. They covered the stars. They were the inky clouds from the frozen world, the clouds of nightmare. It began to rain, rain with ice in it. It hit the turf like bullets, turning it into chalky mud. The wind howled like a pack of grimhounds.

Tiffany managed to take a step forward. The mud sucked at her boots.

“A bit of spirit at last?” said the Queen, stepping back.

Tiffany tried another step, but things were not working anymore. She was too cold and too tired. She could feel her self disappearing, getting lost.

“So sad, to end like this,” said the Queen.

Tiffany fell forward, into the freezing mud.

The rain grew harder, stinging like needles, hammering on her head and running like icy tears down her cheeks. It struck so hard, it left her breathless.

She felt the cold drawing all the heat out of her. And that was the only sensation left, apart from a musical note.

It sounded like the smell of snow, or the sparkle of frost. It was high and thin and drawn out.

She couldn’t feel the ground under her and there was nothing to see, not even the stars. The clouds had covered everything.

She was so cold, she couldn’t feel the cold anymore, or her fingers. A thought managed to trickle through her freezing mind. Is there any me at all? Or do my thoughts just dream of me?

The blackness grew deeper. Night was never as black as this, and winter never as cold. It was colder than the deep winters when the snow came down and Granny Aching would plod from snowdrift to snowdrift, looking for warm bodies. The sheep could survive the snow if the shepherd had some wits, Granny used to say. The snow kept the cold away, the sheep surviving in warm hollows under roofs of snow while bitter wind blew harmlessly over them.

But this was as cold as those days when even the snow couldn’t fall, and the wind was pure cold itself, blowing ice crystals across the turf. Those were the killer days in early spring, when the lambing had begun and winter came howling down one more time.

There was darkness everywhere, bitter and starless.

There was a speck of light, a long way off.

One star. Low down. Moving . . .

It got bigger in the stormy night.

It zigzagged as it came.

Silence covered Tiffany and drew her into itself.

The silence smelled of sheep, and turpentine, and tobacco.

And then came movement, as if she was falling through the ground, very fast.

And gentle warmth and, just for a moment, the sound of waves.

And her own voice, inside her head.

This land is in my bones.

Land under wave.

Whiteness.

It tumbled through the warm, heavy darkness around her, something like snow but as fine as dust. It piled up somewhere below her, because she could see a faint whiteness.

A creature like an ice-cream cone with lots of tentacles shot past her and jetted away.

I’m underwater, thought Tiffany.

I remember . . .

This is the million-year rain under the sea, this is the new land being born underneath an ocean. It’s not a dream. It’s . . . a memory. The land under wave. Millions and millions of tiny shells . . .

This land was alive.

All the time there was the warm, comforting smell of the shepherding hut, and the feeling of being held in invisible hands.

The whiteness below her rose up and over her head, but it didn’t seem uncomfortable. It was like being in a mist.

Now I’m inside the chalk, like a flint, like a calkin . . .

She wasn’t sure how long she spent in the warm deep water, or if indeed any time really had passed, or if the millions of years went past in a second, but she felt movement again, and a sense of rising.

More memories poured into her mind.

There’s always been someone watching the borders. They didn’t decide to. It was decided for them. Someone has to care. Sometimes they have to fight. Someone has to speak for that which has no voice. . . .

She opened her eyes. She was still lying in the mud, and the Queen was laughing at her, and overhead the storm still raged.

But she felt warm. In fact, she felt hot, red-hot with anger . . . anger at the bruised turf, anger at her own stupidity, anger at this beautiful creature whose only talent was control.

This . . . creature was trying to take her world.

All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said:Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!

I have a duty!

The anger overflowed. She stood up, clenched her fists, and screamed at the storm, putting into the scream all the rage that was inside her.

Lightning struck the ground on either side of her. It did so twice.

And it stayed there, crackling, and two dogs formed.

Steam rose from their coats, and blue light sparked from their ears as they shook themselves. They looked attentively at Tiffany.

The Queen gasped and vanished.

“Come by, Lightning!” shouted Tiffany. “Away to me, Thunder!” And she remembered the time when she’d run across the downs, falling over, shouting all the wrong things, while the two dogs had done exactly what needed to be done.

Two streaks of black and white sped away across the turf and up toward the clouds.

They herded the storm.

Clouds panicked and scattered, but always there was a comet streaking across the sky and they were turned. Monstrous shapes writhed and screamed in the boiling sky, but Thunder and Lightning had worked many flocks; there was an occasional snap of lightning-sparked teeth, and a wail. Tiffany stared upward, rain pouring off her face, and shouted commands that no dog could possibly have heard.

Jostling and rumbling and screaming, the storm rolled off the hills and away toward the mountains, where there were deep canyons that could pen it.

Out of breath, glowing with triumph, Tiffany watched until the dogs came back and settled, once again, on the turf. And then she remembered something else: It didn’t matter what orders she gave those dogs. They were not her dogs. They were working dogs.

Thunder and Lightning didn’t take orders from a little girl.

And the dogs weren’t looking at her.

They were looking just behind her.

She’d have turned if someone had told her a horrible monster was behind her. She’d have turned if they’d said it had a thousand teeth. She didn’t want to turn around now. Forcing herself was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

She was not afraid of what she might see. She was terribly, mortally frightened, afraid to the center of her bones of what she might not see. She shut her eyes while her cowardly boots shuffled her around and then, after a deep breath, she opened them again.

There was a gust of Jolly Sailor tobacco, and sheep, and turpentine.

Sparkling in the dark, light glittering off the white shepherdess dress and every blue ribbon and silver buckle of it, was Granny Aching, smiling hugely, radiant with pride. In one hand she held the huge ornamental crook, hung with blue bows.

She pirouetted slowly, and Tiffany saw that while she was a brilliant, sparkling shepherdess from hat to hem, she still had her huge old boots on.

Granny Aching took her pipe out of her mouth and gave Tiffany the little nod that was, from her, a round of applause. And then—she wasn’t.

Real starlit darkness covered the turf, and the nighttime sounds filled the air. Tiffany didn’t know if what had just happened was a dream or had happened somewhere that wasn’t quite here or had happened only in her head. It didn’t matter. It had happened. And now—

“But I’m still here,” said the Queen, stepping in front of her. “Perhaps it was all a dream. Perhaps you have gone a little mad, because you are after all a very strange child. Perhaps you had help. How good are you? Do you really think that you can face me alone? I can make you think whatever I please—”

“Crivens!”

“Oh no, not them,” said the Queen, throwing up her hands.

It wasn’t just the Nac Mac Feegle but also Wentworth, a strong smell of seaweed, a lot of water, and a dead shark. They appeared in midair and landed in a heap between Tiffany and the Queen. But a pictsie was always ready for a fight, and they bounced, rolled, and came up drawing their swords and shaking seawater out of their hair.

“Oh, ’tis you, izzut?” said Rob Anybody, glaring up at the Queen. “Face-to-face wi’ ye at last, ye bloustie ol’ callyack that ye are! Ye canna’ come here, unnerstan’? Be off wi’ ye! Are ye goin’ to go quietly?”

The Queen stamped heavily on him. When she took her foot away, only the top of his head was visible above the turf.

“Well, are ye?” he said, pulling himself out as if nothing had happened. “I don’t want tae have tae lose my temper wi’ ye! An’ it’s no good sendin’ your pets against us, ’cause you ken we can take ’em tae the cleaners!” He turned to Tiffany, who hadn’t moved. “You just leave this tae us, kelda. Us an’ the Quin, we go way back!”

The Queen snapped her fingers. “Always leaping into things you don’t understand,” she hissed. “Well, can you face these?”

Every Nac Mac Feegle sword suddenly glowed blue.

Back in the crowd of eerily lit pictsies, a voice that sounded very much like that of Daft Wullie said:

“Ach, we’re in real trouble noo . . .”

Three figures had appeared in the air, a little way away. The middle one, Tiffany saw, had a long red gown, a strange long wig, and black tights with buckles on his shoes. The others were just ordinary men, it seemed, in ordinary gray suits.

“Oh, ye are a harrrrrd wumman, Quin,” said William the gonnagle, “to set the lawyers ontae us.”

“See the one on the left there,” whimpered a pictsie. “See, he’s got a briefcase! It’s a briefcase! Oh, waily, waily, a briefcase, waily . . .”

Reluctantly, a step at a time, pressing together in terror, the Nac Mac Feegle began to back away.

“Oh, waily waily, he’s snappin’ the clasps,” groaned Daft Wullie. “Oh, waily waily waily, ’tis the sound o’ Doom when a lawyer does that!”

“Mister Rob Anybody Feegle and sundry others?” said one of the figures in a dreadful voice.

“There’s naebody here o’ that name!” shouted Rob Anybody. “We dinna know anythin’!”

“We have here a list of criminal and civil charges totaling nineteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty-three separate offenses—”

“We wasna there!” yelled Rob Anybody desperately. “Isn’t that right, lads?”

“—including more than two thousand cases of Making an Affray, Causing a Public Nuisance, Being Found Drunk, Being Found Very Drunk, Using Offensive Language (taking into account ninety-seven counts of Using Language That Was Probably Offensive If Anyone Else Could Understand It), Committing a Breach of the Peace, Malicious Lingering—”

“It’s mistaken identity!” shouted Rob Anybody. “It’s no’ oour fault! We wuz only standing there an’ someone else did it and ran awa’!”

“—Grand Theft, Petty Theft, Burglary, Housebreaking, Loitering with Intent to Commit a Felony—”

“We wuz misunderstood when we was wee bairns!” yelled Rob Anybody. “Ye’re only pickin’ on us ’cause we’re blue! We always get blamed for everythin’! The polis hate us! We wasna even in the country!”

But, to groans from the cowering pictsies, one of the lawyers produced a big roll of paper from his briefcase. He cleared his throat and read out: “Angus, Big; Angus, Not-as-big-as-Big-Angus; Angus, Wee; Archie, Big; Archie, One-Eyed; Archie, Wee Mad—”

“They’ve got oour names!” sobbed Daft Wullie. “They’ve got oour names! It’s the pris’n hoose for us!”

“Objection! I move for a writ of habeas corpus,” said a small voice. “And enter a plea of vis-ne faciem capite repletam, without prejudice.”

There was absolute silence for a moment. Rob Anybody turned to look at the frightened Nac Mac Feegle and said: “Okay, okay, which of youse said that?”

The toad crawled out of the crowd and sighed. “It suddenly all came back to me,” he said. “I remember what I was now. The legal language brought it all back. I’m a toad now, but”—he swallowed—“once I was a lawyer. And this, people, is illegal. These charges are a complete tissue of lies based on hearsay evidence.”

He raised yellow eyes toward the Queen’s lawyers. “I further move that the case be adjourned sine die on the basis of potest-ne mater tua suere, amice.”

The lawyers had pulled large books out of nowhere and were thumbing through them hastily.

“We’re not familiar with counsel’s terminology,” said one of them.

“Hey, they’re sweatin’,” said Rob Anybody. “You mean we can have lawyers on oour side as well?”

“Yes, of course,” said the toad. “You can have defense lawyers.”

“Defense?” said Rob Anybody. “Are you tellin’ me we could get awa’ wi’ it ’cause of a tishoo o’ lies?”

“Certainly,” said the toad. “And with all the treasure you’ve stolen, you can pay enough to be very innocent indeed. My fee will be—”

He gulped as a dozen glowing swords were swung toward him.

“I’ve just remembered why that fairy godmother turned me into a toad,” he said. “So, in the circumstances, I’ll take this case pro bono publico.”

The swords didn’t move.

“That means for free,” he added.

“Oh, right, we like the sound o’ that,” said Rob Anybody, to the sound of swords being sheathed. “How come ye’re a lawyer an’ a toad?”

“Oh, well, it was just bit of an argument,” said the toad. “A fairy godmother gave my client three wishes—the usual health, wealth, and happiness package—and when my client woke up one wet morning and didn’t feel particularly happy, she got me to bring an action for breach of contract. It was a definite first in the history of fairy godmothering. Unfortunately, as it turned out, so was turning the client into a small hand mirror and her lawyer, as you see before you, into a toad. I think the worst part was when the judge applauded. That was hurtful, in my opinion.”

“But ye can still remember all that legal stuff? Guid,” said Rob Anybody. He glared at the other lawyers. “Hey, youse scunners, we got a cheap lawyer and we’re no’ afraid tae use him!”

The other lawyers were pulling more and more paperwork out of the air now. They looked worried, and a little frightened. Rob Anybody’s eyes gleamed as he watched them.

“What does all that viznee-facey-em stuff mean, my learned friend?” he said.

“Vis-ne faciem capite repletam,” said the toad. “It was the best I could do in a hurry, but it means, approximately”—he gave a little cough—“‘Would you like a face which is full of head?’”

“And tae think we didna know legal talkin’ was that simple,” said Rob Anybody. “We could all be lawyers, lads, if we knew the fancy words! Let’s get them!”

The Nac Mac Feegle could change mood in a moment, especially at the sound of a battle cry. They raised their swords in the air.

“Twelve hundred angry men!” they shouted.

“Nae more courtroom drama!”

“We ha’ the law on oour side!”

“The law’s made to tak’ care o’ raskills!”

“No,” said the Queen, and waved her hand.

Lawyers and pictsies faded away. There was just her and Tiffany, facing one another on the turf at dawn, the wind hissing around the stones.

“What have you done with them?” Tiffany shouted.

“Oh, they’re around . . . somewhere,” said the Queen airily. “It’s all dreams, anyway. And dreams within dreams. You can’t rely on anything, little girl. Nothing is real. Nothing lasts. Everything goes. All you can do is learn to dream. And it’s too late for that. And I . . . I have had longer to learn.”

Tiffany wasn’t sure which of her thoughts was operating now. She was tired. She felt as though she was watching herself from above and a little behind. She saw herself set her boots firmly on the turf, and then . . .

. . . and then . . .

. . . and then, like someone rising from the clouds of a sleep, she felt the deep, deep Time below her. She sensed the breath of the downs and the distant roar of ancient, ancient seas trapped in millions of tiny shells. She thought of Granny Aching, under the turf, becoming part of the chalk again, part of the land under wave. She felt as if huge wheels, of time and stars, were turning slowly around her.

She opened her eyes and then, somewhere inside, opened her eyes again.

She heard the grass growing, and the sound of worms below the turf. She could feel the thousands of little lives around her, smell all the scents on the breeze, and see all the shades of the night.

The wheels of stars and years, of space and time, locked into place. She knew exactly where she was, and who she was, and what she was.

She swung a hand. The Queen tried to stop her, but she might as well have tried to stop a wheel of years. Tiffany’s hand caught her face and knocked her off her feet.

“Now I know why I never cried for Granny,” she said. “She has never left me.”

She leaned down, and centuries bent with her.

“The secret is not to dream,” she whispered. “The secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder. I have woken up and I am real. I know where I come from and I know where I’m going. You cannot fool me anymore. Or touch me. Or anything that is mine.”

I’ll never be like this again, she thought, as she saw the terror in the Queen’s face. I’ll never again feel as tall as the sky and as old as the hills and as strong as the sea. I’ve been given something for a while, and the price of it is that I have to give it back.

And the reward is giving it back, too. No human could live like this. You could spend a day looking at a flower to see how wonderful it is, and that wouldn’t get the milking done. No wonder we dream our way through our lives. To be awake, and see it all as it really is . . . no one could stand that for long.

She took a deep breath and picked the Queen up. She was aware of things happening, of dreams roaring around her, but they didn’t affect her. She was real and she was awake, more aware than she’d ever been. She had to concentrate even to think against the storm of sensations pouring into her mind.

The Queen was as light as a baby and changed shape madly in Tiffany’s arms—into monsters and mixed-up beasts, things with claws and tentacles. But at last she was small and gray, like a monkey, with a large head and big eyes and a little downy chest that went up and down as she panted.

She reached the stones. The arch still stood. It was never down, Tiffany thought. The Queen had no strength, no magic, just one trick. The worst one.

“Stay away from here,” said Tiffany. “Never come back. Never touch what is mine.” And then, because the thing was so weak and babylike, she added: “But I hope there’s someone who’ll cry for you. I hope the king comes back.”

“You pity me?” growled the thing that had been the Queen.

“Yes. A bit,” said Tiffany. “But don’t count on it.” She put the creature down. It scampered across the snow of Fairyland, turned, and became the beautiful Queen again.

“You won’t win,” the Queen said. “There’s always a way in. People dream.”

“Sometimes we waken,” said Tiffany. “Don’t come back . . . or there will be a reckoning. . . .”

She concentrated, and now the stones framed nothing more—or less—than the country beyond.

I shall have to find a way of sealing that, said her Third Thoughts. Or her Twentieth Thoughts, perhaps. Her head was full of thoughts.

She managed to walk a little way and then sat down, hugging her knees. Imagine getting stuck like this, she thought. You’d have to wear earplugs and noseplugs and a big black hood over your head, and still you’d see and hear too much . . .

She closed her eyes, and closed her eyes again.

She felt it all draining away. It was like falling asleep, sliding from that strange wide-awakeness into just normal, everyday . . . well, being awake. It felt as if everything was blurred and muffled.

This is how we always feel, she thought. We sleepwalk through our lives, because how could we live if we were always this awake?

Someone tapped her on the boot.

CHAPTER 14

Small, Like Oak Trees

“Hey, where did you get to?” shouted Rob Anybody, glaring up at her. “One minute we was just aboout to give them lawyers a good legal seein’-to, next minute you and the Quin wuz gone!”

Dreams within dreams, Tiffany thought, holding her head. But they were over, and you couldn’t look at the Nac Mac Feegle and not know what was real.

“It’s over,” she said.

“Didja kill her?”

“No.”

“She’ll be back then,” said Rob Anybody. “She’s awfu’ stupid, that one. Clever with the dreaming, I’ll grant ye, but not a brain in her heid.”

Tiffany nodded. The blurred feeling was going. The moment of wide-awakeness was fading like a dream. But I must remember that it wasn’t a dream.

“How did you get away from the huge wave?” she asked.

“Ach, we’re fast movers,” said Rob Anybody. “An’ it was a strong lighthoose. O’ course, the water came up pretty high.”

“A few sharks were involved, that kind of thing,” said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock.

“Oh, aye, a few sharkies,” said Rob Anybody, shrugging. “And one o’ them octopussies—”

“It was a giant squid,” said William the gonnagle.

“Aye, well, it was a kebab pretty quickly,” said Daft Wullie.

“Ha’ a heidful o’ heid, you wee weewee!” shouted Wentworth, overcome with wit.

William coughed politely. “And the big wave threw up a lot of sunken vessels full o’ trrrreasure,” he said. “We stopped off for a wee pillage.”

The Nac Mac Feegle held up wonderful jewels and big gold coins.

“But that’s just dream treasure, surely?” said Tiffany. “Fairy gold! It’ll turn into rubbish in the morning!”

“Aye?” said Rob Anybody. He glanced at the horizon. “Okay, ye heard the kelda, lads! We got mebbe half an hour to sell it to someone! Permission to go offski?” he added to Tiffany.

“Er . . . oh, yes. Fine. Thank you—”

They were gone, in a split-second blur of blue and red.

But William the gonnagle remained for a moment. He bowed to Tiffany.

“Ye didna do at all badly,” he said. “We’re proud o’ ye. So would yer grrranny be. Remember that. Ye are not unloved.”

Then he vanished too.

There was a groan from Roland, lying on the turf. He began to move.

“Weewee men all gone,” said Wentworth sadly in the silence that followed. “Crivens all gone.”

“What were they?” muttered Roland, sitting up and holding his head.

“It’s all a bit complicated,” said Tiffany. “Er . . . do you remember much?”

“It all seems like . . . a dream . . .” said Roland. “I remember . . . the sea, and we were running, and I cracked a nut which was full of those little men, and I was hunting in this huge forest with shadows—”

“Dreams can be very funny things,” said Tiffany carefully. She went to stand up and thought: I must wait here awhile. I don’t know why I know, I just know. Perhaps I knew and have forgotten. But I must wait for something.

“Can you walk down to the village?” she said.

“Oh, yes. I think so. But what did—?”

“Then will you take Wentworth with you, please? I’d like to . . . rest for a while.”

“Are you sure?” said Roland, looking concerned.

“Yes. I won’t be long. Please? You can drop him off at the farm. Tell my parents I’ll be down soon. Tell them I’m fine.”

“Weewee men,” said Wentworth. “Crivens! Want bed.”

Roland was still looking uncertain.

“Off you go!” Tiffany commanded, and waved him away.

When the two of them had disappeared below the brow of the hill, with several backward glances, she sat between the four iron wheels and hugged her knees.

She could see, far off, the mound of the Nac Mac Feegle. Already they were a slightly puzzling memory, and she’d seen them only a few minutes ago. But when they’d gone, they’d left the impression of never having been there.

She could go to the mound and see if she could find the big hole. But supposing it wasn’t there? Or supposing it was, but all there was down there was rabbits?

No, it’s all true, she said to herself. I must remember that, too.

A buzzard screamed in the dawn grayness. She looked up as it circled into sunlight, and a tiny dot detached itself from the bird.

That was far too high up even for a pictsie to stand the fall.

Tiffany scrambled to her feet as Hamish tumbled through the sky. And then—something ballooned above him, and the fall became just a gentle floating, like thistledown.

The bulging shape above Hamish was Y-shaped. As it got bigger, the shape became more precise, more . . . familiar.

He landed, and a pair of Tiffany’s pants, the long-legged ones with the rosebud pattern, settled down on top of him.

“That was great!” he said, pushing his way through the folds of fabric. “Nae more landin’ on my heid for me!”

“They’re my best pants,” said Tiffany wearily. “You stole them off our clothesline, didn’t you?”

“Oh aye. Nice and clean,” said Hamish. “I had to cut the lace off ’cause it got in the way, but I put it aside and ye could easily sew it on again.” He gave Tiffany the big grin of someone who, for once, has not dived heavily into the ground.

She sighed. She’d liked the lace. She didn’t have many things that weren’t necessary. “I think you’d better keep them,” she said.

“Aye, I will, then,” said Hamish. “Noo, what wuz it? Oh, yes. Ye have visitors comin’. I spotted them out over the valley. Look up there.”

There were two other things up there, bigger than a buzzard, so high that they were already in full sunlight. Tiffany watched as they circled lower.

They were broomsticks.

I knew I had to wait! Tiffany thought.

Her ears bubbled. She turned and saw Hamish running across the grass. As she looked, the buzzard picked him up and sped onward. She wondered if he was frightened or, at least, didn’t want to meet whoever was coming

The broomsticks descended.

The lowest one had two figures on it. As it landed, Tiffany saw that one of them was Miss Tick, clinging anxiously to a smaller figure who’d been doing the steering. She half climbed off, half fell off, and tottered over to Tiffany.

“You wouldn’t believe the time I’ve had,” she said. “It was just a nightmare! We flew through the storm! Are you all right?”

“Er . . . yes . . .”

“What happened?”

Tiffany looked at her. How did you begin to answer something like that?

“The Queen’s gone,” she said. That seemed to cover it.

“What? The Queen has gone? Oh . . . er . . . these ladies are Mrs. Ogg—”

“Mornin’,” said the broomstick’s other occupant, who was pulling at her long black dress, from under the folds of which came the sounds of twanging elastic. “The wind up there blows where it likes, I don’t mind telling you!” She was a short fat lady with a cheerful face like an apple that had been stored too long; all the wrinkles moved into different positions when she smiled.

“And this,” said Miss Tick, “is Miss—”

“Mistress,” snapped the other witch.

“I’m so sorry, Mistress Weatherwax,” said Miss Tick. “Very, very good witches,” she whispered to Tiffany. “I was very lucky to find them. They respect witches up in the mountains.”

Tiffany was impressed that anyone could make Miss Tick flustered, but the other witch seemed to do it just by standing there. She was tall—except, Tiffany realized, she wasn’t that tall, but she stood tall, which could easily fool you if you weren’t paying attention—and like the other witch wore a rather shabby black dress. She had an elderly, thin face that gave nothing away. Piercing blue eyes looked Tiffany up and down, from head to toe.

“You’ve got good boots,” said the witch.

“Tell Mistress Weatherwax what happened,” Miss Tick began. But the witch held up a hand, and Miss Tick stopped talking immediately. Tiffany was even more impressed now.

Mistress Weatherwax gave Tiffany a look that went right through her head and about five miles out the other side. Then she walked over to the stones and waved one hand. It was an odd movement, a kind of wriggle in the air, but for a moment it left a glowing line. There was a noise, a chord, as though all sorts of sounds were happening at the same time. It snapped into silence.

“Jolly Sailor tobacco?” said the witch.

“Yes,” said Tiffany.

The witch waved a hand again. There was another sharp, complicated noise. Mistress Weatherwax turned suddenly and stared at the distant pimple that was the pictsie mound.

“Nac Mac Feegle? Kelda?” she demanded.

“Er, yes. Only temporary,” said Tiffany.

“Hmmph,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

Wave. Sound.

“Frying pan?”

“Yes. It got lost, though.”

“Hmm.”

Wave. Sound. It was as if the woman was extracting her history from the air.

“Filled buckets?”

“And they filled up the log box, too,” said Tiffany.

Wave. Sound.

“I see. Special Sheep Liniment?”

“Yes, my father says it puts—”

Wave. Sound.

“Ah. Land of snow.” Wave. Sound. “A queen.” Wave. Sound. “Fighting.” Wave, sound. “On the sea?” Wave, sound, wave, sound . . .

Mistress Weatherwax stared at the flashing air, looking at pictures only she could see. Mrs. Ogg sat down beside Tiffany, her little legs going up in the air as she made herself comfortable.

“I’ve tried Jolly Sailor,” she said. “Smells like toenails, don’t it?”

“Yes, it does!” said Tiffany, gratefully.

“To be a kelda of the Nac Mac Feegle, you have to marry one of ’em, don’t you?” said Mrs. Ogg innocently.

“Ah, yes, but I found a way around that,” said Tiffany. She told her. Mrs. Ogg laughed. It was a sociable kind of laugh, the sort of laugh that makes you comfortable.

The noise and flashing stopped. Mistress Weatherwax stood staring at nothing for a moment and then said: “You beat the Queen, at the end. But you had help, I think.”

“Yes, I did,” said Tiffany.

“And that was—?”

“I don’t ask you your business,” said Tiffany, before she even realized she was going to say it. Miss Tick gasped. Mrs. Ogg’s eyes twinkled, and she looked from Tiffany to Mistress Weatherwax like someone watching a tennis match.

“Tiffany, Mistress Weatherwax is the most famous witch in all—” Miss Tick began severely, but the witch waved a hand at her again. I really must learn how to do that, Tiffany thought.

Then Mistress Weatherwax took off her pointed hat and bowed to Tiffany.

“Well said,” she said, straightening up and staring directly at Tiffany. “I didn’t have no right to ask you. This is your country—we’re here by your leave. I show you respect as you in turn will respect me.” The air seemed to freeze for a moment and the skies to darken. Then Mistress Weatherwax went on, as if the moment of thunder hadn’t happened: “But if one day you care to tell me more, I should be grateful to hear about it,” she said, in a conversational voice. “And them creatures that look like they’re made of dough, I should like to know more about them, too. Never run across them before. And your grandmother sounds the kind of person I would have liked to meet.” She straightened up. “In the meantime, we’d better see if there’s anything left you can still be taught.”

“Is this where I learn about the witches’ school?” said Tiffany.

There was a moment of silence.

“Witches’ school?” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“Um,” said Miss Tick.

“You were being metapahorrical, weren’t you?” said Tiffany.

“Metapahorrical?” said Mrs. Ogg, wrinkling her forehead.

“She means metaphorical,” mumbled Miss Tick.

“It’s like stories,” said Tiffany. “It’s all right. I worked it out. This is the school, isn’t it? The magic place? The world. Here. And you don’t realize it until you look. Do you know the pictsies think this world is heaven? We just don’t look. You can’t give lessons on witchcraft. Not properly. It’s all about how you are . . . you, I suppose.”

“Nicely said,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “You’re sharp. But there’s magic, too. You’ll pick that up. It don’t take much intelligence, otherwise wizards wouldn’t be able to do it.”

“You’ll need a job, too,” said Mrs. Ogg. “There’s no money in witchcraft. Can’t do magic for yourself, see? Cast-iron rule.”

“I make good cheese,” said Tiffany.

“Cheese, eh?” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Hmm. Yes. Cheese is good. But do you know anything about medicines? Midwifery? That’s a good portable skill.”

“Well, I’ve helped deliver difficult lambs,” said Tiffany. “And I saw my brother being born. They didn’t bother to turn me out. It didn’t look too difficult. But I think cheese is probably easier, and less noisy.”

“Cheese is good,” Mistress Weatherwax repeated, nodding. “Cheese is alive.”

“And what do you really do?” said Tiffany.

The thin witch hesitated for a moment, and then:

“We look to . . . the edges,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “There’s a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong . . . an’ they need watchin’. We watch ’em, we guard the sum of things. And we never ask for any reward. That’s important.”

“People give us stuff, mind you. People can be very gen’rous to witches,” said Mrs. Ogg happily. “On bakin’ days in our village, sometimes I can’t move for cake. There’s ways and ways of not askin’, if you get my meaning. People like to see a happy witch.”

“But down here people think witches are bad!” said Tiffany, but her Second Thoughts added: Remember how rarely Granny Aching ever had to buy her own tobacco?

“It’s amazin’ what people can get used to,” said Mrs. Ogg. “You just have to start slow.”

“And we have to hurry,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “There’s a man riding up here on a farm horse. Fair hair, red face—”

“It sounds like my father!”

“Well, he’s making the poor thing gallop,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Quick, now. You want to learn the skills? When can you leave home?”

“Pardon?” said Tiffany.

“Don’t the girls here go off to work as maids and things?” said Mrs. Ogg.

“Oh, yes. When they’re a bit older than me.”

“Well, when you’re a bit older than you, Miss Tick here will come and find you,” said Mistress Weatherwax. Miss Tick nodded. “There’re elderly witches up in the mountains who’ll pass on what they know in exchange for a bit of help around the cottage. This place will be watched over while you’re gone, you may depend on it. In the meantime you’ll get three meals a day, your own bed, use of broomstick . . . that’s the way we do it. All right?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany, grinning happily. The wonderful moment was passing too quickly for all the questions she wanted to ask. “Yes! But, er . . .”

“Yes?” said Mrs. Ogg.

“I don’t have to dance around with no clothes on or anything like that, do I? Only I heard rumors—”

Mistress Weatherwax rolled her eyes.

Mrs. Ogg grinned cheerfully. “Well, that procedure does have something to recommend it—” she began.

“No, you don’t have to!” snapped Mistress Weatherwax. “No cottage made of sweets, no cackling, and no dancing!”

“Unless you want to,” said Mrs. Ogg, standing up. “There’s no harm in an occasional cackle, if the mood takes you that way. I’d teach you a good one right now, but we really ought to be going.”

“But . . . but how did you manage it?” said Miss Tick to Tiffany. “This is all chalk! You’ve become a witch on chalk? How?”

“That’s all you know, Perspicacia Tick,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “The bones of the hills is flint. It’s hard and sharp and useful. King of stones.” She picked up her broomstick and turned back to Tiffany. “Will you get into trouble, do you think?” she said.

“I might,” said Tiffany.

“Do you want any help?”

“If it’s my trouble, I’ll get out of it,” said Tiffany. She wanted to say:Yes, yes! I’m going to need help! I don’t know what’s going to happen when my father gets here! The Baron’s probably gotten really angry! But I don’t want them to think I can’t deal with my own problems. I ought to be able to cope.

“That’s right,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

Tiffany wondered if the witch could read minds.

“Minds? No,” said Mistress Weatherwax, climbing onto her broomstick. “Faces, yes. Come here, young lady.”

Tiffany obeyed.

“The thing about witchcraft,” said Mistress Weatherwax, “is that it’s not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterward you spend years findin’ out how you passed it. It’s a bit like life in that respect.” She reached out and gently raised Tiffany’s chin so that she could look into her face.

“I see you opened your eyes,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Good. Many people never do. Times ahead might be a little tricky, even so. You’ll need this.”

She stretched out a hand and made a circle in the air around Tiffany’s head, then brought her hand up over the head while making little movements with her forefinger.

Tiffany raised her hands to her head. For a moment she thought there was nothing there, and then they touched . . . something. It was more like a sensation in the air; if you weren’t expecting it to be there, your fingers passed straight through.

“Is it really there?” she said.

“Who knows?” said the witch. “It’s virtually a pointy hat. No one else will know it’s there. It might be a comfort.”

“You mean it just exists in my head?” said Tiffany.

“You’ve got lots of things in your head. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real. Best not to ask me too many questions.”

“What happened to the toad?” said Miss Tick, who did ask questions.

“He’s gone off with the Wee Free Men,” said Tiffany. “It turned out he used to be a lawyer.”

“You’ve given a clan of the Nac Mac Feegle their own lawyer?” said Mrs. Ogg. “That’ll make the world tremble. Still, I always say the occasional tremble does you good.”

“Come, sisters, we must away,” said Miss Tick, who had climbed on the other broomstick behind Mrs. Ogg.

“There’s no need for that sort of talk,” said Mrs. Ogg. “That’s theater talk, that is. Cheerio, Tiff. We’ll see you again.”

Her stick rose gently into the air. From the stick of Mistress Weatherwax, though, there was merely a sad little noise, like the thwop of Miss Tick’s hat point. The broomstick went kshugagugah.

Mistress Weatherwax sighed. “It’s them dwarfs,” she said. “They say they’ve repaired it, oh yes, and it starts first time in their workshop—”

They heard the sound of distant hooves. With surprising speed, Mistress Weatherwax swung herself off the stick, grabbed it firmly in both hands, and ran away across the turf, skirts billowing behind her.

She was a speck in the distance when Tiffany’s father came over the brow of the hill on one of the farm horses. He hadn’t even stopped to put the leather shoes on it; great slices of earth flew up as hooves the size of large soup plates,* each one shod with iron, bit into the turf.

Tiffany heard a faint kshugagugahvvvvvoooom behind her as he leaped off the horse.

She was surprised to see him laughing and crying at the same time.

It was all a bit of a dream.

Tiffany found that a very useful thing to say. It’s hard to remember, it was all a bit of a dream. It was all a bit of a dream, I can’t be certain.

The overjoyed Baron, however, was very certain. Obviously this—this Queen woman, whoever she was, had been stealing children but Roland had beaten her, oh yes, and helped these two young children to get back as well.

Her mother had insisted on Tiffany’s going to bed, even though it was broad daylight. Actually, she didn’t mind. She was tired, and lay under the covers in that nice pink world halfway between asleep and awake.

She heard the Baron and her father talking downstairs. She heard the story being woven between them as they tried to make sense of it all. Obviously the girl had been very brave (this was the Baron speaking), but well, she was nine, wasn’t she? And didn’t even know how to use a sword! Whereas Roland had had fencing lessons at his school . . .

And so it went on. There were other things she heard her parents discussing later, when the Baron had gone. There was the way Ratbag now lived on the roof, for example.

Tiffany lay in bed and smelled the ointment her mother had rubbed into her temples. Tiffany must have been hit on the head, she’d said, because of the way she kept on touching it.

So . . . Roland with the beefy face was the hero, was he? And she was just like the stupid princess who broke her ankle and fainted all the time? That was completely unfair!

She reached out to the little table beside her bed where she’d put the invisible hat. Her mother had put down a cup of broth right through it, but it was still there. Tiffany’s fingers felt, very faintly, the roughness of the brim.

We never ask for any reward, she thought. Besides, it was her secret, all of it. No one else knew about the Wee Free Men. Admittedly Wentworth had taken to running through the house with a tablecloth around his waist shouting, “Weewee mens! I’ll scone you in the boot!” but Mrs. Aching was still so glad to see him back, and so happy that he was talking about things other than sweets, that she wasn’t paying too much attention to what he was talking about.

No, she couldn’t tell anyone. They’d never believe her, and suppose that they did, and went up and poked around in the pictsies’ mound? She couldn’t let that happen.

What would Granny Aching have done?

Granny Aching would have said nothing. Granny Aching often said nothing. She just smiled to herself, and puffed on her pipe, and waited until the right time.

Tiffany smiled to herself.

She slept, and didn’t dream.

And a day went past.

And another day.

On the third day it rained. Tiffany went into the kitchen when no one was about and took down the china shepherdess from the shelf. She put it in a sack, then slipped out of the house and ran up onto the downs.

The worst of the weather was going to either side of the Chalk, which cut through the clouds like the prow of a ship. But when Tiffany reached the spot where an old stove and four iron wheels stood out of the grass, and cut a square of turf, and carefully chipped out a hole for the china shepherdess, and then put the turf back . . . it was raining hard enough to soak in and give the turf a chance of surviving. It seemed the right thing to do. And she was sure she caught a whiff of tobacco.

Then she went to the pictsies’ mound. She’d worried about that. She knew they were there, didn’t she? So, somehow, going to check that they were there would be sort of showing that she doubted if they would be, wouldn’t it? They were busy people. They had lots to do. They had the old kelda to mourn. They were probably very busy. That’s what she told herself. It wasn’t because she kept wondering if there really might be nothing down the hole but rabbits. It wasn’t that at all.

She was the kelda. She had a duty.

She heard music. She heard voices. And then sudden silence as she peered into the gloom.

She carefully took a bottle of Special Sheep Liniment out of her sack and let it slide into darkness.

Tiffany walked away and heard the faint music start up again.

She did wave at a buzzard, circling lazily under the clouds, and she was sure a tiny dot waved back.

On the fourth day Tiffany made butter and did her chores. She did have help.

“And now I want you to go and feed the chickens,” she said to Wentworth. “What is it I want you to do?”

“Fee’ the cluck-clucks,” said Wentworth.

“Chickens,” said Tiffany severely.

“Chickens,” said Wentworth obediently.

“And wipe your nose not on your sleeve! I gave you a handkerchief. And on the way back see if you can carry a whole log, will you?”

“Ach, crivens,” muttered Wentworth.

“And what is it we don’t say?” said Tiffany. “We don’t say the—”

“—the crivens word,” Wentworth muttered.

“And we don’t say it in front of—”

“—in fron’ of Mummy,” said Wentworth.

“Good. And then when I’ve finished, we’ll have time to go down to the river.”

Wentworth brightened up.

“Weewee mens?” he said.

Tiffany didn’t reply immediately.

She hadn’t seen a single Feegle since she’d been home.

“There might be,” she said. “But they’re probably very busy. They’ve got to find another kelda, and . . . well, they’re very busy. I expect.”

“Weewee men say hit you in the head, fish face!” said Wentworth happily.

“We’ll see,” said Tiffany, feeling like a parent. “Now please go and get the eggs.”

When he’d wandered away, carrying the egg basket in both hands, Tiffany turned out some butter onto the marble slab and picked up the paddles to pat it into, well, a pat of butter. Then she’d stamp it with one of the wooden stamps. People appreciated a little picture on their butter.

As she began to shape the butter, she was aware of a shadow in the doorway and turned.

It was Roland.

He looked at her, his face even redder than usual. He was twiddling his very expensive hat nervously, just like Rob Anybody did.

“Yes?” she said.

“Look, about . . . well, about all that . . . about . . .” Roland began.

“Yes?”

“Look, I didn’t—I mean, I didn’t lie to anyone or anything,” he blurted out. “But my father just sort of assumed I’d been a hero, and he just wouldn’t listen to anything I said even after I told him how . . . how . . .”

“Helpful I’d been?” said Tiffany.

“Yes . . . I mean, no! He said, he said, he said it was lucky for you I was there, he said—”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Tiffany, picking up the butter paddles again.

“And he just kept telling everyone how brave I’d been and—”

“I said it doesn’t matter,” said Tiffany. The little paddles went patpatpat on the fresh butter.

Roland’s mouth opened and shut for a moment.

“You mean you don’t mind?” he said at last.

“No. I don’t mind,” said Tiffany.

“But it’s not fair!”

“We’re the only ones who know the truth,” said Tiffany.

Patapatpat. Roland stared at the fat, rich butter as she calmly patted it into shape.

“Oh,” he said. “Er . . . you won’t tell anyone, will you? I mean, you’ve got every right to, but—”

Patapatapat.

“No one would believe me,” said Tiffany.

“I did try,” said Roland. “Honestly. I really did.”

I expect you did, Tiffany thought. But you’re not very clever, and the Baron certainly is a man without First Sight. He sees the world the way he wants to see it.

“One day you’ll be Baron, won’t you?” she said.

“Well, yes. One day. But look, are you really a witch?”

“When you’re Baron you’ll be good at it, I expect?” said Tiffany, turning the butter around. “Fair and generous and decent? You’ll pay good wages and look after the old people? You wouldn’t let people turn an old lady out of her house?”

“Well, I hope I—”

Tiffany turned to face him, a butter paddle in each hand.

“Because I’ll be there, you see. You’ll look up and see my eye on you. I’ll be there on the edge of the crowd. All the time. I’ll be watching everything, because I come from a long line of Aching people and this is my land. But you can be the Baron for us and I hope you’re a good one. If you are not . . . there will be a reckoning.”

“Look, I know you were . . . were . . .” Roland began, going redder in the face.

“Very helpful?” said Tiffany.

“. . . but you can’t talk to me like that, you know!”

Tiffany was sure she heard, up in the roof and on the very edge of hearing, someone say: “Ach, crivens, what a wee snotter . . .”

She shut her eyes for a moment and then, heart pounding, pointed a butter paddle at one of the empty buckets.

“Bucket, fill yourself!” she commanded.

It blurred, and then sloshed. Water dripped down the side.

Roland stared at it. Tiffany gave him one of her sweetest smiles, which could be quite scary.

“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” she said.

He turned to her, face pale. “No one would believe me . . .” he stammered.

“Aye,” said Tiffany. “So we understand one another. Isn’t that nice? And now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to finish this and make a start on some cheese.”

“Cheese? But you . . . you could do anything you wanted!” Roland burst out.

“And right now I want to make cheese,” said Tiffany calmly. “Go away.”

“My father owns this farm!” said Roland, and then realized he’d said that out loud.

There were two little but strangely loud clicks as Tiffany put down the butter paddles and turned around.

“That was a very brave thing you just said,” she said, “but I expect you’re sorry you said it, now that you’ve had a really good think?”

Roland, who had shut his eyes, nodded his head.

“Good,” said Tiffany. “Today I’m making cheese. Tomorrow I may do something else. And in a while, maybe, I won’t be here and you’ll wonder:Where is she? But part of me will always be here, always. I’ll always be thinking about this place. I’ll have it in my eye. And I will be back. Now, go away!”

He turned and ran.

After his footsteps had died away, Tiffany said: “All right, who’s there?”

“It’s me, mistress. No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress.” The pictsie appeared from behind the bucket and added: “Rob Anybody said we should come tae keep an eye on ye for a wee while, and tae thank ye for the offerin’.”

It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done, Tiffany thought.

“Only watch me in the dairy, then,” she said. “No spying!”

“Ach, no, mistress,” said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock nervously. Then he grinned. “Fion’s goin’ off to be the kelda for a clan over near Copperhead Mountain,” he said, “an’ she’s asked me to go along as the gonnagle!”

“Congratulations!”

“Aye, and William says I should be fine if I just work on the mousepipes,” said the pictsie. “And . . . er . . .”

“Yes?” said Tiffany.

“Er . . . Hamish says there’s a girl in the Long Lake clan who’s looking to become a kelda . . . er . . . it’s a fine clan she’s from . . . er . . .” The pictsie was going violet with embarrassment.

“Good,” said Tiffany. “If I was Rob Anybody, I’d invite her over right away.”

“Ye dinna mind?” asked Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock hopefully.

“Not at all,” said Tiffany. She did a little bit, she had to admit to herself, but it was a bit she could put away on a shelf in her head somewhere.

“That’s grand!” said the pictsie. “The lads were a bit worried, ye ken. I’ll run up and tell them.” He lowered his voice. “An’ would ye like me to run after that big heap o’ jobbies that just left and see that he falls off his horse again?”

“No!” said Tiffany hurriedly. “No. Don’t. No.” She picked up the butter paddles. “You leave him to me,” she added, smiling. “You can leave everything to me.”

When she was alone again, she finished the butter . . . patapatapat. . . .

She paused, put the paddles down, and with the tip of a very clean finger drew a curved line in the surface, with another curved line just touching it, so that together they looked like a wave. She traced a third, flat curve under it, which was the Chalk.

Land Under Wave.

She quickly smoothed the butter again and picked up the stamp she’d made yesterday; she’d carved it carefully out of a piece of apple wood that Mr. Block, the carpenter, had given her.

She stamped it onto the butter and took it off carefully.

There, glistening on the oily rich yellow surface, was a gibbous moon and, sailing in front of the moon, a witch on a broomstick.

She smiled again, and it was Granny Aching’s smile. Things would be different one day.

But you had to start small, like oak trees.

Then she made cheese . . .

. . . in the dairy, on the farm, and the fields unrolling, and becoming the downlands sleeping under the hot midsummer sun, where the flocks of sheep, moving slowly, drift over the short turf like clouds on a green sky, and here and there sheepdogs speed over the grass like shooting stars. Forever and ever, wold without end.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The picture that Tiffany “enters” in this book really exists. It’s called The Fairy-Feller’s Master-Stroke, by Richard Dadd, and is in the Tate Gallery in London. It is only about twenty-one by fifteen inches. It took the artist nine years to complete, in the middle of the nineteenth century. I cannot think of a more famous fairy painting. It is, indeed, very strange. Summer heat leaks out of it.

What people “know” about Richard Dadd is that he went mad, killed his father, was locked up in a lunatic asylum for the rest of his life, and painted a weird picture. Crudely, that’s all true, but it’s a dreadful summary of the life of a skilled and talented artist who developed a serious mental illness.

A Nac Mac Feegle does not appear anywhere in the painting, but I suppose it’s always possible that one was removed for making an obscene gesture. It’s the sort of thing they’d do.

Oh, and the tradition of burying a shepherd with a piece of raw wool in the coffin is true, too. Even gods understand that a shepherd can’t neglect the sheep. A god who didn’t understand that would not be worth believing in.

There is no such word as noonlight, but it would be nice if there was.

CREDITS

Cover art and design © 2015
by Jim Tierney

COPYRIGHT

THE WEE FREE MEN. Copyright © 2003 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pratchett, Terry.

The Wee Free Men / by Terry Pratchett.

p.      cm.

Summary: A young witch-to-be named Tiffany teams up with the Wee Free Men, a clan of six-inch-high blue men, to rescue her baby brother and ward off a sinister invasion from Fairyland.

ISBN-10: 0-06-001238-2 (pbk.) — ISBN-13: 978-0-06-001238-0 (pbk.)

EPub Edition © May 2015 ISBN 9780061975264

[1.Witches—Fiction. 2. Fairies—Fiction.] I.Title.

PZ7.P8865 We 2003 | 2002015396
[Fic]—dc21 | CIP
| AC

First Harper paperback edition, 2006

* People say things like “listen to your heart,” but witches learn to listen to other things too. It’s amazing what your kidneys can tell you.

** Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular.

* Tiffany had read lots of words in the dictionary that she’d never heard spoken, so she had to guess at how they were pronounced.

* No words could describe what a Feegle in a kilt looks like upside down, so they won’t try.

* Probably about eleven inches across. Tiffany didn’t measure them this time.

CONTENTS

1. Introduction    from Fairies and How to Avoid Them

2. Chapter 1        Leaving
3. Chapter 2        Twoshirts and Two Noses
4. Chapter 3        A Single-Minded Lady
5. Chapter 4        The PLN
6. Chapter 5        The Circle
7. Chapter 6        The Hiver
8. Chapter 7        The Matter of Brian
9. Chapter 8        The Secret Land
10. Chapter 9        Soul and Center
11. Chapter 10      The Late Bloomer
12. Chapter 11      Arthur
13. Chapter 12      The Egress
14. Chapter 13      The Witch Trials
15. Chapter 14      Queen of the Bees
16. Chapter 15      A Hat Full of Sky
17. Author’s Note
18. Extras
19. To the Reader
20. Talking with Terry Pratchett
21. Welcome to Discworld
22. Credits
23. Copyright

Guide

1. Cover
2. Contents
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Introduction

From Fairies and How to Avoid Them by Miss Perspicacia Tick:

The Nac Mac Feegle

(also called Pictsies, The Wee Free Men, The Little Men, and “Person or Persons Unknown, Believed to be Armed”)

The Nac Mac Feegle are the most dangerous of the fairy races, particularly when drunk. They love drinking, fighting, and stealing, and will in fact steal anything that is not nailed down. If it is nailed down, they will steal the nails as well.

Nevertheless, those who have managed to get to know them and survive say that they are also amazingly loyal, strong, dogged, brave, and, in their own way, quite moral. (For example, they won’t steal from people who don’t have anything.)

The average Feegle man (Feegle women are rare—see later) is about six inches high, red haired, his skin turned blue with tattoos and the dye called woad, and, since you’re this close, he’s probably about to hit you.

He’ll wear a kilt made of any old material, because among the Feegles the clan allegiance is shown by the tattoos. He may wear a rabbit-skull helmet, and a Feegle often decorates his beard and hair with feathers, beads, and anything else that takes his fancy. He will almost certainly carry a sword, although it is mainly for show, the Feegles’ preferred method of fighting being with the boot and the head.

History and Religion

The origin of the Nac Mac Feegle is lost in the famous Mists of Time. They say that they were thrown out of Fairyland by the Queen of the Fairies because they objected to her spiteful and tyrannical rule. Others say they were just thrown out for being drunk.

Little is known about their religion, if any, save for one fact: They think they are dead. They like our world, with its sunshine and mountains and blue skies and things to fight. An amazing world like this couldn’t be open to just anybody, they say. It must be some kind of a heaven or Valhalla, where brave warriors go when they are dead. So, they reason, they have already been alive somewhere else, and then died and were allowed to come here because they have been so good.

This is a quite incorrect and fanciful notion because, as we know, the truth is exactly the other way around.

There is not a great deal of mourning when a Feegle dies, and it’s only because his brothers are sad that he’s not spent more time with them before going back to the land of the living, which they also call “The Last World.”

Habits and Habitat

By choice, the clans of the Nac Mac Feegle live in the burial mounds of ancient kings, where they hollow out a cozy cavern amid the gold. Generally there will be one or two thorn or elder trees growing on it—the Feegles particularly like old, hollow elder trees, which become chimneys for their fires. And there will, of course, be a rabbit hole. It will look just like a rabbit hole. There will be rabbit droppings around it, and maybe even a few bits of rabbit fur if the Feegles are feeling particularly creative.

Down below, the world of the Feegle is a bit like a beehive, but with a lot less honey and a lot more sting.

The reason for this is that females are very rare among the Feegle. And, perhaps because of this, Feegle women give birth to lots of babies, very often and very quickly. They’re about the size of peas when born but grow extremely fast if they’re fed well (Feegles like to live near humans so that they can steal milk from cows and sheep for this purpose).

The queen of the clan is called the kelda, who as she gets older becomes the mother of most of it. Her husband is known as the Big Man. When a girl child is born—and it doesn’t often happen—she stays with her mother to learn the hiddlins, which are the secrets of keldaring. When she is old enough to be married, she must leave the clan, taking a few of her brothers with her as bodyguards on her long journey.

Often she’ll travel to a clan that has no kelda. Very, very rarely, if there is no clan without a kelda, she’ll meet with Feegles from several clans and form a completely new clan, with a new name and a mound of its own. She will also choose her husband. And from then on, while her word is absolute law among her clan and must be obeyed, she’ll seldom go more than a little distance from the mound. She is both its queen and its prisoner.

But once, for a few days, there was a kelda who was a human girl. . . .

A Feegle Glossary,
adjusted for those of a delicate disposition

Bigjobs: Human beings.

Blethers: Rubbish, nonsense.

Carlin: Old woman.

Cludgie: The privy.

Crivens!: A general exclamation that can mean anything from “My goodness!” to “I’ve just lost my temper and there is going to be trouble.”

Dree your/my/his/her weird: Face the fate that is in store for you/me/him/her.

Geas: A very important obligation, backed up by tradition and magic. Not a bird.

Eldritch: Weird, strange. Sometimes means oblong, too, for some reason.

Hag: A witch of any age.

Hagging/Haggling: Anything a witch does.

Hiddlins: Secrets.

Mudlin: Useless person.

Pished: I am assured that this means “tired.”

Scunner: A generally unpleasant person.

Scuggan: A really unpleasant person.

Ships: Wooly things that eat grass and go baa. Easily confused with the other kind.

Spavie: See Mudlin.

Special Sheep Liniment: Probably moonshine whisky, I am very sorry to say. No one knows what it’d do to sheep, but it is said that a drop of it is good for shepherds on a cold winter’s night and for Feegles at any time at all. Do not try to make this at home.

Waily: A general cry of despair.

CHAPTER 1

Leaving

It came crackling over the hills, like an invisible fog. Movement without a body tired it, and it drifted very slowly. It wasn’t thinking now. It had been months since it had last thought, because the brain that was doing the thinking for it had died. They always died. So now it was naked again, and frightened.

It could hide in one of the blobby white creatures that baa’d nervously as it crawled over the turf. But they had useless brains, capable of thinking only about grass and making other things that went baa. No. They would not do. It needed, needed something better, a strong mind, a mind with power, a mind that could keep it safe.

It searched. . . .

The new boots were all wrong. They were stiff and shiny. Shiny boots! That was disgraceful. Clean boots, that was different. There was nothing wrong with putting a bit of a polish on boots to keep the wet out. But boots had to work for a living. They shouldn’t shine.

Tiffany Aching, standing on the rug in her bedroom, shook her head. She’d have to scuff the things as soon as possible.

Then there was the new straw hat, with a ribbon on it. She had some doubts about that, too.

She tried to look at herself in the mirror, which wasn’t easy because the mirror was not much bigger than her hand, and cracked and blotchy. She had to move it around to try and see as much of herself as possible and remember how the bits fitted together.

But today . . . well, she didn’t usually do this sort of thing in the house, but it was important to look smart today, and since no one was around . . .

She put the mirror down on the rickety table by the bed, stood in the middle of the threadbare rug, shut her eyes, and said:

“See me.”

And away on the hills something, a thing with no body and no mind but a terrible hunger and a bottomless fear, felt the power.

It would have sniffed the air if it had a nose.

It searched.

It found.

Such a strange mind, like a lot of minds inside one another, getting smaller and smaller! So strong! So close!

It changed direction slightly and went a little faster. As it moved, it made a noise like a swarm of flies.

The sheep, nervous for a moment about something they couldn’t see or smell, baa’d . . .

. . . and went back to chewing grass.

Tiffany opened her eyes. There she was, a few feet away from herself. She could see the back of her own head.

Carefully, she moved around the room, not looking down at the “her” that was moving, because she found that if she did that, then the trick was over.

It was quite difficult, moving like that, but at last she was in front of herself and looking herself up and down.

Brown hair to match brown eyes . . . well, there was nothing she could do about that. At least her hair was clean and she’d washed her face.

She had a new dress on, which improved things a bit. It was so unusual to buy new clothes in the Aching family that, of course, it was bought big so that she’d “grow into it.” But at least it was pale green, and it didn’t actually touch the floor. With the shiny new boots and the straw hat she looked . . . like a farmer’s daughter, quite respectable, going off to her first job. It’d have to do.

From here she could see the pointy hat on her head, but she had to look hard for it. It was like a glint in the air, gone as soon as you saw it. That’s why she’d been worried about the new straw hat, but it had simply gone through the pointy hat as if it wasn’t there.

This was because, in a way, it wasn’t. It was invisible, except in the rain. Sun and wind went straight through, but rain and snow somehow saw it, and treated it as if it was real.

She’d been given it by the greatest witch in the world, a real witch with a black dress and a black hat and eyes that could go through you like turpentine goes through a sick sheep. It had been a kind of reward. Tiffany had done magic, serious magic. Before she had done it she hadn’t known that she could, when she had been doing it she hadn’t known that she was, and after she had done it she hadn’t known how she had. Now she had to learn how.

“See me not,” she said. The vision of her—or whatever it was, because she was not exactly sure about this trick—vanished.

It had been a shock, the first time she’d done this. But she’d always found it easy to see herself, at least in her head. All her memories were like little pictures of herself doing things or watching things, rather than the view from the two holes in the front of her head. There was a part of her that was always watching her.

Miss Tick—another witch, but one who was easier to talk to than the witch who’d given Tiffany the hat—had said that a witch had to know how to “stand apart,” and that she’d find out more when her talent grew, so Tiffany supposed the “see me” was part of this.

Sometimes Tiffany thought she ought to talk to Miss Tick about “see me.” It felt as if she was stepping out of her body but still had a sort of ghost body that could walk around. It all worked as long as her ghost eyes didn’t look down and see that she was just a ghost body. If that happened, some part of her panicked and she found herself back in her solid body immediately. Tiffany had, in the end, decided to keep this to herself. You didn’t have to tell a teacher everything. Anyway, it was a good trick for when you didn’t have a mirror.

Miss Tick was a sort of witch finder. That seemed to be how witchcraft worked. Some witches kept a magical lookout for girls who showed promise, and found them an older witch to help them along. They didn’t teach you how to do it. They taught you how to know what you were doing.

Witches were a bit like cats. They didn’t much like one another’s company, but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them. And what you might need them for was to tell you, as a friend, that you were beginning to cackle.

Witches didn’t fear much, Miss Tick had said, but what the powerful ones were afraid of, even if they didn’t talk about it, was what they called “going to the bad.” It was too easy to slip into careless little cruelties because you had power and other people hadn’t, too easy to think other people didn’t matter much, too easy to think that ideas like right and wrong didn’t apply to you. At the end of that road was you drooling and cackling to yourself all alone in a gingerbread house, growing warts on your nose.

Witches needed to know other witches were watching them.

And that, Tiffany thought, was why the hat was there. She could touch it anytime, provided she shut her eyes. It was a kind of reminder. . . .

“Tiffany!” her mother shouted up the stairs. “Miss Tick’s here!”

Yesterday Tiffany had said good-bye to Granny Aching. . . .

The iron wheels of the old shepherding hut were half buried in the turf, high up on the hills. The potbellied stove, which still stood lopsided in the grass, was red with rust. The chalk hills were taking them, just like they’d taken the bones of Granny Aching.

The rest of the hut had been burned on the day she’d been buried. No shepherd would have dared to use it, let alone spend the night there. Granny Aching had been too big in people’s minds, too hard to replace. Night and day, in all seasons, she was the Chalk country: its best shepherd, its wisest woman, and its memory. It was as if the green downland had a soul that walked about in old boots and a sacking apron and smoked a foul old pipe and dosed sheep with turpentine.

The shepherds said that Granny Aching had cussed the sky blue. They called the fluffy little white clouds of summer “Granny Aching’s little lambs.” And although they laughed when they said these things, part of them was not joking.

No shepherd would have dared presume to live in that hut, no shepherd at all.

So they had cut the turf and buried Granny Aching in the chalk, watered the turf afterward to leave no mark, then burned her hut.

Sheep wool, Jolly Sailor tobacco, and turpentine . . .

. . . had been the smells of the shepherding hut, and the smell of Granny Aching. Such things have a hold on people that goes right to the heart. Tiffany only had to smell them now to be back there, in the warmth and silence and safety of the hut. It was the place she had gone to when she was upset, and the place she had gone to when she was happy. And Granny Aching would always smile and make tea and say nothing. And nothing bad could happen in the shepherding hut. It was a fort against the world. Even now, after Granny had gone, Tiffany still liked to go up there.

Tiffany stood there, while the wind blew over the turf and sheep bells clonked in the distance.

“I’ve got . . .” She cleared her throat. “I’ve got to go away. I . . . I’ve got to learn proper witching, and there’s no one here now to teach me, you see. I’ve got to . . . to look after the hills like you did. I can . . . do things but I don’t know things, and Miss Tick says what you don’t know can kill you. I want to be as good as you were. I will come back! I will come back soon! I promise I will come back, better than I went!”

A blue butterfly, blown off course by a gust, settled on Tiffany’s shoulder, opened and shut its wings once or twice, then fluttered away.

Granny Aching had never been at home with words. She collected silence like other people collected string. But she had a way of saying nothing that said it all.

Tiffany stayed for a while, until her tears had dried, and then went off back down the hill, leaving the everlasting wind to curl around the wheels and whistle down the chimney of the potbellied stove. Life went on.

It wasn’t unusual for girls as young as Tiffany to go “into service.” It meant working as a maid somewhere. Traditionally, you started by helping an old lady who lived by herself; she wouldn’t be able to pay much, but since this was your first job, you probably weren’t worth much either.

In fact Tiffany practically ran Home Farm’s dairy by herself, if someone helped her lift the big milk churns, and her parents had been surprised she wanted to go into service at all. But as Tiffany said, it was something everyone did. You got out into the world a little bit. You met new people. You never knew what it could lead to.

That, rather cunningly, got her mother on her side. Her mother’s rich aunt had gone off to be a scullery maid, and then a parlor maid, and had worked her way up until she was a housekeeper and married to a butler and lived in a fine house. It wasn’t her fine house, and she only lived in a bit of it, but she was practically a lady.

Tiffany didn’t intend to be a lady. This was all a ruse, anyway. And Miss Tick was in on it.

You weren’t allowed to charge money for the witching, so all witches did some other job as well. Miss Tick was basically a witch disguised as a teacher. She traveled around with the other wandering teachers who went in bands from place to place teaching anything to anybody in exchange for food or old clothes.

It was a good way to get around, because people in the Chalk country didn’t trust witches. They thought they danced around on moonlit nights without their drawers on. (Tiffany had made inquiries about this, and had been slightly relieved to find out that you didn’t have to do this to be a witch. You could if you wanted to, but only if you were certain where all the nettles, thistles, and hedgehogs were.)

But if it came to it, people were a bit wary of the wandering teachers too. They were said to pinch chickens and steal away children (which was true, in a way), and they went from village to village with their gaudy carts and wore long robes with leather pads on the sleeves and strange flat hats and talked among themselves in some heathen lingo no one could understand, like “alea jacta est” and “quid pro quo.” It was quite easy for Miss Tick to lurk among them. Her pointy hat was a stealth version, which looked just like a black straw hat with paper flowers on it until you pressed the secret spring.

Over the last year or so Tiffany’s mother had been quite surprised, and a little worried, at Tiffany’s sudden thirst for education, which people in the village thought was a good thing in moderation but if taken unwisely could lead to restlessness.

Then a month ago the message had come: Be ready.

Miss Tick, in her flowery hat, had visited the farm and had explained to Mr. and Mrs. Aching that an elderly lady up in the mountains had heard of Tiffany’s excellent prowess with cheese and was willing to offer her the post of maid at four dollars a month, one day off a week, her own bed, and a week’s vacation at Hogswatch.

Tiffany knew her parents. Three dollars a month was a bit low, and five dollars would be suspiciously high, but prowess with cheese was worth the extra dollar. And a bed all to yourself was a very nice perk. Before most of Tiffany’s sisters had left home, sleeping two sisters to a bed had been normal. It was a good offer.

Her parents had been impressed and slightly scared of Miss Tick, but they had been brought up to believe that people who knew more than you and used long words were quite important, so they’d agreed.

Tiffany accidentally heard them discussing it after she had gone to bed that night. It’s quite easy to accidentally overhear people talking downstairs if you hold an upturned glass to the floorboards and accidentally put your ear to it.

She heard her father say that Tiffany didn’t have to go away at all.

She heard her mother say that all girls wondered what was out there in the world, so it was best to get it out of her system. Besides, she was a very capable girl with a good head on her shoulders. Why, with hard work there was no reason why one day she couldn’t be a servant to someone quite important, like Aunt Hetty had been, and live in a house with an inside privy.

Her father said she’d find that scrubbing floors was the same everywhere.

Her mother said, well, in that case she’d get bored and come back home after the year was up and, by the way, what did prowess mean?

Superior skill, said Tiffany to herself. They did have an old dictionary in the house, but her mother never opened it because the sight of all those words upset her. Tiffany had read it all the way through.

And that was it, and suddenly here she was, a month later, wrapping her old boots, which had been worn by all her sisters before her, in a piece of clean rag and putting them in the secondhand suitcase her mother had bought her, which looked as if it was made of bad cardboard or pressed grape pips mixed with ear wax, and had to be held together with string.

There were good-byes. She cried a bit, and her mother cried a lot, and her little brother, Wentworth, cried as well just in case he would get a sweet for doing so. Tiffany’s father didn’t cry but gave her a silver dollar and rather gruffly told her to be sure to write home every week, which is a man’s way of crying. She said good-bye to the cheeses in the dairy and the sheep in the paddock and even to Ratbag the cat.

Then everyone apart from the cheeses and the cat stood at the gate and waved to her and Miss Tick—well, except for the sheep, too—until they’d gone nearly all the way down the chalky-white lane to the village.

And then there was silence except for the sound of their boots on the flinty surface and the endless song of the skylarks overhead. It was late August and very hot, and the new boots pinched.

“I should take them off, if I was you,” said Miss Tick after a while.

Tiffany sat down by the side of the lane and got her old boots out of the case. She didn’t bother to ask how Miss Tick knew about the tight new boots. Witches paid attention. The old boots, even though she had to wear several pairs of socks with them, were much more comfortable and really easy to walk in. They’d been walking since long before Tiffany was born, and knew how to do it.

“And are we going to see any . . . little men today?” Miss Tick went on, once they were walking again.

“I don’t know, Miss Tick,” said Tiffany. “I told them a month ago I was leaving. They’re very busy at this time of year. But there’s always one or two of them watching me.”

Miss Tick looked around quickly. “I can’t see anything,” she said. “Or hear anything.”

“No, that’s how you can tell they’re there,” said Tiffany. “It’s always a bit quieter if they’re watching me. But they won’t show themselves while you’re with me. They’re a bit frightened of hags—that’s their word for witches,” she added quickly. “It’s nothing personal.”

Miss Tick sighed. “When I was a little girl, I’d have loved to see the pictsies,” she said. “I used to put out little saucers of milk. Of course, later on I realized that wasn’t quite the thing to do.”

“No, you should have used strong licker,” said Tiffany.

She glanced at the hedge and thought she saw, just for the snap of a second, a flash of red hair. And she smiled, a little nervously.

Tiffany had been, if only for a few days, the nearest a human being can be to a queen of the fairies. Admittedly, she’d been called a kelda rather than a queen, and the Nac Mac Feegle should only be called fairies to their faces if you were looking for a fight. On the other hand the Nac Mac Feegle were always looking for a fight, in a cheerful sort of way, and when they had no one to fight they fought one another, and if one was all by himself he’d kick his own nose just to keep in practice.

Technically they had lived in Fairyland but had been thrown out, probably for being drunk. And now, because if you’d ever been their kelda they never forgot you . . .

. . . they were always there.

There was always one somewhere on the farm, or circling on a buzzard high over the chalk downs. And they watched her, to help and protect her, whether she wanted them to or not. Tiffany had been as polite as possible about this. She’d hidden her diary all the way at the back of a drawer and blocked up the cracks in the privy with wadded paper, and done her best with the gaps in her bedroom floorboards, too. They were little men, after all. She was sure they tried to remain unseen so as not to disturb her, but she’d got very good at spotting them.

They granted wishes—not the magical fairy-tale three wishes, the ones that always go wrong in the end, but ordinary, everyday ones. The Nac Mac Feegle were immensely strong and fearless and incredibly fast, but they weren’t good at understanding that what people said often wasn’t what they meant. One day, in the dairy, Tiffany had said, “I wish I had a sharper knife to cut this cheese,” and her mother’s sharpest knife was quivering in the table beside her almost before she’d got the words out.

“I wish this rain would clear up” was probably okay, because the Feegles couldn’t do actual magic, but she had learned to be careful not to wish for anything that might be achievable by some small, determined, strong, fearless, and fast men who were also not above giving someone a good kicking if they felt like it.

Wishes needed thought. She was never likely to say out loud, “I wish that I could marry a handsome prince,” but knowing that if you did you’d probably open the door to find a stunned prince, a tied-up priest, and a Nac Mac Feegle grinning cheerfully and ready to act as best man definitely made you watch what you said. But they could be helpful, in a haphazard way, and she’d taken to leaving out for them things that the family didn’t need but might be useful to little people, like tiny mustard spoons, pins, a soup bowl that would make a nice bath for a Feegle, and, in case they didn’t get the message, some soap. They didn’t steal the soap.

Her last visit to the ancient burial mound high on the chalk down where the pictsies lived had been to attend the wedding of Rob Anybody, the Big Man of the clan, to Jeannie of the Long Lake. She was going to be the new kelda and spend most of the rest of her life in the mound, having babies like a queen bee.

Feegles from other clans had all turned up for the celebration, because if there’s one thing a Feegle likes more than a party, it’s a bigger party, and if there’s anything better than a bigger party, it’s a bigger party with someone else paying for the drink. To be honest, Tiffany had felt a bit out of place, being ten times as tall as the next tallest person there, but she’d been treated very well, and Rob Anybody had made a long speech about her, calling her “our fine big wee young hag” before falling face-first into the pudding. It had all been very hot, and very loud, but she’d joined in the cheer when Jeannie had carried Rob Anybody over a tiny broomstick that had been laid on the floor. Traditionally, both the bride and the groom should jump over the broomstick, but equally traditionally, no self-respecting Feegle would be sober on his wedding day.

She’d been warned that it would be a good idea to leave then, because of the traditional fight between the bride’s clan and the groom’s clan, which could take until Friday.

Tiffany had bowed to Jeannie, because that’s what hags did, and had a good look at her. She was small and sweet and very pretty. She also had a glint in her eye and a certain proud lift to her chin. Nac Mac Feegle girls were very rare, and they grew up knowing they were going to be keldas one day, and Tiffany had a definite feeling that Rob Anybody was going to find married life trickier than he’d thought.

She was going to be sorry to leave them behind, but not terribly sorry. They were nice in a way, but they could, after a while, get on your nerves. Anyway, she was eleven now, and had a feeling that after a certain age you shouldn’t slide down holes in the ground to talk to little men.

Besides, the look that Jeannie had given her, just for a moment, had been pure poison. Tiffany had read its meaning without having to try. Tiffany had been the kelda of the clan, even if it was only for a short time. She had also been engaged to be married to Rob Anybody, even if that had only been a sort of political trick. Jeannie knew all that. And the look had said: He is mine. This place is mine. I do not want you here! Keep out!

A pool of silence followed Tiffany and Miss Tick down the lane, since the usual things that rustle in hedges tended to keep very quiet when the Nac Mac Feegle were around.

They reached the little village green and sat down to wait for the carrier’s cart that went just a bit faster than walking pace and would take five hours to get to the village of Twoshirts, where—Tiffany’s parents thought—they’d get the big coach that ran all the way to the distant mountains and beyond.

Tiffany could actually see the cart coming up the road when she heard the hoofbeats coming across the green. She turned, and her heart seemed to leap and sink at the same time.

It was Roland, the baron’s son, on a fine black horse. He leaped down before the horse had stopped, and then stood there looking embarrassed.

“Ah, I see a very fine and interesting example of a . . . a . . . a big stone over there,” said Miss Tick in a sticky-sweet voice. “I’ll just go and have a look at it, shall I?”

Tiffany could have pinched her for that.

“Er, you’re going, then,” said Roland as Miss Tick hurried away.

“Yes,” said Tiffany.

Roland looked as though he was going to explode with nervousness.

“I got this for you,” he said. “I had it made by a man, er, over in Yelp.” He held out a package wrapped in soft paper.

Tiffany took it and put it carefully in her pocket.

“Thank you,” she said, and dropped a small curtsy. Strictly speaking, that’s what you had to do when you met a nobleman, but it just made Roland blush and stutter.

“O-open it later on,” said Roland. “Er, I hope you’ll like it.”

“Thank you,” said Tiffany sweetly.

“Here’s the cart. Er . . . you don’t want to miss it.”

“Thank you,” said Tiffany, and curtsied again, because of the effect it had. It was a little bit cruel, but sometimes you had to be.

Anyway, it would be very hard to miss the cart. If you ran fast, you could easily overtake it. It was so slow that “stop” never came as a surprise.

There were no seats. The carrier went around the villages every other day, picking up packages and, sometimes, people. You just found a place where you could get comfortable among the boxes of fruit and rolls of cloth.

Tiffany sat on the back of the cart, her old boots dangling over the edge, swaying backward and forward as the cart lurched away on the rough road.

Miss Tick sat beside her, her black dress soon covered in chalk dust to the knees.

Tiffany noticed that Roland didn’t get back on his horse until the cart was nearly out of sight.

And she knew Miss Tick. By now she would be just bursting to ask a question, because witches hate not knowing things. And sure enough, when the village was left behind, Miss Tick said, after a lot of shifting and clearing her throat:

“Aren’t you going to open it?”

“Open what?” asked Tiffany, not looking at her.

“He gave you a present,” said Miss Tick.

“I thought you were examining an interesting stone, Miss Tick,” said Tiffany accusingly.

“Well, it was only fairly interesting,” said Miss Tick, completely unembarrassed. “So . . . are you?”

“I’ll wait until later,” said Tiffany. She didn’t want a discussion about Roland at this point or, really, at all.

She didn’t actually dislike him. She’d found him in the land of the Queen of the Fairies and had sort of rescued him, although he had been unconscious most of the time. A sudden meeting with the Nac Mac Feegle when they’re feeling edgy can do that to a person. Of course, without anyone actually lying, everyone at home had come to believe that he had rescued her. A nine-year-old girl armed with a frying pan couldn’t possibly have rescued a thirteen-year-old boy who’d had a sword.

Tiffany hadn’t minded that. It stopped people from asking too many questions she didn’t want to answer or even know how to. But he’d taken to . . . hanging around. She kept accidentally running into him on walks more often than was really possible, and he always seemed to be at the same village events she went to. He was always polite, but she couldn’t stand the way he kept looking like a spaniel that had been kicked.

Admittedly—and it took some admitting—he was a lot less of a twit than he had been. On the other hand, there had been such a lot of twit to begin with.

And then she thought, Horse, and wondered why until she realized that her eyes had been watching the landscape while her brain stared at the past.

“I’ve never seen that before,” said Miss Tick.

Tiffany welcomed it as an old friend. The Chalk rose out of the plains quite suddenly on this side of the hills. There was a little valley cupped into the fall of the down, and there was a carving in the curve it made. Turf had been cut away in long flowing lines, so that the bare chalk made the shape of an animal.

“It’s the White Horse,” said Tiffany.

“Why do they call it that?” said Miss Tick.

Tiffany looked at her.

“Because the chalk is white?” she said, trying not to suggest that Miss Tick was being a bit dense.

“No, I meant why do they call it a horse? It doesn’t look like a horse. It’s just . . . flowing lines. . . .”

. . . that look as if they’re moving, Tiffany thought.

It had been cut out of the turf way back in the old days, people said, by the folk who’d built the stone circles and buried their kin in big earth mounds. And they’d cut out the Horse at one end of this little green valley, ten times bigger than a real horse and, if you didn’t look at it with your mind right, the wrong shape, too. Yet they must have known horses, owned horses, seen them every day, and they weren’t stupid people just because they lived a long time ago.

Tiffany had once asked her father about the look of the Horse, when they’d come all the way over here for a sheep fair, and he told her what Granny Aching had told him when he was a little boy. He passed on what she said word for word, and Tiffany did the same now.

“’Taint what a horse looks like,” said Tiffany. “It’s what a horse be.”

“Oh,” said Miss Tick. But because she was a teacher as well as a witch, and probably couldn’t help herself, she added, “The funny thing is, of course, that officially there is no such thing as a white horse. They’re called gray.”*

“Yes, I know,” said Tiffany. “This one’s white,” she added, flatly.

That quietened Miss Tick down for a while, but she seemed to have something on her mind.

“I expect you’re upset about leaving the Chalk, aren’t you?” she said as the cart rattled on.

“No,” said Tiffany.

“It’s okay to be,” said Miss Tick.

“Thank you, but I’m not really,” said Tiffany.

“If you want to have a bit of a cry, you don’t have to pretend you’ve got some grit in your eye or anything—”

“I’m all right, actually,” said Tiffany. “Honestly.”

“You see, if you bottle that sort of thing up, it can cause terrible damage later on.”

“I’m not bottling, Miss Tick.”

In fact, Tiffany was a bit surprised at not crying, but she wasn’t going to tell Miss Tick that. She’d left a sort of space in her head to burst into tears in, but it wasn’t filling up. Perhaps it was because she’d wrapped up all those feelings and doubts and left them on the hill by the potbellied stove.

“And if, of course, you were feeling a bit downcast at the moment, I’m sure you could open the present he—” Miss Tick tried.

“Tell me about Miss Level,” Tiffany said quickly. The name and address were all she knew about the lady she was going to stay with, but an address like “Miss Level, Cottage in the Woods Near the Dead Oak Tree in Lost Man’s Lane, High Overhang, If Out Leave Letters in Old Boot by Door” sounded promising.

“Miss Level, yes,” said Miss Tick, defeated. “Er, yes. She’s not really very old, but she says she’ll be happy to have a third pair of hands around the place.”

You couldn’t slip words past Tiffany, not even if you were Miss Tick.

“So there’s someone else there already?” she said.

“Er . . . no. Not exactly,” said Miss Tick.

“Then she’s got four arms?” said Tiffany. Miss Tick sounded like someone trying to avoid a subject.

Miss Tick sighed. It was difficult to talk to someone who paid attention all the time. It put you off.

“It’s best if you wait until you meet her,” she said. “Anything I tell you will only give you the wrong idea. I’m sure you’ll get along with her. She’s very good with people, and in her spare time she’s a research witch. She keeps bees—and goats, the milk of which, I believe, is very good indeed, owing to homogenized fats.”

“What does a research witch do?”

“Oh, it’s a very ancient craft. She tries to find new spells by learning how old ones were really done. You know all that stuff about ‘ear of bat and toe of frog’? They never work, but Miss Level thinks it’s because we don’t know exactly what kind of frog, or which toe—”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not going to help anyone chop up innocent frogs and bats,” said Tiffany firmly.

“Oh, no, she never kills any!” said Miss Tick hurriedly. “She only uses creatures that have died naturally or been run over or committed suicide. Frogs can get quite depressed at times.”

The cart rolled on down the white, dusty road, until it was lost from view.

Nothing happened. Skylarks sang, so high up they were invisible. Grass seeds filled the air. Sheep baa’d, high up on the Chalk.

And then something came along the road. It moved like a little slow whirlwind, so it could be seen only by the dust it stirred up. As it went past, it made a noise like a swarm of flies.

Then it, too, disappeared down the hill. . . .

After a while a voice, low down in the long grass, said: “Ach, crivens! And it’s on her trail, right enough!”

A second voice said: “Surely the old hag will spot it?”

“Whut? The teachin’ hag? She’s nae a proper hag!”

“She’s got the pointy hat under all them flowers, Big Yan,” said the second voice a bit reproachfully. “I seen it. She presses a wee spring an’ the point comes up!”

“Oh, aye, Hamish, an’ I daresay she does the readin’ and the writin’ well enough, but she disna ken aboot stuff that’s no’ in books. An’ I’m no’ showin’ meself while she’s aroond. She’s the kind of a body that’d write things doon about a man! C’mon, let’s go and find the kelda!”

The Nac Mac Feegle of the Chalk hated writing for all kinds of reasons, but the biggest one was this: Writing stays. It fastens words down. A man can speak his mind and some nasty wee scuggan will write it down and who knows what he’ll do with those words? Ye might as weel nail a man’s shadow tae the wall!

But now they had a new kelda, and a new kelda brings new ideas. That’s how it’s supposed to work. It stopped a clan getting too set in its ways. Kelda Jeannie was from the Long Lake clan, up in the mountains—and they did write things down.

She didn’t see why her husband shouldn’t too. And Rob Anybody was finding out that Jeannie was definitely a kelda.

Sweat was dripping off his forehead. He’d once fought a wolf all by himself, and he’d cheerfully do it again with his eyes shut and one hand tied behind him rather than do what he was doing now.

He had mastered the first two rules of writing, as he understood them.

1. STEAL SOME PAPER.

2. STEAL A PENCIL.

Unfortunately there was more to it than that.

Now he held the stump of pencil in front of him in both hands and leaned backward as two of his brothers pushed him toward the piece of paper pinned up on the chamber wall (it was an old bill for sheep bells, stolen from the farm). The rest of the clan watched, in fascinated horror, from the galleries around the walls.

“Mebbe I could kind o’ ease my way inta it gently,” he protested as his heels left little grooves in the packed-earth floor of the mound. “Mebbe I could just do one o’ they commeras or full stoppies—”

“You’re the Big Man, Rob Anybody, so it’s fittin’ ye should be the first tae do the writin’,” said Jeannie. “I canna hae a husband who canna even write his ain name. I showed you the letters, did I not?”

“Aye, wumman, the nasty, loopy, bendy things!” growled Rob. “I dinna trust that Q, that’s a letter than has it in for a man. That’s a letter with a sting, that one!”

“You just hold the pencil on the paper and I’ll tell ye what marks to make,” said Jeannie, folding her arms.

“Aye, but ’tis a bushel of trouble, writin’,” said Rob. “A word writ doon can hang a man!”

“Wheest, now, stop that! ’Tis easy!” snapped Jeannie. “Bigjob babies can do it, and you’re a full-growed Feegle!”

“An’ writin’ even goes on sayin’ a man’s wurds after he’s deid!” said Rob Anybody, waving the pencil as if trying to ward off evil spirits. “Ye canna tell me that’s right!”

“Oh, so you’re afeared o’ the letters, is that it?” said Jeannie artfully. “Ach, that’s fine. All big men fear something. Take the pencil off ’f him, Wullie. Ye canna ask a man to face his fears.”

There was silence in the mound as Daft Wullie nervously took the pencil stub from his brother. Every beady eye was turned to Rob Anybody. His hands opened and shut. He started to breathe heavily, still glaring at the blank paper. He stuck out his chin.

“Ach, ye’re a harrrrd wumman, Jeannie Mac Feegle!” he said at last. He spat on his hands and snatched back the pencil stub from Daft Wullie. “Gimme that tool o’ perdition! Them letters won’t know whut’s hit them!”

“There’s my brave lad!” said Jeannie, as Rob squared up to the paper. “Right, then. The first letter is an R. That’s the one that looks like a fat man walking, remember?”

The assembled pictsies watched as Rob Anybody, grunting fiercely and with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, dragged the pencil through the curves and lines of the letters. He looked at the kelda expectantly after each one.

“That’s it,” she said at last. “A bonny effort!”

Rob Anybody stood back and looked critically at the paper.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Aye,” said Jeannie. “Ye’ve writ your ain name, Rob Anybody!”

Rob stared at the letters again. “I’m gonna go to pris’n noo?” he asked.

There was a polite cough from beside Jeannie. It belonged to the toad. He had no other name, because toads don’t go in for names. Despite sinister forces that would have people think differently, no toad has ever been called Tommy the Toad, for example. It’s just not something that happens.

This toad had once been a lawyer (a human lawyer; toads manage without them) who’d been turned into a toad by a fairy godmother who’d intended to turn him into a frog but had been a bit hazy on the difference. Now he lived in the Feegle mound, where he ate worms and helped them out with the difficult thinking.

“I’ve told you, Mr. Anybody, that just having your name written down is no problem at all,” he said. “There’s nothing illegal about the words Rob Anybody. Unless, of course”—and the toad gave a little legal laugh—“it’s meant as an instruction!”

None of the Feegles laughed. They liked their humor to be a bit, well, funnier.

Rob Anybody stared at his very shaky writing. “That’s my name, aye?”

“It certainly is, Mr. Anybody.”

“An’ nothin’ bad’s happenin’ at a’,” Rob noted. He looked closer. “How can you tell it’s my name?”

“Ah, that’ll be the readin’ side o’ things,” said Jeannie.

“That’s where the lettery things make a sound in yer heid?” asked Rob.

“Exactly so,” said the toad. “But we thought you’d like to start with the more physical aspect of the procedure.”

“Could I no’ mebbe just learn the writin’ and leave the readin’ to someone else?” Rob asked, without much hope.

“No, my man’s got to do both,” said Jeannie, folding her arms. When a female Feegle does that, there’s no hope left.

“Ach, it’s a terrible thing for a man when his wumman gangs up on him wi’ a toad,” said Rob, shaking his head. But when he turned to look at the grubby paper, there was just a hint of pride in his face.

“Still, that’s my name, right?” he said, grinning.

Jeannie nodded.

“Just there, all by itself and no’ on a WANTED poster or anything. My name, drawn by me.”

“Yes, Rob,” said the kelda.

“My name, under my thumb. No scunner can do anythin’ aboot it? I’ve got my name, nice and safe?”

Jeannie looked at the toad, who shrugged. It was generally held by those who knew them that most of the brains in the Nac Mac Feegle clans ended up in the women.

“A man’s a man o’ some standin’ when he’s got his own name where no one can touch it,” said Rob Anybody. “That’s serious magic, that is—”

“The R is the wrong way roond and you left the A and a Y out of Anybody,” said Jeannie, because it is a wife’s job to stop her husband actually exploding with pride.

“Ach, wumman, I didna’ ken which way the fat man wuz walkin’,” said Rob, airily waving a hand. “Ye canna trust the fat man. That’s the kind of thing us nat’ral writin’ folk knows about. One day he might walk this way, next day he might walk that way.”

He beamed at his name:

ЯOB NybO D

“And I reckon you got it wrong wi’ them Y’s,” he went on. “I reckon it should be N E Bo D. That’s Enn . . . eee . . . bor . . . dee, see? That’s sense!”

He stuck the pencil into his hair and gave her a defiant look.

Jeannie sighed. She’d grown up with seven hundred brothers and knew how they thought, which was often quite fast while being totally in the wrong direction. And if they couldn’t bend their thinking around the world, they bent the world around their thinking. Usually, her mother had told her, it was best not to argue.

Actually, only half a dozen Feegles in the Long Lake clan could read and write very well. They were considered odd, strange hobbies. After all, what—when you got out of bed in the morning—were they good for? You didn’t need to know them to wrestle a trout or mug a rabbit or get drunk. The wind couldn’t be read and you couldn’t write on water.

But things written down lasted. They were the voices of Feegles who’d died long ago, who’d seen strange things, who’d made strange discoveries. Whether you approved of that depended on how creepy you thought it was. The Long Lake clan approved. Jeannie wanted the best for her new clan, too.

It wasn’t easy, being a young kelda. You came to a new clan, with only a few of your brothers as bodyguards, where you married a husband and ended up with hundreds of brothers-in-law. It could be troubling if you let your mind dwell on it. At least back on the island in the Long Lake she had her mother to talk to, but a kelda never went home again.

A kelda was all alone.

Jeannie was homesick and lonely and frightened of the future, which is why she was about to get things wrong.

“Rob!”

Hamish and Big Yan came tumbling through the fake rabbit hole that was the entrance to the mound.

Rob Anybody glared at them. “We wuz engaged in a lit’try enterprise,” he said.

“Yes, Rob, but we watched the big wee young hag safe awa’, like you said, but there’s a hiver after her!” Hamish blurted out.

“Are ye sure?” said Rob, dropping his pencil. “I never heard o’ one of them in this world!”

“Oh, aye,” said Big Yan. “Its buzzin’ fair made my teeths ache!”

“So did you no’ tell her, ye daftie?” said Rob.

“There’s that other hag wi’ her, Rob,” said Big Yan. “The educatin’ hag.”

“Miss Tick?” said the toad.

“Aye, the one wi’ a face like a yard o’ yogurt,” said Big Yan. “An’ you said we wuzna’ to show ourselves, Rob.”

“Aye, weel, this is different—” Rob Anybody began, but stopped.

He hadn’t been a husband for very long, but upon marriage men get a whole lot of extra senses bolted into their brain, and one is there to tell a man that he’s suddenly neck deep in real trouble.

Jeannie was tapping her foot. Her arms were still folded. She had the special smile women learn about when they marry too which seems to say “Yes, you’re in big trouble but I’m going to let you dig yourself in even more deeply.”

“What’s this about the big wee hag?” she said, her voice as small and meek as a mouse trained at the Rodent College of Assassins.

“Oh, ah, ach, weel, aye . . .” Rob began, his face falling. “Do ye not bring her to mind, dear? She was at oor wedding, aye. She was oor kelda for a day or two, ye ken. The Old One made her swear to that just afore she went back to the Land o’ the Livin’,” he added, in case mentioning the wishes of the last kelda would deflect whatever storm was coming. “It’s as well tae keep an eye on her, ye ken, her being oor hag and all. . . .”

Rob Anybody’s voice trailed away in the face of Jeannie’s look.

“A true kelda has tae marry the Big Man,” said Jeannie. “Just like I married ye, Rob Anybody Feegle, and am I no’ a good wife tae ye?”

“Oh, fine, fine,” Rob burbled. “But—”

“And ye canna be married to two wives, because that would be bigamy, would it not?” said Jeannie, her voice dangerously sweet.

“Ach, it wasna that big,” said Rob Anybody, desperately looking around for a way of escape. “And it wuz only temp’ry, an’ she’s but a lass, an’ she wuz good at thinkin’—”

“I’m good at thinking, Rob Anybody, and I am the kelda o’ this clan, am I no’? There can only be one, is that not so? And I am thinking that there will be no more chasin’ after this big wee girl. Shame on ye, anyway. She’ll no’ want the like o’ Big Yan a-gawpin’ at her all the time, I’m sure.”

Rob Anybody hung his head.

“Aye . . . but,” he said.

“But what?”

“A hiver’s chasin’ the puir wee lass.”

There was a long pause before Jeannie said, “Are ye sure?”

“Aye, kelda,” said Big Yan. “Once you hear that buzzin’, ye never forget it.”

Jeannie bit her lip. Then, looking a little pale, she said, “Ye said she’s got the makin’s o’ a powerful hag, Rob?”

“Aye, but nae one in his’try has survived a hiver! Ye canna kill it, ye canna stop it, ye canna—”

“But wuz ye no’ tellin’ me how the big wee girl even fought the Quin and won?” said Jeannie. “Wanged her wi’ a skillet, ye said. That means she’s good, aye? If she is a true hag, she’ll find a way hersel’. We all ha’ to dree our weird. Whatever’s out there, she’s got to face it. If she canna, she’s no true hag.”

“Aye, but a hiver’s worse than—” Rob began.

“She’s off to learn hagglin’ from other hags,” said Jeannie. “An’ I must learn keldarin’ all by myself. Ye must hope she learns as fast as me, Rob Anybody.”

CHAPTER 2

Twoshirts and Two Noses

Twoshirts was just a bend in the road with a name. There was nothing there but an inn for the coaches, a blacksmith’s shop, and a small store with the word SOUVENIRS written optimistically on a scrap of cardboard in the window. And that was it. Around the place, separated by fields and scraps of woodland, were the houses of people for whom Twoshirts was, presumably, the big city. Every world is full of places like Twoshirts. They are places for people to come from, not go to.

It sat and baked silently in the hot afternoon sunlight. Right in the middle of the road an elderly spaniel, mottled brown and white, dozed in the dust.

Twoshirts was bigger than the village back home, and Tiffany had never seen souvenirs before. She went into the store and spent half a penny on a small wood carving of two shirts on a washing line, and two postcards entitled “View of Twoshirts,” which showed the souvenir shop and what was quite probably the same dog sleeping in the road. The little old lady behind the counter called her “young lady” and said that Twoshirts was very popular later in the year, when people came from up to a mile around for the Cabbage Macerating Festival.

When Tiffany came out, she found Miss Tick standing next to the sleeping dog, frowning back the way they’d come.

“Is there something the matter?” said Tiffany.

“What?” said Miss Tick, as if she’d forgotten that Tiffany existed. “Oh . . . no. I just . . . I thought I . . . look, shall we go and have something to eat?”

It took a while to find someone in the inn, but Miss Tick wandered into the kitchens and found a woman who promised them some scones and a cup of tea. She was actually quite surprised she’d promised that, since she hadn’t intended to, it strictly speaking being her afternoon free until the coach came, but Miss Tick had a way of asking questions that got the answers she wanted.

Miss Tick also asked for a fresh egg, not cooked, in its shell. Witches were also good at asking questions that weren’t followed by the other person saying, “Why?”

They sat and ate in the sun, on the bench outside the inn. Then Tiffany took out her diary.

She had one in the dairy too, but that was for cheese and butter records. This one was personal. She’d bought it off a peddler, cheap, because it was last year’s. But, as he said, it had the same number of days.

It also had a lock, a little brass thing on a leather flap. It had its own tiny key. It was the lock that had attracted Tiffany. At a certain age you see the point of locks.

She wrote down “Twoshirts,” and spent some time thinking before adding “a bend in the road.”

Miss Tick kept staring at the road.

“Is there something wrong, Miss Tick?” Tiffany asked again, looking up.

“I’m . . . not sure. Is anyone watching us?”

Tiffany looked around. Twoshirts slept in the heat. There was no one watching.

“No, Miss Tick.”

The teacher removed her hat and took from inside it a couple pieces of wood and a spool of black thread. She rolled up her sleeves, looking around quickly in case Twoshirts had sprouted a population, then broke off a length of the thread and picked up the egg.

Egg, thread, and fingers blurred for a few seconds and then there was the egg, hanging from Miss Tick’s fingers in a neat little black net.

Tiffany was impressed.

But Miss Tick hadn’t finished. She began to draw things from her pockets, and a witch generally has a lot of pockets. There were some beads, a couple of feathers, a glass lens, and one or two strips of colored paper. These all got threaded into the tangle of wood and cotton.

“What is that?” said Tiffany.

“It’s a shamble,” said Miss Tick, concentrating.

“Is it magic?”

“Not exactly. It’s trickery.”

Miss Tick lifted her left hand. Feathers and beads and egg and pocket junk spun in the web of threads.

“Hmm,” she said. “Now let me see what I can see. . . .”

She pushed the fingers of her right hand into the spiderwork of threads and pulled.

Egg and glass and beads and feathers danced through the tangle, and Tiffany was sure that at one point one thread had passed straight through another.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s like cat’s cradle!”

“You’ve played that, have you?” said Miss Tick vaguely, still concentrating.

“I can do all the common shapes,” said Tiffany. “The Jewels and the Cradle and the House and the Flock and the Three Old Ladies, One With a Squint, Carrying the Bucket of Fish to Market When They Meet the Donkey, although you need two people for that one, and I only ever did it once, and Betsy Tupper scratched her nose at the wrong moment and I had to get some scissors to cut her loose. . . .”

Miss Tick’s fingers worked like a loom.

“Funny it should be a children’s toy now,” she said. “Aha . . .” She stared into the complex web she had created.

“Can you see anything?” said Tiffany.

“If I may be allowed to concentrate, child? Thank you. . . .”

Out in the road the sleeping dog woke, yawned, and pulled itself to its feet. It ambled over to the bench the two of them were sitting on, gave Tiffany a reproachful look, and then curled up by her feet. It smelled of old damp carpets.

“There’s . . . something . . .” said Miss Tick very quietly.

Panic gripped Tiffany.

Sunlight reflected off the white dust of the road and the stone wall opposite. Bees hummed between the little yellow flowers that grew on top of the wall. By Tiffany’s feet the spaniel snorted and farted occasionally.

But it was all wrong. She could feel the pressure bearing down on her, pushing at her, pushing at the landscape, squeezing it under the bright light of day. Miss Tick and her cradle of threads were motionless beside her, frozen in the moment of bright horror.

Only the threads moved, by themselves. The egg danced, the glass glinted, the beads slid and jumped from string to string—

The egg burst.

The coach rolled in.

It arrived dragging the world behind it, in a cloud of dust and noise and hooves. It blotted out the sun. Doors opened. Harnesses jingled. Horses steamed. The spaniel sat up and wagged its tail hopefully.

The pressure went—no, it fled.

Beside Tiffany, Miss Tick pulled out a handkerchief and started to wipe egg off her dress. The rest of the shamble had disappeared into a pocket with remarkable speed.

She smiled at Tiffany but kept the smile as she spoke, making herself look slightly mad.

“Don’t get up, don’t do anything, just be as quiet as a little mouse,” she said. Tiffany felt in no state to do anything but sit still; she felt like you feel when you wake up after a nightmare.

The richer passengers got out of the coach, and the poorer ones climbed down from the roof. Grumbling and stamping their feet, trailing road dust behind them, they disappeared.

“Now,” said Miss Tick, when the inn door had swung shut, “we’re . . . we’re going to go for a, a stroll. See that little woods up there? That’s where we’re heading. And when Mr. Crabber, the carter, sees your father tomorrow, he’ll say he—he dropped you off here just before the coach arrived and—and, and everyone will be happy and no one will have lied. That’s important.”

“Miss Tick?” said Tiffany, picking up the suitcase.

“Yes?”

“What happened just now?”

“I don’t know,” said the witch. “Do you feel all right?”

“Er . . . yes. You’ve got some yolk on your hat.” And you’re very nervous, Tiffany thought. That was the most worrying part. “I’m sorry about your dress,” she added.

“It’s seen a lot worse,” said Miss Tick. “Let’s go.”

“Miss Tick?” said Tiffany again as they trudged away.

“Er, yes?”

“You are very nervous,” said Tiffany. “If you told me why, that means there’s two of us, which is only half the nervousness each.”

Miss Tick sighed. “It was probably nothing,” she said.

“Miss Tick, the egg exploded!”

“Yes. Um. A shamble, you see, can be used as a simple magic detector and amplifier. It’s actually very crude, but it’s always useful to make one in times of distress and confusion. I think I . . . probably didn’t make it right. And sometimes you do get big discharges of random magic.”

“You made it because you were worried,” said Tiffany.

“Worried? Certainly not. I am never worried!” snapped Miss Tick. “However, since you raise the subject, I was concerned. Something was making me uneasy. Something close, I think. It was probably nothing. In fact, I feel a lot better now we’re leaving.”

But you don’t look it, Tiffany thought. And I was wrong. Two people means twice as much nervousness each.

But she was sure there was nothing magical about Twoshirts. It was just a bend in the road.

Twenty minutes later the passengers came out to get into the coach. The coachman did notice that the horses were sweating, and wondered why he could hear a swarm of flies when there were no flies to be seen.

The dog that had been lying in the road was found later cowering in one of the inn’s stables, whimpering.

The woods was about half an hour’s walk away, with Miss Tick and Tiffany taking turns to carry the suitcase. It was nothing special, as woods go, being mostly full-grown beech, although once you know that beech drips unpleasant poisons on the ground beneath it to keep it clear, it’s not quite the timber you thought it was.

They sat on a log and waited for sunset. Miss Tick told Tiffany about shambles.

“They’re not magical then?” said Tiffany.

“No. They’re something to be magical through.”

“You mean like spectacles help you see but don’t see for you?”

“That’s right, well done! Is a telescope magical? Certainly not. It’s just glass in a tube, but with one you could count the dragons on the moon. And . . . well, have you ever used a bow? No, probably not. But a shamble can act like a bow, too. A bow stores up muscle power as the archer draws it, and sends a heavy arrow much farther than the archer could actually throw it. You can make one out of anything, so long as it . . . looks right.”

“And then you can tell if magic is happening?”

“Yes, if that’s what you’re looking for. When you’re good at it, you can use it to help you do magic yourself, to really focus on what you have to do. You can use it for protection, like a curse net, or to send a spell, or . . . well, it’s like those expensive penknives, you know? The ones with the tiny saw and the scissors and the toothpick? Except that I don’t think any witch has ever used a shamble as a toothpick, ha ha. All young witches should learn how to make a shamble. Miss Level will help you.”

Tiffany looked around the woods. The shadows were growing longer, but they didn’t worry her. Bits of Miss Tick’s teachings floated through her head: Always face what you fear. Have just enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it’s not your fault, it’s your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don’t always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don’t wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again.

“Miss Level has got long gray hair, has she?” she said.

“Oh, yes.”

“And she’s quite a tall lady, just a bit fat, and she wears quite a lot of necklaces,” Tiffany went on. “And glasses on a chain. And surprisingly high-heeled boots.”

Miss Tick wasn’t a fool. She looked around the clearing.

“Where is she?” she said.

“Standing by the tree over there,” said Tiffany.

Even so, Miss Tick had to squint. What Tiffany had noticed was that witches filled space. In a way that was almost impossible to describe, they seemed to be more real than others around them. They just showed more. But if they didn’t want to be seen, they became amazingly hard to notice. They didn’t hide, they didn’t magically fade away, although it might seem like that; but if you had to describe the room afterward, you’d swear there hadn’t been a witch in it. They just seemed to let themselves get lost.

“Ah yes, well done,” said Miss Tick. “I was wondering when you’d notice.”

Ha! thought Tiffany.

Miss Level got realer as she walked toward them. She was all in black, but clattered slightly as she walked because of all the black jewelry she wore, and she did have glasses, too, which struck Tiffany as odd for a witch. Miss Level reminded Tiffany of a happy hen. And she had two arms, the normal number.

“Ah, Miss Tick,” she said. “And you must be Tiffany Aching.”

Tiffany knew enough to bow; witches don’t curtsy (unless they want to embarrass Roland).

“I’d just like to have a word with Miss Level, Tiffany, if you don’t mind,” said Miss Tick, meaningfully. “Senior witch business.”

Ha! thought Tiffany again, because she liked the sound of it.

“I’ll just go and have a look at a tree then, shall I?” she said with what she hoped was withering sarcasm.

“I should use the bushes if I was you, dear,” Miss Level called after her. “I don’t like stopping once we’re airborne.”

There were some holly bushes that made a decent screen, but after being talked to as though she was ten years old, Tiffany would rather have allowed her bladder to explode.

I beat the Queen of the Fairies! she thought as she wandered into the woods. All right, I’m not sure how, because it’s all like a dream now, but I did do it!

She was angry at being sent away like that. A little respect wouldn’t hurt, would it? That’s what the old witch Mistress Weatherwax had said, wasn’t it? “I show you respect, as you in turn will respect me.” Mistress Weatherwax, the witch who all the other witches secretly wanted to be like, had shown her respect, so you’d think the others could make a bit of effort in that department.

She said: “See me.”

. . . and stepped out of herself and walked away toward Miss Tick and Miss Level, in her invisible ghost body. She didn’t dare look down, in case she saw her feet weren’t there. When she turned and looked back at her solid body, she saw it standing demurely by the holly bushes, clearly too far away to be listening to anyone’s conversation.

As Tiffany stealthily drew nearer, she heard Miss Tick say:

“—but quite frighteningly precocious.”

“Oh dear. I’ve never got on very well with clever people,” said Miss Level.

“Oh, she’s a good child at heart,” said Miss Tick, which annoyed Tiffany rather more than “frighteningly precocious” had.

“Of course, you know my situation,” said Miss Level, as the invisible Tiffany inched closer.

“Yes, Miss Level, but your work does you great credit. That’s why Mistress Weatherwax suggested you.”

“But I am afraid I’m getting a bit absentminded,” Miss Level worried. “It was terrible flying down here, because like a big silly I left my long-distance spectacles on my other nose. . . .”

Her other nose? thought Tiffany.

Both witches froze, exactly at the same time.

“I’m without an egg!” said Miss Tick.

“I have a beetle in a matchbox against just such an emergency!” squeaked Miss Level.

Their hands flew to their pockets and pulled out string and feathers and bits of colored cloth—

They know I’m here! thought Tiffany, and whispered, “See me not!”

She blinked and rocked on her heels as she arrived back in the patient little figure by the holly bushes. In the distance Miss Level was frantically making a shamble and Miss Tick was staring around the woods.

“Tiffany, come here at once!” she shouted.

“Yes, Miss Tick,” said Tiffany, trotting forward like a good girl.

They spotted me somehow, she thought. Well, they are witches, after all, even if in my opinion they’re not very good ones—

Then the pressure came. It seemed to squash the woods flat and filled it with the horrible feeling that something is standing right behind you. Tiffany sank to her knees with her hands over her ears and a pain like the worst earache squeezing her head.

“Finished!” shouted Miss Level. She held up a shamble. It was quite different from Miss Tick’s, made up of string and crow feathers and glittery black beads and, in the middle, an ordinary matchbox.

Tiffany yelled. The pain was like red-hot needles and her ears filled with the buzz of flies.

The matchbox exploded.

And then there was silence, and birdsong, and nothing to show that anything had happened apart from a few pieces of matchbox spiraling down, along with iridescent fragments of wing case.

“Oh dear,” said Miss Level. “He was quite a good beetle, as beetles go. . . .”

“Tiffany, are you all right?” said Miss Tick. Tiffany blinked. The pain had gone as fast as it has arrived, leaving only a burning memory. She scrambled to her feet.

“I think so, Miss Tick!”

“Then a word, if you please!” said Miss Tick. She marched over to a tree and stood there looking stern.

“Yes, Miss Tick?” said Tiffany.

“Did you . . . do anything?” said Miss Tick. “You haven’t been summoning things, have you?”

“No! Anyway, I don’t know how to!” said Tiffany.

“It’s not your little men then, is it?” said Miss Tick doubtfully.

“They’re not mine, Miss Tick. And they don’t do that sort of thing. They just shout ‘Crivens!’ and then start kicking people on the ankle. You definitely know it’s them.”

“Well, whatever it was, it seems to have gone,” said Miss Level. “And we should go too—otherwise we’ll be flying all night.” She reached behind another tree and picked up a bundle of firewood. At least, it looked exactly like that, because it was supposed to. “My own invention,” she said, modestly. “One never knows down here on the plains, does one? And the handle shoots out by means of this button—oh, I’m so sorry, it sometimes does that. Did anyone see where it went?”

The handle was located in a bush and screwed back in.

Tiffany, a girl who listened to what people said, watched Miss Level closely. She definitely had only one nose on her face, and it was sort of uncomfortable to imagine where anyone might have another one and what’d they use it for.

Then Miss Level pulled some rope out of her pocket and passed it to someone who wasn’t there.

That’s what she did, Tiffany was sure. She didn’t drop it, she didn’t throw it, she just held it out and let go, as though she’d thought she was hanging it on an invisible hook.

It landed in a coil on the moss. Miss Level looked down, then saw Tiffany staring at her and laughed nervously.

“Silly me,” she said. “I thought I was over there! I’ll forget my own head next!”

“Well . . . if it’s the one on top of your neck,” said Tiffany cautiously, still thinking about the other nose, “you’ve still got it.”

The old suitcase was roped to the bristle end of the broomstick, which now floated calmly a few feet above the ground.

“There, that’ll make a nice comfy seat,” said Miss Level, now the bag of nerves that most people turned into when they felt Tiffany staring at them. “If you’d just hang on behind me. Er. That’s what I normally do.”

“You normally hang on behind you?” said Tiffany. “How can—”

“Tiffany, I’ve always encouraged your forthright way of asking questions,” said Miss Tick loudly. “And now, please, I would love to congratulate you on your mastery of silence! Do climb on behind Miss Level. I’m sure she’ll want to leave while you’ve still got some daylight.”

The stick bobbed a little as Miss Level climbed onto it. She patted it invitingly.

“You’re not frightened of heights, are you, dear?” she asked as Tiffany climbed on.

“No,” said Tiffany.

“I shall drop in when I come up for the Witch Trials,” said Miss Tick as Tiffany felt the stick rise gently under her. “Take care!”

It turned out that when Miss Level had asked Tiffany if she was scared of heights, it had been the wrong question. Tiffany was not afraid of heights at all. She could walk past tall trees without batting an eyelid. Looking up at huge towering mountains didn’t bother her a bit.

What she was afraid of, although she hadn’t realized it until this point, was depths. She was afraid of dropping such a long way out of the sky that she’d have time to run out of breath screaming before hitting the rocks so hard that she’d turn to a sort of jelly and all her bones would break into dust. She was, in fact, afraid of the ground. Miss Level should have thought before asking the question.

Tiffany clung to Miss Level’s belt and stared at the cloth of her dress.

“Have you ever flown before, Tiffany?” asked the witch as they rose.

“Gnf!” squeaked Tiffany.

“If you like, I could take us round in a little circle,” said Miss Level. “We should have a fine view of your country from up here.”

The air was rushing past Tiffany now. It was a lot colder. She kept her eyes fixed firmly on the cloth.

“Would you like that?” said Miss Level, raising her voice as the wind grew louder. “It won’t take a moment!”

Tiffany didn’t have time to say no and, in any case, was sure she’d be sick if she opened her mouth. The stick lurched under her, and the world went sideways.

She didn’t want to look but remembered that a witch is always inquisitive to the point of nosiness. To stay a witch, she had to look.

She risked a glance and saw the world under her. The red-gold light of sunset was flowing across the land, and down there were the long shadows of Twoshirts and, farther away, the woods and villages all the way back to the long curved hill of the Chalk—

—which glowed red, and the white carving of the chalk Horse burned gold like some giant’s pendant. Tiffany stared at it; in the fading light of the afternoon, with the shadows racing away from the sliding sun, it looked alive.

At that moment she wanted to jump off, fly back, get there by closing her eyes and clicking her heels together, do anything—

No! She’d bundled those thoughts away, hadn’t she? She had to learn, and there was no one on the hills to teach her!

But the Chalk was her world. She walked on it every day. She could feel its ancient life under her feet. The land was in her bones, just as Granny Aching had said. It was in her name, too; in the old language of the Nac Mac Feegle, her name sounded like “Land Under Wave,” and in the eye of her mind she’d walked in those deep prehistoric seas when the Chalk had been formed, in a million-year rain made of the shells of tiny creatures. She trod a land made of life, and breathed it in, and listened to it, and thought its thoughts for it. To see it now, small, alone, in a landscape that stretched to the end of the world, was too much. She had to go back to it—

For a moment the stick wobbled in the air.

No! I know I must go!

It jerked back, and there was a sickening feeling in her stomach as the stick curved away toward the mountains.

“A little bit of turbulence there, I think,” said Miss Level over her shoulder. “By the way, did Miss Tick warn you about the thick wooly pants, dear?”

Tiffany, still shocked, mumbled something that managed to sound like “no.” Miss Tick had mentioned the pants, and how a sensible witch wore at least three pairs to stop ice forming, but she had forgotten about them.

“Oh dear,” said Miss Level. “Then we’d better hedgehop.”

The stick dropped like a stone.

Tiffany never forgot that ride, though she often tried to. They flew just above the ground, which was the blur just below her feet. Every time they came to a fence or a hedge, Miss Level would jump it with a cry of “Here we go!” or “Ups-a-daisy!” which was probably meant to make Tiffany feel better. It didn’t. She threw up twice.

Miss Level flew with her head bent so far down as to be almost level with the stick, thus getting the maximum aerodynamic advantage from the pointy hat. It was quite a stubby one, only about nine inches high, rather like a clown hat without the bobbles;Tiffany found out later that this was so that she didn’t have to take it off when entering low-ceilinged cottages.

After a while—an eternity from Tiffany’s point of view—they left the farmlands behind and started to fly through foothills. Before long they’d left trees behind, too, and the stick was flying above the fast white waters of a wide river studded with boulders. Spray splashed over their boots.

She heard Miss Level yell above the roar of the river and the rush of the wind: “Would you mind leaning back? This bit’s a little tricky!”

Tiffany risked peeking over the witch’s shoulder and gasped.

There was not much water on the Chalk, except for the little streams that people called bournes, which flowed down the valleys in late winter and dried up completely in the summer. Big rivers flowed around it, of course, but they were slow and tame.

The water ahead wasn’t slow and tame. It was vertical.

The river ran up into the dark-blue sky, soared up to the early stars. The broom followed it.

Tiffany leaned back and screamed, and went on screaming as the broomstick tilted in the air and climbed up the waterfall. She’d known the word, certainly, but the word hadn’t been so big, so wet, and above all it hadn’t been so loud.

The mist of it drenched her. The noise pounded in her ears. She held on to Miss Level’s belt as they climbed though spray and thunder and felt that she’d slip at any minute—

—and then she was thrown forward, and the noise of the falls died away behind her as the stick, now once again going “along” rather than “up,” sped across the surface of a river that, while still leaping and foaming, at least had the decency to do it on the ground.

There was a bridge high above, and walls of cold rock hemmed the river in on either side, but the walls got lower and the river got slower and the air got warmer again until the broomstick skimmed across calm fat water that probably didn’t know what was going to happen to it. Silver fish zigzagged away as they passed over the surface.

After a while Miss Level sent them curving up across new fields, smaller and greener than the ones at home. There were trees again, and little woods in deep valleys. But the last of the sunlight was draining away, and soon all there was below was darkness.

Tiffany must have dozed off, clinging to Miss Level, because she felt herself jerk awake as the broomstick stopped in midair. The ground was some way below, but someone had set out a ring of what turned out to be candle ends, burning in old jars.

Delicately, turning slowly, the stick settled down until it stopped just above the grass.

At this point Tiffany’s legs decided to untwist, and she fell off.

“Up we get!” said Miss Level cheerfully, picking her up. “You did very well!”

“Sorry about screaming and being sick,” Tiffany mumbled, tripping over one of the jars and knocking the candle out. She tried to make out anything in the dark, but her head was spinning. “Did you light these candles, Miss Level?”

“Yes. Let’s get inside, it’s getting chilly—” Miss Level began.

“Oh, by magic,” said Tiffany, still dizzy.

“Well, it can be done by magic, yes,” said Miss Level. “But I prefer matches, which are of course a lot less effort and quite magical in themselves, when you come to think about it.” She untied the suitcase from the stick and said: “Here we are, then! I do hope you’ll like it here!”

There was that cheerfulness again. Even when she felt sick and dizzy, and quite interested in knowing where the privy was as soon as possible, Tiffany still had ears that worked and a mind that, however much she tried, wouldn’t stop thinking. And it thought: That cheerfulness has got cracks around the edges. Something isn’t right here. . . .

CHAPTER 3

A Single-Minded Lady

There was a cottage, but Tiffany couldn’t see much in the gloom. Apple trees crowded in around it. Something hanging from a branch brushed against her as, walking unsteadily, she followed Miss Level. It swung away with a tinkling sound. There was the sound of rushing water, too, some way away.

Miss Level was opening a door. It led into a small, brightly lit, and amazingly tidy kitchen. A fire was burning briskly in the iron stove.

“Um . . . I’m supposed to be the apprentice,” said Tiffany, still groggy from the flight. “I’ll make something to drink if you show me where things are—”

“No!” Miss Level burst out, raising her hands. The shout seemed to have shocked her, because she was shaking when she lowered them. “No, I, I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said in a more normal voice, trying to smile. “You’ve had a long day. I’ll show you to your room and where things are, and I’ll bring you up some stew, and you can be an apprentice tomorrow. No rush.”

Tiffany looked at the bubbling pot on the iron stove, and the loaf on the table. It was freshly baked bread, she could smell that.

The trouble with Tiffany was her Third Thoughts.* They thought: She lives by herself. Who lit the fire? A bubbling pot needs stirring from time to time. Who stirred it? And someone lit the candles. Who?

“Is there anyone else staying here, Miss Level?” she said.

Miss Level looked desperately at the pot and the loaf and back to Tiffany.

“No, there’s only me,” she said, and somehow Tiffany knew she was telling the truth. Or a truth, anyway.

“In the morning?” said Miss Level, almost pleading. She looked so forlorn that Tiffany actually felt sorry for her.

She smiled. “Of course, Miss Level,” she said.

There was a brief tour by candlelight. There was a privy not far from the cottage; it was a two-holer, which Tiffany thought was a bit odd—but of course maybe other people had lived here once. There was also a room just for a bath, a terrible waste of space by the standards of Home Farm. It had its own pump and a big boiler for heating the water. This was definitely posh.

Her bedroom was a . . . nice room. Nice was a very good word. Everything had frills. Anything that could have a cover on it was covered. Some attempt had been made to make the room . . . jolly, as if being a bedroom was a jolly wonderful thing to be. Tiffany’s room back on the farm had a rag rug on the floor, a water jug and basin on a stand, a big wooden box for clothes, an ancient dolls’ house, and some old calico curtains, and that was pretty much it. On the farm, bedrooms were for shutting your eyes in.

The room had a chest of drawers. The contents of Tiffany’s suitcase filled one drawer easily.

The bed made no sound when Tiffany sat on it. Her bed at home had a mattress so old that it had a comfy hollow in it, and the springs all made different noises; if she couldn’t sleep, she could move various parts of her body and play “The Bells of St. Ungulants” on the springs—cling twing glong, gling ping bloyinnng, dlink plang dyonnng, ding ploink.

This room smelled different too. It smelled of spare rooms and other people’s soap.

At the bottom of her suitcase was a small box that Mr. Block, the farm’s carpenter, had made for her. He did not go in for delicate work, and it was quite heavy. In it, she kept . . . keepsakes. There was a piece of chalk with a fossil in it, which was quite rare, and her personal butter stamp (which showed a witch on a broomstick) in case she got a chance to make butter here, and a dobby stone, which was supposed to be lucky because it had a hole in it. (She’d been told that when she was seven, and had picked it up. She couldn’t quite see how the hole made it lucky, but since it had spent a lot of time in her pocket, and then safe and sound in the box, it probably was more fortunate than most stones, which got kicked around and run over by carts and so on.)

There was also a blue-and-yellow wrapper from an old packet of Jolly Sailor tobacco, and a buzzard feather, and an ancient flint arrowhead wrapped up carefully in a piece of sheep’s wool. There were plenty of these on the Chalk. The Nac Mac Feegle used them for spear points.

She lined these up neatly on the top of the chest of drawers, alongside her diary, but they didn’t make the place look more homey. They just looked lonely.

Tiffany picked up the old wrapper and the sheep wool and sniffed them. They weren’t quite the smell of the shepherding hut, but they were close enough to it to bring tears to her eyes.

She had never spent a night away from the Chalk before. She knew the word homesickness and wondered whether this cold, thin feeling growing inside her was what it felt like—

Someone knocked at the door.

“It’s me,” said a muffled voice.

Tiffany jumped off the bed and opened the door. Miss Level came in with a tray that held a bowl of beef stew and some bread. She put it down on the little table by the bed.

“If you put it outside the door when you’re finished, I’ll take it down later,” she said.

“Thank you very much,” said Tiffany.

Miss Level paused at the door. “It’s going to be so nice having someone to talk to, apart from myself,” she said. “I do hope you won’t want to leave, Tiffany.”

Tiffany gave her a happy little smile, then waited until the door had shut and she’d heard Miss Level’s footsteps go downstairs before tiptoeing to the window and checking there were no bars in it.

There had been something scary about Miss Level’s expression. It was sort of hungry and hopeful and pleading and frightened, all at once.

Tiffany also checked that she could bolt the bedroom door on the inside.

The beef stew tasted, indeed, just like beef stew and not, just to take an example completely and totally at random, stew made out of the last poor girl who’d worked here.

To be a witch, you have to have a very good imagination. Just now, Tiffany was wishing that hers wasn’t quite so good. But Mistress Weatherwax and Miss Tick wouldn’t have let her come here if it was dangerous, would they? Well, would they?

They might. They just might. Witches didn’t believe in making things too easy. They assumed you used your brains. If you didn’t use your brains, you had no business being a witch. The world doesn’t make things easy, they’d say. Learn how to learn fast.

But . . . they’d give her a chance, wouldn’t they?

Of course they would.

Probably.

She’d nearly finished the not-made-of-people-at-all-honestly stew when something tried to take the bowl out of her hand. It was the gentlest of tugs, and when she automatically pulled it back, the tugging stopped immediately.

O-kay, she thought. Another strange thing. Well, this is a witch’s cottage.

Something pulled at the spoon but, again, stopped as soon as she tugged back.

Tiffany put the empty bowl and spoon back on the tray.

“All right,” she said, hoping she sounded not scared at all. “I’ve finished.”

The tray rose into the air and drifted gently toward the door, where it landed on the floor with a faint tinkle.

Up on the door, the bolt slid back.

The door opened.

The tray rose up and sailed through the doorway.

The door shut.

The bolt slid across.

Tiffany heard the rattle of the spoon as, somewhere on the dark landing, the tray moved on.

It seemed to Tiffany that it was vitally important that she thought before doing anything. And so she thought: It would be stupid to run around screaming because your tray had been taken away. After all, whatever had done it had even had the decency to bolt the door after itself, which meant that it respected her privacy, even while it ignored it.

She cleaned her teeth at the washstand, got into her nightgown, and slid into the bed. She blew out the candle.

After a moment she got up, relit the candle, and with some effort dragged the chest of drawers in front of the door. She wasn’t quite certain why, but she felt better for doing it.

She lay back in the dark again.

Tiffany was used to sleeping while, outside on the downland, sheep baaed and sheep bells occasionally went tonk.

Up here, there were no sheep to baa and no bells to tonk, and every time one didn’t, she woke up thinking, What was that?

But she did get to sleep eventually, because she remembered waking up in the middle of the night to hear the chest of drawers very slowly slide back to its original position.

Tiffany woke up, still alive and not chopped up, when the dawn was just turning gray. Unfamiliar birds were singing.

There were no sounds in the cottage, and she thought: I’m the apprentice, aren’t I? I’m the one who should be cleaning up and getting the fire lit. I know how this is supposed to go.

She sat up and looked around the room.

Her old clothes had been neatly folded on top of the chest of drawers. The fossil and the lucky stone and the other things had gone, and it was only after a frantic search that she found them back in the box in her suitcase.

“Now look,” she said to the room in general. “I am a hag, you know. If there are any Nac Mac Feegle here, step out this minute!”

Nothing happened. She hadn’t expected anything to happen. The Nac Mac Feegle weren’t particularly interested in tidying things up, anyway.

As an experiment she took the candlestick off the bedside table, put it on the chest of drawers, and stood back. More nothing happened.

She turned to look out of the window and, as she did so, there was a faint blint noise.

When she spun around, the candlestick was back on the table.

Well . . . today was going to be a day when she got answers. Tiffany enjoyed the slightly angry feeling. It stopped her thinking about how much she wanted to go home.

She went to put her dress on and realized that there was something soft yet crackly in a pocket.

Oh, how could she have forgotten? But it had been a busy day, a very busy day, and maybe she’d wanted to forget, anyway.

She pulled out Roland’s present and opened the white tissue paper carefully.

It was a necklace.

It was the Horse.

Tiffany stared at it.

Not what a horse looks like, but what a horse be. . . . It had been carved in the turf back before history began, by people who had managed to convey in a few flowing lines everything a horse was: strength, grace, beauty, and speed, straining to break free of the hill.

And now someone—someone clever and, therefore, probably also someone expensive—had made it out of silver. It was flat, just like it was on the hillside, and just like the Horse on the hillside, some parts of it were not joined to the rest of the body. The craftsman, though, had joined these carefully together with tiny silver chain, so when Tiffany held it up in astonishment, it was all there, moving-while-standing-still in the morning light.

She had to put it on. And . . . there was no mirror, not even a tiny hand one. Oh, well . . .

“See me,” said Tiffany.

And far away, down on the plains, something that had lost the trail awoke. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the mist on the fields parted as something invisible started to move, making a noise like a swarm of flies. . . .

Tiffany shut her eyes, took a couple of small steps sideways and a few steps forward, turned around, and carefully opened her eyes again. There she stood, in front of her, as still as a picture. The Horse looked very good on the new dress, silver against green.

She wondered how much it must have cost Roland. She wondered why.

“See me not,” she said. Slowly she took the necklace off, wrapped it up again in its tissue paper, and put it in the box with the other things from home. Then she found one of the postcards from Twoshirts and a pencil, and with care and attention, she wrote Roland a short thank-you note. After a flash of guilt she carefully used the other postcard to tell her parents that she was completely still alive.

Then, thoughtfully, she went downstairs.

It had been dark last night, so she hadn’t noticed the posters stuck up all down the stairs. They were from circuses, and were covered with clowns and animals and that old-fashioned poster lettering where no two lines of type are the same.

They said things like:

THRILLS GALORE! HURRY! HURRY! HURRY!

PROFESSOR MONTY BLADDER’S THREE-RING CIRCUS AND CABINET OF CURIOSITIES!!

SEE THE HORSE WITH HIS HEAD WHERE HIS TAIL SHOULD BE!

SEE THE AMAZING DISLOCATING JACK PUT A LION’S HEAD IN HIS ACTUAL MOUTH!!!

SEE THE EGRESS!!!!!

CLOWNS! CLOWNS! CLOWNS!

THE FLYING PASTRAMI BROTHERS WILL DEFY GRAVITY, THE GREATEST FORCE IN THE UNIVERSE
*WITHOUT A NET!*

SEE CLARENCE THE TAP-DANCING MULE!

WONDER AT TOPSY AND TIPSY
*THE ASTOUNDING MIND-READING ACT*

And so it went on, right down to tiny print. They were strange, bright things to find in a little cottage in the woods.

She found her way into the kitchen. It was cold and quiet, except for the ticking of a clock on the wall. Both the hands had fallen off the clock face and lay at the bottom of the glass cover, so while the clock was still measuring time, it wasn’t inclined to tell anyone about it.

As kitchens went, it was very tidy. In the cupboard drawer under the sink, forks, spoons, and knives were all in neat sections, which was a bit worrying. Every kitchen drawer Tiffany had ever seen might have been meant to be neat but over the years had been crammed with things that didn’t quite fit, like big ladles and bent bottle openers, which meant that they always stuck unless you knew the trick of opening them.

Experimentally she took a spoon out of the spoon section, dropped it among the forks, and shut the drawer. Then she turned her back.

There was a sliding noise and a tinkle exactly like the tinkle a spoon makes when it’s put back among the other spoons, who have missed it and are anxious to hear its tales of life among the frighteningly pointy people.

This time she put a knife in with the forks, shut the drawer—and leaned on it.

Nothing happened for a while, and then she heard the cutlery rattling. The noise got louder. The drawer began to shake. The whole sink began to tremble—

“All right,” said Tiffany, jumping back. “Have it your way!”

The drawer burst open, the knife jumped from section to section like a fish, and the drawer slammed back.

Silence.

“Who are you?” said Tiffany. No one replied. But she didn’t like the feeling in the air. Someone was upset with her now. It had been a silly trick, anyway.

She went out into the garden quickly. The rushing noise she had heard last night was made by a waterfall not far from the cottage. A little waterwheel pumped water into a big stone cistern, and there was a pipe that led into the house.

The garden was full of ornaments. They were rather sad, cheap ones—bunny rabbits with crazy grins, pottery deer with big eyes, gnomes with pointy red hats and expressions that suggested they were on bad medication.

Things hung from the apple trees or were tied to posts all around the place. There were some dream catchers and curse nets, which she sometimes saw hanging up outside cottages at home. Other things looked like big shambles, spinning and tinkling gently. Some . . . well, one looked like a bird made out of old brushes, but most looked like piles of junk. Odd junk, though. It seemed to Tiffany that some of it moved slightly as she went past.

When she went back into the cottage, Miss Level was sitting at the kitchen table.

So was Miss Level. There were, in fact, two of her.

“Sorry,” said the Miss Level on the right. “I thought it was best to get it over with right now.”

The two women were exactly alike. “Oh, I see,” said Tiffany. “You’re twins.”

“No,” said the Miss Level on the left, “I’m not. This might be a little difficult—”

“—for you to understand,” said the other Miss Level. “Let me see, now. You know—”

“—how twins are sometimes said to be able to share thoughts and feelings?” said the first Miss Level.

Tiffany nodded.

“Well,” said the second Miss Level, “I’m a bit more complicated than that, I suppose, because—”

“—I’m one person with two bodies,” said the first Miss Level, and now they spoke like players in a tennis match, slamming the words back and forth.

“I wanted to break this to you—”

“—gently, because some people get upset by the—”

“—idea and find it creepy or—”

“—just plain—”

“—weird.”

The two bodies stopped.

“Sorry about that last sentence,” said the Miss Level on the left. “I only do that when I’m really nervous.”

“Er, do you mean that you both—” Tiffany began, but the Miss Level on the right said quickly, “There is no both. There’s just me, do you understand? I know it’s hard. But I have a right right hand and a right left hand and a left right hand and a left left hand. It’s all me. I can go shopping and stay home at the same time, Tiffany. If it helps, think of me as one—”

“—person with four arms and—”

“—four legs and—”

“—four eyes.”

All four of those eyes now watched Tiffany nervously.

“And two noses,” said Tiffany.

“That’s right. You’ve got it. My right body is slightly clumsier than my left body, but I have better eyesight in my right pair of eyes. I’m human, just like you, except that there’s more of me.”

“But one of you—that is, one half of you—came all the way to Twoshirts for me,” said Tiffany.

“Oh yes, I can split up like that,” said Miss Level. “I’m quite good at it. But if there’s a gap of more than twenty miles or so, I get rather clumsy. And now a cup of tea would do us both good, I think.”

Before Tiffany could move, both the Miss Levels stood up and crossed the kitchen.

Tiffany watched one person make a cup of tea using four arms.

There are quite a few things that need to be done to make a cup of tea, and Miss Level did them all at once. The bodies stood side by side, passing things from hand to hand to hand, moving kettle and cups and spoon in a sort of ballet.

“When I was a child, they thought I was twins,” she said over one of her shoulders. “And then . . . they thought I was evil,” she said, over another shoulder.

“Are you?” said Tiffany.

Both of Miss Level turned around, looking shocked.

“What kind of question is that to ask anyone?” she said.

“Um . . . the obvious one?” said Tiffany. “I mean, if they said, ‘Yes I am! Mwahahaha!’ that would save a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it?”

Four eyes narrowed.

“Mistress Weatherwax was right,” said Miss Level. “She said you were a witch to your boots.”

Inside, Tiffany beamed with pride.

“Well, the thing about the obvious,” said Miss Level, “is that it so often isn’t. . . . Did Mistress Weatherwax really take off her hat to you?”

“Yes.”

“One day perhaps you’ll know how much honor she did you,” said Miss Level. “Anyway . . . no, I’m not evil. But I nearly became evil, I think. Mother died not long after I was born, my father was at sea and never came back—”

“Worse things happen at sea,” said Tiffany. It was something Granny Aching had told her.

“Yes, right, and probably they did, or possibly he never wanted to come back in any case,” said Miss Level dryly. “And I was put in a charity home, bad food, horrible teachers, blah, blah, and I fell into the worst company possible, which was my own. It’s amazing the tricks you can get up to when you’ve got two bodies. Of course, everyone thought I was twins. In the end I ran away to join the circus. Me! Can you imagine that?”

“Topsy and Tipsy, The Astounding Mind-Reading Act?” said Tiffany.

Miss Level stood stock-still, her mouths open.

“It was on the posters over the stairs,” Tiffany added.

Now Miss Level relaxed.

“Oh, yes. Of course. Very . . . quick of you, Tiffany. Yes. You do notice things, don’t you. . . .”

“I know I wouldn’t pay money to see the egress,” said Tiffany. “It just means ‘the way out.’”*

“Clever!” said Miss Level. “Monty put that on a sign to keep people moving though the Believe-It-or-Not tent. ‘This way to the Egress!’ Of course, people thought it was a female eagle or something, so Monty had a big man with a dictionary outside to show them they got exactly what they paid for! Have you ever been to a circus?”

Once, Tiffany admitted. It hadn’t been much fun. Things that try too hard to be funny often aren’t. There had been a moth-eaten lion with practically no teeth, a tightrope walker who was never more than a few feet above the ground, and a knife thrower who threw a lot of knives at an elderly woman in pink tights on a big spinning wooden disc and completely failed to hit her every time. The only real amusement was afterward, when a cart ran over the clown.

“My circus was a lot bigger,” said Miss Level, when Tiffany mentioned this. “Although, as I recall, our knife thrower was also very bad at aiming. We had elephants and camels and a lion so fierce it bit a man’s arm nearly off.”

Tiffany had to admit that this sounded a lot more entertaining.

“And what did you do?” she said.

“Well, I just bandaged him up while I shooed the lion off him—”

“Yes, Miss Level, but I meant in the circus. Just reading your own mind?”

Miss Level beamed at Tiffany. “That, yes, and nearly everything else, too,” she said. “With different wigs on I was the Stupendous Bohunkus Sisters. I juggled plates, you know, and wore costumes covered in sequins. And I helped with the high-wire act. Not walking the wire, of course, but generally smiling and glittering at the audience. Everyone assumed I was twins, and circus people don’t ask too many personal questions in any case. And then what with one thing and another, this and that . . . I came up here and became a witch.”

Both of Miss Level watched Tiffany carefully.

“That was quite a long sentence, that last sentence,” said Tiffany.

“Yes, it was, wasn’t it,” said Miss Level. “I can’t tell you everything. Do you still want to stay? The last three girls didn’t. Some people find me slightly . . . odd.”

“Um . . . I’ll stay,” said Tiffany slowly. “The thing that moves things about is a bit strange, though.”

Miss Level looked surprised and then said, “Oh, do you mean Oswald?”

“There’s an invisible man called Oswald who can get into my bedroom?” said Tiffany, horrified.

“Oh, no. That’s just a name. Oswald isn’t a man, he’s an ondageist. Have you heard of poltergeists?”

“Er . . . invisible spirits that throw things around?”

“Good,” said Miss Level. “Well, an ondageist is the opposite. They’re obsessive about tidiness. He’s quite handy around the house, but he’s absolutely dreadful if he’s in the kitchen when I’m cooking. He keeps putting things away. I think it makes him happy. Sorry, I should have warned you, but he normally hides if anyone comes to the cottage. He’s shy.”

“And he’s a man? I mean, a male spirit?”

“How would you tell? He’s got no body and he doesn’t speak. I just called him Oswald because I always picture him as a worried little man with a dustpan and brush.” The left Miss Level giggled when the right Miss Level said this. The effect was odd and, if you thought that way, also creepy.

“Well, we are getting on well,” said the right Miss Level nervously. “Is there anything more you want to know, Tiffany?”

“Yes, please,” said Tiffany. “What do you want me to do? What do you do?”

And mostly, it turned out, what Miss Level did was chores. Endless chores. You could look in vain for much broomstick tuition, spelling lessons, or pointy-hat management. They were, mostly, the kind of chores that are just . . . chores.

There was a small flock of goats, technically led by Stinky Sam, who had a shed of his own and was kept on a chain, but really led by Black Meg, the senior nanny, who patiently allowed Tiffany to milk her and then, carefully and deliberately, put a hoof in the milk bucket. That’s a goat’s idea of getting to know you. A goat is a worrying thing if you’re used to sheep, because a goat is a sheep with brains. But Tiffany had met goats before, because a few people in the village kept them for their milk, which was very nourishing. And she knew that with goats you had to use persicology.* If you got excited, and shouted, and hit them (hurting your hand, because it’s like slapping a sack full of coat hangers), then they had Won and sniggered at you in goat language, which is almost all sniggering anyway.

By day two Tiffany learned that the thing to do was reach out and grab Black Meg’s hind leg just as she lifted it up to kick the bucket, and lift it up farther. That made her unbalanced and nervous and the other goats sniggered at her, and Tiffany had Won.

Next there were the bees. Miss Level kept a dozen hives, for the wax as much as the honey, in a little clearing that was loud with buzzing. She made Tiffany wear a veil and gloves before she opened a hive. She wore some too.

“Of course,” she observed, “if you are careful and sober and well centered in your life, the bees won’t sting. Unfortunately, not all the bees have heard about this theory. Good morning, Hive Three, this is Tiffany. She will be staying with us for a while. . . .”

Tiffany half expected the whole hive to pipe up, in some horrible high-pitched buzz, “Good morning, Tiffany!” It didn’t.

“Why did you tell them that?” she asked.

“Oh, you have to talk to your bees,” said Miss Level. “It’s very bad luck not to. I generally have a little chat with them most evenings. News and gossip, that sort of thing. Every beekeeper knows about ‘telling the bees.’”

“And who do the bees tell?” asked Tiffany.

Both of Miss Level smiled at her.

“Other bees, I suppose,” she said.

“So . . . if you knew how to listen to the bees, you’d know everything that was going on, yes?” Tiffany persisted.

“You know, it’s funny you should say that,” said Miss Level. “There have been a few rumors . . . But you’d have to learn to think like a swarm of bees. One mind with thousands of little bodies. Much too hard to do, even for me.” She exchanged a thoughtful glance with herself. “Maybe not impossible, though.”

Then there were the herbs. The cottage had a big herb garden, although it contained very little that you’d stuff a turkey with, and at this time of year there was still a lot of work to be done collecting and drying, especially the ones with important roots. Tiffany quite enjoyed that. Miss Level was big on herbs.

There is something called the Doctrine of Signatures. It works like this: When the Creator of the Universe made helpful plants for the use of people, he (or in some versions, she) put little clues on them to give people hints. A plant useful for toothache would look like teeth, one to cure earache would look like an ear, one good for nose problems would drip green goo, and so on. Many people believed this.

You had to use a certain amount of imagination to be good at it (but not much in the case of Nose Dropwort), and in Tiffany’s world the Creator had got a little more . . . creative. Some plants had writing on them, if you knew where to look. It was often hard to find and usually difficult to read, because plants can’t spell. Most people didn’t even know about it and just used the traditional method of finding out whether plants were poisonous or useful by testing them on some elderly aunt they didn’t need, but Miss Level was pioneering new techniques that she hoped would mean life would be better for everyone (and, in the case of the aunts, often longer, too).

“This one is False Gentian,” she told Tiffany when they were in the long, cool workroom behind the cottage. She was holding up a weed triumphantly. “Everyone thinks it’s another toothache cure, but just look at the cut root by stored moonlight, using my blue magnifying glass. . . .”

Tiffany tried it, and read: “GoOD F4r Colds May cors drowsniss Do nOt oprate heavE mashinry.”

“Terrible spelling, but not bad for a daisy,” said Miss Level.

“You mean plants really tell you how to use them?” said Tiffany.

“Well, not all of them, and you have to know where to look,” said Miss Level. “Look at this, for example, on the common walnut. You have to use the green magnifying glass by the light of a taper made from red cotton, thus. . . .”

Tiffany squinted. The letters were small and hard to read.

“‘May contain Nut’?” she ventured. “But it’s a nutshell. Of course it’ll contain a nut. Er . . . won’t it?”

“Not necessarily,” said Miss Level. “It may, for example, contain an exquisite miniature scene wrought from gold and many colored precious stones depicting a strange and interesting temple set in a far-off land. Well, it might,” she added, catching Tiffany’s expression. “There’s no actual law against it. As such. The world is full of surprises.”

That night Tiffany had a lot more to put in her diary. She kept it on top of her chest of drawers with a large stone on it. Oswald seemed to get the message about this, but he had started to polish the stone.

And pull back, and rise above the cottage, and fly the eye across the nighttime. . . .

Miles away, pass invisibly across something that is itself invisible, but which buzzes like a swarm on flies as it drags itself over the ground. . . .

Continue, the roads and towns and trees rushing behind you with zip-zip noises, until you come to the big city, and near the center of the city the high old tower, and beneath the tower the ancient magical university, and in the university the library, and in the library the bookshelves, and . . . the journey has hardly begun.

Bookshelves stream past. The books are on chains. Some snap at you as you pass.

And here is the section of the more dangerous books, the ones that are kept chained in cages or in vats of iced water or simply clamped between lead plates.

But here is a book, faintly transparent and glowing with thaumic radiation, under a glass dome. Young wizards about to engage in research are encouraged to go and read it.

The title is Hivers: A Dissertation Upon a Device of Amazing Cunning by Sensibility Bustle, D. M. Phil., B. El L., Patricius Professor of Magic. Most of the handwritten book is about how to construct a large and powerful magical apparatus to capture a hiver without harm to the user, but on the very last pages Dr. Bustle writes, or wrote:

According to the ancient and famous volume Res Centum et Una Quas Magus Facere Potet,* hivers are a type of demon (indeed, Professor Poledread classifies them as such in I Spy Demons, and Cuvee gives them a section under “wandering spirits” in Liber Immanis Monstrorum.** However, ancient texts discovered in the Cave of Jars by the ill-fated First Expedition to the Loko Region give quite a different story, which bears out my own not inconsiderable research.

Hivers were formed in the first seconds of Creation. They are not alive but they have, as it were, the shape of life. They have no body, brain, or thoughts of their own, and a naked hiver is a sluggish thing indeed, tumbling gently though the endless night between the worlds. According to Poledread, most end up at the bottoms of deep seas, or in the bellies of volcanoes, or drifting through the hearts of stars. Poledread was a very inferior thinker compared to myself, but in this case he is right.

Yet a hiver does have the ability to fear and to crave. We cannot guess what frightens a hiver, but they seem to take refuge in bodies that have power of some sort—great strength, great intellect, great prowess with magic. In this sense they are like the common hermit elephant of Howondaland, Elephas solitarius, which will always seek the strongest mud hut as its shell.

There is no doubt in my mind that hivers have advanced the cause of life. Why did fish crawl out of the sea? Why did humanity grasp such a dangerous thing as fire? Hivers, I believe, have been behind this, firing outstanding creatures of various species with the flame of necessary ambition, which drove them onward and upward! What is it that a hiver seeks? What is it that drives them forward? What is it they want? This I shall find out!

Oh, lesser wizards warn us that a hiver distorts the mind of its host, curdling it and inevitably causing an early death through brain fever. I say poppycock! People have always been afraid of what they do not understand!

But I have understanding!

This morning, at two o’clock, I captured a hiver with my device! And now it is locked inside my head. I can sense its memories, the memories of every creature it has inhabited. Yet because of my superior intellect, I control the hiver. It does not control me. I do not feel that it has changed me in any way. My mind is as extraordinarily powerful as it always has been!

At this point the writing is smudgy, apparently because Bustle was beginning to drool.

Oh, how they have held me back over the years, those worms and cravens that have through sheer luck been allowed to call themselves my superiors! They laughed at me! BUT THEY ARE NOT LAUGHING NOW!!! Even those who called themselves my friends, OH YES, they did nothing but hinder me. What about the warnings? they said. Why did the jar you found the plans in have the words “Do Not Open Under Any Circumstances!” engraved in fifteen ancient languages on the lid? they said. Cowards! So-called “chums”! Creatures inhabited by a hiver become paranoid and insane, they said! Hivers cannot be controlled, they squeaked!! DO ANY OF US BELIEVE THIS FOR ONE MINUTE? Oh, what glories AWAIT! Now I have cleansed my life of such worthlessness! And as for those even now having the DISRESPECT YES DISRESPECT to hammer on my door because of what I did to the so-called Archchancellor and the College Council . . . HOW DARE THEY JUDGE ME! Like all insects they have NO CONCEPT OF GREATNESS!!!!! I WILL SHOW THEM!!! But . . . I in-soleps . . . blit !!!!! hammeringggg dfgujf blort . . .

. . . And there the writing ends. On a little card beside the book some wizard of former times has written: All that could be found of Professor Bustle was buried in a jar in the old Rose Garden. We advise all research students to spend some time there, and reflect upon the manner of his death.

The moon was on the way to being full. A gibbous moon, it’s called. It’s one of the duller phases of the moon and seldom gets illustrated. The full moon and the crescent moon get all the publicity.

Rob Anybody sat alone on the mound just outside the fake rabbit hole, staring at the distant mountains where the snow on the peaks gleamed in the moonlight.

A hand touched him lightly on the shoulder.

“’Tis not like ye to let someone creep up on ye, Rob Anybody,” said Jeannie, sitting down beside him.

Rob Anybody sighed.

“Daft Wullie was telling me ye havena been eatin’ your meals,” said Jeannie carefully.

Rob Anybody sighed.

“And Big Yan said when ye wuz out huntin’ today, ye let a fox go past wi’out gieing it a good kickin’?”

Rob sighed again.

There was a faint pop followed by a glugging noise. Jeannie held out a tiny wooden cup. In her other hand was a small leather bottle.

Fumes from the cup wavered in the air.

“This is the last o’ the Special Sheep Liniment your big wee hag gave us at our wedding,” said Jeannie. “I put it safely by for emergencies.”

“She’s no’ my big wee hag, Jeannie,” said Rob, without looking at the cup. “She’s oor big wee hag. An’ I’ll tell ye, Jeannie, she has it in her tae be the hag o’ hags. There’s power in her she doesna dream of. But the hiver smells it.”

“Aye, well, a drink’s a drink, whomsoever ye call her,” said Jeannie soothingly. She waved the cup under Rob’s nose.

He sighed and looked away.

Jeannie stood up quickly. “Wullie! Big Yan! Come quick!” she yelled. “He willna tak’ a drink! I think he’s deid!”

“Ach, this is no’ the time for strong licker,” said Rob Anybody. “My heart is heavy, wumman.”

“Quickly now!” Jeannie shouted down the hole. “He’s deid and still talkin’!”

“She’s the hag o’ these hills,” said Rob, ignoring her. “Just like her granny. She tells the hills what they are, every day. She has them in her bones. She holds ’em in her heart. Wi’out her, I dinna like tae think o’ the future.”

The other Feegles had come scurrying out of the hole and were looking uncertainly at Jeannie.

“Is somethin’ wrong?” said Daft Wullie.

“Aye!” snapped the kelda. “Rob willna tak’ a drink o’ Special Sheep Liniment!”

Wullie’s little face screwed up in instant grief. “Ach, the Big Man’s deid!” he sobbed. “Oh waily waily waily—”

“Will ye hush yer gob, ye big mudlin!” shouted Rob Anybody, standing up. “I am no’ deid! I’m trying to have a moment o’ existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it’s a puir lookout if a man canna feel the chilly winds o’ fate lashing aroound his nethers wi’out folks telling him he’s deid, eh?”

“Ach, and I see ye’ve been talking to the toad again, Rob,” said Big Yan. “He’s the only one aroound here that used them lang words that tak’ all day to walk the length of. . . .” He turned to Jeannie. “It’s a bad case o’ the thinkin’ he’s caught, missus. When a man starts messin’ wi’ the readin’ and the writin’, then he’ll come doon with a dose o’ the thinkin’ soon enough. I’ll fetch some o’ the lads and we’ll hold his heid under water until he stops doin’ it—’tis the only cure. It can kill a man, the thinkin’.”

“I’ll wallop ye and ten like ye!” yelled Rob Anybody in Big Yan’s face, raising his fists. “I’m the Big Man in this clan and—”

“And I am the kelda,” said their kelda, and one of the hiddlins of keldaring is to use your voice like that: hard, cold, sharp, cutting the air like a dagger of ice. “And I tell you men to go back doon the hole and dinna show your faces back up here until I say. Not you, Rob Anybody Feegle! You stay here until I tell ye!”

“Oh waily waily—” Daft Wullie began, but Big Yan clapped a hand over his mouth and dragged him away quickly.

When they were alone, and scraps of cloud were beginning to mass around the moon, Rob Anybody hung his head.

“I willna go, Jeannie, if you say,” he said.

“Ach, Rob, Rob,” said Jeannie, beginning to cry. “Ye dinna understand. I want no harm to come to the big wee girl, truly I don’t. But I canna face thinkin’ o’ you out there fightin’ this monster that canna be killed! It’s you I’m worried aboot, can ye no’ see?”

Rob put his arm around her. “Aye, I see,” he said.

“I’m your wife, Rob, askin’ ye not to go!”

“Aye, aye. I’ll stay,” said Rob.

Jeannie looked up to him. Tears shone in the moonlight. “Ye mean it?”

“I never braked my word yet,” said Rob. “Except to polis’men and other o’ that kidney, ye ken, and they dinna count.”

“Ye’ll stay? Ye’ll abide by my word?” said Jeannie, sniffing.

Rob sighed. “Aye. I will.”

Jeannie was quiet for a while and then said, in the sharp cold voice of a kelda: “Rob Anybody Feegle, I’m tellin’ ye now to go and save the big wee hag.”

“Whut?” said Rob Anybody, amazed. “Jus’ noo ye said I was tae stay—”

“That was as your wife, Rob. Now I’m telling you as your kelda.” Jeannie stood up, chin out and looking determined. “If ye dinna heed the world o’ yer kelda, Rob Anybody Feegle, ye can be banished fra’ the clan. Ye ken that. So you’ll listen t’ me guid. Tak’ what men you need afore it’s too late, and go to the mountains, and see that the big wee girl comes tae nae harm. And come back safe yoursel’. That is an order! Nay, ’tis more’n an order. ’Tis a geas I’m laying on ye! That cannae be brake!”

“But I—” Rob began, completely bewildered.

“I’m the kelda, Rob,” said Jeannie. “I canna run a clan with the Big Man pinin’. And the hills of our children need their hag. Everyone knows the land needs someone tae tell it whut it is.”

There was something about the way Jeannie had said “children.” Rob Anybody was not the fastest of thinkers, but he always got there in the end.

“Aye, Rob,” said Jeannie, seeing his expression. “Soon I’ll be birthing seven sons.”

“Oh,” said Rob Anybody. He didn’t ask how she knew the number. Keldas just knew.

“That’s great!” he said.

“And one daughter, Rob.”

Rob blinked.

“A daughter? This soon?”

“Aye,” said Jeannie.

“That’s wonderful good luck for a clan!” said Rob.

“Aye. So you’ve got something to come back safe to me for, Rob Anybody. An’ I beg ye to use your heid for somethin’ other than nuttin’ folk.”

“I thank ye, Kelda,” said Rob Anybody. “I’ll do as ye bid. I’ll tak’ some lads and find the big wee hag, for the good o’ the hills. It canna be a good life for the puir wee big wee thing, all alone and far fra’ home, among strangers.”

“Aye,” said Jeannie, turning her face away. “I ken that, too.”

CHAPTER 4

The PLN

At dawn Rob Anybody, watched with awe by his many brothers, wrote the word:

PLN

. . . on a scrap of paper bag. Then he held it up.

“Plan, ye ken,” he said to the assembled Feegles. “Now we have a Plan, all we got tae do is work out what tae do. Yes, Wullie?”

“Whut was that about this geese Jeannie hit ye with?” said Daft Wullie, lowering his hand.

“Not geese, geas,” said Rob Anybody. He sighed. “I told yez. That means it’s serious. It means I got tae bring back the big wee hag, an’ no excuses, otherwise my soul gaes slam-bang intae the big cludgie in the sky. It’s like a magical order. ’Tis a heavy thing, tae be under a geas.”

“Well, they’re big birds,” said Daft Wullie.

“Wullie,” said Rob, patiently, “ye ken I said I would tell ye when there wuz times you should’ve kept your big gob shut?”

“Aye, Rob.”

“Weel, that wuz one o’ them times.” He raised his voice. “Now, lads, ye ken all aboot hivers. They cannae be killed! But ’tis oor duty to save the big wee hag, so this is, like, a sooey-side mission and ye’ll probably all end up back in the land o’ the living doin’ a borin’ wee job. So . . . I’m askin’ for volunteers!”

Every Feegle over the age of four automatically put his hand up.

“Oh, come on,” said Rob. “You canna all come! Look, I’ll tak’ . . . Daft Wullie, Big Yan, and . . . you, Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin. An’ I’m takin’ no weans, so if yez under three inches high, ye’re not comin’! Except for ye, o’course, Awf’ly Wee Billy. As for the rest of youse, we’ll settle this the traditional Feegle way. I’ll tak’ the last fifty men still standing!”

He beckoned the chosen three to a place in the corner of the mound while the rest of the crowd squared up cheerfully. A Feegle liked to face enormous odds all by himself, because it meant you didn’t have to look where you were hitting.

“She’s more’n a hundret miles awa’,” said Rob as the big fight started. “We canna run it—’tis too far. Any of youse scunners got any ideas?”

“Hamish can get there on his buzzard,” said Big Yan, stepping aside as a cluster of punching, kicking Feegles rolled past.

“Aye, and he’ll come wi’ us, but he canna tak’ more’n one passenger,” shouted Rob over the din.

“Can we swim it?” said Daft Wullie, ducking as a stunned Feegle hurtled over his head.

The others looked at him. “Swim it? How can we swim there fra’ here, yer daftie?” said Rob Anybody.

“It’s just worth consid’ring, that’s all,” said Wullie, looking hurt. “I wuz just tryin’ to make a contribution, ye ken? Just wanted to show willin’.”

“The big wee hag left in a cart,” said Big Yan.

“Aye, so what?” said Rob.

“Weel, mebbe we could?”

“Ach, no!” said Rob. “Showin’ oursels tae hags is one thing, but not to other folks! You remember what happened a few years back when Daft Wullie got spotted by that lady who wuz painting the pretty pichoors doon in the valley? I dinna want to have them Folklore Society bigjobs pokin’ aroound again!”

“I have an idea, Mister Rob. It’s me, Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle. We could disguise oursels.”

Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle always announced himself in full. He seemed to feel that if he didn’t tell people who he was, they’d forget about him and he’d disappear. When you’re half the size of most grown pictsies, you’re really short; much shorter and you’d be a hole in the ground.

He was the new gonnagle. A gonnagle is the clan’s bard and battle poet, but they don’t spend all their lives in the same clan. In fact, they’re a sort of clan all by themselves. Gonnagles move around among the other clans, making sure the songs and stories get spread around all the Feegles. Awf’ly Wee Billy had come with Jeannie from the Long Lake clan, which often happens. He was very young for a gonnagle, but as Jeannie had said, there was no age limit to gonnagling. If the talent was in you, you gonnagled. And Awf’ly Wee Billy knew all the songs and could play the mousepipes so sadly that outside it would start to rain.

“Aye, lad?” said Rob Anybody, kindly. “Speak up, then.”

“Can we get hold o’ some human clothes?” said Awf’ly Wee Billy. “Because there’s an old story about the big feud between the Three Peaks clan and the Windy River clan and the Windy River boys escaped by making a tattie-bogle walk, and the men o’ Three Peaks thought it was a bigjob and kept oot o’ its way.”

The others looked puzzled, and Awf’ly Wee Billy remembered that they were men of the Chalk and had probably never seen a tattie-bogle.

“A scarecrow?” he said. “It’s like a bigjob made o’ sticks, wi’ clothes on, for to frighten away the birdies fra’ the crops? Now, the song says the Windy River’s kelda used magic to make it walk, but I reckon it was done by cunnin’ and strength.”

He sang about it. They listened.

He explained how to make a human that would walk. They looked at one another. It was a mad, desperate plan, which was very dangerous and risky and would require tremendous strength and bravery to make it work.

Put like that, they agreed to it instantly.

Tiffany found that there was more than chores and the research, though. There was what Miss Level called “filling what’s empty and emptying what’s full.”

Usually only one of Miss Level’s bodies went out at a time. People thought Miss Level was twins, and she made sure they continued to do so, but she found it a little bit safer all around to keep the bodies apart. Tiffany could see why. You only had to watch both of Miss Level when she was eating. The bodies would pass plates to one another without saying a word, sometimes they’d eat off one another’s forks, and it was rather strange to see one person burp and the other one say “Oops, pardon me.”

“Filling what’s empty and emptying what’s full” meant wandering around the local villages and the isolated farms and, mostly, doing medicine. There were always bandages to change or expectant mothers to talk to. Witches did a lot of midwifery, which is a kind of “emptying what’s full,” but Miss Level wearing her pointy hat had only to turn up at a cottage for other people to suddenly come visiting, by sheer accident. And there was an awful lot of gossip and tea drinking. Miss Level moved in a twitching, living world of gossip, although Tiffany noticed that she picked up a lot more than she passed on.

It seemed to be a world made up entirely of women, but occasionally, out in the lanes, a man would strike up a conversation about the weather and somehow, by some sort of code, an ointment or a potion would get handed over.

Tiffany couldn’t quite work out how Miss Level got paid. Certainly the basket she carried filled up more than it emptied. They’d walk past a cottage and a woman would come scurrying out with a fresh-baked loaf or a jar of pickles, even though Miss Level hadn’t stopped there. But they’d spend an hour somewhere else, stitching up the leg of a farmer who’d been careless with an axe, and get a cup of tea and a stale biscuit. It didn’t seem fair.

“Oh, it evens out,” said Miss Level, as they walked on through the woods. “You do what you can. People give what they can, when they can. Old Slapwick there, with the leg, he’s as mean as a cat, but there’ll be a big cut of beef on my doorstep before the week’s end, you can bet on it. His wife will see to it. And pretty soon people will be killing their pigs for the winter, and I’ll get more lard, ham, bacon, and sausages turning up than a family could eat in a year.”

“You will? What do you do with all that food?”

“Store it,” said Miss Level.

“But you—”

“I store it in other people. It’s amazing what you can store in other people.” Miss Level laughed at Tiffany’s expression. “I mean, I take what I don’t need around to those who don’t have a pig, or who’re going through a bad patch, or who don’t have anyone to remember them.”

“But that means they’ll owe you a favor!”

“Right! And so it just keeps on going around. It all works out.”

“I bet some people are too mean to pay—”

“Not pay,” said Miss Level, severely. “A witch never expects payment and never asks for it and just hopes she never needs to. But sadly, you are right.”

“And then what happens?”

“What do you mean?”

“You stop helping them, do you?”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. “You can’t not help people just because they’re stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone’s poor around here. If I don’t help them, who will?”

“Granny Aching . . . that is, my grandmother said someone has to speak up for them as has no voices,” Tiffany volunteered after a moment.

“Was she a witch?”

“I’m not sure,” said Tiffany. “I think so, but she didn’t know she was. She mostly lived by herself in an old shepherding hut up on the downs.”

“She wasn’t a cackler, was she?” said Miss Level, and when she saw Tiffany’s expression she said hurriedly, “Sorry, sorry. But it can happen, when you’re a witch who doesn’t know it. You’re like a ship with no rudder. But obviously she wasn’t like that, I can tell.”

“She lived on the hills and talked to them, and she knew more about sheep than anybody!” said Tiffany hotly.

“I’m sure she did, I’m sure she did—”

“She never cackled!”

“Good, good,” said Miss Level soothingly. “Was she clever at medicine?”

Tiffany hesitated. “Um . . . only with sheep,” she said, calming down. “But she was very good. Especially if it involved turpentine. Mostly if it involved turpentine, actually. But always she . . . was . . . just . . . there. Even when she wasn’t actually there. . . .”

“Yes,” said Miss Level.

“You know what I mean?” said Tiffany.

“Oh, yes,” said Miss Level. “Your Granny Aching lived down on the uplands—”

“No, up on the downland,” Tiffany corrected her.

“Sorry, up on the downland, with the sheep, but people would look up sometimes, look up at the hills, knowing she was there somewhere, and say to themselves, ‘What would Granny Aching do?’ or ‘What would Granny Aching say if she found out?’ or ‘Is this the sort of thing Granny Aching would be angry about?’” said Miss Level. “Yes?”

Tiffany narrowed her eyes. It was true. She remembered when Granny Aching had hit a peddler who’d overloaded his donkey and was beating it. Granny usually used only words, and not many of them. The man had been so frightened by her sudden rage that he’d stood there and taken it.

It had frightened Tiffany, too. Granny, who seldom said anything without thinking about it for ten minutes beforehand, had struck the wretched man twice across the face in a brief blur of movement. And then news had got around, all along the Chalk. For a while, at least, people were a little more gentle with their animals. For months after that moment with the peddler, carters and drovers and farmers all across the downs would hesitate before raising a whip or a stick, and think: Suppose Granny Aching is watching?

But—

“How did you know that?” Tiffany asked.

“Oh, I guessed. She sounds like a witch to me, whatever she thought she was. A good one, too.”

Tiffany inflated with inherited pride.

“Did she help people?” Miss Level added.

The pride deflated a bit. The instant answer “yes” jumped onto her tongue, and yet . . . Granny Aching hardly ever came down off the hills, except for Hogswatch and the early lambing. You seldom saw her in the village unless the peddler who sold Jolly Sailor tobacco was late on his rounds, in which case she’d be down in a hurry and a flurry of greasy black skirts to cadge a pipeful off one of the old men.

But there wasn’t a person on the Chalk, from the Baron down, who didn’t owe something to Granny. And what they owed to her, she made them pay to others. She always knew who was short of a favor or two.

“She made them help one another,” she said. “She made them help themselves.”

In the silence that followed, Tiffany heard the birds singing by the road. You got a lot of birds here, but she missed the high scream of the buzzards.

Miss Level sighed. “Not many of us are that good,” she said. “If I was that good, we wouldn’t be going to visit old Mr. Weavall again.”

Tiffany said “Oh dear” inside.

Most days included a visit to Mr. Weavall. Tiffany dreaded them.

Mr. Weavall’s skin was paper-thin and yellowish. He was always in the same old armchair, in a tiny room in a small cottage that smelled of old potatoes and was surrounded by a more or less overgrown garden. He’d be sitting bolt upright, his hands on two walking sticks, wearing a suit that was shiny with age, staring at the door.

“I make sure he has something hot every day, although he eats like a bird,” Miss Level had said. “And old Widow Tussy down the lane does his laundry, such as it is. He’s ninety-one, you know.”

Mr. Weavall had very bright eyes and chatted away to and at them as they tidied up the room. The first time Tiffany had met him, he’d called her Mary. Sometimes he still did so. And he’d grabbed her wrist with surprising force as she walked past. . . . It had been a real shock, that claw of a hand suddenly gripping her. You could see blue veins under the skin.

“I shan’t be a burden on anyone,” he’d said urgently. “I got money put by for when I go. My boy, Toby, won’t have nothin’ to worry about. I can pay my way! I want the proper funeral show, right? With the black horses and the plumes and the mutes and a knife-and-fork tea for everyone afterward, I’ve written it all down, fair and square. Check in my box to make sure, will you? That witch woman’s always hanging around here!”

Tiffany had given Miss Level a despairing look. She’d nodded and pointed to an old wooden box tucked under Mr. Weavall’s chair.

It had turned out to be full of coins, mostly copper, but there were quite a few silver ones. It looked like a fortune, and for a moment Tiffany’d wished she had as much money.

“There’s a lot of coins in here, Mr. Weavall,” she’d said.

Mr. Weavall relaxed. “Ah, that’s right,” he’d said. “Then I won’t be a burden.”

Today Mr. Weavall was asleep when they called on him, snoring with his mouth open and his yellow-brown teeth showing. But he awoke in an instant, stared at them, and then said, “My boy Toby’s coming to see I Sat’day.”

“That’s nice, Mr. Weavall,” said Miss Level, plumping up his cushions. “We’ll get the place nice and tidy.”

“He’s done very well for hisself, you know,” said Mr. Weavall proudly. “Got a job indoors with no heavy lifting. He said he’ll see I all right in my old age, but I told him, I told him I’d pay my way when I go, the whole thing, the salt and earth and tuppence for the ferryman, too!”

Today Miss Level gave him a shave. His hands shook too much for him to do it himself. (Yesterday she’d cut his toenails, because he couldn’t reach them; it was not a safe spectator sport, especially when one smashed a windowpane.)

“It’s all in a box under my chair,” he said as Tiffany nervously wiped the last bits of foam off him. “Just check for me, will you, Mary?”

Oh, yes. That was the ceremony, every day.

There was the box, and there was the money. He asked every time. There was always the same amount of money.

“Tuppence for the ferryman?” said Tiffany, as they walked home.

“Mr. Weavall remembers all the old funeral traditions,” said Miss Level. “Some people believe that when you die, you cross the River of Death and have to pay the ferryman. People don’t seem to worry about that these days. Perhaps there’s a bridge now.”

“He’s always talking about . . . his funeral.”

“Well, it’s important to him. Sometimes old people are like that. They’d hate people to think that they were too poor to pay for their own funeral. Mr. Weavall’d die of shame if he couldn’t pay for his own funeral.”

“It’s very sad, him being all alone like that. Something should be done for him,” said Tiffany.

“Yes. We’re doing it,” said Miss Level. “And Mrs. Tussy keeps a friendly eye on him.”

“Yes, but it shouldn’t have to be us, should it?”

“Who should it have to be?” said Miss Level.

“Well, what about this son he’s always talking about?” said Tiffany.

“Young Toby? He’s been dead for fifteen years. And Mary was the old man’s daughter, she died quite young. Mr. Weavall is very shortsighted, but he sees better in the past.”

Tiffany didn’t know what to reply except: “It shouldn’t be like this.”

“There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do.”

“Well, couldn’t you help him by magic?”

“I see to it that he’s in no pain, yes,” said Miss Level.

“But that’s just herbs.”

“It’s still magic. Knowing things is magical, if other people don’t know them.”

“Yes, but you know what I mean,” said Tiffany, who felt she was losing this argument.

“Oh, you mean make him young again?” said Miss Level. “Fill his house with gold? That’s not what witches do.”

“We see to it that lonely old men get a cooked dinner and cut their toenails?” said Tiffany, just a little sarcastically.

“Well, yes,” said Miss Level. “We do what can be done. Mistress Weatherwax said you’ve got to learn that witchcraft is mostly about doing quite ordinary things.”

“And you have to do what she says?” said Tiffany.

“I listen to her advice,” said Miss Level coldly.

“Mistress Weatherwax is the head witch, then, is she?”

“Oh no!” said Miss Level, looking shocked. “Witches are all equal. We don’t have things like head witches. That’s quite against the spirit of witchcraft.”

“Oh, I see,” said Tiffany.

“Besides,” Miss Level added, “Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing.”

Suddenly, things were going missing from the households around the Chalk. This wasn’t the occasional egg or chicken. Clothes were vanishing off washing lines. A pair of boots mysteriously disappeared from under the bed of Nosey Hinds, the oldest man in the village—“And they was damn good boots, they could walk home from the pub all by themselves if I but pointed they in the right direction,” he complained to anyone who would listen. “And they marched off wi’ my old hat, too. And I’d got he just as I wanted he, all soft and floppy!”

A pair of trousers and a long coat vanished from a hook belonging to Abiding Swindell, the ferret keeper, and the coat still had ferrets living in the inside pockets. And who, who climbed through the bedroom window of Clem Doins and shaved off his beard, which had been so long that he could tuck it into his belt? Not a hair was left. He had to go around with a scarf over his face, in case the sight of his poor pink chin frightened the ladies.

It was probably witches, people agreed, and made a few more curse nets to hang in their windows.

However . . .

On the far side of the Chalk, where the long green slopes came down to the flat fields of the plain, there were big thickets of bramble and hawthorn. Usually, these were alive with birdsong, but this particular one, the one just here, was alive with cussing.

“Ach, crivens! Will ye no’ mind where ye’re puttin’ yer foot, ye spavie!”

“I canna help it! It’s nae easy, bein’ a knee!”

“Ye think ye got troubles? Ye wanna be doon here in the boots! That old man Swindell couldnae ha’ washed his feet in years! It’s fair reekin’ doon here!”

“Reekin’, izzit? Well, you try bein’ in this pocket! Them ferrets ne’er got oot to gae to the lavie, if you get my meanin’!”

“Crivens! Will ye dafties no’ shut up?”

“Oh, aye? Hark at him! Just ’cuz ye’re up in the heid, you think you know everythin’? Fra’ doon here ye’re nothing but deid weight, pal!”

“Aye, right! I’m wi’ the elbows on this one! Where’d you be if it wuzn’t for us carryin’ ye aroound? Who’s ye think ye are?”

“I’m Rob Anybody Feegle, as you ken well enough, an’ I’ve had enough o’ the lot o’ yez!”

“Okay, Rob, but it’s real stuffy in here!”

“Ach, an’ I’m fed up wi’ the stomach complainin’, too!”

“Gentlemen.” This was the voice of the toad; no one else would dream of calling the Nac Mac Feegle gentlemen. “Gentlemen, time is of the essence. The cart will be here soon! You must not miss it!”

“We need more time to practice, Toad! We’re walkin’ like a feller wi’ nae bones and a serious case o’ the trots!” said a voice a little higher up than the rest.

“At least you are walking. That’s good enough. I wish you luck, gentlemen.”

There was a cry from farther along the thickets, where a lookout had been watching the road.

“The cart’s comin’ doon the hill!”

“Okay, lads!” shouted Rob Anybody. “Toad, you look after Jeannie, y’hear? She’ll need a thinkin’ laddie to rely on while I’m no’ here! Right, ye scunners! It’s do or die! Ye ken what to do! Ye lads on the ropes, pull us up noo!” The bushes shook. “Right! Pelvis, are ye ready?”

“Aye, Rob!”

“Knees? Knees? I said, knees?”

“Aye, Rob, but—”

“Feets?”

“Aye, Rob!”

The bushes shook again.

“Right! Remember: right, left, right, left! Pelvis, knee, foot on the groound! Keep a spring in the step, feets! Are you ready? All together, boys . . . walk!”

It was a big surprise for Mr. Crabber, the carter. He’d been staring vaguely at nothing, thinking only of going home, when something stepped out of the bushes and into the road. It looked human or, rather, it looked slightly more human than it looked like anything else. But it seemed to be having trouble with its knees, and walked as though they’d been tied together.

However, the carter didn’t spend too much time thinking about that because, clutched in one gloved hand that was waving vaguely in the air, was something gold.

This immediately identified the stranger, as far as the carter was concerned. He was not, as first sight might suggest, some old tramp to be left by the roadside, but an obvious gentleman down on his luck, and it was practically the carter’s duty to help him. He slowed the horse to a standstill.

The stranger didn’t really have a face. There was nothing much to see between the droopy hat brim and the turned-up collar of the coat except a lot of beard. But from somewhere within the beard a voice said:

“. . . Shudupshudup . . . will ye all shudup while I’m talkin’. . . . Ahem. Good day ta’ ye, carter fellow my ol’ fellowy fellow! If ye’ll gie us—me a lift as far as yer are goin’, we—I’ll gie ye this fine shiny golden coin!”

The figure lurched forward and thrust its hand in front of Mr. Crabber’s face.

It was quite a large coin. And it was certainly gold. It had come from the treasure of the old dead king who was buried in the main part of the Feegles’ mound. Oddly enough, the Feegles weren’t hugely interested in gold once they’d stolen it, because you couldn’t drink it and it was difficult to eat. In the mound, they mostly used the old coins and plates to reflect candlelight and give the place a nice glow. It was no hardship to give some away.

The carter stared at it. It was more money than he had ever seen in his life.

“If . . . sir . . . would like to . . . hop on the back of the cart, sir,” he said, carefully taking it.

“Ach, right you are, then,” said the bearded mystery man after a pause. “Just a moment, this needs a wee bitty organizin’ . . . Okay, youse hands, you just grab the side o’ the cart, and you leftie leg, ye gotta kinda sidle along . . . ach, crivens! Ye gotta bend! Bend! C’mon, get it right!” The hairy face turned to the carter. “Sorry aboot this,” it said. “I talk to my knees, but they dinna listen to me.”

“Is that right?” said the carter weakly. “I have trouble with my knees in the wet weather. Goose grease works.”

“Ah, weel, these knees is gonna get more’n a greasin’ if I ha’ to get doon there an’ sort them oot!” snarled the hairy man.

The carter heard various bangs and grunts behind him as the man hauled himself onto the tail of the cart.

“Okay, let’s gae,” said a voice. “We havena got all day. And youse knees, you’re sacked! Crivens, I’m walkin’ like I got a big touch of the stoppies! You gae up to the stomach and send doon a couple of good knee men!”

The carter bit the coin thoughtfully as he urged the horse into a walk. It was such pure gold that he left toothmarks. That meant his passenger was very, very rich. That was becoming very important at this point.

“Can ye no’ go a wee bitty faster, my good man, my good man?” said the voice behind him, after they had gone a little way.

“Ah, well, sir,” said the carter, “see them boxes and crates? I’ve got a load of eggs, and those apples mustn’t be bruised, sir, and then there’s those jugs of—”

There were some bangs and crashes behind him, including the sploosh that a large crate of eggs makes when it hits a road.

“Ye can gae faster noo, eh?” said the voice.

“Hey, that was my—” Mr. Crabber began.

“I’ve got another one o’ they big wee gold coins for ye!” And a heavy and smelly arm landed on the carter’s shoulder. Dangling from the glove on the end of it was, indeed, another coin. It was ten times what the load had been worth.

“Oh, well . . .” said the carter, carefully taking the coin. “Accidents do happen, eh, sir?”

“Aye, especially if I dinna think I’m goin’ fast enough,” said the voice behind him. “We—I mean I’m a big hurry tae get tae yon mountains, ye ken!”

“But I’m not a stagecoach, sir,” said the carter reproachfully as he urged his old horse into a trot.

“Stagecoach, eh? What’s one o’ them things?”

“That’s what you’ll need to catch to take you up into the mountains, sir. You can catch one in Twoshirts, sir. I never go any farther than Twoshirts, sir. But you won’t be able to get the stage today, sir.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got to make stops at the other villages, sir, and it’s a long way, and on Wednesdays it runs early, sir, and this cart can only go so fast, sir, and—”

“If we—I dinna catch yon coach today I’ll gie’ ye the hidin’ o’ yer life,” growled the passenger. “But if I do catch yon coach today, I’ll gie ye five o’ them gold coins.”

Mr. Crabber took a deep breath, and yelled:

“Hi! Hyah! Giddyup, Henry!”

All in all, it seemed to Tiffany, most of what witches did really was very similar to work. Dull work. Miss Level didn’t even use her broomstick very much.

That was a bit depressing. It was all a bit . . . well, goody-goody. Obviously that was better than being baddy-baddy, but a little more . . . excitement would be nice. Tiffany wouldn’t like anyone to think she’d expected to be issued with a magic wand on Day One but, well, the way Miss Level talked about magic, the whole point of witchcraft lay in not using any.

Mind you, Tiffany thought she would be depressingly good at not using any. It was doing the simplest magic that was hard.

Miss Level patiently showed her how to make a shamble, which could more or less be made of anything that seemed a good idea at the time provided it also contained something alive, like a beetle or a fresh egg.

Tiffany couldn’t get the hang of it. That was . . . annoying. Didn’t she have the virtual hat? Didn’t she have First Sight and Second Thoughts? Miss Tick and Miss Level could throw a shamble together in seconds, but Tiffany just got a tangle, dripping with egg. Over and over again.

“I know I’m doing it right, but it just twists up!” Tiffany complained. “What can I do?”

“We could make an omelette?” said Miss Level cheerfully.

“Oh, please, Miss Level!” Tiffany wailed.

Miss Level patted her on the back. “It’ll happen. Perhaps you’re trying too hard. One day it’ll come. The power does come, you know. You just have to put yourself in its path.”

“Couldn’t you make one that I could use for a while, to get the hang of it?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Miss Level. “A shamble is a very tricky thing. You can’t even carry one around, except as an ornament. You have to make it for yourself, there and then, right where and when you want to use it.”

“Why?” said Tiffany.

“To catch the moment,” said the other part of Miss Level, coming in. “The way you tie the knots, the way the string runs—”

“—the freshness of the egg, perhaps, and the moisture in the air—” said the first Miss Level.

“—the tension of the twigs and the kinds of things that you just happen to have in your pocket at that moment—”

“—even the way the wind is blowing,” the first Miss Level concluded. “All these things make a kind of . . . of picture of the here and now when you move them right. And I can’t tell you how to move them, because I don’t know.”

“But you do move them,” said Tiffany, getting lost. “I saw you—”

“I do it but I don’t know how I do,” said Miss Level, picking up a couple of twigs and taking a length of thread. Miss Level sat down at the table opposite Miss Level, and all four hands started to put a shamble together.

“This reminds me of when I was in the circus,” she said. “I was—”

“—walking out for a while with Marco and Falco, the Flying Pastrami Brothers,” the other part of Miss Level went on. “They would do—”

“—triple somersaults fifty feet up with no safety net. What lads they were! As alike as two—”

“—peas, and Marco could catch Falco blindfolded. Why, for a moment I wondered if they were just like me—”

She stopped, went a bit red on both faces, and coughed. “Anyway,” she went on, “one day I asked them how they managed to stay on the high wire, and Falco said, ‘Never ask the tightrope walker how he keeps his balance. If he stops to think about it, he falls off.’ Although actually—”

“—he said it like this, ‘Nev-ah aska tightaropa walkera . . .’ because the lads pretended they were from Brindisi, you see, because that sounds foreign and impressive and they thought no one would want to watch acrobats called the Flying Sidney and Frank Cartwright. Good advice, though, wherever it came from.”

The hands worked. This was not a lone Miss Level, a bit flustered, but the full Miss Level, all twenty fingers working together.

“Of course,” she said, “it can be helpful to have the right sort of things in your pocket. I always carry a few sequins—”

“—for the happy memories they bring back,” said Miss Level from the other side of the table, blushing again.

She held up the shamble. There were sequins, and a fresh egg in a little bag made of thread, and a chicken bone and many other things hanging or spinning in the threads.

Each part of Miss Level put both its hands into the threads and pulled. . . .

The threads took up a pattern. Did the sequins jump from one thread to another? It looked like it. Did the chicken bone pass through the egg? So it seemed.

Miss Level peered into it.

She said: “Something’s coming. . . .”

The stagecoach left Twoshirts half full and was well out over the plains when one of the passengers sitting on the rooftop tapped the driver on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, did you know there’s something trying to catch up to us?” he said.

“Bless you, sir,” said the driver, because he hoped for a good tip at the end of the run, “there’s nothing that can catch up to us.”

Then he heard the screaming in the distance, getting louder.

“Er, I think he means to,” said the passenger as the carter’s wagon caught up to them.

“Stop! Stop, for pity’s sake, stop!” yelled the carter as he sailed past.

But there was no stopping Henry. He’d spent years pulling the carrier’s cart around the villages, very slowly, and he’d always had this idea in his big horse head that he was cut out for faster things. He’d plodded along, being overtaken by coaches and carts and three-legged dogs, and now he was having the time of his life.

Besides, the cart was a lot lighter than usual, and the road was slightly downhill here. All he was really having to do was gallop fast enough to stay in front. And finally he’d nearly overtaken the stagecoach. Him, Henry!

He only stopped because the stagecoach driver stopped first. Besides, the blood was pumping through Henry now, and there were a couple of mares in the team of horses pulling the coach who he felt he’d really like to get to know—find out when was their day off, what kind of hay they liked, that kind of thing.

The carter, white in the face, got down carefully and then lay on the ground and held on tight to the dirt.

His one passenger, who looked to the coach driver like some sort of scarecrow, climbed unsteadily down from the back and lurched toward the coach.

“I’m sorry, we’re full up,” the driver lied. They weren’t full, but there was certainly no room for a thing that looked like that.

“Ach, and there wuz me willin’ to pay wi’ gold,” said the creature. “Gold such as this here,” it added, waving a ragged glove in the air.

Suddenly there was plenty of space for an eccentric millionaire. Within a few seconds he was seated inside, and to the annoyance of Henry, the coach set off again.

Outside Miss Level’s cottage a broomstick was heading through the trees. A young witch—or at least, someone dressed as a witch; it never paid to jump to conclusions—was sitting on it sidesaddle.

She wasn’t flying it very well. It jerked sometimes, and it was clear the girl was no good at making it turn corners, because sometimes she stopped, jumped off, and pointed the stick in a new direction by hand. When she reached the garden gate, she got off again quickly and tethered the stick to it with string.

“Nicely done, Petulia!” said Miss Level, clapping with all four hands. “You’re getting quite good!”

“Um, thank you, Miss Level,” said the girl, bowing. She stayed bowed, and said, “Um, oh dear . . .”

Half of Miss Level stepped forward.

“Oh, I can see the problem,” she said, peering down. “Your amulet with the little owls on it is tangled up with your necklace of silver bats, and they’ve both got caught around a button. Just hold still, will you?”

“Um, I’ve come to see if your new girl would like come to the sabbat tonight,” said the bent Petulia, her voice a bit muffled.

Tiffany couldn’t help noticing that Petulia had jewelry everywhere; later she found that it was hard to be around Petulia for any length of time without having to unhook a bangle from a necklace or, once, an earring from an ankle bracelet (nobody ever found out how that one happened). Petulia couldn’t resist occult jewelry. Most of the stuff was to magically protect her from things, but she hadn’t found anything to protect her from looking a bit silly.

She was short and plump and permanently red-faced and slightly worried.

“Sabbat? Oh, one of your meetings,” said Miss Level. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it, Tiffany?”

“Yes?” said Tiffany, not quite sure yet.

“Some of the girls meet up in the woods in the evenings,” said Miss Level. “For some reason the craft is getting popular again. That’s very welcome, of course.”

She said it as if she wasn’t quite sure. Then she added: “Petulia here works for Old Mother Blackcap, over in Sidling Without. Specializes in animals. Very good woman with pig diseases. I mean, with pigs that’ve got diseases, I don’t mean she has pig diseases. It’ll be nice for you to have friends here. Why don’t you go? There, everything’s unhooked.”

Petulia stood up and gave Tiffany a worried smile.

“Um, Petulia Gristle,” she said, holding out a hand.

“Tiffany Aching,” said Tiffany, shaking it gingerly in case the sound of all the bangles and bracelets jangling together deafened everyone.

“Um, you can ride with me on the broomstick, if you like,” said Petulia.

“I’d rather not,” said Tiffany. Petulia looked relieved but said: “Um, do you want to get dressed?”

Tiffany looked down at her green dress. “I am.”

“Um, don’t you have any gems or beads or amulets or anything?”

“No, sorry,” said Tiffany.

“Um, you must at least have a shamble, surely?”

“Um, can’t get the hang of them,” said Tiffany. She hadn’t meant the “um,” but around Petulia it was catching.

“Um . . . a black dress, perhaps?”

“I don’t really like black. I prefer blue or green,” said Tiffany. “Um . . .”

“Um. Oh well, you’re just starting,” said Petulia generously. “I’ve been crafty for three years.”

Tiffany looked desperately at the nearest half of Miss Level.

“In the craft,” said Miss Level helpfully. “Witchcraft.”

“Oh.” Tiffany knew she was being very unfriendly, and Petulia with her pink face was clearly a nice person, but she felt awkward in front of her and she couldn’t work out why. It was stupid, she knew. She could do with a friend. Miss Level was nice enough, and she managed to get along with Oswald, but it would be good to have someone around her own age to talk to.

“Well, I’d love to come,” she said. “I know I’ve got a lot to learn.”

The passengers inside the stagecoach had paid good money to be inside on the soft seats and out of the wind and the dust, and therefore it was odd that so many got out at the next stop and went and sat on the roof.

The few who didn’t want to ride up there or couldn’t manage the climb sat huddled together on the seat opposite, watching the new traveler like a group of rabbits watching a fox and trying not to breathe.

The problem wasn’t that he smelled of ferrets. Well, that was a problem, but compared to the big problem it wasn’t much of one. He talked to himself. That is, bits of him talked to other bits of him. All the time.

“Ah, it’s fair boggin’ doon here. Ah’m tellin ye! Ah’m sure it’s my turn to be up inna heid!”

“Hah, at leas’ youse people are all cushy in the stomach—it’s us in the legs that has tae do all the work!”

At which the right hand said: “Legs? Youse dinna know the meanin’ of the word ‘work’! Ye ought tae try being stuck in a glove! Ach, blow this for a game o’ sojers! Ah’m gonna stretch ma legs!”

In horrified silence the other passengers watched one of the man’s gloved hands drop off and walk around on the seat.

“Aye, weel, it’s nae picnic doon here inna troosers, neither. A’m gonna let some fresh air in right noo!”

“Daft Wullie, don’t you dare do that—”

The passengers, squeezing even closer together, watched the trousers with terrible fascination. There was some movement, some swearing under the breath in a place where nothing should be breathing, and then a couple of buttons popped and a very small red-headed blue man stuck his head out, blinking in the light.

He froze when he saw the people.

He stared.

They stared.

Then his face widened into a mad smile.

“Youse folks all right?” he said, desperately. “That’s greaaat! Dinna worry aboout me—I’m one o’ they opper-tickle aloosyon’s, ye ken?”

He disappeared back into the trousers, and they heard him whisper: “I’m thinkin’ I fooled ’em easily, no problemo!”

A few minutes later the coach stopped to change horses. When it set off again, it was minus the inside passengers. They got off, and asked for their luggage to be taken off, too. No thank you, they did not want to continue their ride. They’d catch the coach tomorrow, thank you. No, there was no problem in waiting here in this delightful little, er, town of Dangerous Corner. Thank you. Good-bye.

The coach set off again, somewhat lighter and faster. It didn’t stop that night. It should have done so, and the rooftop passengers were still eating their dinner in the last inn when they heard it set off without them. The reason probably had something to do with the big heap of coins now in the driver’s pocket.

CHAPTER 5

The Circle

Tiffany walked through the woods while Petulia flew unsteadily alongside in a series of straight lines. Tiffany learned that Petulia was nice, had three brothers, wanted to be a midwife for humans as well as pigs when she grew up, and was afraid of pins. She also learned that Petulia hated to disagree about anything.

So parts of the conversation went like this:

Tiffany said, “I live down on the Chalk.”

And Petulia said, “Oh, where they keep all those sheep? I don’t like sheep much—they’re so kind of . . . baggy.”

Tiffany said, “Actually, we’re very proud of our sheep.”

And then you could stand back as Petulia reversed her opinions like someone trying to turn a cart around in a very narrow space: “Oh, I didn’t really mean I hate them. I expect some sheep are all right. We’ve got to have sheep, obviously. They’re better than goats, and woolier. I mean I actually like sheep, really. Sheep are nice.”

Petulia spent a lot of time trying to find out what other people thought so that she could think the same way. It would be impossible to have an argument with her. Tiffany had to stop herself from saying “the sky is green” just to see how long it would take for Petulia to agree. But she liked her. You couldn’t not like her. She was restful company. Besides, you couldn’t help liking someone who couldn’t make a broomstick turn corners.

It was a long walk through the woods. Tiffany had always wanted to see a forest so big that you couldn’t see daylight through the other side, but now that she’d lived in one for a couple of weeks, it got on her nerves. It was quite open woodland here, at least around the villages, and not hard to walk through. She’d had to learn what maples and birches were, and she’d never before seen the spruces and firs that grew higher up the slopes. But she wasn’t happy in the company of trees. She missed the horizons. She missed the sky. Everything was too close.

Petulia chattered nervously. Old Mother Blackcap was a pig borer, cow shouter, and all-around veterinary witch. Petulia liked animals, especially pigs, because they had wobbly noses. Tiffany quite liked animals too, but no one except other animals liked animals as much as Petulia.

“So . . . what’s this meeting about?” she said, to change the subject.

“Um? Oh, it’s just to keep in touch,” said Petulia. “Annagramma says it’s important to make contacts.”

“Annagramma’s the leader, then, is she?” said Tiffany.

“Um, no. Witches don’t have leaders, Annagramma says.”

“Hmm,” said Tiffany.

They arrived at last at a clearing in the woods, just as the sun was setting. There were the remains of an old cottage there, now covered mostly in brambles. You might miss it completely if you didn’t spot the rampant growth of lilac and the gooseberry bushes, now a forest of thorns. Someone had lived here once, and had had a garden.

Someone else, now, had lit a fire. Badly. And they had found that lying down flat to blow on a fire because you hadn’t started it with enough paper and dry twigs was not a good idea, because it would then cause your pointy hat, which you had forgotten to take off, to fall into the smoking mess and then, because it was dry, catch fire.

A young witch was now flailing desperately at her burning hat, watched by several interested spectators.

Another one, sitting on a log, said: “Dimity Hubbub, that is literally the most stupid thing anyone has ever done anywhere in the whole world, ever.” It was a sharp, not very nice voice, the sort most people used for being sarcastic with.

“Sorry, Annagramma!” said Miss Hubbub, pulling off the hat and stamping on the point.

“I mean, just look at you, will you? You really are letting everyone down.”

“Sorry, Annagramma!”

“Um,” said Petulia.

Everyone turned to look at the new arrivals.

“You’re late, Petulia Gristle!” snapped Annagramma. “And who’s this?”

“Um, you did ask me to stop in at Miss Level’s to bring the new girl, Annagramma,” said Petulia, as if she’d been caught doing something wrong.

Annagramma stood up. She was at least a head taller than Tiffany and had a face that seemed to be built backward from her nose, which she held slightly in the air. To be looked at by Annagramma was to know that you’d already taken up too much of her valuable time.

“Is this her?”

“Um, yes, Annagramma.”

“Let’s have a look at you, new girl.”

Tiffany stepped forward. It was amazing. She hadn’t really meant to. But Annagramma had the kind of voice that you obeyed.

“What is your name?”

“Tiffany Aching?” said Tiffany, and found herself saying her name as if she was asking permission to have it.

“Tiffany? That’s a funny name,” said the tall girl. “My name is Annagramma Hawkin.”

“Um, Annagramma works for—” Petulia began.

“—works with,” said Annagramma sharply, still looking Tiffany up and down.

“Um, sorry, works with Mrs. Earwig,” said Petulia. “But she—”

“I intend to leave next year,” said Annagramma. “Apparently, I’m doing extremely well. So you’re the girl who’s joined Miss Level, are you? She’s weird, you know. The last three girls all left very quickly. They said it was just too strange trying to keep track of which one of her was which.”

“Which witch was which,” said one of the girls cheerfully.

“Anyone can do that pun, Lucy Warbeck,” said Annagramma, without looking around. “It’s not funny, and it’s not clever.”

She turned her attention back to Tiffany, who felt that she was being examined as critically and thoroughly as Granny Aching would check a ewe she might be thinking of buying. She wondered if Annagramma would actually try to open her mouth and make sure she had all her teeth.

“They say you can’t breed good witches on chalk,” said Annagramma.

All the other girls looked from Annagramma to Tiffany, who thought: Hah, so witches don’t have leaders, do they? But she was in no mood to make enemies.

“Perhaps they do,” she said quietly. This did not seem to be what Annagramma wanted to hear.

“You haven’t even dressed the part,” said Annagramma.

“Sorry,” said Tiffany.

“Um, Annagramma says that if you want people to treat you like a witch, you should look like one,” Petulia said.

“Hmm,” said Annagramma, staring at Tiffany as if she’d failed a simple test. Then she nodded her head. “Well, we all had to start somewhere.” She stood back. “Ladies, this is Tiffany. Tiffany, you know Petulia. She crashes into trees. Dimity Hubbub is the one with the smoke coming out of her hat, so that she looks like a chimney. That’s Gertruder Tiring, that’s the hilariously funny Lucy Warbeck, that’s Harrieta Bilk, who can’t seem to do anything about the squint, and then that’s Lulu Darling, who can’t seem to do anything about the name. You can sit in for this evening . . . Tiffany, wasn’t it? I’m sorry you’ve been taken on by Miss Level. She’s rather sad. Complete amateur. Hasn’t really got a clue. Just bustles about and hopes. Oh, well, it’s too late now. Gertruder, Summon the World’s Four Corners and Open the Circle, please.”

“Er . . .” said Gertruder nervously. It was amazing how many people around Annagramma became nervous.

“Do I have to do everything around here?” said Annagramma. “Try to remember, please! We must have been through this literally a million times!”

“I’ve never heard of the World’s Four Corners,” said Tiffany.

“Really? There’s a surprise,” said Annagramma. “Well, they’re the directions of power, Tiffany, and I would advise you to do something about that name, too, please.”

“But the world’s round, like a plate,” said Tiffany.

“Um, you have to imagine them,” Petulia whispered.

Tiffany wrinkled her forehead.

“Why?” she said.

Annagramma rolled her eyes. “Because that’s the way to do things properly.”

“Oh.”

“You have done some kind of magic, haven’t you?” Annagramma demanded.

Tiffany was a bit confused. She wasn’t used to people like Annagramma.

“Yes,” she said. All the other girls were staring at her, and Tiffany couldn’t help thinking about sheep. When a dog attacks a sheep, the other sheep run away to a safe distance and then turn and watch. They don’t gang up on the dog. They’re just happy it’s not them.

“What are you best at, then?” snapped Annagramma.

Tiffany, her mind still full of sheep, spoke without thinking. “Soft Nellies,” she said. “It’s a sheep cheese. It’s quite hard to make. . . .”

She looked around at the circle of blank faces and felt embarrassment rise inside her like hot jelly.

“Um, Annagramma meant what magic can you do best,” said Petulia kindly.

“Although Soft Nellies is good,” said Annagramma with a cruel little smile. One or two of the girls gave that little snort that meant they were trying not to laugh out loud but didn’t mind showing that they were trying.

Tiffany looked down at her boots again.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, “but I did throw the Queen of the Fairies out of my country.”

“Really?” said Annagramma. “The Queen of the Fairies, eh? How did you do that?”

“I’m . . . not sure. I just got angry with her.” And it was hard to remember exactly what had happened that night. Tiffany recalled the anger, the terrible anger, and the world . . . changing. She’d seen it clearer than a hawk sees, heard it better than a dog hears, felt its age beneath her feet, felt the hills still living. And she remembered thinking that no one could do this for long and still be human.

“Well, you’ve got the right boots for stamping your foot,” said Annagramma. There were a few more half-concealed giggles. “A Queen of the Fairies,” she added. “I’m sure you did. Well, it helps to dream.”

“I don’t tell lies,” mumbled Tiffany, but no one was listening.

Sullen and upset, she watched the girls Open the Corners and Summon the Circle, unless she’d got that the wrong way around. This went on for some time. It would have gone better if they’d all been sure what to do, but it was probably hard to know what to do when Annagramma was around, since she kept correcting everyone. She was standing with a big book open in her arms.

“. . . now you, Gertruder, go widdershins, no, that’s the other way, I must have told you literally a thousand times, and Lulu—where’s Lulu? Well, you shouldn’t have been there! Get the shriven chalice, not that one, no, the one without handles . . . yes. Harrieta, hold the Wand of the Air a bit higher, I mean, it must be in the air, d’you understand? And for goodness’ sake, Petulia, please try to look a little more stately, will you? I appreciate that it doesn’t come naturally to you, but you might at least show you’re making an effort. By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you, no invocation ever written starts with ‘um,’ unless I’m very much mistaken. Harrieta, is that the Cauldron of the Sea? Does it even look like a Cauldron of the Sea? I don’t think so, do you? What was that noise?”

The girls looked down. Then someone mumbled: “Dimity trod on the Circlet of Infinity, Annagramma.”

“Not the one with the genuine seed pearls on it?” said Annagramma in a tight little voice.

“Um, yes,” said Petulia. “But I’m sure she’s very sorry. Um . . . shall I make a cup of tea?”

The book slammed shut.

“What is the point?” said Annagramma to the world in general. “What. Is. The. Point? Do you want to spend the rest of your lives as village witches, curing boils and warts for a cup of tea and a biscuit? Well? Do you?”

There was a shuffling among the huddled witches, and a general murmur of “No, Annagramma.”

“You did all read Mrs. Earwig’s book, didn’t you?” she demanded. “Well, did you?”

Petulia raised a hand nervously. “Um—” she began.

“Petulia, I’ve told you literally a million times not to start. Every. Single. Sentence. With ‘Um’—haven’t I?”

“Um—” said Petulia, trembling with nervousness.

“Just speak up, for goodness’ sake! Don’t hesitate all the time!”

“Um—”

“Petulia!”

“Um—”

“Really, you might make an effort. Honestly, I don’t know what’s the matter with all of you!”

I do, Tiffany thought. You’re like a dog worrying sheep all the time. You don’t give them time to obey you, and you don’t let them know when they’ve done things right. You just keep barking.

Petulia had lapsed into tongue-tied silence.

Annagramma put the book down on the log. “Well, we’ve completely lost the moment,” she said. “We may as well have that cup of tea, Petulia. Do hurry up.”

Petulia, relieved, grabbed the kettle. People relaxed a little.

Tiffany looked at the cover of the book. It read:

The Higher MagiK
by Letice Earwig, Witch

“Magic with a K?” she said aloud. “Magikkkk?”

“That’s deliberate,” said Annagramma coldly. “Mrs. Earwig says that if we are to make any progress at all we must distinguish the higher MagiK from the everyday sort.”

“The everyday sort of magic?” said Tiffany.

“Exactly. None of that mumbling in hedgerows for us. Proper sacred circles, spells written down. A proper hierarchy, not everyone running around doing whatever they feel like. Real wands, not bits of grubby stick. Professionalism, with respect. Absolutely no warts. That’s the only way forward.”

“Well, I think—” Tiffany began.

“I don’t really care what you think, because you don’t know enough yet,” said Annagramma sharply. She turned to the group in general. “Do we all at least have something for the Trials this year?” she asked. There were general murmurs and nods on the theme of “yes.”

“What about you, Petulia?” said Annagramma.

“I’m going to do the pig trick, Annagramma,” said Petulia meekly.

“Good. You’re nearly good at that,” said Annagramma, and pointed around the circle, from one girl to another, nodding at their answers, until she came to Tiffany.

“Soft Nellies?” she said, to sniggering amusement.

“What are Witch Trials?” said Tiffany. “Miss Level mentioned them, but I don’t know what they are.”

Annagramma gave one of her noisy sighs.

“You tell her, Petulia,” she said. “You brought her, after all.”

Hesitantly, with lots of “um”s and glances at Annagramma, Petulia explained about the Witch Trials. Um, it was a time when witches from all over the mountains could meet up and um see old friends and um pick up the latest news and gossip. Ordinary people could come along too, and there was a fair and um sideshows.

It was quite an um big event. And in the afternoon all the witches that um wanted to could show off a spell or um something they’d been working on, which was very um popular.

To Tiffany they sounded like sheepdog trials, without the dogs or the sheep. They were in Sheercliff this year, which was quite close.

“And is there a prize?” she asked.

“Um, oh no,” said Petulia. “It’s all done in the spirit of fun and good fellow—um, good sistership.”

“Hah!” said Annagramma. “Not even she will believe that! It’s all a fix, anyway. They’ll all applaud Mistress Weatherwax. She always wins, whatever she does. She just messes up people’s minds. She just fools them into thinking she’s good. She wouldn’t last five minutes against a wizard. They do real magic. And she dresses like a scarecrow, too! It’s ignorant old women like her who keep witchcraft rooted in the past, as Mrs. Earwig points out in Chapter One!”

One or two girls looked uncertain. Petulia even looked over her shoulder.

“Um, people do say she’s done amazing things, Annagramma,” she said. “And, um, they say she can spy on people miles away—”

“Yes, they say that,” said Annagramma. “That’s because they’re all frightened of her! She’s such a bully! That’s all she does, bully people and mess up their heads! That’s old witchcraft, that is. Just one step away from cackling, in my opinion. She’s half cracked now, they say.”

“She didn’t seem cracked to me.”

“Who said that?” snapped Annagramma.

Everyone looked at Tiffany, who wished she hadn’t spoken. But now there was nothing for it but to go on.

“She was just a bit old and stern,” she said. “But she was quite . . . polite. She didn’t cackle.”

“You’ve met her?”

“Yes.”

“She spoke to you, did she?” snarled Annagramma. “Was that before or after you kicked out the Fairy Queen?”

“Just after,” said Tiffany, who was not used to this sort of thing. “She turned up on a broomstick,” she added. “I am telling the truth.”

“Of course you are,” said Annagramma, smiling grimly. “And she congratulated you, I expect.”

“Not really,” said Tiffany. “She seemed pleased, but it was hard to tell.”

And then Tiffany said something really, really stupid. Long afterward, and long after all sorts of things had happened, she’d go “la la la!” to blot out the memory whenever something reminded her of that evening.

She said: “She did give me this hat.”

And they said, all of them, with one voice: “What hat?”

Petulia took her back to the cottage. She did her best, and assured Tiffany that she believed her, but Tiffany knew she was just being nice. Miss Level tried to talk to her as she ran upstairs, but she bolted her door, kicked off her boots, and lay down on the bed with the pillow over her head to drown out the laughter echoing inside.

Downstairs there was some muffled conversation between Petulia and Miss Level and then the sound of the door closing as Petulia left.

After a while there was a scraping noise as Tiffany’s boots were dragged across the floor and arranged neatly under the bed. Oswald was never off duty.

After another while the laughter died down, although she was sure it’d never go completely.

Tiffany could feel the hat. At least, she had been able to feel it. The virtual hat, on her real head. But no one could see it, and Petulia had even waved a hand back and forth over Tiffany’s head and encountered a complete absence of hat.

The worst part—and it was hard to find the worst part, so humiliatingly bad had it been—was hearing Annagramma say, “No, don’t laugh at her. That’s too cruel. She’s just foolish, that’s all. I told you the old woman messes with people’s heads!”

Tiffany’s First Thoughts were running around in circles. Her Second Thoughts were caught up in the storm. Only her Third Thoughts, which were very weak, came up with: Even though your world is completely and utterly ruined and can never be made better, no matter what, and you’re completely inconsolable, it would be nice if you heard someone bringing some soup upstairs. . . .

The Third Thoughts got Tiffany off the bed and over to the door, where they guided her hand to slide the bolt back. Then they let her fling herself on the bed again.

A few minutes later there was a creak of footsteps on the landing. It’s nice to be right.

Miss Level knocked, then came in after a decent pause. Tiffany heard the tray go down on the table, then felt the bed move as a body sat down on it.

“Petulia is a capable girl, I’ve always thought,” said Miss Level after a while. “She’ll make some village a very serviceable witch one day.”

Tiffany stayed silent.

“She told me all about it,” said Miss Level. “Miss Tick never mentioned the hat, but if I was you, I wouldn’t have told her about it anyway. It sounds the sort of thing Mistress Weatherwax would do. You know, sometimes it helps to talk about these things.”

More silence from Tiffany.

“Actually, that’s not true,” Miss Level added. “But as a witch I am incredibly inquisitive and would love to know more.”

That had no effect either. Miss Level sighed and stood up. “I’ll leave the soup, but if you let it get too cold, Oswald will try to take it away.”

She went downstairs.

Nothing stirred in the room for about five minutes. Then there was faintest of tinkles as the soup began to move.

Tiffany’s hand shot out and gripped the tray firmly. That’s the job of Third Thoughts: First and Second Thoughts might understand your current tragedy, but something has to remember that you haven’t eaten since lunchtime.

Afterward, and after Oswald had speedily taken the empty bowl away, Tiffany lay in the dark, staring at nothing.

The novelty of this new country had taken all her attention in the past few days, but now that had drained away in the storm of laughter, and homesickness rushed to fill in the empty spaces.

She missed the sounds and the sheep and the silences of the Chalk. She missed seeing the blackness of the hills from her bedroom window, outlined against the stars. She missed . . . part of herself. . . .

But they’d laughed at her. They’d said “What hat?” and they’d laughed even more when she’d raised her hand to touch the invisible brim and hadn’t found it. . . .

She’d touched it every day for eighteen months, and now it had gone. And she couldn’t make a shamble. And she just had a green dress, while all the other girls wore black ones. Annagramma had a lot of jewelry, too, in black and silver. All the other girls had shambles, too, beautiful ones. Who cared if they were just for show?

Perhaps she wasn’t a witch at all. Oh, she’d defeated the Queen, with the help of the little men and the memory of Granny Aching, but she hadn’t used magic. She wasn’t sure, now, what she had used. She’d felt something go down through the soles of her boots, down through the hills and through the years, and come back loud and roaring in a rage that shook the sky:

. . . How dare you invade my world, my land, my life . . .

But what had the virtual hat done for her? Perhaps the old woman had tricked her, had just made her think there was a hat there. Perhaps she was a bit cracked, like Annagramma had said, and had just got things wrong. Perhaps Tiffany should go home and make Soft Nellies for the rest of her life.

Tiffany turned around and crawled down the bed and opened her suitcase. She pulled out the rough box, opened it in the dark, and closed a hand around the lucky stone.

She’d hoped that there’d be some kind of spark, some kind of friendliness in it. There was none. There was just the roughness of the outside of the stone, the smoothness on the face where it had split, and the sharpness between the two. And the piece of sheep’s wool did nothing but make her fingers smell of sheep, and this made her long for home and feel even more upset. The silver Horse was cold.

Only someone quite close would have heard the sob. It was quite faint, but it was carried on the dark red wings of misery. She wanted, longed for, the hiss of wind in the turf and the feel of centuries under her feet. She wanted that sense, which had never left her before, of being where Achings had lived for thousands of years. She needed blue butterflies and the sounds of sheep and the big empty skies.

Back home, when she’d felt upset, she’d gone up to the remains of the old shepherding hut and sat there for a while. That had always worked.

It was a long way away now. Too far. Now she was full of a horrible, heavy, dead feeling, and there was nowhere to leave it. And it wasn’t how things were supposed to go.

Where was the magic? Oh, she understood that you had to learn about the basic, everyday craft, but when did the “witch” part turn up? She’d been trying to learn, she really had, and she was turning into . . . well, a good worker, a handy girl with potions and a reliable person. Dependable, like Miss Level.

She’d expected—well, what? Well . . . to be doing serious witch stuff, you know, broomsticks, magic, guarding the world against evil forces in a noble yet modest way, and then also doing good for poor people because she was a really nice person. And the people she’d seen in the picture had had rather less messy ailments and their children didn’t have such runny noses. Mr. Weavall’s flying toenails weren’t in it anywhere. Some of them boomeranged.

She got sick on broomsticks. Every time. She couldn’t even make a shamble. She was going to spend her days running around after people who, to be honest, could sometimes be doing a bit more for themselves. No magic, no flying, no secrets . . . just toenails and bogeys.

She belonged to the Chalk. Every day she’d told the hills what they were. Every day they’d told her who she was. But now she couldn’t hear them.

Outside, it began to rain, quite hard, and in the distance Tiffany heard the mutter of thunder.

What would Granny Aching have done? But even folded in the wings of despair she knew the answer to that.

Granny Aching never gave up. She’d search all night for a lost lamb. . . .

She lay looking at nothing for a while, and then lit the candle by the bed and swiveled her legs onto the floor. This couldn’t wait until morning.

Tiffany had a little trick for seeing the hat. If you moved your hand behind it quickly, there was a slight, brief blurriness to what you saw, as though the light coming through the invisible hat took a little more time.

It had to be there.

Well, the candle should give enough light to be sure. If the hat was there, everything would be fine, and it wouldn’t matter what other people thought.

She stood in the middle of the carpet, while lightning danced across the mountains outside, and closed her eyes.

Down in the garden the apple-tree branches flayed in the wind, the dream catchers and curse nets clashing and jangling. . . .

“See me,” she said.

The world went quiet, totally silent. It hadn’t done that before. But Tiffany tiptoed around until she knew she was opposite herself, and opened her eyes again . . .

And there she was, and so was the hat, as clear as it had ever been.

And the image of Tiffany below, a young girl in a green dress, opened its eyes and smiled at her and said:

“We see you. Now we are you.”

Tiffany tried to shout, “See me not!” But there was no mouth to shout. . . .

Lightning struck somewhere nearby. The window blew in. The candle flame flew out in a streamer of fire and died.

And then there was only darkness, and the hiss of the rain.

CHAPTER 6

The Hiver

Thunder rolled across the Chalk.

Jeannie carefully opened the package that her mother had given her on the day she’d left the Long Lake mound. It was a traditional gift, one that every young kelda got when she went away, never to return. Keldas could never go home. Keldas were home.

The gift was this: memory.

Inside the bag were a triangle of tanned sheepskin, three wooden stakes, a length of string twisted out of nettle fibers, a tiny leather bottle, and a hammer.

She knew what to do, because she’d see her mother do it many times. The hammer was used to bang in the stakes around the smoldering fire. The string was used to tie the three corners of the leather triangle to the stakes so that it sagged in the center, just enough to hold a small bucketful of water, which Jeannie had drawn herself from the deep well.

She knelt down and waited until the water very slowly began to seep though the leather, then built up the fire.

She was aware of all the eyes of the Feegles in the shadowy galleries around and above her. None of them would come near her while she was boiling the cauldron. They’d rather chop their own legs off. This was pure hiddlins.

And this was what a cauldron really was, back in the days before humans had worked copper or poured iron. It looked like magic. It was supposed to. But if you knew the trick, you could see how the cauldron would boil dry before the leather burned.

When the water in the skin was steaming, she damped down the fire and added to the water the contents of the little leather bottle, which contained some of the water from her mother’s cauldron. That’s how it had always gone, from mother to daughter, since the very beginning.

Jeannie waited until the cauldron had cooled some more, then took up a cup, filled it, and drank. There was a sigh from the shadowy Feegles.

She lay back and closed her eyes, waiting. Nothing happened except that the thunder rattled the land and the lightning turned the world black and white.

And then, so gently that it had already happened before she realized that it was starting to happen, the past caught up with her. There, around her, were all the old keldas, starting with her mother, her grandmothers, their mothers . . . back until there was no one to remember . . . one big memory, carried for a while by many, worn and hazy in parts but old as a mountain.

But all the Feegles knew about that. Only the kelda knew about the real hiddlin, which was this: The river of memory wasn’t a river, it was a sea.

Keldas yet to be born would remember, one day. On nights yet to come, they’d lie by their cauldron and become, for a few minutes, part of the eternal sea. By listening to unborn keldas remembering their past, you remember your future. . . .

You needed skill to find those faint voices, and Jeannie did not have all of it yet, but something was there.

As lightning turned the world to black and white again, she sat bolt upright.

“It’s found her,” she whispered. “Oh, the puir wee thing!”

Rain had soaked into the rug when Tiffany woke up. Damp daylight spilled into the room.

She got up and closed the window. A few leaves had blown in.

O-kay.

It hadn’t been a dream. She was certain of that. Something . . . strange had happened. The tips of her fingers were tingling. She felt . . . different. But not, now that she took stock, in a bad way. No. Last night she’d felt awful, but now, now she felt . . . full of life.

Actually, she felt happy. She was going to take charge. She was going to take control of her life. Get-up-and-go had got up and come.

The green dress was rumpled, and really it needed a wash. She had her old blue one in the chest of drawers, but somehow it didn’t seem right to wear it now. She’d have to make do with the green until she could get another one.

She went to put on her boots, then stopped and stared at them.

They just wouldn’t do, not now. She got the new shiny ones out of her case and wore them instead.

She found both of Miss Level was out in the wet garden in her nightie, sadly picking up bits of dream catcher and fallen apples. Even some of the garden ornaments had been smashed, although the madly grinning gnomes had unfortunately escaped destruction.

Miss Level brushed her hair out of one pair of her eyes and said: “Very, very strange. All the curse nets seem to have exploded. Even the boredom stones are discharged! Did you notice anything?”

“No, Miss Level,” said Tiffany meekly.

“And all the old shambles in the workroom are in pieces! I mean, I know they are really only ornamental and have next to no power left, but something really strange must have happened.”

Both of her gave Tiffany a look that Miss Level probably thought was very sly and cunning, but it made her look slightly ill.

“The storm seemed a touch magical to me. I suppose you girls weren’t doing anything . . . odd last night, were you, dear?” she said.

“No, Miss Level. I thought they were a bit silly.”

“Because, you see, Oswald seems to have gone,” said Miss Level. “He’s very sensitive to atmospheres. . . .”

It took Tiffany a moment to understand what she was talking about. Then she said: “But he’s always here!”

“Yes, ever since I can remember!” said Miss Level.

“Have you tried putting a spoon in the knife section?”

“Yes, of course! Not so much as a rattle!”

“Dropped an apple core? He always—”

“That was the first thing I tried!”

“How about the salt and sugar trick?”

Miss Level hesitated. “Well, no . . .” She brightened up. “He does love that one, so he’s bound to turn up, yes?”

Tiffany found the big bag of salt and another of sugar, and poured both of them into a bowl. Then she stirred up the fine white crystals with her hand.

She’d found this was the ideal away of keeping Oswald occupied while they did the cooking. Sorting the salt and sugar grains back into the right bags could take him an entire happy afternoon. But now the mixture just lay there, Oswaldless.

“Oh, well . . . I’ll search the house,” said Miss Level, as if that was a good way of finding an invisible person. “Go and see to the goats, will you, dear? And then we’ll have to try to remember how to do the dishes!”

Tiffany let the goats out of the shed. Usually Black Meg immediately went and stood on the milking platform and gave her an expectant look as if to say, I’ve thought up a new trick.

But not today. When Tiffany looked inside the shed, the goats were huddled in the dark at the far end. They panicked, nostrils flaring, and scampered around as she went toward them, but she managed to grab Black Meg by her collar. The goat twisted and fought her as she dragged her out toward the milking stand. Meg climbed up because it was either that or have her head pulled off, then stood there snorting and bleating.

Tiffany stared at the goat. Her bones felt as though they were itching. She wanted to . . . do things, climb the highest mountain, leap into the sky, run around the world. And she thought: This is silly. I start every day with a battle of wits with an animal!

Well, let’s show this creature who is in charge.

She picked up the broom that was used for sweeping out the milking parlor. Black Meg’s slot eyes widened in fear, and wham! went the broom.

It hit the milking stand. Tiffany hadn’t intended to miss like that. She’d wanted to give Meg the wallop the creature richly deserved, but somehow, the stick had twisted in her hand. She raised it again, but the look in her eye and the whack on the wood had achieved the right effect. Meg cowered.

“No more games!” hissed Tiffany, lowering the stick.

The goat stood as still as a log. Tiffany milked her out, took the pail back into the dairy, weighed it, chalked up the amount on the slate by the door, and tipped the milk into a big bowl.

The rest of the goats were nearly as bad, but a herd learns fast.

All together they gave three gallons, which was pretty pitiful for ten goats. Tiffany chalked this up without enthusiasm and stood staring at it, fiddling with the chalk. What was the point of this? Yesterday she’d been full of plans for experimental cheeses, but now cheese was dull.

Why was she here, doing silly chores, helping people too stupid to help themselves? She could be doing . . . anything!

She looked down at the scrubbed wooden table.

HElp Me

Someone had written on the wood in chalk. And the piece of chalk was still in her hand—

“Petulia’s come to see you, dear,” said Miss Level, behind her.

Tiffany quickly shifted a milking bucket over the words and turned around guiltily.

“What?” she said. “Why?”

“Just to see if you’re all right, I think,” said Miss Level, watching Tiffany carefully.

The dumpy girl stood very nervously on the doorstep, her pointy hat in her hands.

“Um, I just thought I ought to see how you, um, are . . .” she muttered, looking Tiffany squarely in the boots. “Um, I don’t think anyone really wanted to be unkind. . . .”

“You’re not very clever and you’re too fat,” said Tiffany. She stared at the round pink face for a moment and knew things. “And you still have a teddy bear help me and you believe in fairies.”

She slammed the door, went back to the dairy, and stared at the bowls of milk and curds as if she was seeing them for the first time.

Good with Cheese. That was one of the things everyone remembered about her: Tiffany Aching, brown hair, Good with Cheese. But now the dairy looked all wrong and unfamiliar.

She gritted her teeth. Good with Cheese. Was that really what she wanted to be? Of all the things people could be in the world, did she want to be known just as a dependable person to have around rotted milk? Did she really want to spend all day scrubbing slabs and washing pails and plates and . . . and . . . and that weird wire thing just there, that—

. . . cheese cutter . . .

—that cheese cutter? Did she want her whole life to—

Hold on . . .

“Who’s there?” said Tiffany. “Did someone just say ‘cheese cutter’?”

She peered around the room, as if someone could be hiding behind the bundles of dried herbs. It couldn’t have been Oswald. He’d gone, and he never spoke in any case.

Tiffany grabbed the pail, spat on her hand, and rubbed out the chalked Help Me.

—tried to rub it out. But her hand gripped the edge of the table and held it firmly, no matter how much she pulled. She flailed with her left hand, managing to knock over a pail of milk, which washed across the letters . . . and her right hand let go suddenly.

The door was pushed open. Both of Miss Level was there. When she pulled herself together like that, standing side by side, it was because she felt she had something important to say.

“I have to say, Tiffany, that I think—”

“—you were very nasty to Petulia just—”

“—now. She went off crying.”

She stared at Tiffany’s face. “Are you all right, child?”

Tiffany shuddered.

“Er . . . yes. Fine. Feel a bit odd. Heard a voice in my head. Gone now.”

Miss Level looked at her with her heads on one side, right and left in different directions.

“If you’re sure, then. I’ll get changed. We’d better leave soon. There’s a lot to do today.”

“A lot to do,” said Tiffany weakly.

“Well, yes. There’s Slapwick’s leg, and I’ve got to see to the Grimly baby, and it’s been a week since I’ve visited Surleigh Bottom, and, let’s see, Mr. Plover’s got gnats again, and I’d better just find a moment to have a word with Mistress Slopes . . . then there’s Mr. Weavall’s lunch to cook. I think I’ll have to do that here and run down with it for him, and of course Mrs. Fanlight is near her time, and”—she sighed—“so is Miss Hobblow, again. . . . It’s going to be a full day. It’s really hard to fit it all in, really it is.”

Tiffany thought: You stupid woman, standing there looking worried because you just haven’t got time to give people everything they demand! Do you think you could ever give them enough help? Greedy, lazy, dumb people, always wanting all the time! The Grimly baby? Mrs. Grimly’s got eleven children! Who’d miss one?

Mr. Weavall’s dead already! He just won’t go! You think they’re grateful, but all they’re doing is making sure you come around again! That’s not gratitude, that’s just insurance!

The thought horrified part of her, but it had turned up and it flamed there in her head, just itching to escape from her mouth.

“Things need tidying up here,” she muttered.

“Oh, I can do that while we’re gone,” said Miss Level cheerfully. “Come on, let’s have a smile! There’s lots to do!”

There was always lots to do, Tiffany growled in her head as she trailed after Miss Level to the first village. Lots and lots. And it never made any difference. There was no end to the wanting.

They went from one grubby, smelly cottage to another, ministering to people too stupid to use soap, drinking tea from cracked cups, gossiping with old women with fewer teeth than toes. It made her feel ill.

It was a bright day, but it seemed to darken as they walked on. The feeling was like a thunderstorm inside her head.

Then the daydreams began. She was helping to splint the broken arm of some dull child when she glanced up and saw her reflection in the glass of the cottage window.

She was a tiger, with huge fangs.

She yelped and stood up.

“Oh, do be careful,” said Miss Level, and then saw her face. “Is there something wrong?” she asked.

“I . . . I . . . something bit me!” lied Tiffany. That was a safe bet in these places. The fleas bit the rats and the rats bit the children.

She managed to get out into the daylight, her head spinning. Miss Level came out a few minutes later and found her leaning against the wall, shaking.

“You look dreadful,” she said.

“Ferns!” said Tiffany. “Everywhere! Big ferns! And big things, like cows made out of lizards!” She turned a wide, mirthless smile onto Miss Level, who took a step back. “You can eat them!” She blinked. “What’s happening?” she whispered.

“I don’t know, but I’m coming right down here this minute to fetch you,” said Miss Level. “I’m on the broomstick right now!”

“They laughed at me when I said I could trap one. Well, who’s laughing now, tell me that, eh?”

Miss Level’s expression of concern turned into something close to panic.

“That didn’t sound like your voice. That sounded like a man! Do you feel all right?”

“Feel . . . crowded,” murmured Tiffany.

“Crowded?” said Miss Level.

“Strange . . . memories . . . help me . . .”

Tiffany looked at her arm. It had scales on it. Now it had hair on it. Now it was smooth and brown, and holding—

“A scorpion sandwich?” she said.

“Can you hear me?” asked Miss Level, her voice a long way away. “You’re delirious. Are you sure you girls haven’t been playing with potions or anything like that?”

The broomstick dropped out of the sky and the other part of Miss Level nearly fell off. Without speaking, both of Miss Level got Tiffany onto the stick and part of Miss Level got on behind her.

It didn’t take long to fly back to the cottage. Tiffany spent the flight with her mind full of hot cotton wool and wasn’t at all certain where she was, although her body did know and threw up again.

Miss Level helped her off the stick and sat her on the garden seat just outside the cottage door.

“Now just you wait there,” said Miss Level, who dealt with emergencies by talking incessantly and using the word “just” too often because it’s a calming word, “and I’ll just get you a drink and then we’ll just see what the matter is. . . .” There was a pause, and then the stream of words came out of the house again, dragging Miss Level after them. “. . . And I’ll just check on . . . things. Just drink this, please!”

Tiffany drank the water and, out of the corner of her eye, saw Miss Level weaving string around an egg. She was trying to make a shamble without Tiffany noticing.

Strange images were floating around Tiffany’s mind. There were scraps of voices, fragments of memories . . . and one little voice that was her own, small and defiant and getting fainter:

You’re not me. You just think you are! Someone help me!

“Now, then,” said Miss Level, “let’s just see what we can see—”

The shamble exploded, not just into pieces but into fire and smoke.

“Oh, Tiffany,” said Miss Level, frantically waving smoke away. “Are you all right?”

Tiffany stood up slowly. It seemed to Miss Level that she was slightly taller than she remembered.

“Yes, I think I am,” said Tiffany. “I think I’ve been all wrong, but now I’m all right. And I’ve been wasting my time, Miss Level.”

“What—” Miss Level began.

Tiffany pointed a finger at her.

“I know why you had to leave the circus, Miss Level,” she said. “It had to do with the clown Floppo, the trick ladder, and . . . some custard. . . .”

Miss Level went pale. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Just by looking at you!” said Tiffany, pushing past her into the dairy. “Watch this, Miss Level!”

She pointed a finger. A wooden spoon rose an inch from the table. Then it began to spin, faster and faster, until with a cracking sound it broke into splinters. They whirled away across the room.

“And I can do this!” Tiffany shouted. She grabbed a bowl of curds, tipped them out onto the table, and waved a hand at them. They turned into a cheese.

“Now that’s what cheese making should be!” she said. “To think that I spent stupid years learning the hard way! That’s how a real witch does it! Why do we crawl in the dirt, Miss Level? Why do we amble around with herbs and bandage smelly old men’s legs? Why do we get paid with eggs and stale cakes? Annagramma is as stupid as a hen, but even she can see it’s wrong. Why don’t we use magic? Why are you so afraid?”

Miss Level tried to smile.

“Tiffany, dear, we all go through this,” she said, and her voice was shaking. “Though not as . . . explosively as you, I have to say. And the answer is . . . well, it’s dangerous.”

“Yes, but that’s what people always say to scare children,” said Tiffany. “We get told stories to frighten us, to keep us scared! Don’t go into the big bad woods help me because it’s full of scary things, that’s what we’re told. But really, the big bad woods should be scared of us! I’m going out!”

“I think that would be a good idea,” said Miss Level weakly. “Until you behave.”

“I don’t have to do things your way,” snarled Tiffany, slamming the door behind her.

Miss Level’s broomstick was leaning against the wall a little way away. Tiffany stopped and stared at it, her mind on fire.

She’d tried to keep away from it. Miss Level had wheedled her into a trial flight with Tiffany clinging on tightly with arms and legs while both of Miss Level ran alongside her, holding on to ropes and making encouraging noises. They had stopped when Tiffany threw up for the fourth time.

Well, that was then!

She grabbed the stick, swung a leg over it—and found that her other foot stuck to the ground as though nailed there. The broomstick swung around wildly as she tried to pull it up, and, when the boot was finally tugged off the ground, the stick turned over so that Tiffany was upside down. This is not the best position in which to make a grand exit.

She said, quietly, “I am not going to learn you, you are going to learn me. Or the next lesson will involve an axe!”

The broomstick turned upright, then gently rose.

“Right,” said Tiffany. There was no fear this time. There was just impatience. The ground dropping away below her didn’t worry her at all. If it didn’t have the sense to stay away from her, she’d hit it. . . .

As the stick drifted away, there was whispering in the long grass of the garden.

“Ach, we’re too late, Rob. That wuz the hiver, that wuz.”

“Aye, but did ye see that foot? It’s nae won yet—oour hag’s in there somewhere! She’s fighting it! It canna win until it’s taken the last scrap o’ her! Wullie, will ye stop tryin’ to grab them apples!”

“It’s sorry I am tae say this, Rob, but no one can fight a hiver. ’Tis like fightin’ yoursel. The more you fight, the more it’ll tak’ o’ ye. And when it has all o’ ye—”

“Wash oot yer mouth wi’ hedgehog pee, Big Yan! That isna gonna happen—”

“Crivens! Here comes the big hag!”

Half of Miss Level stepped out into the ruined garden.

She stared up at the departing broomstick, shaking her head.

Daft Wullie was stuck out in the open, where he’d been trying to snag a fallen apple. He turned to flee and would have got clean away if he hadn’t run straight into a pottery garden gnome. He bounced off, stunned, and staggered wildly, trying to focus on the big, fat, chubby-cheeked figure in front of him. He was far too angry to hear the click of the garden gate and the soft tread of approaching footsteps.

When it comes to choosing between running and fighting, a Feegle doesn’t think twice. He doesn’t think at all.

“What’re ye grinnin’ at, pal?” he demanded. “Oh aye, you reckon you’re the big man, eh, jus’ ’cos yez got a fishin’ rod?” He grabbed a pink pointy ear in each hand and aimed his head at what turned out be quite a hard pottery nose. It smashed anyway, as things tend to in these circumstances, but it did slow the little man down and cause him to stagger in circles.

Too late, he saw Miss Level bearing down on him from the doorway. He turned to flee, right into the hands of also Miss Level.

Her fingers closed around him.

“I’m a witch, you know,” she said. “And if you don’t stop struggling this minute, I will subject you to the most dreadful torture. Do you know what that is?”

Daft Wullie shook his head in terror. Long years of juggling had given Miss Level a grip like steel. Down in the long grass the rest of the Feegles listened so hard it hurt.

Miss Level brought him a little closer to her mouth.

“I’ll let you go right now without giving you a taste of the twenty-year-old MacAbre single malt I have in my cupboard,” she said.

Rob Anybody leaped up.

“Ach, crivens, mistress, what a thing to taunt a body wi’! D’ye no’ have a drop of mercy in you?” he shouted. “Ye’re a cruel hag indeed tae—” He stopped. Miss Level was smiling. Rob Anybody looked around, flung his sword on the ground and said: “Ach, crivens!”

The Nac Mac Feegle respected witches, even if they did call them hags. And this one had brought out a big loaf and a whole bottle of whisky on the table for the taking. You had to respect someone like that.

“Of course, I’d heard of you, and Miss Tick mentioned you,” she said, watching them eat, which is not something to be done lightly. “But I always thought you were just a myth.”

“Aye, weel, we’ll stay that way if ye dinna mind,” said Rob Anybody, and belched. “’Tis bad enough wi’ them arky-olly-gee men wantin’ to dig up oour mounds wi’oot them folklore ladies wantin’ to tak’ pichoors o’ us an’ that.”

“And you watch over Tiffany’s farm, Mr. Anybody?”

“Aye, we do that, an’ we dinna ask for any reward,” said Rob Anybody stoutly.

“Aye, we just tak’ a few wee eiggs an’ fruits an’ old clothes and—” Daft Wullie began.

Rob gave him a look.

“Er . . . wuz that one o’ those times when I shouldna open my big fat mouth?” said Wullie.

“Aye. It wuz,” said Rob. He turned back to both of Miss Level. “Mebbe we tak’ the odd bitty thing lyin’ aboot—”

“—in locked cupboards an’ such—” added Daft Wullie happily.

“—but it’s no’ missed, an’ we keeps an eye on the ships in payment,” said Rob, glaring at his brother.

“You can see the sea from down there?” said Miss Level, entering that state of general bewilderment that most people fell into when talking to the Feegles.

“Rob Anybody means the sheep,” said Awf’ly Wee Billy. Gonnagles know a bit more about language.

“Aye, I said so, ships,” said Rob Anybody. “Anywa’ . . . aye, we watch her farm. She’s the hag o’ oor hills, like her granny.” He added proudly, “It’s through her the hills knows they are alive.”

“And a hiver is . . . ?”

Rob hesitated. “Dunno the proper haggin’ way o’ talking aboot it,” he said. “Awf’ly Wee Billy, you know them lang words.”

Billy swallowed. “There’s old poems, mistress. It’s like a, a mind wi’oot a body, except it disna think. Some say it’s nothing but a fear, and never dies. And what it does . . .” His tiny face wrinkled. “It’s like them things you get on sheep,” he decided.

The Feegles who weren’t eating and drinking came to his aid.

“Horns?”

“Wools?”

“Tails?”

“Legs?”

“Chairs?” This was Daft Wullie.

“Sheep ticks,” said Billy thoughtfully.

“A parasite, you mean?” said Miss Level.

“Aye, that could be the word,” said Billy. “It creeps in, ye ken. It looks for folks wi’ power and strength. Kings, ye ken, magicians, leaders. They say that way back in time, afore there wuz people, it lived in beasts. The strongest beasts, ye ken, the ones wi’ big, big teeths. An’ when it finds ye, it waits for a chance tae creep intae your head and it becomes ye.”

The Feegles fell silent, watching Miss Level.

“Becomes you?” she said.

“Aye. Wi’ your memories an’ all. Only . . . it changes ye. It gives ye a lot o’ power, but it takes ye over, makes ye its own. An’ the last wee bit of ye that still is ye . . . well, that’ll fight and fight, mebbe, but it will dwindle and dwindle until it’s a’ gone an’ ye’re just a memory. . . .”

The Feegles watched both of Miss Level. You never knew what a hag would do at a time like this.

“Wizards used to summon demons,” she said. “They may still do so, although I think that’s considered so fifteen-centuries-ago these days. But that takes a lot of magic. And you could talk to demons, I believe. And there were rules.”

“Never heard o’ a hiver talkin’,” said Billy. “Or obeyin’ rules.”

“But why would it want Tiffany?” said Miss Level. “She’s not powerful!”

“She has the power o’ the land in her,” said Rob Anybody stoutly. “’Tis a power that comes at need, not for doin’ wee conjurin’ tricks. We seen it, mistress!”

“But Tiffany doesn’t do any magic,” said Miss Level helplessly. “She’s very bright, but she can’t even make a shamble. You must be wrong about that.”

“Any o’ youse lads seen the hag do any hagglin’ lately?” Rob Anybody demanded. There were a lot of shaken heads, and a shower of beads, beetles, feathers, and miscellaneous head items.

“Do you spy—I mean, do you watch over her all the time?” said Miss Level, slightly horrified.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob, airily. “No’ in the privy, o’ course. An’ it’s getting harder in her bedroom ’cuz she’s blocked up a lot o’ the cracks, for some reason.”

“I can’t imagine why,” said Miss Level carefully.

“No’ us, neither,” said Rob. “We reckon it was ’cuz o’ the drafts.”

“Yes, I expect that’s why it was,” said Miss Level.

“So mostly we get in through a mousehole and hides out in her old dolly house until she guz tae sleep,” said Rob. “Dinna look at me like that, mistress—all the lads is perrrfect gentlemen an’ keeps their eyes tight shut when she’s gettin’ intae her nightie. Then there’s one guarding her window and another at the door.”

“Guarding her from what?”

“Everything.”

For a moment Miss Level had a picture in her mind of a silent, moonlit bedroom with a sleeping child. She saw, by the window, lit by the moon, one small figure on guard, and another in the shadows by the door. What were they guarding her from? Everything . . .

But now something, this thing, has taken her over and she’s locked inside somewhere. But she never used to do magic! I could understand it if it was one of the other girls messing around, but . . . Tiffany?

One of the Feegles was slowly raising a hand.

“Yes?” she said.

“It’s me, mistress, Big Yan. I dinna know if it wuz proper hagglin’, mistress,” he said nervously, “but me an’ Nearly Big Angus saw her doin’ something odd a few times, eh, Nearly Big Angus?” The Feegle next to him nodded and the speaker went on. “It was when she got her new dress and her new hat . . .”

“And verra bonny she looked, too,” said Nearly Big Angus.

“Aye, she did that. But she’d put ’em on, and then standing in the middle o’ the floor she said—whut wuz it she said, Nearly Big Angus?”

“‘See me,’” Nearly Big Angus volunteered.

Miss Level looked blank. The speaker, now looking a bit sorry that he’d raised this, went on: “Then after a wee while we’d hear her voice say, ‘See me not,’ and then she’d adjust the hat, ye know, mebbe to a more fetchin’ angle.”

“Oh, you mean she was looking at herself in what we call a mirror,” said Miss Level. “That’s a kind of—”

“We ken well what them things are, mistress,” said Nearly Big Angus. “She’s got a tiny one, all cracked and dirty. But it’s nae good for a body as wants tae see herself properly.”

“Verra good for the stealin’, mirrors,” said Rob Anybody. “We got oour Jeannie a silver one wi’ garnets in the frame.”

“And she’d say ‘See me’?” said Miss Level.

“Aye, an’ then ‘See me not,’”said Big Yan. “An’ betweentimes she’d stand verra still, like a stachoo.”

“Sounds like she was trying to invent some kind of invisibility spell,” Miss Level mused. “They don’t work like that, of course.”

“We reckoned she was just tryin’ to throw her voice,” said Nearly Big Angus. “So it sounds like it’s comin’ fra’ somewhere else, ye ken? Wee Iain can do that a treat when we’re huntin’.”

“Throw her voice?” said Miss Level, her brow wrinkling. “Why did you think that?”

“’Cuz when she said, ‘See me not,’ it sounded like it wuz no’ comin fra’ her, and her lips didnae move.”

Miss Level stared at the Feegles. When she spoke next, her voice was a little strange.

“Tell me,” she said, “when she was just standing there, was she moving at all?”

“Just breathin’ verra slow, mistress,” said Big Yan.

“Were her eyes shut?”

“Aye!”

Miss Level started to breathe very fast.

“She walked out of her own body! There’s not one—”

“—witch in a hundred who can do that!” she said. “That’s Borrowing, that is! It’s better than any circus trick! It’s putting—”

“—your mind somewhere else! You have to—”

“—learn how to protect yourself before you ever try it! And she just invented it because she didn’t have a mirror? The little fool, why didn’t she—”

“—say? She walked out of her own body and left it there for anything to take over! I wonder what—”

“—she thought she was—”

“—doing?”

After a while Rob Anybody gave a polite cough.

“We’re better at questions about fightin’, drinkin’, and stealin’,” he mumbled. “We dinna have the knowin’ o’ the hagglin’.”

CHAPTER 7

The Matter of Brian

Something that called itself Tiffany flew across the treetops.

It thought it was Tiffany. It could remember everything—nearly everything—about being Tiffany. It looked like Tiffany. It even thought like Tiffany, more or less. It had everything it needed to be Tiffany . . .

. . . except Tiffany. Except the tiny part of her that was . . . her.

It peered from her own eyes, tried to hear with her own ears, think with her own brain.

A hiver took over its victim not by force, exactly, but simply by moving into any space, like the hermit elephant.* It just took you over because that was what it did, until it was in all the places and there was no room left . . .

. . . except . . .

. . . it was having trouble. It had flowed through her like a dark tide but there was a place, tight and sealed, that was still closed. If it had had the brains of a tree, it would have been puzzled.

If it had had the brains of a human, it would have been frightened. . . .

Tiffany brought the broomstick in low over the trees and landed it neatly in Mrs. Earwig’s garden. There really was nothing to it, she decided. You just had to want it to fly.

Then she was sick again, or at least tried to be, but since she’d thrown up twice in the air, there wasn’t much left to be sick with. It was ridiculous! She wasn’t frightened of flying anymore, but her stupid stomach was!

She wiped her mouth carefully and looked around.

She’d landed on a lawn. She’d heard of them, but had never seen a real one before. There was grass all around Miss Level’s cottage, but that was just, well, the grass of the clearing. Every other garden she’d seen was used for growing vegetables, with perhaps just a little space for flowers if the wife had gotten tough about it. A lawn meant you were posh enough to afford to give up valuable potato space.

This lawn had stripes.

Tiffany turned to the stick and said, “Stay!” and then marched across the lawn to the house. It was a lot grander than Miss Level’s cottage, but from what Tiffany had heard, Mrs. Earwig was a more senior witch. She’d also married a wizard, although he didn’t do any wizarding these days. It was a funny thing, Miss Level said, but you didn’t often meet a poor wizard.

She knocked at the door and waited.

There was a curse net hanging in the porch. You’d have thought that a witch wouldn’t need such a thing, but Tiffany supposed they used them as decoration. There was also a broomstick leaning against the wall, and a five-pointed silver star on the door. Mrs. Earwig advertised.

Tiffany knocked on the door again, much harder.

It was instantly opened by a tall, thin woman, all in black. But it was a very decorative, rich, deep black, all lacy and ruffled, and set off with more silver jewelry than Tiffany imagined could exist. She didn’t just have rings on her fingers. Some fingers had sort of silver finger gloves, designed to look like claws. She gleamed like the night sky.

And she was wearing her pointy hat, which Miss Level never did at home. It was taller than any hat that Tiffany had ever seen. It had stars on it, and silver hatpins glittered.

All of this should have added up to something pretty impressive. It didn’t. Partly it was because there was just too much of everything, but mostly it was because of Mrs. Earwig. She had a long, sharp face and looked very much as though she was about to complain about the cat from next door widdling on her lawn. And she looked like that all the time. Before she spoke, she very pointedly looked at the door to see if the heavy knocking had made a mark.

“Well?” she said, haughtily, or what she probably thought was haughtily. It sounded a bit strangled.

“Bless all in this house,” said Tiffany.

“What? Oh, yes. Favorable runes shine on this our meeting,” said Mrs. Earwig hurriedly. “Well?”

“I’ve come to see Annagramma,” said Tiffany. There really was too much silver.

“Oh, are you one of her girls?” said Mrs. Earwig.

“Not . . . exactly,” said Tiffany. “I work with Miss Level.”

“Oh, her,” said Mrs. Earwig, looking her up and down. “Green is a very dangerous color. What is your name, child?”

“Tiffany.”

“Hmm,” said Mrs. Earwig, not approving at all. “Well, you had better come in.” She glanced up and made a tch! sound. “Oh, will you look at that? I bought that at the craft fair over in Slice, too. It was very expensive!”

The curse net was hanging in tatters.

“You didn’t do that, did you?” Mrs. Earwig demanded.

“It’s too high, Mrs. Earwig,” said Tiffany.

“It’s pronounced Ah-wij,” said Mrs. Earwig coldly.

“Sorry, Mrs. Earwig.”

“Come.”

It was a strange house. You couldn’t doubt that a witch lived in it, and not just because every doorframe had a tall pointy bit cut out of the top of it to allow Mrs. Earwig’s hat to pass through. Miss Level had nothing on her walls except circus posters, but Mrs. Earwig had proper big paintings everywhere and they were all . . . witchy. There were lots of crescent moons and young women with quite frankly not enough clothes on, and big men with horns and, ooh, not just horns. There were suns and moons on the tiles of the floor, and the ceiling of the room Tiffany was led into was high, blue, and painted with stars. Mrs. Earwig (pronounced Ah-wij) pointed to a chair with gryphon feet and crescent-shaped cushions.

“Sit there,” she said. “I will tell Annagramma you are here. Do not kick the chair legs, please.”

She went out via another door.

Tiffany looked around—

—the hiver looked around—

—and thought: I’ve got to be the strongest. When I am strongest, I shall be safe. That one is weak. She thinks you can buy magic.

“Oh, it really is you,” said a sharp voice behind her. “The cheese girl.”

Tiffany stood up.

—the hiver had been many things, including a number of wizards, because wizards sought power all the time and sometimes found, in their treacherous circles, not some demon that was so stupid that it could be tricked with threats and riddles, but the hiver, which was so stupid that it could not be tricked at all. And the hiver remembered—

Annagramma was drinking a glass of milk. Once you’d seen Mrs. Earwig, you understood something about Annagramma. There was an air about her that she was taking notes on the world in order to draw up a list of suggestions for improvements.

“Hello,” said Tiffany.

“I suppose you came along to beg to be allowed to join after all, have you? I suppose you might be fun.”

“No, not really. But I might let you join me,” said Tiffany. “Are you enjoying that milk?”

The glass of milk turned into a bunch of thistles and grass. Annagramma dropped it hurriedly. When it hit the floor, it became a glass of milk again, and shattered and splashed.

Tiffany pointed at the ceiling. The painted stars flared, filling the room with light. But Annagramma stared at the spilled milk. “You know they say the power comes?” said Tiffany. “Well, it’s come to me. Do you want to be my friend? Or do you want to be . . . in my way? I should clean up that milk, if I was you.”

She concentrated. She didn’t know where this was coming from, but it seemed to know exactly what to do.

Annagramma rose a few inches off the floor. She struggled and tried to run, but that only made her spin. To Tiffany’s dreadful delight, the girl started to cry.

“You said we ought to use our power,” said Tiffany, walking around her as Annagramma tried to break free. “You said if we had the gift, people ought to know about it. You’re a girl with her head screwed on right.” Tiffany bent down a bit to look her in the eye. “Wouldn’t it be awful if it got screwed on wrong?”

She waved a hand and her prisoner dropped to the ground. But while Annagramma was unpleasant, she wasn’t a coward, and she rose up with her mouth open to yell and a hand upraised—

“Careful,” said Tiffany. “I can do it again.”

Annagramma wasn’t stupid, either. She lowered her hand and shrugged.

“Well, you have been lucky,” she said grudgingly.

“But I still need your help,” said Tiffany.

“Why would you need my help?” asked Annagramma sulkily.

—We need allies, the hiver thought with Tiffany’s mind. They can help protect us. If necessary, we can sacrifice them. Other creatures will always want to be friends with the powerful, and this one loves power—

“To start with,” said Tiffany, “where can I get a dress like yours?”

Annagramma’s eyes lit up. “Oh, you want Zakzak Stronginthearm, over in Sallett Without,” she said. “He sells everything for the modern witch.”

“Then I want everything,” said Tiffany.

“He’ll want paying,” Annagramma went on. “He’s a dwarf. They know real gold from illusion gold. Everyone tries it out on him, of course. He just laughs. If you try it twice, he’ll make a complaint to your mistress.”

“Miss Tick said a witch should have just enough money,” said Tiffany.

“That’s right,” said Annagramma. “Just enough to buy everything she wants! Mrs. Earwig says that just because we’re witches, we don’t have to live like peasants. But Miss Level is old-fashioned, isn’t she? Probably hasn’t got any money in the house.”

And Tiffany said, “Oh, I know where I can get some money. I’ll meet you please help me! here this afternoon, and you can show me where his place is.”

“What was that?” said Annagramma sharply.

“I just said I’d stop me! meet you here this—” Tiffany began.

“There it was again! There was a sort of . . . odd echo in your voice,” said Annagramma. “Like two people trying to talk at once.”

“Oh, that,” said the hiver. “That’s nothing. It’ll stop soon.”

It was an interesting mind, and the hiver enjoyed using it—but always there was that one place, that little place that was closed; it was annoying, like an itch that wouldn’t go away. . . .

It did not think. The mind of the hiver was just what remained of all the other minds it had once lived in. They were like echoes after the music is taken away. But even echoes, bouncing off one another, can produce new harmonies.

They clanged now. They rang out things like: fit in. Not strong enough yet to make enemies. Have friends. . . .

Zakzak’s low-ceilinged, dark shop had plenty to spend your money on. Zakzak was indeed a dwarf, and they’re not traditionally interested in using magic, but he certainly knew how to display merchandise, which is what they are very good at.

There were wands, mostly of metal, some of rare woods. Some had shiny crystals stuck on them, which of course made them more expensive. There were bottles of colored glass in the potions section, and oddly enough, the smaller the bottle, the more expensive it was.

“That’s because there’s often very rare ingredients, like the tears of some rare snake or something,” said Annagramma.

“I didn’t know snakes cried,” said Tiffany.

“Don’t they? Oh, well, I expect that’s why it’s expensive.”

There was plenty of other stuff. Shambles hung from the ceiling, much prettier and more interesting than the working ones that Tiffany had seen. Since they were made up complete, then surely they were dead, just like the ones Miss Level kept for ornamentation. But they looked good—and looking was important.

There were even stones for looking into.

“Crystal balls,” said Annagramma as Tiffany picked one up. “Careful! They’re very expensive!” She pointed to a sign, which had been placed thoughtfully among the glittering globes. It said:

LOVELY TO LOOK AT
NICE TO HOLD
IF YOU DROP IT
YOU GET TORN APART BY WILD HORSES

Tiffany held the biggest one in her hand and saw how Mr. Stronginthearm moved slightly away from his counter, ready to rush forward with a bill if she dropped it.

“Miss Tick uses a saucer of water with a bit of ink poured into it,” she said. “And she usually borrows the water and cadges the ink, at that.”

“Oh, a fundamentalist,” said Annagramma. “Letice—that’s Mrs. Earwig—says they let us down terribly. Do we really want people to think witches are just a bunch of mad old women who look like crows? That’s so gingerbread-cottagey! We really ought to be professional about these things.”

“Hmm,” said Tiffany, throwing the crystal ball up into the air and catching it again with one hand. “People should be made to fear witches.”

“Well, er, certainly they should respect us,” said Annagramma. “Um . . . I should be careful with that, if I was you. . . .”

“Why?” said Tiffany, tossing the ball over her shoulder.

“That was finest quartz!” shouted Zakzak, rushing around his counter.

“Oh, Tiffany,” said Annagramma, shocked and trying not to giggle.

Zakzak rushed past them to where the shattered ball lay in hundreds of very expensive fragmen—

—did not lie in very expensive fragments.

Both he and Annagramma turned to Tiffany.

She was spinning the crystal globe on the tip of her finger.

“Quickness of the hand deceives the eye,” she said.

“But I heard it smash!” said Zakzak.

“Deceives the ear, too,” said Tiffany, putting the ball back on its stand. “I don’t want this, but”—and she pointed a finger—“I’ll take that necklace and that one and the one with the cats and that ring and a set of those and two, no, three of those and—what are these?”

“Um, that’s a Book of Night,” said Annagramma nervously. “It’s a sort of magical diary. You write down what you’ve been working on. . . .”

Tiffany picked up the leather-bound book. It had an eye set in heavier leather on the cover. The eye rolled to look at her. This was a real witch’s diary, and much more impressive than some shamefully cheap old book bought off a peddler.

“Whose eye was it?” said Tiffany. “Anyone interesting?”

“Er, I get the books from the wizards at Unseen University,” said Zakzak, still shaken. “They’re not real eyes, but they’re clever enough to swivel around until they see another eye.”

“It just blinked,” said Tiffany.

“Very clever people, wizards,” said the dwarf, who knew a sale when he saw one. “Shall I wrap it up for you?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “Wrap everything up. And now can anyone hear me? show me the clothes department . . .”

. . . where there were hats. There are fashions in witchery, just like everything else. Some years the slightly concertina’d look is in, and you’ll even see the point twisting around so much it’s nearly pointing at the ground. There are varieties even in the most traditional hat (Upright Cone, Black), such as the Countrywoman (inside pockets, waterproof), the Cloudbuster (low-drag coefficient for broomstick use), and, quite importantly, the Safety (guaranteed to survive 80 percent of falling farmhouses).

Tiffany chose the tallest upright cone. It was more than two feet high and had big stars sewn on it.

“Ah, the Sky Scraper. Very much your look,” said Zakzak, bustling around and opening drawers. “It’s for the witch on the way up, who knows what she wants and doesn’t care how many frogs it takes, aha. Incidentally, many ladies like a cloak with that. Now, we have the Midnight, pure wool, fine knit, very warm, but”—he gave Tiffany a knowing look—“we currently have very limited supplies of the Zephyr Billow, just in, very rare, black as coal and thin as a shadow. Completely useless for keeping you warm or dry, but it looks fabulous in even the slightest breeze. Observe.”

He held up the cloak and blew gently. It billowed out almost horizontally, flapping and twisting like a sheet in a gale.

“Oh, yes,” breathed Annagramma.

“I’ll take it,” said Tiffany. “I shall wear it to the Witch Trials on Saturday.”

“Well, if you win, be sure to tell everyone you bought it here,” said Zakzak.

“When I win, I shall tell them I got it at a considerable discount,” said Tiffany.

“Oh, I don’t do discounts,” said Zakzak, as loftily as a dwarf can manage.

Tiffany stared at him, then picked up one of the most expensive wands from the display. It glittered.

“That’s a Number Six,” whispered Annagramma. “Mrs. Earwig has one of those!”

“I see it’s got runes on it,” said Tiffany, and something about the way she said it made Zakzak go pale.

“Well, of course,” said Annagramma. “You’ve got to have runes.”

“These are in Oggham,” said Tiffany, smiling nastily at Zakzak. “It’s a very ancient language of the dwarfs. Shall I tell you what they say? They say ‘Oh What a Wally Is Waving This.’”

“Don’t you take that nasty lying tone with me, young lady!” said the dwarf. “Who’s your mistress? I know your type! Learn one spell and you think you’re Mistress Weatherwax! I’m not standing for this kind of behavior! Brian!”

There was a rustling from the bead curtains that led to the back of the shop, and a wizard appeared.

You could tell he was a wizard. Wizards never want you to have to guess. He had long flowing robes with stars and magical symbols on them; there were even some sequins. His beard would have been long and flowing if indeed he’d been the kind of young man who could really grow a beard. Instead, it was ragged and wispy and not very clean. And the general effect was also spoiled by the fact that he was smoking a cigarette, and had a mug of tea in his hand and a face that looked a bit like something that lives under damp logs.

The mug was chipped, and on it were the jolly words YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE MAGIC TO WORK HERE BUT IT HELPS!

“Yeah?” he asked, adding reproachfully, “I was on my tea break, you know.”

“This young . . . lady is being awkward,” said Zakzak. “Throwing magic about. Talking back and being smart at me. The usual stuff.”

Brian looked at Tiffany. She smiled.

“Brian’s been to Unseen University,” said Zakzak with a “so there” smirk. “Got a degree. What he doesn’t know about magic could fill a book! These ladies need showing the way out, Brian.”

“Now then, ladies,” said Brian nervously, putting down his mug. “Do what Mr. Stronginthearm says and push off, right? We don’t want trouble, do we? Go on, there’s good kids.”

“Why do you need a wizard to protect you, with all these magical amulets around the place, Mr. Stronginthearm?” said Tiffany sweetly.

Zakzak turned to Brian. “What’re you standing there for?” he demanded. “She’s doing it again! I pay you, don’t I? Put a ’fluence on ’em or something!”

“Well, er . . . that one could be a bit of an awkward customer . . .” Brian said, nodding toward Tiffany.

“If you studied wizardry, Brian, then you know about conservation of mass, don’t you?” she said. “I mean, you know what really happens when you try to turn someone into a frog?”

“Well, er . . .” the wizard began.

“Ha! That’s just a figure of speech!” snapped Zakzak. “I’d like to see you turn someone into a frog!”

“Wish granted,” said Tiffany, and waved the wand.

Brian started to say, “Look, when I said I’d been to Unseen University, I meant—”

But he ended up saying, “Erk.”

Take the eye away from Tiffany, up through the shop, high, high above the village until the landscape spreads out in a patchwork of fields, woods, and mountains.

The magic spreads out like the ripples made when a stone is dropped in water. Within a few miles of the place it makes shambles spin and breaks the threads of curse nets. As the ripples widen, the magic gets fainter, although it never dies and still can be felt by things far more sensitive than any shamble. . . .

Let the eye move and fall now on this woods, this clearing, this cottage. . . .

There is nothing on the walls but whitewash, nothing on the floor but cold stone. The huge fireplace doesn’t even have a cooking stove. A black teakettle hangs on a black hook over what can hardly be called a fire at all; it’s just a few little sticks huddling together.

This is the house of a life peeled to the core.

Upstairs, an old woman, all in faded black, is lying on a narrow bed. But you wouldn’t think she was dead, because there is a big card on a string around her neck that reads:

I ATE’NT DEAD

. . . and you have to believe it when it’s written down like that.

Her eyes are shut, her hands are crossed on her chest, her mouth is open.

And bees crawl into her mouth, and over her ears, and all over her pillow. They fill the room, flying in and out of the open window, where someone has put a row of saucers filled with sugary water on the sill.

None of the saucers match, of course. A witch never has matching crockery. But the bees work on, coming and going . . . busy as bees.

When the ripple of magic passes through, the buzz rises to a roar. Bees pour in through the window urgently, as though driven by a gale. They land on the still old woman until her head and shoulders are a boiling mass of tiny brown bodies.

And then, as one insect, they rise in a storm and pour away into the outside air, which is full of whirling seeds from the sycamore trees outside.

Mistress Weatherwax sat bolt upright and said, “Bzzzt!” Then she stuck a finger into her mouth, rootled around a bit, and pulled out a struggling bee. She blew on it and shooed it out of the window.

For a moment her eyes seemed to have many facets, just like a bee’s.

“So,” she said. “She’s learned how to Borrow, has she? Or she’s been Borrowed!”

Annagramma fainted. Zakzak stared, too afraid to faint.

“You see,” said Tiffany, while something in the air went gloop, gloop above them, “a frog weighs only a few ounces, but Brian weighs, oh, about a hundred and twenty pounds, yes? So to turn someone big into a frog, you’ve got to find something to do with all the bits you can’t fit into a frog, right?”

She bent down and lifted up the pointy wizard’s hat on the floor.

“Happy, Brian?” she asked. A small frog, squatting in a heap of clothes, looked up and said, “Erk!”

Zakzak didn’t look at the frog. He was looking at the thing that went gloop, gloop. It was like a large pink balloon full of water, quite pretty really, wobbling gently against the ceiling.

“You’ve killed him!” he mumbled.

“What? Oh, no. That’s just the stuff he doesn’t need right now. It’s sort of . . . spare Brian.”

“Erk,” said Brian. Gloop went the rest of him.

“About this discount—” Zakzak began hurriedly. “Ten percent would be—”

Tiffany waved the wand. Behind her, the whole display of crystals rose in the air and began to orbit one another in a glittering and, above all, fragile way.

“That wand shouldn’t do that!” he said.

“Of course it can’t. It’s rubbish. But I can,” said Tiffany. “Ninety percent discount, did I hear you say? Think quickly, I’m getting tired. And the spare Brian is getting . . . heavy.”

“You can keep it all!” Zakzak screamed. “For free! Just don’t let him splash! Please!”

“No, no, I’d like you to stay in business,” said Tiffany. “A ninety percent discount would be fine. I’d like you to think of me as . . . a friend. . . .”

“Yes! Yes! I am your friend! I’m a very friendly person! Now please put him baaack! Please!” Zakzak dropped to his knees, which wasn’t very far. “Please! He’s not really a wizard! He just did evening classes there in fretwork! They hire out classrooms, that sort of thing. He thinks I don’t know! But he read a few of the magic books on the quiet and he pinched the robes and he can talk wizard lingo so’s you’d hardly know the difference! Please! I’d never get a real wizard for the money I pay him! Don’t hurt him, please!”

Tiffany waved a hand. There was a moment even more unpleasant than the one that had ended up with the spare Brian bumping against the ceiling, and then the whole Brian stood there, blinking.

“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” gasped Zakzak.

Brian blinked. “What just happened?” he asked.

Zakzak, beside himself with horror and relief, patted him frantically.

“You’re all there?” he said. “You’re not a balloon?”

“Here, get off!” said Brian, pushing him away.

There was a groan from Annagramma. She opened her eyes, saw Tiffany, and tried to scramble to her feet and back away, which meant that she went backward like a spider.

“Please don’t do that to me! Please don’t!” she shouted.

Tiffany ran after her and pulled her to her feet.

“I wouldn’t do anything to you, Annagramma,” she said happily. “You’re my friend! We’re all friends! Isn’t that nice please please stop me . . .”

You had to remember that pictsies weren’t brownies. In theory brownies would do the housework for you if you left them a saucer of milk.

The Nac Mac Feegle . . . wouldn’t.

Oh, they’d try, if they liked you and you didn’t insult them with milk in the saucer. They were helpful. They just weren’t good at it. For example, you shouldn’t try to remove a stubborn stain from a plate by repeatedly hitting it with your head.

And you didn’t want to see a sink full of them and your best china. Or a precious pot rolling backward and forward across the floor while the Feegles inside simultaneously fought the ground-in dirt and each other.

But Miss Level, once she’d got the better china out of the way, found she rather liked the Feegles. There was something unsquashable about them. And they were entirely unamazed by a woman with two bodies too.

“Ach, that’s nothin’,” Rob Anybody had said. “When we wuz raidin’ for the Quin, we once found a world where there wuz people wi’ five bodies each. All sizes, ye ken, for doin’ a’ kinds of jobs.”

“Really?” said both of Miss Level.

“Aye, and the biggest body had a huge left hand, just for openin’ pickle jars.”

“Those lids can get very tight, it’s true,” Miss Level had agreed.

“Oh, we saw some muckle eldritch places when we wuz raiding for the Quin,” said Rob Anybody. “But we gave that up, for she wuz a schemin’, greedy, ill-fared carlin, that she was!”

“Aye, and it wuz no’ because she threw us oout o’ Fairyland for being completely pished at two in the afternoon, whatever any scunner might mphf mphf . . .” said Daft Wullie.

“Pished?” said Miss Level.

“Aye . . . oh, aye, it means . . . tired. Aye. Tired. That’s whut it means,” said Rob Anybody, holding his hands firmly over his brother’s mouth. “An’ ye dinna ken how to talk in front o’ a lady, yah shammerin’ wee scunner!”

“Er . . . thank you for doing the dishes,” said Miss Level. “You really didn’t need to . . .”

“Ach, it wasna any trouble,” said Rob Anybody cheerfully, letting Daft Wullie go. “An’ I’m sure all them plates an’ stuff will mend fine wi’ a bit o’ glue.”

Miss Level looked up at the clock with no hands.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “What exactly is it you propose to do, Mr. Anybody?”

“Whut?”

“Do you have a plan?”

“Oh, aye!”

Rob Anybody rummaged around in his spog, which is a leather bag most Feegles have hanging from their belt. The contents are usually a mystery but sometimes include interesting teeth.

He flourished a much-folded piece of paper.

Miss Level carefully unfolded it.

“‘PLN’?” she said.

“Aye,” said Rob proudly. “We came prepared! Look, it’s written doon. Pee El Ner. Plan.”

“Er . . . how can I put this . . .” Miss Level mused. “Ah, yes. You came rushing all this way to save Tiffany from a creature that can’t be seen, touched, smelled, or killed. What did you intend to do when you found it?”

Rob Anybody scratched his head, to a general shower of objects.

“I think mebbe you’ve put yer finger on the one weak spot, mistress,” he admitted.

“Do you mean you charge in regardless?”

“Oh, aye. That’s the plan, sure enough,” said Rob Anybody, brightening up.

“And then what happens?”

“Weel, gen’raly people are tryin’ tae wallop us by then, so we just make it up as we gae along.”

“Yes, Robert, but the creature is inside her head!”

Rob Anybody gave Billy a questioning look.

“Robert is a heich-heidit way o’ sayin’ Rob,” said the gonnagle, and to save time he said to Miss Level: “That means kinda posh.”

“Ach, we can get inside her heid, if we have to,” said Rob. “I’d hoped tae get here afore the thing got to her, but we can chase it.”

Miss Level’s face was a picture. Two pictures.

“Inside her head?” she said.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob, as if that sort of thing happened every day. “No problemo. We can get in or oout o’ anywhere. Except maybe pubs, which for some reason we ha’ trouble leavin’. A heid? Easy.”

“Sorry, we’re talking about a real head here, are we?” said Miss Level, horrified. “What do you do, go in through the ears?”

Once again, Rob stared at Billy, who looked puzzled.

“No, mistress. They’d be too small,” he said patiently. “But we can move between worlds, ye ken. We’re fairy folk.”

Miss Level nodded both heads. It was true, but it was hard to look at the assembled ranks of the Nac Mac Feegle and remember that they were, technically, fairies. It was like watching penguins swimming underwater and having to remember that they were birds.

“And?” she said.

“We can get intae dreams, ye see. . . . And what’s a mind but another world o’ dreamin’?”

“No, I must forbid that!” said Miss Level. “I can’t have you running around inside a young girl’s head! I mean, look at you! You’re fully grow . . . well, you’re men! It’d be like, like . . . well, it’d be like you looking at her diary!”

Rob Anybody looked puzzled.

“Oh, aye?” he said. “We looked at her diary loads o’ times. Nae harm done.”

“You looked at her diary?” said Miss Level, horrified. “Why?”

Really, she thought later, she should have expected the answer.

“’Cuz it wuz locked,” said Daft Wullie. “If she didna want anyone tae look at it, why’d she keep it at the back o’ her sock drawer? Anyway, all there wuz wuz a load o’ words we couldna unnerstan’ an’ wee drawings o’ hearts and flowers an’ that.”

“Hearts? Tiffany?” said Miss Level. “Really?” She shook herself. “But you shouldn’t have done that! And going into someone’s mind is even worse!”

“The hiver is in there, mistress,” said Awf’ly Wee Billy meekly.

“But you said you can’t do anything about it!”

“She might. If we can track her doon,” said the gonnagle. “If we can find the wee bitty bit o’ her that’s still her. She’s a bonny fighter when she’s roused. Ye see, mistress, a mind’s like a world itself. She’ll be hidin’ in it somewhere, lookin’ oout though her own eyes, listenin’ wi’ her own ears, tryin’ to make people hear, tryin’ no’ to let yon beast find her . . . and it’ll be hunting her all the time, trying tae break her doon. . . .”

Miss Level began to look hunted herself. Fifty small faces, full of worry and hope and broken noses, looked up at her. And she knew she didn’t have a better plan. Or even a PLN.

“All right,” she said. “But at least you ought to have a bath. I know that’s silly, but it will make me feel better about the whole thing.”

There was a general groan.

“A bath? But we a’ had one no’ a year ago,” said Rob Anybody. “Up at the big dew pond for the ships!”

“Ach, crivens!” said Big Yan. “Ye canna ask a man tae take a bath again this soon, mistress! There’ll be nothin’ left o’ us!”

“With hot water and soap!” said Miss Level. “I mean it! I’ll run the water and I . . . I’ll put some rope over the edge so you can climb in and out, but you will get clean. I’m a wi—a hag, and you’d better do what I say!”

“Oh, all reet!” said Rob. “We’ll do it for the big wee hag. But ye’re no’ tae peek, okay?”

“Peek?” said Miss Level. She pointed a trembling finger. “Get into that bathroom now!”

Miss Level did, however, listen at the door. It’s the sort of thing a witch does.

There was nothing to hear at first but the gentle splash of water, and then:

“This is no’ as bad as I thought!”

“Aye, very pleasin’.”

“Hey, there’s a big yellow duck here. Who’re ye pointin’ that beak at, yer scunner—”

There was a wet quack and some bubbling noises as the rubber duck sank.

“Rob, we oughta get one o’ these put in back in the mound. Verra warmin’ in the wintertime.”

“Aye, it’s no’ that good for the ship, havin’ tae drink oout o’ that pond after we’ve been bathin’. It’s terrible, hearin’ a ship try tae spit.”

“Ach, it’ll make us softies! It’s nae a guid wash if ye dinna ha’ the ice formin’ on yer heid!”

“Who’re you callin’ a softie?”

There followed a lot more splashing, and water started to seep under the door.

Miss Level knocked.

“Come on out now, and dry yourselves off!” she commanded. “She could be back at any minute!”

In fact, it wasn’t for another two hours, by which time Miss Level had got so nervous that her necklaces jingled all the time.

She’d come to witching later than most, being naturally qualified by reason of the two bodies, but she’d never been very happy about magic. In truth, most witches could get through their whole lives without having to do serious, undeniable magic (making shambles and curse nets and dream catchers didn’t really count, being rather more like arts and crafts, and most of the rest of it was practical medicine, common sense, and the ability to look stern in a pointy hat). But being a witch and wearing the big black hat was like being a policeman. People saw the uniform, not you. When the mad axeman was running down the street, you weren’t allowed to back away, muttering, “Could you find someone else? Actually, I mostly just do, you know, stray dogs and road safety. . . .” You were there, you had the hat, you did the job. That was a basic rule of witchery: It’s up to you.

She was two bags of nerves when Tiffany arrived back, and stood side by side holding hands with herself to give herself confidence.

“Where have you been, dear?”

“Out,” said Tiffany.

“And what have you been doing?”

“Nothing.”

“I see you’ve been shopping.”

“Yes.”

“Who with?”

“Nobody.”

“Ah, yes,” Miss Level trilled, completely adrift. “I remember when I used to go out and do nothing. Sometimes you can be your own worst company. Believe me, I know—”

But Tiffany had already swept upstairs.

Without anyone actually seeming to move, Feegles started to appear everywhere in the room.

“Well, that could ha’ gone better,” said Rob Anybody.

“She looked so different!” Miss Level burst out. “She moved differently! I just didn’t know what to do! And those clothes!”

“Aye. Sparklin’ like a young raven,” said Rob.

“Did you see all those bags? Where could she have got the money? I certainly don’t have that kind of—”

She stopped, and both of Miss Level spoke.

“Oh, no—”

“—surely not! She wouldn’t—”

“—have, would she?”

“I dinna ken whut ye’re talkin’ aboot,” said Awf’ly Wee Billy, “but whut she would dae isna the point. That’s the hiver doin’ the thinkin’!”

Miss Level clasped all four hands together in distress. “Oh dear . . . I must go down to the village and check!”

One of her ran toward the door.

“Well, at least she’s brought the broomstick back,” muttered the Miss Level who stayed. She started to wear the slightly unfocused expression she got when both her bodies weren’t in the same place.

They could hear noises from upstairs.

“I vote we just tap her gently on the heid,” said Big Yan. “It canna give us any trouble if it’s gone sleepies, aye?”

Miss Level clenched and unclenched her fists nervously. “No,” she said. “I’ll go up there and have a serious talk with her!”

“I told yez, mistress, it’s not her,” said Awf’ly Wee Billy wearily.

“Well at least I’ll wait until I’ve visited Mr. Weavall,” said Miss Level, standing in her kitchen. “I’m nearly there . . . ah . . . he’s asleep. I’ll just eease the box out quietly. . . . If she’s taken his money, I’m going to be so angry—”

It was a good hat, Tiffany thought. It was at least as tall as Mrs. Earwig’s hat, and it shone darkly. The stars gleamed.

The other packages covered the floor and the bed. She pulled out another one of the black dresses, the one covered in lace, and the cloak, which spread out in the air. She really liked the cloak. In anything but a complete dead calm, it floated and billowed as if whipped by a gale. If you were going to be a witch, you had to start by looking like one.

She twirled in it once or twice and then said something without thinking, so that the hiver part of her was caught unawares.

“See me.”

The hiver was suddenly thrust outside her body. Tiffany was free. She hadn’t expected it. . . .

She felt herself to the tips of her fingers. She dived toward the bed, grabbed one of Zakzak’s best wands, and waved it desperately in front of her like a weapon.

“You stay out!” she said. “Stay away! It’s my body, not yours! You’ve made it do dreadful things! You stole Mr. Weavall’s money! Look at these stupid clothes! And don’t you know about eating and drinking? You stay away! You’re not coming back! Don’t you dare! I’ve got power, you know!”

So have we, said her own voice in her own head.Yours.

They fought. A watcher would have seen only a girl in a black dress, spinning around the room and flailing her arms as if she’d been stung, but Tiffany fought for every toe, every finger. She bounced off a wall, banged against the chest of drawers, slammed into another wall—

—and the door was flung open.

One of Miss Level was there, no longer nervous but trembling with rage. She pointed a shaking finger.

“Listen to me, whoever you are! Did you steal Mr.—” she began.

The hiver turned.

The hiver struck.

The hiver . . . killed.

CHAPTER 8

The Secret Land

It’s bad enough being dead. Waking up and seeing a Nac Mac Feegle standing on your chest and peering intently at you from an inch away only makes things worse.

Miss Level groaned. It felt as though she was lying on the floor.

“Ach, this one’s alive, right enough,” said the Feegle. “Told yez! That’s a weasel skull ye owe me!”

Miss Level blinked one set of eyes and then froze in horror.

“What happened to me?” she whispered.

The Feegle in front of her was replaced by the face of Rob Anybody. It was not an improvement.

“How many fingers am I holdin’ up?” he said.

“Five,” whispered Miss Level.

“Am I? Ah, well, ye could be right, ye’d have the knowin’ o’ the countin’,” said Rob, lowering his hand. “Ye’ve had a wee bittie accident, ye ken. You’re a wee bittie dead.”

Miss Level’s head slumped back. Through the mist of something that wasn’t exactly pain, she heard Rob Anybody say to someone she couldn’t see:

“Hey, I wuz breakin’ it tae her gently! I did say ‘wee bittie’ twice, right?”

“It’s as though part of me is . . . a long way off,” murmured Miss Level.

“Aye, you’re aboout right there,” said Rob, champion of the bedside manner.

Some memories bobbed to the surface of the thick soup in Miss Level’s mind.

“Tiffany killed me, didn’t she?” she said. “I remember seeing that black figure turn around, and her expression was horrible—”

“That wuz the hiver,” said Rob Anybody. “That was no’ Tiffany! She was fightin’ it! She still is, inside! But it didna remember you ha’ two bodies! We got tae help her, mistress!”

Miss Level pushed herself upright. It wasn’t pain she felt, but it was the . . . ghost of pain.

“What happened to me?” she said, weakly.

“There was like, an explosion, an’ smoke an’ that,” said Rob. “Not messy, really.”

“Oh, well, that’s a small mercy, anyway,” said Miss Level, sagging back.

“Aye, there was just this, like, big purple cloud o’, like, dust,” said Daft Wullie.

“Where’s my . . . I can’t feel . . . Where’s my other body?”

“Aye, that was what got blown up in that big cloud, right enough,” said Rob. “Good job ye hae a spare, eh?”

“She’s all mithered in her heid,” whispered Awf’ly Wee Billy. “Take it gently, eh?”

“How do you manage, seeing only one side of things?” said Miss Level dreamily to the world in general. “How will I get everything done with only one pair of hands and feet? Being in just one place all the time . . . how do people manage? It’s impossible. . . .”

She shut her eyes.

“Mistress Level, we need ye!” shouted Rob Anybody into her ear.

“Need, need, need,” murmured Miss Level. “Everyone needs a witch. No one cares if a witch needs. Giving and giving always . . . a fairy godmother never gets a wish, let me tell you . . .”

“Mistress Level!” Rob screamed. “Ye cannae pass oout on us noo!”

“I’m weary,” whispered Miss Level. “I’m very, very pished.”

“Mistress Level!” Rob Anybody yelled. “The big wee hag is lying on the floor like a dead person, but she’s cold as ice and sweatin’ like a horse! She’s fightin’ the beast inside her, mistress! And she’s losin’!” Rob peered into Miss Level’s face and shook his head. “Auchtahelweit! She’s swooned! C’mon, lads, let’s move her!”

Like many small creatures, Feegles are immensely strong for their size. It still took ten of them to carry Miss Level up the narrow stairs without banging her head more than necessary, although they did use her feet to push open the door to Tiffany’s room.

Tiffany lay on the floor. Sometimes a muscle twitched.

Miss Level was propped up like a doll.

“How’re we gonna bring the big hag roound?” said Big Yan.

“I heard where ye has to put someone’s heid between their legs,” said Rob doubtfully.

Daft Wullie sighed and drew his sword. “Sounds a wee bit drastic tae me,” he said, “but if someone will help me hold her steady—”

Miss Level opened her eyes, which was just as well. She focused unsteadily on the Feegles and smiled a strange, happy little smile.

“Ooo, fairies!” she mumbled.

“Ach, noo she’s ramblin’,” said Rob Anybody.

“She means fairies like bigjobs think they are,” said Awf’ly Wee Billy. “Tiny wee tinkly creatures that live in flowers an’ fly aroound cuddlin’ butterflies an’ that.”

“What? Have they no’ seen real fairies? They’re worse’n wasps!” said Big Yan.

“We havna got time for this!” snapped Rob Anybody. He jumped onto Miss Level’s knee.

“Aye, ma’am, we’s fairies from the land o’—” He stopped and looked imploringly at Billy.

“Tinkle?” Billy suggested.

“Aye, the land o’ Tinkle, ye ken, and we found this puir wee—”

“—princess,” said Billy.

“Aye, princess, who’s been attacked by a bunch o’ scunners—”

“—wicked goblins,” said Billy.

“—yeah, wicked goblins, right, an’ she’s in a bad way, so we wuz wonderin’ if ye could kinda tell us how tae look after her—”

“—until the handsome prince turns up on a big white horse wi’ curtains roound it an’ wakes her with a magical kiss,” said Billy.

Rob gave him a desperate look and turned back to the bemused Miss Level.

“Aye, what ma friend Fairy Billy just said,” he managed.

Miss Level tried to focus.

“You’re very ugly for fairies,” she said.

“Aye, well, the ones you gen’rally see are for the pretty flowers, ye ken,” said Rob Anybody, inventing desperately. “We’re more for the stingin’ nettles and bindweed an’ Old Man’s Troosers an’ thistles, okay? It wouldna be fair for only the bonny flowers tae have fairies noo, would it? It’d prob’ly be against the law, eh? Noo, can ye please help us wi’ this princess here before them scunners—”

“—wicked goblins—” said Billy.

“Aye, before they come back,” said Rob.

Panting, he watched Miss Level’s face. There seemed to be a certain amount of thinking going on.

“Is her pulse rapid?” murmured Miss Level. “You say her skin is cold but she’s sweating? Is she breathing rapidly? It sounds like shock. Keep her warm. Raise her legs. Watch her carefully. Try to remove . . . the cause. . . .” Her head slumped.

Rob turned to Awf’ly Wee Billy.

“A horse wi’ curtains roound it?” he said. “Where did ye get all that blethers?”

“There’s a big hoouse near the Long Lake, an’ they read stories tae their wee bairn an’ I got along an’ listened fra’ a mousehole,” said Awf’ly Wee Billy. “One day I snuck in and looked at the pichoors, and there was bigjobs called k’nits wi’ shields and armor and horses wi’ curtains—”

“Weel, it worked, blethers though it be,” said Rob Anybody. He looked at Tiffany. She was lying down, so he was about as high as her chin. It was like walking around a small hill. “Crivens, it does me nae guid at all ta see the puir wee thing like this,” he said, shaking his head. “C’mon, lads, get that cover off the bed and put that cushion under her feet.”

“Er, Rob?” said Daft Wullie.

“Aye?” Rob was staring up at the unconscious Tiffany.

“How are we goin’ tae get inta her heid? There’s got tae be somethin’ tae guide us in.”

“Aye, Wullie, an’ I ken whut it’s gonna be, ’cuz I’ve been usin’ mah heid for thinkin’!” said Rob. “Ye’ve seen the big wee hag often enough, right? Well, see this necklet?”

He reached up. The silver horse had slipped around Tiffany’s neck as she lay on the floor. It hung there, amid the amulets and dark glitter.

“Aye?” said Wullie.

“It was a present from that son o’ the Baron,” said Rob. “An’ she’s kept it. She’s tried tae turn hersel’ intae some kind of creature o’ the night, but somethin’ made her keep this. It’ll be in her heid, too. ’Tis important tae her. All we need tae do is frannit a wheelstone on it and it’ll tak’ us right where she is.”*

Daft Wullie scratched his head.

“But I thought she thought he was just a big pile of jobbies?” he said. “I seen her oout walkin’, an’ when he comes ridin’ past, she sticks her nose in th’ air and looks the other wa’. In fact, sometimes I seen her wait aroound a full five-and-twenty minutes for him tae come past, just so’s she can do that.”

“Ah, weel, no man kens the workin’s o’ the female mind,” said Rob Anybody loftily. “We’ll follow the Horse.”

From Fairies and How to Avoid Them by Miss Perspicacia Tick:

No one knows exactly how the Nac Mac Feegle step from one world to another. Those who have seen Feegles actually travel this way say that they apparently throw back their shoulders and thrust out one leg straight ahead of them. Then they wiggle their foot and are gone. This is known as “the crawstep,” and the only comment on the subject by a Feegle is “It’s all in the ankle movement, ye ken.” They appear to be able to travel magically between worlds of all kinds but not within a world. For this purpose, they assure people, they have “feets.”

The sky was black, even though the sun was high. It hung at just past noon, lighting the landscape as brilliantly as a hot summer day, but the sky was midnight black, shorn of stars.

This was the landscape of Tiffany Aching’s mind.

The Feegles looked around them. There seemed to be downland underfoot, rolling and green.

“She tells the land what it is. The land tells her who she is,” whispered Awf’ly Wee Billy. “She really does hold the soul o’ the land in her heid. . . .”

“Aye, so ’tis,” muttered Rob Anybody. “But there’s nae creatures, ye ken. Nae ships. Nae burdies.”

“Mebbe . . . mebbe somethin’s scared them awa’?” said Daft Wullie.

There was, indeed, no life. Stillness and silence ruled here. In fact Tiffany, who cared a lot about getting words right, would have said it was a hush, which is not the same as silence. A hush is what you get in cathedrals at midnight.

“Okay, lads,” Rob Anybody whispered. “We dinna ken what we’re goin’ tae find, so ye tread as light as e’er foot can fall, unnerstan’? Let’s find the big wee hag.”

They nodded, and stepped forward like ghosts.

The land rose slightly ahead of them, to some kind of earthworks. They advanced on it carefully, wary of ambush, but nothing stopped them as they climbed two long mounds in the turf that made a sort of cross.

“Manmade,” said Big Yan, when they reached the top. “Just like in the old days, Rob.” The silence sucked his speech away.

“This is deep inside o’ the big wee hag’s head,” said Rob Anybody, looking around warily. “We dinna know whut made ’em.”

“I dinna like this, Rob,” said a Feegle. “It’s too quiet.”

“Aye, Slightly Sane Georgie, it is that—”

“You are my sunshine, my only su—”

“Daft Wullie!” snapped Rob, without taking his eyes off the strange landscape.

The singing stopped. “Aye, Rob?” said Daft Wullie from behind him.

“Ye ken I said I’d tell ye when ye wuz guilty o’ stupid and inna-pro-pree-ate behavior?”

“Aye, Rob,” said Daft Wullie. “That wuz another one o’ those times, wuz it?”

“Aye.”

They moved on again, staring around them. And still there was the hush. It was the pause before an orchestra plays, the quietness before thunder. It was as if all the small sounds of the hills had shut down to make room for one big sound to happen.

And then they found the Horse.

They’d seen it, back on the Chalk. But here it was not carved into the hillside but spread out before them. They stared at it.

“Awf’ly Wee Billy?” said Rob, beckoning the young gonnagle toward him. “You’re a gonnagle, ye ken aboout poetry and dreams. What’s this? Why’s it up here? It shouldna be on the top o’ the hills!”

“Serious hiddlins, Mr. Rob,” said Billy. “This is serious hiddlins. I canna work it out yet.”

“She knows the Chalk. Why’d she get this wrong?”

“I’m thinkin’ aboout it, Mr. Rob.”

“You wouldna care tae think a bit faster, would ye?”

“Rob?” said Big Yan, hurrying up. He’d been scouting ahead.

“Aye?” said Rob gloomily.

“Ye’d better come and see this.”

On top of a round hill was a four-wheeled shepherding hut, with a curved roof and a chimney for the potbellied stove. Inside, the walls were covered with the yellow and blue wrappers from hundreds of packets of Jolly Sailor tobacco. There were old sacks hanging up there, and the back of the door was covered with chalk marks where Granny Aching had counted sheep and days. And there was a narrow iron bedstead, made comfortable with old fleeces and feed sacks.

“D’ye have the unnerstandin’ of this, Awf’ly Wee Billie?” said Rob. “Can ye tell us where the big wee hag is?”

The young gonnagle looked worried. “Er, Mister Rob, ye ken I’ve only just been made a gonnagle? I mean, I know the songs an’ a’, but I’m no’ verra experienced at this. . . .”

“Aye?” said Rob Anybody. “An’ just how many gonnagles afore ye ha’ walked through the dreams o’ a hag?”

“Er . . . none I’ve ever heard of, Mister Rob,” Billy confessed.

“Aye. So you already know more aboout it than any o’ them big men,” said Rob. He gave the boy a smile. “Do yer best, laddie. I dinna expect any more of you than that.”

Billy looked out of the shed door and took a deep breath: “Then I’ll tell ye I think she’s hidin’ somewhere close, like a hunted creature, Mr. Rob. This is a wee bit o’ her memory, the place o’ her granny, the place where she’s always felt safe. I’ll tell ye I think that we’re in the soul and center o’ her. The bit o’ her that is her. And I’m frightened for her. Frightened to mah boots.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been watchin’ the shadows, Mr. Rob,” said Billy. “The sun is movin’. It’s slippin’ doon the sky.”

“Aye, weel, that’s whut the sun does—” Rob began.

Billy shook his head. “Nay, Mr. Rob. Ye dinna understand! I’m tellin’ ye that’s no’ the sun o’ the big wide world. That’s the sun o’ the soul o’ her.”

The Feegles looked at the sun, and at the shadows, then back at Billy. He’d stuck his chin out bravely, but he was trembling.

“She’ll die when night comes?” Rob said.

“There’s worser things than death, Mr. Rob. The hiver will have her, head tae toe . . .”

“That is nae gonna happen!” shouted Rob Anybody, so suddenly that Billy backed away. “She’s a strong big wee lass! She fought the Quin wi’ no more than a fryin’ pan!”

Awf’ly Wee Billy swallowed. There were a lot of things he’d rather do than face Rob Anybody now. But he pressed on.

“Sorry, Mr. Rob, but I’m telling ye she had iron then, an’ she wuz on her ain turf. She’s a lang, lang way fra’ hame here. An’ it’ll squeeze this place when it finds it, leave no more room for it, and the night will come, an’ . . .”

“’Scuse me, Rob. I ha’ an idea.”

It was Daft Wullie, twisting his hands nervously. Everyone turned to look at him.

“Ye ha’ an idea?” said Rob.

“Aye, an’ if I tell youse, I dinna want you ta’ say it’s inna-pro-pree-ate, okay, Rob?”

Rob Anybody sighed. “Okay, Wullie ye ha’ my word on it.”

“Weel,” said Wullie, his fingers knotting and unknotting, “what is this place if it’s not truly her ain place? What is it if not her ain turf? If she canna fight the creature here, she canna fight it anywhere!”

“But it willna come here,” said Billy. “It doesna need to. As she grows weaker, this place will fade away.”

“Oh, crivens,” mumbled Daft Wullie. “Weel, it was a good idea, right? Even if it doesna work?”

Rob Anybody wasn’t paying any attention. He stared around the shepherding hut. My man’s got to use his heid for something other than nuttin’ folk, Jeannie had said.

“Daft Wullie is right,” he said quietly. “This is her safe place. She holds the land, she has it in her eye. The creature can ne’er touch her here. Here she has power. But ’twill be a jailhoouse for her here unless she fights the monster. She’d be locked in here and watch her life gae doon the cludgie. She’ll look oot at the world like a pris’ner at a tiny window, and see hersel’ hated and feared. So we’ll fetch the beast in here against its will, and here it will die!”

The Feegles cheered. They weren’t sure what was going on, but they liked the sound of it.

“How?” said Awf’ly Wee Billy.

“Ye had to gae and ask that, eh?” said Rob Anybody bitterly. “An’ I wuz doin’ sae weel wi’ the thinkin’. . .”

He turned. There was a scratching noise on the door above him.

Up there, across the rows and rows of half-rubbed-out markings, freshly chalked letters were appearing one by one, as if an invisible hand was writing them.

“Worrds,” said Rob Anybody. “She’s tryin’ tae tell us somethin’!”

“Yes, they say—” Billy began.

“I ken weel what they say!” snapped Rob Anybody. “I ha’ the knowin’ of the readin’! They say . . .”

He looked up again. “Okay, they say . . . that’s the snake, an’ that’s the kinda like a gate letter, an’ the comb on its side, two o’ that, an’ the fat man standin’ still, an’ the snake again, and then there’s whut we calls a ‘space,’ and then there’s the letter like a saw’s teeth, and two o’ the letters that’s roound like the sun, and the letter that’s a man sittin’ doon. And onna next line we ha’ . . . the man wi’ his arms oot, and the letter that’s you, an’ ha, the fat man again but noo he’s walkin, an’ next he’s standin’ still again, an’ next is the comb, an’ the up-an’-doon ziggy-zaggy letter, and the man’s got his arms oot, and then there’s me, and that ziggy-zaggy and we end the line with the comb again. . . . An’ on the next line we starts wi’ the bendy hook, that’s the letter roound as the sun, them’s twa’ men sittin’ doon, there’s the letter reaching oout tae the sky, then there’s a space ’cuz there’s nae letter, then there’s the snaky again, an’ the letter like a hoouse frame, and then there’s the letter that’s me, aye, an’ another fella sitting doon, an’ another big roound letter, and, ha, oour ol’ friend, the fat man walkin’! The End!”

He stood back, hands on hips, and demanded:

“There! Is that readin’ I just did, or wuz it no’?” There was a cheer from the Feegles, and some applause.

Awf’ly Wee Billy looked up at the chalked words:

SHEEPS WOOL
TURPENTINE
JOLLY SAILOR

And then he looked at Rob Anybody’s expression.

“Aye, aye,” he said. “Ye’re doin great, Mr. Rob. Sheep’s wool, turpentine, and Jolly Sailor tobacco.”

“Ach, weel, anyone can read it all in one go,” said Rob Anybody dismissively. “But youse gotta be guid to break it doon intae all the tricksie letters. And veera guid to have the knowin’ o’ the meanin’ o’ the whole.”

“What is that?” asked Awf’ly Wee Billy.

“The meaning, gonnagle, is that you are gonna go stealin’!” There was a cheer from the rest of the Feegles. They hadn’t been keeping up very well, but they recognized that word all right.

“An’ it’s gonna be a stealin’ tae remember!” Rob yelled, to another cheer. “Daft Wullie!”

“Aye!”

“Ye’ll be in charge! Ye ha’ not got the brains o’ a beetle, brother o’ mine, but when it comes tae the thievin’, ye hae no equal in this wurld! Ye’ve got tae fetch turpentine and fresh sheep wool and some o’ the Jolly Sailor baccy! Ye got tae get them to the big hag wi’ twa’ bodies! Tell her she must mak’ the hiver smell them, right? It’ll bring it here! And ye’d best be quick, because that sun is movin’ down the sky. Ye’ll be stealin’ fra’ Time itself—aye? Ye have a question?”

Daft Wullie had raised a finger.

“Point o’ order, Rob,” he said, “but it was a wee bittie hurtful there for you to say I dinna hae the brains of a beetle . . .”

Rob hesitated, but only for a moment. “Aye, Daft Wullie, ye are right in whut ye say. It was unricht o’ me to say that. It was the heat o’ the moment, an’ I am full sorry for it. As I stand here before ye now, I will say: Daft Wullie, ye do hae the brains o’ a beetle, an’ I’ll fight any scunner who says different!”

Daft Wullie’s face broke into a huge smile, then crinkled into a frown.

“But ye are the leader, Rob,” he said.

“No’ on this raid, Wullie. A’m staying here. I have every confidence that ye’ll be a fiiinne leader on this raid an’ not totally mess it up like ye did the last seventeen times!”

There was a general groan from the crowd.

“Look at the sun, will ye!” said Rob, pointing. “It’s moved since we’ve been talkin’! Someone’s got tae stay wi’ her! I will no’ ha’ it said we left her tae die alone! Now, get movin’, ye scunners, or feel the flat o’ my blade!”

He raised his sword and growled. They fled.

Rob Anybody laid his sword down with care, then sat on the step of the shepherding hut to watch the sun.

After a while he was aware of something else. . . .

Hamish the aviator gave Miss Level’s broomstick a doubtful look. It hung a few feet above the ground, and it worried him.

He hitched up the bundle on his back that contained his parachute, although it was technically the “paradrawers,” since it was made of string and an old pair of Tiffany’s best Sunday drawers, well washed. They still had flowers on them, but there was nothing like them for getting a Feegle safely to the ground. He had a feeling it (or they) were going to be needed.

“It’s no’ got feathers,” he complained.

“Look, we dinna ha’ time to argue!” said Daft Wullie. “We’re in a hurry, ye ken, an’ you’re the only one who knows how tae fly!”

“A broomstick isna flyin’,” said Hamish. “It’s magic. It hasna any wings! I dinna ken that stuff!”

But Big Yan had already thrown a piece of string over the bristle end of the stick and was climbing up. Other Feegles followed.

“Besides, how do they steer these things?” Hamish went on.

“Weel, how do ye do it with wi’ the birdies?” Daft Wullie demanded.

“Oh, that’s easy. Ye just shift your weight, but—”

“Ach, ye’ll learn as we go,” said Wullie. “Flying canna be that difficult. Even ducks can do it, and they have nae brains at a’.”

And there was really no point in arguing, which is why, a few minutes later, Hamish inched his way along the stick’s handle. The rest of the Feegles clung to the bristles at the other end, chattering.

Firmly tied to the bristles was a bundle of what looked like sticks and rags, with a battered hat and the stolen beard on top of it.

At least this extra weight meant that the stick end was pointing up, toward a gap in the fruit trees. Hamish sighed, took a deep breath, pulled his goggles over his eyes, and put a hand on a shiny area of stick just in front of him.

Gently, the stick began to move through the air. There was a cheer from the Feegles.

“See? Told yez ye’d be okay,” Daft Wullie called out. “But can ye no’ make it go a wee bit faster?”

Carefully, Hamish touched the shiny area again.

The stick shuddered, hung motionless for a moment, and then shot upward trailing a noise very like:

Arrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh. . . .

In the silent world of Tiffany’s head, Rob Anybody picked up his sword again and crept across the darkening turf.

There was something there, small but moving.

It was a tiny thornbush, growing so fast that its twigs visibly moved. Its shadow danced on the grass.

Rob Anybody stared at it. It had to mean something. He watched it carefully. Little bush, growing . . .

And then he remembered what the old kelda had told them when he’d been a wee boy.

Once, the land had been all forest, heavy and dark. Then men came and cut down trees. They let the sun in. The grass grew up in the clearings. The bigjobs brought in sheep, which ate the grass, and also what grew in the grass: tree seedlings. And so the dark forests died. There hadn’t been much life in them, not once the tree trunks closed in behind you; it had been dark as the bottom of the sea in there, the leaves far above keeping out the light. Sometimes there was the crash of a branch, or the rattle and patter as acorns the squirrels had missed bounced down, from branch to branch, into the gloom. Mostly it was just hot and silent. Around the edges of the forest were the homes of many creatures. Deep inside the forest, the everlasting forest, was the home of wood.

But the turf lived in the sun, with its hundreds of grasses and flowers and birds and insects. The Nac Mac Feegle knew that better than most, being so much closer to it. What looked like a green desert at a distance was a tiny, thriving, roaring jungle. . . .

“Ach,” said Rob Anybody. “So that’s yer game, izzit? Weel, ye’re no’ takin’ over in here too!”

He chopped at the spindly thing with his sword and stood back.

The rustling of leaves behind him made him turn.

There were two more saplings unfolding. And a third. He looked across the grass and saw a dozen, a hundred tiny trees beginning their race for the sky.

Worried though he was, and he was worried to his boots, Rob Anybody grinned. If there’s one thing a Feegle likes, it’s knowing that wherever you strike, you’re going to hit an enemy.

The sun was going down and the shadows were moving and the turf was dying.

Rob charged.

Arrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . .

What happened during the Nac Mac Feegle’s search for the right smell was remembered by several witnesses (quite apart from all the owls and bats who were left spinning in the air by a broomstick being navigated by a bunch of screaming little blue men).

One of them was Number 95, a ram owned by a not very imaginative farmer. But all he remembered was a sudden noise in the night and a draughty feeling on his back. That was about as exciting as it got for Number 95, so he went back to thinking about grass.

Arrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . .

Then there was Mildred Pusher, age seven, who was the daughter of the shepherd who owned Number 95. One day, when she’d grown up and become a grandmother, she told her grandchildren about the night she came downstairs by candlelight for a drink of water and heard the noises under the sink. . . .

“And there were these little voices, you see, and one said, ‘Ach, Wullie, you canna drink that, look, it says “Poison!” on the bottle,’ and another voice said, ‘Aye, gonnagle, they put that on tae frighten a man from havin’ a wee drink,’ and the first voice said, ‘Wullie, it’s rat poison!’ and the second voice said, ‘That’s fine, then, ’cuz I’m no’ a rat!’ And then I opened the cupboard under the sink, and what do you think—it was full of fairies! And they looked at me and I looked at them and one of them said, ‘Hey, this is a dream you’re having, big wee girl!’ and immediately they all agreed! And the first one said, ‘So, in this dream ye’re having, big wee girl, you wouldna mind telling us where the turpentine is, wouldya?’ And so I told them it was outside in the barn, and he said, ‘Aye? Then we’re offski. But here’s a wee gift fra’ the fairies for a big wee girl who’s gonna go right back tae sleep!’ And then they were gone!”

One of her grandchildren, who’d been listening with his mouth open, said, “What did they give you, Grandma?”

“This!” Mildred held up a silver spoon. “And the strange thing is, it’s just like the ones my mother had, which vanished mysteriously from the drawer the very same night! I’ve kept it safe ever since!”

This was admired by all. Then one of the grandchildren asked: “What were the fairies like, Grandma?”

Grandma Mildred thought about this. “Not as pretty as you might expect,” she said at last. “But definitely more smelly. And just after they’d gone there was a sound like—”

Arrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . .

People in The King’s Legs (the owner had noticed that there were lots of inns and pubs called The King’s Head or The King’s Arms, and spotted a gap in the market) looked up when they heard the noise outside.

After a minute or two the door burst open.

“Good night to ye, fellow bigjobs!” roared a figure in the doorway.

The room fell horribly silent. Awkwardly, legs going in every direction, the scarecrow figure wove unsteadily toward the bar and grabbed it thankfully, hanging on as it sagged to its knees.

“A big huge wee drop o’ yer finest whisky, me fine fellow barman fellow,” it said from somewhere under the hat.

“It seems to me that you’ve already had enough to drink, friend,” said the barman, whose hand had crept to the cudgel he kept under the bar for special customers.

“Who’re ye calling ‘friend,’ pal?” roared the figure, trying to pull itself up. “That’s fightin’ talk, that is! And I havena had enough to drink, pal, ’cuz if I have, why’ve I still got all this money, eh? Answer me that!”

A hand sagged into a coat pocket, came out jerkily, and slammed down onto the top of the bar. Ancient gold coins rolled in every direction, and a couple of silver spoons dropped out of the sleeve.

The silence of the bar became a lot deeper. Dozens of eyes watched the shiny discs as they spun off the bar and rolled across the floor.

“An’ I want an ounce o’ Jolly Sailor baccy,” said the figure.

“Why, certainly, sir,” said the barman, who had been brought up to be respectful to gold coins. He felt under the bar and his expression changed.

“Oh. I’m sorry, sir, we’ve sold out. Very popular, Jolly Sailor. But we’ve got plenty of—”

The figure had already turned around to face the rest of the room.

“Okay, I’ll gie a handful o’ gold to the first scunner who gi’es me a pipeful o’ Jolly Sailor!” it yelled.

The room erupted. Tables scraped. Chairs overturned.

The scarecrow man grabbed the first pipe and threw the coins into the air. As fights immediately broke out, he turned back to the bar and said: “And I’ll ha’ that wee drop o’ whisky before I go, barman. Ach, no you willna, Big Yan! Shame on ye! Hey, youse legs can shut up right noo! A wee pint of whisky’ll do us no harm! Oh, aye? Who deid and made ye Big Man, eh? Listen, ye scunner, oour Rob is in there! Aye, and he’d have a wee drink, too!”

The customers stopped pushing one another out the way to get at the coins, and got up to face a whole body arguing with itself.

“Anywa’, I’m in the heid, right? The heid’s in charge. I dinna ha’ tae listen to a bunch o’ knees! I said this wuz a bad idea, Wullie. Ye ken we ha’ trouble getting oout of pubs! Well, speaking on behalf o’ the legs, we’re not gonna stand by and watch the heid get pished, thank ye so veerae much!”

To the horror of the customers the entire bottom half of the figure turned around and started to walk toward the door, causing the top half to fall forward. It gripped the edge of the bar desperately, managed to say, “Okay! Is a deep-fried pickled egg totally oout o’ the question?” and then the figure—

—tore itself in half. The legs staggered a few steps toward the door and fell over.

In the shocked silence a voice from somewhere in the trousers said: “Crivens! Time for offski!”

The air blurred for a moment and the door slammed.

After a while one of the customers stepped forward cautiously and prodded the heap of old clothes and sticks that was all that remained of the visitor. The hat rolled off, and he jumped back.

A glove that was still hanging on to the bar fell to the floor with a thwap! that sounded very loud.

“Well, look at it this way,” said the barman. “Whatever it was, at least it’s left its pockets.”

From outside came the sound of:

Arrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . .

The broomstick hit the thatched roof of Miss Level’s cottage hard and stuck in it. Feegles fell off, still fighting.

In a struggling, punching mass they rolled into the cottage, conducted guerrilla warfare all the way up the stairs, and ended up in a head-butting, kicking heap in Tiffany’s bedroom, where those who’d been left behind to guard the sleeping girl and Miss Level joined in out of interest.

Gradually the fighters became aware of a sound. It was the skirl of the mousepipes, cutting through the battle like a sword. Hands stopped gripping throats, fists stopped in mid punch, kicks hovered in midair.

Tears ran down Awf’ly Wee Billy’s face as he played “The Bonny Flowers,” the saddest song in the world. It was about home, and mothers, and good times gone past, and faces no longer there. The Feegles let go of one another and stared down at their feet as the forlorn notes wound about them, speaking of betrayal and treachery and the breaking of promises—

“Shame on ye!” screamed Awf’ly Wee Billy, letting the pipe drop out of his mouth. “Shame on ye! Traitors! Betrayers! Ye shame hearth and hame! Your hag is fightin’ for her verra soul! Have ye no honor?” He flung down the mousepipes, which wailed into silence. “I curse my feets that let me stand here in front o’ ye! Ye shame the verrae sun shinin’ on ye! Ye shame the kelda that birthed ye! Traitors! Scuggans! What ha’ I done to be among this parcel o’ rogues? Any man here want tae fight? Then fight me! Aye, fight me! An’ I swear by the harp o’ bones I’ll tak’ him tae the deeps o’ the sea an’ then kick him tae the craters o’ the moon an’ see him ride tae the Pit o’ Heel itself on a saddle made o’ hedgehogs! I tell ye, my rage is the strength of the storm that tears mountains intae sand! Who among ye will stand agin me?”

Big Yan, who was almost three times the size of Awf’ly Wee Billy, cowered back as the little gonnagle stood in front of him. Not a Feegle would have raised a hand at that moment, for fear of his life. The rage of a gonnagle was a dreadful thing to see. A gonnagle could use words like swords.

Daft Wullie shuffled forward.

“I can see ye’re upset, gonnagle,” he mumbled. “’Tis me that’s at fault, on account o’ being daft. I shoulda remembered aboout us and pubs.”

He looked so dejected that Awf’ly Wee Billie calmed down a little.

“Very well then,” he said, but rather coldly because you can’t lose that much anger all at once. “We’ll not talk aboout this again. But we will remember it, right?” He pointed to the sleeping shape of Tiffany. “Now pick up that wool, and the tobacco, and the turpentine, understand? Someone tak’ the top off the turpentine bottle and pour a wee drop onto a bit o’ cloth. And no one, let me mak’ myself clear, is tae drink any of it!”

The Feegles fell over themselves to obey. There was a ripping noise as the “bit o’ cloth” was obtained from the bottom of Miss Level’s dress.

“Right,” said Awf’ly Wee Billy. “Daft Wullie, you tak’ all the three things and put them up on the big wee hag’s chest, where she can smell them.”

“How can she smell them when she’s oout cold like that?” asked Wullie.

“The nose disna sleep,” said the gonnagle flatly.

The three smells of the shepherding hut were laid reverentially just below Tiffany’s chin.

“Noo we wait,” said Awf’ly Wee Billy. “We wait, and hope.”

It was hot in the little bedroom with the sleeping witches and a crowd of Feegles. It wasn’t long before the smells of sheep’s wool, turpentine, and tobacco rose and twined and filled the air. . . .

Tiffany’s nose twitched.

The nose is a big thinker. It’s good at memory—very good. So good that a smell can take you back in memory so hard that it hurts. The brain can’t stop it. The brain has nothing to do with it. The hiver could control brains, but it couldn’t control a stomach that threw up when it was flown on a broomstick. And it was useless at noses. . . .

The smell of sheeps’ wool, turpentine, and Jolly Sailor tobacco could carry a mind away, all the way to a silent place that was warm and safe and free from harm . . .

The hiver opened its eyes and looked around.

“The shepherding hut?” it said.

It sat up. Red light shone in through the open door, and between the trunks of the saplings growing everywhere. Many of them were quite big now and cast long shadows, putting the setting sun behind bars. Around the shepherding hut, though, they had been cut down.

“This is a trick,” it said. “It won’t work. We are you. We think like you. We’re better at thinking like you than you are.”

Nothing happened.

The hiver looked like Tiffany, although here it was slightly taller because Tiffany thought she was slightly taller than she really was. It stepped out of the hut and onto the turf.

“It’s getting late,” it said to the silence. “Look at the trees! This place is dying. We don’t have to escape. Soon all of this will be part of us. Everything that you really could be. You’re proud of your little piece of ground. We can remember when there were no worlds! We—you could change things with a wave of your hand! You could make things right or make things wrong, and you could decide which is which! You will never die!”

“Then why are ye sweatin’, ye big heap o’ jobbies? Ach, what a scunner!” said a voice behind it.

For a moment the hiver wavered. Its shape changed, many times in the fractions of a second. There were bits of scales, fins, teeth, a pointy hat, claws . . . and then it was Tiffany again, smiling.

“Oh, Rob Anybody, we are glad to see you,” it said. “Can you help us?”

“Dinna gi’ me all that swiddle!” shouted Rob, bouncing up and down in rage. “I know a hiver when I sees one! Crivens, but ye’re due a kickin’!”

The hiver changed again, became a lion with teeth the size of swords and roared at him.

“Ach, it’s like that, is it?” said Rob Anybody. “Dinna go awa’!” He ran a few steps and vanished.

The hiver changed back to its Tiffany shape again.

“Your little friend has gone,” it said. “Come out now. Come out now. Why fear us? We are you. You won’t be like the rest, the dumb animals, the stupid kings, the greedy wizards. Together—”

Rob Anybody returned, followed by . . . well, everyone.

“Ye canna die,” he yelled. “But we’ll make ye wish ye could!”

They charged.

The Feegles had the advantage in most fights because they were small and fought big enemies. If you’re small and fast, you’re hard to hit. The hiver fought back by changing shape, all the time. Swords clanged on scales, heads butted fangs—it whirled across the turf, growling and screaming, calling up past shapes to counter every attack. But Feegles were hard to kill. They bounced when thrown, sprang back when trodden on, and easily dodged teeth and claws. They fought—

—and the ground shook so suddenly that even the hiver lost its footing.

The shepherding hut creaked and began to settle into the turf, which opened up around it as easily as butter. The saplings trembled and began to fall over, one after the other, as if their roots were being cut under the grass.

The land . . . rose.

Rolling down the shifting slope, the Feegles saw the hills cimbing toward the sky. What was there, what had always been there, become more plain.

Rising into the dark sky was a head, shoulders, a chest. Someone who had been lying down, growing turf, their arms and legs the hills and valleys of the downland, was sitting up. They moved with great stony slowness, millions of tons of hill shifting and creaking around them. What had looked like two long mounds in the shape of a cross became giant green arms, unfolding.

A hand with fingers longer than houses reached down, picked up the hiver, and lifted it up into the air.

Far off, something thumped three times. The sound seemed to be coming from outside the world. The Feegles, turning and watching from the small hill that was one of the knees of the giant girl, ignored it.

“She tells the land whut it is, and it tells her who she is,” said Awf’ly Wee Billy, tears running down his face. “I canna write a song aboot this! I’m nae good enough!”

“Is that the big wee hag dreamin’ she’s the hills or the hills dreamin’ they’re the big wee hag?” said Daft Wullie.

“Both, mebbe,” said Rob Anybody. They watched the huge hand close and winced.

“But ye canna kill a hiver,” said Daft Wullie.

“Aye, but ye can frit it awa’,” said Rob Anybody. “It’s a big wee universe oout there. If I was it, I’d no’ think o’ tryin’ her again!”

There were three more booms in the distance, louder this time.

“I think,” he went on, “that’s it’s time we were offski.”

In Miss Level’s cottage someone was knocking heavily on the front door. Thump. Thump. Thump.

CHAPTER 9

Soul and Center

Tiffany opened her eyes, remembered, and thought: Was that a dream, or was that real?

And the next thought was: How do I know I’m me? Suppose I’m not me but just think I’m me? How can I tell if I’m me or not? Who’s the “me” who’s asking the question? Am I thinking these thoughts? How would I know if I wasn’t?

“Dinna ask me,” said a voice by her head. “Is this one of them tricksie ones?”

It was Daft Wullie. He was sitting on her pillow.

Tiffany squinted down. She was in bed in Miss Level’s cottage. A green quilt stretched out in front of her. A quilt. Green. Not turf, not hills . . . but it looked like the downland from here.

“Did I say all that aloud?” she asked.

“Oh, aye.”

“Er . . . it did all happen, didn’t it?” said Tiffany.

“Oh, aye,” said Daft Wullie cheerfully. “The big hag o’ hags wuz up here till just noo, but she said ye probably wasna gonna wake up a monster.”

More bits of memory landed in Tiffany’s head like red-hot rocks landing on a peaceful planet.

“Are you all right?”

“Oh, aye,” said Daft Wullie.

“And Miss Level?”

And this rock of memory was huge, a flaming mountain that’d make a million dinosaurs flee for their lives. Tiffany’s hands flew to her mouth.

“I killed her!” she said.

“Noo, then, ye didna—”

“I did! I felt my mind thinking it. She made me angry! I just waved my hand like this”—a dozen Nac Mac Feegle dived for cover—“and she just exploded into nothing! It was me! I remember!”

“Aye, but the hag o’ hags said it wuz usin’ your mind tae think with—” Daft Wullie began.

“I’ve got the memories! It was me, with this hand!” The Feegles who had raised their heads ducked back down again. “And . . . the memories I’ve got . . . I remember dust, turning into stars . . . things . . . the heat . . . blood . . . the taste of blood . . . I remember . . . I remember the see-me trick! Oh, no! I practically invited it in! I killed Miss Level!”

Shadows were closing in around her vision, and there was a ringing in her ears. Tiffany heard the door swing open, and hands picked her up as though she was as light as a bubble. She was slung over a shoulder and carried swiftly down the stairs and out into the bright morning, where she was swung down onto the ground.

“. . . And all of us . . . we killed her . . . take one crucible of silver . . .” she mumbled.

A hand slapped her sharply across the face. She stared through inner mists at the tall dark figure in front of her. A bucket handle was pressed firmly into her hand.

“Milk the goats now, Tiffany! Now, Tiffany, d’you hear! The trusting creatures look to you! They wait for you! Tiffany milks the goats. Do it, Tiffany! The hands know how, the mind will remember and grow stronger, Tiffany!”

She was thrust down into the milking stall and, through the mist in her head, made out the cowering shape of . . . of . . . Black Meg.

The hands remembered. They placed the pail, grasped a teat, and then, as Meg raised a leg to play the foot-in-the-bucket game, grabbed it and forced it safely back down onto the milking platform.

She worked slowly, her head full of hot fog, letting her hands have their way. Buckets were filled and emptied, milked goats got a bucket of feed from the bin. . . .

Sensibility Bustle was rather puzzled that his hands were milking a goat. He stopped.

“What is your name?” said a voice behind him.

“Bustle. Sensibil—”

“No! That was the wizard, Tiffany! He was the strongest echo, but you’re not him! Get into the dairy, Tiffany!”

She stumbled into the cool room under the command of that voice, and the world focused. There was a foul cheese on the slab, sweating and stinking.

“Who put this here?” she asked.

“The hiver did, Tiffany. Tried to make a cheese by magic, Tiffany. Hah! And you are not it, Tiffany! You know how to make cheese the right way, don’t you, Tiffany? Indeed you do! What is your name?”

. . . all was confusion and strange smells. In panic, she roared—

Her face was slapped again.

“No, that was the saber-toothed tiger, Tiffany! They’re all just old memories the hiver left behind, Tiffany! It’s worn a lot of creatures, but they are not you! Come forward, Tiffany!”

She heard the words without really understanding them. They were just out there somewhere, between people who were just shadows. But it was unthinkable to disobey them.

“Drat!” said the hazy tall figure, “where’s that little blue feller? Mr. Anyone?”

“Here, mistress. It’s Rob Anybody, mistress. I beg o’ ye not tae turn me intae somethin’ unnatural, mistress!”

“You said she had a box of keepsakes. Fetch it down here this minute. I feared this might happen. I hates doin’ it this way!”

Tiffany was turned around and once again looked into the blurry face while strong hands gripped her arms. Two blue eyes stared into hers. They shone in the mist like sapphires.

“What’s your name, Tiffany?” said the voice.

“Tiffany!”

The eyes bored into her. “Is it? Really? Sing me the first song you ever learned, Tiffany! Now!”

“Hzan, hzana, m’taza—”

“Stop! That was never learned on a chalk hill! You ain’t Tiffany! I reckon you’re that desert queen who killed twelve of her husbands with scorpion sandwiches! Tiffany is the one I’m after! Back into the dark with you!”

Things went blurry again. She could hear whispered discussions through the fog, and the voice said: “Well, that might work. What’s your name, pictsie?”

“Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle, mistress.”

“You’re very small, aren’t you?”

“Only for my height, mistress.”

The grip tightened on Tiffany’s arms again. The blue eyes glinted.

“What does your name mean in the Old Speech of the Nac Mac Feegle, Tiffany? Think . . .”

It rose from the depths of her mind, trailing the fog behind it. It came up through the clamoring voices and lifted her beyond the reach of ghostly hands. Ahead, the clouds parted.

“My name is Land Under Wave,” said Tiffany, and slumped forward.

“No, no, none of that, we can’t have that,” said the figure holding her. “You’ve slept enough. Good, you know who you are! Now you must be up and doing! You must be Tiffany as hard as you may, and the other voices will leave you alone, depend on it. Although it might be a good idea if you don’t make sandwiches for a while.”

She did feel better. She’d said her name. The clamoring in her head had calmed down, although it was still a chatter that made it hard to think straight. But now at least she could see clearly. The black-dressed figure holding her wasn’t tall, but she was so good at acting as if she was that it tended to fool most people.

“Oh . . . you’re . . . Mistress Weatherwax?”

Mistress Weatherwax pushed her down gently into a chair. From every flat surface in the kitchen, the Nac Mac Feegles watched Tiffany.

“I am. And a fine mess we have here. Rest for a moment, and then we must be up and doing—”

“Good morning, ladies. Er, how is she?”

Tiffany turned her head. Miss Level stood in the door. She looked pale, and she was walking with a stick.

“I was lying in bed and I thought, well, there’s no reason to stay up here feeling sorry for myself,” she said.

Tiffany stood up. “I’m so sor—” she began, but Miss Level waved a hand vaguely.

“Not your fault,” she said, sitting down heavily at the table. “How are you? And, for that matter, who are you?”

Tiffany blushed. “Still me, I think,” she mumbled.

“I got here last night and saw to Miss Level,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Watched over you, too, girl. You talked in your sleep, or rather, Sensibility Bustle did, what’s left of him. That ol’ wizard was quite helpful, for something that’s nothing much more’n a bunch of memories and habits.”

“I don’t understand about the wizard,” said Tiffany. “Or the desert queen.”

“Don’t you?” said the witch. “Well, a hiver collects people. Tries to add them to itself, you might say, use them to think with. Dr. Bustle was studying them hundreds of years ago, and set a trap to catch one. It got him instead, silly fool. It killed him in the end. It gets ’em all killed in the end. They go mad, one way or the other—they stop remembering what they shouldn’t do. But it keeps a sort of . . . pale copy of them, a sort of living memory. . . .” She looked at Tiffany’s puzzled expression and shrugged. “Something like a ghost,” she said.

“And it’s left ghosts in my head?”

“More like ghosts of ghosts, really,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Something we don’t have a word for, maybe.”

Miss Level shuddered. “Well, thank goodness you’ve got rid of the thing, at least,” she quavered. “Would anyone like a nice cup of tea?”

“Ach, leave that tae us!” shouted Rob Anybody, leaping up. “Daft Wullie, you an’ the boys mak’ some tea for the ladies!”

“Thank you,” said Miss Level weakly, as a clattering began behind her. “I feel so clum—what? I thought you broke all the teacups when you did the dishes!”

“Oh, aye,” said Rob cheerfully. “But Wullie found a whole load o’ old ones shut awa’ in a cupboard—”

“That very valuable bone china was left to me by a very dear friend!” shouted Miss Level. She sprang to her feet and turned toward the sink. With amazing speed for someone who was partly dead, she snatched teapot, cup, and saucer from the surprised pictsies and held them up as high as she could.

“Crivens!” said Rob Anybody, staring at the crockery. “Now that’s what I call hagglin’!”

“I’m sorry to be rude, but they’re of great sentimental value!” said Miss Level.

“Mr. Anybody, you and your men will kindly get away from Miss Level and shut up!” said Mistress Weatherwax quickly. “Pray do not disturb Miss Level while she’s making tea!”

“But she’s holding—” Tiffany began in amazement.

“And let her get on with it without your chatter either, girl!” the witch snapped.

“Aye, but she picked up yon teapot wi’oot—” a voice began.

The old witch’s head spun around. Feegles backed away like trees bending to a gale.

“Daft William,” she said coldly, “there’s room in my well for one more frog, except that you don’t have the brains of one!”

“Ahahaha, that’s wholly correct, mistress,” said Daft Wullie, sticking out his chin with pride. “I fooled you there! I ha’ the brains o’ a beetle!”

Mistress Weatherwax glared at him, then turned back to Tiffany.

“I turned someone into a frog!” Tiffany said. “It was dreadful! He didn’t all fit in, so there was this sort of huge pink—”

“Never mind that right now,” said Mistress Weatherwax in a voice that was suddenly so nice and ordinary that it tinkled like a bell. “I expect you finds things a bit different here than they were at home, eh?”

“What? Well, yes, at home I never turned—” Tiffany began in surprise, then saw that just above her lap the old woman was making frantic circular hand motions that somehow meant keep going as if nothing has happened.

So they chatted madly about sheep, and Mistress Weatherwax said they were very wooly, weren’t they, and Tiffany said that they were, extremely so, and Mistress Weatherwax said extremely wooly was what she’d heard . . . while every eye in the room watched Miss Level—

—making tea using four arms, two of which did not exist, and not realizing it.

The black kettle sailed across the room and apparently tipped itself into the pot. Cups and saucers and spoons and the sugar bowl floated with a purpose.

Mistress Weatherwax leaned across to Tiffany.

“I hope you’re still feeling . . . alone?” she whispered.

“Yes, thank you. I mean, I can . . . sort of . . . feel them there, but they’re not getting in the way . . . er . . . sooner or later she’s going to realize . . . I mean, isn’t she?”

“Very funny thing, the human mind,” whispered the old woman. “I once had to see to a poor young man who had a tree fall on his legs. Lost both legs from the knee down. Had to have wooden legs made. Still, they were made out of that tree, which I suppose was some comfort, and he gets about pretty well. But I remember him saying, ‘Mistress Weatherwax, I can still feel my toes sometimes.’ It’s like the head don’t accept what’s happened. And it’s not like she’s . . . your everyday kind of person to start with. I mean, she’s used to havin’ arms she can’t see—”

“Here we are,” said Miss Level, bustling over with three cups and saucers and the sugar bowl. “One for you, one for you, and one for—oh . . .”

The sugar bowl dropped from an invisible hand and spilled its sugar onto the table. Miss Level stared at it in horror while, in the other hand that wasn’t there, a cup and saucer wobbled without visible means of support.

“Shut your eyes, Miss Level!” And there was something in the voice, some edge or strange tone, that made Tiffany shut her eyes too.

“Right! Now, you know the cup’s there, you can feel your arm,” said Mistress Weatherwax, standing up. “Trust it! Your eyes are not in possession of all the facts! Now put the cup down gently . . . thaaat’s right. You can open your eyes now, but what I wants you to do, right, as a favor to me, is put the hands that you can see flat down on the table. Right. Good. Now, without takin’ those hands away, just go over to the dresser and fetch me that blue biscuit tin, will you? I’m always partial to a biscuit with my tea. Thank you very much.”

“But . . . but I can’t do that now—”

“Get past ‘I can’t,’ Miss Level,” Mistress Weatherwax snapped. “Don’t think about it, just do it! My tea’s getting cold!”

So this is witchcraft too, Tiffany thought. It’s like Granny Aching talking to animals. It’s in the voice! Sharp and soft by turns, and you use little words of command and encouragement and you keep talking, making the words fill the creature’s world, so that the sheepdogs obey you and the nervous sheep are calmed. . . .

The biscuit tin floated away from the dresser. As it neared the old woman, the lid unscrewed and hovered in the air beside it. She reached in delicately.

“Ooh, store-bought Teatime Assortment,” she said, taking four biscuits and quickly putting three of them in her pocket. “Very posh.”

“It’s terribly difficult to do this!” Miss Level moaned. “It’s like trying not to think of a pink rhinoceros!”

“Well?” said Mistress Weatherwax. “What’s so special about not thinking of a pink rhinoceros?”

“It’s impossible to think of one if someone tells you mustn’t,” Tiffany explained.

“No it ain’t,” said Mistress Weatherwax firmly. “I ain’t thinking of one right now, and I gives you my word on that. You want to take control of that brain of yours, Miss Level. So you’ve lost a spare body? What’s another body when all’s said and done? Just a lot of upkeep, another mouth to feed, wear and tear on the furniture . . . in a word, fuss. Get your mind right, Miss Level, and the world is your . . .” The old witch leaned down to Tiffany and whispered: “What’s that thing, lives in the sea, very small, folks eat it?”

“Shrimp?” Tiffany suggested, a bit puzzled.

“Shrimp? All right. The world is your shrimp, Miss Level. Not only will there be a great saving on clothes and food, which is not to be sneezed at in these difficult times, but when people see you moving things through the air, well, they’ll say, ‘There’s a witch and a half, and no mistake! and they will be right. You just hold on to that skill, Miss Level. You maintain. Think on what I’ve said. And now you stay and rest. We’ll see to what needs doing today. You just make a little list for me, and Tiffany’ll know the way.”

“Well, indeed, I do feel . . . somewhat shaken,” said Miss Level, absentmindedly brushing her hair out of her eyes with an invisible hand. “Let me see . . . you could just drop in on Mr.Umbril, and Mistress Turvy, and the young Raddle boy, and check on Mrs. Towney’s bruise, and take some Number 5 ointment to Mr. Drover, and pay a call on old Mrs. Hunter at Saucy Corner, and . . . now, who have I forgotten?”

Tiffany realized she was holding her breath. It had been a horrible day, and a dreadful night, but what was looming and lining up for its place on Miss Level’s tongue was, somehow, going to be worse than either.

“. . . Ah, yes, have a word with Miss Quickly at Uttercliff, and then probably you’ll need to talk to Mrs. Quickly, too, and there’re a few packages to be dropped off on the way, they’re in my basket, all marked up. And I think that’s it. . . . Oh, no, silly me, I almost forgot . . . and you need to drop in on Mr. Weavall, too.”

Tiffany breathed out. She really didn’t want to. She’d rather not breathe ever again than face Mr. Weavall and open an empty box.

“Are you sure you’re . . . totally yourself, Tiffany?” said Miss Level, and Tiffany leaped at this lifesaving excuse not to go.

“Well, I do feel a bit—” she began, but Mistress Weatherwax interrupted with, “She’s fine, Miss Level, apart from the echoes. The hiver has gone away from this house, I can assure you.”

“Really?” said Miss Level. “I don’t mean to be rude, but how can you be so certain?”

Mistress Weatherwax pointed down.

Grain by grain, the spilled sugar was rolling across the tabletop and leaping into the sugar bowl.

Miss Level clasped her hands together.

“Oh, Oswald,” she said, her face one huge smile, “you’ve come back!”

Miss Level, and possibly Oswald, watched them go from the gate.

“She’ll be fine with your little men keeping her company,” said Mistress Weatherwax as she and Tiffany turned away and took the lane through the woods. “It could be the making of her, you know, being half dead.”

Tiffany was shocked. “How can you be so cruel?”

“She’ll get some respect when people see her moving stuff through the air. Respect is meat and drink to a witch. Without respect, you ain’t got a thing. She doesn’t get much respect, our Miss Level.”

That was true. People didn’t respect Miss Level. They liked her, in an unthinking sort of way, and that was it. Mistress Weatherwax was right, and Tiffany wished she wasn’t.

“Why did you and Miss Tick send me to her, then?” she said.

“Because she likes people,” said the witch, striding ahead. “She cares about ’em. Even the stupid, mean, drooling ones, the mothers with the runny babies and no sense, the feckless and the silly and the fools who treat her like some kind of a servant. Now that’s what I call magic—seein’ all that, dealin’ with all that, and still goin’ on. It’s sittin’ up all night with some poor old man who’s leavin’ the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin’ their terror, seein’ ’em safely on their way . . . and then cleanin’ ’em up, layin’ ’em out, making ’em neat for the funeral, and helpin’ the weeping widow strip the bed and wash the sheets—which is, let me tell you, no errand for the fainthearted—and stayin’ up the next night to watch over the coffin before the funeral, and then going home and sitting down for five minutes before some shouting angry man comes bangin’ on your door ’cuz his wife’s havin’ difficulty givin’ birth to their first child and the midwife’s at her wits’ end and then getting up and fetching your bag and going out again. . . . We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better’n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart. That is the root and heart and soul and center of witchcraft, that is. The soul and center!” Mistress Weatherwax smacked her fist into her hand, hammering out her words. “The . . . soul . . . and . . . center!”

Echoes came back from the trees in the sudden silence. Even the grasshoppers by the side of the track had stopped sizzling.

“And Mrs. Earwig,” said Mistress Weatherwax, her voice sinking to a growl, “Mrs. Earwig tells her girls it’s about cosmic balances and stars and circles and colors and wands and . . . and toys, nothing but toys!” She sniffed. “Oh, I daresay they’re all very well as decoration, somethin’ nice to look at while you’re workin’, somethin’ for show, but the start and finish, the start and finish, is helpin’ people when life is on the edge. Even people you don’t like. Stars is easy, people is hard.”

She stopped talking. It was several seconds before birds began to sing again.

“Anyway, that’s what I think,” she added in the tones of someone who suspects that she might have gone just a bit further than she meant to.

She turned around when Tiffany said nothing, and saw that she had stopped and was standing in the lane looking like a drowned hen.

“Are you all right, girl?” she said.

“It was me!” wailed Tiffany. “The hiver was me! It wasn’t thinking with my brain, it was using my thoughts! It was using what it found in my head! All those insults, all that . . .” She gulped. “That . . . nastiness. All it was was me with—”

“—without the bit of you that was locked away,” said Mistress Weatherwax sharply. “Remember that.”

“Yes, but supposing—” Tiffany began, struggling to get all the woe out.

“The locked-up bit was the important bit,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them. Harder, maybe. There’d be a sight more frogs in this world if I didn’t know how not to turn people into them. And big pink balloons, too.”

“Don’t,” said Tiffany, shuddering.

“That’s why we do all the tramping around and doctorin’ and stuff,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Well, and because it makes people a bit better, of course. But doing it moves you into your center, so’s you don’t wobble. It anchors you. Keeps you human, stops you cackling. Just like your granny with her sheep, which are to my mind as stupid and wayward and ungrateful as humans. You think you’ve had a sight of yourself and found out you’re bad? Hah! I’ve seen bad, and you don’t get near it. Now, are you going to stop grizzling?”

“What?” snapped Tiffany.

Mistress Weatherwax laughed, to Tiffany’s sudden fury.

“Yes, you’re a witch to your boots,” she said. “You’re sad, and behind that you’re watching yourself being sad and thinking, Oh, poor me, and behind that you’re angry with me for not going ‘There, there, poor dear.’ Let me talk to those Third Thoughts then, because I want to hear from the girl who went to fight a fairy queen armed with nothin’ but a fryin’ pan, not some child feelin’ sorry for herself and wallowing in misery!”

“What? I am not wallowing in misery!” Tiffany shouted, striding up to her until they were inches apart. “And what was all that about being nice to people, eh?” Overhead, leaves fell off the trees.

“That doesn’t count when it’s another witch, especially one like you!” Mistress Weatherwax snapped, prodding her in the chest with a finger as hard as wood.

“Oh? Oh? And what’s that supposed to mean?” A deer galloped off through the woods. The wind got up.

“One who’s not paying attention, child!”

“Why, what have I missed that you’ve seen . . . old woman?”

“Old woman I may be, but I’m tellin’ you the hiver is still around! You only threw it out!” Mistress Weatherwax shouted. Birds rose from the trees in panic.

“I know!” screamed Tiffany.

“Oh yes? Really? And how do you know that?”

“Because there’s a bit of me still in it! A bit of me I’d rather not know about, thank you! I can feel it out there! Anyway, how do you know?”

“Because I’m a bloody good witch, that’s why,” snarled Mistress Weatherwax, as rabbits burrowed deeper to get out of the way. “And what do you want me to do about the creature while you sit there snivelin’, eh?”

“How dare you! How dare you! It’s my responsibility! I’ll deal with it, thank you so very much!”

“You? A hiver? It’ll take more than a frying pan! They can’t be killed!”

“I’ll find a way! A witch deals with things!”

“Hah! I’d like to see you try!”

“I will!” shouted Tiffany. It started to rain.

“Oh? So you know how to attack it, do you?”

“Don’t be silly! I can’t! It can always keep out of my way! It can even sink into the ground! But it’ll come looking for me, understand? Me, not anyone else! I know it! And this time I’ll be ready!”

“Will you, indeed?” said Mistress Weatherwax, folding her arms.

“Yes!”

“When?”

“Now!”

“No!”

The old witch held up a hand.

“Peace be on this place,” she said quietly. The wind dropped. The rain stopped. “No, not yet,” she went on as peace once again descended. “It’s not attackin’ yet. Don’t you think that’s odd? It’d be licking its wounds, if it had a tongue. And you’re not ready yet, whatever you thinks. No, we’ve got somethin’ else to do, haven’t we?”

Tiffany was speechless. The tide of outrage inside her was so hot that it burned her ears. But Mistress Weatherwax was smiling. The two facts did not work well together.

Her First Thoughts were: I’ve just had a blazing row with Mistress Weatherwax! They say that if you cut her with a knife, she wouldn’t bleed until she wanted to! They say that when some vampires bit her, they all started to crave tea and sweet biscuits. She can do anything, be anywhere! And I called her an old woman!

Her Second Thoughts were: Well, she is.

Her Third Thoughts were:Yes, she is Mistress Weatherwax. And she’s keeping you angry. If you’re full of anger, there’s no room left for fear.

“You hold that anger,” Mistress Weatherwax said, as if reading all of her mind. “Cup it in your heart, remember where it came from, remember the shape of it, save it until you need it. But now the wolf is out there somewhere in the woods, and you need to see to the flock.”

It’s the voice, Tiffany thought. She really does talk to people like Granny Aching talked to sheep, except she hardly cusses at all. But I feel . . . better.

“Thank you,” she said.

“And that includes Mr. Weavall.”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “I know.”

CHAPTER 10

The Late Bloomer

It was an . . . interesting day. Everyone in the mountains had heard of Mistress Weatherwax. If you didn’t have respect, she said, you didn’t have anything. Today she had it all. Some of it even rubbed off on Tiffany.

They were treated like royalty—not the sort who get dragged off to be beheaded or have something nasty done with a red-hot poker, but the other sort, when people walk away dazed saying, “She actually said hello to me, very graciously! I will never wash my hand again!”

Not that many people they dealt with washed their hands at all, Tiffany thought with the primness of a dairy worker. But people crowded around outside the cottage doors, watching and listening, and they sidled up to Tiffany to say things like “Would she like a cup of tea? I’ve cleaned our cup!” And in the garden of every cottage they passed, Tiffany noticed, the beehives were suddenly bustling with activity.

She worked away, trying to stay calm, trying to think about what she was doing. You did the doctoring work as neatly as you could, and if it was on something oozy, then you just thought about how nice things would be when you’d stopped doing it. She felt Mistress Weatherwax wouldn’t approve of this attitude. But Tiffany didn’t much like hers either. She lied all the—She didn’t tell the truth all the time.

For example, there was the Raddles’ privy. Miss Level had explained carefully to Mr. and Mrs. Raddle several times that it was far too close to the well, and so the drinking water was full of tiny, tiny creatures that were making their children sick. They’d listened very carefully, every time they heard the lecture, and still they never moved the privy. But Mistress Weatherwax told them it was caused by goblins who were attracted to the smell, and by the time they left that cottage, Mr. Raddle and three of his friends were already digging a new well the other end of the garden.

“It really is caused by tiny creatures, you know,” said Tiffany, who’d once handed over an egg to a traveling teacher so she could line up and look through his “**ASTOUNDING MIKROSCOPICAL DEVICE! A ZOO IN EVERY DROP OF DITCHWATER!**” She’d almost collapsed the next day from not drinking. Some of those creatures were hairy.

“Is that so?” said Mistress Weatherwax sarcastically.

“Yes. It is. And Miss Level believes in telling them the truth!”

“Good. She’s a fine, honest woman,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “But what I say is you have to tell people a story they can understand. Right now I reckon you’d have to change quite a lot of the world, and maybe bang Mr. Raddle’s stupid fat head against the wall a few times, before he’d believe that you can be sickened by drinking tiny invisible beasts. And while you’re doing that, those kids of theirs will get sicker. But goblins, now, they makes sense today. A story gets things done. And when I see Miss Tick tomorrow, I’ll tell her it’s about time them wandering teachers started coming up here.”

“All right,” said Tiffany reluctantly, “but you told Mr. Umbril the shoemaker that his chest pains will clear up if he walks to the waterfall at Tumble Crag every day for a month and throws three shiny pebbles into the pool for the water sprites! That’s not doctoring!”

“No, but he thinks it is. The man spends too much time sitting hunched up. A five-mile walk in the fresh air every day for a month will see him as right as rain,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“Oh,” said Tiffany. “Another story?”

“If you like,” said Mistress Weatherwax, her eyes twinkling. “And you never know, maybe the water sprites will be grateful for the pebbles.”

She glanced sidelong at Tiffany’s expression and patted her on the shoulder.

“Never mind, miss,” she said. “Look at it this way. Tomorrow, your job is to change the world into a better place. Today, my job is to see that everyone gets there.”

“Well, I think—” Tiffany began, then stopped. She looked up at the line of woods between the small fields of the valleys and the steep meadows of the mountains.

“It’s still there,” she said.

“I know,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“It’s moving around, but it’s keeping away from us.”

“I know,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“What does it think it’s doing?”

“It’s got a bit of you in it. What do you think it’s doing?”

Tiffany tried to think. Why wouldn’t it attack? Oh, she’d be better prepared this time, but it was strong.

“Maybe it’s waiting until I’m upset again,” she said. “But I keep having a thought. It makes no sense. I keep thinking about . . . three wishes.”

“Wishes for what?”

“I don’t know. It sounds silly.”

Mistress Weatherwax stopped. “No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s a deep part of you trying to send yourself a message. Just remember it. Because now—”

Tiffany sighed. “Yes, I know. Mr. Weavall.”

No dragon’s cave was ever approached as carefully as the cottage in the overgrown garden.

Tiffany paused at the gate and looked back, but Mistress Weatherwax had diplomatically vanished. Probably she’s found someone to give her a cup of tea and a sweet biscuit, she thought. She lives on them!

She opened the gate and walked up the path.

You couldn’t say: It’s not my fault. You couldn’t say: It’s not my responsibility.

You could say: I will deal with this.

You didn’t have to want to. But you had to do it.

Tiffany took a deep breath and stepped into the dark cottage.

Mr. Weavall, in his chair, was just inside the door and fast asleep, showing the world an open mouth full of yellow teeth.

“Um . . . hello, Mr. Weavall,” Tiffany quavered, but perhaps not quite loudly enough. “Just, er, here to see that you, that everything is . . . is all right. . . .”

There was a snort nonetheless, and he woke, smacking his lips to get the sleep out of his mouth.

“Oh, ’tis you,” he said. “Good afternoon to ye.” He eased himself more upright and started to stare out of the doorway, ignoring her.

Maybe he won’t ask, she thought as she did the dishes and dusted and plumped the cushions and, not to put too fine a point on it, emptied the commode. But she nearly yelped when the arm shot out and grabbed her wrist and the old man gave her his pleading look.

“Just check the box, Mary, will you? Before you go? Only I heard clinking noises last night, see. Could be one o’ the sneaky thieves got in.”

“Yes, Mr. Weavall,” said Tiffany, all the while thinking: Idon’twanttobehereIdon’twanttobehere!

She pulled out the box. There was no choice.

It felt heavy. She stood up and lifted the lid.

After the creak of the hinges, there was silence.

“Are you all right, girl?” said Mr. Weavall.

“Um . . .” said Tiffany.

“It’s all there, ain’t it?” said the old man anxiously.

Tiffany’s mind was a puddle of goo.

“Um . . . it’s all here,” she managed. “Um . . . and now it’s all gold, Mr. Weavall.”

“Gold? Hah! Don’t you pull my leg, girl. No gold ever came my way!”

Tiffany put the box on the old man’s lap, as gently as she could, and he stared into it.

Tiffany recognized the worn coins. The pictsies ate off them in the mound. There had been pictures on them, but they were too worn to make out now.

But gold was gold, pictures or not.

She turned her head sharply and was certain she saw something small and redheaded vanish into the shadows.

“Well now,” said Mr. Weavall. “Well now.” And that seemed to exhaust his conversation for a while. Then he said, “Far too much money here to pay for a buryin’. I don’t recall savin’ all this. I reckon you could bury a king for this amount of money.”

Tiffany swallowed. She couldn’t leave things like this. She just couldn’t.

“Mr. Weavall, I’ve got something I must tell you,” she said. And she told him. She told him all of it, not just the good bits. He sat and listened carefully.

“Well, now, isn’t that interesting,” he said when she’d finished.

“Um . . . I’m sorry,” said Tiffany. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“So what you’re saying, right, is ’cuz that creature made you take my burying money, right, you think these fairy friends o’ yourn filled my ol’ box with gold so’s you wouldn’t get into trouble, right?”

“I think so,” said Tiffany.

“Well, it looks like I should thank you, then,” said Mr. Weavall.

“What?”

“Well, it seems to I, if you hadn’t ha’ took the silver and copper, there wouldn’t have been any room for all this gold, right?” said Mr. Weavall. “And I shouldn’t reckon that ol’ dead king up on yon hills needs it now.”

“Yes, but—”

Mr. Weavall fumbled in the box and held up a gold coin that would have bought his cottage.

“A little something for you, then, girl,” he said. “Buy yourself some ribbons or something. . . .”

“No! I can’t! That wouldn’t be fair!” Tiffany protested desperately. This was completely going wrong!

“Wouldn’t it, now?” said Mr. Weavall, and his bright eyes gave her a long, shrewd look. “Well, then, let’s call it payment for this little errand you’re gonna run for I, eh? You’re gonna run up they stairs, which I can’t quite manage anymore, and bring down the black suit that’s hanging behind the door, and there’s a clean shirt in the chest at the end of the bed. And you’ll polish my boots and help I up, but I’m thinking I could prob’ly make it down the lane on my own. ’Cuz, y’see, this is far too much money to buy a man’s funeral, but I reckon it’ll do fine to marry him off, so I am proposin’ to propose to the Widow Tussy that she engages in matrimony with I!”

The last sentence took a little working out, and then Tiffany said, “You are?”

“That I am,” said Mr. Weavall, struggling to his feet. “She’s a fine woman who bakes a very reasonable steak-and-onion pie, and she has all her own teeth. I know that because she showed I. Her youngest son got her a set of fancy store-bought teeth all the way from the big city, and very handsome she looks in ’em. She was kind enough to loan ’em to I one day when I had a difficult piece of pork to tackle, and a man doesn’t forget a kindness like that.”

“Er . . . you don’t think you ought to think about this, do you?” said Tiffany.

Mr. Weavall laughed. “Think? I got no business to be thinking about it, young lady! Who’re you to tell an old ’un like I that he ought to be thinking? I’m ninety-one, I am! Got to be up and doing! Besides, I have reason to believe by the twinkle in her eye that the Widow Tussy will not turn up her nose at my suggestion. I’ve seen a fair number of twinkles over the years, and that was a good ’un. And I daresay that suddenly having a box of gold will fill in the corners, as my ol’ dad would say.”

It took ten minutes for Mr. Weavall to get changed, with a lot of struggling and bad language and no help from Tiffany, who was told to turn her back and put her hands over her ears. Then she had to help him out into the garden, where he threw away one walking stick and waggled a finger at the weeds.

“And I’ll be chopping down the lot of you tomorrow!” he shouted triumphantly.

At the garden gate he grasped the post and pulled himself nearly vertical, panting.

“All right,” he said, just a little anxiously. “It’s now or never. I look okay, does I?”

“You look fine, Mr. Weavall.”

“Everything clean? Everything done up?”

“Er . . . yes,” said Tiffany.

“How’s my hair look?”

“Er . . . you don’t have any, Mr. Weavall,” she reminded him.

“Ah, right. Yes, ’tis true. I’ll have to buy one o’ they whatdyoucallem’s, like a hat made of hair? Have I got enough money for that, d’you think?”

“A wig? You could buy thousands, Mr. Weavall!”

“Hah! Right.” His gleaming eyes looked around the garden. “Any flowers out? Can’t see too well. . . . Ah . . . speckatickles, I saw ’em once, made of glass, makes you see good as new. That’s what I need. . . . Have I got enough for speckatickles?”

“Mr. Weavall,” said Tiffany, “you’ve got enough for anything.”

“Why, bless you!” said Mr. Weavall. “But right now I need a bow-kwet of flowers, girl. Can’t go courtin’ without flowers and I can’t see none. Anythin’ left?”

A few roses were hanging on among the weeds and briars in the garden. Tiffany fetched a knife from the kitchen and made them up into a bouquet.

“Ah, good,” he said. “Late bloomers, just like I!” He held them tightly in his free hand and suddenly frowned, and fell silent, and stood like a statue.

“I wish my Toby and my Mary was goin’ to be able to come to the weddin’,” he said quietly. “But they’re dead, you know.”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “I know, Mr. Weavall.”

“And I could wish that my Nancy was alive, too, although bein’ as I hopes to be marryin’ another lady, that ain’t a sensible wish, maybe. Hah! Nearly everyone one I knows is dead.” Mr. Weavall stared at the bunch of flowers for a while, and then straightened up again. “Still, can’t do nothin’ about that, can we? Not even for a box full of gold!”

“No, Mr. Weavall,” said Tiffany hoarsely.

“Oh, don’t cry, girl! The sun is shinin’, the birds is singin’, and what’s past can’t be mended, eh?” said Mr. Weavall jovially. “And the Widow Tussy is waitin’!”

For a moment he looked panicky, and then he cleared his throat.

“Don’t smell too bad, do I?” he said.

“Er . . . only of mothballs, Mr. Weavall.”

“Mothballs? Mothballs is okay. Right, then! Time’s a-wastin’!”

Using only the one stick, waving his other arm with the flowers in the air to keep his balance, Mr. Weavall set off with surprising speed.

“Well,” said Mistress Weatherwax as, with jacket flying, he rounded the corner. “That was nice, wasn’t it?”

Tiffany looked around quickly. Mistress Weatherwax was still nowhere to be seen, but she was somewhere to be unseen. Tiffany squinted at what was definitely an old wall with some ivy growing up it, and it was only when the old witch moved that she spotted her. She hadn’t done anything to her clothes, hadn’t done any magic as far as Tiffany knew, but she’d simply . . . faded in.

“Er, yes,” said Tiffany, taking out a handkerchief and blowing her nose.

“But it worries you,” said the witch. “You think it shouldn’t have ended like that, right?”

“No!” said Tiffany hotly.

“It would have been better if he’d been buried in some ol’ cheap coffin paid for by the village, you think?”

“No!” Tiffany twisted up her fingers. Mistress Weatherwax was sharper than a field of pins. “But . . . all right, it just doesn’t seem . . . fair. I mean, I wish the Feegles hadn’t done that. I’m sure I could have . . . sorted it out somehow, saved up . . .”

“It’s an unfair world, child. Be glad you have friends.”

Tiffany looked up at the treeline.

“Yes,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “But not up there.”

“I’m going away,” said Tiffany. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m going away.”

“Broomstick?” said Mistress Weatherwax. “It don’t move fast—”

“No! Where would I fly to? Home? I don’t want to take it there! Anyway, I can’t just fly off with it roaming around! When it . . . when I meet it, I don’t want to be near people, you understand? I know what I . . . what it can do if it’s angry! It half killed Miss Level!”

“And if it follows you?”

“Good! I’ll take it up there somewhere!” Tiffany waved at the mountains.

“All alone?”

“I don’t have a choice, do I?”

Mistress Weatherwax gave her a look that went on too long.

“No,” she said. “You don’t. But neither have I. That’s why I will come with you. Don’t argue, miss. How would you stop me, eh? Oh, that reminds me . . . them mysterious bruises Mrs. Towny gets is because Mr. Towny beats her, and the father of Miss Quickly’s baby is young Fred Turvey. You might mention that to Miss Level.”

As she spoke, a bee flew out of her ear.

Bait, thought Tiffany a few hours later, as they walked away from Miss Level’s cottage and up toward the high moors. I wonder if I’m bait, just like in the old days when the hunters would tether a lamb or a baby goat to bring the wolves nearer.

She’s got a plan to kill the hiver. I know it. She’s worked something out. It’ll come for me and she’ll just wave a hand.

She must think I’m stupid.

They had argued, of course. But Mistress Weatherwax had come up with a deeply unfair one. It was: You’re eleven. Just like that. You’re eleven, and what is Miss Tick going to tell your parents? Sorry about Tiffany, but we let her go off by herself to fight an ancient monster that can’t be killed and what’s left of her is in this jar?

Miss Level had joined in at that part, almost in tears.

If Tiffany hadn’t been a witch, she would have whined about everyone being so unfair!

In fact they were being fair. She knew they were being fair. They were not thinking just of her but of other people, and Tiffany hated herself—well, slightly—because she hadn’t. But it was sneaky of them to choose this moment to be fair. That was unfair.

No one had told her she was only nine when she went into Fairyland armed with just a frying pan. Admittedly, no one else had known she was going, except the Nac Mac Feegle, and she was much taller than they were. Would she have gone if she’d known what was in there, she wondered?

Yes. I would have.

And you’re going to face the hiver even though you don’t know how to beat it?

Yes. I am. There’s part of me still in it. I might be able to do something—

But aren’t you just ever so slightly glad that Mistress Weatherwax and Miss Level won the argument and now you’re going off very bravely but you happen to be accompanied, completely against your will, by the most powerful witch alive?

Tiffany sighed. It was dreadful when your own thoughts tried to gang up on you.

The Feegles hadn’t objected to her going to find the hiver. They did object to not being allowed to come with her. They’d been insulted, she knew. But, as Mistress Weatherwax had said, this was true haggling and there was no place in it for Feegles. If the hiver came, out there, not in a dream but for real, it’d have nothing about it that could be kicked or head butted.

Tiffany had tried to make a little speech, thanking them for their help, but Rob Anybody had folded his arms and turned his back. It had all gone wrong. But the old witch had been right. They could get hurt. The trouble was, explaining to Feegles how dangerous things were going to be only got them more enthusiastic.

She left them arguing with one another. It had not gone well.

But now that was all behind her, in more ways than one. The trees beside the track were less bushy and more pointy—or, if Tiffany had known more about trees, she would have said that the oaks were giving way to evergreens.

She could feel the hiver. It was following them, but a long way back.

If you had to imagine a head witch, you wouldn’t imagine Mistress Weatherwax. You might imagine Mrs. Earwig, who glided across the floor as though she was on wheels, and had a dress as black as the darkness in a deep cellar, but Mistress Weatherwax was just an old woman with a lined face and rough hands in a dress as black as night, which is never as black as people think. It was dusty and ragged around the hem, too.

On the other hand, thought her Second Thoughts, you once bought Granny Aching a china shepherdess, remember? All blue and white and sparkly?

Her First Thoughts thought: Well, yes, but I was a lot younger then.

Her Second Thoughts thought: Yes, but which one was the real shepherdess? The shiny lady in the nice clean dress and buckled shoes, or the old lady who stumped around in the snow with boots filled with straw and a sack across her shoulders?

At which point Mistress Weatherwax stumbled. She caught her balance very quickly.

“Dangerously loose stones on this path,” she said. “Watch out for them.”

Tiffany looked down. There weren’t that many stones, and they didn’t seem very dangerous or particularly loose.

How old was Mistress Weatherwax? That was another question she wished she hadn’t asked. She was skinny and wiry, just like Granny Aching, the kind of person who goes on and on—but one day Granny Aching had gone to bed and had never got up again, just like that. . . .

The sun was setting. Tiffany could feel the hiver in the same way that you can sense that someone is looking at you. It was still in the woods that hugged the mountain like a scarf.

At last the witch stopped at a spot where rocks like pillars sprouted out of the turf. She sat down with her back to a big rock.

“This’ll have to do,” she said. “It’ll be dark soon, and you could turn an ankle on all this loose stone.”

There were huge boulders around them, house sized, that had rolled down from the mountains in the past. The rock of the peaks began not far away, a wall of stone that seemed to hang above Tiffany like a wave. It was a desolate place. Every sound echoed.

She sat down by Mistress Weatherwax and opened the bag that Miss Level had packed for the journey.

Tiffany wasn’t very experienced at things like this but, according to the book of fairy tales, the typical food for taking on an adventure was bread and cheese. Hard cheese, too.

Miss Level had made them ham sandwiches, with pickles, and she’d included napkins. That was kind of a strange thought to keep in your head:We’re trying to find a way of killing a terrible creature, but at least we won’t be covered in crumbs.

There was a bottle of cold tea, too, and a bag of biscuits. Miss Level knew Mistress Weatherwax.

“Shouldn’t we light a fire?” Tiffany suggested.

“Why? It’s a long way down to the treeline to get the firewood, and there’ll be a fine half-moon up in twenty minutes. Your friend’s keeping its distance, and there’s nothing else that’ll attack us up here.”

“Are you sure?”

“I walk safely in my mountains,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“But aren’t there trolls and wolves and things?”

“Oh, yes. Lots.”

“And they don’t try to attack you?”

“Not anymore,” said a self-satisfied voice in the dark. “Pass me the biscuits, will you?”

“Here you are. Would you like some pickles?”

“Pickles gives me the wind something awful.”

“In that case—”

“Oh, I wasn’t saying no,” Mistress Weatherwax said, taking two large pickled cucumbers.

Oh, good, Tiffany thought.

She’d brought three fresh eggs with her. Getting the hang of a shamble was taking too long. It was stupid. All the other girls were able to use them. She was sure she was doing everything right.

She’d filled her pocket with random things. Now she pulled them out without looking, wove the thread around the egg as she’d done a hundred times before, grasped the pieces of wood, and moved them so that . . .

Poc!

The egg cracked and oozed.

“I told you,” said Mistress Weatherwax, who’d opened one eye. “They’re toys. Sticks and stones.”

“Have you ever used one?” said Tiffany.

“No. Couldn’t get the hang of them. They got in the way.” Mistress Weatherwax yawned, wrapped the blanket around her, made a couple of mnup, mnup noises as she tried to get comfortable against the rock; and after a while, her breathing became deeper.

Tiffany waited in silence, her blanket around her, until the moon came up. She’d expected that to make things better, but it didn’t. Before, there had just been darkness. Now there were shadows.

There was a snore beside her. It was one of those good solid ones, like ripping canvas.

Silence happened. It came across the night on silver wings, noiseless as the fall of a feather, silence made into a bird, which alighted on a rock close by. It swiveled its head to look at Tiffany.

There was more than just the curiosity of a bird in that look.

The old woman snored again. Tiffany reached out, still staring at the owl, and shook her gently. When that didn’t work, she shook her hardly.

There was a sound like three pigs colliding and Mistress Weatherwax opened one eye and said, “Whoo?”

“There’s an owl watching us! It’s right up close!”

Suddenly the owl blinked, looked at Tiffany as if amazed to see her, spread its wings, and glided off into the night.

Mistress Weatherwax gripped her throat, coughed once or twice, and then said hoarsely, “Of course it was an owl, child! It took me ten minutes to lure it this close! Now just you be quiet while I starts again—otherwise I shall have to make do with a bat, and when I goes out on a bat for any time at all, I ends up thinkin’ I can see with my ears, which is no way for a decent woman to behave!”

“But you were snoring!”

“I was not snoring! I was just resting gently while I tickled an owl closer! If you hadn’t shaken me and scared it away, I’d have been up there with this entire moor under my eye.”

“You . . . take over its mind?” said Tiffany nervously.

“No! I’m not one of your hivers! I just . . . borrows a lift from it, I just . . . nudges it now and again, it don’t even know I’m there. Now try to rest!”

“But what if the hiver—?”

“If it comes anywhere near, it’ll be me that tells you!” Mistress Weatherwax hissed, and lay back. Then her head jerked up one more time. “And I do not snore!” she added.

After half a minute she started to snore again.

Minutes after that the owl came back, or perhaps it was a different owl. It glided onto the same rock, settled there for a while, and then sped away. The witch stopped snoring. In fact, she stopped breathing.

Tiffany leaned closer and finally lowered an ear to the skinny chest to see if there was a heartbeat.

Her own heart felt as if it was clenched like a fist—

—because of the day she’d found Granny Aching in the hut. She was lying peacefully on the narrow iron bed, but Tiffany had known something was wrong as soon as she had stepped inside—

Boom.

Tiffany counted to three.

Boom.

Well, it was a heartbeat.

Very slowly, like a twig growing, a stiff hand moved. It slid like a glacier into a pocket and came up holding a large piece of card on which was written:

I ATE’NT DEAD

Tiffany decided she wasn’t going to argue. But she pulled the blanket over the old woman and wrapped her own around herself.

By moonlight she tried again with her shamble. Surely she should be able to make it do something. Maybe if—

By moonlight she very, very carefully—

Poc!

The egg cracked. The egg always cracked, and now there was only one left. Tiffany didn’t dare try it with a beetle, even if she could have found one. It would be too cruel.

She sat back and looked across the landscape of silver and black, and her Third Thoughts thought: It’s not going to come near.

Why?

She thought: I’m not sure why I know. But I know. It’s keeping away. It knows Mistress Weatherwax is with me.

She thought: How can it know that? It’d not got a mind. It doesn’t know what a Mistress Weatherwax is!

Still thinking, thought her Third Thoughts.

Tiffany slumped against the rock.

Sometimes her head was too . . . crowded. . . .

And then it was morning, and sunlight, and dew on her hair, and mist coming off the ground like smoke . . . and an eagle sitting on the rock where the owl had been, eating something furry. She could see every feather on its wing.

It swallowed, glared at Tiffany with its crazy bird eyes, and flapped away, making the mist swirl.

Beside her, Mistress Weatherwax began to snore again, which Tiffany took to mean that she was in her body. She gave the old woman a nudge, and the sound that had been a regular gnaaaargrgrgrgrg suddenly became blort.

The old woman sat up coughing and waved a hand irritably at Tiffany to pass her the tea bottle. She didn’t speak until she’d gulped half of it.

“Ah, say what you like, but rabbit tastes a lot better cooked,” she gasped, shoving the cork back in. “And without the fur on!”

“You took—borrowed the eagle?” said Tiffany.

“O’ course. I couldn’t expect the poor ol’ owl to fly around after daybreak, just to see who’s about. It was hunting voles all night, and believe me, raw rabbit’s better’n voles. Don’t eat voles.”

“I won’t,” said Tiffany, and meant it. “Mistress Weatherwax, I think I know what the hiver’s doing. It’s thinking.”

“I thought it had no brains!”

Tiffany let her thoughts speak for themselves.

“But there’s an echo of me in it, isn’t there? There must be. It has an echo of everyone it’s . . . been. There must be a bit of me in it. I know it’s out there, and it knows I’m here with you. And it’s keeping away.”

“Oh? Why’s that, then?”

“Because it’s frightened of you, I think.”

“Huh! And why’s that?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany simply. “It’s because I am. A bit.”

“Oh dear. Are you?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “It’s like a dog that’s been beaten but won’t run away. It doesn’t understand what it’s done wrong. But . . . there’s something about it that . . . there’s a thought that I’m nearly having. . . .”

Mistress Weatherwax said nothing. Her face went blank.

“Are you all right?” said Tiffany.

“I was just leavin’ you time to have that thought,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“Sorry. It’s gone now. But . . . we’re thinking about the hiver in the wrong way.”

“Oh, yes? And why’s that?”

“Because . . .” Tiffany struggled with the idea. “I think it’s because we don’t want to think about it the right way. It’s something to do with . . . the third wish. And I don’t know what that means.”

The witch said, “Keep picking at that thought,” and then looked up and added, “We’ve got company.”

It took Tiffany several seconds to spot what Mistress Weatherwax had seen—a shape at the edge of the woods, small and dark. It was coming closer, but rather uncertainly.

It resolved itself into the figure of Petulia, flying slowly and nervously a few feet above the heather. Sometimes she jumped down and wrenched the stick in a slightly different direction.

She got off again when she reached Tiffany and Mistress Weatherwax, grabbed the broom hastily, and aimed it at a big rock. It hit it gently and hung there, trying to fly through stone.

“Um, sorry,” she panted. “But I can’t always stop it, and this is better than having an anchor . . . um.”

She started to bob a curtsy to Mistress Weatherwax, remembered she was a witch, and tried to turn it into a bow halfway down, which was an event you’d pay money to see. She ended up bent double, and from somewhere in there came the little voice, “Um, can someone help, please? I think my Octogram of Trimontane has got caught up on my Pouch of Nine Herbs. . . .”

There was a tricky minute while they untangled her, with Mistress Weatherwax muttering, “Toys, just toys,” as they unhooked bangles and necklaces.

Petulia stood upright, red in the face. She saw Mistress Weatherwax’s expression, whipped off her pointy hat, and held it in front on her. This was a mark of respect, but it did mean that a two-foot, sharp, pointy thing was being aimed at them.

“Um . . . I went to see Miss Level and she said you’d come up here after some horrible thing,” she said. “Um . . . so I thought I’d better see how you were.”

“Um . . . that was very kind of you,” said Tiffany, but her treacherous Second Thoughts thought: And what would you have done if it had attacked us? She had a momentary picture of Petulia standing in front of some horrible raging thing, but it wasn’t as funny as she’d first thought. Petulia would stand in front of it, shaking with terror, her useless amulets clattering, scared almost out of her mind . . . but not backing away. She’d thought there might be people facing something horrible here, and she’d come anyway.

“What’s your name, my girl?” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“Um, Petulia Gristle, mistress. I’m learning with Gwinifer Blackcap.”

“Old Mother Blackcap?” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Very sound. A good woman with pigs. You did well to come here.”

Petulia looked nervously at Tiffany.

“Um, are you all right? Miss Level said you’d been . . . ill.”

“I’m much better now, but thank you very much for asking anyway,” said Tiffany wretchedly. “Look, I’m sorry about—”

“Well, you were ill,” said Petulia.

And that was another thing about Petulia. She always wanted to think the best of everybody. This was sort of worrying if you knew that the person she was doing her best to think nice thoughts about was you.

“Are you going to go back to the cottage before the Trials?” Petulia went on.

“Trials?” said Tiffany, suddenly lost.

“The Witch Trials,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“Today,” said Petulia.

“I’d forgotten all about them!” said Tiffany.

“I hadn’t,” said the old witch calmly. “I never miss a Trial. Never missed a Trial in sixty years. Would you do a poor old lady a favor, Miss Gristle, and ride that stick of yours back to Miss Level’s place and tell her that Mistress Weatherwax presents her compliments and intends to head directly to the Trials. Was she well?”

“Um, she was juggling balls without using her hands!” said Petulia in wonderment. “And d’you know what? I saw a fairy in her garden! A blue one!”

“Really?” said Tiffany, her heart sinking.

“Yes! It was rather scruffy, though. And when I asked it if it really was a fairy, it said it was . . . um . . . ‘the big stinky horrible spiky iron stinging nettle fairy from the Land o’ Tinkle,’ and called me a ‘scunner.’ Do you know what that means?”

Tiffany looked into that round, hopeful face. She opened her mouth to say, “It means someone who likes fairies,” but stopped in time. That just wouldn’t be fair. She sighed.

“Petulia, you saw a Nac Mac Feegle,” she said. “It is a kind of fairy, but they’re not the sweet kind. I’m sorry. They’re good . . . well, more or less . . . but they’re not entirely nice. And ‘scunner’ is a kind of swear word. I don’t think it’s a particularly bad one, though.”

Petulia’s expression didn’t change for a while. Then she said: “So it was a fairy, then?”

“Well, yes. Technically.”

The round pink face smiled.

“Good, I did wonder, because it was, um, you know . . . having a wee up against one of Miss Level’s garden gnomes?”

“Definitely a Feegle,” said Tiffany.

“Oh well, I suppose the big stinky horrible spiky iron stinging nettle needs a fairy, just like every other plant,” said Petulia.

CHAPTER 11

Arthur

When Petulia had gone, Mistress Weatherwax stamped her feet and said, “Let’s go, young lady. It’s about eight miles to Sheercliff. They’ll have started before we get there.”

“What about the hiver?”

“Oh, it can come if it likes.” Mistress Weatherwax smiled. “Oh, don’t frown like that. There’ll be more’n three hundred witches at the Trials, and they’re way out in the country. It’ll be as safe as anything. Or do you want to meet the hiver now? We could probably do that. It don’t seem to move fast.”

“No!” said Tiffany, louder than she’d intended. “No, because . . . things aren’t what they seem. We’d do things wrong. Er . . . I can’t explain it. It’s because of the third wish.”

“Which you don’t know what it is?”

“Yes. But I will soon, I hope.”

The witch stared at her. “Yes, I hope so, too,” she said. “Well, no point in standing around. Let’s get moving.” And with that the witch picked up her blanket and set off as though being pulled by a string.

“We haven’t even had anything to eat!” said Tiffany, running after her.

“I had a lot of voles last night,” said Mistress Weatherwax over her shoulder.

“Yes, but you didn’t actually eat them, did you?” said Tiffany. “It was the owl that actually ate them.”

“Technic’ly, yes,” Mistress Weatherwax admitted. “But if you think you’ve been eating voles all night, you’d be amazed how much you don’t want to eat anything the next morning. Or ever again.”

She nodded at the distant, departing figure of Petulia.

“Friend of yours?” she said, as they set out.

“Er . . . if she is, I don’t deserve it,” said Tiffany.

“Hmm,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Well, sometimes we get what we don’t deserve.”

For an old woman Mistress Weatherwax could move quite fast. She strode over the moors as if distance was a personal insult. But she was good at something else too.

She knew about silence. There was the swish of her long skirt as it snagged the heathers, but somehow that became part of the background noise.

In the silence, as she walked, Tiffany could still hear the memories. There were hundreds of them left behind by the hiver. Most of them were so faint that they were nothing more than a slight uncomfortable feeling in her head, but the ancient tiger still burned brightly in the back of her brain, and behind that was the giant lizard. They’d been killing machines, the most powerful creatures in their world—once. The hiver had taken them both. And then they’d died fighting.

Always taking fresh bodies, always driving the owners mad with the urge for power, which would always end with getting them killed . . . and just as Tiffany wondered why, a memory said: Because it is frightened.

Frightened of what? Tiffany thought. It’s so powerful!

Who knows? But it’s mad with terror. Completely binkers!

“You’re Sensibility Bustle, aren’t you?” said Tiffany, and then her ears informed her that she’d said this aloud.

“Talkative, ain’t he,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “He talked in your sleep the other night. Used to have a very high opinion of himself. I reckon that’s why his memories held together for so long.”

“He doesn’t know binkers from bonkers, though,” said Tiffany.

“Well, memory fades,” said Mistress Weatherwax. She stopped and leaned against a rock. She sounded out of breath.

“Are you all right, mistress?” said Tiffany.

“Sound as a bell,” said Mistress Weatherwax, wheezing slightly. “Just getting my second wind. Anyway, it’s only another six miles.”

“I notice you’re limping a bit,” said Tiffany.

“Do you, indeed? Then stop noticing!”

The shout echoed off the cliffs, full of command.

Mistress Weatherwax coughed when the echo had died away. Tiffany had gone pale.

“It seems to me,” said the old witch, “that I might just’ve been a shade on the sharp side there. It was prob’ly the voles.” She coughed again. “Them as knows me, or has earned it one way or the other, calls me Granny Weatherwax. I shall not take it amiss if you did the same.”

“Granny Weatherwax?” said Tiffany, shocked out of her shock by this new shock.

“Not technic’ly,” said Mistress Weatherwax quickly. “It’s what they call a honorific, like Old Mother So-and-so, or Goodie Thingy, or Nanny Whatshername. To show that a witch has . . . is fully . . . has been—”

Tiffany didn’t know whether to laugh or burst into tears.

“I know,” she said.

“You do?”

“Like Granny Aching,” said Tiffany. “She was my granny, but everyone on the Chalk called her Granny Aching.” “Mrs. Aching” wouldn’t have worked, she knew. You needed a big, warm, billowing open kind of word. Granny Aching was there for everybody.

“It’s like being everyone’s grandmother,” she added. And didn’t add: who tells them stories!

“Well, then. Perhaps so. Granny Weatherwax it is,” said Granny Weatherwax, and added quickly, “but not technic’ly. Now we’d best be moving.”

She straightened up and set off again.

Granny Weatherwax. Tiffany tried it out in her head. She’d never known her other grandmother, who’d died before she was born. Calling someone else granny was strange, but oddly, it seemed right. And you could have two.

The hiver followed them. Tiffany could feel it. But it was still keeping its distance. Well, there’s a trick to take to the Trials, she thought. Granny—her brain tingled as she thought the word—Granny has got a plan. She must have.

But . . . things weren’t right. There was another thought she wasn’t quite having;it ducked out of sight every time she thought she had it. The hiver wasn’t acting right.

She made sure she kept up with Granny Weatherwax.

As they got nearer to the Trials, there were clues. Tiffany saw at least three broomsticks in the air, heading the same way. They reached a proper track, too, and groups of people were traveling in the same direction; there were a few pointy hats among them, which was a definite clue. The track dropped on down through some woods, came up in a patchwork of little fields, and headed for a tall hedge from behind which came the sound of a brass band playing a medley of Songs from the Shows, although by the sound of it no two musicians could agree on what Song or which Show.

Tiffany jumped when she saw a balloon sail up above the trees, catch the wind, and swoop away, but it turned out to be just a balloon and not a lump of excess Brian. She could tell this because it was followed by a long scream of rage mixed with a roar of complaint: “AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaaBLOON!” which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this.

However, on this occasion a broomstick with a pointy-hatted passenger rose above the trees, caught up with the balloon, and towed it back down to the Trials ground.

“Didn’t use to be like this,” Granny Weatherwax grumbled as they reached a gate. “When I was a girl, we just used to meet up in some meadow somewhere, all by ourselves. But now, oh no, it has to be a Grand Day Out for All the Family. Hah!”

There had been a crowd around the gate leading into the field, but there was something about that “Hah!” The crowd parted, as if by magic, and the women pulled their children a little closer to them as Granny walked right up to the gate.

There was a boy there selling tickets and wishing, now, that he’d never been born.

Granny Weatherwax stared at him. Tiffany saw his ears go red.

“Two tickets, young man,” said Granny. Little bits of ice tinkled off her words.

“That’ll, er, be, er . . . one child and one senior citizen?” the young man quavered.

Granny leaned forward and said: “What is a senior citizen, young man?”

“It’s like . . . you know . . . old folks,” the boy mumbled. Now his hands were shaking.

Granny leaned farther forward. The boy really, really wanted to step back, but his feet were rooted to the ground. All he could do was bend backward.

“Young man,” said Granny, “I am not now, nor shall I ever be, an ‘old folk.’ We’ll take two tickets, which I see on that board there is a penny apiece.” Her hand shot out, fast as an adder. The boy made a noise like gneeee as he leaped back.

“Here’s tuppence,” said Granny Weatherwax.

Tiffany looked at Granny’s hand. The first finger and thumb were held together, but there did not appear to be any coins between them.

Nevertheless, the young man, grinning horribly, took the total absence of coins very carefully between his thumb and finger. Granny twitched two tickets out of his other hand.

“Thank you, young man,” she said, and walked into the field. Tiffany ran after her.

“What did—?” she began, but Granny Weatherwax raised a finger to her lips, grasped Tiffany’s shoulder, and swiveled her around.

The ticket seller was still staring at his fingers. He even rubbed them together. Then he shrugged, held them over his leather moneybag, and let go.

Clink, clink . . .

The crowd around the gate gave a gasp, and one or two of them started to applaud. The boy looked around with a sick kind of grin, as if of course he’d expected that to happen.

“Ah, right,” said Granny Weatherwax happily. “And now I could just do with a cup of tea and maybe a sweet biscuit.”

“Granny, there are children here! Not just witches!”

People were looking at them. Granny Weatherwax jerked Tiffany’s chin up so that she could look into her eyes.

“Look around, eh? Down here you can’t move for amulets and wands and whatnot! It’ll be bound to keep away, eh?”

Tiffany turned to look. There were sideshows all around the field. A lot of them were fun fair stuff that she’d seen before at agricultural shows around the Chalk: Roll-a-Penny, Lucky Dip, Bobbing for Piranhas, that sort of thing. The Ducking Stool was very popular among young children on such a hot day. There wasn’t a fortune-telling tent, because no fortune teller would turn up at an event where so many visitors were qualified to argue and answer back, but there were a number of witch stalls. Zakzak’s had a huge tent, with a display dummy outside wearing a Sky Scraper hat and a Zephyr Billow cloak, which had drawn a crowd of admirers. The other stalls were smaller, but they were thick with things that glittered and tinkled, and they were doing a brisk trade among the younger witches. There were whole stores full of dream catchers and curse nets, including the new self-emptying ones. It was odd to think of witches buying them, though. It was like fish buying umbrellas.

Surely a hiver wouldn’t come here, with all these witches?

She turned to Granny Weatherwax.

Granny Weatherwax wasn’t there.

It is hard to find a witch at the Witch Trials. That is, it is too easy to find a witch at the Witch Trials, but very hard to find the one you’re looking for, especially if you suddenly feel lost and all alone and you can feel panic starting to open inside you like a fern.

Most of the older witches were sitting at trestle tables in a huge roped-off area. They were drinking tea. Pointy hats bobbed as tongues wagged. Every woman seemed capable of talking while listening to all the others at the table at the same time, although this talent isn’t confined to witches. It was no place to search for an old woman in black with a pointy hat.

The sun was quite high in the sky now. The field was filling up. Witches were circling to land at the far end, and more and more people were pouring in through the gateway. The noise was intense. Everywhere Tiffany turned, black hats were scurrying.

Pushing her way through the throng, she looked desperately for a friendly face, like Miss Tick or Miss Level or Petulia. If it came to it, an unfriendly one would do—even Mrs. Earwig.

And she tried not to think. She tried not to think that she was terrified and alone in this huge crowd, and that up on the hill, invisible, the hiver now knew this because just a tiny part of it was her.

She felt the hiver stir. She felt it begin to move.

Tiffany stumbled through a chattering group of witches, their voices sounding shrill and unpleasant. She felt ill, as though she’d been in the sun too long. The world was spinning.

A remarkable thing about a hiver, a reedy voice began, somewhere in the back of her head, is that its hunting pattern mimics that of the common shark, among other creatures—

“I do not want a lecture, Mr. Bustle,” Tiffany mumbled. “I do not want you in my head!”

But the memory of Sensibility Bustle had never taken much notice of other people when he was alive and it wasn’t going to begin now. It went on in its self-satisfied squeak: —in that, once it has selected its prey, it will completely ignore other attractive targets—

She could see all the way across the Trials field, and something was coming. It moved through the crowd like the wind through a field of grass. You could plot its progress by the people. Some fainted, some yelped and turned around, some ran. Witches stopped their gossip, chairs were overturned, and the shouting started. But it wasn’t attacking anything. It was only interested in Tiffany.

Like a shark, thought Tiffany. The killer of the sea, where worse things happen.

Tiffany backed away, the panic filling her up. She bumped into witches hurrying toward the commotion and shouted at them:

“You can’t stop it! You don’t know what it is! You’ll flail at it and wave glittery sticks and it will keep coming! It will keep coming!”

She put her hands into her pockets and touched the lucky stone. And the string. And the piece of chalk.

If this was a story, she thought bitterly, I’d trust in my heart and follow my star and all that other stuff and it would all turn out all right, right now, by tinkly Magikkkk. But you’re never in a story when you need to be.

Story, story, story . . .

The third wish. The Third Wish. The Third Wish is the important one.

In stories the genie or the witch or the magic cat . . . offers you three wishes.

Three wishes . . .

She grabbed a hurrying witch and looked into the face of Annagramma, who stared at her in terror and tried to cower away.

“Please don’t do anything to me! Please!” she cried. “I’m your friend, aren’t I?”

“If you like, but that wasn’t me and I’m better now,” said Tiffany, knowing she was lying. It had been her, and that was important. She had to remember that. “Quick, Annagramma! What’s the third wish? Quickly! When you get three wishes, what’s the third wish!”

Annagramma’s face screwed up into the affronted frown she wore when something had the nerve not to be understandable. “But why do—?”

“Don’t think about it, please! Just answer!”

“Well, er . . . it could be anything . . . being invisible or . . . or blond, or anything—” Annagramma burbled, her mind coming apart at the seams.

Tiffany shook her head and let her go. She ran to an old witch who was staring at the commotion.

“Please, mistress, this is important! In stories, what’s the third wish? Don’t ask me why, please! Just remember!”

“Er . . . happiness. It’s happiness, isn’t it?” said the old lady. “Yes, definitely. Health, wealth, and happiness. Now if I was you, I’d—”

“Happiness? Happiness . . . thank you,” said Tiffany, and looked around desperately for someone else. It wasn’t happiness, she knew that in her boots. You couldn’t get happiness by magic, and that was another clue right there.

There was Miss Tick, hurrying between the tents. There was no time for half measures. Tiffany pulled her around and shouted: “HelloMissTickYesI’mFineIHopeYouAreWellTooWhatIsTheThirdWishQuicklyThisIsImportantPleaseDon’tArgueOrAskQuestionThereIsn’tTime!”

Miss Tick, to her credit, hesitated only for a moment or two. “To have a hundred more wishes, isn’t it?” she said.

Tiffany stared at her and then said, “Thank you. It isn’t, but that’s a clue, too.”

“Tiffany, there’s a—” Miss Tick began.

But Tiffany had seen Granny Weatherwax.

She was standing in the middle of the field, in a big square that had been roped off for some reason. No one seemed to notice her. She was watching the frantic witches around the hiver, where there was an occasional flash and sparkle of magic. She had a calm, faraway look.

Tiffany brushed Miss Tick’s arm away, ducked under the rope, and ran up to her.

“Granny!”

The blue eyes turned to her.

“Yes?”

“In stories, where the genie or the magic frog or the fairy godmother gives you three wishes . . . what’s the third wish?”

“Ah, stories,” said Granny. “That’s easy. In any story worth the tellin’, that knows about the way of the world, the third wish is the one that undoes the harm the first two wishes caused.”

“Yes! That’s it! That’s it!” shouted Tiffany, and the words piling up behind the question poured out. “It’s not evil! It can’t be! It hasn’t got a mind of its own! This is all about wishes! Our wishes! It’s like in the stories, where they—”

“Calm down. Take a deep breath,” said Granny. She took Tiffany by the shoulders so that she faced the panicking crowd.

“You got frightened for a moment, and now it’s comin’ and it’s not going to turn back, not now, ’cuz it’s desperate. It don’t even see the crowd. They don’t mean a thing to it. It’s you it wants. It’s you it’s after. You should be the one who faces it. Are you ready?”

“But supposing I lose—”

“I never got where I am today by supposin’ I was goin’ to lose, young lady. You beat it once—you can do it again!”

“But I could turn into something terrible!”

“Then you’ll face me,” said Granny. “You’ll face me, on my ground. But that won’t happen, will it? You were fed up with grubby babies and silly women? Then this is . . . the other stuff. It’s noon now. They should’ve started the Trials proper, but, hah, it looks as though people have forgotten. Now, then . . . do you have it in you to be a witch by noonlight, far away from your hills?”

“Yes!” There was no other answer, not to Granny Weatherwax.

Granny Weatherwax bowed low and then took a few steps back.

“In your own time, then, madam,” she said.

Wishes, wishes, wishes, thought Tiffany, distracted, fumbling in her pockets for the bits to make a shamble. It’s not evil. It gives us what we think we want! And what do people ask for? More wishes!

You couldn’t say: A monster got into my head and made me do it. She’d wished the money was hers. The hiver just took her at her thought.

You couldn’t say:Yes, but I’d never have really taken it! The hiver used what it found—the little secret wishes, the desires, the moments of rage, all the things that real humans knew how to ignore! It didn’t let you ignore them!

Then, as she fumbled to tie the pieces together, the egg flipped out of her hands, trusted in gravity, and smashed on the toe of her boot.

She stared at it, the blackness of despair darkening the noonlight. Why did I try this? I’ve never made a shamble that worked, so why did I try? Because I believed it had to work this time, that’s why. Like in a story. Suddenly it would all be . . . all right.

But this isn’t a story, and there are no more eggs. . . .

There was a scream, but it was high up and the sound of it took Tiffany home in the bounce of a heartbeat. It was a buzzard, in the eye of the sun, getting bigger in its plunge toward the field.

It soared up again as it passed over Tiffany’s head, fast as an arrow, and as it did so, something small let go its hold on the buzzard’s talons with a cry of “Crivens!”

Rob Anybody dropped like a stone, but there was a thwap! and suddenly a balloon of cloth snapped open above him. Two balloons, in fact, or to put it another way, Rob Anybody had “borrowed” Hamish’s parachute.

He let go of them as soon as they’d slowed him down, and dropped neatly into the shamble.

“Did ye think we’d leave ye?” he shouted, holding on to the strings. “I’m under a geas, me! Get on wi’ it, right noo!”

“What? I can’t!” said Tiffany, trying to shake him off. “Not with you! I’ll kill you! I always crack the eggs! What goose?”

“Dinna argue!” shouted Rob, bouncing up and down in the strings. “Do it! Or ye’re no’ the hag of the hills! An’ I know ye are!”

People were running past now. Tiffany glanced up. She thought she could see the hiver now as a moving shape in the dust.

She looked at the tangle in her hands and at Rob’s grinning face.

The moment twanged.

A witch deals with things, said her Second Thoughts. Get past the “I can’t.”

O-kay . . .

Why hasn’t it ever worked before? Because there was no reason for it to work. I didn’t need it to work.

I need it to help me now. No. I need me to help me.

So think about it. Ignore the noise, ignore the hiver rolling toward me over the trodden grass . . .

She’d used the things she’d had, so that was right. Calm down. Slow down. Look at the shamble. Think about the moment. There were all the things from home . . .

No. Not all the things. Not all the things at all. This time she felt the shape of what wasn’t there—

—and tugged at the silver Horse around her neck, breaking its chain, then hanging it in the threads.

Suddenly her thoughts were as cool and clear as ice, as bright and shiny as they needed to be. Let’s see . . . that looks better there . . . and that needs to be pulled this way . . .

The movement jerked the silver Horse into life. Then it spun gently, passing through the threads and Rob Anybody, who said “Didna hurt a bit! Keep goin’!”

Tiffany felt a tingle in her feet. The Horse gleamed as it turned.

“I dinna want to hurry ye!” said Rob Anybody. “But hurry!”

I’m far from home, thought Tiffany, in the same clear way, but I have it in my eye. Now I open my eyes. Now I open my eyes again—

Ahh . . .

Can I be a witch away from my hills? Of course I can. I never really leave you, Land Under Wave. . . .

Shepherds on the Chalk felt the ground shake, like thunder under the turf. Birds scattered from the bushes. The sheep looked up.

Again, the ground trembled.

Some people said a shadow crossed the sun. Some people said they heard the sound of hooves.

And a boy trying to catch hares in the little valley of the Horse said the hillside had burst and a horse had leaped out like a wave as high as the sky, with a mane like the surf of the sea and a coat as white as chalk. He said it had galloped into the air like rising mist, and flown toward the mountains like a storm.

He got punished for telling stories, of course, but he thought it was worth it.

The shamble glowed. Silver coursed along the threads. It was coming from Tiffany’s hands, sparking like stars.

In that light she saw the hiver reach her and spread out until it was all around her, invisibility made visible. It rippled and reflected the light oddly. In those glints and sparkles there were faces, wavering and stretching like reflections in water.

Time was going slowly. She could see, beyond the wall of hiver, witches staring at her. One had lost her hat in the commotion, but it was hanging in the air. It hadn’t had time to fall yet.

Tiffany’s fingers moved. The hiver shimmered in the air, disturbed like a pond when a pebble has been dropped into it. Tendrils of it reached toward her. She felt its panic, felt its terror as it found itself caught—

“Welcome,” said Tiffany.

Welcome? said the hiver in Tiffany’s own voice.

“Yes. You are welcome in this place. You are safe here.”

No! We are never safe!

“You are safe here,” Tiffany repeated.

Please! said the hiver. Shelter us!

“The wizard was nearly right about you,” said Tiffany. “You hid in other creatures. But he didn’t wonder why. What are you hiding from?”

Everything, said the hiver.

“I think I know what you mean,” said Tiffany.

Do you? Do you know what it feels like to be aware of every star, every blade of grass? Yes. You do. You call it “opening your eyes again.” But you do it for a moment. We have done it for eternity. No sleep, no rest, just endless . . . endless experience, endless awareness. Of everything. All the time. How we envy you, envy you! Lucky humans, who can close your minds to the endless cold deeps of space! You have this thing you call . . . boredom? That is the rarest talent in the universe! We heard a song—it went “Twinkle twinkle little star. . . .” What power! What wondrous power! You can take a billion trillion tons of flaming matter, a furnace of unimaginable strength, and turn it into a little song for children! You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds, and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming!

Completely binkers! said a cheerful voice at the back of Tiffany’s memory. You just couldn’t keep Dr. Bustle down.

Pity us, yes, pity us, said the voices of the hiver. No shield for us, no rest for us, no sanctuary. But you, you withstood us. We saw that in you. You have minds within minds. Hide us!

“You want silence?” said Tiffany.

Yes, and more than silence, said the voice of the hiver.You humans are so good at ignoring things. You are almost blind and almost deaf. You look at a tree and see . . . just a tree, a stiff weed. You don’t see its history, feel the pumping of the sap, hear every insect in the bark, sense the chemistry of the leaves, notice the hundred shades of green, the tiny movements to follow the sun, the subtle growth of the wood . . .

“But you don’t understand us,” said Tiffany. “I don’t think any human could survive you. You give us what you think we want, as soon as we want it, just like in fairy stories. And the wishes always go wrong.”

Yes. We know that now. We have an echo of you now. We have . . . understanding, said the hiver. So now we come to you with a wish. It is the wish that puts the others right.

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “That’s always the last wish, the third wish. It’s the one that says ‘Make this not have happened.’”

Teach us the way to die, said the voices of the hiver.

“I don’t know it!”

All humans know the way, said the voices of the hiver.You walk it every day of your short, short lives. You know it. We envy you your knowledge. You know how to end. You are very talented.

I must know how to die, Tiffany thought. Somewhere deep down. Let me think. Let me get past the “I can’t.” . . .

She held up the glittering shamble. Shafts of light still spun off it, but she didn’t need it anymore. She could hold the power in the center of herself. It was all a matter of balance.

The light died. Rob Anybody was still hanging in the threads, but all his hair had come unplaited and stood out from his head in a great red ball. He looked stunned.

“I could just murrrder a kebab,” he said.

Tiffany lowered him to the ground, where he swayed slightly; then she put the rest of the shamble in her pocket.

“Thank you, Rob,” she said. “But I want you to go now. It could get . . . serious.”

It was, of course, the wrong thing to say.

“I’m no’ leavin’!” he snapped. “I promised Jeannie to keep ye safe! Let’s get on wi’ it!”

There was no arguing. Rob was standing in that half crouch of his, fists bunched, chin out, ready for anything and burning with defiance.

“Thank you,” said Tiffany, and straightened up.

Death is right behind us, she thought. Life ends, and there’s death, waiting. So . . . it must be close. Very close.

It would be . . . a door. Yes. An old door, old wood. Dark, too.

She turned. Behind her, there was a black door in the air.

The hinges would creak, she thought.

When she pushed it open, they did.

So-oo . . . she thought, this isn’t exactly real. I’m telling myself a story I can understand, about doors, and I’m fooling myself just enough for it all to work. I just have to keep balanced on that edge for it to go on working, too. That’s as hard as not thinking about a pink rhinoceros. And if Granny Weatherwax can do that, I can too.

Beyond the door, black sand stretched away under a sky of pale stars. There were some mountains on the distant horizon.

You must help us through, said the voices of the hiver.

“If you’ll tak’ my advice, you’ll no’ do that,” said Rob Anybody from Tiffany’s ankle. “I dinna trust the scunner one wee bitty!”

“There’s part of me in there. I trust that,” she said. “I did say you don’t have to come, Rob.”

“Oh, aye? An’ I’m tae see ye go through there alone, am I? Ye’ll not find me leavin’ ye now!”

“You’ve got a clan and a wife, Rob!”

“Aye, an’ so I willna dishonor them by lettin’ yer step across Death’s threshold alone,” said Rob Anybody firmly.

So, thought Tiffany as she stared through the doorway, this is what we do. We live on the edges. We help those who can’t find the way. . . .

She took a deep breath and stepped across.

Nothing much changed. The sand felt gritty underfoot and crunched when she walked over it, as she expected, but when it was kicked up, it fell back as slowly as thistledown, and she hadn’t expected that. The air wasn’t cold, but it was thin and prickly to breathe.

The door shut softly behind her.

Thank you, said the voices of the hiver. What do we do now?

Tiffany looked around her, and up at the stars. They weren’t ones that she recognized.

“You die, I think,” she said.

But there is no “me” to die, said the voices of the hiver. There is only us.

Tiffany took a deep breath. This was about words, and she knew about words. “Here is a story to believe,” she said. “Once we were blobs in the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats, and then monkeys, and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand once had claws! In my human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and the chisel teeth of a rabbit and the grinding teeth of a cow! Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to live in! When we’re frightened, the hair on our skin stands up, just like it did when we had fur. We are history! Everything we’ve ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are. Would you like the rest of the story?”

Tell us, said the hiver.

“I’m made up of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my ancestors. They’re in the way I look, in the color of my hair. And I’m made up of everyone I’ve ever met who’s changed the way I think. So who is ‘me’?”

The piece that just told us that story, said the hiver. The piece that’s truly you.

“Well . . . yes. But you must have that too. You know you say you’re ‘us’—who is it saying it? Who is saying you’re not you? You’re not different from us. We’re just much, much better at forgetting. And we know when not to listen to the monkey.”

You’ve just puzzled us, said the hiver.

“The old bit of our brains that wants to be head monkey, and attacks when it’s surprised,” said Tiffany. “It reacts. It doesn’t think. Being human is knowing when not to be the monkey or the lizard or any of the other old echoes. But when you take people over, you silence the human part. You listen to the monkey. The monkey doesn’t know what it needs, only what it wants. No, you are not an ‘us.’ You are an ‘I.’”

I, me, said the hiver. I. Who am I?

“Do you want a name? That helps.”

Yes. A name. . . .

“I’ve always liked Arthur as a name.”

Arthur, said the hiver. I like Arthur too. And if I am, I can stop. What happens next?

“The creatures you . . . took over, didn’t they die?”

Yes, said the Arthur. But we—but I didn’t see what happened. They just stopped being here.

Tiffany looked around at the endless sand. She couldn’t see anybody, but there was something out there that suggested movement. It was the occasional change in the light, perhaps, as if she was catching glimpses of something she was not supposed to see.

“I think,” she said, “that you have to cross the desert.”

What’s on the other side? asked Arthur.

Tiffany hesitated.

“Some people think you go to a better world,” she said. “Some people think you come back to this one in a different body. And some think there’s just nothing. They think you just stop.”

And what do you think? Arthur asked.

“I think that there are no words to describe it,” said Tiffany.

Is that true? said Arthur.

“I think that’s why you have to cross the desert,” said Tiffany. “To find out.”

I will look forward to it. Thank you.

“Good-bye . . . Arthur.”

She felt the hiver fall away. There wasn’t much sign of it—a movement of a few sand grains, a sizzle in the air—but it slid away slowly across the black sand.

“An’ bad cess an’ good riddance tae ye!” Rob Anybody shouted after it.

“No,” said Tiffany. “Don’t say that.”

“Aye, but it killed folk to stay alive.”

“It didn’t want to. It didn’t know how people work.”

“That was a fine load of o’ blethers ye gave it, at any rate,” said Rob admiringly. “Not even a gonnagle could make up a load o’ blethers like that.”

Tiffany wondered if it had been. Once, when the wandering teachers had come to the village, she had paid half a dozen eggs for a morning’s education on “***WONDERS OF THE UNIVERS!!***” That was expensive, for education, but it had been thoroughly worth it. The teacher had been a little bit crazy, even for a teacher, but what he’d said had seemed to make absolute sense. One of the most amazing things about the universe, he had said, was that, sooner or later, everything is made of everything else, although it’ll probably take millions and millions of years for this to happen. The other children had giggled or argued, but Tiffany knew that what had once been tiny living creatures was now the chalk of the hills. Everything went around, even stars.

That had been a very good morning, especially since she’d been refunded half an egg for pointing out that universe had been spelled wrong.

Was it true? Maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe it just had to be true enough for Arthur.

Her eyes, the inner eyes that opened twice, were beginning to close. She could feel the power draining away. You couldn’t stay in that state for long. You became so aware of the universe that you stopped being aware of you. How clever of humans to have learned how to close their minds. Was there anything so amazing in the universe as boredom?

She sat down, just for a moment, and picked up a handful of the sand. It rose above her hand, twisting like smoke, reflecting the starlight, then settled back as if it had all the time in the world.

She had never felt this tired.

She still heard the inner voices. The hiver had left memories behind, just a few. She could remember when there had been no stars and when there had been no such thing as “yesterday.” She knew what was beyond the sky and beneath the grass. But she couldn’t remember when she had last slept, properly slept, in a bed. Being unconscious didn’t count. She closed her eyes, and closed her eyes again—

Someone kicked her hard on the foot.

“Dinna gae to sleep!” Rob Anybody shouted. “Not here! Ye canna gae to sleep here! Rise an’ shine!”

Still feeling muzzy, Tiffany pushed herself back onto her feet, through gentle swirls of rising dust, and turned to the dark door.

It wasn’t there.

There were her footprints in the sand, but they went only a few feet and, anyway, were slowly disappearing. There was nothing around her but dead desert, forever.

She turned back to look toward the distant mountains, but her view was blocked by a tall figure, all in black, holding a scythe. It hadn’t been there before.

GOOD AFTERNOON, said Death.

CHAPTER 12

The Egress

Tiffany stared up into a black hood. There was a skull in it, but the eye sockets glowed blue.

At least bones had never frightened Tiffany. They were only chalk that had walked around.

“Are you—?” she began, but Rob Anybody gave a yell and leaped straight for the hood.

There was a thud. Death took a step backward and raised a skeletal hand to his cowl. He pulled Rob Anybody out by his hair and held him at arm’s length while the Nac Mac Feegle cursed and kicked.

IS THIS YOURS? Death asked Tiffany. The voice was heavy and all around her, like thunder.

“No. Er . . . he’s his.”

I WAS NOT EXPECTING A NAC MAC FEEGLE TODAY, said Death. OTHERWISE I WOULD HAVE WORN PROTECTIVE CLOTHING, HA HA.

“They do fight a lot,” Tiffany admitted. “You are Death, aren’t you? I know this might sound like a silly question.”

YOU ARE NOT AFRAID?

“Not yet. But, er . . . which way to the egress, please?”

There was a pause. Then Death said, in a puzzled voice: ISN’T THAT A FEMALE EAGLE?

“No,” said Tiffany. “Everyone thinks that. Actually, it’s the way out. The exit.”

Death pointed, with the hand that still held the incandescently angry Rob Anybody.

THAT WAY. YOU HAVE TO WALK THE DESERT.

“All the way to the mountains?”

YES. BUT ONLY THE DEAD CAN TAKE THAT WAY.

“Ye’ve got tae let me go sooner or later, ye big ’natomy!” yelled Rob Anybody. “And then ye’re gonna get sich a kickin’!”

“There was a door here!” said Tiffany.

AH, YES, said Death. BUT THERE ARE RULES. THAT WAS A WAY IN, YOU SEE.

“What’s the difference?

A FAIRLY IMPORTANT ONE, I’M SORRY TO SAY. YOU WILL HAVE TO SEE YOURSELVES OUT. DO NOT FALL ASLEEP HERE. SLEEP HERE NEVER ENDS.

Death vanished. Rob Anybody dropped to the sand and came up ready to fight, but they were alone.

“Ye’ll have to make a door oout,” he said.

“I don’t know how! Rob, I told you not to come with me. Can’t you get out?”

“Aye. Probably. But I’ve got to see ye safe. The kelda put a geas on me. I must save the hag o’ the hills.”

“Jeannie told you that?”

“Aye. She was verra definite,” said Rob Anybody.

Tiffany slumped down onto the sand again. It fountained up around her.

“I’ll never get out,” she said. How to get in, yes, that wasn’t hard. . . .

She looked around. They weren’t obvious, but there were occasional changes in the light, and little puffs of dust.

People she couldn’t see were walking past her. People were crossing the desert. Dead people, going to find out what was beyond the mountains . . .

I’m eleven, she thought. People will be upset. She thought about the farm, and how her mother and father would react. But there wouldn’t be a body, would there? So people would hope and hope that she’d come back and was just . . . missing, like old Mrs. Happens in the village, who lit a candle in the window every night for her son who’d been lost at sea thirty years ago.

She wondered if Rob could send a message—but what could she say? “I’m not dead, I’m just stuck”?

“I should have thought of other people,” she said aloud.

“Aye, weel, ye did,” said Rob, sitting down by her foot. “Yon Arthur went off happy, and ye saved other folk fra’ being killed. Ye did what ye had to do.”

Yes, thought Tiffany. That’s what we have to do. And there’s no one to protect you, because you’re the one who’s supposed to do that sort of thing.

But her Second Thoughts said: I’m glad I did it. I’d do it again. I stopped the hiver killing anyone else, even though we led it right into the Trials. And that thought was followed by a space. There should have been another thought, but she was too tired to have it. It had been important.

“Thank you for coming, Rob,” she said. “But when . . . you can leave, you must go straight back to Jeannie, understand? And tell her I’m grateful she sent you. Say I wish we’d had a chance to get to know each other better.”

“Oh, aye. I’ve sent the lads back anyway. Hamish is waitin’ for me.”

At which point the door appeared, and opened.

Granny Weatherwax stepped through and beckoned urgently.

“Some people don’t have the sense they were born with! Come on, right now!” she commanded. Behind her the door started to swing shut, but she swung around savagely and rammed her boot against the jamb, shouting, “Oh, no you don’t, you sly devil!”

“But . . . I thought there were rules!” said Tiffany, getting up and hurrying forward, all tiredness sudden gone. Even a tired body wants to survive.

“Oh? Really?” said Granny. “Did you sign anything? Did you take any kind of oath? No? Then they weren’t your rules! Quickly, now! And you, Mr. Anyone!”

Rob Anybody jumped onto her boot just before she pulled it away. The door shut with another click, disappeared, and left them in . . . dead light, it seemed, a space of gray air.

“Won’t take long,” said Granny Weatherwax. “It doesn’t usually. It’s the world getting back into line. Oh, don’t look like that. You showed it the Way, right? Out of pity. Well, I know this path already. You’ll tread it again, no doubt, for some other poor soul, open the door for them as can’t find it. But we don’t talk about it, understand?”

“Miss Level never—”

“We don’t talk about it, I said,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Do you know what a part of being a witch is? It’s making the choices that have to be made. The hard choices. But you did . . . quite well. There’s no shame in pity.”

She brushed some grass seed off her dress.

“I hope Mrs. Ogg has arrived,” she said. “I need her recipe for apple chutney. Oh . . . when we arrive you might feel a bit dizzy. I’d better warn you.”

“Granny?” said Tiffany, as the light began to grow brighter. It brought tiredness back with it, too.

“Yes?”

“What exactly happened just then?”

“What do you think happened?”

Light burst in upon them.

Someone was wiping Tiffany’s forehead with a damp cloth.

She lay, feeling the beautiful coolness. There were voices around her, and she recognized the chronic-complainer tones of Annagramma:

“. . . And she was really making a fuss in Zakzak’s. Honestly, I don’t think she’s quite right in the head! I think she’s literally gone cuckoo! She was shouting things and using some kind of, oh, I don’t know, some peasant trick to make us think she’d turned that fool Brian into a frog. Well, of course, she didn’t fool me for one minute—”

Tiffany opened her eyes and saw the round pink face of Petulia, screwed up with concern.

“Um, she’s awake!” said the girl.

The space between Tiffany and the ceiling filled up with pointy hats. They drew back, reluctantly, as she sat up. From above, it must have looked like a dark daisy, closing and opening.

“Where is this?” she said.

“Um, the First Aid and Lost Children’s Tent,” said Petulia. “Um . . . you fainted when Mistress Weatherwax brought you back from . . . from wherever you’d gone. Everyone’s been in to see you!”

“She said you’d, like, dragged the monster into, like, the Next World!” said Lucy Warbeck, her eyes gleaming. “Mistress Weatherwax told everyone all about it!”

“Well, it wasn’t quite—” Tiffany began. She felt something prod her in the back. She reached behind her, and her hand came out holding a pointy hat. It was almost gray with age and quite battered. Zakzak wouldn’t have dared try to sell something like this, but the other girls stared at it like starving dogs watching a butcher’s hand.

“Um, Mistress Weatherwax gave you her hat,” breathed Petulia. “Her actual hat.”

“She said you were a born witch and no witch should be without a hat!” said Dimity Hubbub, watching.

“That’s nice,” said Tiffany. She was used to secondhand clothes.

“It’s only an old hat,” said Annagramma.

Tiffany looked up at the tall girl and let herself smile slowly.

“Annagramma?” she said, raising a hand with the fingers open.

Annagramma backed away. “Oh no,” she said. “Don’t you do that! Don’t you do that! Someone stop her doing that!”

“Do you want a balloon, Annagramma?” said Tiffany, sliding off the table.

“No! Please!” Annagramma took another step back, holding her arms in front of her face, and fell over a bench. Tiffany picked her up and patted her cheerfully on a cheek.

“Then I shan’t buy you one,” she said. “But please learn what literally really means, will you?”

Annagramma smiled in a frozen kind of way. “Er, yes,” she managed.

“Good. And then we will be friends.”

She left the girl standing there and went back to pick up the hat.

“Um, you’re probably still a bit woozy,” said Petulia. “You probably don’t understand.”

“Ha, I wasn’t actually frightened, you know,” said Annagramma. “It was all for fun, of course.” No one paid any attention.

“Understand what?” said Tiffany.

“It’s her actual hat!” the girls chorused.

“It’s like, if that hat could talk, what stories it would have to, you know, tell,” said Lucy Warbeck.

“It was just a joke,” said Annagramma to anyone who was listening.

Tiffany looked at the hat. It was very battered, and not extremely clean. If that hat could talk, it would probably mutter.

“Where’s Granny Weatherwax now?” she said.

There was a gasp from the girls. This was nearly as impressive as the hat.

“Um . . . she doesn’t mind you calling her that?” said Petulia.

“She invited me to,” said Tiffany.

“Only we heard you had to have known her for, like, a hundred years before she let you call her that . . .” said Lucy Warbeck.

Tiffany shrugged. “Well, anyway,” she said, “do you know where she is?”

“Oh, having tea with the other old witches and yacking on about chutney and how witches today aren’t what they were when she was a girl,” said Lulu Darling.

“What?” said Tiffany. “Just having tea?”

The young witches looked at one another in puzzlement.

“Um, there’s buns too,” said Petulia. “If that’s important.”

“But she opened the door for me. The door into—out of the . . . the desert! You can’t just sit down after that and have buns!”

“Um, the ones I saw had icing on them,” Petulia ventured nervously. “They weren’t just homemade—”

“Look,” said Lucy Warbeck, “we didn’t really, you know, see anything? You were just standing there with this like glow around you and we couldn’t get in and then Gran—Mistress Weatherwax walked up and stepped right in and you both, you know, stood there? And then the glow went zip and vanished and you, like, fell over.”

“What Lucy’s failing to say very accurately,” said Annagramma, “is that we didn’t actually see you go anywhere. I’m telling you this as a friend, of course. There was just this glow, which could have been anything.”

Annagramma was going to be a good witch, Tiffany considered. She could tell herself stories that she literally believed. And she could bounce back like a ball.

“Don’t forget, I saw the horse,” said Harrieta Bilk.

Annagramma rolled her eyes. “Oh yes, Harrieta thinks she saw some kind of horse in the sky. Except it didn’t look like a horse, she says. She says it looked like a horse would look if you took the actual horse away and just left the horsiness, right, Harrieta?”

“I didn’t say that!” snapped Harrieta.

“Well, pardon me. That’s what it sounded like.”

“Um, and some people said they saw a white horse grazing in the next field, too,” said Petulia. “And a lot of the older witches said they felt a tremendous amount of—”

“Yes, some people thought they saw a horse in a field, but it isn’t there anymore,” said Annagramma in the singsong voice she used when she thought it was all stupid. “That must be very rare in the country, seeing horses in fields. Anyway, if there really was a white horse, it was gray.”

Tiffany sat on the edge of the table, staring at her knees. Anger at Annagramma had jolted her to life, but now the tiredness was creeping back again.

“I suppose none of you saw a little blue man, about six inches high, with red hair?” she said quietly.

“Anyone?” said Annagramma with malicious cheerfulness. There was a general mumbling of “no.”

“Sorry, Tiffany,” said Lucy.

“Don’t worry,” said Annagramma. “He probably just rode away on his white horse!”

This is going to be like Fairyland all over again, thought Tiffany. Even I can’t remember if it was real. Why should anyone believe me? But she had to try.

“There was a dark doorway,” she said slowly, “and beyond it was a desert of black sand, and it was light although there were stars in the sky, and Death was there. I spoke to him. . . .”

“You spoke to him, did you?” said Annagramma. “And what did he say, pray?”

“He didn’t say pray,” said Tiffany. “We didn’t talk about much. But he didn’t know what an egress was.”

“It’s a small type of heron, isn’t it?” said Harrieta.

There was silence, except for the noise of the Trials outside.

“It’s not your fault,” said Annagramma in what was, for her, almost a friendly voice. “It’s like I said: Mistress Weatherwax messes with people’s heads.”

“What about the glow?” said Lucy.

“That was probably ball lightning,” said Annagramma. “That’s very strange stuff.”

“But people were, like, hammering on it! It was as hard as ice!”

“Ah, well, it probably felt like that,” said Annagramma, “but it was . . . probably affecting people’s muscles, maybe. I’m only trying to be helpful here,” she added. “You’ve got to be sensible. She just stood there. You saw her. There weren’t any doors or deserts. There was just her.”

Tiffany sighed. She felt tired. She wanted to crawl off somewhere. She wanted to go home. She’d walk there now if her boots weren’t suddenly so uncomfortable.

While the girls argued, she undid the laces and tugged one off.

Silver-black dust poured out. When it hit the ground, it bounced slowly, curving up into the air again like mist.

The girls turned, watching in silence. Then Petulia reached down and caught some of the dust. When she lifted her hand, the fine stuff flowed between her fingers. It fell as slowly as feathers.

“Sometimes things go wrong,” she said, in a faraway voice. “Mistress Blackcap told me. Haven’t any of you been there when old folk are dying?” There were one or two nods, but everyone was watching the dust.

“Sometimes things go wrong,” said Petulia again. “Sometimes they’re dying but they can’t leave because they don’t know the Way. She said that’s when they need you to be there, close to them, to help them find the door so they don’t get lost in the dark.”

“Petulia, we’re not supposed to talk about this,” said Harrieta gently.

“No!” said Petulia, her face red. “It is time to talk about it, just here, just us! Because she said it’s the last thing you can do for someone. She said there’s a dark desert they have to cross, where the sand—”

“Hah! Mrs. Earwig says that sort of thing is black magic,” said Annagramma, her voice as sharp and sudden as a knife.

“Does she?” said Petulia dreamily as the sand poured down. “Well, Mistress Blackcap said that sometimes the moon is light and sometimes it’s in shadow, but you should always remember it’s the same moon. And . . . Annagramma?”

“Yes?”

Petulia took a deep breath.

“Don’t you ever dare interrupt me again as long as you live. Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare! I mean it.”

CHAPTER 13

The Witch Trials

And then . . . there were the Trials themselves. That was the point of the day, wasn’t it? But Tiffany, stepping out with the girls around her, sensed the buzz in the air. It said: Was there any point now? After what had happened?

Still, people had put up the rope square again, and a lot of the older witches dragged their chairs to the edge of it, and it seemed that it was going to happen after all. Tiffany wandered up to the rope, found a space, and sat down on the grass with Granny Weatherwax’s hat in front of her.

She was aware of the other girls behind her, and also of a buzz or susurration of whispering spreading out into the crowd.

“. . . She really did do it, too. . . . No, really . . . all the way to the desert. . . . Saw the dust . . . her boots were full, they say. . . .”

Gossip spreads faster among witches than a bad cold. Witches gossip like starlings.

There were no judges and no prizes. The Trials weren’t like that, as Petulia had said. The point was to show what you could do, to show what you’d become, so that people would go away thinking things like “That Caramella Bottlethwaite, she’s coming along nicely.” It wasn’t a competition, honestly. No one won.

And if you believed that, you’d believe that the moon is pushed around the sky by a goblin called Wilberforce.

What was true was that one of the older witches generally opened the thing with some competent but not surprising trick that everyone had seen before but still appreciated. That broke the ice. This year it was old Goodie Trample and her collection of singing mice.

But Tiffany wasn’t paying attention. On the other side of the roped-off square, sitting on a chair and surrounded by older witches like a queen on her throne, was Granny Weatherwax.

The whispering went on. Maybe opening her eyes had opened her ears, too, because Tiffany felt she could hear the whispers all around the square.

“. . . Din’t have no trainin’, just did it. . . . Did you see that horse? . . . I never saw no horse! . . . Din’t just open the door, she stepped right in! . . . Yeah, but who was it fetched her back? Esme Weatherwax, that’s who! . . . Yes, that’s what I’m sayin’, any little fool could’ve opened the door by luck, but it takes a real witch to bring her back, that’s a winner, that is. . . . Fought the thing, left it there! . . . I didn’t see you doing anything, Violet Pulsimone! That child . . . Was there a horse or not? . . . Was going to do my dancing broom trick, but that’d be wasted now, of course. . . . Why did Mistress Weatherwax give the girl her hat, eh? What’s she want us to think? She never takes off her hat to no one!”

You could feel the tension, crackling from pointy hat to pointy hat like summer lighting.

The mice did their best with “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” but it was easy to see that their minds weren’t on it. Mice are high-strung and very temperamental.

Now people were leaning down beside Granny Weatherwax. Tiffany could see some animated conversations going on.

“You know, Tiffany,” said Lucy Warbeck, behind her, “all you’ve got to do is, like, stand up and admit it. Everyone knows you did it. I mean no one’s ever, like, done something like that at the Trials!”

“And it’s about time the old bully lost,” said Annagramma.

But she’s not a bully, Tiffany thought. She’s tough, and she expects other witches to be tough, because the edge is no place for people who break. Everything with her is a kind of test. And her Third Thoughts handed over the thought that had not quite made it back in the tent: Granny Weatherwax, you knew the hiver would only come for me, didn’t you? You talked to Dr. Bustle, you told me. Did you just turn me into your trick for today? How much did you guess? Or know?

“You’d win,” said Dimity Hubbub. “Even some of the older ones would like to see her taken down a peg. They know big magic happened. There’s not a whole shamble for miles.”

So I’d win because some people don’t like somebody else? Tiffany thought. Oh, yes, that’s really be something to be proud of. . . .

“You can bet she’ll stand up,” said Annagramma. “You watch. She’ll explain how the poor child got dragged into the Next World by a monster, and she brought her back. That’s what I’d do, if I was her.”

I expect you would, Tiffany thought. But you’re not, and you’re not me, either.

She stared at Granny Weatherwax, who was waving away a couple of elderly witches.

I wonder, she thought, if they’ve been saying things like “This girl needs taking down a peg, Mistress Weatherwax.” And as she thought that, Granny turned back and caught her eye—

The mice stopped singing, mostly in embarrassment. There was a pause, and then people started to clap, because it was the sort of thing you had to do.

A witch, someone Tiffany didn’t know, stepped out into the square, still clapping in that fluttery, hands-held-close-together-at-shoulder-height way that people use when they want to encourage the audience to go on applauding just that little bit longer.

“Very well done, Doris, excellent work, as ever,” she trilled. “They’ve come along marvelously since last year, thank you very much, wonderful, well done . . . ahem . . .”

The woman hesitated, while behind her Doris Trample crawled around on hands and knees trying to urge her mice back into their box. One of them was having hysterics.

“And now, perhaps . . . some lady would like to, er . . . take the, er . . . stage?” said the mistress of ceremonies, as brightly as a glass ball about to shatter. “Anyone?”

There was stillness, and silence.

“Don’t be shy, ladies!” The voice of the mistress of ceremonies was getting more strained by the second. It’s no fun trying to organize a field full of born organizers. “Modesty does not become us! Anyone?”

Tiffany felt the pointy hats turning, some toward her, some toward Granny Weatherwax. Away across the few yards of grass, Granny reached up and brushed someone’s hand from her shoulder, sharply, without breaking eye contact with Tiffany. And we’re not wearing hats, thought Tiffany. You gave me a virtual hat once, Granny Weatherwax, and I thank you for it. But I don’t need it today. Today, I know I’m a witch.

“Oh, come now, ladies!” said the mistress of ceremonies, now almost frantic. “This is the Trials! A place for friendly and instructive contestation in an atmosphere of fraternity and goodwill! Surely some lady . . . or young lady, perhaps . . . ?”

Tiffany smiled. It should be sorority, not fraternity. We’re sisters, mistress, not brothers.

“Come on, Tiffany!” Dimity urged. “They know you’re good!”

Tiffany shook her head.

“Oh, well, that’s it,” said Annagramma, rolling her eyes. “The old baggage has messed with the girl’s head, as usual—”

“I don’t know who’s messed with whose head,” snapped Petulia, rolling up her sleeves. “But I’m going to do the pig trick.” She got to her feet, and there was a general stir in the crowd.

“Oh, I see it’s going to be—oh, it’s you, Petulia,” said the mistress of ceremonies, slightly disappointed.

“Yes, Miss Casement, and I intend to perform the pig trick,” said Petulia loudly.

“But, er, you don’t seem to have brought a pig with you,” said Miss Casement, taken aback.

“Yes, Miss Casement. I shall perform the pig trick . . . without a pig!”

This caused a sensation, and cries of “Impossible!” and “There are children here, you know!”

Miss Casement looked around for assistance and found none.

“Oh well,” she said helplessly. “If you are sure, dear . . .”

“Yes. I am. I shall use . . . a sausage!” said Petulia, producing one from a pocket and holding it up. There was another sensation.

Tiffany didn’t see the trick. Nor did Granny Weatherwax. Their gaze was like an iron bar, and even Miss Casement instinctively didn’t step into it.

But Tiffany heard the squeal, and the gasp of amazement, and then the thunder of applause. People would have applauded anything at that point, in the same way that pent-up water would take any route out of a dam.

And then witches got up. Miss Level juggled balls that stopped and reversed direction in midair. A middle-aged witch demonstrated a new way to stop people from choking, which doesn’t even sound magical until you understand that a way of turning nearly dead people into fully alive people is worth a dozen spells that just go twing! And other women and girls came up one at a time, with big tricks and handy tips and things that went wheee! or stopped toothache or, in one case, exploded—

—and then there were no more entries.

Miss Casement walked back into the center of the field, almost drunk with relief that there had been a Trials, and made one final invitation to any ladies “or, indeed, young ladies” who might like to come forward.

There was a silence so thick you could have stuck pins in it.

And then she said: “Oh, well . . . in that case, I declare the Trials well and truly closed. Tea will be in the big tent!”

Tiffany and Granny stood up at the same time, to the second, and bowed to each other. Then Granny turned away and joined the stampede toward the teas. It was interesting to see how the crowd parted, all unaware, to let her through, like the sea in front of a particularly good prophet.

Petulia was surrounded by other young witches. The pig trick had gone down very well. Tiffany lined up to give her a hug.

“But you could have won!” said Petulia, red in the face with happiness and worry.

“That doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t,” said Tiffany.

“You gave it away,” said a sharp voice behind her. “You had it in your hand, and you gave it all away. How do you feel about that, Tiffany? Do you have a taste for humble pie?”

“Now you listen to me, Annagramma,” Petulia began, pointing a furious finger.

Tiffany reached out and lowered the girl’s arm. Then she turned and smiled so happily at Annagramma that it was disturbing.

What she wanted to say was: “Where I come from, Annagramma, they have the Sheepdog Trials. Shepherds travel there from all over to show off their dogs. And there’re silver crooks and belts with silver buckles and prizes of all kinds, Annagramma, but do you know what the big prize is? No, you wouldn’t. Oh, there are judges, but they don’t count, not for the big prize. There is—there was a little old lady who was always at the front of the crowd, leaning on the hurdles with her pipe in her mouth with the two finest sheepdogs ever pupped sitting at her feet. Their names were Thunder and Lightning, and they moved so fast, they set the air on fire and their coats outshone the sun, but she never, ever put them in the Trials. She knew more about sheep than even sheep know. And what every young shepherd wanted, really wanted, wasn’t some silly cup or belt but to see her take her pipe out of her mouth as he left the arena and quietly say, ‘That’ll do,’ because that meant he was a real shepherd and all the other shepherds would know it, too. And if you’d told him he had to challenge her, he’d cuss at you and stamp his foot and tell you he’d sooner spit the sun dark. How could he ever win? She was shepherding. It was the whole of her life. What you took away from her you’d take away from yourself. You don’t understand that, do you? But it’s the heart and soul and center of it! The soul . . . and . . . center!”

But it would be wasted, so what she said was: “Oh, just shut up, Annagramma. Let’s see if there’s any buns left, shall we?”

Overhead, a buzzard screamed. She looked up.

The bird turned on the wind and, racing through the air as it began the long glide, headed back toward home.

They were always there.

Beside her cauldron, Jeannie opened her eyes.

“He’s comin’ hame!” she said, scrambling to her feet. She waved a hand urgently at the watching Feegles. “Don’t ye just stand there gawping!” she commanded. “Catch some rabbits to roast! Build up the fire! Boil up a load o’ water, ’cuz I’m takin’ a bath! Look at this place, ’tis like a midden! Get it cleaned up! I want it sparkling for the Big Man! Go an’ steal some Special Sheep Liniment! Cut some green boughs, holly or yew, mebbe! Shine up the golden plates! The place must sparkle! What’re ye all standin’ there for?”

“Er, what did ye want us to do first, Kelda?” asked a Feegle nervously.

“All of it!”

In her chamber they filled the kelda’s soup-bowl bath and she scrubbed, using one of Tiffany’s old toothbrushes, while outside there were the sounds of Feegles working hard at cross-purposes. The smell of roasting rabbit began to fill the mound.

Jeannie dressed herself in her best dress, did her hair, picked up her shawl, and climbed out of the hole. She stood there watching the mountains until, after about an hour, a dot in the sky got bigger and bigger.

As a kelda, she would welcome home a warrior. As a wife, she would kiss her husband and scold him for being so long away. As a woman, she thought she would melt with relief, thankfulness, and joy.

CHAPTER 14

Queen of the Bees

And one afternoon about a week later, Tiffany went to see Granny Weatherwax.

It was only fifteen miles as the broomstick flies, and as Tiffany still didn’t like flying a broomstick, Miss Level took her.

It was the invisible part of Miss Level. Tiffany just lay flat on the stick, holding on with arms and legs and knees and ears if possible, and took along a paper bag to be sick into, because no one likes anonymous sick dropping out of the sky. She was also holding a large burlap sack, which she handled with care.

She didn’t open her eyes until the rushing noises had stopped and the sounds around her told her she was probably very close to the ground. In fact Miss Level had been very kind. When she fell off, because of the cramp in her legs, the broomstick was just above some quite thick moss.

“Thank you,” said Tiffany as she got up, because it always pays to mind your manners around invisible people.

She had a new dress. It was green, like the last one. The complex world of favors and obligations and gifts that Miss Level lived and moved in had thrown up four yards of nice material (for the trouble-free birth of Miss Quickly’s baby boy) and a few hours’ dressmaking (Mrs. Hunter’s bad leg feeling a lot better, thank you). She’d given the black one away. When I’m old, I shall wear midnight, she’d decided. But for now she’d had enough of darkness.

She looked around at this clearing on the side of a hill, surrounded by oak and sycamore on three sides but open on the downhill side with a wide view of the countryside below. The sycamores were shedding their spinning seeds, which whirled down lazily across a patch of garden. It was unfenced, even though some goats were grazing nearby. If you wondered why the goats weren’t eating the garden, it was because you’d forgotten who lived here. There was a well. And, of course, a cottage.

Mrs. Earwig would definitely have objected to the cottage. It was out of a storybook. The walls leaned against one another for support, the thatched roof was slipping off like a bad wig, and the chimneys were corkscrewed. If you thought a gingerbread cottage would be too fattening, this was the next worst thing.

In a cottage deep in the forest lived the Wicked Old Witch. . . .

It was a cottage out of the nastier kind of fairy tale.

Granny Weatherwax’s beehives were tucked away down one side of the cottage. Some were the old straw kind, most were patched-up wooden ones. They thundered with activity, even this late in the year.

Tiffany turned aside to look at them, and the bees poured out in a dark stream. They swarmed toward Tiffany, formed a column, and—

She laughed. They’d made a witch of bees in front of her, thousands of them all holding station in the air. She raised her right hand. With a rise in the level of buzzing, the bee-witch raised its right hand. She turned around. It turned around, the bees carefully copying every swirl and flutter of her dress, the ones on the very edge buzzing desperately because they had farthest to fly.

She carefully put down the big sack and reached out toward the figure. With another roar of wings it went shapeless for a moment, then re-formed a little way away, but with a hand outstretched toward her. The bee that was the tip of its forefinger hovered just in front of Tiffany’s fingernail.

“Shall we dance?” said Tiffany.

In the clearing full of spinning seeds, she circled the swarm. It kept up pretty well, moving fingertip to buzzing tip, turning when she turned, although there were always a few bees racing to catch up.

Then it raised both its arms and twirled in the opposite direction, the bees in the “skirt” spreading out again as it spun. It was learning.

Tiffany laughed and did the same thing. Swarm and girl whirled across the clearing.

She felt happy and wondered if she’d ever felt this happy before. The gold light, the falling seeds, the dancing bees . . . it was all one thing. This was the opposite of the dark desert. Here, light was everywhere and filled her up inside. She could feel herself here but see herself from above, twirling with a buzzing shadow that sparkled golden as the light struck the bees. Moments like this paid for it all.

Then the witch made of bees leaned closer to Tiffany, as if staring at her with its thousands of little jeweled eyes. There was a faint piping noise from inside the figure and the bee-witch exploded into a spreading, buzzing cloud of insects that raced away across the clearing and disappeared. The only movement now was the whirring fall of the sycamore seeds.

Tiffany breathed out.

“Now, some people would have found that scary,” said a voice behind her.

Tiffany didn’t turn around immediately. First she said, “Good afternoon, Granny Weatherwax.” Then she turned around. “Have you ever done this?” she demanded, still half drunk with delight.

“It’s rude to start with questions. You’d better come in and have a cup of tea,” said Granny Weatherwax.

You’d barely know that anyone lived in the cottage. There were two chairs by the fire, one of them a rocking chair, and by the table were two chairs that didn’t rock but did wobble because of the uneven stone floor. There was a dresser, and a rag rug in front of the huge hearth. A broomstick leaned against the wall in one corner, next to something mysterious and pointy, under a cloth. There was a very narrow and dark flight of stairs. And that was it. There was nothing shiny, nothing new, and nothing unnecessary.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” said Granny Weatherwax, taking a sooty black kettle off the fire and filling an equally black teapot.

Tiffany opened the sack she had brought with her.

“I’ve come to bring you your hat back,” she said.

“Ah,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Have you? And why?”

“Because it’s your hat,” said Tiffany, putting it on the table. “Thank you for the loan of it, though.”

“I daresay there’s plenty of young witches who’d give their high teeth for an ol’ hat of mine,” said Granny, lifting up the battered hat.

“There are,” said Tiffany, and did not add, “and it’s eyeteeth, actually.” What she did add was: “But I think everyone has to find their own hat. The right hat for them, I mean.”

“I see you’re now wearing a shop-bought one, then,” said Granny Weatherwax. “One of them Sky Scrapers. With stars,” she added, and there was so much acid in the word “stars” that it would’ve melted copper and then dropped through the table and the floor and melted more copper in the cellar below. “Think that makes it more magical, do you? Stars?”

“I . . . did when I bought it. And it’ll do for now.”

“Until you find the right hat,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Yes.”

“Which ain’t mine?”

“No.”

“Good.”

The old witch walked across the room and tugged the cloth off the thing in the corner. It turned out to be a big wooden spike, just about the size of a pointy hat on a tall stand. A hat was being . . . constructed on it, with thin strips of willow and pins and stiff black cloth.

“I make my own,” she said. “Every year. There’s no hat like the hat you make yourself. Take my advice. I stiffens the calico and makes it waterproof with special jollop. It’s amazing what you can put into a hat you make yourself. But you didn’t come to talk about hats.”

Tiffany let the question out at last.

“Was it real?”

Granny Weatherwax poured the tea, picked up her cup and saucer, then carefully poured some of the tea out of the cup and into the saucer. She held this up and, with care, like someone dealing with an important and delicate task, blew gently on it. She did this slowly and calmly, while Tiffany tried hard to conceal her impatience.

“The hiver’s not around anymore?” said Granny.

“No. But—”

“And how did it all feel? When it was happening? Did it feel real?”

“No,” said Tiffany. “It felt more than real.”

“Well, there you are, then,” said Granny Weatherwax, taking a sip from the saucer. “And the answer is: If it wasn’t real, it wasn’t false.”

“It was like a dream where you’ve nearly woken up and can control it, you know?” said Tiffany. “If I was careful, it worked. It was like making myself rise up in the air by pulling hard on my bootlaces. It was like telling myself a story—”

Granny nodded.

“There’s always a story,” she said. “It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”

“And what was your plan to beat the hiver?” asked Tiffany. “Please? I’ve got to know!”

“My plan?” said Granny Weatherwax innocently. “My plan was to let you deal with it.”

“Really? So what would you have done if I’d lost?”

“The best I can,” said Granny calmly. “I always do.”

“Would you have killed me if I’d become the hiver again?”

The saucer was steady in the old witch’s hand. She looked reflectively at the tea.

“I would have spared you if I could,” she said. “But I didn’t have to, right? The Trials was the best place to be. Believe me, witches can act together if they must. It’s harder’n herding cats, but it can be done.”

“It’s just that I think we . . . turned it all into a little show,” said Tiffany.

“Hah, no. We made it into a big show!” said Granny Weatherwax with great satisfaction. “Thunder and lightning and white horses and wonderful rescues! Good value, eh, for a penny? And you’ll learn, my girl, that a bit of a show every now and again does no harm to your reputation. I daresay Miss Level’s findin’ that out already, now she can juggle balls and raise her hat at the same time! Depend upon what I say!”

She delicately drank her tea out of the saucer, then nodded at the old hat on the table.

“Your grandmother,” she said, “did she wear a hat?”

“What? Oh . . . not usually,” said Tiffany, still thinking about the big show. “She used to wear an old sack as a kind of bonnet when the weather was really bad. She said hats only blow away up on the hill.”

“She made the sky her hat, then,” said Granny Weatherwax. “And did she wear a coat?”

“Hah, all the shepherds used to say that if you saw Granny Aching in a coat, it’d mean it was blowing rocks!” said Tiffany proudly.

“Then she made the wind her coat, too,” said Granny Weatherwax. “It’s a skill. Rain don’t fall on a witch if she doesn’t want it to, although personally I prefer to get wet and be thankful.”

“Thankful for what?” said Tiffany.

“That I’ll get dry later.” Granny Weatherwax put down the cup and saucer. “Child, you’ve come here to learn what’s true and what’s not, but there’s little I can teach you that you don’t already know. You just don’t know you know it, and you’ll spend the rest of your life learning what’s already in your bones. And that’s the truth.”

She stared at Tiffany’s hopeful face and sighed.

“Come outside then,” she said. “I’ll give you lesson one. It’s the only lesson there is. It don’t need writing down in no book with eyes on it.”

She led the way to the well in her back garden, looked around on the ground, and picked up a stick.

“Magic wand,” she said. “See?” A green flame leaped out of it, making Tiffany jump. “Now you try.”

It didn’t work for Tiffany, no matter how much she shook it.

“Of course not,” said Granny. “It’s a stick. Now, maybe I made a flame come out of it, or maybe I made you think one did. That don’t matter. It was me is what I’m sayin’, not the stick. Get your mind right and you can make a stick your wand and the sky your hat and a puddle your magic . . . your magic . . . er, what’re them fancy cups called?”

“Er . . . goblet,” said Tiffany.

“Right. Magic goblet. Things aren’t important. People are.” Granny Weatherwax looked sidelong at Tiffany. “And I could teach you how to run across those hills of yours with the hare, I could teach you how to fly above them with the buzzard. I could tell you the secrets of the bees. I could teach you all this and much more besides, if you’d do just one thing, right here and now. One simple thing, easy to do.”

Tiffany nodded, eyes wide.

“You understand, then, that all the glittery stuff is just toys, and toys can lead you astray?”

“Yes!”

“Then take off that shiny horse you wear around your neck, girl, and drop it in the well.”

Obediently, half hypnotized by the voice, Tiffany reached behind her neck and undid the clasp.

The pieces of the silver Horse shone as she held it over the water.

She stared at it as if she was seeing it for the first time. And then . . .

She tests people, she thought. All the time.

“Well?” said the old witch.

“No,” said Tiffany. “I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?” said Granny sharply.

“Can’t,” said Tiffany and stuck out her chin. “And won’t!”

She drew her hand back and refastened the necklace, glaring defiantly at Granny Weatherwax.

The witch smiled.

“Well done,” she said quietly. “If you don’t know when to be a human being, you don’t know when to be a witch. And if you’re too afraid of goin’ astray, you won’t go anywhere. May I see it, please?”

Tiffany looked into those blue eyes. Then she undid the clasp again and handed over the necklace. Granny held it up.

“Funny, ain’t it, that it seems to gallop when the light hits it,” said the witch, watching it twist this way and that. “Well-made thing. O’ course, it’s not what a horse looks like, but it’s certainly what a horse is.”

Tiffany stared at her with her mouth open. For a moment Granny Aching stood there grinning, and then Granny Weatherwax was back. Did she do that, she wondered, or did I do it myself? And do I dare find out?

“I didn’t just come to bring the hat back,” she managed to say. “I brought you a present, too.”

“I’m sure there’s no call for anyone to bring me a present,” said Granny Weatherwax, sniffing.

Tiffany ignored this, because her mind was still spinning. She fetched her sack again and handed over a small, soft parcel, which moved as it changed shape in her hands.

“I took most of the stuff back to Mr. Stronginthearm,” she said. “But I thought you might have a . . . a use for this.”

The old woman slowly unwrapped the white paper. The Zephyr Billow cloak unrolled itself under her fingers and filled the air like smoke.

“It’s lovely, but I couldn’t wear it,” said Tiffany as the cloak shaped itself over the gentle currents of the clearing. “You need gravitas to carry off a cloak like that.”

“What’s gravitarse?” said Granny Weatherwax sharply.

“Oh . . . dignity. Seniority. Wisdom. Those sorts of things,” said Tiffany.

“Ah,” said Granny, relaxing a little. She stared at the gently rippling cloak and sniffed. It really was a wonderful creation. The wizards had got at least one thing right when they had made it. It was one of those things that fill a hole in your life that you didn’t know was there until you’d seen it.

“Well, I suppose there’s those as can wear a cloak like this, and those as can’t,” she conceded. She let it curl around her neck and fastened it there with a crescent-shaped brooch.

“It’s a bit too grand for the likes of me,” she said. “A bit too fancy. I could look like a flibbertigibbet wearing something like this.” It was spoken like a statement but it had a curl like a question.

“No, it suits you, it really does,” said Tiffany cheerfully. “If you don’t know when to be a human being, you don’t know when to be a witch.”

Birds stopped singing. Up in the trees, squirrels ran and hid. Even the sky seemed to darken for a moment.

“Er . . . that’s what I heard,” said Tiffany, and added, “from someone who knows these things.”

The blue eyes stared into hers. There were no secrets from Granny Weatherwax. Whatever you said, she watched what you meant.

“Perhaps you’ll call again sometimes,” she said, turning slowly and watching the cloak curve in the air. “It’s always very quiet here.”

“I should like that,” said Tiffany. “Shall I tell the bees before I come, so you can get the tea ready?”

For a moment Granny Weatherwax glared, and then the lines faded into a wry grin.

“Clever,” she said.

What’s inside you? Tiffany thought. Who are you really, in there? Did you want me to take your hat? You pretend to be the big bad wicked witch, and you’re not. You test people all the time, test, test, test, but you really want them to be clever enough to beat you. Because it must be hard, being the best. You’re not allowed to stop. You can only be beaten, and you’re too proud ever to lose. Pride! You’ve turned it into terrible strength, but it eats away at you. Are you afraid to laugh in case you hear an early cackle?

We’ll meet again, one day. We both know it. We’ll meet again, at the Witch Trials.

“I’m clever enough to know how you manage not to think of a pink rhinoceros if someone says ‘pink rhinoceros,’” she managed to say aloud.

“Ah, that’s deep magic, that is,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“No. It’s not. You don’t know what a rhinoceros looks like, do you?”

Sunlight filled the clearing as the old witch laughed, as clear as a downland stream.

“That’s right!” she said.

CHAPTER 15

A Hat Full of Sky

It was one of those strange days in late February when it’s a little warmer than it should be and, although there’s wind, it seems to be all around the horizons and never quite where you are.

Tiffany climbed up onto the downs where, in the sheltered valleys, the early lambs had already found their legs and were running around in a gang in that strange jerky run that lambs have, which makes them look like wooly rocking horses.

Perhaps there was something about that day, because the old ewes joined in, too, and skipped with their lambs. They jumped and spun, half happy, half embarrassed, big winter fleeces bouncing up and down like a clown’s trousers.

It had been an interesting winter. She’d learned a lot of things. One of them was that you could be a bridesmaid to two people who between them were over 170 years old. This time Mr. Weavall, with his wig spinning on his head and his big spectacles gleaming, had insisted on giving one of the gold pieces to “our little helper,” which more than made up for the wages that she hadn’t asked for and Miss Level couldn’t afford. She’d used some of it to buy a really good brown cloak. It didn’t billow, it didn’t fly out behind her, but it was warm and thick and kept her dry.

She’d learned lots of other things too. As she walked past the sheep and their lambs, she gently touched their minds, so softly that they didn’t notice. . . .

Tiffany had stayed up in the mountains for Hogswatch, which officially marked the changing of the year. There’d been a lot to do there, and anyway it wasn’t much celebrated on the Chalk. Miss Level had been happy to give her leave now, though, for the lambing festival, which the old people called Sheepbellies. It was when the shepherds’ year began. The hag of the hills couldn’t miss that. That was when, in warm nests of straw shielded from the wind by hurdles and barriers of cut furze, the future happened. She’d helped it happen, working with the shepherds by lantern light, dealing with the difficult births. She’d worked with the pointy hat on her head and had felt the shepherds watching her as, with knife and needle and thread and hands and soothing words, she’d saved ewes from the black doorway and helped new lambs into the light. You had to give them a show. You had to give them a story. And she’d walked back home proudly in the morning, bloody to the elbows, but it had been the blood of life.

Later she had gone up to the Feegles’ mound and slid down the hole. She’d thought about this for some time and had gone prepared—with clean torn-up handkerchiefs and some soapwort shampoo made from a recipe Miss Level had given her. She had a feeling that Jeannie would have a use for these. Miss Level always visited new mothers. It was what you did.

Jeannie had been pleased to see her. Lying on her stomach so that she could get part of her body into the kelda’s chamber, Tiffany had been allowed to hold all eight of what she kept thinking of as the Roblets, born at the same time as the lambs. Seven of them were bawling and fighting one another. The eighth lay quietly, biding her time. The future happened.

It wasn’t only Jeannie who thought of her differently. News had got around. The people of the Chalk didn’t like witches. They had always come from outside. They had always come as strangers. But there was our Tiffany, birthing the lambs like her granny did, and they say she’s been learning witchery in the mountains! Ah, but that’s still our Tiffany, that is. Okay, I’ll grant you that she’s wearing a hat with big stars on it, but she makes good cheese and she knows about lambing and she’s Granny Aching’s granddaughter, right? And they’d tap their noses knowingly. Granny Aching’s granddaughter. Remember what the old woman could do? So if witch she be, then she’s our witch. She knows about sheep, she does. Hah, and I heard they had a big sort of trial for witches up in them mountains and our Tiffany showed ’em what a girl from the Chalk can do. It’s modern times, right? We got a witch now, and she’s better’n anyone else’s! No one’s throwing Granny Aching’s granddaughter in a pond!

Tomorrow she’d go back to the mountains again. It had been a busy three weeks, quite apart from the lambing. Roland had invited her to tea at the castle. It had been a bit awkward, as these things are, but it was funny how, in a couple of years, he’d gone from a lumbering oaf to a nervous young man who forgot what he was talking about when she smiled at him. And they had books in the castle!

He’d shyly presented her with a Dictionary of Amazingly Uncommon Words, and she had been prepared enough to bring him a hunting knife made by Zakzak Stronginthearm, who was excellent at blades even if he was rubbish at magic. The hat wasn’t mentioned, very carefully. And when she’d got home, she’d found a bookmark in the P section and a faint pencil underline under the word plongeon: “a small curtsy, about one third as deep as the traditional one. No longer used.” Alone in her bedroom, she’d blushed. It’s always surprising to be reminded that while you’re watching and thinking about people, all knowing and superior, they’re watching and thinking about you, right back at you.

She’d written it down in her diary, which was a lot thicker now, what with all the pressed herbs and extra notes and bookmarks. It had been trodden on by cows, struck by lightning, and dropped in tea. And it didn’t have an eye on it. An eye would have got knocked off on day one. It was a real witch’s diary.

Tiffany had stopped wearing the hat, except in public, because it kept getting bent by low doorways and completely crushed by her bedroom ceiling. She was wearing it today, though, clutching it occasionally whenever a gust tried to snatch it off her head.

She reached the place where four rusty iron wheels were half buried in the turf and a potbellied stove stood up from the grass. It made a useful seat.

Silence spread out around Tiffany, a living silence, while the sheep danced with their lambs and the world turned.

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

The words ran through Tiffany’s mind as she watched the sheep, and she found herself filling up with joy—at the new lambs, at life, at everything. Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.

“I’ve come back!” she announced to the hills. “Better than I went!”

She snatched off the hat with stars on it. It wasn’t a bad hat, for show, although the stars made it look like a toy. But it was never her hat. It couldn’t be. The only hat worth wearing was the one you made for yourself, not one you bought, not one you were given. Your own hat, for your own head. Your own future, not someone else’s.

She hurled the starry hat up as high as she could. The wind there caught it neatly. It tumbled for a moment and then was lifted by a gust and, swooping and spinning, sailed away across the downs and vanished forever.

Then Tiffany made a hat out of the sky and sat on the old potbellied stove, listening to the wind around the horizons while the sun went down.

As the shadows lengthened, many small shapes crept out of the nearby mound and joined her in the sacred place, to watch.

The sun set, which is everyday magic, and warm night came.

The hat filled up with stars. . . .

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Doctrine of Signatures mentioned here really exists in this world, although now it’s better known by historians than doctors. For hundreds of years, perhaps thousands, people believed that God, who of course had made everything, had “signed” each thing in a way that showed humanity what it could be used for. For example, goldenrod is yellow and so “must” be good for jaundice, which turns the skin yellow. (A certain amount of guesswork was involved, but sometimes patients survived.)

By an amazing coincidence, the Horse carved on the Chalk is remarkably similar to the Uffington White Horse, which in this world is carved on the downlands near the village of Uffington in southwest Oxfordshire. It’s 374 feet long, several thousand years old, and carved on the hill in such a way that you can only see all of it in one go from the air. This suggests that a) it was carved for the gods to see or b) flying was invented a lot earlier that we thought or c) people used to be much, much taller.

Oh, and this world had Witch Trials, too. They were not fun.

A HAT FULL OF SKY

The Book That Demanded to Be Written

Talking with Terry Pratchett

Welcome to Discworld

. . . and more!

To the Reader:

I HAD TO WRITE this book. In fact, other projects had to go on hold to let it past.

This was because certain scenes and characters just turned up and camped in my head and wouldn’t go away. When Miss Level said, “I left my long-distance spectacles on my other nose,” I knew I had to write more about this woman. I wanted to find out what Tiffany would do next. I wanted to see what the Nac Mac Feegles would try this time. I wanted to do the “dancing with bees” scene. And writing The Wee Free Men had been fun.

You can’t start on your next planned book when another one is bumping gently but insistently against your brain.

This is it.

I’ve had a lot of mail (actually, mostly e-mail—we’re bringing up a generation that can type with its thumbs) about The Wee Free Men. Kids liked it. Adults wrote and asked if it was really a children’s book. The children didn’t. That struck me as . . . interesting. A lot of girls thanked me for writing about a real girl; a lot of boys (and some of their parents) asked if the Nac Mac Feegle really swear that much. (No, they don’t—their mixture of Old Scots and modern Glaswegian slang is pretty innocent when translated. Truly.)

I know there’s going to be at least one more book about Tiffany because I know the title and some of the scenes. But it can wait . . . I hope.

Terry Pratchett

Talking with Terry Pratchett

Tiffany Aching has decided she wants to be a witch when she grows up. What did you want to be when you were Tiffany’s age?

When I was Tiffany’s age, I wanted to be an astronomer. I never succeeded in my ambition, because astronomers have to be good at math, and I’ve never been very good at math. I thought astronomy was a really cool job, because you got to stay up late at night. But I have to say I’m very pleased that now, because of the success of my writing, I’ve built my own observatory.

Tiffany read the dictionary straight through because no one had told her she wasn’t supposed to. Did you ever read the dictionary straight through?

Ha! Yes, I did it when I was a kid. I read dictionaries all the way through: dictionaries, thesauruses, dictionaries of slang, all that sort of thing, for the sheer fun of doing it. I think I was a rather weird kid, to be frank.

Tiffany is also an expert cheesemaker. Have you ever made cheese?

Yep. Goat’s cheese. We used to keep goats, which are really just like sheep, but a lot more intelligent and much, much more bad-tempered. I was pretty good at goat cheese, I have to say. I could make goat cheese again if someone wanted me to.

The landscape Tiffany grew up in is clearly based on the English chalk country—you’ve said there is amazingly little you had to make up about her home. What can you tell us about this part of England?

A large area of southern England is on the chalk; in fact, the White Cliffs of Dover are chalk. I live on the chalk, about twelve miles from Stonehenge. I even own about forty acres of the chalk. You always see sheep on the chalk, it tends to be very high country, and you don’t see too many trees. It’s really the center of all our mythologies in England. There’s Stonehenge there, and strange ancient carvings, and the burial mounds of dead chieftains. Back in the days when the valleys were just all flooded and swampy, the chalk uplands were how people moved around, and, in the heart of it all, was Stonehenge.

Is Tiffany’s family in any way based on your own?

Well, I grew up on the chalk. I was born in the Chiltern Hills, which is another chalk outcrop. And a lot of the things that Tiffany thinks and sees, in fact, I thought and saw when I was her age; a lot of the way Tiffany comprehends the landscape is based on my own experiences. I don’t come from a farming family, but I spent a lot of time among farmers and their families when I was a kid. I’m the actual archetypal example of an only child, so I had plenty of time to myself. My paternal grandmother has a very special place in my heart, just as Tiffany’s grandmother does, because when I was a kid I was allowed to read from her bookshelf. It was a very short bookshelf, but it contained every book you really ought to read, like the complete short stories of H. G. Wells, and the complete short stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I just worked my way along my granny’s bookshelf and didn’t realize that I was getting an education.

In Tiffany’s world, being a witch means, in part, to have certain duties and responsibilities. How did you decide to include these obligations as part of your definition of witchcraft?

Certainly witchcraft for Tiffany has very little to do with magic as people generally understand it. It has an awful lot to do with taking responsibility for yourself and taking responsibility also for the less able people and, up to a certain point, guarding your society. This is based on how witchcraft really was, I suspect. The witch was the village herbalist, the midwife, the person who knew things. She would sit up with the dying, lay out the corpses, deliver the newborn. Witches tended to be needed when human beings were meeting the dangerous edges of their lives, the places where there is no map. They don’t mess around with tinkly spells; they get their hands dirty.

And then there are the Nac Mac Feegle. They’re the most feared of all the fairy races, and yet they’re also loyal, strong, and very funny. How did you come up with the Nac Mac Feegle?

I thought it very strange, and very sad, that the fairy kingdom largely appears to be English. I thought it was time for some regional representation. And the Nac Mac Feegle are, well, they’re like tiny little Scottish Smurfs who have seen Braveheart altogether too many times. They speak a mixture of Gaelic, Old Scots, Glaswegian, and gibberish. And they’re extremely brave, and they’re extremely small, and extremely strong, and there’s hundreds and hundreds of them, and they just are automatically funny. You can’t help but love them, at a distance.

What happens to get you to sit down at your desk and write the opening words of a new novel?

I’m not sure. I start with a handful of semiformed ideas and play around with them until they seem to make some sense. Actually typing is important to me—it kind of tricks my brain into gear. I’ve got a pack-rat mind, like most writers, and once I starting thinking hard about a new project all kinds of odd facts and recollections shuffle forward to get a place on the bus.

Do you know where a story is going when you start writing, or do you let the story take control and see where it takes you?

This answer deserves one sentence or an essay! I’ll try to summarize it like this: writing, for me, is a little like wood carving. You find the lump of tree (the big central theme that gets you started) and you start cutting the shape that you think you want it to be. But you find, if you do it right, that the wood has a grain of its own (characters develop and present new insights, concentrated thinking about the story opens new avenues). If you’re sensible, you work with the grain and, if you come across a knot hole, you incorporate that into the design. This is not the same as “making it up as you go along”; it’s a very careful process of control.

The fantasy genre is often thought of as escapism, but is it escapism with a firm root in reality?

Fantasy IS escapism, but wait . . . why is this wrong? What are you escaping from, and where are you escaping to? Is the story opening windows or slamming doors? The British author G. K. Chesterton summarized the role of fantasy very well. He said its purpose was to take the everyday, commonplace world and lift it up and turn it around and show it to us from a different perspective, so that once again we see it for the first time and realize how marvelous it is. Fantasy—the ability to envisage this world in many different ways—is one of the skills that makes us human.

Your Discworld novels are fantastically successful. Now you’re writing Discworld novels specifically for younger readers. Why?

I think my heart has always been in writing for children. My first book was written for children, and a few years ago I realized that if I wrote a few books for younger readers I could approach Discworld in a different way. There’s a lot of difference between writing for children and writing for adults, and it’s almost impossible to tell you what it is, but I know it when I’m doing it. You have more fun, and I have to say, it’s a little bit harder, especially if you do it right.

Welcome to Discworld

DISCWORLD IS A FLAT, circular planet that rests on the backs of four elephants, which in turn are standing on the back of a giant turtle. Don’t ask what the turtle stands on; you might as well ask what sound yellow makes. This is the backdrop for an intricate and delightful world where every aspect of life—modern and ancient, sacred and profane—is both celebrated and satirized, from religion and Christmas to vampires, opera, war, and everything in between. Reading Terry Pratchett is the literary equivalent to doing a cha-cha. It’s exciting, it’s invigorating, and those more rhythmically inclined say it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it. Best of all, it’s fun!

Terry Pratchett Adds:

Discworld is a fantasy series for adults or, at least, taller people. There are about thirty books in the series—but don’t worry, you don’t have to read them all (actually, you don’t have to read any of them, but I’d be happy if you did). A Hat Full of Sky, The Wee Free Men, and The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents are set on the same world in a series that runs side by side with the adult one.

It certainly isn’t that the Discworld books for young readers are more simply written; I’m not very good at complicated writing in any case. Personally, I’m pretty proud of the writing in the young reader books. They win awards. The adult books just make me lots of money, and who wants that? The biggest difference is that the young reader books have younger main characters, though they do share some characters with the adult series. Death, the Death of Rats, Granny Weatherwax, and Mrs. Ogg have had major roles in some of the adult books. But you don’t need to know this to appreciate the young reader books.

I’m often asked where a reader should start, if they want to read more Discworld stories. A good question. They could start at the very beginning, with The Color of Magic, but many people reckon Mort and Wyrd Sisters are good “starters.”

There are adults who read the young reader books, and kids age nine who read the adult Discworld books (I know because I get mail from them). That’s the nice thing about fantasy—it’s open to anyone who can read.

It’s a series, not a serial. The books can be enjoyed in any order, but there are repeating characters whose stories form “mini series” within Discworld, such as Granny Weatherwax; the “wizard” Rincewind; Death and his adopted granddaughter, Susan; and Sam Vimes—head of the Watch in the Disc’s biggest city: Ankh-Morpork.

The Color of Magic

Introducing the wild and wonderful Discworld—witnessed through the four eyes of the tourist Twoflower and his inept guide, Rincewind, the world’s least competent wizard.

The Light Fantastic

A red star finds itself in Discworld’s way, and it appears that Rincewind is all that stands between the world and Doomsday.

Equal Rites

Women have never been wizards; wizards have always been men. But when Granny Weatherwax plays the midwife, who’s to say a baby girl can’t grow up to be a wizard?

Mort

Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job.

Sourcery

There was an eighth son of an eighth son. Naturally, he was a wizard. He had seven sons. And then he had an eighth son . . . a wizard squared . . . a source of magic . . . a Sourceror.

Wyrd Sisters

Even Granny Weatherwax finds that meddling in royal politics is a lot more difficult than certain playwrights would have you believe.

Pyramids

Teppic inherited the throne of Djelibeybi rather earlier than he expected (his father wasn’t too happy about it either) . . . but that was only the beginning of his problems.

Guards! Guards!

A huge dragon appears in Ankh-Morpork, charbroiling everything in its path, and it’s the valiant (mostly) Captain Sam Vimes and the brave (well, sort of) Night Watch to the rescue!

Eric

A would-be Faust attempts to conjure a powerful demon—and gets Rincewind instead!

Moving Pictures

When the glamour of far-off Holy Wood threatens the stability of a starstruck Discworld, Victor and Gaspode the Wonder Dog must restore order—and they’re definitely not ready for their close-up!

Reaper Man

They say there are only two things you can count on. But that was before Death started pondering the existential.

Witches Abroad

Granny Weatherwax must stop a powerful fairy godmother from forcing Princess Emberella into a fate worse than death: Living happily ever after!

Small Gods

What do you do when your cup runneth over with little intelligence and a lot of faith, and your small but bossy god proclaims you the Chosen One?

Lords and Ladies

A group of not-so-cute elves invades the kingdom of Lancre—giving Granny Weatherwax the delightful task of taking out the Faerie Trash.

Men at Arms

Sam Vimes and the City Watch are up against the Discworld’s first gun. Think guns don’t kill people? This one does.

Soul Music

Sure, there are skeletons in every family’s closet. Just ask Susan Sto Helit, who is about to mind the family store while dear old Grandpa Death takes a holiday.

Feet of Clay

A killer with fiery eyes is stalking Ankh-Morpork, leaving behind lots of corpses and a major headache for City Watch Captain Sam Vimes.

Interesting Times

The Counterweight Continent is in urgent need of a Great Wizard. They get the incapable wizard Rincewind instead. See him run away from war, revolution, and fortune cookies.

Maskerade

Ankh-Morpork’s newest diva (and wannabe witch) must flush out a ghost in the Opera House with the help of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg.

Hogfather

When the jolly Hogfather vanishes on the eve of Hogswatchnight, the grim specter of Death acts as an unlikely stand-in, delivering holiday presents to the children of Discworld. HO HO HO.

Jingo

Hostilities break out when rival cities Ankh-Morpork and Al-Khali both stake a claim to the same island. Can Sam Vimes and the City Watch police a war?

The Last Continent

Rincewind turns up on the Last Continent (currently under construction) where the senior wizards from Unseen University are searching for a missing colleague. No worries, mate.

Carpe Jugulum

The vampires of Überwald have come out of the casket, and Granny Weatherwax and the witches must figure out how put them back in!

The Fifth Elephant

Everyone knows the world is flat, and supported on the backs of four elephants. But weren’t there supposed to be five? And why does a missing elephant mean Sam Vimes must play the diplomat?

The Truth

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret: Starting Ankh-Morpork’s first newspaper is hard work—even after the dwarves involved have figured out how to turn lead into gold.

Thief of Time

Time stops for no man—but it may stop for Discworld unless Susan Sto Helit acts fast!

Night Watch

This morning Sam Vimes thought longingly of the good old days. Tonight he’s in them. . . .

Monstrous Regiment

War has come to Discworld . . . again. And sometimes—in war as in everything else—the best man for the job is a woman.

Discworld for Young Readers

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Winner of the Carnegie Medal

A streetwise alley cat, a pack of talking rats, and a stupid-looking kid with a flute devise the perfect Pied-Piper scam—until they try to con the wrong town at the wrong time, and suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives.

The Wee Free Men

Armed with a frying pan and a copy of Diseases of the Sheep, Tiffany Aching braves the horrors of Fairyland to find her kidnapped baby brother. Her allies? The six-inch high, sword-wielding, sheep-stealing Wee Free Men. Crivens!

Terry Pratchett’s Other Books for Young Readers

Truckers

Hundreds of four-inch-high Nomes have lived under the floorboards of a department store for so long they believe the Store is the whole world—until a group of nomes arrives from the Outside and delivers shocking news: the Store is going to be destroyed!

Diggers

The nomes attempt to settle into a new home in a seemingly abandoned quarry, only to find the humans who created it want to come back. . . .

Wings

Lead by young Masklin, a trio of nomes must cross the Atlantic Ocean, find the space shuttle, and hijack a communications satellite. Success means the survival of the nomes: failure is not an option. Fortunately the nomes don’t know that their quest is impossible!

The Bromeliad Trilogy

The story of the nomes: Truckers, Diggers, and Wings, published together in one volume!

Only You Can Save Mankind

Johnny Maxwell is playing his favorite computer game when the alien fleet on his screen suddenly announces: We surrender. They’re not supposed to surrender—they’re supposed to die! But then, it’s only a game. Isn’t it?

Johnny and the Dead

The spectral inhabitants of a local cemetery recruit the help of Johnny Maxwell and his friends when their home is threatened by a scheming developer’s plans.

Johnny and the Bomb

Time travel throws Johnny and his friends back to the night in World War II when a stray bomb exploded on a quiet street. With his knowledge of history, can Johnny save the lives of the innocent victims? Should he try?

CREDITS

Cover art and design © 2015
by Jim Tierney

COPYRIGHT

“You Are My Sunshine” by Jimmie Davis

© 1940 by Peer International Corporation

Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured.

Used By Permission. All Rights Reserved.

A HAT FULL OF SKY. Copyright © 2004 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pratchett, Terry.

A hat full of sky / by Terry Pratchett.—1st ed.

p.   cm.

Summary: Tiffany Aching, a young witch-in-training, learns about magic and responsibility as she battles a disembodied monster with the assistance of the six-inch-high Wee Free Men and Mistress Weatherwax, the greatest witch in the world.

ISBN 0-06-058660-5 — ISBN 0-06-058661-3 (lib. bdg.)

ISBN 0-06-058662-1 (pbk.)

EPub Edition © May 2015 ISBN 9780061975189

[1. Witches—Fiction. 2. Fairies—Fiction. 3. Monsters—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7. P8865Hat 2004 | 2003021443
[Fic]—dc22 | CIP
| AC

First Harper edition, 2005

Visit us on the World Wide Web!

www.harperteen.com

*She had to say that because she was a witch and a teacher, and that’s a terrible combination. They want things to be right. They like things to be correct. If you want to upset a witch, you don’t have to mess around with charms and spells—you just have to put her in a room with a picture that’s hung slightly crooked and watch her squirm.

*First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.

*Knowing the dictionary all the way through does have some uses.

*Tiffany knew what psychology was, but it hadn’t been a pronunciation dictionary.

*One Hundred and One Things a Wizard Can Do

**The Monster Book of Monsters

*The hermit elephant of Howondaland has a very thin hide, except on its head, and young ones will often move into a small mud hut while the owners are out. It is far too shy to harm anyone, but most people quit their huts pretty soon after an elephant moves in. For one thing, it lifts the hut off the ground and carries it away on its back across the veldt, settling it down over any patch of nice grass that it finds. This makes housework very unpredictable. Nevertheless, an entire village of hermit elephants moving across the plains is one of the finest sights on the continent.

*If anyone knew what this meant, they’d know a lot more about the Nac Mac Feegle’s way of traveling.

CONTENTS

1. Introduction    A Feegle Glossary
2. Chapter 1        The Big Snow
3. Chapter 2        Miss Treason
4. Chapter 3        The Secret of Boffo
5. Chapter 4        Snowflakes
6. Chapter 5        Miss Treason’s Big Day
7. Chapter 6        Feet and Sprouts
8. Chapter 7        On with the Dance
9. Chapter 8        The Horn of Plenty
10. Chapter 9        Green Shoots
11. Chapter 10      Going Home
12. Chapter 11      Even Turquoise
13. Chapter 12      The Pike
14. Chapter 13      The Crown of Ice
15. Author’s Note
16. Credits
17. Copyright

Guide

1. Cover
2. Contents
3. 1

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Introduction

A Feegle Glossary,
adjusted for those of a delicate disposition

(A Work in Progress by Miss Perspicacia Tick)

Bigjobs: Human beings.

Big Man: Chief of the clan (usually the husband of the kelda).

Blethers: Rubbish, nonsense.

Boggin’: To be desperate, as in “I’m boggin’ for a cup of tea.”

Bunty: A weak person.

Cack yer kecks: Er, to put it delicately . . . to be very, very frightened. As it were.

Carlin: Old woman.

Cludgie: The privy.

Crivens!: A general exclamation that can mean anything from “My goodness!” to “I’ve just lost my temper and there is going to be trouble.”

Dree your/my/his/her weird: Face the fate that is in store for you/me/him/her.

Een: Eyes.

Eldritch: Weird, strange. Sometimes means oblong, too, for some reason.

Fash: Worry, upset.

Geas: A very important obligation, backed up by tradition and magic. Not a bird.

Gonnagle: The bard of the clan, skilled in musical instruments, poems, stories, and songs.

Hag: A witch of any age.

Hag o’ hags: A very important witch.

Hagging/Haggling: Anything a witch does.

Hiddlins: Secrets.

Kelda: The female head of the clan, and eventually the mother of most of it. Feegle babies are very small, and a kelda will have hundreds in her lifetime.

Lang syne: Long ago.

Last World: The Feegles believe that they are dead. This world is so nice, they argue, that they must have been really good in a past life and then died and ended up here. Appearing to die here means merely going back to the Last World, which they believe is rather dull.

Mudlin: Useless person.

Pished: I am assured that this means “tired.”

Schemie: An unpleasant person.

Scuggan: A really unpleasant person.

Scunner: A generally unpleasant person.

Ships: Woolly things that eat grass and go baa. Easily confused with the other kind.

Spavie: See Mudlin.

Special Sheep Liniment: Probably moonshine whisky, I am very sorry to say. No one knows what it’d do to sheep, but it is said that a drop of it is good for shepherds on a cold winter’s night and for Feegles at any time at all. Do not try to make this at home.

Spog: A leather pouch, worn on the front of his belt, where a Feegle keeps his valuables and uneaten food, interesting insects, useful bits of twig, lucky dirt, and so on. It is not a good idea to fish around in a spog.

Steamie: Found only in the big Feegle mounds in the mountains, where there’s enough water to allow regular bathing; it’s a kind of sauna. Feegles on the Chalk tend to rely on the fact that you can get only so much dirt on you before it starts to fall off of its own accord.

Waily: A general cry of despair.

CHAPTER 1

The Big Snow

When the storm came, it hit the hills like a hammer. No sky should hold as much snow as this, and because no sky could, the snow fell, fell in a wall of white.

There was a small hill of snow where there had been, a few hours ago, a little cluster of thorn trees on an ancient mound. This time last year there had been a few early primroses; now there was just snow.

Part of the snow moved. A piece about the size of an apple rose up, with smoke pouring out around it. A hand no larger than a rabbit’s paw waved the smoke away.

A very small but very angry blue face, with the lump of snow still balanced on top of it, looked out at the sudden white wilderness.

“Ach, crivens!” it grumbled. “Will ye no’ look at this? ’Tis the work o’ the Wintersmith! Noo there’s a scunner that willna tak’ ‘no’ fra’ an answer!”

Other lumps of snow were pushed up. More heads peered out.

“Oh waily, waily, waily!” said one of them. “He’s found the big wee hag again!”

The first head turned toward this head, and said, “Daft Wullie?”

“Yes, Rob?”

“Did I no’ tell ye to lay off that waily business?”

“Aye, Rob, ye did that,” said the head addressed as Daft Wullie.

“So why did ye just do it?”

“Sorry, Rob. It kinda bursted oot.”

“It’s so dispiritin’.”

“Sorry, Rob.”

Rob Anybody sighed. “But I fear ye’re right, Wullie. He’s come for the big wee hag, right enough. Who’s watchin’ over her doon at the farm?”

“Wee Dangerous Spike, Rob.”

Rob looked up at clouds so full of snow that they sagged in the middle.

“Okay,” he said, and sighed again. “It’s time fra’ the Hero.”

He ducked out of sight, the plug of snow dropping neatly back into place, and slid down into the heart of the Feegle mound.

It was quite big inside. A human could just about stand up in the middle, but would then bend double with coughing because the middle was where there was a hole to let smoke out.

All around the inner wall were tiers of galleries, and every one of them was packed with Feegles. Usually the place was awash with noise, but now it was frighteningly quiet.

Rob Anybody walked across the floor to the fire, where his wife, Jeannie, was waiting. She stood straight and proud, like a kelda should, but close up it seemed to him that she had been crying. He put his arm around her.

“All right, ye probably ken what’s happenin’,” he told the blue-and-red audience looking down on him. “This is nae common storm. The Wintersmith has found the big wee hag—noo then, settle doon!”

He waited until the shouting and sword rattling had died down, then went on: “We canna fight the Wintersmith for her! That’s her road! We canna walk it for her! But the hag o’ hags has set us on another path! It’s a dark one, and dangerous!”

A cheer went up. Feegles liked the idea of this, at least.

“Right!” said Rob, satisfied. “Ah’m awa’ tae fetch the Hero!”

There was a lot of laughter at this, and Big Yan, the tallest of the Feegles, shouted, “It’s tae soon. We’ve only had time tae gie him a couple o’ heroing lessons! He’s still nae more than a big streak o’ nothin’!”

“He’ll be a Hero for the big wee hag and that’s an end o’ it,” said Rob sharply. “Noo, off ye go, the whole boilin’ o’ ye! Tae the chalk pit! Dig me a path tae the Underworld!”

It had to be the Wintersmith, Tiffany Aching told herself, standing in front of her father in the freezing farmhouse. She could feel it out there. This wasn’t normal weather even for midwinter, and this was springtime. It was a challenge. Or perhaps it was just a game. It was hard to tell, with the Wintersmith.

Only it can’t be a game because the lambs are dying. I’m only just thirteen, and my father, and a lot of other people older than me, want me to do something. And I can’t. The Wintersmith has found me again. He is here now, and I’m too weak.

It would be easier if they were bullying me, but no, they’re begging. My father’s face is gray with worry and he’s begging. My father is begging me.

Oh no, he’s taking his hat off. He’s taking off his hat to speak to me!

They think magic comes free when I snap my fingers. But if I can’t do this for them, now, what good am I? I can’t let them see I’m afraid. Witches aren’t allowed to be afraid.

And this is my fault. I: I started all this. I must finish it.

Mr. Aching cleared his throat.

“. . . And, er, if you could . . . er, magic it away, uh, or something? For us . . . ?”

Everything in the room was gray, because the light from the windows was coming through snow. No one had wasted time digging the horrible stuff away from the houses. Every person who could hold a shovel was needed elsewhere, and still there were not enough of them. As it was, most people had been up all night, walking the flocks of yearlings, trying to keep the new lambs safe . . . in the dark, in the snow. . . .

Her snow. It was a message to her. A challenge. A summons.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good girl,” said her father, grinning with relief. No, not a good girl, thought Tiffany. I brought this on us.

“You’ll have to make a big fire, up by the sheds,” she said aloud. “I mean a big fire, do you understand? Make it out of anything that will burn, and you must keep it going. It’ll keep trying to go out, but you must keep it going. Keep piling on the fuel, whatever happens. The fire must not go out!”

She made sure that the “not!” was loud and frightening. She didn’t want people’s minds to wander. She put on the heavy brown woolen cloak that Miss Treason had made for her and grabbed the black pointy hat that hung on the back of the farmhouse door. There was a sort of communal grunt from the people who’d crowded into the kitchen, and some of them backed away. We want a witch now, we need a witch now, but—we’ll back away now, too.

That was the magic of the pointy hat. It was what Miss Treason called “Boffo.”

Tiffany Aching stepped out into the narrow corridor that had been cut through the snow-filled farmyard where the drifts were more than twice the height of a man. At least the deep snow kept off the worst of the wind, which was made of knives.

A track had been cleared all the way to the paddock, but it had been heavy going. When there are fifteen feet of snow everywhere, how can you clear it? Where can you clear it to?

She waited by the cart sheds while the men hacked and scraped at the snowbanks. They were tired to the bone by now; they’d been digging for hours.

The important thing was—

But there were lots of important things. It was important to look calm and confident, it was important to keep your mind clear, it was important not to show how pants-wettingly scared you were. . . .

She held out a hand, caught a snowflake, and took a good look at it. It wasn’t one of the normal ones, oh no. It was one of his special snowflakes. That was nasty. He was taunting her. Now she could hate him. She’d never hated him before. But he was killing the lambs.

She shivered and pulled the cloak around her.

“This I choose to do,” she croaked, her breath leaving little clouds in the air. She cleared her throat and started again. “This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.”

It wasn’t a spell, except in her own head, but if you couldn’t make spells work in your own head, you couldn’t make them work at all.

Tiffany wrapped her cloak around her against the clawing wind and watched dully as the men brought straw and wood. The fire started slowly, as if frightened to show enthusiasm.

She’d done this before, hadn’t she? Dozens of times. The trick was not that hard when you got the feel of it, but she’d done it with time to get her mind right, and anyway, she’d never done it with anything more than a kitchen fire to warm her freezing feet. In theory it should be just as easy with a big fire and a field of snow, right?

Right?

The fire began to roar up. Her father put his hand on her shoulder. Tiffany jumped. She’d forgotten how quietly he could move.

“What was that about choosing?” he said. She’d forgotten what good hearing he had, too.

“It’s a . . . witch thing,” she answered, trying not to look at his face. “So that if this . . . doesn’t work, it’s no one’s fault but mine.” And this is my fault, she added to herself. It’s unfair, but no one said it wasn’t going to be.

Her father’s hand caught her chin and gently turned her head around. How soft his hands are, Tiffany thought. Big man’s hands but soft as a baby’s, because of the grease on the sheep’s fleeces.

“We shouldn’t have asked you, should we . . . ?” he said.

Yes, you should have asked me, Tiffany thought. The lambs are dying under the dreadful snow. And I should have said no, I should have said I’m not that good yet. But the lambs are dying under the dreadful snow!

There will be other lambs, said her Second Thoughts.

But these aren’t those lambs, are they? These are the lambs that are dying, here and now. And they’re dying because I listened to my feet and dared to dance with the Wintersmith.

“I can do it,” she said.

Her father held her chin and stared into her eyes.

“Are you sure, jiggit?” he asked. It was the nickname her grandmother had had for her— Granny Aching, who never lost a lamb to the dreadful snow. He’d never used it before. Why had it risen up in his mind now?

“Yes!” She pushed his hand away, and broke his gaze before she could burst into tears.

“I . . . haven’t told your mother this yet,” said her father very slowly, as if the words required enormous care, “but I can’t find your brother. I think he was trying to help. Abe Swindell said he saw him with his little shovel. Er . . . I’m sure he’s all right, but . . . keep an eye open for him, will you? He’s got his red coat on.”

His face, with no expression at all, was heartbreaking to see. Little Wentworth, nearly seven years old, always running after the men, always wanting to be one of them, always trying to help . . . how easily a small body could get overlooked. . . . The snow was still coming fast. The horribly wrong snowflakes were white on her father’s shoulders. It’s these little things you remember when the bottom falls out of the world, and you’re falling—

That wasn’t just unfair; that was . . . cruel.

Remember the hat you wear! Remember the job that is in front of you! Balance! Balance is the thing. Hold balance in the center, hold the balance. . . .

Tiffany extended her numb hands to the fire, to draw out the warmth.

“Remember, don’t let the fire go out,” she said.

“I’ve got men bringing up wood from all over,” said her father. “I told ’em to bring all the coal from the forge, too. It won’t run out of feeding, I promise you!”

The flame danced and curved toward Tiffany’s hands. The trick was, the trick, the trick . . . was to fold the heat somewhere close, draw it with you and . . . balance. Forget everything else!

“I’ll come with—” her father began.

“No! Watch the fire!” Tiffany shouted, too loud, frantic with fear. “You will do what I say!”

I am not your daughter today! her mind screamed. I am your witch! I will protect you!

She turned before he could see her face and ran through the flakes, along the track that had been cut toward the lower paddocks. The snow had been trodden down into a lumpy, hummocky path, made slippery with fresh snow. Exhausted men with shovels pressed themselves into the snowbanks on either side rather than get in her way.

She reached the wider area where other shepherds were digging into the wall of snow. It tumbled in lumps around them.

“Stop! Get back!” her voice shouted, while her mind wept.

The men obeyed quickly. The mouth that had given that order had a pointy hat above it. You didn’t argue with that.

Remember the heat, the heat, remember the heat, balance, balance. . . .

This was witching cut to the bone. No toys, no wands, no Boffo, no headology, no tricks. All that mattered was how good you were.

But sometimes you had to trick yourself. She wasn’t the Summer Lady and she wasn’t Granny Weatherwax. She needed to give herself all the help she could.

She pulled the little silver horse out of her pocket. It was greasy and stained, and she’d meant to clean it, but there had been no time, no time. . . .

Like a knight putting on his helmet, she fastened the silver chain around her neck.

She should have practiced more. She should have listened to people. She should have listened to herself.

She took a deep breath and held out her hands on either side of her, palms up. On her right hand a white scar glowed.

“Thunder on my right hand,” she said. “Lightning in my left hand. Fire behind me. Frost in front of me.”

She stepped forward until she was only a few inches away from the snowbank. She could feel its coldness already pulling the heat out of her. Well, so be it. She took a few deep breaths. This I choose to do. . . .

“Frost to fire,” she whispered.

In the yard, the fire went white and roared like a furnace.

The snow wall spluttered and then exploded into steam, sending chunks of snow into the air. Tiffany walked forward slowly. Snow pulled back from her hands like mist at sunrise. It melted in the heat of her, becoming a tunnel in the deep drift, fleeing from her, writhing around her in clouds of cold fog.

Yes! She smiled desperately. It was true. If you had the perfect center, if you got your mind right, you could balance. In the middle of the seesaw is a place that never moves. . . .

Her boots squelched over warm water. There was fresh green grass under the snow, because the awful storm had been so late in the year. She walked on, heading to where the lambing pens were buried.

Her father stared at the fire. It was burning white-hot, like a furnace, eating through the wood as if driven by a gale. It was collapsing into ashes in front of his eyes. . . .

Water was pouring around Tiffany’s boots now.

Yes! But don’t think about it! Hold the balance! More heat! Frost to fire!

There was a bleat.

Sheep could live under the snow, at least for a while. But as Granny Aching used to say, when the gods made sheep, they must’ve left their brains in their other coat. In a panic, and sheep were always just an inch from panicking, they’d trample their own lambs.

Now ewes and lambs appeared, steaming and bewildered as the snow melted around them, as if they were sculptures left behind.

Tiffany moved on, staring straight ahead of her, only just aware of the excited cries of the men behind her. They were following her, pulling the ewes free, cradling the lambs. . . .

Her father yelled at the other men. Some of them were hacking at a farm cart, throwing the wood down into the white-hot flames. Others were dragging furniture up from the house. Wheels, tables, straw bales, chairs—the fire took everything, gulped it down, and roared for more. And there wasn’t any more.

No red coat. No red coat! Balance, balance. Tiffany waded on, water and sheep pouring past her. The tunnel ceiling fell in a splashing and slithering of slush. She ignored it. Fresh snowflakes fell down through the hole and boiled in the air above her head. She ignored that, too. And then, ahead of her . . . a glimpse of red.

Frost to fire! The snow fled, and there he was. She picked him up, held him close, sent some of her heat into him, felt him stir, whispered: “It weighed at least forty pounds! At least forty pounds!”

Wentworth coughed and opened his eyes. Tears falling like melting snow, she ran over to a shepherd and thrust the boy into his arms.

“Take him to his mother! Do it now!” The man grabbed the boy and ran, frightened of her fierceness. Today she was their witch!

Tiffany turned back. There were more lambs to be saved.

Her father’s coat landed on the starving flames, glowed for a moment, then fell into gray ashes. The other men were ready; they grabbed the man as he went to jump after it and pulled him back, kicking and shouting.

The flint cobbles had melted like butter. They spluttered for a moment, then froze.

The fire went out.

Tiffany Aching looked up, into the eyes of the Wintersmith.

And up on the roof of the cart shed, the small voice belonging to Wee Dangerous Spike said, “Ach, crivens!”

All this hasn’t happened yet. It might not happen at all. The future is always a bit wobbly. Any little thing, like the fall of a snowflake or the dropping of the wrong kind of spoon, can send it spinning off along a new path. Or perhaps not.

Where it all began was last autumn, on the day with a cat in it. . . .

CHAPTER 2

Miss Treason

This is Tiffany Aching, riding a broomstick through the mountain forests a hundred miles away. It’s a very old broomstick, and she’s flying it just above the ground; it’s got two smaller broomsticks stuck on the back like training wheels, to stop it from tipping over. It belongs, appropriately, to a very old witch called Miss Treason, who’s even worse at flying than Tiffany and is 113 years old.

Tiffany is slightly more than one hundred years younger than that, taller than she was even a month ago, and not as certain of anything at all as she was a year ago.

She is training to be a witch. Witches usually wear black, but as far as she could tell, the only reason that witches wore black was that they’d always worn black. This did not seem a good enough reason, so she tended to wear blue or green. She didn’t laugh with scorn at finery because she’d never seen any.

You couldn’t escape the pointy hat, though. There was nothing magical about a pointy hat except that it said that the woman underneath it was a witch. People paid attention to a pointy hat.

Even so, it was hard to be a witch in the village where you’d grown up. It was hard to be a witch to people who knew you as “Joe Aching’s girl” and had seen you running around with only your undershirt on when you were two years old.

Going away had helped. Most people Tiffany knew hadn’t been more than ten miles away from the spot where they were born, so if you’d gone to mysterious foreign parts, that made you a bit mysterious, too. You came back slightly different. A witch needed to be different.

Witching was turning out to be mostly hard work and really short on magic of the zap!-glingle-glingle-glingle variety. There was no school and nothing that was exactly like a lesson. But it wasn’t wise to try to learn witching all by yourself, especially if you had a natural talent. If you got it wrong, you could go from ignorant to cackling in a week. . . .

When you got right down to it, it was all about cackling. No one ever talked about this, though. Witches said things like “You can never be too old, too skinny, or too warty,” but they never mentioned the cackling. Not properly. They watched out for it, though, all the time.

It was all too easy to become a cackler. Most witches lived by themselves (cat optional) and might go for weeks without ever seeing another witch. In those times when people hated witches, they were often accused of talking to their cats. Of course they talked to their cats. After three weeks without an intelligent conversation that wasn’t about cows, you’d talk to the wall. And that was an early sign of cackling.

“Cackling,” to a witch, didn’t just mean nasty laughter. It meant your mind drifting away from its anchor. It meant you losing your grip. It meant loneliness and hard work and responsibility and other people’s problems driving you crazy a little bit at a time, each bit so small that you’d hardly notice it, until you thought that it was normal to stop washing and wear a kettle on your head. It meant you thinking that the fact you knew more than anyone else in your village made you better than them. It meant thinking that right and wrong were negotiable. And, in the end, it meant you “going to the dark,” as the witches said. That was a bad road. At the end of that road were poisoned spinning wheels and gingerbread cottages.

What stopped this was the habit of visiting. Witches visited other witches all the time, sometimes traveling quite a long way for a cup of tea and a bun. Partly this was for gossip, of course, because witches love gossip, especially if it’s more exciting than truthful. But mostly it was to keep an eye on one another.

Today Tiffany was visiting Granny Weatherwax, who was in the opinion of most witches (including Granny herself) the most powerful witch in the mountains. It was all very polite. No one said, “Not gone bats, then?” or “Certainly not! I’m as sharp as a spoon!” They didn’t need to. They understood what it was all about, so they talked of other things. But when she was in a mood, Granny Weatherwax could be hard work.

She sat silently in her rocking chair. Some people are good at talking, but Granny Weatherwax was good at silence. She could sit so quiet and still that she faded. You forgot she was there. The room became empty.

It upset people. It was probably meant to. But Tiffany had learned silence too, from Granny Aching, her real grandmother. Now she was learning that if you made yourself really quiet, you could become almost invisible.

Granny Weatherwax was an expert.

Tiffany thought of it as the I’m-not-here spell, if it was a spell. She reasoned that everyone had something inside them that told the world they were there. That was why you could often sense when someone was behind you, even if they were making no sound at all. You were receiving their I-am-here signal.

Some people had a very strong one. They were the people who got served first in shops. Granny Weatherwax had an I-am-here signal that bounced off the mountains when she wanted it to; when she walked into a forest, all the wolves and bears ran out the other side.

She could turn it off, too.

She was doing that now. Tiffany was having to concentrate to see her. Most of her mind was telling her that there was no one there at all.

Well, she thought, that’s about enough of that. She coughed. Suddenly Granny Weatherwax had always been there.

“Miss Treason is very well,” said Tiffany.

“A fine woman,” said Granny.

“Oh, yes.”

“She has her funny ways,” said Tiffany.

“We’re none of us perfect,” said Granny.

“She’s trying some new eyes,” said Tiffany.

“That’s good.”

“They’re a couple of ravens. . . .”

“It’s just as well,” said Granny.

“Better than the mouse she usually uses,” said Tiffany.

“I expect they are.”

There was a bit more of this, until Tiffany began to get annoyed at doing all the work. There was such a thing as common politeness, after all. Oh well, she knew what to do about it now.

“Mrs. Earwig’s written another book,” she said.

“I heard,” said Granny. The shadows in the room maybe grew a little darker.

Well, that explained the sulk. Even thinking about Mrs. Earwig made Granny Weatherwax angry. Mrs. Earwig was all wrong to Granny Weatherwax. She wasn’t born locally, which was almost a crime to begin with. She wrote books, and Granny Weatherwax didn’t trust books. And Mrs. Earwig (pronounced “Ah-wij,” at least by Mrs. Earwig) believed in shiny wands and magical amulets and mystic runes and the power of the stars, while Granny Weatherwax believed in cups of tea, dry biscuits, washing every morning in cold water, and, well, she believed mostly in Granny Weatherwax.

Mrs. Earwig was popular among the younger witches, because if you did witchcraft her way, you could wear so much jewelry that you could barely walk. Granny Weatherwax wasn’t popular with anyone much—

—except when they needed her. When Death was standing by the cradle or the axe slipped in the woods and blood was soaking into the moss, you sent someone hurrying to the cold, gnarly little cottage in the clearing. When all hope was gone, you called for Granny Weatherwax, because she was the best.

And she always came. Always. But popular? No. Need is not the same as like. Granny Weatherwax was for when things were serious.

Tiffany did like her, though, in an odd kind of way. She thought Granny Weatherwax liked her, too. She let Tiffany call her Granny to her face, when all the other young witches had to call her Mistress Weatherwax. Sometimes Tiffany thought that if you were friendly to Granny Weatherwax, she tested you to see how friendly you would stay. Everything about Granny Weatherwax was a test.

“The new book is called First Flights in Witchcraft,” she went on, watching the old witch carefully.

Granny Weatherwax smiled. That is, her mouth went up at the corners.

“Hah!” she said. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You can’t learn witchin’ from books. Letice Earwig thinks you can become a witch by goin’ shoppin’.” She gave Tiffany a piercing look, as if she was making up her mind about something. Then she said: “An’ I’ll wager she don’t know how to do this.”

She picked up her cup of hot tea, curling her hand around it. Then she reached out with her other hand and took Tiffany’s hand.

“Ready?” said Granny.

“For wha—” Tiffany began, and then she felt her hand get hot. The heat spread up her arm, warming it to the bone.

“Feelin’ it?”

“Yes!”

The warmth died away. And Granny Weatherwax, still watching Tiffany’s face, turned the teacup upside down.

The tea dropped out in one lump. It was frozen solid.

Tiffany was old enough not to say, “How did you do that?” Granny Weatherwax didn’t answer silly questions or, for that matter, many questions at all.

“You moved the heat,” Tiffany said. “You took the heat out of the tea and moved it through you to me, yes?”

“Yes, but it never touched me,” said Granny triumphantly. “It’s all about balance, do you see? Balance is the trick. Keep the balance and—” She stopped. “You’ve ridden on a seesaw? One end goes up, one end goes down. But the bit in the middle, right in the middle, that stays where it is. Upness and downness go right through it. Don’t matter how high or low the ends go, it keeps the balance.” She sniffed. “Magic is mostly movin’ stuff around.”

“Can I learn that?”

“I daresay. It’s not hard, if you get your mind right.”

“Can you teach me?”

“I just have. I showed you.”

“No, Granny, you just showed me how to do it, not . . . how to do it!”

“Can’t tell you that. I know how I do it. How you do it’ll be different. You’ve just got to get your mind right.”

“How do I do that?”

“How should I know? It’s your mind,” snapped Granny. “Put the kettle on again, will you? My tea’s gone cold.”

There was something almost spiteful about all this, but that was Granny. She took the view that if you were capable of learning, you’d work it out. There was no point in making it easy for people. Life wasn’t easy, she said.

“An’ I see you’re still wearing that trinket,” said Granny. She didn’t like trinkets, a word she used to mean anything metal a witch wore that wasn’t there to hold up, shut, or fasten. That was “shoppin’.”

Tiffany touched the little silver horse she wore around her neck. It was small and simple, and it meant a lot to her.

“Yes,” she said calmly. “I still am.”

“What have you got in that basket?” Granny said now, which was unusually rude. Tiffany’s basket was on the table. It had a present in it, of course. Everyone knew you took a small present along when you went visiting, but the person you were visiting was supposed to be surprised when you gave it to her, and say things like “Oooh, you shouldn’t have.”

“I brought you something,” said Tiffany, swinging the big black kettle onto the fire.

“You’ve got no call to be bringing me presents, I’m sure,” said Granny sternly.

“Yes, well,” said Tiffany, and left it at that.

She heard Granny lift the lid of the basket. There was a kitten in it.

“Her mother is Pinky, the Widow Cable’s cat,” said Tiffany, to fill the silence.

“You shouldn’t have,” growled the voice of Granny Weatherwax.

“It was no trouble.” Tiffany smiled at the fire.

“I can’t be havin’ with cats.”

“She’ll keep the mice down,” said Tiffany, still not turning around.

“Don’t have mice.”

Nothing for them to eat, thought Tiffany. Aloud, she said, “Mrs. Earwig’s got six big black cats.” In the basket, the white kitten would be staring up at Granny Weatherwax with the sad, shocked expression of all kittens. You test me, I test you, Tiffany thought.

“I don’t know what I shall do with it, I’m sure. It’ll have to sleep in the goat shed,” said Granny Weatherwax. Most witches had goats.

The kitten rubbed against Granny’s hand and went meep.

When Tiffany left, later on, Granny Weatherwax said good-bye at the door and very carefully shut the kitten outside.

Tiffany went across the clearing to where she’d tied up Miss Treason’s broomstick.

But she didn’t get on, not yet. She stepped back up against a holly bush, and went quiet until she wasn’t there anymore, until everything about her said: I’m not here.

Everyone could see pictures in the fire and in clouds. You just turned that the other way around. You turned off that bit of yourself that said you were there. You dissolved. Anyone looking at you would find you very hard to see. Your face became a bit of leaf and shadow, your body a piece of tree and bush. The other person’s mind would fill in the gaps.

Looking like just another piece of holly bush, she watched the door. The wind had got up, warm but worrisome, shaking the yellow and red leaves off the sycamore trees and whirring them around the clearing. The kitten tried to bat a few of them out of the air and then sat there, making sad little mewling noises. Any minute now, Granny Weatherwax would think Tiffany had gone and would open the door and—

“Forgot something?” said Granny by her ear.

She was the bush.

“Er . . . it’s very sweet. I just thought you might, you know, grow to like it,” said Tiffany, but she was thinking: Well, she could have got here if she ran, but why didn’t I see her? Can you run and hide at the same time?

“Never you mind about me, my girl,” said the witch. “You run along back to Miss Treason and give her my best wishes, right now. But”—and her voice softened a little—“that was good hiding you did just then. There’s many as would not have seen you. Why, I hardly heard your hair growin’!”

When Tiffany’s stick had left the clearing, and Granny Weatherwax had satisfied herself in other little ways that she had really gone, she went back inside, carefully ignoring the kitten again.

After a few minutes, the door creaked open a little. It may have been just a draft. The kitten trotted inside. . . .

All witches were a bit odd. Tiffany had got used to odd, so that odd seemed quite normal. There was Miss Level, for example, who had two bodies, although one of them was imaginary. Mistress Pullunder, who bred pedigreed earthworms and gave them all names . . . well, she was hardly odd at all, just a bit peculiar, and anyway earthworms were quite interesting in a basically uninteresting kind of way. And there had been Old Mother Dismass, who suffered from bouts of temporal confusion, which can be quite strange when it happens to a witch; her mouth never moved in time with her words, and sometimes her footsteps came down the stairs ten minutes before she did.

But when it came to odd, Miss Treason didn’t just take the cake, but a packet of biscuits too, with sprinkles on the top, and also a candle.

Where to start, when things were wall-to-wall odd. . . .

Miss Eumenides Treason had gone blind when she was sixty years old. To most people that would have been a misfortune, but Miss Treason was skilled at Borrowing, a particular witch talent.

She could use the eyes of animals, reading what they saw right out of their minds.

She’d gone deaf when she was seventy-five, but she’d got the hang of it by now and used any ears she could find running around.

When Tiffany had first gone to stay with her, Miss Treason had used a mouse for seeing and hearing, because her old jackdaw had died. It was a bit worrying to see an old woman striding around the cottage with a mouse in her outstretched hand, and very worrying if you said something and the mouse was swung around to face you. It was amazing how creepy a little pink wriggly nose could be.

The new ravens were a lot better. Somebody in one of the local villages had made the old woman a perch that fitted across her shoulders, one bird on either side, and with her long white hair the effect was very, well, witchy, although a bit messy down the back of her cloak by the end of the day.

Then there was her clock. It was heavy and made of rusty iron by someone who was more blacksmith than watchmaker, which was why it went clonk-clank instead of tick-tock. She wore it on her belt and could tell the time by feeling the stubby little hands.

There was a story in the villages that the clock was Miss Treason’s heart, which she’d used ever since her first heart died. But there were lots of stories about Miss Treason.

You had to have a high threshold for odd to put up with her. It was traditional that young witches traveled around and stayed with older witches to learn from a lot of experts in exchange for what Miss Tick the witch finder called “some help with the chores,” which meant “doing all the chores.” Mostly, they left Miss Treason’s after one night. Tiffany had stuck it out for three months so far.

Oh, and sometimes, when she was looking for a pair of eyes to look through, Miss Treason would creep into yours. It was a strange prickly sensation, like having someone invisible looking over your shoulder.

Yes . . . perhaps Miss Treason didn’t just take the cake, a packet of biscuits with sprinkles on the top, and a candle, but also the trifle, the sandwiches, and a man who made amusing balloon animals afterward.

She was weaving at her loom when Tiffany came in. Two beaks turned to face her.

“Ah, child,” said Miss Treason in a thin, cracked voice. “You have had a good day.”

“Yes, Miss Treason,” said Tiffany obediently.

“You have seen the girl Weatherwax and she is well.” Click-clack went the loom. Clonk-clank went the clock.

“Quite well,” said Tiffany. Miss Treason didn’t ask questions. She just told you the answers. “The girl Weatherwax,” Tiffany thought, as she started to get their supper. But Miss Treason was very old.

And very scary. It was a fact. You couldn’t deny it. She didn’t have a hooked nose and she did have all her teeth, even if they were yellow, but after that she was a picture-book wicked witch. And her knees clicked when she walked. And she walked very fast, with the help of two sticks, scuttling around like a big spider. That was another strange thing: The cottage was full of cobwebs, which Miss Treason ordered Tiffany never to touch, but you never saw a spider.

There was the thing about black, too. Most witches liked black, but Miss Treason even had black goats and black chickens. The walls were black. The floor was black. If you dropped a stick of licorice, you’d never find it again. And, to Tiffany’s dismay, she had to make her cheeses black, which meant painting the cheeses with shiny black wax. Tiffany was an excellent cheesemaker and it did keep them moist, but Tiffany distrusted black cheeses. They always looked as though they were plotting something.

And Miss Treason didn’t seem to need sleep. She hadn’t got much use for night and day now. When the ravens went to bed, she’d summon up an owl and weave by owl sight. An owl was particularly good, she said, because it’d keep turning its head to watch the shuttle of the loom. Click-clack went the loom, and clonk-clank went the clock, right back at it.

Miss Treason, with her billowing black cloak and bandaged eyes and wild white hair . . .

Miss Treason with her two sticks, wandering the cottage and garden in the dark and frosty night, smelling the memory of flowers . . .

All witches had some particular skill, and Miss Treason delivered Justice.

People would come from miles around to bring her their problems:

I know it’s my cow but he says it’s his!

She says it’s her land but my father left it to me!

. . . and Miss Treason would sit at the click-clacking loom with her back to the room full of anxious people. The loom worried them. They watched it as though they were afraid of it, and the ravens watched them.

They would stutter out their cases, um-ing and ah-ing, while the loom rattled away in the flickering candlelight. Oh, yes . . . the candlelight . . .

The candleholders were two skulls. One had the word ENOCHI carved on it; the other had the word ATHOOTITA.

(The words meant “GUILT” and “INNOCENCE.” Tiffany wished she didn’t know that. There was no way that a girl brought up on the Chalk should know that, because the words were in a foreign language, and an ancient one, too. She knew them because of Dr. Sensibility Bustle, D.M. Phil., B.El L., Patricius Professor of Magic at Unseen University, who was in her head.

(Well, a tiny part of him, at least.

(A couple of summers ago she had been taken over by a hiver, a . . . thing that had been collecting minds for millions of years. Tiffany managed to get it out of her head, but a few fragments had stayed tangled up in her brain. One of these was a tiny lump of ego and a mix of memories that were what remained of the late Dr. Bustle. He wasn’t much trouble, but if she looked at anything in a foreign language, she could read it—or, rather, hear Dr. Bustle’s reedy voice translating it for her. That seemed to be about all that was left of him, but she tried to avoid getting undressed in front of a mirror.)

The candles had dripped wax all over the skulls, and people would keep glancing at them the whole time they were in the room.

And then, when all the words had been said, the loom would stop with a shock of sudden silence, and Miss Treason would turn around in her big heavy chair, which had wheels on it, and remove the black blindfold from her pearly gray eyes and say:

“I have heard. Now I shall see. I shall see what is true.”

Some people would actually run away at this point, when she stared at them in the light from the skulls. Those eyes that could not see your face could somehow see your mind. When Miss Treason was looking right through you, you could only be truthful or very, very stupid.

So no one ever argued with Miss Treason.

Witches were not allowed to be paid for using their talents, but everyone who came to have a dispute settled by Miss Treason brought her a present, usually food but sometimes clean used clothing, if it was black, or a pair of old boots if they were her size. If Miss Treason gave judgment against you, it was really not a good idea (everyone said) to ask for your present back, as being turned into something small and sticky often offends.

They said if you lied to Miss Treason, you would die horribly within a week. They said that kings and princes came to see Miss Treason at night, asking questions about great affairs of state. They said that in her cellar was a heap of gold, guarded by a demon with skin like fire and three heads that would attack anyone it saw and eat their noses.

Tiffany suspected that at least two of these beliefs were wrong. She knew the third one wasn’t true, because one day she’d gone down into the cellar (with a bucket of water and a poker, just in case), and there was nothing there but piles of potatoes and carrots. And a mouse, watching her carefully.

Tiffany wasn’t scared, much. For one thing, unless the demon was good at disguising itself as a potato, it probably didn’t exist. And another thing was that although Miss Treason looked bad and sounded bad and smelled like old locked wardrobes, she didn’t feel bad.

First Sight and Second Thoughts, that’s what a witch had to rely on: First Sight to see what’s really there, and Second Thoughts to watch the First Thoughts to check that they were thinking right. Then there were the Third Thoughts, which Tiffany had never heard discussed and therefore kept quiet about; they were odd, seemed to think for themselves, and didn’t turn up very often. And they were telling her that there was more to Miss Treason than met the eye.

And then one day, when she was dusting, Tiffany knocked over the skull called Enochi.

. . . and suddenly Tiffany knew a lot more about Miss Treason than Miss Treason probably wanted anyone to know.

Tonight, as they were eating their stew (with black beans), Miss Treason said, “The wind is rising. We must go soon. I would not trust the stick above the trees on a night like this. There may be strange creatures about.”

“Go? We’re going out?” Tiffany asked. They never went out in the evenings, which was why the evenings always felt a hundred years long.

“Indeed we are. They will be dancing tonight.”

“Who will?”

“The ravens will not be able to see and the owl will get confused,” Miss Treason went on. “I will need to use your eyes.”

“Who will be dancing, Miss Treason?” said Tiffany. She liked dancing, but no one seemed to dance up here.

“It is not far, but there will be a storm.”

So that was that; Miss Treason wasn’t going to tell. But it sounded interesting. Besides, it would probably be an education to see anyone Miss Treason thought was strange.

Of course, it did mean Miss Treason would put her pointy hat on. Tiffany hated this bit. She’d have to stand in front of Miss Treason and stare at her, and feel the little tingle in her eyes as the ancient witch used her as a kind of mirror.

The wind was roaring in the woods like a big dark animal by the time they’d finished supper. It barged the door out of Tiffany’s hands when she opened it and blew around the room, making the cords hum on the loom.

“Are you sure about this, Miss Treason?” she said, trying to push the door shut.

“Don’t you say that to me! You will not say that to me! The dance must be witnessed! I have never missed the dance!” Miss Treason looked nervous and edgy. “We must go! And you must wear black.”

“Miss Treason, you know I don’t wear black,” said Tiffany.

“Tonight is a night for black. You will wear my second-best cloak.”

She said it with a witch’s firmness, as if the idea of anyone disobeying had never crossed her mind. She was 113 years old. She’d had a lot of practice. Tiffany didn’t argue.

It isn’t that I have anything against black, Tiffany thought as she fetched the second-best cloak, but it’s just not me. When people say witches wear black, they actually mean that old ladies wear black. Anyway, it’s not as if I’m wearing pink or something. . . .

After that she had to wrap Miss Treason’s clock in pieces of blanket, so that the clonk-clank became clonk-clank. There was no question of leaving it behind. Miss Treason always kept the clock close to her.

While Tiffany got herself ready, the old woman wound the clock up with a horrible graunching noise. She was always winding it up; sometimes she stopped to do it in the middle of a judgment, with a room full of horrified people.

There was no rain yet, but when they set out the air was full of twigs and flying leaves. Miss Treason sat sidesaddle on the broom, hanging on for dear life, while Tiffany walked along towing it by means of a piece of clothesline.

The sunset sky was still red, and a gibbous moon was high, but the clouds were being whipped across it, filling the woods with moving shadows. Branches knocked together, and Tiffany heard the creak and crash as, somewhere in the dark, one fell to the ground.

“Are we going to the villages?” Tiffany yelled above the din.

“No! Take the path through the forest!” shouted Miss Treason.

Ah, thought Tiffany, is this the famous “dancing around without your drawers on” that I’ve heard so much about? Actually, not very much about, because as soon as anyone mentions it, someone else tells them to shut up, so I really haven’t heard much about it at all, but haven’t heard in a very meaningful way.

It was something people thought witches did, but witches didn’t think they did it. Tiffany had to admit she could see why. Even hot summer nights weren’t all that warm, and there were always hedgehogs and thistles to worry about. Besides, you just couldn’t imagine someone like Granny Weatherwax dancing around without— Well, you just couldn’t imagine it, because if you did, it would make your head explode.

The wind died down as she took the forest track, still towing the floating Miss Treason. But the wind had brought cold air with it and then left it behind. Tiffany was glad of the cloak, even if it was black.

She trudged on, taking different tracks when Miss Treason told her to, until she saw firelight through the trees, in a little dip in the land.

“Stop here and help me down, girl,” said the old witch. “And listen carefully. There are rules. One, you will not talk; two, you will look only at the dancers; three, you will not move until the dance is finished. I will not tell you twice!”

“Yes, Miss Treason. It’s very cold up here.”

“And will get colder.”

They headed for the distant light. What good is a dance you can only watch? Tiffany wondered. It didn’t sound like much fun.

“It isn’t meant to be fun,” said Miss Treason.

Shadows moved across the firelight, and Tiffany heard the sound of men’s voices. Then, as they reached the edge of the sunken ground, someone threw water over the fire.

There was a hiss, and a cloud of smoke and steam rose among the trees. It happened in a moment and left a shock behind. The only thing that had seemed alive here had died.

Dry fallen leaves crunched under her feet. The moon, in a sky swept clean now of clouds, made little silver shapes on the forest floor.

It was some time before Tiffany realized that there were six men standing in the middle of the clearing. They must have been wearing black; against the moonlight they looked like man-shaped holes into nothing. They were in two lines of three, facing each other, but were so still that after a while Tiffany wondered if she was imagining them.

There was the thud of a drumbeat: bom . . . bom . . . bom.

It went on for half a minute or so, and then stopped. But in the silence of the cold woods the beat went on inside Tiffany’s head, and perhaps that wasn’t the only head it thundered in, because the men were gently nodding their heads, to keep the beat.

They began to dance.

The only noise was of their boots hitting the ground as the shadow men wove in and out. But then Tiffany, her head full of the silent drum, heard another sound. Her foot was tapping, all by itself.

She’d heard this beat before; she’d seen men dancing like this. But it had been on warm days in bright sunshine. They’d worn little bells on their clothes.

“This is a Morris dance!” she said, not quite under her breath.

“Shush!” hissed Miss Treason.

“But this isn’t the right—”

“Be silent!”

Blushing and angry in the dark, Tiffany took her eyes off the dancers and defiantly looked around the clearing. There were other shadows crowding in, human or at least human shaped, but she couldn’t see them clearly and maybe that was just as well.

It was getting colder, she was sure. White frost was crackling across the leaves.

The beat went on. But it seemed to Tiffany that it wasn’t alone now, but had picked up other beats and echoes from inside her head.

Miss Treason could shush all she liked. It was a Morris dance. But it was out of time!

The Morris men came to the village sometime in May. You could never be sure when, because they had to call at lots of villages along the Chalk, and every village had a pub, which slowed them down.

They carried sticks and wore white clothes with bells on them, to stop them from creeping up on people. No one likes an unexpected Morris dancer. Tiffany would wait outside the village with the other children and dance behind them all the way in.

And then they used to dance on the village green to the beat of a drum, banging their sticks together in the air, and then everyone would go to the pub and summer would come.

Tiffany hadn’t been able to work out how that last bit happened. The dancers danced, and then summer came—that was all anybody seemed to know. Her father said that there had once been a year when the dancers hadn’t turned up, and a cold wet spring had turned into a chilly autumn, with the months between being filled with mists and rain and frosts in August.

The sound of the drums filled her head now, making her feel dizzy. They were wrong; there was something wrong—

And then she remembered the seventh dancer, the one they called the Fool. He was generally a small man, wearing a battered top hat and bright rags sewn all over his clothes. Mostly he wandered around holding out the hat and grinning at people until they gave him money for beer. But sometimes he’d put the hat down and whirl off into the dancers. You’d expect there to be a massive collision of arms and legs, but it never happened. Jumping and twirling among the sweating men, he always managed to be where the other dancers weren’t.

The world was moving around her. She blinked. The drums in her head were like thunder now, and there was one beat as deep as oceans. Miss Treason was forgotten. So was the strange, mysterious crowd. Now there was only the dance itself.

It twisted in the air like a living thing. But there was a space in it, moving around. It was where she should be, she knew it. Miss Treason had said no, but that had been a long time ago and how could Miss Treason understand? What could she know? When did she last dance? The dance was in Tiffany’s bones now, calling to her. Six dancers were not enough!

She ran forward and jumped into the dance.

The eyes of the dancing men glared at her as she skipped and danced between them, always being where they weren’t. The drums had her feet, and they went where the beat sent them.

And then . . .

. . . there was someone else there.

It was like the feeling of someone behind her—but it was also the feeling of someone in front of her, and beside her, and above her, and below her, all at once.

The dancers froze, but the world spun. The men were just black shadows, darker outlines in the darkness. The drumbeats stopped, and there was one long moment as Tiffany turned gently and silently, arms out, feet not touching the ground, her face turned toward stars that were as cold as ice and sharp as needles. It felt . . . wonderful.

A voice said: “Who Are You?” It had an echo, or perhaps two people had said it at almost the same time.

The beat came back, suddenly, and six men crashed into her.

A few hours later, in the small town of Dogbend, down on the plains, the citizens threw a witch into the river with her arms and legs tied together.

This sort of thing never happened in the mountains, where witches had respect, but down on the wide plains there were still people dumb enough to believe the nastier stories. Besides, there wasn’t much to do in the evenings.

However, it probably wasn’t often that the witch was given a cup of tea and some biscuits before her ducking.

It had happened here because the people of Dogbend Did It By The Book.

The book was called: Magavenatio Obtusis.*

The townspeople didn’t know how the book had arrived. It had just turned up one day, on a shelf in one of the shops.

They knew how to read, of course. You had to have a certain amount of reading and writing to get on in the world, even in Dogbend. But they didn’t trust books much, or the kind of people who read them.

This one, though, was a book on how to deal with witches. It looked pretty authoritative, too, without too many long (and therefore untrustworthy) words, like “marmalade.” At last, they told one another, this is what we need. This is a sensible book. Okay, it isn’t what you’d expect, but remember that witch last year? We ducked her in the river and then tried to burn her alive? Only she was too soggy, and got away? Let’s not go through that again!

They paid particular attention to this bit:

It is very important, having caught your witch, not to harm her in any way (yet!). On no account set fire to her! This is an error beginners often fall into. It just makes the witch mad and she comes back even stronger. As everyone knows, the other way to get rid of a witch is to throw her into a river or pond.

This is the best plan:

First, imprison her overnight in a moderately warm room and give her as much soup as she asks for. Carrot-and-lentil might do, but for best results we recommend leek-and-potato made with a good beef stock. This has been proven to seriously harm her magical powers. Do not give her tomato soup—it will make her very powerful.

To be on the safe side, put a silver coin in each of her boots. She will not be able to pull the coins out because they will burn her fingers.

Provide her with warm blankets and a pillow. This will trick her into going to sleep. Lock the door and see that no one enters.

About one hour before dawn, go into the room. Now you might think the way to do this would be to rush in shouting. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. Tiptoe in gently, leave a cup of tea by the sleeping witch, tiptoe back to the doorway, and cough quietly. This is important. If awakened suddenly, she could get very nasty indeed.

Some authorities recommend chocolate biscuits with the tea, others say that ginger biscuits will be enough. If you value your life, do not give her plain biscuits, because sparks will fly out of her ears. When she awakes, recite this powerful mystic rune, which will stop her from turning into a swarm of bees and flying away:

ITI SAPIT EYI MA NASS.

When she has finished the tea and biscuits, tie her hands and feet in front of her with rope using No. 1 Bosun’s knots and throw her in the water.

IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTE: Do this before it starts getting light. Do not stay to watch!

Of course, this time some people did. And what they saw was the witch sinking and not coming up again, while her wicked pointy hat floated away. Then they went home for breakfast.

In this particular river, nothing much happened for several minutes more. Then the pointy hat started to move toward a thick patch of reeds. It stopped there, and rose very slowly. A pair of eyes peered out from underneath the brim. . . .

When she was sure that there was no one about, Miss Perspicacia Tick, teacher and witch finder, crawled up the bank on her stomach and then legged it away at high speed into the woods just as the sun came up. She’d left a bag with a clean dress and some fresh underwear stuck in a badger’s sett, along with a box of matches (she never carried matches in her pocket if there was a danger of being caught, in case it gave people ideas).

Well, she thought, as she dried out in front of a fire, things could have been worse. Thank goodness the village still had someone left who could read, or else she would have been in a pretty pickle. Maybe it was a good idea that she’d had the book printed in big letters.

It was in fact Miss Tick who had written Witch Hunting for Dumb People, and she made sure that copies of it found their way into those areas where people still believed that witches should be burned or drowned.

Since the only witch ever likely to pass through these days was Miss Tick herself, it meant that if things did go wrong, she’d get a good night’s sleep and a decent meal before being thrown into the water. The water was no problem at all to Miss Tick, who had been to the Quirm College for Young Ladies, where you had to have an icy dip every morning to build Moral Fiber. And a No. 1 Bosun’s knot was very easy to undo with your teeth, even underwater.

Oh, yes, she thought as she emptied her boots, and she’d got two silver sixpences, too. Really, the people of the village of Dogbend were getting very stupid indeed. Of course, that’s what happened when you got rid of your witches. A witch was just someone who knew a bit more than you did. That’s what the name meant. And some people didn’t like anyone who knew more than they did, so these days the wandering teachers and the traveling librarians steered clear of the place. The way things were going, if the people of Dogbend wanted to throw stones at anyone who knew more than them, they’d soon have to throw them at the pigs.

The place was a mess. Unfortunately there was a girl aged eight there who was definitely showing promise, and Miss Tick dropped in sometimes to keep an eye on her. Not as a witch, obviously, because although she liked a cold dip in the morning, you could have too much of a good thing. She disguised herself as a humble apple seller, or a fortune-teller. (Witches don’t usually do fortune-telling, because if they did, they’d be too good at it. People don’t want to know what’s really going to happen, only that it’s going to be nice. But witches don’t add sugar.)

Unfortunately the spring on Miss Tick’s stealth hat had gone wrong while she was walking down the main street and the point had popped up. Even Miss Tick hadn’t been able to talk her way out of that one. Oh well, she’d have to make other arrangements now. Witch finding was always dangerous. You had to do it, though. A witch growing up all alone was a sad and dangerous child. . . .

She stopped, and stared at the fire. Why had she just thought about Tiffany Aching? Why now?

Working quickly, she emptied her pockets and started a shamble.

Shambles worked. That was about all you could say about them for certain. You made them out of some string and a couple of sticks and anything you had in your pocket at the time. They were a witch’s equivalent of those knives with fifteen blades and three screwdrivers and a tiny magnifying glass and a thing for extracting earwax from chickens.

You couldn’t even say precisely what they did, although Miss Tick thought they were a way of finding out what things the hidden bits of your own mind somehow knew. You had to make a shamble from scratch every time, and only from things in your pockets. There was no harm in having interesting things in your pockets, though, just in case.

After less than a minute Miss Tick had crafted a shamble out of:

One twelve-inch ruler

One bootlace

One piece of secondhand string

Some black thread

One pencil

One pencil sharpener

A small stone with a hole in it

A matchbox containing a mealworm called Roger, along with a scrap of bread for him to eat, because every shamble must contain something living

About half a packet of Mrs. Sheergold’s Lubricated Throat Lozenges

A button

It looked like a cat’s cradle, or maybe the tangled strings of a very strange puppet.

Miss Tick stared at it, waiting for it to read her. Then the ruler swung around, the throat sweets exploded in a little cloud of red dust, the pencil shot away and stuck in Miss Tick’s hat, and the ruler was covered in frost.

That was not supposed to happen.

Miss Treason sat downstairs in her cottage and watched Tiffany sleeping in the low bedroom above her. She did this through a mouse, which was sitting on the tarnished brass bedstead. Beyond the gray windows (Miss Treason hadn’t bothered to clean them for fifty-three years, and Tiffany hadn’t been able to shift all the dirt), the wind howled among the trees, even though it was midafternoon.

He’s looking for her, she thought as she fed a piece of ancient cheese to another mouse on her lap. But he won’t find her. She is safe here.

Then the mouse looked up from the cheese. It had heard something.

“I told yez! She’s here somewhere, fellas!”

“I dinna see why we canna just talk tae the ol’ hag. We get along fine wi’ hags.”

“Mebbe, but this one is a terrrrrible piece o’ work. They say she’s got a fearsome demon in her tattie cellar.”

Miss Treason looked puzzled. “Them?” she whispered to herself. The voices were coming from beneath the floor. She sent the mouse scurrying across the boards and into a hole.

“I dinna want to disappoint ye, but we’s in a cellar right here, and it’s full o’ tatties.”

After a while a voice said: “So where izzit?”

“Mebbe it’s got the day off?”

“What’s a demon need a day off for?”

“Tae gae an’ see its ol’ mam an’ dad, mebbe?”

“Oh, aye? Demons have mams, do they?”

“Crivens! Will ye lot stop arguin’! She might hear us!”

“Nae, she’s blind as a bat and deaf as a post, they say.”

Mice have very good hearing. Miss Treason smiled as the hurrying mouse came out in the rough old stone wall of the cellar, near the floor.

She looked through its eyes. It could see quite well in the gloom, too.

A small group of little men was creeping across the floor. Their skins were blue and covered with tattoos and dirt. They all wore very grubby kilts, and each one had a sword, as big as he was, strapped to his back. And they all had red hair, a real orange-red, with scruffy pigtails. One of them wore a rabbit skull as a helmet. It would have been more scary if it hadn’t kept sliding over his eyes.

In the room above, Miss Treason smiled again. So they’d heard of Miss Treason? But they hadn’t heard enough.

As the four little men squirmed through an old rat hole to get out of the cellar, they were watched by two more mice, three different beetles, and a moth. They tiptoed carefully across the floor, past an old witch who was clearly asleep— right up until she banged on the arms of her chair and bellowed:

“Jings! I see you there, ye wee schemies!”

The Feegles reacted in instant panic, colliding with one another in shock and awe.

“I dinna remember tellin’ ye tae move!” shouted Miss Treason, grinning horribly.

“Oh, waily, waily, waily! She’s got the knowin’ o’ the speakin’!” someone sobbed.

“Ye’re Nac Mac Feegles, right? But I dinna ken the clan markin’s. Calm doon, I ain’t gonna deep-fry ye. You! What’s your name?”

“Ah’m Rob Anybody, Big Man o’ the Chalk Hill clan,” said the one with the rabbit-skull helmet. “And—”

“Aye? Big Man, are ye? Then ye’ll do me the courtesy an’ tak’ off yon bony bonnet ere ye speak tae me!” said Miss Treason, enjoying herself no end. “An’ stannit up straight! I will have nae slouchin’ in this hoose!”

Instantly all four Feegles stood to rigid attention.

“Right!” said Miss Treason. “An’ who are the rest o’ yez?”

“This is my brother Daft Wullie, miss,” said Rob Anybody, shaking the shoulder of the Feegle who was an instant wailer. He was staring in horror at Enochi and Athootita.

“An’ the other two of you . . . I mean, twa’ o’ ye?” said Miss Treason. “You, there. I mean ye. Ye have the mousepipes. Are ye a gonnagle?”

“Aye, mistress,” said a Feegle who looked neater and cleaner than the others, although it had to be said that there were things living under old logs that were cleaner and neater than Daft Wullie.

“And your name is . . . ?”

“Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin, mistress.”

“You’re staring hard at me, Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin,” said Miss Treason. “Are ye afraid?”

“No, mistress. I wuz admirin’ ye. It does my heart good tae see a witch so . . . witchy.”

“It does, does it?” said Miss Treason suspiciously. “Are ye sure ye’re no’ afraid o’ me, Mr. Billy Bigchin?”

“No, mistress. But I will be if it makes ye happy,” said Billy carefully.

“Hah!” said Miss Treason. “Well, I see we have—hae a clever one here. Who is your big friend, Mr. Billy?”

Billy elbowed Big Yan in the ribs. Despite his size, which for a Feegle was huge, he was looking very nervous. Like a lot of people with big muscles, he got edgy about people who were strong in other ways.

“He’s Big Yan, mistress,” Billy Bigchin supplied, while Big Yan stared at his feet.

“I see he’s got a necklace o’ big teeth,” said Miss Treason. “Human teeth?”

“Aye, mistress. Four, mistress. One for every man he’s knocked out.”

“Are you talking about human men?” asked Miss Treason in astonishment.

“Aye, mistress,” said Billy. “Mostly he drops on ’em heidfirst oot o’ a tree. He has a verra tough heid,” he added, in case this wasn’t clear.

Miss Treason sat back. “And now you will kindly explain why ye were creepin’ aboot here in my hoose,” she said. “Come along, now!”

There was a tiny, tiny pause before Rob Anybody said happily, “Oh, weel, that’s easy. We wuz huntin’ the haggis.”

“No, you weren’t,” said Miss Treason sharply, “because a haggis is a pudding of sheep’s offal and meat, well spiced and cooked in a sheep’s stomach.”

“Ah, that is only when ye canna find the real thing, mistress,” said Rob Anybody carefully. “’Tis no’ a patch on the real thing. Oh, a canny beast is the haggis, which makes its burrows in tattie cellars. . . .”

“And that’s the truth? You were hunting the haggis? Is it, Daft Wullie?” said Miss Treason, her voice suddenly sharp. All eyes, including a pair belonging to an earwig, turned to the luckless Wullie.

“Er . . . aye . . . oooh . . . aarg . . . waily, waily, waily!” moaned Daft Wullie, and dropped to his knees. “Please dinna do somethin’ horrible tae me, mistress!” he begged. “Yon earwiggy is givin’ me a dreadful look!”

“Very well, we shall start again,” said Miss Treason. She reached up and tore off her blindfold. The Feegles stepped back as she touched the skulls on either side of her.

“I do not need eyes to smell a lie when it comes calling,” she said. “Tell me why you are here. Tell me . . . again.”

Rob Anybody hesitated for a moment. This was, in the circumstances, very brave of him. Then he said: “’Tis aboot the big wee hag, mistress, we came.”

“The big wee— Oh, you mean Tiffany?”

“Aye!”

“We is under one o’ them big birds,” said Daft Wullie, keeping his eyes averted from the witch’s blind stare.

“He means a geas, mistress,” said Rob Anybody, glaring at his brother. “It’s like a—”

“—a tremendous obligation that you cannot disobey,” said Miss Treason. “I ken what a geas is. But why?”

Miss Treason had heard a lot of things in 113 years, but now she listened in astonishment to a story about a human girl who had, for a few days at least, been the kelda of a clan of Nac Mac Feegles. And if you were their kelda, even for a few days, they’d watch over you . . . forever.

“An’ she’s the hag o’ our hills,” said Billy Bigchin. “She cares for them, keeps them safe. But . . .”

He hesitated, and Rob Anybody continued: “Our kelda is havin’ dreams. Dreams o’ the future. Dreams o’ the hills all froze an’ everyone deid an’ the big wee hag wearin’ a crown o’ ice!”

“My goodness!”

“Aye, an’ there wuz more!” said Billy, throwing out his arms. “She saw a green tree growin’ in a land o’ ice! She saw a ring o’ iron! She saw a man with a nail in his heart! She saw a plague o’ chickens an’ a cheese that walks like a man!”

There was silence, and then Miss Treason said: “The first two, the tree and the ring, no problem there, good occult symbolism. The nail, too, very metaphorical. I’m a bit doubtful about the cheese—could she mean Horace?—and the chickens . . . I’m not sure you can have a plague of chickens, can you?”

“Jeannie wuz verra firm about them,” said Rob Anybody. “She’s dreamed many strange and worryin’ things, so we thought we might just see how the big wee hag wuz gettin’ along.”

Miss Treason’s various eyes stared at him. Rob Anybody stared back with an expression of ferocious honesty, and did not flinch.

“This seems an honorable enterprise,” she said. “Why start by lying?”

“Oh, the lie wuz goin’ tae be a lot more interestin’,” said Rob Anybody.

“The truth of the matter seems quite interesting to me,” said Miss Treason.

“Mebbe, but I wuz plannin’ on puttin’ in giants an’ pirates an’ magic weasels,” Rob declared. “Real value for the money!”

“Oh well,” said Miss Treason. “When Miss Tick brought Tiffany to me, she did say she was guarded by strange powers.”

“Aye,” said Rob Anybody proudly. “That’d be us, right enough.”

“But Miss Tick is a rather bossy woman,” said Miss Treason. “I am sorry to say I didn’t listen much to what she said. She is always telling me that these girls are really keen to learn, but mostly they are just flibbertigibbets who want to be a witch to impress the young men, and they run away after a few days. This one doesn’t, oh no! She runs toward things! Did you know she tried to dance with the Wintersmith?!”

“Aye. We ken. We were there,” said Rob Anybody.

“You were?”

“Aye. We followed yez.”

“No one saw you there. I would have known if they did,” Miss Treason said.

“Aye? Weel, we’re good at no one seein’ us,” said Rob Anybody, smiling. “It’s amazin’, the people who dinna see us.”

“She actually tried to dance with the Wintersmith,” Miss Treason repeated. “I told her not to.”

“Ach, people’re always tellin’ us not tae do things,” said Rob Anybody. “That’s how we ken what’s the most interestin’ things tae do!”

Miss Treason stared at him with the eyes of one mouse, two ravens, several moths, and an earwig.

“Indeed,” she said, and sighed. “Yes. The trouble with being this old, you know, is that being young is so far away from me now that it seems sometimes that it happened to someone else. A long life is not what it’s cracked up to be, that is a fact. It—”

“The Wintersmith is seekin’ for the big wee hag, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. “We saw her dancin’ wi’ the Wintersmith. Now he is seekin’ her. We can hear him in the howl o’ the wind.”

“I know,” said Miss Treason. She stopped, and listened for a moment. “The wind has dropped,” she stated. “He’s found her.”

She snatched up her walking sticks and scuttled toward the stairs, going up them with amazing speed. Feegles swarmed past her into the bedroom, where Tiffany lay on a narrow bed.

A candle burned in a saucer at each corner of the room.

“But how has he found her?” Miss Treason demanded. “I had her hidden! You, blue men, fetch wood now!” She glared at them. “I said fetch—”

She heard a couple of thumps. Dust was settling. The Feegles were watching Miss Treason expectantly. And sticks, a lot of sticks, were piled in the tiny bedroom fireplace.

“Ye did well,” she said. “An’ not tae soon!”

Snowflakes were drifting down the chimney.

Miss Treason crossed her walking sticks in front of her and stamped her foot hard.

“Wood burn, fire blaze!” she shouted. The wood in the grate burst into flame. But now frost was forming on the window, ferny white tendrils snapping across the glass with a crackling sound.

“I am not putting up with this at my age!” said the witch.

Tiffany opened her eyes, and said: “What’s happening?”

CHAPTER 3

The Secret of Boffo

It is not good, being in a sandwich of bewildered dancers. They were heavy men. Tiffany was Aching all over. She was covered in bruises, including one the shape of a boot that she wasn’t going to show to anyone.

Feegles filled every flat surface in Miss Treason’s weaving room. She was working at her loom with her back to the room because, she said, this helped her think; but since she was Miss Treason, her position didn’t matter much. There were plenty of eyes and ears she could use, after all. The fire burned hot, and there were candles everywhere. Black ones, of course.

Tiffany was angry. Miss Treason hadn’t shouted, hadn’t even raised her voice. She’d just sighed and said “foolish child,” which was a whole lot worse, mostly because that’s just what Tiffany knew she’d been. One of the dancers had helped bring her back to the cottage. She couldn’t remember anything about that at all.

A witch didn’t do things because they seemed a good idea at the time! That was practically cackling! You had to deal every day with people who were foolish and lazy and untruthful and downright unpleasant, and you could certainly end up thinking that the world would be considerably improved if you gave them a slap. But you didn’t because, as Miss Tick had once explained: a) it would make the world a better place for only a very short time; b) it would then make the world a slightly worse place; and c) you’re not supposed to be as stupid as they are.

Her feet had moved, and she’d listened to them. She ought to have been listening to her head. Now she had to sit by Miss Treason’s fire with a tin hot-water bottle on her lap and a shawl around her.

“So the Wintersmith is a kind of god?” she said.

“That kind o’ thing, yes,” said Billy Bigchin. “But not the prayin’-to kinda god. He just . . . makes winters. It’s his job, ye ken.”

“He’s an elemental,” said Miss Treason from her loom.

“Aye,” said Rob Anybody. “Gods, elementals, demons, spirits . . . sometimes it’s hard to tell ’em apart wi’oot a map.”

“And the dance is to welcome winter?” said Tiffany. “That doesn’t make sense! The Morris dance is to welcome the coming of the summer, yes, that’s—”

“Are you an infant?” said Miss Treason. “The year is round! The wheel of the world must spin! That is why up here they dance the Dark Morris, to balance it. They welcome the winter because of the new summer deep inside it!”

Click-clack went the loom. Miss Treason was weaving a new cloth, of brown wool.

“Well, all right,” said Tiffany. “We welcomed it . . . him. That doesn’t mean he’s supposed to come looking for me!”

“Why did you join the dance?” Miss Treason demanded.

“Er . . . There was a space, and—”

“Yes. A space. A space not intended for you. Not for you, foolish child. You danced with him, and now he wants to meet such a bold girl. I have never heard of such a thing! I want you to fetch the third book from the right on the second shelf from the top of my bookcase.” She handed Tiffany a heavy black key. “Can you manage to do even that?”

Witches didn’t need to slap the stupid, not when they had a sharp tongue that was always ready.

Miss Treason also had several shelves of books, which was unusual for one of the older witches. The shelves were high up, the books looked big and heavy, and up until now Miss Treason had forbidden Tiffany to dust them, let alone unlock the big black iron band that secured them to the shelves. People who came here always gave them a nervous look. Books were dangerous.

Tiffany unlocked the bands and wiped away the dust. Ah . . . the books were, like Miss Treason, not everything they seemed. They looked like magic books, but they had names like An Encyclopaedia of Soup. There was a dictionary. Next to it the book Miss Treason had asked for was covered in cobwebs.

Still blushing with shame and anger, Tiffany got the book down, fighting to get it free of the webs. Some of them went pling! as they snapped, and dust fell off the top of the pages. When she opened it, it smelled old and parchmenty, like Miss Treason. The title, in gold lettering that had almost rubbed away, was Chaffinch’s Ancient and Classical Mythology. It was full of bookmarks.

“Pages eighteen and nineteen,” said Miss Treason, her head not moving. Tiffany turned to them.

“‘The Dacne of the Sneasos’?” she said. “Is that supposed to be ‘The Dance of the Seasons’?”

“Regrettably, the artist, Don Weizen de Yoyo, whose famous masterpiece that was, did not have the same talent with letters as he had with painting,” said Miss Treason. “They worried him, for some reason. I notice you mention the words before the pictures. You are a bookish child.”

The picture was . . . strange. It showed two figures. Tiffany hadn’t seen masquerade costumes. There wasn’t the money at home for that sort of thing. But she’d read about them, and this was pretty much what she’d imagined.

The page showed a man and a woman—or, at least, things that looked like a man and a woman. The woman was labeled “Summer” and was tall and blond and beautiful, and therefore to the short, brown-haired Tiffany was a figure of immediate distrust. She was carrying what looked like a big basket shaped like a shell, which was full of fruit.

The man, “Winter,” was old and bent and gray. Icicles glittered on his beard.

“Ach, that’s wha’ the Wintersmith would look like, sure enough,” said Rob Anybody, strolling across the page. “Ol’ Frosty.”

“Him?” said Tiffany. “That’s the Wintersmith? He looks a hundred years old!”

“A youngster, eh?” said Miss Treason nastily.

“Dinna let him kiss ye, or yer nose might turn blue and fall off!” said Daft Wullie cheerfully.

“Daft Wullie, don’t you dare say things like that!” said Tiffany.

“I wuz just tryin’ to lighten the mood, ye ken,” said Wullie, looking sheepish.

“That’s an artist’s impression, of course,” said Miss Treason.

“What does that mean?” said Tiffany, staring at the picture. It was wrong. She knew it. This wasn’t what he was like at all. . . .

“It means he made it up,” said Billy Bigchin. “He wouldna ha’ seen him, noo, would he? No one’s seen the Wintersmith.”

“Yet!” said Daft Wullie.

“Wullie,” said Rob Anybody, turning to his brother, “ye ken I told ye aboot makin’ tactful remarks?”

“Aye, Rob, I ken weel,” said Wullie obediently.

“What ye just said wuz not one o’ them,” said Rob.

Wullie hung his head. “Sorry, Rob.”

Tiffany clenched her fists. “I didn’t mean all this to happen!”

Miss Treason turned her chair with some solemnity.

“Then what did you mean? Will you tell me? Did you dance out of youth’s inclination to disobey old age? To mean is to think. Did you think at all? Others have joined in the dance before now. Children, drunkards, youths for a silly bet . . . nothing happened. The spring and autumn dances are . . . just an old tradition, most people would say. Just a way of marking when ice and fire exchange their dominion over the world. Some of us think we know better. We think something happens. For you, the dance became real, and something has happened. And now the Wintersmith is seeking you.”

“Why?” Tiffany managed.

“I don’t know. When you were dancing, did you see anything? Hear anything?”

How could you describe the feeling of being everywhere and everything? Tiffany wondered. She didn’t try.

“I . . . thought I heard a voice, or maybe two voices,” she mumbled. “Er, they asked me who I was.”

“Int-ter-rest-ting,” said Miss Treason. “Two voices? I will consider the implications. What I can’t understand is how he found you. I will think about that. In the meantime, I expect it would be a good idea to wear warm clothing.”

“Aye,” said Rob Anybody, “the Wintersmith canna abide the heat. Oh, I’ll be forgettin’ my ain heid next! We brought a wee letter from that hollow tree down in the forest. Gi’ it to the big wee hag, Wullie. We picked it up on the way past.”

“A letter?” said Tiffany as the loom clacked behind her and Daft Wullie began to pull a grubby, rolled-up envelope from his spog.

“It’s from that wee heap o’ jobbies at the castle back hame,” Rob went on as his brother hauled. “He says he bides fine and hopes ye do likewise, an’ he’s lookin’ forward to you bein’ back hame soon, an’ there’s lots o’ stuff about how the ships are doin’ an’ suchlike, no’ verra interestin’ in ma opinion, an’ he’s writ S. W. A. L. K. on the bottom, but we havena worked out what that means yet.”

“You read my letter?” said Tiffany in horror.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob with pride. “Nae problem. Billy Bigchin here gave me a wee hint with some o’ the longer words, but it was mostly me, aye.” He beamed, but the grin faded as he watched Tiffany’s expression. “Ach, I ken you’re a wee bitty upset that we opened yon envelope thingy,” he explained. “But that’s okay, ’cuz we glued it up again wi’ slug. Ye wouldna ever know it’d been read.”

He coughed, because Tiffany was still glaring at him. All women were a bit scary to the Feegles, and witches were the worst. At last, when he was really nervous, Tiffany said: “How did you know where that letter would be?”

She glanced sideways at Daft Wullie. He was chewing the edge of his kilt. He only ever did this when he was frightened.

“Er . . . would you accept a wee bittie lie?” Rob said.

“No!”

“It’s interestin’. There’s dragons an’ unicorns in it—”

“No. I want the truth!”

“Ach, it’s so boring. We go to the Baron’s castle an’ read the letters ye sent him, an’, an’ ye said the postman knows to leave letters tae you in the hollow tree by the waterfall,” said Rob.

If the Wintersmith had got into the cottage, the air couldn’t have been any colder.

“He keeps the letters fra’ ye in a box under his—” Rob began, and then shut his eyes as Tiffany’s patience parted with a twang even louder than Miss Treason’s strange cobwebs.

“Don’t you know it’s wrong to read other people’s letters?” she demanded.

“Er . . .” Rob Anybody began.

“And you broke into the Baron’s cast—”

“Ah, ah, ah, no, no, no!” said Rob, jumping up and down. “Ye canna get us on that one! We just walked in through one of them little wee slits for the firin’ o’ the arrows—”

“And then you read my personal letters sent personally to Roland?” said Tiffany. “They were personal!”

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody. “But dinna fash yersel’—we willna tell anyone what was in ’em.”

“We ne’er tell a soul what’s in yer diary, after all,” said Daft Wullie. “Not e’en the bits wi’ the flowers ye draw aroound them.”

Miss Treason is grinning to herself behind me, Tiffany thought. I just know she is. But she’d run out of nasty tones of voice. You did that after talking to the Feegles for any length of time.

You were their kelda, her Second Thoughts reminded her. They think they have a solemn duty to protect you. It doesn’t matter what you think. They’re going to make your life sooo complicated.

“Don’t read my letters,” she said, “and don’t read my diary, either.”

“Okay,” said Rob Anybody.

“Promise?”

“Oh, aye.”

“But you promised last time!”

“Oh, aye.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Oh, aye, nae problemo.”

“And that’s the promise of an untrustworthy, lying, stealing Feegle, is it?” said Miss Treason. “Because ye believe ye’re deid already, do ye no’? That’s what ye people think, right?”

“Oh, aye, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. “Thank ye for drawin’ ma attention tae that.”

“In fact, Rob Anybody, ye ha’ nae intention o’ keepin’ any promise at all!”

“Aye, mistress,” said Rob proudly. “Not puir wee weak promises like that. Becuz, ye see, ’tis oor solemn destiny to guard the big wee hag. We mus’ lay doon oor lives for her if it comes to it.”

“How can ye do that when ye’re deid already?” said Miss Treason sharply.

“That’s a bit o’ a puzzler, right enough,” said Rob, “so probably we’ll lay doon the lives o’ any scunners who do wrong by her.”

Tiffany gave up and sighed. “I’m almost thirteen,” she said. “I can look after myself.”

“Hark at Miss Self-Reliant,” said Miss Treason, but not in a particularly nasty way. “Against the Wintersmith?”

“What does he want?” said Tiffany.

“I told you. Perhaps he wants to find out what kind of girl was so forward as to dance with him?” said Miss Treason.

“It was my feet! I said I didn’t mean to!”

Miss Treason turned around in her chair. How many eyes is she using? Tiffany’s Second Thoughts wondered. The Feegles? The ravens? The mice? All of them? How many of me is she seeing? Is she watching me with mice, or insects with dozens of glittery eyes?

“Oh, that’s all right then,” said Miss Treason. “Once again, you didn’t mean it. A witch takes responsibility! Have you learned nothing, child?”

Child. That was a terrible thing to say to anyone who was almost thirteen. Tiffany felt herself going red again. The horrible hotness spread inside her head.

That was why she walked across the room, opened the front door, and stepped outside.

A fluffy snow was falling, very gently. When Tiffany looked into the pale-gray sky, she saw the flakes drifting down in soft, feathery clusters; it was the kind of snow that people back home on the Chalk called “Granny Aching shearing her sheep.”

Tiffany felt the flakes melting on her hair as she walked away from the cottage. Miss Treason was shouting from the doorway, but she walked on, letting the snow cool her blushes.

Of course this is stupid, she told herself. But being a witch is stupid. Why do we do it? It’s hard work for not much reward. What’s a good day for Miss Treason? When someone brings her a secondhand pair of old boots that fit properly! What does she know about anything?

Where is the Wintersmith, then? Is he here? I’ve only got Miss Treason’s word for it! That and a made-up picture in a book!

“Wintersmith!” she shouted.

You could hear the snow falling. It made a strange little noise, like a faint, cold sizzle.

“Wintersmith!”

There was no reply.

Well, what had she expected? A big booming voice? Mr. Spiky the icicle man? There was nothing but the softness of white snow falling patiently among dark trees.

She felt a bit silly now, but satisfied, too. This was what a witch did! She faced what she was afraid of, and then it held no more fear! She was good at this!

She turned—and saw the Wintersmith.

Remember this, said her Third Thoughts, cutting in. Every little detail is important.

The Wintersmith was . . .

. . . nothing. But the snow outlined him. It flowed around him in lines, as if traveling on an invisible skin. He was just a shape, and nothing more, except perhaps for two tiny pale purple-gray dots in the air, where you might expect to find eyes.

Tiffany stood still, her mind frozen, her body waiting to be told what to do.

The hand made of falling snow was reaching toward her now, but very slowly, as you would reach out toward an animal you do not want to frighten. There was . . . something, some strange sense of things unsaid because there was no voice to say them, a sense of striving, as if the thing were putting heart and soul into this moment, even if it did not know the meaning of heart or soul.

The hand stopped about a foot away from her. It was formed into a fist, and now it turned over and the fingers opened.

Something gleamed. It was the white horse, made of silver, on a fine silver chain.

Tiffany’s hand flew to her throat. But she’d had it on last night! Before she went . . . to . . . watch . . . the . . . dance. . . .

It must have come off! And he’d found it!

That’s interesting, said her Third Thoughts that busied themselves with the world in their own way. You can’t see what’s hidden inside an invisible fist. How does that work? And why are those little purple-gray blurs in the air where you’d expect to find eyes? Why aren’t they invisible?

That’s Third Thoughts for you. When a huge rock is going to land on your head, they’re the thoughts that think: Is that an igneous rock, such as granite, or is it sandstone?

That part of Tiffany’s brain that was a little less precise at the moment watched the silver horse dangle on its chain.

Her First Thought was: Take it.

Her Second Thought was: Don’t take it. It’s a trap.

Her Third Thought was: Really don’t take it. It will be colder than you can imagine.

And then the rest of her overruled the Thoughts entirely and said: Take it. It’s part of who you are. Take it. When you hold it, you think of home. Take it!

She held out her right hand.

The horse dropped into it. Instinctively she closed her fingers over it. It was indeed colder than she could have imagined, and it burned.

She screamed. The Wintersmith’s snowy outline became a flurry of flakes. The snow around her feet erupted with a cry of “Crivens!” as a mass of Feegles grabbed her feet and carried her, upright, across the clearing and back in through the cottage’s doorway.

Tiffany forced her hand open and, with trembling fingers, pulled the silver horse off her palm. It left a perfect print, a white horse on pink flesh. It wasn’t a burn, it was a . . . freeze.

Miss Treason’s chair rumbled around on its wheels.

“Come here, child,” she ordered.

Still clasping her hand, trying to force back the tears, Tiffany walked over to her.

“Stand right here by my chair, this instant!”

Tiffany did so. This was no time to be disobedient.

“I wish to look in your ear,” said Miss Treason. “Brush your hair aside.”

Tiffany held back her hair, and winced when she heard the tickle of mouse whiskers. Then the creature was taken away.

“Ah, I am surprised,” said Miss Treason. “I can see nothing.”

“Er . . . what were you expecting to see?” Tiffany ventured.

“Daylight!” snapped Miss Treason, so loudly that the mouse scuttled away. “Have you no brains at all, child?”

“Ah dunno if anyone is interested,” said Rob Anybody, “but I think yon Wintersmith has offskied. An’ it’s stopped snowin’.”

No one was listening. When witches row, they concentrate.

“It was mine!”

“A trinket!”

“No!”

“O’ course, this may not be the best time tae tell ye . . .” Rob went on, miserably.

“You think you need it to be a witch?”

“Yes!”

“A witch needs no devices!”

“You’ve used shambles!”

“Used, yes! Don’t need. Not need!”

“Ah mean, it’s quite meltin’ awa—” Rob said, smiling nervously.

Anger grabbed Tiffany’s tongue. How dare this stupid old crone talk about not needing things!

“Boffo!” she shouted. “Boffo, Boffo, Boffo!”

Silence slammed down. After a while Miss Treason looked past Tiffany and said: “Ye wee Feegle schemies! Get oot o’ here right noo! Ah’ll ken it if ye don’t! This is hag business!”

The room filled with a sort of whooshing noise, and the door to the kitchen slammed shut.

“So,” said Miss Treason, “you know about Boffo, do you?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany, breathing heavily. “I do.”

“Very well. And have you told anyone—?” Miss Treason paused and raised a finger to her lips. Then she banged a stick on the floor. “Ah said get oot, ye scunners! Off intae the woods w’ ye! Check that he’s really gang awa’! I’ll see yer guilt through yer own een if ye defy me!”

From below there was the sound of a lot of potatoes rumbling as the Feegles scrambled out through the little ventilation grill.

“Now they’ve gone,” said Miss Treason. “They’ll stay gone, too. Boffo will see to that.”

Somehow, in the space of a few seconds, Miss Treason had become more human and a lot less scary. Well . . . slightly less scary.

“How did you find out? Did you go looking for it? Did you go prowling and rummaging?” said Miss Treason.

“No! I’m not like that! I found out by accident one day when you were having a nap!” Tiffany rubbed her hand.

“Does that hurt a lot?” said Miss Treason, leaning forward. She might be blind, but—like all the senior witches who knew what they were doing—she noticed everything.

“No, not now. It did, though. Look, I—”

“Then you will learn to listen! Do you think the Wintersmith has gone?”

“He just seemed to vanish—I mean, vanish even more. I think he just wanted to give me back my necklace.”

“Do you think that is the sort of thing the spirit of Winter, who commands the blizzard and the frost, would really do?”

“I don’t know, Miss Treason! He’s the only one I’ve met!”

“You danced with him.”

“I didn’t know I was going to!”

“Nevertheless.”

Tiffany waited, and then said: “Nevertheless what?”

“Just general neverthelessness. The little horse led him to you. But he’s not here now—you’re right about that. I’d know if he was.”

Tiffany walked up to the front door, hesitated for just a moment, and then opened it and went out into the clearing. There was a bit of snow here and there, but the day was turning into just another one of those gray-skyed winter days.

I’d know if he was, too, she thought. And he isn’t. And her Second Thoughts said: Oh? How do you know?

“We’ve both touched the horse,” she said under her breath.

She looked around at the empty branches and the sleeping trees, fiddling with the silver chain in her hand. The forests were curling in on themselves, ready for the winter.

He’s out there, but not close. He must be very busy, with a whole winter to make. . . .

She said, “Thank you!” automatically, because her mother had always said that politeness costs nothing, and went back in. It was very hot inside now, but Miss Treason always had a huge log pile built by the Secret of Boffo. The local woodcutters always kept the pile high. A chilly witch might get nasty.

“I should like a cup of black tea,” said the old woman as Tiffany walked in, looking thoughtful.

She waited until Tiffany was washing out the cup, then said: “Have you heard the stories about me, child?” The voice was kindly. There had been shouts, there had been things said that might have been better put, there had been temper and defiance. But they were there together, with nowhere else to go. The quiet voice was a peace offering, and Tiffany was glad of it.

“Er, that you have a demon in the cellar?” Tiffany answered, her mind still full of puzzles. “And you eat spiders? And get visited by kings and princes? And that any flower planted in your garden blooms black?”

“Oh, do they say so?” said Miss Treason, looking delighted. “I haven’t heard that last one. How nice. And did you hear that I walk around at night in the dark time of the year and reward those who have been good citizens with a purse of silver? But if they have been bad, I slit open their bellies with my thumbnail like this?”

Tiffany leaped backward as a wrinkled hand twisted her around and Miss Treason’s yellow thumbnail scythed past her stomach. The old woman looked terrifying.

“No! No, I haven’t heard that one!” she gasped, pressing up against the sink.

“What? And it was a wonderful story, with real historical antecedents!” said Miss Treason, her vicious scowl becoming a smile. “And the one about me having a cow’s tail?”

“A cow’s tail? No!”

“Really? How very vexing,” said Miss Treason, lowering her finger. “I fear the art of storytelling has got into a pretty bad way in these parts. I really shall have to do something.”

“This is just another kind of Boffo, right?” said Tiffany. She wasn’t totally sure. Miss Treason had looked pretty scary with that thumbnail. No wonder girls left so quickly.

“Ah, you do have a brain, after all. Of course it is. Boffo, yes. A good name for it. Boffo, indeed. The art of expectations. Show people what they want to see, show ’em what they think should be there. I have a reputation to keep up, after all.”

Boffo, Tiffany thought. Boffo, Boffo, Boffo.

She went over to the skulls, picked one up, and read the label underneath, just like she’d done a month ago:

Ghastly Skull No. 1 Price $2.99

The Boffo Novelty & Joke Shop

No. 4, Tenth Egg Street, Ankh-Morpork

“If it’s a laugh . . . it’s a Boffo!”

“Very lifelike, aren’t they,” said Miss Treason, clicking back to her chair, “if you can say that about a skull, of course! The shop sold a wonderful machine for making spiderwebs. You poured in this sticky stuff, d’you see, and with practice quite good webs could be made. Can’t abide creepy-crawlies, but of course I’ve got to have the webs. Did you notice the dead flies?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany, glancing up. “They’re raisins. I thought you had vegetarian spiders.”

“Well done. Nothing wrong with your eyes, at least. I got my hat from there, too. ‘Wicked Old Witch Number Three, A Must for Scary Parties,’ I think it was. I’ve still got their catalogue somewhere, if you’re interested.”

“Do all witches buy from Boffo?” asked Tiffany.

“Only me, at least around here. Oh, and I believe Old Mistress Breathless over in Two Falls used to buy warts from there.”

“But . . . why?” said Tiffany.

“She couldn’t grow them. Just couldn’t grow them at all, poor woman. Tried everything. Face like a baby’s bottom, her whole life.”

“No, I meant, why do you want to seem so”— Tiffany hesitated, and went on—“awful?”

“I have my reasons,” said Miss Treason.

“But you don’t do those things the stories say you do, do you? Kings and princes don’t come to consult you, do they?”

“No, but they might,” said Miss Treason stoutly. “If they got lost, for example. Oh, I know all about those stories. I made up most of them!”

“You made up stories about yourself ?”

“Oh, yes. Of course. Why not? I couldn’t leave something as important as that to amateurs.”

“But people say you can see a man’s soul!”

Miss Treason chuckled. “Yes. Didn’t make that one up! But I’ll tell you, for some of my parishioners I’d need a magnifying glass! I see what they see, I hear with their ears. I knew their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers. I know the rumors and the secrets and the stories and the truths. And I am Justice to them, and I am fair. Look at me. See me.”

Tiffany looked—and looked past the black cloak and the skulls and the rubber cobwebs and the black flowers and the blindfold and the stories, and saw a little deaf and blind old lady.

Boffo made the difference . . . not just the silly party stuff, but Boffo-thinking—the rumors and the stories. Miss Treason had power because people thought she did. It was like the standard witch’s hat. But Miss Treason was taking Boffo much, much further.

“A witch needs no devices, Miss Treason,” Tiffany said.

“Don’t get smart with me, child. Didn’t the girl Weatherwax tell you all this? Oh, yes, you don’t need a wand or a shamble or even a pointy hat to be a witch. But it helps a witch to put on a show! People expect it. They’ll believe in you. I didn’t get where I am today by wearing a woolly bobble hat and a gingham apron! I look the part. I—”

There was a crash from outside, in the direction of the dairy.

“Our little blue friends?” said Miss Treason, raising her eyebrows.

“No, they’re absolutely forbidden to go into any dairy I work in,” Tiffany began, heading for the door. “Oh dear, I hope it’s not Horace—”

“I told you he’d be nothing but trouble, did I not?” Miss Treason shouted as Tiffany hurried away.

It was Horace. He’d squeezed out of his cage again. He could make himself quite runny when he wanted to.

There was a broken butter dish on the floor, but although it had been full of butter, there was none there now. There was just a greasy patch.

And, from the darkness under the sink, there came a sort of high-speed grumbling noise, a kind of mnnamnamnam. . . .

“Oh, you’re after butter now, are you, Horace?” said Tiffany, picking up the dairy broom. “That’s practically cannibalism, you know.”

Still, it was better than mice, she had to admit. Finding little piles of mouse bones on the floor was a bit distressing. Even Miss Treason had not been able to work that one out. A mouse she happened to be looking through would be trying to get at the cheeses and then it would all go dark.

That was because Horace was a cheese.

Tiffany knew that Lancre Blue cheeses were always a bit on the lively side, and sometimes had to be nailed down, but . . . well, she was highly skilled at cheese making, even though she said it herself, and Horace was definitely a champion. The famous blue streaks that gave the variety its wonderful color were really pretty, although Tiffany wasn’t sure they should glow in the dark.

She prodded the shadows with the end of the broom. There was a crack, and when she pulled the stick out again, two inches were missing from the end. Then there was a ptooi! noise and the missing piece of handle bounced off the wall on the other side of the room.

“No more milk for you, then,” said Tiffany, straightening up, and she thought:

He came to give me the horse back. The Wintersmith did that.

Um . . .

That is quite . . . impressive, when you think about it.

I mean, he’s got to organize avalanches and gales and come up with new shapes for snowflakes and everything, but he spared a bit of time just to come and give me my necklace back. Um . . .

And he just stood there.

And then he just vanished—I mean vanished even more.

Um . . .

She left Horace muttering under the sink and made tea for Miss Treason, who was back at her weaving. Then she quietly went up to her room.

Tiffany’s diary was three inches thick. Annagramma, another local trainee witch and one of her friends (more or less), said that she should really call it her Book of Shadows and write it on vellum using one of the special magical inks sold at Zakzak Stronginthearm’s Magical Emporium at Popular Prices—at least, prices that were popular with Zakzak.

Tiffany couldn’t afford one. You could only trade witchcraft—you weren’t supposed to sell it. Miss Treason didn’t mind her selling cheeses, but even so paper was expensive up here, and the wandering peddlers never had very much to sell. They usually had an ounce or two of green copperas, though, which could make a decent ink if you mixed it with crushed oak galls or green walnut shells.

The diary was now as thick as a brick with extra pages Tiffany had glued in. She’d worked out that she could make it last two more years if she wrote small.

On the leather cover she had, with a hot skewer, drawn the words “Feegles Keep Out!!” It had never worked. They looked upon that sort of thing as an invitation. She wrote parts of the diary in code these days. Reading didn’t come naturally to the Chalk Hill Feegles, so surely they’d never get the hang of a code.

She looked around carefully, in any case, and unlocked the huge padlock that secured a chain around the book. She turned to today’s date, dipped her pen in the ink, and wrote: “Met t .”

Yes, a snowflake would be a good code for the Wintersmith.

He just stood there, she thought.

And he ran away because I screamed.

Which was a good thing, obviously.

Um . . .

But . . . I wish I hadn’t screamed.

She opened her hand. The image of the horse was still there, as white as chalk, but there was no pain at all.

Tiffany gave a little shiver and pulled herself together. So? She had met the spirit of Winter. She was a witch. It was the sort of thing that sometimes happened. He’d politely given her back what was hers, and then he’d gone. There was no call to get soppy about it. There were things to do.

Then she wrote: “Ltr frm R.”

She very carefully opened the letter from Roland, which was easy because slug slime isn’t much of a glue. With any luck she could even reuse the envelope. She hunched over the letter so that no one could read it over her shoulder. Finally she said: “Miss Treason, will you get out of my face, please? I need to use my eyeballs privately.”

There was a pause and then a mutter from downstairs, and the tickling behind her eyes went away.

It was always . . . good to get a letter from Roland. Yes, they were often about the sheep, and other things of the Chalk, and sometimes there’d be a dried flower inside, a harebell or a cowslip. Granny Aching wouldn’t have approved of that; she always said that if the hills had wanted people to pick the flowers, they would have grown more of them.

The letters always made her homesick.

One day Miss Treason had said, “This young man who writes to you . . . is he your beau?” and Tiffany had changed the subject until she had time to look up the word in the dictionary and then more time to stop blushing.

Roland was . . . well, the thing about Roland was . . . the main thing about . . . well, the point was . . . he was there.

Okay, when she’d first really met him, he had been a rather useless, rather stupid lump, but what could you expect? He’d been the prisoner of the Queen of the Elves for a year, to start with, fat as butter and half crazy on sugar and despair. Besides, he’d been brought up by a couple of haughty aunts, his father—the Baron—being mostly more interested in horses and dogs.

He’d more and less changed since then: more thoughtful, less rowdy, more serious, less stupid. He’d also had to wear glasses, the first ever seen on the Chalk.

And he had a library! More than a hundred books! Actually, it belonged to the castle, but no one else seemed interested in it.

Some of the books were huge and ancient, with wooden covers and huge black letters and colored pictures of strange animals and far-off places. There was Waspmire’s Book of Unusual Days, Crumberry’s Why Things Are Not Otherwise, and all but one volume of the Ominous Encyclopaedia. Roland had been astonished to find that she could read foreign words, and she’d been careful not to tell him it was all done with the help of what remained of Dr. Bustle.

The thing was . . . the fact was . . . well, who else had they got? Roland couldn’t, just couldn’t have friends among the village kids, what with him being the son of the Baron and everything. But Tiffany had the pointy hat now, and that counted for something. The people of the Chalk didn’t like witches much, but she was Granny Aching’s granddaughter, right? No tellin’ what she’d learned from the ol’ girl, up at the shepherding hut. And they do say she showed those witches up in the mountains what witchin’s all about, eh? Remember the lambing last year? She prit near brought dead lambs back to life just by lookin’ at ’em! And she’s an Aching, and they’ve got these hills in their bones. She’s all right. She’s ours, see?

And that was fine, except that she didn’t have any old friends anymore. Kids back home who’d been friendly were now . . . respectful, because of the hat. There was a kind of wall, as if she’d grown up and they hadn’t. What could they talk about? She’d been to places they couldn’t even imagine. Most of them hadn’t even been to Twoshirts, which was only half a day away. And this didn’t worry them at all. They were going to do the jobs their fathers did, or raise children like their mothers did. And that was fine, Tiffany added hurriedly to herself. But they hadn’t decided. It was just happening to them, and they didn’t notice.

It was the same up in the mountains. The only people of her own age she could actually talk to were other witches-in-training like Annagramma and the rest of the girls. It was useless trying to have a real conversation with people in the villages, especially the boys. They just looked down and mumbled and shuffled their feet, like people at home when they had to talk to the Baron.

Actually, Roland did that too, and he went red every time she looked at him. Whenever she visited the castle, or walked on the hills with him, the air was full of complicated silences . . . just like it had been with the Wintersmith.

She read the letter carefully, trying to ignore the grubby Feegle fingerprints all over it. He’d been kind enough to include several spare sheets of paper.

She smoothed one out, very carefully, stared at the wall for a while, and then began to write.

Down in the scullery,* Horace the cheese had come out from behind the slop bucket. Now he was in front of the back door. If a cheese ever looked thoughtful, Horace looked thoughtful now.

In the tiny village of Twoshirts, the driver of the mail coach was having a bit of a problem. A lot of mail from the countryside around Twoshirts ended up at the souvenir shop there, which also acted as the post office.

Usually the driver just picked up the mailbag, but today there was a difficulty. He frantically turned over the pages of the book of Post Office Regulations.

Miss Tick tapped her foot. This was getting on his nerves.

“Ah, ah, ah,” said the coachman triumphantly. “Says here no animals, birds, dragons, or fish!”

“And which one of them do you think I am?” asked Miss Tick icily.

“Ah, well, right, well, human is kind of like animal, right? I mean, look at monkeys, right?”

“I have no wish to look at monkeys,” said Miss Tick. “I have seen the sort of things they do.”

The coachman clearly spotted that this was a road not to go down, and turned the pages furiously. Then he beamed.

“Ah, ah, ah!” he said. “How much do you weigh, miss?”

“Two ounces,” said Miss Tick. “Which by chance is the maximum weight of a letter that can be sent to the Lancre and Near Hinterland area for ten pence.” She pointed to the two stamps gummed to her lapel. “I have already purchased my stamps.”

“You never weigh two ounces!” said the coachman. “You’re a hundred and twenty pounds at least!”

Miss Tick sighed. She’d wanted to avoid this, but Twoshirts wasn’t Dogbend, after all. It lived on the highway, it watched the world go past. She reached up and pressed the button that worked her hat.

“Would you like me to forget you just said that?” she asked.

“Why?” said the coachman.

There was a pause while Miss Tick stared blankly at him. Then she turned her eyes upward.

“Excuse me,” she said. “This is always happening, I’m afraid. It’s the duckings, you know. The spring rusts.”

She reached up and banged the side of the hat. The hidden pointy bit shot up, scattering paper flowers.

The coachman’s eyes followed it. “Oh,” he said.

And the thing about pointy hats was this: The person under one was definitely a witch or a wizard. Oh, someone who wasn’t could probably get a pointy hat and go out wearing it, and they’d be fine right up until the moment when they met a real pointy-hat owner. Wizards and witches don’t like impostors. They also don’t like being kept waiting.

“How much do I weigh now, pray?” she asked.

“Two ounces!” said the coachman quickly.

Miss Tick smiled. “Yes. And not one scruple more! A scruple being, of course, a weight of twenty grains, or one twenty-fourth of an ounce. I am in fact . . . unscrupulous!”

She waited to see if this extremely teachery joke was going to get a smile but didn’t mind when it didn’t. Miss Tick rather liked being smarter than other people.

She got on the coach.

As the coach climbed up into the mountains, snow started to fall. Miss Tick, who knew that no two snowflakes are alike, didn’t pay them any attention. If she had done so, she’d have felt slightly less smart.

Tiffany slept. A fire glowed in the bedroom grate. Downstairs, Miss Treason’s loom wove its way through the night. . . .

Small blue figures crept across the bedroom floor and, by forming a Feegle pyramid, reached the top of the little table Tiffany used as a desk.

Tiffany turned over in bed and made a little snfgl noise. The Feegles froze, just for a moment, and then the bedroom door swung gently shut behind them.

A blue blur raised a trail of dust on the narrow stairs, across the loom-room floor, out into the scullery, and through a strange cheese-shaped hole in the outside door. From then on it was a trail of disturbed leaves leading deep into the woods, where a small fire burned. It lit the faces of a horde of Feegles, although it may not have wanted to.

The blur stopped and became about six Feegles, two of them carrying Tiffany’s diary.

They laid it down carefully.

“We’re well oot o’ that hoose,” said Big Yan. “Dija see dem bigjob skulls? There’s a hag ye wouldna want tae cross in a hurry!”

“Ach, I see she’s got one o’ they paddly locks again,” said Daft Wullie, walking around the diary.

“Rob, I canna help thinkin’ that it’s no’ right tae read this,” said Billy Bigchin as Rob put his arm into the keyhole. “It’s pers’nal!”

“She’s oor hag. What’s pers’nal tae her is pers’nal tae us,” said Rob matter-of-factly, fishing around inside the lock. “Besides, she must want someone tae read it, ’cuz she wrote things doon. Nae point in writin’ stuff doon if ye dinna want it read! It’s a sheer waste o’ pencil!”

“Mebbe she wanted tae read it hersel’,” said Billy doubtfully.

“Oh, aye? Why’d she want tae do that?” said Rob scornfully. “She already kens what’s in it. An’ Jeannie wants tae know what she’s thinkin’ aboot the Baron’s lad.”

There was a click, and the padlock opened. The assembled Feeglehood watched carefully.

Rob turned the rustling pages and grinned.

“Ach, she’s writ here: Oh, the dear Feegles ha’ turned up again,” he said. This met with general applause.

“Ach, what a kind girl she is tae write that,” said Billy Bigchin. “Can I see?”

He read: Oh dear, the Feegles have turned up again.

“Ah,” he said. Billy Bigchin had come with Jeannie all the way from the Long Lake clan. The clan there was more at home with the reading and writing, and since he was the gonnagle, he was expected to be good at both.

The Chalk Hill Feegles, on the other hand, were more at home with the drinkin’, stealin’, and fightin’, and Rob Anybody was good at all three. But he’d learned to read and write because Jeannie had asked him to. He did them with a lot more optimism than accuracy, Billy knew. When he was faced with a long sentence, he tended to work out a few words and then have a great big guess.

“The art o’ readin’ is all aboot understandin’ whut the wurds is tryin’ tae say, right?” said Rob.

“Aye, mebbe,” said Big Yan, “but is there any wurd there tae tell us that the big wee hag is sweet on that heap o’ jobbies doon in the stone castle?”

“Ye ha’ a verra ro-mantic nature,” said Rob. “And the answer is: I canna tell. They writes some bits o’ their letters in them wee codies. That’s a terrible thing tae do to a reader. It’s hard enough readin’ the normal words, wi’oot somebody jumblin’ them all up.”

“It’ll be a baaaad look-oot fra’ us all if the big wee hag starts mindin’ boys instead o’ gettin’ the knowin’ o’ the hagglin’,” said Big Yan.

“Aye, but the boy willna be interested in marryin’,” said Slightly Mad Angus.

“He might be one day,” said Billy Bigchin, who’d made a hobby of watching humans. “Most bigjob men get married.”

“They do?” said a Feegle in astonishment.

“Oh, aye.”

“They want tae get married?”

“A lot o’ them do, aye,” said Billy.

“So there’s nae more drinkin’, stealin’, an’ fightin’?”

“Hey, ah’m still allowed some drinkin’ an’ stealin’ an’ fightin’!” said Rob Anybody.

“Aye, Rob, but we canna help noticin’ ye also have tae do the Explainin’, too,” said Daft Wullie.

There was a general nodding from the crowd. To Feegles, Explaining was a dark art. It was just so hard.

“Like, when we come back from drinkin’, stealin’, an’ fightin’, Jeannie gives ye the Pursin’ o’ the Lips,” Daft Wullie went on.

A moan went up from all the Feegles: “Ooooh, save us from the Pursin’ o’ the Lips!”

“An’ there’s the Foldin’ o’ the Arms,” said Wullie, because he was even scaring himself.

“Oooooh, waily, waily, waily, the Foldin’ o’ the Arms!” the Feegles cried, tearing at their hair.

“Not tae mention the Tappin’ o’ the Feets. . . .” Wullie stopped, not wanting to mention the Tappin’ o’ the Feets.

“Aargh! Oooooh! No’ the Tappin’ o’ the Feets!” Some of the Feegles started to bang their heads on trees.

“Aye, aye, aye, BUT,” said Rob Anybody desperately, “what youse dinna ken is that this is part o’ the hiddlins o’ husbandry.”

Feegles looked at one another. There was silence except for the creak of a small tree as it fell over.

“We never heard o’ any sich thing, Rob,” said Big Yan.

“Well, an’ ah’m no’ surprised! Who’d tell ye? Ye ain’t married! Ye dinna get the po-et-ic symmi-tree o’ the whole thing. Gather roound ’til I tell ye. . . .”

Rob looked around to see if anyone apart from about five hundred Feegles was watching him, and went on: “See . . . first ye get the drinkin’ an’ the fightin’ an’ the stealin’, okay. An’ when you get back tae the mound, it’s time for the Tappin’ o’ the Feets—”

“Ooooooo!”

“—an’ the Foldin’ o’ the Arms—”

“Aaaargh!”

“—an’, o’ course, the Pursin’ o’ the Lips an’ will ye scunners knock it off wi’ the groanin’ before I starts bangin’ heids together! Right?”

All the Feegles fell silent, except for one:

“Oh, waily, waily, waily! Ohhhhhhh! Aaarrgh! The Pursin’ . . . o’. . . the . . .”

He stopped and looked around in embarrassment.

“Daft Wullie?” said Rob Anybody with icy patience.

“Aye, Rob?”

“Ye ken I told yez there wuz times ye should listen to whut I was sayin’?”

“Aye, Rob?”

“That wuz one o’ them times.”

Daft Wullie hung his head. “Sorry, Rob.”

“Aye! Now, where wuz I . . . Oh, aye . . . we get the lips an’ the arms an’ the feets, okay? An’ then—”

“It’s time for the Explainin’!” said Daft Wullie.

“Aye!” snapped Rob Anybody. “Any one o’ youse mudlins want to be the one who dares tae do the Explainin’?”

He looked around.

The Feegles shuffled backward.

“Wi’ the kelda a-pursin’ an’ a-foldin’ an’ a-tappin’,” Rob went on in a voice of Doom, “an’ that look in her bonny eye that says: ‘This Explanation had better be really guid’? Well? Do ye?”

By now Feegles were crying and chewing the edges of their kilts in terror.

“No, Rob,” they murmured.

“No, aye!” said Rob Anybody triumphantly. “Ye wouldna! That’s because you don’t have the knowin’ o’ the husbandry!”

“I heard Jeannie say ye come up with Explanations no other Feegle in all the world would try,” said Daft Wullie admiringly.

“Aye, that’s quite likely,” said Rob, swelling with pride. “An’ Feegles has got a fine tradition o’ huge Explanations!”

“She said some of your Explainin’ is so long an’ twisty, by the time ye’ve got to the end, she canna recall how they started,” Daft Wullie went on.

“It’s a nat’ral gift—I wouldna wanta boast,” said Rob, waving his hand modestly.

“I canna see bigjobs bein’ good at Explainin’,” said Big Yan. “They’re verra slow thinkers.”

“They still get wed, though,” said Billy Bigchin.

“Aye, and yon boy in the big castle is bein’ too friendly wi’ the big wee hag,” said Big Yan. “His da is gettin’ old an’ sick, and soon yon boy will own a big stone castle an’ the wee bittie papers that says that he owns the hills.”

“Jeannie’s afeared that if he’s got the wee bittie papers that says he owns the hills,” Billy Bigchin continued, “he might go daft and think they belong to him. An’ we know where that’ll lead, right?”

“Aye,” said Big Yan. “Plowin’.”

It was a dreaded word. The old Baron had once planned to plow a few of the flatter areas of the Chalk, because wheat was fetching high prices and there was no money in sheep, but Granny Aching had been alive then and had changed his mind for him.

But some pastures around the Chalk were being plowed up already. There was money in wheat. The Feegles took it for granted that Roland would take to the plow, too. Wasn’t he brought up by a couple of vain, scheming, and unpleasant aunts?

“I dinna trust him,” said Slightly Mad Angus. “He reads books an’ such. He disna care aboot the land.”

“Aye,” said Daft Wullie, “but if he wuz wed tae the big wee hag, he’d no’ think o’ the plow, ’cuz the big wee hag would soon gi’e him the Pursin’ o’ the Arms—”

“It’s the Foldin’ o’ the Arms!” snapped Rob Anybody.

All the Feegles looked around fearfully.

“Ooooooh, not the Foldin’ o’ th—”

“Shut up!” Rob yelled. “Ah’m ashamed o’ yez! It’s up tae the big wee hag tae marry who she wants tae! Is that no’ so, gonnagle?”

“Hmm?” said Billy, looking upward. He caught a snowflake.

“I said the big wee hag can wed who she wants, right?”

Billy was staring at the snowflake.

“Billy?” said Rob.

“What?” he said, as if waking up. “Oh . . . yes. Do ye think she wants tae marry the Wintersmith?”

“The Wintersmith?” said Rob. “He canna marry anyone. He’s like a spirit—there’s nothin’ tae him!”

“She danced with him. We saw her,” said Billy, catching another flake and inspecting it.

“Just girlish high spirits! Anyway, why should the big wee hag think anything o’ the Wintersmith?”

“I have reason tae believe,” said the gonnagle slowly, as more flakes danced down, “that the Wintersmith is thinkin’ a lot aboot the big wee hag. . . .”

CHAPTER 4

Snowflakes

They say that there can never be two snowflakes that are exactly alike, but has anyone checked lately?

Snow fell gently in the darkness. It piled up on rooftops, it kissed its way between the branches of trees, it settled on the forest floor with a gentle sizzle and smelled sharply of tin.

Granny Weatherwax always checked the snow. She stood at her doorway, with the candlelight streaming out around her, and caught flakes on the back of a shovel.

The white kitten watched the snowflakes. That’s all it did. It didn’t bat them with a paw, it just watched, very intently, each flake spiral down until it landed. Then the kitten would watch it some more, until it was sure the entertainment was over, before it looked up and selected another flake.

It was called You, as in “You! Stop that!” and “You! Get off there!” When it came to names, Granny Weatherwax didn’t do fancy.

Granny looked at the snowflakes and smiled in her not-exactly-nice way.

“Come back in, You,” she said, and shut the door.

Miss Tick was shivering by the fire. It wasn’t very big—just big enough. However, there was the smell of bacon and pease pudding coming from a small pot on the embers, and beside the small pot was a much larger one from which came the smell of chicken. Miss Tick didn’t often get chicken, so she lived in hope.

It had to be said that Granny Weatherwax and Miss Tick did not get on well with each other. Senior witches often don’t. You could tell that they didn’t by the way they were extremely polite all the time.

“The snow is early this year, Mistress Weatherwax,” said Miss Tick.

“Indeed it is, Miss Tick,” said Granny Weatherwax. “And so . . . interesting. Have you looked at it?”

“I’ve seen snow before, Mistress Weatherwax,” said Miss Tick. “It was snowing all the way up here. I had to help push the mail coach! I saw altogether too much snow! But what are we going to do about Tiffany Aching?”

“Nothing, Miss Tick. More tea?”

“She is rather our responsibility.”

“No. She’s hers, first and last. She’s a witch. She danced the Winter Dance. I saw her do it.”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean to,” said Miss Tick.

“How can you dance and not mean it?”

“She’s young. The excitement probably ran away with her feet. She didn’t know what was going on.”

“She should have found out,” said Granny Weatherwax. “She should have listened.”

“I’m sure you always did what you were told when you were almost thirteen, Mistress Weatherwax,” said Miss Tick with just a hint of sarcasm.

Granny Weatherwax stared at the wall for a moment. “No,” she said. “I made mistakes. But I didn’t make excuses.”

“I thought you wanted to help the child?”

“I’ll help her to help herself. That is my way. She’s danced into the oldest Story there is, and the only way out is through the other end. The only way, Miss Tick.”

Miss Tick sighed. Stories, she thought. Granny Weatherwax believes the world is all about stories. Oh well, we all have our funny little ways. Except me, obviously.

“Of course. It’s just that she’s so . . . normal,” Miss Tick said aloud. “When you consider what she’s done, I mean. And she thinks so much. And now that she’s come to the attention of the Wintersmith, well . . .”

“She fascinates him,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“That’s going to be a big problem.”

“Which she will have to solve.”

“And if she can’t?”

“Then she’s not Tiffany Aching,” said Granny Weatherwax firmly. “Ah, yes, she’s in the Story now, but she don’t know it! Look at the snow, Miss Tick. They say that no two snowflakes are alike. How could they know something like that? Oh, they thinks they’re so smart! I’ve always wanted to catch ’em out. An’ I have done! Go outside now, and look at the snow. Look at the snow, Miss Tick! Every flake the same!”

Tiffany heard the knocking and opened the tiny bedroom window with difficulty. Snow had built up on the sill, soft and fluffy.

“We didna want tae wake ye,” said Rob Anybody, “but Awf’ly Wee Billy said you ought tae see this.”

Tiffany yawned. “What am I looking for?” she muttered.

“Catch some o’ yon flakes,” said Rob. “No, not on yer hand—they’ll melt tae soon.”

In the gloom Tiffany felt around for her diary. It wasn’t there. She looked on the floor, in case she’d knocked it off. Then a match flared as Rob Anybody lit a candle, and there was the diary, looking as though it had always been there but, she noticed, also being suspiciously cold to the touch. Rob looked innocent, a sure sign of guilt.

Tiffany saved the questions for later and poked the diary out of the window. Flakes settled on it, and she lifted it closer to her eyes.

“They look just like any ordin—” she began, and then stopped, and then said, “Oh, no . . . this must be a trick!”

“Aye? Well, ye could call it that,” said Rob. “But it’s his trick, ye ken.”

Tiffany stared at falling flakes drifting in the light of the candle.

Every one of them was Tiffany Aching. A little, frozen, sparkling Tiffany Aching.

Downstairs, Miss Treason burst out laughing.

The doorknob on the door to the tower bedroom was rattled angrily. Roland de Chumsfanleigh (pronounced Chuffley; it wasn’t his fault) carefully paid it no attention.

“What are you doing in there, child?” said a muffled voice peevishly.

“Nothing, Aunt Danuta,” said Roland, without turning around from his desk. One of the advantages of living in a castle was that rooms were easy to lock; his door had three iron locks and two bolts that were as thick as his arm.

“Your father is calling out for you, you know!” said another voice, with even more peeve.

“He whispers, Aunt Araminta,” Roland said calmly, carefully writing an address on an envelope. “He only cries out when you set the doctors on him.”

“It’s for his own good!”

“He cries out,” Roland repeated, and then licked the flap on the envelope.

Aunt Araminta rattled the doorknob again.

“You are a very ungrateful child! You will starve, you know! We will get the guards to batter this door down!”

Roland sighed. The castle had been built by people who did not like to have their doors battered down, and anyone trying to do that here would have to carry the battering ram up a narrow spiral staircase with no room at the top to turn around, and then find a way to knock down a door four planks thick and made of oak timbers so ancient, it was like iron. One man could defend this room for months, if he had provisions. He heard some more grumbling outside and then the echo of the aunts’ shoes as they went down the tower. Then he heard them screaming at the guards again.

It wouldn’t do them much good. Sergeant Roberts and his guards* were edgy about taking orders from the aunts. Everyone knew, though, that if the Baron died before the boy was twenty-one, the aunts would legally run the estate until he was. And while the Baron was very ill, he was not dead. It was not a happy time to be a disobedient guard, but the sergeant and his men survived the anger of the aunts by being, when their orders justified it, deaf, stupid, forgetful, confused, ill, lost, or—in the case of Kevin—foreign.

For now, Roland kept his excursions for the small hours, when no one was around and he could pillage the kitchen. That’s when he went in to see his father. The doctors kept the old man dosed with something, but Roland held his hand for a while for the comfort that it gave. If he found jars of wasps or leeches, he threw them into the moat.

He stared at the envelope. Perhaps he ought to tell Tiffany about this, but he didn’t like to think about it. It would worry her and she might try to rescue him again, and that wouldn’t be right. This was something he had to face. Besides, he wasn’t locked in. They were locked out. While he held the tower, there was a place where they couldn’t poke and pry and steal. He’d got what was left of the silver candlesticks under his bed, along with what remained of the antique silver cutlery (“gone to be valued,” they’d said) and his mother’s jewel box. He’d been a bit late finding that; it was missing her wedding ring and the silver-and-garnet necklace his grandmother had left to her.

But tomorrow he’d get up early and ride over to Twoshirts with the letter. He liked writing them. They turned the world into a nicer place, because you didn’t have to include the bad bits.

Roland sighed. It would have been nice to tell Tiffany that in the library he’d found a book called Sieges and Survival by the famous general Callus Tacticus (who invented “tactics,” which was interesting). Who’d have thought such an ancient book could be so useful? The general had been very firm about having provisions, so Roland had plenty of small potatoes, large sausages, and heavy dwarf bread, which was handy to drop on people.

He glanced across the room, where there was a portrait of his mother that he had carried up from the cellar where they had left it (“waiting to be cleaned,” they said). Right beside it, if you knew what you were looking for, an area of wall about the size of a small door looked lighter than the rest of the stones. The candlestick next to it looked slightly lopsided, too.

There were lots of advantages to living in a castle.

Outside, it began to snow.

The Nac Mac Feegles peered out at the fluffy flakes from the thatch of Miss Treason’s cottage. By the light that managed to leak out from the grubby windows below, they watched the tiny Tiffanys whirl past.

“Say it wi’ snowflakes,” said Big Yan. “Hah!”

Daft Wullie snatched a spiraling flake. “Ye gotta admit he’s done the wee pointy hat really well,” he said. “He must like the big wee hag a lot.”

“It disna make any sense!” said Rob Anybody. “He’s the Winter! He’s all the snow an’ ice an’ storms an’ frosts. She’s just a wee big girl! Ye canna say that’s an ideal match! Whut do ye say, Billy? Billy?”

The gonnagle was chewing the end of his mousepipes while staring at the flakes with a faraway look in his eyes. But somehow Rob’s voice broke into his thoughts, because he said: “Whut does he ken aboot people? He’s no’ as alive as a wee insect, yet he’s as powerful as the sea. An’ he’s sweet on the big wee hag. Why? Whut can she be tae him? Whut will he do next? I tell ye this: Snowflakes is just the beginning. We must watch oot, Rob. This may become verra bad. . . .”

Up in the mountains, 990,393,072,007 Tiffany Achings landed lightly on the old packed snow on a ridge and began an avalanche that carried away more than a hundred trees and a hunting lodge. This wasn’t Tiffany’s fault.

It wasn’t her fault that people slipped on packed layers of her, or couldn’t open the door because she was piled up outside it, or got hit by handfuls of her thrown by small children. Most of her had melted by breakfast time the next day, and besides, no one noticed anything strange except witches who don’t take people’s word for things, and a lot of kids no one listened to.

Even so, Tiffany woke up feeling very embarrassed.

Miss Treason didn’t help at all.

“At least he likes you,” she said while she ferociously wound up her clock.

“I wouldn’t know about that, Miss Treason,” said Tiffany, really not wanting this conversation at all. She was washing the dishes at the sink, her back to the old woman, and she was glad that Miss Treason could not see her face—and, if it came to it, that she couldn’t see Miss Treason’s face, either.

“What will your young man say about it, I wonder?”

“What young man is that, Miss Treason?” said Tiffany, as stonily as she could manage.

“He writes you letters, girl!”

And I expect you read them with my eyes, Tiffany thought. “Roland? He’s just a friend . . . sort of,” she said.

“A sort of friend?”

I’m not going into this, Tiffany thought. I bet she’s grinning. It’s not her business, anyway.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s right, Miss Treason. A sort of friend.”

There was a long silence, which Tiffany used to scrub out the bottom of an iron saucepan.

“It is important to have friends,” said Miss Treason, in a voice that was somehow smaller than it had been. It sounded as though Tiffany had won. “When you have finished, dear, please be kind enough to fetch me my shamble bag.”

Tiffany did so, and hurried off into the dairy. It was always good to get in there. It reminded her of home, and she could think better. She—

There was a cheese-shaped hole in the bottom of the door, but Horace was back in his broken cage, making a very faint mnmnmnmn noise that may have been cheese snores. She left him alone and dealt with the morning’s milk.

At least it wasn’t snowing. She felt herself blushing, and tried to stop herself from even thinking about it.

And there was going to be a coven meeting tonight. Would the other girls know? Hah! Of course they would. Witches paid attention to snow, especially if it was going to be embarrassing for somebody.

“Tiffany? I wish to speak with you,” Miss Treason called out.

Miss Treason had hardly ever called her Tiffany before. It was quite worrying to hear her say the name.

Miss Treason was holding up a shamble. Her seeing-eye mouse was dangling awkwardly among the bits of bone and ribbon.

“This is so inconvenient,” she said, and raised her voice. “Ach, ye mudlins! C’mon oot! I ken ye’re there! I can see ye lookin’ at me!”

Feegle heads appeared from behind very nearly everything.

“Good! Tiffany Aching, sit down!”

Tiffany sat down quickly.

“At a time like this, too,” said Miss Treason, laying down the shamble. “This is so inconvenient. But there is no doubt.” She paused for a moment and said: “I will die the day after tomorrow. On Friday, just before half past six in the morning.”

It was an impressive statement, and did not deserve this reply: “Oh, that’s a shame, tae be missin’ the weekend like that,” said Rob Anybody. “Are ye goin’ somewhere nice?”

“But . . . but . . . you can’t die!” Tiffany burst out. “You’re a hundred and thirteen years old, Miss Treason!”

“You know, that is very probably the reason, child,” said Miss Treason calmly. “Didn’t anyone tell you that witches have forewarning when they’re going to die? Anyway, I like a good funeral.”

“Oh aye, ye canna beat a good wake,” said Rob Anybody. “Wi’ lots o’ boozin’ an’ dancin’ an’ greetin’ an feastin’ an’ boozin’.”

“There may be some sweet sherry,” said Miss Treason. “As for feasting, I always say you cannot go far wrong with a ham roll.”

“But you can’t just—” Tiffany began, and stopped as Miss Treason turned her head fast, like a chicken does.

“—leave you like this?” she said. “Is that what you were going to say?”

“Er, no,” Tiffany lied.

“You’ll have to move in with someone else, of course,” said Miss Treason. “You’re not really senior enough to take on a cottage, not when there’s older girls waiting—”

“You know I don’t want to spend my life in the mountains, Miss Treason,” Tiffany said quickly.

“Oh yes, Miss Tick did tell me,” said the old witch. “You want to go back to your little chalk hills.”

“They’re not little!” Tiffany snapped, louder than she’d meant to.

“Yes, this has been a bit of a trying time all around,” said Miss Treason very calmly. “I shall write some letters, which you will take down to the village, and then you shall have your afternoon off. We shall hold the funeral tomorrow afternoon.”

“Sorry? You mean before you die?” said Tiffany.

“Why, of course! I don’t see why I shouldn’t have some fun!”

“Good thinkin’!” said Rob Anybody. “That’s the kind o’ sensible detail people usually fails tae consider.”

“We call it a going-away party,” said Miss Treason. “Just for witches, of course. Other people tend to get a bit nervous—I can’t think why. And on the bright side, we’ve got that splendid ham that Mr. Armbinder gave us last week for settling the ownership of the chestnut tree, and I’d love to try it.”

An hour later Tiffany set out, with her pockets full of notes to butchers and bakers and farmers in the local villages.

She was a bit surprised at the reception she got. They seemed to think it was all a joke.

“Miss Treason’s not going to go dying at her time of life,” said a butcher, weighing out sausages. “I heard that Death’s come for her before and she slammed the door on him!”

“Thirteen dozen sausages, please,” said Tiffany. “Cooked and delivered.”

“Are you sure she’s going to die?” said the butcher, uncertainty clouding his face.

“No. But she is,” said Tiffany.

And the baker said, “Don’t you know about that clock of hers? She had it made when her heart died. It’s like a clockwork heart, see?”

“Really?” said Tiffany. “So if her heart died, and she had a new one made of clockwork, how did she stay alive while the new heart was being made?”

“Oh, that’d be by magic, obviously,” said the baker.

“But a heart pumps blood, and Miss Treason’s clock is outside her body,” Tiffany pointed out. “There’s no . . . tubes. . . .”

“It pumps the blood by magic,” said the baker, speaking slowly. He gave her an odd look. “How can you be a witch if you don’t know this stuff?”

It was the same everywhere else. It was as if the idea of there being no Miss Treason was the wrong shape to put in anyone’s head. She was 113 years old, and they argued that it was practically unheard of for anyone to die aged 113. It was a joke, they said, or she’d got a scroll signed in blood that meant she’d live forever, or you’d have to steal her clock before she’d die, or every time the Grim Reaper came for her she lied about her name or sent him to another person, or maybe she was just feeling a bit unwell. . . .

By the time Tiffany was finished, she was wondering if it really was going to happen. Yet Miss Treason had seemed so certain. And if you were 113, the amazing thing wasn’t that you were going to die tomorrow but that you were still alive today.

With her head full of gloomy thoughts, she set out to the coven meeting.

Once or twice she thought she could feel Feegles watching her. She never knew how she could feel this; it was a talent you learned. And you learned to put up with it, most of the time.

All the other young witches were there by the time she arrived, and they had even got a fire lit.

Some people think that “coven” is a word for a group of witches, and it’s true that’s what the dictionary says. But the real word for a group of witches is an “argument.”

In any case, most of the witches Tiffany had met never used the word. Mrs. Earwig did, though, almost all the time. She was tall and thin and rather chilly, and wore silver spectacles on a little chain, and used words like “avatar” and “sigil.” And Annagramma, who ran the coven because she’d invented it and had the tallest hat and sharpest voice, was her star pupil (and her only one).

Granny Weatherwax always said that what Mrs. Earwig did was wizard magic with a dress on, and Annagramma certainly dragged a lot of books and wands along to the meetings. Mostly, the girls did a few ceremonies to keep her quiet, because for them the real purpose of the coven was to see friends, even if they were friends simply because they were, really, the only people you could talk to freely because they had the same problems and would understand what you were moaning about.

They always met out in the woods, even in the snow. There was always enough wood lying around for a fire, and they all dressed up warm as a matter of course. Even in the summer, comfort on a broomstick at any height meant more layers of underclothing than anyone would dare guess at, and sometimes a couple of hot-water bottles held on with string.

At the moment three small fireballs circled the fire. Annagramma had made them. You could slay enemies with them, she’d said. They made the others uneasy. It was wizard magic, showy and dangerous. Witches preferred to cut enemies dead with a look. There was no sense in killing your enemy. How would she know you’d won?

Dimity Hubbub had brought a huge tray of inside-out cake. It was just the thing to put a coating on your ribs against the cold.

Tiffany said: “Miss Treason told me she’s going to die on Friday morning. She said she just knows.”

“That’s a shame,” said Annagramma in a that’s-not-really-a-shame tone of voice. “She was very old, though.”

“She still is,” said Tiffany.

“Um, it’s called The Call,” said Petulia Gristle. “Old witches know when they’re going to die. No one knows how it works. They just do.”

“Has she still got those skulls?” said Lucy Warbeck, who had her hair piled up on her head with a knife and fork stuck in it. “I couldn’t stand them. They seemed to be, like, looking at me all the time!”

“It was her using me as a mirror that made me leave,” said Lulu Darling. “Does she still do that?”

Tiffany sighed. “Yes.”

“I said flatly that I wouldn’t go,” said Gertruder Tiring, poking the fire. “Did you know that if you leave a witch without permission, no other witch will take you on, but if you leave Miss Treason even after only one night, no one says anything about it and they just find you another place?”

“Mrs. Earwig says things like skulls and ravens is going far too far,” said Annagramma. “Everyone around there is literally frightened out of their lives!”

“Um, what’s going to happen to you?” said Petulia to Tiffany.

“I don’t know. I suppose I’ll go somewhere else.”

“Poor you,” said Annagramma. “Miss Treason didn’t say who’ll take over the cottage, by any chance?” she added, as if she’d only just thought of the question.

The sound that followed was the silence made by half a dozen pairs of ears listening so hard they were nearly creaking. There were not a lot of young witches coming up, it was true, but witches lived a long time, and getting your own cottage was the prize. That’s when you started getting respect.

“No,” said Tiffany.

“Not even a hint?”

“No.”

“She didn’t say it was going to be you, did she?” said Annagramma sharply. Her voice could be really annoying. It could make “hello” sound like an accusation.

“No!”

“Anyway, you’re too young.”

“Actually, there’s no, you know, actual age limit,” said Lucy Warbeck. “Nothing written down, anyway.”

“How do you know that?” Annagramma snapped.

“I asked Old Mrs. Pewmire,” said Lucy.

Annagramma’s eyes narrowed. “You asked her? Why?”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Because I wanted to know, that’s all. Look, everyone knows you’re the oldest and the . . . you know, most trained. Of course you’ll get the cottage.”

“Yes,” said Annagramma, watching Tiffany. “Of course.”

“That’s, um, sorted out, then,” said Petulia, more loudly than necessary. “Did you have a lot of snow last night? Old Mother Blackcap said it was unusual.”

Tiffany thought: Oh dear, here we go. . . .

“We often get it this early up here,” said Lucy.

“I thought it was a bit fluffier than usual,” said Petulia. “Quite pretty, if you like that sort of thing.”

“It was just snow,” said Annagramma. “Hey, did any of you hear what happened to the new girl who started with Miss Tumult? Ran away screaming after an hour?” She smiled, not very sympathetically.

“Um, was it the frog?” Petulia asked.

“No, not the frog. She didn’t mind the frog. It was Unlucky Charlie.”

“He can be scary,” Lucy agreed.

And that was it, Tiffany realized as the gossip ran on. Someone who was practically a kind of god had made billions of snowflakes that looked like her—and they hadn’t noticed!

. . . which was a good thing, obviously . . .

Of course it was. The last thing she wanted was teasing and stupid questions, of course. Well, of course . . .

. . . but . . . well . . . it would have been nice if they’d known, if they’d said “Wow,” if they’d been jealous or frightened or impressed. And she couldn’t tell them, or at least she couldn’t tell Annagramma, who’d make a joke of it and almost but not exactly say that she was making it up.

The Wintersmith had visited her and been . . . impressed. It was a bit sad if the only people who knew about this were Miss Treason and hundreds of Feegles, especially since—she shuddered—by Friday morning it would only be known by hundreds of little blue men.

To put it another way: If she didn’t tell someone else who was at least the same size as her and alive, she would burst.

So she told Petulia, on the way home. They had to go the same way, and they both flew so slowly that at night it was easier to walk, since you didn’t hit so many trees.

Petulia was plump and reliable and already the best pig witch in the mountains, a fact that means a lot where every family owns a pig. And Miss Treason had said that soon the boys would be running after her, because a girl who knows her pigs would never want for a husband.

The only problem with Petulia was that she always agreed with you and always said what she thought you wanted to hear. But Tiffany was a bit cruel and just told her all the facts. She got a few wows, which she was pleased with.

After a while Petulia said: “That must have been very, um, interesting.” And that was Petulia for you.

“What shall I do?”

“Um . . . do you need to do anything?” said Petulia.

“Well, sooner or later people are going to notice that all snowflakes are shaped like me!”

“Um, are you worried that they won’t?” said Petulia, so innocently that Tiffany laughed.

“But I’ve got this feeling that it’s not going to stop with snowflakes! I mean, he is everything to do with wintertime!”

“And he ran away when you screamed . . .” said Petulia thoughtfully.

“That’s right.”

“And then he did something sort of . . . silly.”

“What?”

“The snowflakes,” said Petulia helpfully.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” said Tiffany, a bit hurt. “Not exactly silly.”

“Then it’s all obvious,” said Petulia. “He’s a boy.”

“What?”

“A boy. You know what they are?” said Petulia. “Blush, grunt, mumble, wibble? They’re pretty much all the same.”

“But he’s millions of years old and he acts like he’s never seen a girl before!”

“Um, I don’t know. Has he ever seen a girl before?”

“He must have! What about Summer?” said Tiffany. “She’s a girl. Well, a woman. According to a book I’ve seen, anyway.”

“I suppose all you can do is wait to see what he does next, then. Sorry. I’ve never had snowflakes made in my honor. . . . Er, we’re here. . . .”

They’d reached the clearing where Miss Treason lived, and Petulia began to look a bit nervous.

“Um . . . all these stories about her . . .” she said, looking at the cottage. “Are you all right there?”

“Was one of them about what she can do with her thumbnail?” asked Tiffany.

“Yes!” said Petulia, shuddering.

“She made that one up. Don’t tell anyone, though.”

“Why would anyone make up a story like that about themselves?”

Tiffany hesitated. Pigs couldn’t be fooled by Boffo, so Petulia hadn’t run across it. And she was amazingly honest, which Tiffany was coming to learn was a bit of a drawback in a witch. It wasn’t that witches were actually dishonest, but they were careful about what kind of truth they told.

“I don’t know,” she lied. “Anyway, you have to cut through quite a lot of a person before anything falls out. And skin is quite tough. I don’t think it’s possible.”

Petulia looked alarmed. “You tried?”

“I practiced with my thumbnail on a big ham this morning, if that’s what you mean,” said Tiffany. You have to check things, she thought. I heard the story that Miss Treason has wolf’s teeth, and people tell that to one another even though they’ve seen her.

“Um . . . I’ll come and help tomorrow, of course,” said Petulia, nervously looking at Tiffany’s hands in case there were going to be any more thumbnail experiments. “Going-away parties can be quite jolly, really. But, um, if I was you, I’d tell Mr. Wintersmith to go away. That’s what I did when Davey Lummock started getting, um, too romantic. And I told him that I was, um, walking out with Makky Weaver—don’t tell the others!”

“Isn’t he the one who talks about pigs all the time?”

“Well, pigs are very interesting,” said Petulia reproachfully. “And his father, um, has got the biggest pig-breeding farm in the mountains.”

“That’s something worth thinking about, definitely,” said Tiffany. “Ouch.”

“What happened?” said Petulia.

“Oh, nothing. My hand really twinged there for a moment.” Tiffany rubbed it. “Part of the healing, I suppose. See you tomorrow.”

Tiffany went indoors. Petulia carried on through the forest.

From up near the roof came the sounds of a conversation.

“Didja hear what the fat girl said?”

“Aye, but pigs are no’ that interestin’.”

“Oh, I dinna ken aboot that. A verra useful animal is the pig. You can eat every part o’ it, ye ken, except for the squeal.”

“Ach, ye’re wrong there. Ye can use the squeal.”

“Dinna be daft!”

“Aye, ye can so! Ye make up a pie crust, right, an’ ye put in a lot o’ ham, right, an’ then ye catch the squeal, put the top on the pie before he can escape, right, an’ bung it straight in the oven.”

“I ne’er heard o’ such a thing as that!”

“Have ye no’? It’s called squeal-and-ham pie.”

“There’s nae such thing!”

“Why not? There’s bubble-and-squeak, right? An’ a squeak is wee compared tae a squeal. I reckon you could—”

“If youse mudlins dinna listen, I’ll put ye inna pie!” yelled Rob Anybody. The Feegles muttered into silence

And on the other side of the clearing the Wintersmith watched with purple-gray eyes. He watched until a candle was lit in an upstairs room, and watched the orange glow until it went out.

Then, walking unsteadily on new legs, he went toward the flower patch where, in the summer, roses had grown.

If you went to Zakzak Stronginthearm’s Magical Emporium, you’d see crystal balls of all sizes but more or less only one price, which was A Great Deal Of Money. Since most witches, and particularly the good ones, had Not Much Money At All, they made use of other things, like the glass floats off old fishing nets or a saucer of black ink.

There was a puddle of black ink on Granny Weatherwax’s table now. It had been in the saucer, but things had wobbled a bit when Granny and Miss Tick had banged their heads together trying to look in the saucer at the same time.

“Did you hear that?” said Granny Weatherwax. “Petulia Gristle asked the important question, and she just didn’t think about it!”

“I’m sorry to say I missed it too,” said Miss Tick. You, the white kitten, jumped up onto the table, walked carefully through the puddle of ink, and dropped into Miss Tick’s lap.

“Stop that, You,” said Granny Weatherwax in a vague sort of way as Miss Tick stared down at her dress.

“It hardly shows up,” said Miss Tick, but in fact four perfect cat footprints were very clear. Witches’ dresses start out black but soon fade to shades of gray because of frequent washings or, in the case of Miss Tick, regular dips in various ponds and streams. They got threadbare and ragged, too, and their owners liked that. It showed you were a working witch, not a witch for show. Four black kitten footprints in the middle of your dress suggested you were a bit wussy, though. She lowered the cat to the floor, where it trotted over to Granny Weatherwax, rubbed up against her, and tried to meep more chicken into existence.

“What was the important thing?” said Miss Tick.

“I’m asking you as one witch to another, Perspicacia Tick: Has the Wintersmith ever met a girl?”

“Well,” said Miss Tick, “I suppose the classic representation of Summer might be called a—”

“But do they ever meet?” asked Granny Weatherwax.

“In the Dance, I suppose. Just for a moment,” said Miss Tick.

“And at that moment, that very moment, in dances Tiffany Aching,” said Granny Weatherwax. “A witch who won’t wear black. No, it’s blue and green for her, like green grass under a blue sky. She calls to the strength of her hills, all the time. An’ they calls to her! Hills that was once alive, Miss Tick! They feels the rhythm of the Dance, an’ so in her bones does she, if she did but know it. And this shapes her life, even here! She could not help but tap her feet! The land taps its feet to the Dance of the Seasons!”

“But she—” Miss Tick began, because no teacher likes to hear anyone else talk for very long.

“What happened in that moment?” Granny Weatherwax went on, unstoppably. “Summer, Winter, and Tiffany. One spinning moment! And then they part. Who knows what got tangled? Suddenly, the Wintersmith is acting so stupid, he might even be a wee bit . . . human?”

“What has she got herself into?” said Miss Tick.

“The Dance, Miss Tick. The Dance that never ends. An’ she can’t change the steps, not yet. She has to dance to his tune for a while.”

“She’s going to be in a lot of danger,” Miss Tick said.

“She has the strength of her hills,” said Granny.

“Soft hills, though,” said Miss Tick. “Easily worn down.”

“But the heart of the chalk is flint, remember. It cuts sharper than any knife.”

“Snow can cover the hills,” said Miss Tick.

“Not forever.”

“It did once,” said Miss Tick, fed up with playing games. “For thousands of years, at least. An age of ice. Great beasts wallowed and sneezed across the world.”

“That’s as may be,” said Granny Weatherwax, a glint in her eye. “O’ course, I wasn’t around then. In the meantime, we must watch our girl.”

Miss Tick sipped her tea. Staying with Granny Weatherwax was a bit of a trial. Last night’s pot of chicken scraps had turned out to be not for her but for You. The witches had good thick pease pudding and bacon soup without—and this was important—the bacon. Granny kept a big lump of fat bacon on a string and had taken it out, carefully dried it, and put it away for another day. Despite her hunger, Miss Tick was impressed. Granny could shave the skin off a second.

“I hear that Miss Treason has heard her Call,” she said.

“Yes. Funeral tomorrow,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“That’s a difficult steading* over there,” said Miss Tick. “They’ve had Miss Treason for a long, long time. It’ll be a tricky task for a new witch.”

“She’ll be a difficult . . . act to follow, indeed,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Act?” said Miss Tick.

“I meant life, of course,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Whom will you put in there?” asked Miss Tick, because she liked to be first with the news. She also made a point of saying “whom” whenever she could. She felt it was more literate.

“Miss Tick, that is not up to me,” said Granny sharply. “We have no leaders in witchcraft, you know that.”

“Oh indeed,” said Miss Tick, who also knew that the leader the witches did not have was Granny Weatherwax. “But I know that Mrs. Earwig will be proposing young Annagramma, and Mrs. Earwig has quite a few followers these days. It’s probably those books she writes. She makes witchcraft sound exciting.”

“You know I don’t like witches who try to impose their will on others,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Quite,” said Miss Tick, trying not to laugh.

“I shall, however, drop a name into the conversation,” said Granny Weatherwax.

With a clang, I expect, thought Miss Tick. “Petulia Gristle has shaped up very well,” she said. “A good all-around witch.”

“Yes, but mostly all around pigs,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I was thinking about Tiffany Aching.”

“What?” said Miss Tick. “Don’t you think that child has enough to cope with?”

Granny Weatherwax smiled briefly. “Well, Miss Tick, you know what they say: If you want something done, give it to someone who’s busy! And young Tiffany might be very busy soon,” she added.

“Why do you say that?” said Miss Tick.

“Hmm. Well, I can’t be sure, but I will be very interested to see what happens to her feet. . . .”

Tiffany didn’t sleep much on the night before the funeral. Miss Treason’s loom had clicked and clacked all through the night, because she had an order for bedsheets she wanted to complete.

It was just getting light when Tiffany gave up and got up, in that order. At least she could get the goats mucked out and milked before she tackled the other chores. There was snow, and a bitter wind was blowing it across the ground.

It wasn’t until she was carting a barrowload of muck to the compost heap, which was steaming gently in the gray light, that she heard the tinkling. It sounded a bit like the wind chimes Miss Pullunder had around her cottage, only they were tuned to a note that was uncomfortable for demons.

It was coming from the place where the rose bed was in summer. It grew fine, old roses, full of scent and so red they were nearly, yes, black.

The roses were blooming again. But they—

“How do you like them, sheep girl?” said a voice. It didn’t arrive in her head, it wasn’t her thoughts, any of them, and Dr. Bustle didn’t wake up until at least ten. It was her own voice, from her own lips. But she hadn’t thought it, and she hadn’t meant to say it.

Now she was running back to the cottage. She hadn’t decided to do that either, but her legs had taken over. It wasn’t fear, not exactly; it was just that she very much wanted to be somewhere other than in the garden with the sun not up and the snow blowing and filling the air with ice crystals as fine as fog.

She ran through the scullery door and collided with a dark figure, which said, “Um, sorry,” and therefore was Petulia. She was the kind of person who apologized if you trod on her foot. Right now there was no sight more welcome.

“Sorry, I was called out to deal with a difficult cow and, um, it wasn’t worth going back to bed,” Petulia said, and then added: “Are you all right? You don’t look it!”

“I heard a voice in my mouth!” said Tiffany.

Petulia gave her an odd look and might just have stepped an inch or so backward.

“You mean in your head?” she asked.

“No! I can deal with those! My mouth said words all by itself! And come and see what’s grown in the rose garden! You won’t believe it!”

There were roses. They were made of ice so thin that, if you breathed on them, they melted away and left nothing but the dead stalks they’d grown on. And there were dozens of them, waving in the wind.

“Even the heat of my hand near them makes them drip,” said Petulia. “Do you think it’s your Wintersmith?”

“He’s not mine! And I can’t think of any other way they’d turn up!”

“And you think he, um, spoke to you?” said Petulia, plucking another rose. Ice particles slid off her hat every time she moved.

“No! It was me! I mean, my voice! But it didn’t sound like him. I mean, like I think he’d sound! It was a bit snide, like Annagramma when she’s in a mood! But it was my voice!”

“How do you think he’d sound?” said Petulia.

The wind gusted across the clearing, making the pine trees shake and roar.

“. . . Tiffany . . . be mine . . .”

After a little while Petulia coughed and said: “Um, was it just me, or did that sound like—?”

“Not just you,” whispered Tiffany, standing very still.

“Ah,” said Petulia, in a voice as bright and brittle as a rose of ice. “Well, I think we should get indoors now, yes? Um, and get all the fires lit and some tea made, yes? And then start getting things ready, because quite soon a lot of people will be turning up.”

A minute later they were in the cottage, with the doors bolted and every candle spluttering into life.

They didn’t talk about the wind or the roses. What would be the point? Besides, there was a job to be done. Work, that’s what helps. Work, and think and talk later, don’t gabble now like frightened ducks. They even managed to get another layer of grime off the windows.

All through the morning people arrived from the village with the things Miss Treason had ordered. People were walking across the clearing. The sun was out, even if it was as pale as a poached egg. The world was belonging to . . . normality. Tiffany caught herself wondering if she was wrong about things. Were there roses? There were none now; the fragile petals had not survived even the dawn’s weak light. Had the wind spoken? Then she met Petulia’s gaze. Yes, it had happened. But for now there was a funeral to feed.

The girls had already got to work on the ham rolls, with three sorts of mustard, but however far wrong you couldn’t go with a ham roll, if that was all you were giving seventy or eighty hungry witches, you were going all the way past Wrong and were heading into Absolute Party Disaster. So barrows were arriving with loaves and roasts of beef, and jars of pickled cucumbers so big that they looked like drowned whales. Witches are very keen on pickles, as a rule, but the food they like best is free food. Yes, that’s the diet for your working witch: lots of food that someone else is paying for, and so much of it that there is enough to shove in your pockets for later.

As it turned out, Miss Treason wasn’t paying for it either. No one would take any money. They wouldn’t leave, either, but hung about by the back door looking worried until they could have a word with Tiffany. The conversation, when she could spare the time from slicing and spreading, would go something like this:

“She’s not really dying, is she?”

“Yes. At around half past six tomorrow morning.”

“But she’s very old!”

“Yes. I think that’s sort of why, you see.”

“But what will we do without her?”

“I don’t know. What did you do before she was here?”

“She was always here! She knew everything! Who’s going to tell us what to do now?”

And then they’d say: “It’s not going to be you, is it?” and give her a Look that said: We hope not. You don’t even wear a black dress.

After a while Tiffany got fed up with this and in a very sharp voice asked the next person, a woman delivering six cooked chickens: “What about all those stories about her slitting open bad people’s bellies with her thumbnail, then?”

“Er, well, yes, but it was never anyone we knew,” said the woman virtuously.

“And the demon in the cellar?”

“So they say. O’ course, I never saw it pers’nally.” The woman gave Tiffany a worried look. “It is down there, isn’t it?”

You want it to be, Tiffany thought. You actually want there to be a monster in the cellar!

But as far as Tiffany knew, what was in the cellar this morning was a lot of snoring Feegles who had been boozin’. If you put a lot of Feegles in a desert, within twenty minutes they’d find a bottle of something dreadful to drink.

“Believe me, madam, you wouldn’t want to wake what’s down there now,” she said, giving the woman a worried smile.

The woman seemed satisfied with that but suddenly looked concerned again.

“And the spiders? She really eats spiders?” she asked.

“Well, there’s lots of webs,” said Tiffany, “but you never see a spider!”

“Ah, right,” said the woman, as if she’d been let into a big secret. “Say what you like, Miss Treason’s been a real witch. With skulls! I expect you have to polish ’em, eh? Ha! She could spit your eye out as soon as look at you!”

“She never did, though,” said a man delivering a huge tray of sausages. “Not to anyone local, anyway.”

“That’s true,” the woman admitted reluctantly. “She was very gracious in that respect.”

“Ah, she was a proper old-time witch, Miss Treason,” said the sausage man. “Many a man has widdled in his boots when she’s turned the sharp side of her tongue on him. You know that weaving she’s always doing? She weaves your name into the loom, that’s what she does! And if you tell her a lie, your thread breaks and you drop down dead on the spot!”

“Yes, that happens all the time,” said Tiffany, thinking: This is amazing! Boffo has a life of its own!

“Well, we don’t get witches like her these days,” said a man delivering four dozen eggs. “These days it’s all airy-fairy and dancin’ around without your drawers on.”

They all looked inquiringly at Tiffany.

“It’s wintertime,” she said coldly. “And I’ve got to get on with my work. The witches will be here soon. Thank you very much.”

While they were putting the eggs on to boil, she told Petulia about it. It didn’t come as a surprise.

“Um, they’re proud of her,” Petulia said. “I’ve heard them boasting about her up at the pig market in Lancre.”

“They boast?”

“Oh, yes. Like: You think old Mistress Weatherwax is tough? Ours has got skulls! And a demon! She’s gonna live forever ’cuz she’s got a clockwork heart she winds up every day! And she eats spiders, sure of it! How d’you like them poisoned apples, huh?”

Boffo works all by itself, Tiffany thought, once you get it started. Our Baron is bigger than your Baron, our witch is witchier than your witch. . . .

CHAPTER 5

Miss Treason’s Big Day

The witches started arriving around four o’clock, and Tiffany went out into the clearing to do air traffic control. Annagramma arrived by herself, looking very pale and wearing more occult jewelry than you could imagine. And there was a difficult moment when Mrs. Earwig and Granny Weatherwax arrived at the same time, and circled in a ballet of careful politeness as each waited for the other to land. In the end, Tiffany directed them into different corners of the clearing and hurried away.

There was no sign of the Wintersmith, and she was sure she’d know if he was near. He’d gone far away, she hoped, arranging a gale or conducting a blizzard. The memory of that voice in her mouth remained, awkward and worrying. Like an oyster dealing with a piece of grit, Tiffany coated it with people and hard work.

Now the day was just another pale, dry, early winter’s day. Apart from the food, nothing else at the funeral had been arranged. Witches arrange themselves. Miss Treason sat in her big chair, greeting old friends and old enemies alike.* The cottage was far too small for them all, so they spilled out into the garden in gossiping groups, like a flock of old crows or, possibly, chickens. Tiffany didn’t have much time to talk, because she was kept too busy carrying trays.

But something was going on, she could tell. Witches would pause and turn to watch her as she staggered past, and then turn back to their group and the level of hubbub in the group would rise a bit. Groups would come together and separate again. Tiffany recognized this. The witches were making a Decision.

Lucy Warbeck sidled up to her while she was bringing out a tray of tea, and whispered, as if it were a guilty secret: “Mistress Weatherwax has suggested you, Tiff.”

“No!”

“It’s true! They’re talking about it! Annagramma’s having a fit!”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive! Best of luck!”

“But I don’t want the—” Tiffany pushed the tray into Lucy’s arms. “Look, can you take that around for me, please? They’ll just grab as you go past. I’ve got to get the, er, put the things in, er . . . got things to do. . . .”

She hurried down the steps to the cellar, which was suspiciously empty of Feegles, and leaned against the wall.

Granny Weatherwax must be cackling, rules or no rules! But her Second Thoughts crept up to whisper: You could do it, though. She may be right. Annagramma annoys people. She talks to them as if they are children. She’s interested in magic (sorry, magik with a “K”), but people get on her nerves. She’ll make a mess of it, you know she will. She just happens to be tall and wears lots of occult jewelry and looks impressive in a pointy hat.

Why would Granny suggest Tiffany? Oh, she was good. She knew she was good. But didn’t everyone know she didn’t want to spend her life up here? Well, it had to be Annagramma, didn’t it? Witches tended to be cautious and traditional, and she was the oldest of the coven. Okay, a lot of witches didn’t like Mrs. Earwig, but Granny Weatherwax didn’t exactly have many friends either.

She went back upstairs before she could be missed, and tried to be inconspicuous as she sidled through the crowd.

She saw Mrs. Earwig and Annagramma as the center of one group; the girl looked worried, and hurried over when she caught sight of Tiffany. She was red in the face.

“Have you heard anything?” she demanded.

“What? No!” said Tiffany, starting to pile up used plates.

“You’re trying to take the cottage away from me, aren’t you?” Annagramma was nearly crying.

“Don’t be silly! Me? I don’t want a cottage at all!”

“So you say. But some of them are saying you should get it! Miss Level and Miss Pullunder have spoken up for you!”

“What? I couldn’t possibly follow Miss Treason!”

“Well, of course that’s what Mrs. Earwig is telling everyone,” said Annagramma, settling down a bit. “Completely unacceptable, she says.”

I took the hiver through the Dark Door, Tiffany thought as she viciously scraped food scraps into the garden for the birds. The White Horse came out of the hill for me. I got my brother and Roland back from the Queen of the Elves. And I danced with the Wintersmith, who turned me into ten billion snowflakes. No, I don’t want to be in a cottage in these damp woods, I don’t want to be a kind of slave to people who can’t be bothered to think for themselves, I don’t want to wear midnight and make people afraid of me. There is no name for what I want to be. But I was old enough to do all those things, and I was acceptable.

But she said: “I don’t know what this is about!”

At which point she felt someone looking at her, and she knew, if she turned around, that it would be Granny Weatherwax.

Her Third Thoughts—the ones that paid attention out of the corner of her ear and the edge of her eye all the time—told her: Something is going on. All you can do about it is be yourself. Don’t look around.

“You’re really not interested?” said Annagramma uncertainly.

“I’ve come up here to learn witching,” said Tiffany stiffly. “And then I’m going to go home. But . . . are you sure you want the cottage?”

“Well, of course! Every witch wants a cottage!”

“But they’ve had years and years of Miss Treason,” Tiffany pointed out.

“Then they’ll just have to get used to me,” said Annagramma. “I expect they’ll be pretty glad to see the back of skulls and cobwebs and being frightened! I know she’s got the local people really scared of her.”

“Ah,” said Tiffany.

“I’ll be a new broom,” said Annagramma. “Frankly, Tiffany, after that old woman, just about anyone would be popular.”

“Er, yes . . .” said Tiffany. “Tell me, Annagramma, have you ever worked with any other witch?”

“No, I’ve always been with Mrs. Earwig. I’m her first pupil, you know,” Annagramma added proudly. “She’s very exclusive.”

“And she doesn’t go around the villages much, does she?” said Tiffany.

“No. She concentrates on the Higher Magik.” Annagramma wasn’t particularly observant and was very vain, even by the standard of witches, but now she looked a little less confident. “Well, someone has to. We can’t all tramp around bandaging cut fingers, you know,” she added. “Is there a problem?”

“Hmm? Oh, no. I’m sure you’ll get on well,” said Tiffany. “Er . . . I know my way around the place, so if you need any help, just ask.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll get things sorted out to my liking,” said Annagramma, whose boundless self-confidence couldn’t stay squashed for long. “I’d better go. By the way, it looks as though the food is running low.”

She swept away.

The big vats on the trestle table just inside the door were indeed looking a bit empty. Tiffany saw one witch stuff four hard-boiled eggs into her pocket.

“Good afternoon, Miss Tick,” she said loudly.

“Ah, Tiffany,” said Miss Tick smoothly, turning around without the least sign of embarrassment. “Miss Treason has just been telling us how well you have been doing here.”

“Thank you, Miss Tick.”

“She says that you have a fine eye for hidden detail,” Miss Tick went on.

Like the labels on skulls, Tiffany thought. “Miss Tick,” she said, “do you know anything about people wanting me to take over the cottage?”

“Oh, that’s all been decided,” said Miss Tick. “There was some suggestion that it should be you, since you’re already here, but really, you are still young, and Annagramma has had much more experience. I’m sorry, but—”

“That’s not fair, Miss Tick,” said Tiffany.

“Now, now, Tiffany, that’s not the sort of thing a witch says—” Miss Tick began.

“I don’t mean not fair to me, I mean unfair to Annagramma. She’s going to make a mess of it, isn’t she?”

Just for the skin of a moment Miss Tick looked guilty. It really was a very short space of time indeed, but Tiffany spotted it.

“Mrs. Earwig is certain that Annagramma will do a very good job,” said Miss Tick.

“Are you?”

“Remember whom you are talking to, please!”

“I’m talking to you, Miss Tick! This is . . . wrong!” Tiffany’s eyes blazed.

She saw movement out of the corner of her eye. An entire plate of sausages was moving across the white cloth at very high speed.

“And that is stealing,” she growled, leaping after it.

She chased after the dish as, skimming a few inches above the ground, it rounded the cottage and disappeared behind the goat shed. She plunged after it.

There were several plates lying on the leaves behind the shed. There were potatoes, oozing butter, and a dozen ham rolls, and a pile of boiled eggs, and two cooked chickens. Everything except the sausages in the dish, which was now stationary, had a gnawed look.

There was absolutely no sign of the Feegles. That was how she could tell they were there. They always hid from her when they knew she was angry.

Well, this time she was really angry. Not at the Feegles (much), although the stupid hiding trick got on her nerves, but at Miss Tick and Granny Weatherwax and Annagramma and Miss Treason (for dying), and the Wintersmith himself (for a lot of reasons she hadn’t had time to sort out yet).

She stepped back and went quiet.

There was always a feeling of sinking slowly and peacefully, but this time it was like a dive into darkness.

When she opened her eyes, it felt as if she were looking through windows into a huge hall. Sound seemed to be coming from a long way away, and there was an itching between her eyes.

Feegles appeared, from under leaves, behind twigs, even from under plates. Their voices sounded as though they were underwater.

“Ach, crivens! She’s done some big hagglin’ on us!”

“She’s ne’er done that before!”

Hah, I’m hiding from you, thought Tiffany. Bit of a change, eh? Hmm, I wonder if I can move. She took a step sideways. The Feegles didn’t seem to see it.

“She’s gonna jump oot on us any moment! Ooohhh, waily—”

Ha! If I could walk up to Granny Weatherwax like this, she’d have to be so impressed—

The itch on Tiffany’s nose was getting worse, and there was a feeling that was similar to, but fortunately not yet the same as, the need to visit the privy. It meant: Something is going to happen soon, so it would be a good idea to be ready for it.

The sound of the voices began to get clearer, and little blue and purple spots ran across her vision.

And then there was something that, if it had made a noise, would have gone wwwhamp! It was like the popping you got in your ears after a high broomstick flight. She reappeared in the middle of the Feegles, causing immediate panic.

“Stop stealing the funeral meats right now, you wee scuggers!” she shouted.

The Feegles stopped and stared at her. Then Rob Anybody said: “Socks wi’oot feets?”

There was one of those moments—you got a lot of them around the Feegles—when the world seems to have got tangled up and it is so important to unravel the knot before you can go any further.

“What are you talking about?” asked Tiffany.

“Scuggers,” said Rob Anybody. “They’re like socks wi’oot feets in ’em. For keepin’ yer legs warm, ye ken?”

“You mean like legwarmers?” said Tiffany.

“Aye, aye, that would be a verra guid name for ’em, it bein’ what they do,” said Rob. “In point o’ fact, mebbe the term ye meant to use wuz ‘thievin’ scunners,’ which means—”

“—us,” said Daft Wullie helpfully.

“Oh. Yes. Thank you,” said Tiffany quietly. She folded her arms and then shouted, “Right, you thieving scunners! How dare you steal Miss Treason’s funeral meats!”

“Oh, waily waily, it’s the Foldin’ o’ the Arms, the Foooldin’ o’ the Aaaarmss!” cried Daft Wullie, dropping to the ground and trying to cover himself with leaves. Around him Feegles started to wail and cower, and Big Yan began to bang his head on the rear wall of the dairy.

“Now then, ye must all stay calm!” yelled Rob Anybody, turning around and waving his hands desperately at his brothers.

“There’s the Pursin’ o’ the Lips!” a Feegle shouted, pointing a shaking finger at Tiffany’s face. “She’s got the knowin’ o’ the Pursin’ o’ the Lips! ’Tis Doom come upon us a’!”

The Feegles tried to run, but since they were panicking again, they mostly collided with one another.

“I’m waiting for an explanation!” said Tiffany.

The Feegles froze, and every face turned toward Rob Anybody.

“An Explanation?” he said, shifting uneasily. “Oh, aye. An Explanation. Nae problemo. An Explanation. Er . . . what kind would you like?”

“What kind? I just want the truth!”

“Aye? Oh. The truth? Are you sure?” Rob ventured rather nervously. “I can do much more interestin’ Explanations than that—”

“Out with it!” snapped Tiffany, tapping her foot.

“Ach, crivens, the Tappin’ o’ the Feets has started!” moaned Daft Wullie. “There’s gonna be witherin’ scoldin’ at any moment!”

And that was it. Tiffany burst out laughing. You couldn’t look at a bunch of frightened Nac Mac Feegles and not laugh. They were so bad at it. One sharp word and they were like a basket of scared puppies, only smellier.

Rob Anybody gave her a lopsided grin.

“Weel, all the big hags is doin’ it too,” he said. “The wee fat one’s thieved fifteen ham rolls!” he added admiringly.

“That’d be Nanny Ogg,” said Tiffany. “Yes, she always carries a string bag up her knicker leg.”

“Ach, this is no’ a proper wake,” said Rob Anybody. “There should be singin’ an’ boozin’ an’ the flexin’ o’ the knees, no’ all this standin’ aroond gossipin’.”

“Well, gossiping’s part of witchcraft,” said Tiffany. “They’re checking to see if they’ve gone batty yet. What is the flexin’ o’ the knees?”

“The dancin’, ye ken,” said Rob. “The jigs an’ reels. ’Tis no’ a good wake unless the hands is flingin’ an’ the feets is twinklin’ an’ the knees is flexin’ an’ the kilts is flyin’.”

Tiffany had never seen the Feegles dance, but she had heard them. It sounded like warfare, which was probably how it ended up. The flyin’ o’ the kilts sounded a bit worrying, though, and reminded her of a question she had never quite dared to ask up until now.

“Tell me . . . is there anything worn under the kilt?”

From the way the Feegles went quiet again, she got the feeling that this was not a question they liked being asked.

Rob Anybody narrowed his eyes. The Feegles held their breath.

“Not necessarily,” he said.

At last the funeral was over, possibly because there was nothing left to eat and drink. Many of the departing witches were carrying small packages. That was another tradition. A lot of things in the cottage were the property of the cottage, and would pass on to the next witch, but everything else got passed on to the soon-to-be-late witch’s friends. Since the old witch would be alive when this happened, it saved squabbling.

That was the thing about witches. They were, according to Granny Weatherwax, “people what looks up.” She didn’t explain. She seldom explained. She didn’t mean people who looked at the sky; everyone did that. She probably meant that they looked up above the everyday chores and wondered, “What’s all this about? How does it work? What should I do? What am I for?” And possibly even: “Is there anything worn under the kilt?” Perhaps that was why odd, in a witch, was normal . . .

. . . but they’d squabble like polecats over a silver spoon that wasn’t even silver. As it was, several were waiting impatiently by the sink for Tiffany to wash some big dishes that Miss Treason had promised to them, and which had held the funeral roast potatoes and sausage rolls.

At least there was no problem with leftovers. Nanny Ogg, a witch who’d invented Leftover Sandwiches Soup, was waiting in the scullery with her big string bag and a bigger grin.

“We were going to have the rest and potatoes for supper,” said Tiffany angrily, but with a certain amount of interest. She’d met Nanny Ogg before and quite liked her, but Miss Treason had said, darkly, that Nanny Ogg was “a disgusting old baggage.” That sort of comment attracts your attention.

“Fair enough,” said Nanny Ogg as Tiffany placed her hand on the meat. “You did a good job here today, Tiff. People notice that.”

She was gone before Tiffany could recover. One of them had very nearly said thank you! Amazing!

Petulia helped her bring the big table indoors and finish the tidying up. She hesitated, though, before she left.

“Um . . . you will be all right, will you?” she said. “It’s all a bit . . . strange.”

“We’re supposed to be no strangers to strangeness,” said Tiffany primly. “Anyway, you’ve sat up with the dead and dying, haven’t you?”

“Oh, yes. Mostly pigs, though. Some humans. Um . . . I don’t mind staying, if you like,” Petulia added in a leaving-as-soon-as-possible voice.

“Thank you. But after all, what’s the worst that can happen?”

Petulia stared at her and then said, “Well, let me think . . . a thousand vampire demons, each one with enormous—”

“I’ll be fine,” said Tiffany quickly. “Don’t you worry at all. Good night.”

Tiffany shut the door and then leaned on it with her hand over her mouth until she heard the gate click. She counted to ten to make sure that Petulia had got some distance and then risked taking her hand away. By then the scream that had been patiently waiting to come out had dwindled to something like “Unk!”

This was going to be a very strange night.

People died. It was sad, but they did. What did you do next? People expected the local witch to know. So you washed the body and did a few secret and squelchy things and dressed them in their best clothes and laid them out with bowls of earth and salt beside them (no one knew why you did this bit, not even Miss Treason, but it had always been done) and you put two pennies on their eyes “for the ferryman” and you sat with them the night before they were buried, because they shouldn’t be left alone.

Exactly why was never properly explained, although everyone got told the story of the old man who was slightly less dead than everybody thought and got up off the spare bed in the middle of the night and got back into bed with his wife.

The real reason was probably a lot darker than that. The start and finish of things was always dangerous, lives most of all.

But Miss Treason was a wicked ol’ witch. Who knew what might happen? Hang on, Tiffany told herself; don’t you believe the Boffo. She’s really just a clever old lady with a catalogue!

In the other room Miss Treason’s loom stopped.

It often did. But this evening the sudden silence it made was louder than usual.

Miss Treason called out: “What do we have in the larder that needs eating up?”

Yes, this is going to be a very odd night, Tiffany told herself.

Miss Treason went to bed early. It was the first time Tiffany had ever known her not to sleep in a chair. She’d put on a long white nightdress, too, the first time Tiffany had seen her not in black.

There was a lot still to do. It was traditional that the cottage should be left sparkling clean for the next witch, and although it was hard to make black sparkle, Tiffany did her best. Actually, the cottage was always pretty clean, but Tiffany scraped and scrubbed and polished because it put off the moment when she’d have to go and talk to Miss Treason. She even took down the fake spiderwebs and threw them on the fire, where they burned with a nasty blue flame. She wasn’t sure what to do with the skulls. Finally, she wrote down everything she could remember about the local villages: when babies were due, who was very ill and what with, who was feuding, who was “difficult,” and just about every other local detail she thought might be helpful to Annagramma. Anything to just put off the moment. . . .

At last there was nothing for it but to climb the narrow stairs and say: “Is everything all right, Miss Treason?”

The old woman was sitting up in bed, scribbling. The ravens were perched on the bedposts.

“I’m just writing a few thank-you letters,” she said. “Some of those ladies today came quite a long way and will be having a chilly ride back.”

“‘Thank you for coming to my funeral’ letters?” asked Tiffany weakly.

“Indeed. And they’re not often written, you may be sure of that. You know the girl Annagramma Hawkin will be the new witch here? I am sure she would like you to stay on. At least for a while.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” said Tiffany.

“Quite,” said Miss Treason smiling. “I suspect the girl Weatherwax has arrangements in mind. It will be interesting to see how Mrs. Earwig’s brand of witchcraft suits my silly people, although it may be best to observe events from behind a rock. Or, in my case, under it.”

She put the letters aside, and both the ravens turned to look at Tiffany.

“You have been here with me only three months.”

“That’s right, Miss Treason.”

“We have not talked, woman to woman. I should have taught you more.”

“I’ve learned a lot, Miss Treason.” And that was true.

“You have a young man, Tiffany. He sends you letters and packages. You go into Lancre Town every week to send letters to him. I fear you live not where you love.”

Tiffany said nothing. They’d been through this before. Roland seemed to fascinate Miss Treason.

“I was always too busy to pay attention to young men,” said Miss Treason. “They were always for later and then later was too late. Pay attention to your young man.”

“Erm . . . I did say he’s not actually my—” Tiffany began, feeling herself start to blush.

“But do not become a strumpet like Mrs. Ogg,” said Miss Treason.

“I’m not very musical,” said Tiffany uncertainly.

Miss Treason laughed. “You have a dictionary, I believe,” she said. “A strange but useful thing for a girl to have.”

“Yes, Miss Treason.”

“On my bookshelf you will find a rather larger dictionary. An Unexpurgated Dictionary. A useful thing for a young woman to have. You may take it, and one other book. The others will remain with the cottage. You may also have my broomstick. Everything else, of course, belongs to the cottage.”

“Thank you very much, Miss Treason. I’d like to take that book about mythology.”

“Ah, yes. Chaffinch. A very good choice. It has been a great help to me and will, I suspect, be of particular assistance to you. The loom must stay, of course. Annagramma Hawkin will find it useful.”

Tiffany doubted this. Annagramma wasn’t very practical at all. But it was probably not the time to say so.

Miss Treason leaned back against the cushions.

“They think you wove names into your cloth,” said Tiffany.

“That? Oh, it’s true. There’s nothing magical about it. It’s a very old trick. Any weaver can do it. You won’t be able to read it, though, without knowing how it was done.” Miss Treason sighed. “Oh, my silly people. Anything they don’t understand is magic. They think I can see into their hearts, but no witch can do that. Not without surgery, at least. No magic is needed to read their little minds, though. I’ve known them since they were babes. I remember when their grandparents were babes! They think they’re so grown-up! But they’re still no better than babies in the sandpit, squabbling over mud pies. I see their lies and excuses and fears. They never grow up, not really. They never look up and open their eyes. They stay children their whole lives.”

“I’m sure they’ll miss you,” said Tiffany.

“Ha! I’m the wicked ol’ witch, girl. They feared me, and did what they were told! They feared joke skulls and silly stories. I chose fear. I knew they’d never love me for telling ’em the truth, so I made certain of their fear. No, they’ll be relieved to hear the witch is dead. And now I shall tell you something vitally important. It is the secret of my long life.”

Ah, thought Tiffany, and she leaned forward.

“The important thing,” said Miss Treason, “is to stay the passage of the wind. You should avoid rumbustious fruits and vegetables. Beans are the worst, take it from me.”

“I don’t think I understand—” Tiffany began.

“Try not to fart, in a nutshell.”

“In a nutshell I imagine it would be pretty unpleasant!” said Tiffany nervously. She couldn’t believe she was being told this.

“This is no joking matter,” said Miss Treason. “The human body only has so much air in it. You have to make it last. One plate of beans can take a year off your life. I have avoided rumbustiousness all my days. I am an old person and that means what I say is wisdom!” She gave the bewildered Tiffany a stern look. “Do you understand, child?”

Tiffany’s mind raced. Everything is a test! “No,” she said. “I’m not a child and that’s nonsense, not wisdom!”

The stern look cracked into a smile. “Yes,” said Miss Treason. “Total gibberish. But you’ve got to admit it’s a corker, all the same, right? You definitely believed it, just for a moment? The villagers did last year. You should have seen the way they walked about for a few weeks! The strained looks on their faces quite cheered me up! How are things with the Wintersmith? All gone quiet, has it?”

The question was like a sharp knife in a slice of cake, and arrived so suddenly that Tiffany gasped.

“I woke up early and wondered where you were,” said Miss Treason. It was so easy to forget that she used other people’s ears and eyes all the time, in an absentminded sort of way.

“Did you see the roses?” asked Tiffany. She hadn’t felt the telltale tickle, but she hadn’t exactly had much time for anything but worry.

“Yes. Fine things,” said Miss Treason. “I wish I could help you, Tiffany, but I’m going to be otherwise occupied. And romance is an area where I cannot offer much advice.”

“Romance?” said Tiffany, shocked.

“The girl Weatherwax and Miss Tick will have to guide you,” Miss Treason went on. “I must say, though, that I suspect that neither of them has jousted much in the lists of love.”

“Lists of love?” said Tiffany. It was getting worse!

“Can you play poker?” Miss Treason asked.

“Pardon?”

“Poker. The card game. Or Cripple Mr. Onion? Chase My Neighbor Up the Passage? You must have sat up with the dead and dying before?”

“Well, yes. But I’ve never played cards with them! Anyway, I don’t know how to play!”

“I’ll teach you. There’s a pack of cards in the bottom drawer of the dresser. Go and fetch them.”

“Is this like gambling? My father said that people shouldn’t gamble.”

Miss Treason nodded. “Good advice, my dear. Don’t worry. The way I play poker isn’t like gambling at all. . . .”

When Tiffany awoke with a jolt, playing cards sliding off her dress and onto the floor, the cold gray light of morning filled the room.

She peered at Miss Treason, who was snoring like a pig.

What was the time? It was six at least! What should she do?

Nothing. There was nothing to do.

She picked up the Ace of Wands and stared at it. So that was poker, was it? Well, she hadn’t been too bad at it, once she’d worked out that it was all about making your face tell lies. For most of the time the cards were just something to do with your hands.

Miss Treason slept on. Tiffany wondered if she should get some breakfast, but it seemed such a—

“The ancient kings of Djelibeybi, who are buried in pyramids,” said Miss Treason from the bed, “used to believe that they could take things with them into the next world. Such things as gold and precious stones and even slaves. On that basis, please make me a ham sandwich.”

“Er . . . you mean . . . ?” Tiffany began.

“The journey after death is quite a long one,” said Miss Treason, sitting up. “I may get hungry.”

“But you’ll just be a soul!”

“Well, perhaps a ham sandwich has a soul, too,” said Miss Treason, as she swung her skinny legs out of the bed. “I’m not sure about the mustard, but it’s worth a try. Hold still there!” This was because she had picked up her hairbrush and was using Tiffany as a mirror. The fiercely concentrated glare a few inches away was as much as Tiffany could bear on a morning like this.

“Thank you—you may go and make the sandwich,” said Miss Treason, laying the brush aside. “I will now get dressed.”

Tiffany hurried out and washed her face in the basin in her room; she always did that after the eyeballing, but she’d never plucked up the courage to object, and now certainly wasn’t the time to start.

As she dried her face, she thought she heard a muffled sound outside and went over to the window. There was frost on—

Oh, no . . . oh . . . no . . . no! He was at it again!

The frost ferns spelled the word “Tiffany.” Over and over.

She grabbed a rag and wiped them off, but the ice only formed again, thicker.

She hurried downstairs. The ferns were all over the windows, and when she tried to wipe them off, the rag froze to the glass. It creaked when she pulled at it.

Her name, all over the window. Over all the windows. Maybe over all the windows in all the mountains. Everywhere.

He’d come back. That was dreadful!

But also, just a bit . . . cool. . . .

She didn’t think the word, because as far as Tiffany knew the word meant “slightly cold.” But she thought the thought, even so. It was a hot little thought.

“In my day young men would just carve the girl’s initials on a tree,” said Miss Treason, coming down the stairs one careful step at a time. Too late, Tiffany felt the tickle behind her eyes.

“It’s not funny, Miss Treason! What shall I do?”

“I don’t know. If possible, be yourself.”

Miss Treason bent down creakily and opened her hand. The seeing-eye mouse hopped down onto the floor, turned, and stared at her with tiny black eyes for a moment. She prodded it with a finger. “Go on, off you go. Thank you,” she said, and then it scuttled off to a hole.

Tiffany helped her upright, and the old witch said: “You’re starting to snivel, aren’t you.”

“Well, it’s all a bit—” Tiffany began. The little mouse had looked so lost and forlorn.

“Don’t cry,” said Miss Treason. “Living this long’s not as wonderful as people think. I mean, you get the same amount of youth as everyone else, but a great big extra helping of being very old and deaf and creaky. Now, blow your nose and help me on with the ravens’ perch.”

“He might still be out there . . .” Tiffany mumbled as she eased the perch onto the thin shoulders.

Then she rubbed at the window again and saw shapes and movement.

“Oh . . . they came . . .” she said.

“What?” said Miss Treason. She stopped. “There’s lots of people out there!”

“Er . . . yes,” said Tiffany.

“What do you know about this, my girl?”

“Well, you see, they kept asking when—”

“Fetch my skulls! They mustn’t see me without my skulls! How does my hair look?” said Miss Treason, frantically winding up her clock.

“It looks nice—”

“Nice? Nice? Are you mad? Mess it up this minute!” Miss Treason demanded. “And fetch my most raggedy cloak! This one’s far too clean! Move yourself, child!”

It took several minutes to get Miss Treason ready, and a lot of the time was spent convincing her that taking the skulls out in daylight might be dangerous, in case they got dropped and someone saw the labels. Then Tiffany opened the door.

A murmur of conversation crashed into silence.

There were people in a crowd all around the door. As Miss Treason stepped forward, it parted to leave a clear path.

To her horror, Tiffany saw a dug grave on the other side of the clearing. She hadn’t expected that. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but a dug grave wasn’t it.

“Who dug—?”

“Our blue friends,” said Miss Treason. “I asked them to.”

And then the crowd started to cheer. Women hurried forward with big bunches of yew, holly, and mistletoe, the only green things growing. People were laughing. People were crying. They clustered around the witch, forcing Tiffany out to the edge of the crowd. She went quiet and listened.

“We don’t know what we’ll do without you, Miss Treason.” — “I don’t think we’ll get another witch as good as you, Miss Treason!” — “We never thought you’d go, Miss Treason. You brought my ol’ granddad into the world.” —

Walking into the grave, Tiffany thought. Well, that’s style. That is . . . solid gold Boffo. They’ll remember that for the rest of their lives—

“In that case you shall keep all the puppies but one—” Miss Treason had stopped to organize the crowd. “The custom is to give that one to the owner of the dog. You should have kept the bitch in, after all, and minded your fences. And your question, Mister Blinkhorn?”

Tiffany stood up straight. They were bothering her! Even this morning! But she . . . wanted to be bothered. Being bothered was her life.

“Miss Treason!” she snapped, pushing her way through the mob. “Remember you have an appointment!”

It wasn’t the best thing to say, but a lot better than: “You said you were going to die in about five minutes’ time!”

Miss Treason turned and looked uncertain for a moment.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, indeed. We had better get on.” Then, still talking to Mr. Blinkhorn about some complex problem concerning a fallen tree and someone’s shed, and with the rest of the crowd trailing after her, she let Tiffany walk her gently to the graveside.

“Well, at least you’ve got a happy ending, Miss Treason,” Tiffany whispered. It was a silly thing to say and deserved what it got.

“We make happy endings, child, day to day. But you see, for the witch there are no happy endings. There are just endings. And here we are. . . .”

Best not to think, thought Tiffany. Best not to think you’re climbing down an actual ladder into an actual grave. Try not to think about helping Miss Treason down the ladder onto the leaves that are piled up at one end. Do not let yourself know you’re standing in a grave.

Down here, the horrible clock seemed to clank even louder: clonk-clank, clonk-clank. . . .

Miss Treason trod the leaves down a bit and said cheerfully, “Yes, I can see myself being quite comfortable here. Listen, child, I told you about the books, did I not? And there is a small gift for you under my chair. Yes, this seems adequate. Oh, I forgot . . .”

Clonk-clank, clonk-clank . . . went the clock, sounding much louder down there.

Miss Treason stood on tiptoe and poked her head over the edge of the hole. “Mr. Easy! You owe two months’ rent to the Widow Langley! Understand? Mr. Plenty, the pig belongs to Mrs. Frumment, and if you don’t give it back to her, I shall come back and groan under your window! Mistress Fullsome, the Dogelley family have had Right of Passage over the Turnwise pasture since even I cannot remember, and you must . . . you must . . .”

Clon . . . k.

There was a moment, one long moment, when the sudden silence of the clock not ticking anymore filled the clearing like thunder.

Slowly Miss Treason sagged down onto the leaves.

It took a few dreadful seconds for her brain to start working, and then Tiffany screamed at the people clustered above: “Go back, all of you! Give her some air!”

She knelt down as they backed hurriedly away.

The smell of the raw soil was sharp in the air. At least Miss Treason seemed to have died with her eyes shut. Not everyone did. Tiffany hated having to shut them for people; it was like killing them all over again.

“Miss Treason?” she whispered. That was the first test. There were a lot of them, and you had to do them all: speak to them, raise an arm, check the pulses including the one behind the ear, check for breath with a mirror . . . and she’d always been so nervous about getting them wrong that the first time she’d had to go out to deal with someone who looked dead—a young man who’d been in a horrible sawmill accident—she’d done every single test, even though she’d had to go and find his head.

There were no mirrors in Miss Treason’s cottage.

In that case she—

—should think! This is Miss Treason here! And I heard her wind her clock up only a few minutes ago!

She smiled.

“Miss Treason!” she said, very close to the woman’s ear. “I know you’re in there!”

And that’s when the morning, which had been sad, weird, odd, and horrible, became . . . Boffo all the way.

Miss Treason smiled.

“Have they gone?” she inquired.

“Miss Treason!” said Tiffany sternly. “That was a terrible thing to do!”

“I stopped my clock with my thumbnail,” said Miss Treason proudly. “Couldn’t disappoint them, eh? Had to give ’em a show!”

“Miss Treason,” said Tiffany severely, “did you make up the story about your clock?”

“Of course I did! And it’s a wonderful bit of folklore, a real corker. Miss Treason and her clockwork heart! Might even become a myth, if I’m lucky. They’ll remember Miss Treason for thousands of years!”

Miss Treason closed her eyes again.

“I’ll certainly remember you, Miss Treason,” said Tiffany. “I will really, because—”

The world had gone gray, and was getting grayer. And Miss Treason had gone very still.

“Miss Treason?” said Tiffany, nudging her. “Miss Treason?”

MISS EUMENIDES TREASON, AGED ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN?

Tiffany heard the voice inside her head. It didn’t seem to have come through her ears. And she’d heard it before, making her quite unusual. Most people hear the voice of Death only once.

Miss Treason stood up, without the creak of even one bone. And she looked just like Miss Treason, solid and smiling. What now lay on the dead leaves was, in this strange light, just a shadow.

But a very tall dark figure was standing beside her. It was Death himself. Tiffany had seen him before, in his own land beyond the Dark Door, but you didn’t need to have met him before to know who he was. The scythe, the long hooded robe, and of course the bundle of hourglasses were all clues.

“Where are your manners, child?” said Miss Treason.

Tiffany looked up and said: “Good morning.”

GOOD MORNING, TIFFANY ACHING, AGED THIRTEEN, said Death in his no-voice. I SEE YOU ARE IN GOOD HEALTH.

“A little curtsy would be in order too,” said Miss Treason.

To Death? thought Tiffany. Granny Aching wouldn’t have liked that. Never bend the knee to tyrants, she would say.

AT LAST, MISS EUMENIDES TREASON, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER. Death took her gently by the arm.

“Hey, wait a minute!” said Tiffany. “Miss Treason is one hundred and thirteen!”

“Er . . . I adjusted it slightly for professional reasons,” said Miss Treason. “One hundred and eleven sounds so . . . adolescent.” As if to hide her ghostly embarrassment, she plunged her hand into her pocket and pulled out the spirit of the ham sandwich.

“Ah, it worked,” she said. “I know I—where has the mustard gone?”

MUSTARD IS ALWAYS TRICKY, said Death as they began to fade.

“No mustard? What about pickled onions?”

PICKLES OF ALL SORTS DON’T SEEM TO MAKE IT. I’M SORRY. Behind them, the outline of a door appeared.

“No relishes in the next world? That’s dreadful! What about chutneys?” said the vanishing Miss Treason.

THERE’S JAM. JAM WORKS.

“Jam? Jam! With ham?”

And they were gone. The light went back to normal. Sound came back. Time came back.

Once again the thing to do was not to think too deeply, just keep her thoughts nice and level and focused on what she had to do.

Watched by the people still hovering around the clearing, Tiffany went and got some blankets, bundling them up so that when she carried them back to the grave, no one would notice that the two Boffo skulls and the spiderweb-making machine were tucked inside. Then with Miss Treason and the secret of Boffo safely tucked away, she filled in the grave, and at this point a couple of men ran and helped her— right until there came, from under the soil:

Clonk-clank. Clonk.

The men froze. So did Tiffany, but her Third Thoughts cut in with: Don’t worry! Remember, she stopped it! A falling stone or something must have started it going again!

She relaxed and said sweetly: “That was probably just her saying good-bye.”

The rest of the soil got shoveled in really quickly.

And now I’m part of the Boffo, Tiffany thought, as the people hurried back to their villages. But Miss Treason worked very hard for them. She deserves to be a myth, if that’s what she wants. And I’ll bet, I’ll bet that on dark nights they’ll hear her. . . .

But now there was nothing but the wind in the trees.

She stared at the grave.

Someone should say something. Well? She was the witch, after all.

There wasn’t much religion on the Chalk or in the mountains. The Omnians came and had a prayer meeting about once a year, and sometimes a priest from the Nine Day Wonderers or the See of Little Faith or the Church of Small Gods would come by on a donkey. People went to listen, if a priest sounded interesting or went red and shouted, and they sang the songs if they had a good tune. And then they went home again.

“We are small people,” her father had said. “It ain’t wise to come to the attention of the gods.”

Tiffany remembered the words he had said over the grave of Granny Aching, what seemed like a lifetime ago. On the summer turf of the downlands, with the buzzards screaming in the sky, they had seemed to be all there was to say. So she said them now:

“If any ground is Consecrate, this ground is.

If any day is Holy, it is this day.”

She saw a movement, and then Billy Bigchin, the gonnagle, scrambled onto the turned earth of the grave. He gave Tiffany a solemn look, then unslung his mousepipes and began to play.

Humans could not hear the mousepipes very well because the notes were too high, but Tiffany could feel them in her head. A gonnagle could put many things into his music, and she felt sunsets, and autumns, and the mist on hills and the smell of roses so red they were nearly black. . . .

When he had finished, the gonnagle stood in silence for a moment, looked at Tiffany again, then vanished.

Tiffany sat on a stump and cried a bit, because it needed to be done. Then she went and milked the goats, because someone had to do that, too.

CHAPTER 6

Feet and Sprouts

In the cottage, the beds were airing, the floors had been swept, and the log basket was full. On the kitchen table the inventory was laid out: so many spoons, so many pans, so many dishes, all lined up in the dingy light. Tiffany packed some of the cheeses, though. She’d made them, after all.

The loom was silent in its room; it looked like the bones of some dead animal, but under the big chair was the package Miss Treason had mentioned, wrapped in black paper. Inside it was a cloak woven of brown wool so dark that it was almost black. It looked warm.

That was it, then. Time to go. If she lay down and put her ear to a mousehole, she could hear widespread snoring coming from the cellar. The Feegles believed that after a really good funeral, everyone should be lying down. It wasn’t a good idea to wake them. They’d find her. They always did.

Was that everything? Oh, no, not quite. She took down the Unexpurgated Dictionary and Chaffinch’s Mythology, with the “Dacne of the Sneasos” in it, and went to tuck them into a bag under the cheeses. As she did so, the pages flipped like cards and several things dropped out onto the stone floor. Some of them were faded old letters, which she tucked back inside for now.

There was also the Boffo catalogue. The cover had a grinning clown on it, and the words:

The Boffo Novelty & Joke Company!!!!!

Guffaws, Jokes, Chuckles, Japes Galore!!!

IF IT’S A LAUGH, IT’S A BOFFO!!!

Be the Life of the Party with our Novelty Gift Pack!!!

Special Offer This Month: Half Price off Red Noses!!!

Yes, you could spend years trying to be a witch, or you could spend a lot of money with Mr. Boffo and be one as soon as the postman arrived.

Fascinated, Tiffany turned the pages. There were skulls (Glow in the Dark, $8 Extra) and fake ears and pages of hilarious noses (Ghastly Dangling Booger free on noses over $5) and masks, as Boffo would say, Galore!!! Mask No. 19, for example, was: Wicked Witch De-Luxe, with Mad Greasy Hair, Rotting Teeth, and Hairy Warts (supplied loose, stick them where you like!!!). Miss Treason had obviously stopped short of buying one of these, possibly because the nose looked like a carrot but probably because the skin was bright green. She could also have bought Scary Witch Hands ($8 a pair, with green skin and black fingernails) and Smelly Witch Feet ($9).

Tiffany tucked the catalogue back into the book. She couldn’t leave it for Annagramma to find, or the secret of Miss Treason’s Boffo would be out.

And that was it: one life, ended and neatly tidied away. One cottage, clean and empty. One girl, wondering what was going to happen next. “Arrangements” would be made.

Clonk-clank.

She didn’t move, didn’t look around. I’m not going to be Boffo’d, she told herself. There’s an explanation for that noise that has nothing to do with Miss Treason. Let’s see . . . I cleaned the fireplace, right? And I leaned the poker next to it. But unless you get it just right, it always falls over sooner or later in a sneaky kind of way. That’s it. When I turn and look behind me, I’ll see that the poker has fallen over and is lying in the grate and therefore the noise wasn’t caused by any kind of ghostly clock at all.

She turned around slowly. The poker was lying in the grate.

And now, she thought, it would be a good idea to go outside into the fresh air. It’s a bit sad and stuffy in here. That’s why I want to go out, because it’s sad and stuffy. It’s not at all because I’m afraid of any imaginary noises. I’m not superstitious. I’m a witch. Witches aren’t superstitious. We are what people are superstitious of. I just don’t want to stay. I felt safe here when she was alive—it was like sheltering under a huge tree—but I don’t think it is safe anymore. If the Wintersmith makes the trees shout my name, well, I’ll cover my ears. The house feels like it’s dying and I’m going outside.

There was no point in locking the door. The local people were nervous enough about going inside even when Miss Treason was alive. They certainly wouldn’t set foot inside now, not until another witch had made the place her own.

A weak, runny-egg kind of sun was showing through the clouds, and the wind had blown the frost away. But a brief autumn turned to winter quickly up here; from now on there would always be the smell of snow in the air. Up in the mountains the winter never ended. Even in the summer, the water in the streams was ice cold from the melting snow.

Tiffany sat down on the old stump with her ancient suitcase and a sack and waited for the Arrangements. Annagramma would be here pretty soon, you could bet on that.

The cottage already looked abandoned. It seemed like—

It was her birthday. The thought pushed itself to the front. Yes, it would be today. Death had got it right. The one big day in the year that was totally hers, and she had forgotten about it in all the excitement, and now it was already two thirds over.

Had she ever told Petulia and the others when her birthday was? She couldn’t remember.

Thirteen years old. But she’d been thinking of herself as “nearly thirteen” for months now. Pretty soon she’d be “nearly fourteen.”

She was just about to enjoy a bit of self-pity when there was a stealthy rustling behind her. She turned so quickly that Horace the cheese leaped backward.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Tiffany. “Where have you been, you naughty bo— cheese? I was worried sick!”

Horace looked ashamed, but it was quite hard to see how he managed it.

“Are you going to come with me?” she asked.

Horace was immediately surrounded by a feeling of yesness.

“All right. You must get in the sack.” Tiffany opened it, but Horace backed away.

“Well, if you are going to be a naughty chee—” she began, and stopped. Her hand was itching. She looked up . . . at the Wintersmith.

It had to be him. At first he was just swirling snow in the air, but as he strode across the clearing, he seemed to come together, become human, become a young man with a cloak billowing out behind him and snow on his hair and shoulders. He wasn’t transparent this time, not entirely, but something like ripples ran across him, and Tiffany thought she could see the trees behind him, like shadows.

She took a few hurried steps backward, but the Wintersmith was crossing the dead grass with the speed of a skater. She could turn and run, but that would mean she was, well, turning and running, and why should she do that? She hadn’t been the one scribbling on people’s windows!

What should she say, what should she say?

“Now, I really appreciated you finding my necklace,” she said, backing away again. “And the snowflakes and roses were really very . . . it was very sweet. But . . . I don’t think that we . . . well, you’re made of cold and I’m not . . . I’m a human, made of . . . human stuff.”

“You must be her,” said the Wintersmith. “You were in the Dance! And now you are here, in my winter.”

The voice wasn’t right. It sounded . . . fake, somehow, as if the Wintersmith had been taught to say the sound of words without understanding what they were.

“I’m a her,” she said uncertainly. “I don’t know about ‘must be.’ Er . . . please, I’m really sorry about the dance, I didn’t mean to, it just seemed so . . .”

He’s still got the same purple-gray eyes, she noticed. Purple-gray, in a face sculpted from freezing fog. A handsome face, too. “Look, I never meant to make you think—” she began.

“Meant?” said the Wintersmith, looking astonished. “But we don’t mean. We are!”

“What do you . . . mean?”

“Crivens!”

“Oh, no . . .” muttered Tiffany as Feegles erupted from the grass.

The Feegles didn’t know the meaning of the word “fear.” Sometimes Tiffany wished they’d read a dictionary. They fought like tigers, they fought like demons, they fought like giants. What they didn’t do was fight like something with more than a spoonful of brain.

They attacked the Wintersmith with swords, heads, and feet, and the fact that everything went through him as if he were a shadow didn’t seem to bother them. If a Feegle aimed a boot at a misty leg and ended up kicking himself in his own head, then it had been a good result.

The Wintersmith ignored them, like a man paying no attention to butterflies.

“Where is your power? Why are you dressed like this?” the Wintersmith demanded. “This is not as it should be!”

He stepped forward and grabbed Tiffany’s wrist hard, much harder than a ghostly hand should be able to do.

“It is wrong!” he shouted. Above the clearing the clouds were moving fast.

Tiffany tried to pull away. “Let me go!”

“You are her!” the Wintersmith shouted, pulling her toward him.

Tiffany hadn’t known where the shout came from, but the slap came from her hand, thinking for itself. It caught the figure on the cheek so hard that for a moment the face blurred, as if she’d smeared a painting.

“Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me!” she screamed.

There was a flicker behind the Wintersmith. Tiffany couldn’t see it clearly because of the icy haze and her own anger and terror, but something blurred and dark was moving toward them across the clearing, wavering and distorted like a figure seen through ice. It loomed behind the transparent figure for one dark moment, and then became Granny Weatherwax, in the same space as the Wintersmith . . . inside him.

He screamed for a second, and exploded into a mist.

Granny stumbled forward, blinking.

“Urrrgh. It’ll take a while to get the taste of that out of my head,” she said. “Shut your mouth, girl—something might fly into it.”

Tiffany shut her mouth. Something might fly into it.

“What . . . what did you do to him?” she managed.

“It!” snapped Granny, rubbing her forehead. “It’s an it, not a he! An it that thinks it’s a he! Now give me your necklace!”

“What! But it’s mine!”

“Do you think I want an argument?” Granny Weatherwax demanded. “Does it say on my face I want an argument? Give it to me now! Don’t you dare defy me!”

“I won’t just—”

Granny Weatherwax lowered her voice and, in a piercing hiss much worse than a scream, said: “It’s how it finds you. Do you want it to find you again? It’s just a fog now. How solid do you think it will become?”

Tiffany thought about that strange face, not moving like a real one should, and that strange voice, putting words together as if they were bricks. . . .

She undid the little silver clasp and held up the necklace.

It’s just Boffo, she told herself. Every stick is a wand, every puddle is a crystal ball. This is just a . . . a thing. I don’t need it to be me.

Yes, I do.

“You must give it to me,” said Granny softly. “I can’t take it.”

She held out her hand, palm up.

Tiffany dropped the horse into it and tried not to see Granny Weatherwax’s fingers as a closing claw.

“Very well,” said Granny, satisfied. “Now we must go.”

“You were watching me,” said Tiffany sullenly.

“All morning. You could have seen me if you’d thought to look,” said Granny. “But you didn’t do a bad job at the burial, I’ll say that.”

“I did a good job!”

“That’s what I said.”

“No,” said Tiffany, still trembling. “You didn’t.”

“I’ve never held with skulls and suchlike,” said Granny, ignoring this. “Artificial ones, at any rate. But Miss Treason—”

She stopped, and Tiffany saw her stare at the treetops.

“Is that him again?” she asked.

“No,” said Granny, as if this were something to be disappointed about. “No, that’s young Miss Hawkin. And Mrs. Letice Earwig. Didn’t hang about, I see. And Miss Treason hardly cooled down.” She sniffed. “Some people might have had the common decency not to snatch.”

The two broomsticks landed a little way off. Annagramma looked nervous. Mrs. Earwig looked like she always did: tall, pale, very well dressed, wearing lots of occult jewelry and an expression that said you were slightly annoying her but she was being gracious enough not to let it show. And she always looked at Tiffany, when she ever bothered to look at her at all, as if Tiffany were some kind of strange creature that she didn’t quite understand.

Mrs. Earwig was always polite to Granny, in a formal and chilly way. It made Granny Weatherwax mad, but that was the way of witches. When they really disliked one another, they were as polite as duchesses.

As the other two approached, Granny bowed low and removed her hat. Mrs. Earwig did the same thing, only the bow was a little lower.

Tiffany saw Granny glance up and then bow lower still, by about an inch.

Mrs. Earwig managed to go half an inch farther down.

Tiffany and Annagramma exchanged a hopeless glance over the straining backs. Sometimes this sort of thing could go on for hours.

Granny Weatherwax gave a grunt and straightened up. So did Mrs. Earwig, red in the face.

“Blessin’s be upon our meetin’,” said Granny in a calm voice. Tiffany winced. This was a declaration of hostilities. Yelling and prodding with the fingers was perfectly ordinary witch arguing, but speaking carefully and calmly was open warfare.

“How kind of you to greet us,” said Mrs. Earwig.

“I hopes I sees you in good health?”

“I keep well, Miss Weatherwax.” Annagramma shut her eyes. That was a kick in the stomach, by witch standards.

“It’s Mistress Weatherwax, Mrs. Earwig,” said Granny. “As I believes you know?”

“Why, yes. Of course it is. I am so sorry.” These vicious blows having been exchanged, Granny went on: “I trust Miss Hawkin will find everything to her likin’.”

“I’m sure that—” Mrs. Earwig stared at Tiffany, her face a question.

“Tiffany,” said Tiffany helpfully.

“Tiffany. Of course. What a lovely name. . . . I’m sure that Tiffany has done her very best,” said Mrs. Earwig. “However, we shall shrive and consecrate the cottage, in case of . . . influences.”

I already scrubbed and scrubbed everything! Tiffany thought.

“Influences?” said Granny Weatherwax. Even the Wintersmith could not have managed a voice so icy.

“And disquieting vibrations,” said Mrs. Earwig.

“Oh, I know about those,” said Tiffany. “It’s the loose floorboard in the kitchen. If you tread on it, it makes the dresser wobble.”

“There has been talk of a demon,” said Mrs. Earwig, gravely ignoring this. “And . . . skulls.”

“But—” Tiffany began, and Granny’s hand squeezed her shoulder so hard she stopped.

“Deary, deary me,” said Granny, still holding on tightly. “Skulls, eh?”

“There are some very disturbing stories,” said Mrs. Earwig, watching Tiffany. “Of the darkest nature, Mistress Weatherwax. I feel that the people in this steading have been very badly served, indeed. Dark forces have been unleashed.”

Tiffany wanted to yell: No! It was all stories! It was all Boffo! She watched over them! She stopped their stupid arguments, she remembered their laws, she scolded their silliness! She couldn’t do that if she was just a frail old lady! She had to be a myth! But Granny’s grip kept her silent.

“Strange forces are certainly at work,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I wish you well in your endeavors, Mrs. Earwig. If you will excuse me?”

“Of course, Mis—tress Weatherwax. May good stars attend you.”

“May the road slow down to meet your feet,” said Granny. She stopped gripping Tiffany so hard but nevertheless almost dragged her around the side of the cottage. The late Miss Treason’s broomstick was leaning against the wall.

“Tie your stuff on quickly!” she commanded. “We must move!”

“Is he going to come back?” asked Tiffany, struggling to tie the sack and old suitcase onto the bristles.

“Not yet. Not soon, I think. But it will be looking for you. And it will be stronger. Dangerous to you, I believe, and those around you! You have such a lot to learn! You have such a lot to do!”

“I thanked him! I tried to be nice to him! Why is he still interested in me?”

“Because of the Dance,” said Granny.

“I’m sorry about that!”

“Not good enough. What does a storm know of sorrow? You must make amends. Did you really think that space was left there for you? Oh, this is so tangled! How are your feet?”

Tiffany, angry and bewildered, stopped with one leg half over the stick.

“My feet? What about my feet?”

“Do they itch? What happens when you take your boots off ?”

“Nothing! I just see my socks! What have my feet got to do with anything?”

“We shall find out,” said Granny, infuriatingly. “Now, come along.”

Tiffany tried to get the stick to rise, but it barely cleared the dead grass. She looked around. The bristles were covered with Nac Mac Feegles.

“Dinna mind us,” said Rob Anybody. “We’ll hold on tight!”

“An’ dinna make it too bumpy, ’cuz I feel like the top o’ mah heid’s come off,” said Daft Wullie.

“Do we get meals on this flight?” said Big Yan. “I’m fair boggin’ for a wee drink.”

“I can’t take you all!” said Tiffany. “I don’t even know where I’m going!”

Granny Weatherwax glared at the Feegles. “You’ll have to walk. We’re travelin’ to Lancre Town. The address is Tir Nani Ogg, The Square.”

“Tir Nani Ogg,” said Tiffany. “Isn’t that—?”

“It means Nanny Ogg’s Place,” said Granny as Feegles dropped off the broomstick. “You’ll be safe there. Well, more or less. But we must make a stop on the way. We must put that necklace as far away from you as we can. And I know how to do that! Oh, yes!”

The Nac Mac Feegle jogged through the afternoon woods. Local wildlife had found out about Feegles, so the fluffy woodland creatures had all dived for their burrows or climbed high into the trees, but after a while Big Yan called a halt and said: “There’s somethin’ trackin’ us!”

“Don’t be daft,” said Rob Anybody. “There’s nothin’ left in these woods that’s mad enough tae hunt Feegles!”

“I know what I’m sensin’,” said Big Yan stubbornly. “I can feel it in my watter. There’s somethin’ creepin’ up on us right noo!”

“Weel, I’m not one tae argue wi’ a man’s watter,” said Rob wearily. “Okay, lads, spread oot inna big circle!”

Swords drawn, the Feegles spread out, but after a few minutes there was a general muttering. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear. A few birds sang, at a safe distance. Peace and quiet, unusual in the vicinity of Feegles, was everywhere.

“Sorry, Big Yan, but I’m thinkin’ yer watter is no’ on the button this time,” said Rob Anybody.

It was at this point that Horace the cheese dropped from a branch onto his head.

A lot of water flowed under the big bridge at Lancre, but from up here you could barely see it because of the spray coming from the waterfalls a little farther on, spray that hovered in the freezing air. There was white water all through the deep gorge, and then the river leaped the waterfall like a salmon and hit the plains below like a thunderstorm. From the base of the falls you could follow the river all the way past the Chalk, but it moved in wide, lazy curves, and it was quicker to fly in a straight line.

Tiffany had flown up it just once, when Miss Level had first brought her into the mountains. Since then she’d always taken the long way down, cruising just above the zigzagging coach road. Flying out over the edge of that furious torrent into a sudden drop full of cold damp air and then pointing the stick almost straight down was pretty high on her list of things she never intended to do, ever.

Now Granny Weatherwax stood on the bridge, the silver horse in her hand.

“It’s the only way,” she said. “It’ll end up at the bottom of the deep sea. Let the Wintersmith look for you there!”

Tiffany nodded. She wasn’t crying, which is not the same as, well, not crying. People walked around not crying all the time and didn’t think about it at all. But now, she did. She thought: I’m not crying. . . .

It made sense. Of course it made sense. It was all Boffo! Every stick is a wand, every puddle is a crystal ball. No thing had any power that you didn’t put there. Shambles and skulls and wands were like . . . shovels and knives and spectacles. They were like . . . levers. With a lever you could lift a big rock, but the lever didn’t do any work.

“It has to be your choice,” said Granny. “I can’t make it for you. But it’s a small thing, and while you have it, it will be dangerous.”

“You know, I don’t think he wanted to hurt me. He was just upset,” said Tiffany.

“Really? Do you want to meet it upset again?”

Tiffany thought about that strange face. There had been the shape of a human there—more or less—but it was as if the Wintersmith had heard of the idea of being human but hadn’t found out how to do it yet.

“You think he’ll harm other people?” she asked.

“He is the Winter, child. It’s not all pretty snowflakes, is it?”

Tiffany held out her hand. “Give it back to me, please.”

Granny handed it over with a shrug.

It lay in Tiffany’s hand, on the strange white scar. It was the first thing she had ever been given that wasn’t useful, that wasn’t supposed to do something.

I don’t need this, she thought. My power comes from the Chalk. But is that what life’s going to be like? Nothing that you don’t need?

“We should tie it to something that’s light,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Otherwise it will get caught on the bottom.”

After some rooting around in the grass near the bridge, she found a stick and wrapped the silver chain around it.

It was noon. Tiffany had invented the word noonlight because she liked the sound of it. Anyone could be a witch at midnight, she’d thought, but you’d have to be really good to be a witch by noonlight.

Good at being a witch, anyway, she thought now as she walked back onto the bridge. Not good at being a happy person.

She threw the necklace off the bridge.

She didn’t make a big thing of it. It would have been nice to say that the silver horse glittered in the light, seemed to hang in the air for a moment before falling the long fall. Perhaps it did, but Tiffany didn’t look.

“Good,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Is it all over now?” said Tiffany.

“No! You danced into a story, girl, one that tells itself to the world every year. It’s the Story about ice and fire, Summer and Winter. You’ve made it wrong. You’ve got to stay to the end and make sure it turns out right. The horse is just buyin’ you time, that’s all.”

“How much time?”

“I don’t know. This hasn’t happened before. Time to think, at least. How are your feet?”

The Wintersmith was moving through the world without, in any human sense, moving at all. Wherever winter was, he was too.

He was trying to think. He’d never had to do this before, and it hurt. Up until now humans had just been parts of the world that moved around in strange ways and lit fires. Now he was spinning himself a mind, and everything was new.

A human . . . made of human stuff . . . that was what she had said.

Human stuff. He had to make himself of human stuff for the beloved. In the chill of morgues and the wreckage of ships, the Wintersmith rode the air searching for human stuff. And what was it? Dirt and water, mostly. Leave a human long enough and even the water would go, and there would be nothing but a few handfuls of dust that blew away in the wind.

So, since water did not think, all the work was being done by the dust.

The Wintersmith was logical, because ice was logical. Water was logical. Wind was logical. There were rules. So what a human was all about was . . . the right kind of dust!

And, while he was searching for it, he could show her how strong he was.

That evening Tiffany sat on the edge of her new bed, the clouds of sleep rising in her brain like thunderheads, and yawned and stared at her feet.

They were pink, and had five toes each. They were pretty good feet, considering.

Normally when people met you, they’d say things like “How are you?” Nanny Ogg had just said: “Come on in. How’s your feet?”

Suddenly everyone was interested in her feet. Of course, feet were important, but what did people expect to happen to them?

She swung them back and forth on the ends of her legs. They didn’t do anything strange, so she got into bed.

She hadn’t slept properly for two nights. She hadn’t really understood that until she’d reached Tir Nani Ogg, when her brain had started to spin of its own accord. She’d talked to Mrs. Ogg, but it was hard to remember what about. Voices had banged in her ears. Now, at last, she had nothing to do but sleep.

It was a good bed, the best she’d ever slept in. It was the best room she’d ever been in, although she’d been too tired to explore it. Witches didn’t go in much for comfort, especially in spare bedrooms, but Tiffany had grown up on an ancient bed where the springs went gloing every time she moved, and with care she could get them to play a tune.

This mattress was thick and yielding. She sank into it as if it were very soft, very warm, very slow quicksand.

The trouble is, you can shut your eyes but you can’t shut your mind. As she lay in the dark, it squiggled pictures inside her head, of clocks that went clonk-clank, of snowflakes shaped like her, of Miss Treason striding through the nighttime forest, seeking bad people with her yellow thumbnail ready.

Myth Treason . . .

She drifted through these scrambled memories into dull whiteness. But it got brighter, and took on detail, little areas of black and gray. They began to move gently from side to side. . . .

Tiffany opened her eyes, and everything became clear. She was standing on a . . . a boat, no, a big sailing ship. There was snow on the decks, and icicles hung from the rigging. It was sailing in the washing-up-water light of dawn, on a silent gray sea full of floating ice and clouds of fog. The rigging creaked, the wind sighed in the sails. There was no one to be seen.

“Ah. This appears to be a dream. Let me out, please,” said a familiar voice.

“Who are you?” said Tiffany.

“You. Cough, please.”

Tiffany thought: Well, if this is a dream . . . and she coughed.

A figure grew up out of the snow on the deck. It was her, and she was looking around thoughtfully.

“Are you me too?” Tiffany asked. Strangely, here on the freezing deck, it didn’t seem that, well, strange.

“Hmm. Oh, yes,” said the other Tiffany, still staring intently at things. “I’m your Third Thoughts. Remember? The part of you that never stops thinking? The bit that notices little details? It’s good to be out in fresh air. Hmm.”

“Is there something wrong?”

“Well, this clearly appears to be a dream. If you would care to look, you’ll see that the steersman in yellow oilskins up there at the wheel is the Jolly Sailor off the wrappers of the tobacco that Granny Aching used to smoke. He always comes into our mind when we think about the sea, yes?”

Tiffany looked up at the bearded figure, who gave her a cheerful wave.

“Yes, that’s certainly him!” she said.

“But I don’t think this is our dream, exactly,” said the Third Thoughts. “It’s too . . . real.”

Tiffany reached down and picked up a handful of snow.

“Feels real,” she said. “Feels cold.” She made a snowball and threw it at herself.

“I really wish I wouldn’t do that,” said the other Tiffany, brushing the snow off her shoulder. “But you see what I mean? Dreams are never as . . . nondreamlike as this.”

“I know what I mean,” said Tiffany. “I think they’re going to be real, and then something weird turns up.”

“Exactly. I don’t like it at all. If this is a dream, then something horrible is going to happen. . . .”

They looked ahead of the ship. There was a dismal, dirty bank of fog there, spreading out across the sea.

“There’s something in the fog!” said the Tiffanys together.

They turned and scurried up the ladder to the man at the wheel.

“Keep away from the fog! Please don’t go near it!” Tiffany shouted.

The Jolly Sailor took his pipe out of his mouth and looked puzzled.

“A Good Smoke in Any Weather?” he said to Tiffany.

“What?”

“It’s all he can say!” said her Third Thoughts, grabbing the wheel. “Remember? That’s what he says on the label!”

The Jolly Sailor pushed her away gently. “A Good Smoke in Any Weather,” he said soothingly. “In Any Weather.”

“Look, we only want to—” Tiffany began, but her Third Thoughts, without a word, put a hand on her head and turned her around.

Something was coming out of the fog.

It was an iceberg, a large one, at least five times as high as the ship, as majestic as a swan. It was so big that it was causing its own weather. It seemed to be moving slowly; there was white water around its base. Snow fell around it. Streamers of fog trailed behind it.

The Jolly Sailor’s pipe dropped out of his mouth as he stared.

“A Good Smoke!” he swore.

The iceberg was Tiffany. It was a Tiffany hundreds of feet high, formed of glittering green ice, but it was still a Tiffany. There were seabirds perched on her head.

“It can’t be the Wintersmith doing this!” said Tiffany. “I threw the horse away!” She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted: “I THREW THE HORSE AWAY!”

Her voice echoed off the looming ice figure. A few birds took off from the huge cold head, screaming. Behind Tiffany, the ship’s wheel spun. The Jolly Sailor stamped a foot and pointed to the white sails above them.

“A Good Smoke in Any Weather!” he commanded.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean!” said Tiffany desperately.

The man pointed to the sails and made frantic pulling motions with his hands.

“A Good Smoke!”

“Sorry, I just can’t understand you!”

The sailor snorted and ran off toward a rope, which he hauled on in a great hurry.

“It’s gotten weird,” said her Third Thoughts quietly.

“Well, yes, I should think a huge iceberg shaped like me is a—”

“No, that’s just strange. This is weird,” said her Third Thoughts. “We’ve got passengers. Look.” She pointed.

Down on the main deck there was a row of hatches with big iron grids on them; Tiffany hadn’t noticed them before.

Hands, hundreds of them, pale as roots under a log, groping and waving, were thrusting through the grids.

“Passengers?” Tiffany whispered in horror. “Oh, no . . .”

And then the screaming started. It would have been better, but not a lot better, if it had been cries of “Help! and “Save us,” but instead it was just screaming and wailing, just the sounds of people in pain and fear—

No!

“Come back inside my head,” she said grimly. “It’s too distracting to have you running around outside. Right now.”

“I’ll walk in from behind you,” said her Third Thoughts. “Then it won’t seem so—”

Tiffany felt a twinge of pain, and a change in her mind, and thought: Well, I suppose it could have been a lot messier.

Okay. Let me think. Let all of me think.

She watched the desperate hands, waving like weeds underwater, and thought: I’m in something like a dream, but I don’t think it’s mine. I’m on a ship, and we’re going to get killed by an iceberg that’s a giant figure of me.

I think I liked it better when I was snowflakes. . . .

Whose dream is this?

“What is this about, Wintersmith?” she asked, and her Third Thoughts, back where they should be, commented: It’s amazing, you can even see your own breath in the air.

“Is this a warning?” Tiffany shouted. “What do you want?”

You for my bride, said the Wintersmith. The words just arrived in her memory.

Tiffany’s shoulders sank.

You know this isn’t real, said her Third Thoughts. But it may be the shadow of something real. . . .

I shouldn’t have let Granny Weatherwax send Rob Anybody away like that—

“Crivens! Shiver me timber!” shouted a voice behind her. And then there was the usual clamor:

“It’s ‘timbers,’ ye dafty!”

“Aye? But I can only find one!”

“Splice the big plank! Daft Wullie’s just walked intae the watter!”

“The big puddin’! I told him, just the one eye patch!”

“With a yo hoho and a ho yoyo—”

Feegles erupted from the cabin behind Tiffany, and Rob Anybody stopped in front of her as the rest streamed past. He saluted.

“Sorry we’re a wee bittie late, but we had to find the black patches,” he said. “There’s sich a thing as style, ye ken.”

Tiffany was speechless, but only for a moment. She pointed.

“We’ve got to stop this ship from hitting that iceberg!”

“Just that? Nae problemo!” Rob looked past her to the looming ice giantess and grinned. “He’s got yer nose just right, eh?”

“Just stop it! Please?” Tiffany pleaded.

“Aye-aye! C’mon, lads!”

Watching the Feegles working was like watching ants, except that ants didn’t wear kilts and shout “Crivens!” all the time. Maybe it was because they could make one word do so much work that they seemed to have no problem at all with the Jolly Sailor’s orders. They swarmed across the deck. Mysterious ropes were pulled. Sails moved and billowed to a chorus of “A Good Smoke!” and “Crivens!”

Now the Wintersmith wants to marry me, Tiffany thought. Oh, dear.

She’d sometimes wondered if she’d get married one day, but she was definite that now was too soon for “one day.” Yes, her mother had been married when she was still fourteen, but that was the sort of thing that happened in the olden days. There were a lot of things to be done before Tiffany ever got married, she was very clear about that.

Besides, when you thought about it . . . yuk. He wasn’t even a person. He’d be too—

Thud! went the wind in the sails. The ship creaked and leaned over, and everyone was shouting at her. Mostly they shouted, “The wheel! Grab the wheel right noo!” although there was also a desperate “A Good Smoke in Any Weather!” in there too.

Tiffany turned to see the wheel spinning in a blur. She made a snatch at it and got thumped across the fingers by the spokes, but there was a length of rope coiled nearby and she managed to lasso the wheel with a loop and jerk it to a halt without sliding along the deck too much. Then she grabbed the wheel and tried to turn it the other way. It was like pushing a house, but it did move, very slowly at first and then faster as she put her back into it.

The ship came around. She could feel it moving, beginning to head a little bit away from the iceberg, not directly for it. Good! Things were going right at last! She spun the wheel some more, and now the huge cold wall was sliding past, filling the air with mist. Everything was going to be all right after—

The ship hit the iceberg.

It started with a simple crack! as a spar caught on an outcrop, but then others smashed as the ship scraped along the side of the ice. Then there were some sharp splintering noises as the ship ground onward, and bits of plank shot up on columns of foaming water. The top of a mast broke off, dragging sails and rigging with it. A lump of ice smashed onto the deck a few feet away from Tiffany, showering her with needles.

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go!” she panted, hanging on to the wheel.

Marry me, said the Wintersmith.

Churning white water roared across the foundering ship. Tiffany held on for a moment longer; then the cold surf covered her . . . except that it was suddenly not cold, but warm. But it was still stopping her from breathing. In the darkness she tried to fight her way to the surface, until the blackness was suddenly pulled aside, her eyes filled with light, and a voice said: “I’m sure these mattresses are far too soft, but you can’t tell Mrs. Ogg a thing.”

Tiffany blinked. She was in bed, and a skinny woman with worried hair and a rather red nose was standing by it.

“You were tossing and turning like a mad thing,” the woman said, putting a steaming mug on the small table by the bed. “One day someone will suffikate, mark my words.”

Tiffany blinked again. I’m supposed to think: Oh, it was just a dream. But it wasn’t just a dream. Not my dream.

“What time is it?” she managed.

“About seven,” said the woman.

“Seven!” Tiffany pushed the sheets back. “I’ve got to get up! Mrs. Ogg will be wanting her breakfast!”

“I shouldn’t think so. I took it to her in bed not ten minutes ago,” said the woman, giving Tiffany a Look. “And I’m off home.” She sniffed. “Drink your tea before it gets cold.” And with that she marched toward the door.

“Is Mrs. Ogg ill?” asked Tiffany, looking everywhere for her socks. She’d never heard of anyone who wasn’t really old or very ill having a meal in bed.

“Ill? I don’t think she’s had a day’s illness in her life,” said the woman, managing to suggest that in her opinion this was unfair. She shut the door.

Even the bedroom floor was smooth—not made smooth by centuries of feet that had worn down the planks and taken all the splinters out, but because someone had sanded and varnished it. Tiffany’s bare feet stuck to it slightly. There was no dust to be seen, no spiderwebs anywhere. The room was bright and fresh and exactly unlike any room in a witch’s cottage ought to be.

“I’m going to get dressed,” she said to the air. “Are there any Feegles in here?”

“Ach, no,” said a voice from under the bed.

There was some frantic whispering and the voice said: “That is tae say, there’s hardly any o’ us here at a’.”

“Then shut your eyes,” said Tiffany.

She got dressed, taking occasional sips of the tea as she did so. Tea brought to your bedside when you weren’t ill? That sort of thing happened to kings and queens!

And then she noticed the bruise on her fingers. It didn’t hurt at all, but the skin was blue where the ship’s wheel had hit it. Right . . .

“Feegles?” she said.

“Crivens, ye’ll nae be foolin’ us a second time,” said the voice from under the bed.

“Get out here where I can see you, Daft Wullie!” Tiffany commanded.

“It’s real hagglin’, miss, the way ye always ken it’s me.”

After some more urgent whispering, Daft Wullie—for it was indeed he—trooped out with two more Feegles and Horace the cheese.

Tiffany stared. All right, he was a blue cheese, so he was about the same color as a Feegle. And he acted like a Feegle, no doubt about that. Why, though, had he got a grubby strip of Feegle tartan around him?

“He kinda found us,” said Daft Wullie, putting his arm around as much of Horace as was possible. “Can I keep him? He understands evera word I say!”

“That’s amazing, because I don’t,” said Tiffany. “Look, were we in a shipwreck last night?”

“Oh, aye. Sorta.”

“Sort of? Was it real or wasn’t it?”

“Oh, aye,” said the Feegle nervously.

“Which?” Tiffany insisted.

“Kinda real, and kinda not real, in a real unreal sorta way,” said Daft Wullie, squirming a bit. “I don’t have the knowin’ o’ the right wurdies. . . .”

“Are all you Feegles okay?”

“Oh aye, miss,” said Daft Wullie, brightening up. “Nae problemo. It wuz only a dream ship on a dream sea, after a’.”

“And a dream iceberg?” said Tiffany.

“Ach, no. The iceberg was real, mistress.”

“I thought so! Are you sure?”

“Aye. We’re good at the knowin’ o’ stuff like that,” said Daft Wullie. “That’s so, eh, lads?” The other two Feegles, in total awe of being in the presence of the big wee hag without the safety of hundreds of brothers around them, nodded at Tiffany and then tried to shuffle behind each other.

“A real iceberg shaped like me is floating around on the sea?” said Tiffany in horror. “Getting in the way of shipping?”

“Aye. Could be,” said Daft Wullie.

“I’m going to get into so much trouble!” said Tiffany, standing up.

There was a snapping noise, and the end of one of the floorboards leaped out of the floor and hung there, bouncing up and down with a rocking-chair noise. It had ripped out two long nails.

“And now this,” said Tiffany weakly. But the Feegles and Horace had vanished.

Behind Tiffany someone laughed, although it was maybe more of a chuckle, deep and real and with just a hint that maybe someone had told a rude joke.

“Those little devils can’t half run, eh?” said Nanny Ogg, ambling into the room. “Now then, Tiff, I wants you to turn around slowly and go and sit on your bed with your feet off the ground. Can you do that?”

“Of course, Mrs. Ogg,” said Tiffany. “Look, I’m sorry about—”

“Poo, what’s a floorboard more or less?” said Nanny Ogg. “I’m much more worried about Esme Weatherwax. She said there might be something like this! Ha, she was right and Miss Tick was wrong! There’ll be no living with her after this! She’ll have her nose so far in the air, her feet won’t touch the ground!”

With a spioioioiiing! sound, another floorboard sprang up.

“And it might be a good idea if yours didn’t either, miss,” Nanny Ogg added. “I’ll be back in half a tick.”

That turned out to be the same length of time as twenty-seven seconds, when Nanny returned carrying a pair of violently pink slippers with bunny rabbits on them.

“My second-best pair,” she said as, behind her, a board went plunk! and hurled four big nails into the far wall. The boards that had already sprung up were beginning to sprout what looked a lot like leaves. They were thin and weedy, but leaves were what they were.

“Is it me doing this?” asked Tiffany nervously.

“I daresay Esme will want to tell you all about it herself,” said Nanny, helping Tiffany’s feet into the slippers. “But what you’ve got here, miss, is a bad case of Ped Fecundis.” In the back of Tiffany’s memory Dr. Sensibility Bustle, D. M. Phil., B. El L., stirred in his sleep for a moment and took care of the translation.

“Fertile Feet?” said Tiffany.

“Well done! I didn’t expect anything to happen to floorboards, mind you, but it makes sense, when you think about it. They’re made of wood, after all, so they’re tryin’ to grow.”

“Mrs. Ogg?” said Tiffany.

“Yes?”

“Please? I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about! I keep my feet very clean! And I think I’m a giant iceberg!”

Nanny Ogg gave her a slow, kind look. Tiffany stared into dark, twinkling eyes. Don’t try to trick her or hold anything back from those eyes, said her Third Thoughts. Everyone says she’s been Granny Weatherwax’s best friend since they were girls. And that means that under all those wrinkles must be nerves of steel.

“Kettle’s on downstairs,” said Nanny brightly. “Why don’t you come down and tell me all about it?”

Tiffany had looked up “strumpet” in the Unexpurgated Dictionary, and found it meant “a woman who is no better than she should be” and “a lady of easy virtue.” This, she decided after some working out, meant that Mrs. Gytha Ogg, known as Nanny, was a very respectable person. She found virtue easy, for one thing. And if she was no better than she should be, then she was just as good as she ought to be.

She had a feeling that Miss Treason hadn’t meant this, but you couldn’t argue with logic.

Nanny Ogg was good at listening, at least. She listened like a great big ear, and before Tiffany realized it, she was telling her everything. Everything. Nanny sat on the opposite side of the big kitchen table, puffing gently at a pipe with a hedgehog carved on it. Sometimes she’d ask a little question, like “Why was that?” or “And then what happened?” and off they’d go again. Nanny’s friendly little smile could drag out of you things you didn’t know you knew.

While they talked, Tiffany’s Third Thoughts scanned the room out of the corners of her eyes.

It was wonderfully clean and bright, and there were ornaments everywhere—cheap, jolly ones, the sort that have things like “To the World’s Best Mum” on them. And where there weren’t ornaments, there were pictures of babies and children and families.

Tiffany had thought that only grand folk lived in homes like this. There were oil lamps! There was a bath, made of tin, hanging conveniently on a hook outside the privy! There was a pump actually indoors! But Nanny ambled around in her rather worn black dress, not grand at all.

From the best chair in the room of ornaments, a large gray cat watched Tiffany with a half-open eye that glinted with absolute evil. Nanny had referred to him as “Greebo . . . don’t mind him, he’s just a big old softie,” which Tiffany knew enough to interpret as “he’ll have his claws in your leg if you go anywhere near him.”

Tiffany talked as she hadn’t talked to anyone before. It must be a kind of magic, her Third Thoughts concluded. Witches soon picked up ways of controlling people with their voices, but Nanny Ogg listened at you.

“This lad Roland who is not your young man,” said Nanny, when Tiffany had paused for breath. “Thinking of marrying him, are you?”

Don’t lie, her Third Thoughts insisted.

“I . . . well, your mind comes up with all kinds of things when you’re not paying attention, doesn’t it?” said Tiffany. “It’s not like thinking. Anyway, all the other boys I’ve met just stare at their stupid feet! Petulia says it’s because of the hat.”

“Well, taking it off helps,” said Nanny Ogg. “Mind you, so did a low-cut bodice, when I was a girl. Stopped ’em lookin’ at their stupid feet, I don’t mind telling you!”

Tiffany saw the dark eyes locked onto her. She burst out laughing. Mrs. Ogg’s face broke into a huge grin that should have been locked up for the sake of public decency, and for some reason Tiffany felt a lot better. She’d passed some kind of test.

“Mind you, that probably wouldn’t work with the Wintersmith, of course,” said Nanny, and the gloom came down again.

“I didn’t mind the snowflakes,” said Tiffany. “But the iceberg—I think that was a bit much.”

“Showing off in front of the girls,” said Nanny, puffing at her hedgehog pipe. “Yes, they do that.”

“But he can kill people!”

“He’s Winter. It’s what he does. But I reckon he’s in a bit of a tizzy because he’s never been in love with a human before.”

“In love?”

“Well, he probably thinks he is.”

Once again the eyes watched her carefully.

“He’s an elemental, and they’re simple, really,” Nanny Ogg went on. “But he’s trying to be human. And that’s complicated. We’re packed with stuff he doesn’t understand—can’t understand, really. Anger, for example. A blizzard is never angry. The storm don’t hate the people who die in it. The wind is never cruel. But the more he thinks about you, the more he’s having to deal with feelings like this, and there’s none can teach him. He’s not very clever. He’s never had to be. And the interesting thing is that you are changin’ too—”

There was a knocking at the door. Nanny Ogg got up and opened it. Granny Weatherwax was there, with Miss Tick peering over her shoulder.

“Blessings be upon this house,” said Granny, but in a voice that suggested that if blessings needed to be taken away, she could do that, too.

“Quite probably,” said Nanny Ogg.

“It’s Ped Fecundis, then?” Granny nodded at Tiffany.

“Looks like a bad case. The floorboards started growing after she walked over them in bare feet.”

“Ha! Have you given her anything for it?” said Granny.

“I prescribed a pair of slippers.”

“I really don’t see how avatarization could be taking place, not when we’re talking about elementals, it makes no—” Miss Tick began.

“Do stop wittering, Miss Tick,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I notices you witter when things goes wrong, and it is not being a help.”

“I don’t want to worry the child, that’s all,” said Miss Tick. She took Tiffany’s hand, patted it, and said, “Don’t you worry, Tiffany, we’ll—”

“She’s a witch,” said Granny sternly. “We just have to tell her the truth.”

“You think I’m turning into a . . . a goddess?” said Tiffany.

It was worth it to see their faces. The only mouth not in an O was the one belonging to Granny Weatherwax, which was smirking. She looked like someone whose dog has just done a rather good trick.

“How did you work that out?” Granny asked.

Dr. Bustle had a guess: Avatar, an incarnation of a god. But I’m not going to tell you that, Tiffany thought. “Well, am I?” she said.

“Yes,” said Granny Weatherwax. “The Wintersmith thinks you are . . . oh, she’s got a lot of names. The Lady of the Flowers is a nice one. Or the Summer Lady. She makes the summertime, just like he makes the winter. He thinks you’re her.”

“All right,” said Tiffany. “But we know he’s wrong, don’t we?”

“Er . . . not quite as wrong as we’d like,” said Miss Tick.

Most of the Feegles had camped out in Nanny Ogg’s barn, where they were holding a council of war, except that it was about something that isn’t quite the same thing.

“What we’ve got here,” Rob Anybody pronounced, “is a case o’ Romance.”

“What’s that, Rob?” asked a Feegle.

“Aye, is it like how wee babbies are made?” asked Daft Wullie. “Ye told about that last year. It wuz verra interestin’, although a bit far-fetched tae my mind.”

“No’ exactly,” said Rob Anybody. “An’ it’s kinda hard tae describe. But I reckon yon Wintersmith wants to romance the big wee hag and she disna ken what tae do aboot it.”

“So it is like how babbies are made?” said Daft Wullie.

“No, ’cuz even beasties know that but only people know aboot Romancin’,” said Rob. “When a bull coo meets a lady coo, he disna have tae say, ‘My heart goes bang-bang-bang when I see your wee face,’ ’cuz it’s kinda built intae their heads. People have it more difficult. Romancin’ is verra important, ye ken. Basically it’s a way the boy can get close to the girl wi’oot her attackin’ him and scratchin’ his eyes oot.”

“I dinna see how we can teach her any o’ that stuff,” said Slightly Mad Angus.

“The big wee hag reads books,” said Rob Anybody. “When she sees a book she just canna help herself. An’ I,” he added proudly, “have a Plan.”

The Feegles relaxed. They always felt happier when Rob had a Plan, especially since most plans of his boiled down to screaming and rushing at something.

“Tell us aboot the Plan, Rob,” said Big Yan.

“Ah’m glad ye asked me,” said Rob. “The Plan is: We’ll find her a book aboot Romancin’.”

“An’ how will we find this book, Rob?” asked Billy Bigchin uncertainly. He was a loyal gonnagle, but he was also bright enough to get nervous whenever Rob Anybody had a Plan.

Rob Anybody airily waved a hand. “Ach,” he said, “we ken this trick! A’ we need is a big hat an’ coat an’ a coat hanger an’ a broom handle!”

“Oh aye?” said Big Yan. “Well, I’m not bein’ doon in the knee again!”

With witches everything is a test. That’s why they tested Tiffany’s feet.

I bet that I’m the only person in the world about to do this, she thought as she lowered both her feet into a tray of soil that Nanny had hastily shoveled up. Granny Weatherwax and Miss Tick were both sitting on bare wooden chairs, despite the fact that the gray cat Greebo was occupying the whole of one big saggy armchair. You didn’t want to wake up Greebo when he wanted to sleep.

“Can you feel anything?” asked Miss Tick.

“It’s a bit cold, that’s all—oh . . . something’s happening. . . .”

Green shoots appeared around her feet, and grew quickly. Then they went white at the base and gently pushed Tiffany’s feet aside as they began to swell.

“Onions?” said Granny Weatherwax scornfully.

“Well, they were the only seeds I could find quickly,” said Nanny Ogg, poking at the glistening white bulbs. “Good size. Well done, Tiff.”

Granny looked shocked. “You’re not going to eat those, are you, Gytha?” she said accusingly. “You are, aren’t you? You’re going to eat them!”

Nanny Ogg, standing up with a bunch of onions in each pudgy hand, looked guilty, but only for a moment.

“Why not?” she said stoutly. “Fresh vegetables are not to be sneezed at in the winter. And anyway, her feet are nice and clean.”

“It’s not seemly,” said Miss Tick.

“It didn’t hurt,” said Tiffany. “All I had to do was put my feet on the tray for a moment.”

“Yes, she says it didn’t hurt,” Nanny Ogg insisted. “Now, I think I might have some old carrot seeds in the kitchen drawer—” She saw the expressions on the faces of the others. “All right, all right, then. There’s no need to look like that,” she said. “I was just tryin’ to point out the silver lining, that’s all.”

“Someone please tell me what is happening to me?” Tiffany wailed.

“Miss Tick is going to give you the answer in some long words,” said Granny. “But they boils down to this: It’s the Story happening. It’s making you fit into itself.”

Tiffany tried not to look like someone who didn’t understand a word that she had just heard.

“I could do with a little bit of the fine detail, I think,” she said.

“I think I’ll get some tea brewed,” said Nanny Ogg.

CHAPTER 7

On with the Dance

The Wintersmith and the Summer Lady . . . danced. The dance never ended.

Winter never dies. Not as people die. It hangs on in late frost and the smell of autumn in a summer evening, and in the heat it flees to the mountains.

Summer never dies. It sinks into the ground; in the depths, winter buds form in sheltered places and white shoots creep under dead leaves. Some of it flees into the deepest, hottest deserts, where there is a summer that never ends. To animals they were just the weather, just part of everything.

But humans arose and gave them names, just as people filled the starry sky with heroes and monsters, because this turned them into stories. And humans loved stories, because once you’d turned things into stories, you could change the stories. And there was the problem, right there.

Now the Lady and the Wintersmith danced around the year, changing places in the spring and autumn, and it had worked for thousands of years, right up until the time a girl couldn’t control her feet and had arrived in the dance at exactly the wrong time.

But the Story had life, too. It was like a play now. It would roll on around the year, and if one of the players wasn’t the real actress but just some girl who’d wandered onto the stage, well, that was too bad. She’d have to wear the costume and speak the lines and hope that there was going to be a happy ending. Change the Story, even if you don’t mean to, and the Story changes you.

Miss Tick used a lot more words than this, like “anthropomorphic personification,” but this was what ended up in Tiffany’s head.

“So . . . I’m not a goddess?” she said.

“Oh, I wish I had a blackboard.” Miss Tick sighed. “They really don’t survive the water, though, and of course the chalks get so soggy—”

“What we think happened in the Dance,” Granny Weatherwax began in a loud voice, “is that you and the Summer Lady got . . . mixed up.”

“Mixed up?”

“You may have some of her talents. The myth of the Summer Lady says that flowers grow wherever she walks,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Where e’er,” said Miss Tick primly.

“What?” snapped Granny, who was now pacing up and down in front of the fire.

“It’s ‘where e’er she walks,’ in fact,” said Miss Tick. “It’s more . . . poetical.”

“Hah,” Granny said. “Poetry!”

Am I going to get into trouble about this? Tiffany wondered. “And what about the real Summer Lady? Is she going to be angry?” she asked.

Granny Weatherwax stopped pacing and looked at Miss Tick, who said: “Ah, yes . . . er . . . we are exploring every possibility—”

“That means we don’t know,” said Granny. “That’s the truth of it. This is about gods, see? But yes, since you ask, they can be a bit touchy.”

“I didn’t see her in the dance,” said Tiffany.

“Did you see the Wintersmith?”

“Well . . . no,” said Tiffany. How could she describe that wonderful, endless, golden, spinning moment? It went beyond bodies and thoughts. But it had sounded as though two people had said: “Who are you?” She pulled her boots back on. “Er . . . where is she now?” she asked as she tied the laces. Perhaps she’d have to run.

“She’s probably gone back underground for the winter. The Summer Lady doesn’t walk above ground in winter.”

“Up until now,” said Nanny Ogg cheerfully. She seemed to be enjoying this.

“Aah, Mrs. Ogg has put her finger on the other problem,” said Miss Tick. “The, er, Wintersmith and the Summer Lady are, uh, that is, they’ve never—” She looked imploringly at Nanny Ogg.

“They’ve never met except in the Dance,” said Nanny. “But now here you are, and you feel like the Summer Lady to him, walking around as bold as brass in the wintertime, so you might be . . . how shall I put it . . . ?”

“. . . exciting his romantic propensities,” said Miss Tick quickly.

“I wasn’t going to describe it quite like that,” said Nanny Ogg.

“Yes, I suspects you weren’t!” said Granny. “I suspects you was going to use Language!”

Tiffany definitely heard the capital “L,” which entirely suggested that the language she was thinking of was not to be uttered in polite company.

Nanny stood up and tried to look haughty, which is hard to do when you have a face like a happy apple.

“I was actually going to draw Tiff’s attention to this,” she said, taking an ornament off the crowded mantelpiece. It was a little house. Tiffany had glanced at it before; it had two little doorways at the front and, at the moment, a tiny little wooden man with a top hat.

“It’s called a weather house,” Nanny said, handing it to Tiffany. “I don’t know how it works—there’s a bit of special string or something—but there’s a little wooden man who comes out if it’s going to rain and a little wooden woman who comes out when it’s going to be sunny. But they’re on a little pivoty thing, see? They can never be out at the same time, see? Never. An’ I can’t help wonderin’, when the weather’s changin’, if the little man sees the little woman out of the corner of his eye and wonders—”

“Is this about sex?” asked Tiffany.

Miss Tick looked at the ceiling. Granny Weatherwax cleared her throat. Nanny gave a huge laugh that would have embarrassed even the little wooden man.

“Sex?” she said. “Between Summer and Winter? Now there’s a thought.”

“Don’t . . . think . . . it,” said Granny Weatherwax sternly. She turned to Tiffany. “He’s fascinated by you, that’s what it is. And we don’t know how much of the Summer Lady’s power is in you. She might be quite weak. You’ll have to be a summer in winter until winter ends,” she added flatly. “That’s justice. No excuses. You made a choice. You get what you chose.”

“Couldn’t I just go and find her and say I’m sorry—?” Tiffany began.

“No. The old gods ain’t big on ‘sorry,’” said Granny, pacing up and down again. “They know it’s just a word.”

“You know what I think?” said Nanny. “I think she’s watchin’ you, Tiff. She’s sayin’ to herself, ‘Who’s this hoity-toity young madam steppin’ into my shoes? Well, let’s make her walk a mile in ’em and see how she likes it!’”

“Mrs. Ogg may have something there,” said Miss Tick, who was leafing through Chaffinch’s Mythology. “The gods expect you to pay for your mistakes.”

Nanny Ogg patted Tiffany’s hand. “If she wants to see what you can do, show her what you can do, Tiff, eh? That’s the way! Surprise her!”

“You mean the Summer Lady?” said Tiffany.

Nanny winked. “Oh, and the Summer Lady, too!”

There was what sounded very much like the start of a laugh from Miss Tick before Granny Weatherwax glared at her.

Tiffany sighed. It was all very well to talk about choices, but she had no choice here.

“All right. What else can I expect apart from . . . well, the feet?”

“I’m, er, checking,” said Miss Tick, still thumbing through the book. “Ah . . . it says here that she was, I mean is, fairer than all the stars in heaven. . . .”

They all looked at Tiffany.

“You could try doing something with your hair,” said Nanny Ogg after a while.

“Like what?” said Tiffany.

“Like anything, really.”

“Apart from the feet and doing something with my hair,” said Tiffany sharply, “is there anything else?”

“Says here, quoting a very old manuscript: ‘She waketh the grasses in Aprill and filleth the beehives with honey swete,’” Miss Tick reported.

“How do I do that?”

“I don’t know, but I suspect that happens anyway,” said Miss Tick.

“And the Summer Lady gets the credit?”

“I think she just has to exist for it to happen, really,” said Miss Tick.

“Anything else?”

“Er, yes. You have to make sure the winter ends,” said Miss Tick. “And, of course, deal with the Wintersmith.”

“And how do I do that?”

“We think that you just have to . . . be there,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Or perhaps you’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

Meep.

“Be where?” said Tiffany.

“Everywhere. Anywhere.”

“Granny, your hat squeaked,” said Tiffany. “It went meep!”

“No it didn’t,” Granny said sharply.

“It did, you know,” said Nanny Ogg. “I heard it too.”

Granny Weatherwax grunted and pulled off her hat. The white kitten, curled around her tight bun of hair, blinked in the light.

“I can’t help it,” Granny muttered. “If I leave the dratted thing alone, it goes under the dresser and cries and cries.” She looked around at the others as if daring them to say anything. “Anyway,” she added, “it keeps m’ head warm.”

On his chair, the yellow slit of Greebo’s left eye opened lazily.

“Get down, You,” said Granny, lifting the kitten off her head and putting it on the floor. “I daresay Mrs. Ogg has got some milk in the kitchen.”

“Not much,” said Nanny. “I’ll swear something’s been drinking it!”

Greebo’s eye opened all the way, and he began to growl softly.

“You sure you know what you’re doing, Esme?” said Nanny Ogg, reaching for a cushion to throw. “He’s very protective of his territory.”

You the kitten sat on the floor and washed her ears. Then, as Greebo got to his feet, she fixed him with an innocent little stare and took a flying leap onto his nose, landing on it with all her claws out.

“So is she,” said Granny Weatherwax as Greebo erupted from the chair and hurtled around the room before disappearing into the kitchen. There was a crash of saucepans followed by the groioioioing of a saucepan lid spinning into silence on the floor.

The kitten padded back into the room, hopped into the empty chair, and curled up.

“He brought in half a wolf last week,” said Nanny Ogg. “You haven’t been hexperimenting* on that poor kitten, have you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” said Granny. “She just knows her own mind, that’s all.” She turned to Tiffany. “I don’t reckon the Wintersmith will be worrying about you too much for a while,” she said. “The big winter weather will be on us soon. That’ll keep him busy. In the meantime, Mrs. Ogg will teach you . . . things she knows.”

And Tiffany thought: I wonder how embarrassing this is going to be.

Deep in the snow, in the middle of a windswept moorland, a small band of traveling librarians sat around their cooling stove and wondered what to burn next.

Tiffany had never been able to find out much about the librarians. They were a bit like the wandering priests and teachers who went even into the smallest, loneliest villages to deliver those things—prayers, medicine, facts—that people could do without for weeks at a time but sometimes needed a lot of all at once. The librarians would loan you a book for a penny, although they often would take food or good secondhand clothes. If you gave them a book, you got ten free loans.

Sometimes you’d see two or three of their wagons parked in some clearing and could smell the glues they boiled up to repair the oldest books. Some of the books they loaned were so old that the printing had been worn gray by the pressure of people’s eyeballs reading it.

The librarians were mysterious. It was said they could tell what book you needed just by looking at you, and they could take your voice away with a word.

But here they were searching the shelves for T. H. Mouseholder’s famous book Survival in the Snow.

Things were getting desperate. The oxen that pulled the wagon had broken their tethers and run off in the blizzard, the stove was nearly out, and worst of all, they were down to their last candles, which meant that soon they would not be able to read books.

“It says here in K. Pierpoint Poundsworth’s Among the Snow Weasels that the members of the ill-fated expedition to Whale Bay survived by making soup of their own toes,” said Deputy Librarian Grizzler.

“That’s interesting,” said Senior Librarian Swinsley, who was rummaging on the shelf below. “Is there a recipe?”

“No, but there may be something in Superflua Raven’s book Cooking in Dire Straits. That’s where we got yesterday’s recipe for Nourishing Boiled Socks Surprise—” There was a thunderous knocking at the door. It was a two-part door that allowed only the top half to be opened, so that a ledge on the bottom half could be a sort of small desk for stamping books. Snow came through the crack as the knocking continued.

“I hope that’s not the wolves again,” said Mr. Grizzler. “I got no sleep at all last night!”

“Do they knock? We could check in The Habits of Wolves by Captain W. E. Lightly,” said Senior Librarian Swinsley, “or perhaps you could just open the door? Quickly! The candles are going out!”

Grizzler opened the top half of the door. There was a tall figure on the steps, hard to see in the fitful, cloud-strained moonlight.

“Ah’m lookin’ for Romance,” it rumbled.

The Deputy Librarian thought for a moment, and then said, “Isn’t it a bit chilly out there?”

“Aren’t ye the people wi’ all dem books?” the figure demanded.

“Yes, indeed . . . oh, Romance! Yes, certainly!” said Mr. Swinsley, looking relieved. “In that case, I think you’ll want Miss Jenkins. Forward please, Miss Jenkins.”

“It looks like youse is freezin’ in there,” said the figure. “Dem’s icicles hanging from der ceilin’.”

“Yes. However, we have managed to keep them off the books,” said Mr. Swinsley. “Ah, Miss Jenkins. The, er, gentleman is looking for Romance. Your department, I think.”

“Yes, sir,” said Miss Jenkins. “What kind of romance were you looking for?”

“Oh, one wi’ a cover on, ye ken, and wi’ pages wi’ all wurdies on ’em,” said the figure.

Miss Jenkins, who was used to this sort of thing, disappeared into the gloom at the other end of the wagon.

“Dese scunners are total loonies!” said a new voice. It appeared to come from somewhere on the person of the dark book borrower, but much lower than the head.

“Pardon?” said Mr. Swinsley.

“Ach, nae problemo,” said the figure quickly. “Ah’m sufferin’ from a grumblin’ knee, ’tis an old trouble—”

“Why don’t they be burnin’ all dem books, eh?” the unseen knee grumbled.

“Sorry aboot this, ye know how knees can let a man doon in public, I’m a martyr to dis one,” said the stranger.

“I know how it is. My elbow acts up in wet weather,” said Mr. Swinsley. There was some sort of fight going on in the nether regions of the stranger, who was shaking like a puppet.

“That will be one penny,” Miss Jenkins said. “And I will need your name and address.”

The dark figure shuddered. “Oh, I—we ne’er give out oor name an’ address!” it said quickly. “It is against oor religion, ye ken. Er . . . I dinna wanta be a knee aboot this, but why is ye all here freezin’ tae death?”

“Our oxen wandered off, and alas, the snow’s too deep to walk through,” said Mr. Swinsley.

“Aye. But youse got a stove an’ all them dry ol’ books,” said the dark figure.

“Yes, we know,” said the librarian, looking puzzled.

There was the kind of wretched pause you get when two people aren’t going to understand each other’s point of view at all. Then:

“Tell ye what, me an’—ma knee—will go an’ fetch yer cows for ye, eh?” said the mysterious figure. “Got tae be worth a penny, eh? Big Yan, you’ll feel the rough side o’ my hand in a minit!”

The figure dropped out of sight. Snow flew up in the moonlight. For a moment it sounded as if a scuffle were going on, and then a sound like “Crivens!” disappearing into the distance.

The librarians were about to shut the door when they heard the terrified bellows of the oxen, getting louder very quickly.

Two curling waves of snow came across the glittering moors. The creatures rode them like surfers, yelling at the moon. The snow settled down a few feet away from the wagon. There was a blue-and-red blur in the air, and the romantic book was whisked away.

But what was really odd, the librarians agreed, was that when the oxen had come speeding toward them, they had appeared to be traveling backward.

It was hard to be embarrassed by Nanny Ogg, because her laugh drove embarrassment away. She wasn’t embarrassed about anything.

Today Tiffany, with extra pairs of socks on to avoid unfortunate floral incidents, went with her “around the houses,” as it was known to witches.

“You did this for Miss Treason?” asked Nanny as they stepped out. There were big fat clouds massing around the mountains; there would be a lot more snow tonight.

“Oh yes. And for Miss Level and Miss Pullunder.”

“Enjoyed it, did you?” said Nanny, wrapping her cloak around her.

“Sometimes. I mean, I know why we do it, but sometimes you get fed up with people being stupid. I quite like doing the medicine stuff.”

“Good with the herbs, are you?”

“No. I’m very good with the herbs.”

“Oh, there’s a bit of swank, eh?” said Nanny.

“If I didn’t know I was good with herbs, I’d be stupid, Mrs. Ogg.”

“That’s right. Good. It’s good to be good at something. Now, our next little favor is—”

—giving an old lady a bath, as much as was possible with a couple of tin basins and some washcloths. And that was witchcraft. Then they looked in on a woman who’d just had a baby, and that was witchcraft, and a man with a very nasty leg injury that Nanny Ogg said was doing very well, and that was witchcraft too, and then in an out-of-the-way group of huddled little cottages, they climbed the cramped wooden stairs to a tiny little bedroom where an old man shot at them with a crossbow.

“You old devil, ain’t you dead yet?” said Nanny. “You’re looking well! I swear, the man with the scythe must’ve forgotten where you live!”

“I’m a-waitin’ for him, Mrs. Ogg!” said the old man cheerfully. “If I’m gonna go, I’ll take ’im with me!”

“This is my girl Tiff. She’s learnin’ the witchin’,” said Nanny, raising her voice. “This is Mr. Hogparsley, Tiff . . . Tiff?” She snapped her fingers in front of Tiffany’s eyes.

“Huh?” said Tiffany. She was still staring in horror.

The twang of the bow as Nanny opened the door had been bad enough, but for a fraction of a second, she would have sworn that an arrow had gone right through Nanny Ogg and stuck in the door frame.

“Shame on you for firing at a young lady, Bill,” said Nanny severely, plumping up his pillows. “And Mrs. Dowser says you’ve been shootin’ at her when she comes up to see you,” she added, putting her basket down by the bed. “That’s no way to treat a respectable woman who brings you your meals, is it? For shame!”

“Sorry, Nanny,” muttered Mr. Hogparsley. “It’s just that she’s skinny as a rake and wears black. ’Tis an easy mistake to make in poor light.”

“Mr. Hogparsley here is lying in wait for Death, Tiff,” said Nanny. “Mistress Weatherwax helped you make the special traps and arrows, ain’t that right, Bill?”

“Traps?” whispered Tiffany. Nanny just nudged her and pointed down. The floorboards were covered in ferociously spiked mantraps.

They were all drawn in charcoal.

“I said isn’t that right, Bill?” Nanny repeated, raising her voice. “She helped you with the traps!”

“She did that!” said Mr. Hogparsley. “Hah! I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side o’ her!”

“Right, so no shootin’ arrows at anyone except Death, right? Otherwise Mistress Weatherwax won’t make you any more,” said Nanny, putting a bottle on the old wooden box that was Mr. Hogparsley’s bedside table. “Here’s some of your jollop, freshly mixed up. Where did she tell you to keep the pain?”

“It’s sitting up here on my shoulder, missus, being no trouble.”

Nanny touched the shoulder, and seemed to think for a moment. “It’s a brown-and-white squiggle? Sort of oblong?”

“That’s right, missus,” said Mr. Hogparsley, pulling at the cork on the bottle. “It wiggles away there and I laughs at it.” The cork popped out. Suddenly, the room smelled of apples.

“It’s gettin’ big,” said Nanny. “Mistress Weatherwax will be along tonight to take it away.”

“Right you are, missus,” said the old man, filling a mug to the brim.

“Try not to shoot her, all right? It only makes her mad.”

It was snowing again when they stepped out of the cottage, big feathery flakes that meant business.

“I reckon that’s it for today,” Nanny announced. “I’ve got things to see to over in Slice, but we’ll take the stick tomorrow.”

“That arrow he fired at us—” said Tiffany.

“Imaginary,” said Nanny Ogg, smiling.

“It looked real for a moment!”

Nanny Ogg chuckled. “It’s amazing what Esme Weatherwax can make people imagine!”

“Like traps for Death?”

“Oh, yes. Well, it gives the old boy an interest in life. He’s on his way to the Door. But at least Esme’s seen to it that there’s no pain.”

“Because it’s floating over his shoulder?” said Tiffany.

“Yep. She put it just outside his body for him, so it don’t hurt,” said Nanny, the snow crunching under her feet.

“I didn’t know you could do that!”

“I can do it for small stuff, toothaches and the like. Esme’s the champion for it, though. We’re none of us too proud to call her in. Y’know, she’s very good at people. Funny, really, ’cuz she doesn’t like ’em much.”

Tiffany glanced at the sky, and Nanny was the kind of inconvenient person who notices everything.

“Wondering if lover boy is goin’ to drop in?” she said with a big grin.

“Nanny! Really!”

“But you are, aren’t you?” said Nanny, who knew no shame. “O’ course, he’s always around, when you think about it. You’re walking through him, you feel him on your skin, you stamp him off your boots when you go indoors—”

“Just don’t talk like that, please?” said Tiffany.

“Besides, what’s time to an elemental?” Nanny chattered. “And I suppose snowflakes don’t just make themselves, especially when you’ve got to get the arms and legs right. . . .”

She’s looking at me out of the corner of her eye to see if I’m going red, Tiffany thought. I know it.

Then Nanny nudged her in the ribs and laughed one of her laughs that would make a rock blush.

“Good for you!” she said. “I’ve had a few boyfriends myself that I’d have loved to stamp off my boots!”

Tiffany was just getting ready for bed that night when she found a book under her pillow.

The title, in fiery red letters, was Passion’s Plaything by Marjory J. Boddice, and in smaller print were the words: Gods and Men said their love was not to be, but they would not listen!! A tortured tale of a tempestuous romance by the author of Sundered Hearts!!!

The cover showed, up close, a young woman with dark hair and clothes that were a bit on the skimpy side in Tiffany’s opinion, both hair and clothes blowing in the wind. She looked desperately determined, and also a bit chilly. A young man on a horse was watching her some distance away. It appeared that a thunderstorm was blowing up.

Strange. There was a library stamp inside, and Nanny didn’t use the library. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to read a bit before blowing the candle out.

Tiffany turned to page one. And then to page two. When she got to page nineteen she went and fetched the Unexpurgated Dictionary.

She had older sisters and she knew some of this, she told herself. But Marjory J. Boddice had got some things laughably wrong. Girls on the Chalk didn’t often run away from a young man who was rich enough to own his own horse— or not for long and not without giving him a chance to catch up. And Megs, the heroine of the book, clearly didn’t know a thing about farming. No young man would be interested in a woman who couldn’t dose a cow or carry a piglet. What kind of help would she be around the place? Standing around with lips like cherries wouldn’t get the cows milked or the sheep sheared!

And that was another thing. Did Marjory J. Boddice know anything about sheep? This was a sheep farm in the summertime, wasn’t it? So when did they shear the sheep? The second most important occasion in a sheep farm’s year and it wasn’t worth mentioning?

Of course, they might have a breed like Habbakuk Polls or Lowland Cobbleworths that didn’t need shearing, but these were rare and any sensible author would surely have mentioned it.

And the scene in chapter five, where Megs left the sheep to fend for themselves while she went gathering nuts with Roger . . . well, how stupid was that? They could have wandered anywhere, and they were really stupid to think they’d find nuts in June.

She read on a bit further, and thought: Oh. I see. Hmm. Hah. Not nuts at all, then. On the Chalk, that sort of thing was called “looking for cuckoo nests.”

She stopped there to go downstairs to fetch a fresh candle, got back into bed, let her feet warm up again, and went on reading.

Should Megs marry sulky dark-eyed William, who already owned two and a half cows, or should she be swayed by Roger, who called her “my proud beauty” but was clearly a bad man because he rode a black stallion and had a mustache?

Why did she think she had to marry either of them? Tiffany wondered. Anyway, she spent too much time leaning meaningfully against things and pouting. Wasn’t anyone doing any work? And if she always dressed like that, she’d catch a chill.

It was amazing what those men put up with. But it made you think.

She blew out the candle and sank gently under the eiderdown, which was as white as snow.

Snow covered the Chalk. It fell around the sheep, making them look a dirty yellow. It covered the stars but glowed by its own light. It stuck to the windows of the cottages, blotting out the orange candlelight. But it would never cover the castle. The castle stood on a mound a little way from the village, a tower of stone ruling all those thatched homes. They looked as if they had grown from the land, but the castle nailed it down. It said: I Own.

In his room, Roland wrote carefully. He ignored the hammering from outside.

Annagramma, Petulia, Miss Treason—Tiffany’s letters were full of faraway people with strange-sounding names. Sometimes he tried to imagine them, and wondered if she was making them up. The whole witchcraft business seemed . . . well, not as advertised. It seemed like—

“Do you hear this, you wicked boy?” Aunt Danuta sounded triumphant. “Now it’s barred from this side too! Hah! This is for your own good, you know. You will stay in there until you are ready to apologize!”

—like hard work, to be honest. Worthy, though, visiting the sick and everything, but very busy and not very magical. He’d heard of “dancing around without your drawers on” and tried his best not to imagine it, but in any case there didn’t seem to be anything like that. Even broomstick rides sounded—

“And we know about your secret passage now, oh yes! It’s being walled up! No more thumbing your nose at people who are doing their very best for you!”

—dull. He paused for a moment, staring blankly at the carefully stacked piles of loaves and sausages beside his bed. I ought to get some onions tonight, he thought. General Tacticus says they are unsurpassable for the proper operation of the digestive system if you can’t find fresh fruit.

What to write, what to write . . . yes! He’d tell her about the party. He’d only gone because his father, in one of his good moments, had asked him to. It was important to keep in with the neighbors but not with the relatives! It’d been quite nice to get out, and he’d been able to leave his horse at Mr. Gamely’s stable, where the aunts wouldn’t think of looking for it. Yes . . . she’d enjoy hearing about the party.

The aunts were shouting again, about locking the door to his father’s room. And they were blocking the secret passage. That meant that all he was left with was the loose stone that came out behind the tapestry in the next room, the wobbly flagstone that could let him drop down into the room below, and, of course, the chain outside the window that let him climb all the way down to the ground. And on his desk, on top of General Tacticus’s book, was a complete set of shiny new castle keys. He’d got Mr. Gamely to make them for him. The blacksmith was a thoughtful man who could see the sense in being friendly to the next Baron.

He could come and go as he liked, whatever they did. They could bully his father, they could shout all they pleased, but they would never own him.

You could learn a lot from books.

The Wintersmith was learning. It was a hard, slow task when you had to make your brain out of ice. But he had learned about snowmen. They were built by the smaller kinds of humans. That was interesting. Apart from the ones in pointy hats, the bigger humans didn’t seem to hear him. They knew invisible creatures didn’t speak to them out of the air.

The small ones, though, hadn’t found out what was impossible.

In the big city was a big snowman.

Actually, it would be more honest to call it a slushman. Technically it was snow, but by the time it had spiraled down through the big city’s fogs, smogs, and smokes, it was already a sort of yellowish gray, and then most of what ended up on the pavement was what had been thrown up from the gutter by cart wheels. It was, at best, a mostly snowman. But three grubby children were building it anyway, because building something that you could call a snowman was what you did. Even if it was yellow.

They’d done their best with what they could find and had given him two horse droppings for eyes and a dead rat for a nose.

At which point the snowman spoke to them, in their heads.

Small humans, why do you do that?

The boy who might have been the older boy looked at the girl who might have been the older girl. “I’ll tell you I heard that if you say you heard it too,” he said.

The girl was still young enough not to think “snowmen can’t talk” when one of them had just spoken to her, so she said to it: “You have to put them in to make you a snowman, mister.”

Does that make me human?

“No, ’cuz . . .” She hesitated.

“You ain’t got innards,” said the third and smallest child, who might have been the younger boy or the younger girl, but who was spherical with so many layers of clothing that it was quite impossible to tell. It did have a pink woolly hat with a bobble on it, but that didn’t mean anything. Someone did care about it, though, because they’d embroidered “R” and “L” on its mittens, “F” and “B” on the front and back of its coat, “T” on top of the bobble hat, and probably “U” on the underside of its rubber boots. That meant that while you couldn’t know what it was, you could be certain it was the right way up and which way it was facing.

A cart went by, throwing up another wave of slush.

Innards? said the secret voice of the snowman. Made of special dust, yes! But what dust?

“Iron,” said the possibly older boy promptly. “Enough iron to make a nail.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right, that’s how it goes,” said the possibly older girl. “We used to skip to it. Er . . . ‘Iron enough to make a nail . . . Water enough to drown a cow—’”

“A dog,” said the possibly older boy. “It’s ‘Water enough to drown a dog, Sulfur enough to stop the fleas.’ It’s ‘Poison enough to kill a cow.’”

What is this? the Wintersmith asked.

“It’s . . . like . . . an old song,” said the possibly older boy.

“More like a sort of poem. Everyone knows it,” said the possibly older girl.

“’S called ‘These Are the Things That Make a Man,’” said the child who was the right way up.

Tell me the rest of it, the Wintersmith demanded, and on the freezing pavement they did, as much as they knew.

When they’d finished, the possibly older boy said hopefully, “Is there any chance you can take us flying?”

No, said the Wintersmith. I have things to find! Things that make a man!

One afternoon, when the sky was growing cold, there was a frantic knocking on Nanny’s door. It turned out to be caused by Annagramma, who almost fell into the room. She looked terrible, and her teeth were chattering.

Nanny and Tiffany stood her by the fire, but she started talking before her teeth had warmed up.

“Skkkkulls!” she managed.

Oh dear, thought Tiffany.

“What about them?” she said as Nanny Ogg hurried in from the kitchen with a hot drink.

“Mmmmmiss Trrreason’s Skkkkulls!”

“Yes? What about them?”

Annagramma took a swig from the mug. “What did you do with them?” she gasped, cocoa dribbling down her chin.

“Buried them.”

“Oh, no! Why?”

“They were skulls. You can’t just leave skulls lying about!”

Annagramma looked around wildly. “Can you lend me a shovel, then?”

“Annagramma! You can’t dig up Miss Treason’s grave!”

“But I need some skulls!” Annagramma insisted. “The people there—well, it’s like the olden days! I whitewashed that place with my own hands! Have you any idea how long it takes to whitewash over black? They complained! They won’t have anything to do with crystal therapy, they just frown and say Miss Treason gave them sticky black medicine that tasted horrible but worked! And they keep on asking me to sort out stupid little problems, and I don’t have a clue what they’re about. And this morning there was this old man who’s dead and I’ve got to lay him out and sit up with him tonight. Well, I mean, that’s so . . . yuk. . . .”

Tiffany glanced at Nanny Ogg, who was sitting in her chair and puffing gently on her pipe. Her eyes were gleaming. When she saw Tiffany’s expression, she winked and said: “I’ll leave you girls to have a little chat, shall I?”

“Yes, please, Nanny. And please don’t listen at the door.”

“To a private conversation? The very idea!” said Nanny, and went into the kitchen.

“Will she listen?” whispered Annagramma. “I’ll just die if Mistress Weatherwax finds out.”

Tiffany sighed. Did Annagramma know anything? “Of course she’ll listen,” she said. “She’s a witch.”

“But she said she wouldn’t!”

“She’ll listen, but she’ll pretend she hasn’t and she won’t tell anyone,” said Tiffany. “It’s her cottage, after all.”

Annagramma looked desperate. “And on Tuesday I’ve probably got to go and deliver a baby out in some valley somewhere! An old woman came and gabbled at me about it!”

“That’ll be Mrs. Owslick,” said Tiffany. “I did leave some notes, you know. Didn’t you read them?”

“I think perhaps Mrs. Earwig tidied them away,” Annagramma said.

“You should have looked at them! It took me an hour to write them all down!” said Tiffany reproachfully. “Three pieces of paper! Look, calm down, will you? Didn’t you learn anything about midwifery?”

“Mrs. Earwig said giving birth is a natural action and nature should be allowed to take its course,” said Annagramma, and Tiffany was sure she heard a snort from behind the kitchen door. “I know a soothing chant, though.”

“Well, I expect that will be a help,” said Tiffany weakly.

“Mrs. Earwig said the village women know what to do,” said Annagramma hopefully. “She says to trust in their peasant wisdom.”

“Well, Mrs. Obble was the old woman who called, and she has just got simple peasant ignorance,” said Tiffany. “She puts leaf mold on wounds if you don’t watch her. Look, just because a woman’s got no teeth doesn’t mean she’s wise. It might just mean she’s been stupid for a very long time. Don’t let her anywhere near Mrs. Owslick until after the baby. It’s not going to be an easy birth as it is.”

“Well, I know plenty of spells that will help—”

“No! No magic! Only to take away pain! Surely you know that?”

“Yes, but Mrs. Earwig says—”

“Why don’t you go and ask Mrs. Earwig to help you, then?”

Annagramma stared at Tiffany. That sentence had come out a bit louder than intended. And then Annagramma’s face slid into what she probably thought was a friendly expression. It made her look slightly mad.

“Hey, I’ve got a great idea!” she said, as bright as a crystal that was about to shatter. “Why don’t you come back to the cottage and work for me?”

“No. I’ve got other work to do.”

“But you’re so good at the messy stuff, Tiffany,” said Annagramma in a syrupy voice. “It seems to come naturally to you.”

“I started at the lambing when I was small, that’s why. Small hands can get inside and untangle things.”

And now Annagramma had that hunted look she got when she was dealing with anything she didn’t immediately understand.

“Inside the sheep? You mean up its . . .”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Untangle things?”

“Sometimes the lambs try to get born backward,” said Tiffany.

“Backward,” muttered Annagramma weakly.

“And it can be worse if there’s twins.”

“Twins . . .” Then Annagramma said, as if spotting the flaw: “But look, I’ve seen lots of pictures of shepherds and sheep and there’s never anything like that. I thought it was all just . . . standing around and watching the sheep eat grass.”

There were times when you could feel that the world would be a better place if Annagramma got the occasional slap around the ear. The silly unthinking insults, her huge lack of interest in anyone other than herself, the way she treated everyone as if they were slightly deaf and a bit stupid . . . it could make your blood boil. But you put up with it because every once in a while you saw through it all. Inside there was this worried, frantic little face watching the world like a bunny watching a fox, and screaming at it in the hope that it would go away and not hurt her. And a meeting of witches, who were supposed to be clever, had handed her this steading that would be a hard job for anyone.

It didn’t make sense.

No, it didn’t make sense.

“It only happens when there’s a difficult lambing,” said Tiffany while her mind raced. “And that means it’s out in the dark and the cold and the rain. Artists never seem to be around then. It’s amazing.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” said Annagramma. “Like I’m not here!”

Tiffany blinked. All right, she thought, how am I supposed to deal with this?

“Look, I’ll come and help you with the laying out,” she said, as calmly as she could manage. “And I expect I can help with Mrs. Owslick. Or ask Petulia. She’s good. But you’ll have to do the watching by yourself.”

“Sitting up all night with a dead person?” said Annagramma, and shivered.

“You can take a book to read,” said Tiffany.

“I suppose I could draw a circle of protection around the chair . . .” Annagramma muttered.

“No,” said Tiffany. “No magic. Mrs. Earwig must have told you this?”

“But a circle of protection—”

“It draws attention. Something might turn up to see why it’s there. Don’t worry, it’s just to make the old people happy.”

“Er . . . when you say that something might turn up . . .” Annagramma began.

Tiffany sighed. “All right, I’ll sit up with you, just this once,” she said. Annagramma beamed.

“And as for skulls,” said Tiffany, “just wait a moment.” She went upstairs and got the Boffo catalogue, which she’d hidden in her old suitcase. She came back with it carefully rolled up and handed it over. “Don’t look at it now,” she said. “Wait until you’re alone. You might find it gives you ideas. Okay? I’ll come and meet you around seven tonight.”

When Annagramma had gone, Tiffany sat and counted under her breath. When she’d got to five, Nanny Ogg came and vigorously dusted a few ornaments before saying: “Oh, has your little friend gone?”

“Do you think I’m being silly?” said Tiffany.

Nanny stopped pretending to do housework. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, not havin’ listened,” she said, “but if I had been listenin’, I’d think you won’t get any thanks, that’s what I’d think.”

“Granny shouldn’t have meddled,” said Tiffany.

“Shouldn’t have, eh?” said Nanny, her face blank.

“I’m not stupid, Nanny,” said Tiffany. “I’ve worked it out.”

“Worked it out, have you? There’s a clever girl,” said Nanny Ogg, sitting down in her chair. “And what is it you’ve worked out, then?”

This was going to get difficult. Nanny was usually cheerful all the time. When she went solemn, like she was now, it could make you nervous. But Tiffany pressed on.

“I couldn’t take on a cottage,” she said. “Oh, I can do most of the everyday stuff, but you need to be older to run a steading. There’s things people won’t tell you if you’re thirteen, hat or not. But Granny put it about that she was suggesting me, and so everyone saw it as a contest between me and Annagramma, right? And they chose her because she’s older and sounds really competent. And now it’s all falling apart. It’s not her fault she was taught magic instead of witchcraft. Granny just wants her to fail so that everyone will know that Mrs. Earwig is a bad teacher. And I don’t think that’s good.”

“I wouldn’t be too quick to decide what it is Esme Weatherwax wants, if I was you,” said Nanny Ogg. “I won’t say a word, mind you. You go off and help your friend if you want, but you’ve still got to work for me, okay? That’s only fair. How’s the feet?”

“They feel fine, Nanny. Thank you for asking.”

More than a hundred miles away, Mr. Fusel Johnson knew nothing about Tiffany, Nanny Ogg, or indeed anything very much except for clocks and watches, which he made for a living. He also knew how to lime-wash a kitchen, which was an easy and cheap way to get a nice white look even if the stuff was a bit runny. And therefore he had no idea why several handfuls of the white powder fountained up out of the mixing bowl before he could add the water, hung in the air for a moment like a ghost, and vanished up the chimney. In the end he put it down to too many trolls moving into the area. This wasn’t very logical, but such beliefs generally aren’t.

And the Wintersmith thought: Lime enough to make a man!

That night Tiffany sat up with Annagramma and old Mr. Tissot, except that he was lying down because he was dead. Tiffany had never liked watching over the dead. It wasn’t exactly something you could like. It was always a relief when the sky turned gray and the birds started to sing.

Sometimes, in the night, Mr. Tissot made little noises. Except, of course, it wasn’t Mr. Tissot, who’d met Death hours ago. It was just the body he’d left behind, and the sounds it made were really no different from the noises made by an old house as it cooled down.

It was important to remember these things around two o’clock in the morning. Vitally important when the candle flickered.

Annagramma snored. No one with a nose that small should be able to make a snore that loud. It was like ripping planks. Whatever evil spirits might be around on this night, that sound would probably scare them away.

It wasn’t the gnh gnh gnh part that was so bad, and Tiffany could live with the bloooooorrrrt! It was the gap between them, after the gnh gnh gnh had wound up but before the long letdown of the bloooooorrrrt! that really got on her nerves. It was never the same length twice. Sometimes there was gnh gnh gnh bloooooorrrrt!, one right after the other, and then there might be such a huge gap after gnh gnh gnh that Tiffany found herself holding her breath while she waited for the bloooooorrrrt! It wouldn’t have been so bad if Annagramma had stuck to one length of pause. Sometimes she stopped altogether, and there was blessed silence until a festival of bloorts began, usually with a faint mni mni lip-smacking sound as Annagramma shifted position in her chair.

Where are you, Flower Lady? What are you? You should be sleeping!

The voice was so faint that Tiffany might not have heard it at all if she hadn’t been all tensed up waiting for the next gnh gnh gnh. And here it came—

Gnh gnh gnh!

Let me show you my world, Flower Lady. Let me show you all the colors of ice!

BLOOOOOORRRRT!

About three quarters of Tiffany thought: Oh, no! Will he find me if I reply? No. If he could find me, he’d be here. My hand isn’t itching.

The other quarter thought: A god or godlike being is talking to me and I could really do without the snoring, Annagramma, thank you so much.

Gnh gnh gnh!

“I said I was sorry,” she whispered into the dancing candlelight. “I saw the iceberg. It was very . . . er . . . nice of you.”

I have made many more.

BLOOOOOORRRRT!

Many more icebergs, thought Tiffany. Great big freezing, floating mountains that look like me, dragging fog banks and snowstorms behind them. I wonder how many ships will run into them.

“You shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble,” she whispered.

Now I am growing stronger! I am listening and learning! I am understanding humans!

Outside the cottage window a thrush began to sing. Tiffany blew out the candle, and gray light crept into the room.

Listening and learning . . . how could a blizzard understand things?

Tiffany, Flower Lady! I am making myself a man!

There was a complicated grunting as Annagramma’s gnh gnh gnh and bloooooorrrrt! ran into each other and she woke up.

“Ah,” she said, stretching her arms and yawning. She looked around. “Well, that seemed to go well.”

Tiffany stared at the wall. What did he mean, making himself a man? Surely he—

“You didn’t fall asleep, did you, Tiffany?” said Annagramma in what she probably thought was a playful voice. “Not even for one tiny little second?”

“What?” said Tiffany, glaring at the wall. “Oh . . . no. I didn’t!”

People were moving around downstairs. After a little while there was a creaking on the stairs and the low door was pushed open. A middle-aged man, looking sheepishly at the floor, uttered, “Mam says would you ladies like some breakfast?”

“Oh, no, we couldn’t possibly take what little you have—” Annagramma began.

“Yes, please, we will be grateful,” said Tiffany, louder and quicker. The man nodded, and shut the door.

“Oh, how could you say that?” said Annagramma as his footsteps creaked down. “These are poor people! I thought you would—”

“Shut up, will you?” snapped Tiffany. “Just shut up and wake up! These are real people! They’re not some kind of, of, of idea! We will go down there and we will eat breakfast and we’ll say how good it is and then we will thank them and they will thank us and we will go! And that will mean everyone has done the right thing by custom, and that will be what’s important to them. Besides, they don’t think they’re poor, because everyone around here is poor! But they’re not so poor they can’t afford to do the right things! That would be poor!”

Annagramma was staring at her with her mouth open.

“Be careful what you say next,” said Tiffany, breathing heavily. “In fact, don’t say anything.”

Breakfast was ham and eggs. It was eaten in polite silence. After that, in the same silence except that it was outdoors, they flew back to what people would probably always think of as Miss Treason’s cottage.

There was a small boy loitering outside. As soon as they landed, he blurted out, “Mrs. Obble says the baby’s on the way an’ she said you’d give me a penny for goin’.”

“You have got a bag, haven’t you?” said Tiffany, turning to Annagramma.

“Yes, er, lots.”

“I mean a call-out bag. You know, you keep it by the door with everything in it that you’ll need if . . .”

Tiffany saw the terrified look on the girl’s face. “Okay, so you haven’t got a bag. We’ll just have to do the best we can. Give him a penny and let’s go.”

“Can we get anyone to help if it goes wrong?” Annagramma asked as they left the ground.

“We are the help,” said Tiffany simply. “And since this is your steading, I’m giving you the really tough job—”

—which was keeping Mrs. Obble occupied. Mrs. Obble wasn’t a witch, although most people thought she was. She looked like one—that is, she looked like someone who’d bought everything in the Boffo catalogue on the day of the Special Offer on Hairy Warts—and she was mildly crazy and should not have been allowed within a mile of any mother who was going to have her first baby, since she would very conscientiously tell them (or cackle at them, anyway) about all the things that could go wrong in a way that made it sound as if they would all go wrong. She wasn’t a bad nurse, though, once you stopped her from putting a leaf-mold poultice on everything.

Things went noisily and with a certain amount of fuss, but nothing like Mrs. Obble had predicted, and the result was a baby boy, who was not a bouncing baby but only because Tiffany caught him; Annagramma didn’t know how to hold babies.

She did look good in a pointy hat, though, and since she was clearly older than Tiffany and did hardly any of the work, the other women assumed she was in charge.

Tiffany left her holding the baby (the right way up, this time) and looking proud, and began the long flight back through the woods to Tir Nani Ogg. It was a crisp evening, but there was a bit of wind that blew stinging snow crystals off the trees. It was an exhausting journey and very, very cold. He can’t know where I am, she repeated to herself as she flew back in the dusk. And he’s not very clever. Winter has to end sometime, right?

Er . . . how? said her Second Thoughts. Miss Tick said you just have to be there, but surely you have to do something else?

I suppose I’ll have to walk around with my shoes off, Tiffany thought.

Everywhere? her Second Thoughts wondered, as she swerved between the trees.

It’s probably like being a queen, her Third Thoughts said. She just has to sit in a palace and maybe do a bit of driving around in a big coach and waving, and all over a huge kingdom monarching is going on.

But as she avoided more trees, she also tried to avoid the little scurrying thought that was trying to creep into her mind: Sooner or later, one way or the other, he will find you . . . and how can he make himself a man?

Assistant Postmaster Groat did not believe in doctors. They made you ill, he thought. So he put sulfur in his socks every morning and he was proud to say that he had never had a day’s illness in his life. This may have been because not many people cared to come very close to him, because of the smell. Something did, though. A gale roared into his post office when he was opening the door one morning and blew his socks clean off.*

And no one heard the Wintersmith say: “Sulfur enough to make a man!”

Nanny Ogg was sitting by the fire when Tiffany came in, stamping snow off her boots.

“You look frozen all through,” Nanny said. “You need a glass of hot milk with a drop of brandy in it, that’s what you need.”

“Ooh, yyess . . .” Tiffany managed through chattering teeth.

“Get me one too, then, will you?” said Nanny. “Only joking. You get warmed up; I’ll see to the drink.”

Tiffany’s feet felt like blocks of ice. She knelt by the fire and stretched out her hand to the stockpot on its big black hook. It bubbled all the time.

Get your mind right, and balance. Reach out and cup your hands around it, and concentrate, concentrate, on your freezing boots.

After a while her toes felt warm and then—

“Ow!” Tiffany pulled her hands away and sucked at her fingers.

“Didn’t have your mind right,” said Nanny Ogg from the doorway.

“Well, you know, that’s just a bit difficult when you’ve had a long day and you didn’t sleep much and the Wintersmith is looking for you,” snapped Tiffany.

“The fire doesn’t care,” said Nanny, shrugging. “Hot milk coming up.”

Things were a little better when Tiffany had warmed up. She wondered how much brandy Nanny had added to the milk. Nanny had done one for herself, with probably some milk added to the brandy.

“Isn’t this nice and cozy,” said Nanny after a while.

“Is this going to be the talk about sex?” said Tiffany.

“Did anyone say there was going to be one?” said Nanny innocently.

“I kind of got the feeling,” said Tiffany. “And I know where babies come from, Mrs. Ogg.”

“I should hope so.”

“I know how they get there, too. I live on a farm and I’ve got a lot of older sisters.”

“Ah, right,” said Nanny. “Well, I see you’re pretty well prepared for life, then. Not much left for me to tell you, I expect. And I’ve never had a god pay any attention to me, as far as I can recall. Flattered, are you?”

“No!” Tiffany looked into Nanny’s smile. “Well, a bit,” she admitted.

“And frightened of him?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the poor thing hasn’t quite got it right yet. He started off so well, with the ice roses and everything, and then he wanted to show you his muscles. Typical. But you shouldn’t be frightened of him. He should be frightened of you.”

“Why? Because I’m pretending to be the flower woman?”

“Because you’re a girl! It’s a poor lookout if a bright girl can’t wind a boy around her little finger. He’s smitten with you. You could make his life a misery with a word. Why, when I was a girl, a young man nearly threw himself off the Lancre Bridge because I spurned his advances!”

“He did? What happened?”

“I unspurned ’em. Well, he looked so pretty standing there, and I thought, that’s a good-looking bum on him if ever I saw one.” Nanny sat back. “And think about poor ol’ Greebo. He’ll fight anything. But Esme’s little white kitten leaped straight at him, and now the poor dear won’t come into this room without peering around the door to check that she’s not here. You should see his poor little face when he does, too. It’s all wrinkled up. O’ course, he could tear her into bits with one claw, but he can’t now ’cuz she’s fixed his head.”

“You’re not saying I should try to tear the Wintersmith’s face off, are you?”

“No, no, you don’t have to be as blunt as that. Give him a little hope. Be kind but firm—”

“He wants to marry me!”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“That means he wants to stay friendly. Don’t say no, don’t say yes. Act like a queen. He’s got to learn to show you some respect. What are you doing?”

“Writing this down,” said Tiffany, scribbling in her diary.

“You don’t need to write it down, love,” said Nanny. “It’s written down in you somewhere. On a page you haven’t read yet, I reckon. Which reminds me, these came when you were out.” Nanny fished down among the seat cushions and pulled out a couple of envelopes. “My boy Shawn is the postman, so he knew you’d moved.”

Tiffany nearly snatched them out of her hand. Two letters! “Like him, do you? Your young man in the castle?” said Nanny.

“He’s a friend who writes to me,” said Tiffany haughtily.

“That’s right, that’s just the look and voice you need for dealing with the Wintersmith!” said Nanny, looking delighted. “Who does he think he is, daring to talk to you? That’s the way!”

“I shall read them in my room,” said Tiffany.

Nanny nodded. “One of the girls did us a lovely casserole,” she said (famously, Nanny never remembered the names of her daughters-in-law). “Yours is in the oven. I’m off to the pub. Early start tomorrow!”

Alone in her room, Tiffany read the first letter.

To the unaided eye, not much happened on the Chalk. It had avoided History. It was a place of small things. Tiffany enjoyed reading about them.

The second letter seemed to be much the same as the first one—until the bit about the ball. He’d gone to a ball! It was at the house of Lord Diver, who was a neighbor! He’d danced with his daughter, who was called Iodine because Lord Diver thought that was a nice name for a girl! They’d had three dances!! And ice cream!! Iodine had shown him her watercolors!!!

How could he sit there and write such things?!!!

Tiffany’s eyes moved on, over the everyday news like the bad weather and what had happened to old Aggie’s leg, but the words didn’t enter her head because it was on fire.

Who did he think he was, dancing with another girl?

You danced with the Wintersmith, her Third Thoughts said.

All right, but what about the watercolors?

The Wintersmith showed you the snowflakes, said her Third Thoughts.

But I was just being polite!

Perhaps he was just being polite, too.

All right, but I know those aunts, Tiffany thought furiously. They’ve never liked me, because I’m only a farm girl! And Lord Diver’s very rich and his daughter is his only child! They’re scheming!

How could he sit there and write as if eating ice cream with another girl was a perfectly normal thing to do! That was as bad as—well, something pretty bad, at least!

As for looking at her watercolors . . .

He’s just a boy you happen to write to, said her Third Thoughts.

Yes, well . . .

Yes, well . . . what? her Third Thoughts persisted. They were getting on Tiffany’s nerves. Your own brains ought to have the decency to be on your side!

Just “Yes, well . . .” okay? she thought angrily.

You’re not being very sensible about this.

Oh, really? Well, I’ve been sensible all day! I’ve been sensible for years! I think I’m owed five minutes of being really unreasonably angry, don’t you?

There’s some casserole downstairs, and you haven’t eaten since breakfast, said her Third Thoughts. You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten something.

How can I eat stew when people are looking at watercolors? How dare he look at watercolors!

But her Third Thoughts were right—not that this made things any better. If you’re going to be angry and miserable, you might as well be so on a full stomach. She went downstairs and found the casserole in the oven. It smelled good. Nothing but the best for dear ol’ Mum.

She opened the cutlery drawer for a spoon. The drawer stuck. She rattled it, pulled at it, and swore a few times, but it stayed stuck.

“Oh, yes, go ahead,” said a voice behind her. “See how much help that is. Don’t be sensible and stick your hand under the top and carefully free up the stuck item. Oh no. Rattle and curse, that’s the way!”

Tiffany turned.

There was a skinny, tired-looking woman standing by the kitchen table. She seemed to be wearing a sheet draped around her and was smoking a cigarette. Tiffany had never seen a woman smoke a cigarette before, but especially never a cigarette that burned with a fat red flame and gave off sparks.

“Who are you, and what are you doing in Mrs. Ogg’s kitchen?” Tiffany said sharply.

This time it was the woman who looked surprised.

“You can hear me?” she said. “And see me?”

“Yes!” Tiffany snarled. “And this is a food preparation area, you know!”

“You’re not supposed to be able to see me!”

“Well, I’m looking at you!”

“Hold on a minute,” said the woman, frowning at Tiffany. “You’re not just a human, are you . . . ?” She squinted oddly for a moment and then said, “Oh, you’re her. Am I right? The new Summer?”

“Never mind me, who are you?” said Tiffany. “And it was only one dance!”

“Anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers,” said the woman. “Pleased to meet you.” She took another puff at the flaming cigarette, and there were more sparks. Some of them dropped on the floor but didn’t seem to do any damage.

“There’s a goddess just for that?” said Tiffany.

“Well, I find lost corkscrews and things that roll under furniture,” said Anoia offhandedly. “Sometimes things that get lost under sofa cushions, too. They want me to do stuck zippers, and I’m thinking about that. But mostly I manifest whensoever people rattle stuck drawers and call upon the gods.” She puffed on her cigarette. “Got any tea?”

“But I didn’t call on anyone!”

“You did,” said Anoia, blowing more sparks. “You cussed. Sooner or later, every curse is a prayer.” She waved the hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette and something in the drawer went pling. “It’ll be all right now. It was the egg slicer. Everyone has one, and no one knows why. Did anyone in the world ever knowingly go out one day and buy an egg slicer? I don’t think so.”

Tiffany tried the drawer. It slid out easily.

“About that tea?” said Anoia, sitting down.

Tiffany put the kettle on. “You know about me?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” said Anoia. “It’s been quite some time since a god fell in love with a mortal. Everyone wants to see how it turns out.”

“Fell in love?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And you mean the gods are watching?”

“Well, of course,” said Anoia. “Most of the big ones don’t do anything else these days! But I’m supposed to do zippers, oh yes, and my hands get very stiff in this weather!”

Tiffany glanced at the ceiling, which was now full of smoke.

“They’re watching all the time?” she said, aghast.

“I heard you’re getting more interest than the war in Klatchistan, and that was pretty popular,” said Anoia, holding out her red hands. “Look, chilblains. Not that they care, of course.”

“Even when I’m having a . . . wash?” said Tiffany.

The goddess laughed nastily. “Yes. And they can see in the dark, too. Best not to think about it.”

Tiffany looked up at the ceiling again. She had been hoping for a bath tonight.

“I’ll try not to,” she said darkly, and added: “Is it . . . hard, being a goddess?”

“It has its good days,” said Anoia. She stood with her cigarette arm cupped at the elbow by her other hand, holding the flaming, sparking thing close to her face. Now she took a sharp pull, raised her head, and blew a cloud of smoke out to join the smog on the ceiling. Sparks fell out of it like rain. “I haven’t been doing drawers long. I used to be a volcano goddess.”

“Really?” said Tiffany. “I’d never have guessed.”

“Oh, yes. It was good work, apart from the screaming,” said Anoia, and then added in a bitter tone of voice: “Ha! And the god of storms was always raining on my lava. That’s men for you, dear. They rain on your lava.”

“And look at watercolors,” said Tiffany.

Anoia’s eyes narrowed. “Someone else’s watercolors?”

“Yes!”

“Men! They’re all the same,” said Anoia. “Take my advice, dear, and show Mr. Wintersmith the door. He’s only an elemental, after all.”

Tiffany glanced at the door.

“Give him the boot, dear, send him packing and change the locks. Let’s have summer all year round like the hot countries do. Grapes all over the place, eh? Coconuts on every tree! Hah, when I was in the volcano game, I couldn’t move for mangoes. Kiss good-bye to snow and fog and slush. Have you got the thingy yet?”

“The thingy?” said Tiffany, looking worried.

“It’ll turn up, I daresay,” said Anoia. “I hear it can be a bit tricky to— Oops, I hear rattling, must fly, don’t worry, I won’t tell him where you are—”

She vanished. So did the smoke.

Not knowing what else to do, Tiffany ladled out a plate of hearty meat and vegetables and ate it. So . . . she could see gods now? And they knew about her? And everyone wanted to give her advice.

It was not a good idea to come to the attention of those in high places, her father had said.

But it was impressive. In love with her, eh? And telling everyone? But he was really an elemental, not a proper god at all. All he knew was how to move wind and water around!

Even so . . . huh. Some people have elementals running after them! Oh yes! How about that? If people were stupid enough to dance around with girls who painted watercolors to lead honest men to their Doom, well, she could be haughty to people who were almost gods. She ought to mention that in a letter, except that of course she wasn’t going to be writing to him now. Hah!

And a few miles away Old Mother Blackcap, who made her own soap out of animal fat and potash made, indeed, from plant ashes, felt a bar of soap snatched from her hand just as she was about to boil some sheets. The tub of water froze solid, too.

Being a witch, she immediately said: “There’s a strange thief about!”

And the Wintersmith said: “Potash enough to make a man!”

CHAPTER 8

The Horn of Plenty

That night, after Nanny Ogg had gone to bed, Tiffany did have the bath she’d been looking forward to. This was not something to be taken lightly. First, the tin bath had to be fetched from its hook on the back of the privy, which was at the bottom of the garden, and dragged through the dark, freezing night to a place of honor in front of the fire. Then kettles had to be heated over the fire and on the black kitchen stove, and getting even six inches of warm water was an effort. Afterward, the water all had to be scooped out and into the sink and the bath moved into a corner, ready to be taken outside in the morning. When you had to do all that, you might as well scrub every inch.

Tiffany did one extra thing: She wrote PRIVATE!! on a piece of cardboard and wedged it in the hanging lamp in the center of the room so that it could be read only from above. She wasn’t sure it would put off any inquisitive gods, but she felt better for doing it.

That night she slept without dreaming. In the morning snow had put a fresh coating on the drifts, and a couple of Nanny Ogg’s grandchildren were building her a snowman on the lawn. They came in after a while and demanded a carrot for the nose and two lumps of coal for the eyes.

Nanny took her to the isolated village of Slice, where people were always glad and surprised to see someone they weren’t related to. Nanny Ogg ambled from cottage to cottage along the paths cut in the snow, drinking enough cups of tea to float an elephant and doing witchcraft in small ways. Mostly it seemed to just consist of gossip, but once you got the hang of it, you could hear the magic happening. Nanny Ogg changed the way people thought, even if it was only for a few minutes. She left people thinking they were slightly better people. They weren’t, but as Nanny said, it gave them something to live up to.

Then there was another night without dreams, but Tiffany woke up with a snap at half past five, feeling . . . odd.

She rubbed the frost off the window and saw the snowman by moonlight.

Why do we do it? she wondered. As soon as there’s snow, we build snowmen. We do worship the Wintersmith, in a way. We make the snow human. . . . We give him coal eyes and a carrot nose to bring him alive. Oh, and I see the children gave him a scarf. That’s what a snowman needs, a scarf to keep him warm. . . .

She went down into the silent kitchen, and for want of anything else to do she scrubbed the table. Doing something with her hands helped her think.

Something had changed, and it was her. She’d been worrying about what he would do and what he would think, as if she were just a leaf being blown about by the wind. She dreaded hearing his voice in her head, where he had no right to be.

Well, not now. Not anymore.

He ought to be worried about her.

Yes, she’d made a mistake. Yes, it was her fault. But she wasn’t going to be bullied. You couldn’t let boys go around raining on your lava and ogling other people’s watercolors.

Find the story, Granny Weatherwax always said. She believed that the world was full of story shapes. If you let them, they controlled you. But if you studied them, if you found out about them . . . you could use them, you could change them. . . .

Miss Treason had known all about stories, yes? She’d spun them like a spiderweb, to give herself power. And they worked because people wanted to believe them. And Nanny Ogg told a story, too. Fat, jolly Nanny Ogg, who liked a drink (and another drink, thank you kindly) and was everyone’s favorite grandmother . . . but those twinkling little eyes could bore into your head and read all your secrets.

Even Granny Aching had a story. She’d lived in the old shepherding hut, high on the hills, listening to the wind blowing over the turf. She was mysterious, alone—and the stories floated up and gathered around her, all those stories about her finding lost lambs even though she was dead, all those stories about her, still, watching over people. . . .

People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense.

Well, her story wasn’t going to be the story of a little girl who got pushed around. There was no sense in that.

Except . . . he’s not actually bad. The gods in the Mythology, they seemed to get the hang of being human—a bit too human, sometimes— but how could a snowstorm or a gale ever find out? He was dangerous and scary—but you couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. . . .

Someone hammered on Nanny Ogg’s back door. It turned out to be a tall figure in black.

“Wrong house,” said Tiffany. “No one here is even a bit sick.”

A hand raised the black hood, and from its depths a voice hissed: “It’s me, Annagramma! Is she in?”

“Mrs. Ogg’s not up yet,” said Tiffany.

“Good. Can I come in?”

At the kitchen table, over a cup of warming tea, Annagramma revealed all. Life in the woods was not going well.

“Two men came to see me about some stupid cow they both think they own!” she said.

“That’ll be Joe Broomsocket and Shifty Adams. I left you a note about them, too,” said Tiffany. “Whenever one or other of them gets drunk, they argue about that cow.”

“What am I supposed to do about it?”

“Nod and smile. Wait until the cow dies, Miss Treason always said. Or one of the men,” said Tiffany. “It’s the only way.”

“And a woman came to see me with a sick pig!”

“What did you do about it?”

“I told her I don’t do pigs! But she burst into tears, so I tried Bangle’s Universal Nostrum on it.”

“You used that on a pig?” said Tiffany, shocked.

“Well, the pig witch uses magic, so I don’t see why—” Annagramma began defensively.

“She knows what works!” said Tiffany.

“It was perfectly all right when I got it down out of the tree! She didn’t have to make all that fuss! I’m sure the bristles will grow back! In time!”

“It wasn’t a spotted pig, was it? And a woman with a squint?” Tiffany asked.

“Yes! I think so! Does it matter?”

“Mrs. Stumper is very attached to that pig,” said Tiffany reproachfully. “She brings him up to the cottage about once a week. It’s usually just an upset stomach. She feeds him too much.”

“Really? Then I won’t open the door to her next time,” said Annagramma firmly.

“No, let her in. Really, it’s all because she’s lonely and wants to chat.”

“Well, I should think I’ve got better things to do with my time than listen to an old lady who just wants to talk,” said Annagramma indignantly.

Tiffany looked at her. Where did you start, apart from banging the girl’s head on the table until the brain started working?

“Listen very carefully,” she said. “I mean to her, not just to me. You’ve got no better use of your time than to listen to old ladies who want to talk. Everyone tells things to witches. So listen to everyone and don’t say much and think about what they say and how they say it and watch their eyes. . . . It becomes like a big jigsaw puzzle, but you’re the only one who can see all the pieces. You’ll know what they want you to know, and what they don’t want you to know, and even what they think no one knows. That’s why we go around the houses. That’s why you will go around the houses, until you’re part of their lives.”

“All this just to get some power over a crowd of farmers and peasants?”

Tiffany spun around and kicked a chair so hard that it broke a leg. Annagramma backed away quickly.

“What did you do that for?”

“You’re clever—you guess!”

“Oh, I forgot . . . your father is a shepherd . . .”

“Good! You remembered!” Tiffany hesitated. Certainty was pouring into her brain, courtesy of her Third Thoughts. Suddenly she knew Annagramma.

“And your father?” she asked.

“What?” Annagramma instinctively drew herself up. “Oh, he owns several farms—”

“Liar!”

“Well, perhaps I should say he is a farmer—” the girl began, nervousness beginning to show.

“Liar!”

Annagramma backed away. “How dare you talk to me like—”

“How dare you not tell me the truth!”

In the pause that opened, Tiffany heard everything—the faint crackle of wood in the stove, the sound of mice in the cellar, her own breathing roaring like the sea in a cave. . . .

“He works for a farmer, all right?” said Annagramma quickly, and then looked shocked at her own words. “We don’t have any land, we don’t even own the cottage. There’s the truth, if you want it. Happy now?”

“No. But thank you,” said Tiffany.

“Are you going to tell the others?”

“No. It doesn’t matter. But Granny Weatherwax wants you to make a mess of all this, do you understand? She’s got nothing against you . . .” Tiffany hesitated, then went on, “I mean, nothing more than she has against everyone. She just wants people to see that Mrs. Earwig’s style of witchcraft doesn’t work. This is just like her! She’s not said a word against you, she’s just let you have exactly what you wanted. It’s like a story. Everyone knows that if you get exactly what you wish for, it all goes bad. And you wished for a cottage. And you’re going to mess it up.”

“I just need another day or two to get the hang—”

“Why? You’re a witch with a cottage. You’re supposed to be able to deal with it! Why take it on if you couldn’t do it?”

You’re supposed to be able to deal with it, sheep girl! Why take it on if you couldn’t do it?

“So you’re not going to help me?” Annagramma glared at Tiffany, and then her expression, most unusually, softened a bit and she said, “Are you all right?”

Tiffany blinked. It’s horrible to have your own voice echo back at you from the other side of your mind.

“Look, I haven’t got time,” she said weakly. “Maybe the others can . . . help out?”

“I don’t want them to know!” Panic cut curves on Annagramma’s face.

She can do magic, Tiffany thought. She’s just not good at witchcraft. She’ll make a mess of it. She’ll make a mess of people.

She gave in. “All right, I can probably spare some time. There’s not many chores to do at Tir Nani Ogg. And I’ll explain things to the others. They’ll have to know. They’ll probably help. You learn fast—you could pick up the basic stuff in a week or so.”

Tiffany watched Annagramma’s face. She was actually thinking about it! If she were drowning and you threw her a rope, she’d complain if it was the wrong color. . . .

“Well, if they are just helping me . . .” Annagramma said, brightening up.

You could almost admire the girl for the way she could rearrange the real world in her head. Another story, thought Tiffany; it’s all about Annagramma.

“Yes, we’ll be helping you.” She sighed.

“Perhaps we could even tell people that you girls are coming to me to learn things?” said Annagramma hopefully.

People said that you should always count up to ten before losing your temper. But if it was Annagramma you were dealing with, you had to know some bigger numbers, like perhaps a million.

“No,” said Tiffany, “I don’t think we’ll do that. You are the one doing the learning.”

Annagramma opened her mouth to argue, saw the look on Tiffany’s face, and decided not to.

“Er, yes,” she said. “Of course. Er . . . thank you.”

That was a surprise.

“They probably will help,” said Tiffany. “It won’t look good if one of us fails.”

To her amazement, the girl really was crying. “It’s just that I didn’t really think they were my friends. . . .”

“I don’t like her,” said Petulia, who was knee-deep in pigs. “She calls me the pig witch.”

“Well, you are a pig witch,” said Tiffany, who was standing outside the pigpen. The big shed was full of pigs. The noise was nearly as bad as the smell. Fine snow, like dust, was falling outside.

“Yes, but when she says it, there’s a good deal too much pig and not enough witch,” said Petulia. “Every time she opens her mouth, I think I’ve done something wrong.” She waved a hand in a pig’s face and muttered a few words. The animal’s eyes crossed and it opened its mouth. It got a large dose of green liquid from a bottle.

“We can’t just leave her to struggle,” said Tiffany. “People might get hurt.”

“Well, that wouldn’t be our fault, would it?” said Petulia, dosing another pig. She cupped her hands and shouted over the din to a man at the other end of the pens: “Fred, this lot’s done!” Then she climbed out of the pen, and Tiffany saw that she’d got her dress tucked up to her waist and was wearing a pair of heavy leather britches under it.

“They’re making a real fuss this morning,” she said. “Sounds like they’re getting a bit frisky.”

“Frisky?” said Tiffany. “Oh . . . yes.”

“Listen, you can hear the boars yelling in their shed,” said Petulia. “They can smell the spring.”

“But it’s not even Hogswatch yet!”

“It’s the day after tomorrow. Anyway the springtime sleeps under the snow, my dad always says,” said Petulia, washing her hands in a bucket.

No ums, said Tiffany’s Third Thoughts. When she’s working, Petulia never says “um.” She’s certain of things when she’s working. She stands up straight. She’s in charge.

“Look, it will be our fault if we can see something wrong and don’t do anything about it,” said Tiffany.

“Oh, Annagramma again,” said Petulia. She shrugged. “Look, I can go over there maybe once a week after Hogswatch and show her some of the basic stuff. Will that make you happy?”

“I’m sure she’ll be grateful.”

“I’m sure she won’t be. Have you asked any of the others?”

“No. I thought that if they knew you’d agreed, they probably would, too,” said Tiffany.

“Hah! Well, I suppose that at least we can say we tried. You know, I used to think Annagramma was really clever because she knew a lot of words and could do sparkly spells? But show her a sick pig and she’s useless!”

Tiffany told her about Mrs. Stumper’s pig and Petulia looked shocked.

“We can’t have that sort of thing,” she said. “In a tree? Perhaps I’ll try to drop in this afternoon then.” She hesitated. “You know Granny Weatherwax won’t be happy about this? Do we want to be caught between her and Mrs. Earwig?”

“Are we doing the right thing or not?” said Tiffany. “Anyway, what’s the worst she could do to us?”

Petulia gave a short laugh with no humor in it at all. “Well,” she said, “first, she could make our—”

“She won’t.”

“I wish I was as sure as you,” said Petulia. “All right, then. For Mrs. Stumper’s pig.”

Tiffany flew above the treetops, and the occasional high twig brushed against her boots. There was just enough winter sunshine to make the snow crisp and glittery, like a frosted cake.

It had been a busy morning. The coven hadn’t been very interested in helping Annagramma. The coven itself seemed a long time ago. It had been a busy winter.

“All we did was muck about while Annagramma bossed us around,” Dimity Hubbub had said while grinding minerals and very carefully tipping them, a bit at a time, into a tiny pot being heated by a candle. “I’m too busy to mess around with magic. It never did anything useful. You know her trouble? She thinks you can be a witch by buying enough things.”

“She just needs to learn how to deal with people,” said Tiffany.

At this point, the pot exploded.

“Well, I think we can safely say that wasn’t your everyday toothache cure,” said Dimity, picking bits of pot out of her hair. “All right, I can spare the odd day, if Petulia’s doing it. But it won’t do much good.”

Lucy Warbeck was lying full length and fully clothed in a tin bath full of water when Tiffany came by. Her head was all the way under the surface, but when she saw Tiffany peering in, she held up a sign saying I’M NOT DROWNING! Miss Tick had said she would make a good witch finder, so she was training hard.

“I don’t see why we should help Annagramma,” she said as Tiffany helped her get dry. “She just likes putting people down with that sarcastic voice of hers. Anyway, what’s it to you? You know she doesn’t like you.”

“I thought we’ve always got on . . . more or less,” said Tiffany.

“Really? You can do stuff she can’t even attempt! Like that thing where you go invisible . . . you do it and you make it look easy! But you come along to the meetings and act like the rest of us and help clear up afterward, and that drives her mad!”

“Look, I don’t understand what you’re going on about.”

Lucy picked up another towel. “She can’t stand the idea that someone’s better than her but doesn’t crow about it.”

“Why should I do that?” said Tiffany, bewildered.

“Because that’s what she’d do, if she was you,” said Lucy, carefully pushing the knife and fork back into her piled-up hair.* “She thinks you’re laughing at her. And now, oh my word, she’s got to depend on you. You might as well have pushed pins up her nose.”

But Petulia had signed up, and so Lucy and the rest of them did, too. Petulia had become the big success story since she’d won the Witch Trials with her famous Pig Trick two years ago. She’d been laughed at—well, by Annagramma, and everyone else had sort of grinned awkwardly— but she’d stuck to what she was good at and people were saying that she’d got skills with animals that even Granny Weatherwax couldn’t match. She’d got solid respect, too. People didn’t understand a lot of what witches did, but anyone who could get a sick cow back on its feet . . . well, that person was someone you looked up to. So for the whole coven, after Hogswatch, it was going to be All About Annagramma time.

Tiffany flew back toward Tir Nani Ogg with her head spinning. She’d never thought anyone could be envious of her. Okay, she’d picked up one or two things, but anyone could do them. You just had to be able to switch yourself off.

She’d sat on the sand of the desert behind the Door, she’d faced dogs with razor teeth . . . they were not things she wanted to remember. And on top of all that, there was the Wintersmith.

He couldn’t find her without the horse, everyone was sure of that. He could speak in her head, and she could speak to him, but that was a kind of magic and didn’t have anything to do with maps.

He’d been quiet for a while. He was probably building icebergs.

She landed the broomstick on a small bald hill among the trees. There was no cottage to be seen.

She climbed off the stick but held on to it, just in case.

The stars were coming out. The Wintersmith liked clear nights. They were colder.

And the words came. They were her words in her voice and she knew what they meant, but they had a sort of echo.

“Wintersmith! I command you!”

As she blinked at the high-toned way the words had sounded, the reply came back.

The voice was all around her.

Who commands the Wintersmith?

“I am the Summer Lady.” Well, she thought, I’m a sort of stand-in.

Then why do you hide from me?

“I fear your ice. I fear your chill. I run from your avalanches. I hide from your storms.” Ah, right. This is goddess talk.

Live with me in my world of ice!

“How dare you order me! Don’t you dare to order me!”

But you chose to dwell in my winter. . . . The Wintersmith sounded uncertain.

“I go where I please. I make my own way. I seek the leave of no man. In your country you will honor me—or there will be a reckoning!” And that bit is mine, Tiffany thought, pleased to get a word in.

There was a long silence, filled with uncertainty and puzzlement. Then the Wintersmith said: How may I serve you, my lady?

“No more icebergs looking like me. I don’t want to be a face that sinks a thousand ships.”

And the frost? May we share the frosts? And the snowflakes?

“Not the frosts. You must not write my name on windows. That can only lead to trouble.”

But I may be permitted to honor you in snowflakes?

“Er . . .” Tiffany stopped. Goddesses shouldn’t say “er,” she was sure of that.

“Snowflakes will be . . . acceptable,” she said. After all, she thought, it’s not as though they have my name on them. I mean, most people won’t notice, and if they do they won’t know it’s me.

Then there will be snowflakes, my lady, until the time we dance again. And we will, for I am making myself a man!

The voice of the Wintersmith . . . went.

Tiffany was alone again among the trees.

Except . . . she wasn’t.

“I know you’re still there,” she said, her breath leaving a sparkle in the air. “You are, aren’t you? I can feel you. You’re not my thoughts. I’m not imagining you. The Wintersmith has gone. You can speak with my mouth. Who are you?”

The wind made snow fall from the trees nearby. The stars twinkled. Nothing else moved.

“You are there,” said Tiffany. “You’ve put thoughts in my head. You’ve even made my own voice speak to me. That’s not going to happen again. Now that I know the feeling, I can keep you out. If you have anything to say to me, say it now. When I leave here, I will shut my mind to you. I will not let—”

How does it feel to be so helpless, sheep girl?

“You are Summer, aren’t you?” said Tiffany.

And you are like a little girl dressing in her mother’s clothes, little feet in big shoes, dress trailing in the dirt. The world will freeze because of a silly child—

Tiffany did—something that it would be impossible for her to describe, and the voice ended up like a distant insect.

It was lonely on the hill, and cold. And all you could do was keep going. You could scream, cry, and stamp your feet, but apart from making you feel warmer, it wouldn’t do any good. You could say it was unfair, and that was true, but the universe didn’t care because it didn’t know what “fair” meant. That was the big problem about being a witch. It was up to you. It was always up to you.

Hogswatch came, with more snow and some presents. Nothing from home, even though some coaches were getting through. She told herself there was probably a good reason, and tried to believe it.

It was the shortest day of the year, which was convenient because it fitted neatly with the longest night. This was the heart of winter, but Tiffany didn’t expect the present that arrived the next day.

It had been snowing hard, but the evening sky was pink and blue and freezing.

It came out of the pink evening sky with a whistling noise and landed in Nanny Ogg’s garden, throwing up a shower of dirt and leaving a big hole.

“Well, that’s good-bye to the cabbages,” said Nanny, looking out the window.

Steam was rising from the hole when they went outside, and there was a strong smell of sprouts.

Tiffany peered through the steam. Dirt and stalks covered the thing, but she could make out something rounded.

She let herself slide farther into the hole, right down amid the mud and steam and the mysterious thing. It wasn’t very hot now, and as she scraped stuff away, she began to have a nasty feeling that she knew what it was.

It was, she was sure, the “thingy” that Anoia had talked about. It looked mysterious enough. And as it emerged from the mud, she knew she’d seen it before.

“Are you all right down there? I can’t see you for all this steam!” Nanny Ogg called. By the sound of it, the neighbors had come running; there was some excited chattering.

Tiffany quickly scraped mud and mashed cabbages over the arrival and called up, “I think this might explode. Tell everyone to get indoors! And then reach down and grab my hand, will you?”

There was some shouting above her and the sound of running feet. Nanny Ogg’s hand appeared, waving around in the fog, and between them they got Tiffany out of the hole.

“Shall we hide under the kitchen table?” said Nanny as Tiffany tried to brush mud and cabbage off her dress. Then Nanny winked. “If it is going to explode?”

Her son Shawn came around the house with a bucket of water in each hand and stopped, looking disappointed that there was nothing to do with them.

“What was it, Mum?” he panted.

Nanny looked at Tiffany, who said: “Er . . . a giant rock fell out of the sky.”

“Giant rocks can’t stay up in the sky, miss!” said Shawn.

“I expect that’s why this one fell down, lad,” said Nanny briskly. “If you want to do something useful, you can stand guard and make sure nobody comes near it.”

“What shall I do if it explodes, Mum?”

“Come and tell me, will you?” said Nanny. She hurried Tiffany into the cottage, shut the door behind them, and said: “I’m a dreadful ol’ liar, Tiff, and it takes one to know one. What’s down there?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s going to explode,” said Tiffany. “And if it did, I think the worse that’d happen is that we’d be covered in coleslaw. I think it’s the Cornucopia.”

There was the sound of voices outside and the door was flung open.

“Blessings be upon this house,” said Granny Weatherwax, stamping snow off her boots. “Your boy said I shouldn’t come in, but I think he was wrong. I came as quick as I could. What’s happened?”

“We’ve got cornucopias,” said Nanny Ogg, “whatever they are.”

It was later that evening. They’d waited until it was dark before pulling the Cornucopia out of the hole. It was a lot lighter than Tiffany had expected; in fact it had an air about it of something very, very heavy which, for reasons of its own, had become light just for a while.

Now it was on the kitchen table, wiped clean of mud and cabbages. Tiffany thought it looked vaguely alive. It was warm to the touch and seemed to vibrate slightly under her fingers.

“According to Chaffinch,” she said, with the Mythology open on her lap, “the god Blind Io created the Cornucopia from a horn of the magical goat Almeg to feed his two children by the Goddess Bisonomy, who was later turned into a shower of oysters by Epidity, God of Things Shaped like Potatoes, after insulting Resonata, Goddess of Weasels, by throwing a mole at her shadow. It is now the badge of office of the summer goddess.”

“I always said there used to be far too much of that sort of thing in the old days,” said Granny Weatherwax.

The witches stared at the thing. It did look a bit like a goat horn, but much larger.

“How does it work?” said Nanny Ogg. She stuck her head inside it and shouted “Hello!” Helloes came back, echoing for a long time, as if they had gone much farther than you would expect them to.

“Looks like a great big seashell to me,” was the opinion of Granny Weatherwax. The kitten You padded around the giant thing, sniffing daintily at it. (Greebo was hiding behind the saucepans on the top shelf. Tiffany checked.)

“I don’t think anyone knows,” she said. “But the other name for it is The Horn of Plenty.”

“A horn? Can you play a tune on it?” asked Nanny.

“I don’t think so,” said Tiffany. “It contains . . . er . . . things.”

“What sort of things?” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Well, technically . . . everything,” said Tiffany. “Everything that grows.”

She showed them the picture in the book. All sorts of fruits, vegetables, and grain were spilling from the Cornucopia’s wide mouth.

“Mostly fruit, though,” said Nanny. “Not many carrots, but I suppose they’re up in the pointy end. They’d fit better there.”

“Typical artist,” said Granny. “He just painted the showy stuff in the front. Too proud to paint an honest potato!” She poked at the page with an accusing finger. “And what about these cherubs? We’re not going to get them too, are we? I don’t like to see little babies flying through the air.”

“They turn up a lot in old paintings,” said Nanny Ogg. “They put them in to show it’s Art and not just naughty pictures of ladies with not many clothes on.”

“Well, they’re not fooling me,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Go on, Tiff, give it a go,” said Nanny Ogg, walking around the table.

“I don’t know how!” said Tiffany. “There aren’t any instructions!”

And then, too late, Granny shouted: “You! Come out of there!”

But with a flick of her tail the white kitten trotted inside.

They banged on the horn. They held it upside down and shook it. They tried shouting down it. They put a saucer of milk in front of it and waited. The kitten didn’t return. Then Nanny Ogg prodded gently inside the Cornucopia with a mop, which to no one’s great surprise went farther inside the Cornucopia than there was Cornucopia on the outside.

“She’ll come out when she’s hungry,” she said reassuringly.

“Not if she finds something to eat in there,” said Granny Weatherwax, peering into the dark.

“I shouldn’t think she’ll find cat food,” said Tiffany, examining the picture closely. “There may be milk, though.”

“You! Come out of there this minute!” Granny commanded in a voice fit to shake mountains.

There was a distant meep.

“Perhaps she’s got stuck?” said Nanny. “I mean, it’s like a spiral, growing smaller at the end, right? Cats ain’t very big at goin’ backward.”

Tiffany saw the look on Granny’s face and sighed.

“Feegles?” she said to the room in general. “I know there are some of you in this room. Come out, please!”

Feegles appeared from behind every ornament. Tiffany tapped the Cornucopia.

“Can you get a little kitten out of here?” she asked.

“Just that? Aye, nae problemo,” said Rob Anybody. “I wuz hopin’ it was gonna be something difficult!”

The Nac Mac Feegles disappeared into the Horn at a trot. Their voices died away. The witches waited.

They waited some more.

And some more.

“Feegles!” shouted Tiffany into the hole. She thought she heard a very distant, very faint “Crivens!”

“If it can produce grain, they might have found beer in there,” said Tiffany. “And that means they’ll only run out when the beer runs out too!”

“Cats can’t feed on beer!” snapped Granny Weatherwax.

“Well, I’m fed up with waiting,” said Nanny. “Look, there’s a little hole in the pointy end, too. I’m going to blow into it!”

She tried to, at least. Her cheeks went big and red and her eyes bulged, and it was pretty clear that if the horn didn’t blow, then she would—at which point, the horn gave up. There was a distant and unmistakably curly rumbling noise, which got louder and louder.

“I can’t see anything yet,” said Granny, looking into the wide mouth of the horn.

Tiffany pulled her away just as You galloped out of the Cornucopia with her tail straight out and her ears flattened. She skidded across the table, leaped onto Granny Weatherwax’s dress, scrambled onto her shoulder, and turned and spat defiance.

With a cry of “Crivvvvvvvvens!” Feegles poured out of the horn.

“Behind the sofa, everyone!” yelled Nanny. “Run!”

Now the rumble was like thunder. It grew and grew and then—

—stopped.

In the silence, three pointy hats rose from behind the sofa. Small blue faces rose from behind everything.

Then there was a noise very similar to pwat! and something small and wizened rolled out of the mouth of the Horn and dropped onto the floor. It was a very dried-up pineapple.

Granny Weatherwax brushed some dust off her dress.

“You’d better learn to use this,” she said to Tiffany.

“How?”

“Don’t you have any idea?”

“No!”

“Well, it’s turned up for you, madam, and it’s dangerous!”

Tiffany gingerly picked up the Cornucopia, and again there was that definite feeling of some hugely heavy thing pretending, very successfully, to be light.

“Maybe it needs some magic word,” suggested Nanny Ogg. “Or there’s somewhere special that you press. . . .”

As Tiffany turned it in the light, something gleamed for a moment.

“Hold on, these look like words,” she said. She read: ENA ONOMA.

All that you desire, I give upon a name, murmured the memory of Dr. Bustle.

The next line said: .

I grow, I shrink, Dr. Bustle translated.

“I think I might have an idea,” she said, and in memory of Miss Treason she declared: “Ham sandwich!”

Nothing happened.

Then Dr. Bustle lazily translated, and Tiffany said: “!”

With a fwlap a ham sandwich sailed out of the mouth of the Cornucopia and was expertly caught by Nanny, who bit into it.

“Not bad at all!” she announced. “Try a few more.”

“!” said Tiffany, and there was the kind of sound you get when you disturb a cave full of bats.

“Stop!” she yelled, but nothing stopped. Then Dr. Bustle whispered and she shouted: “!”

There were a . . . lot of sandwiches. The pile reached the ceiling, in fact. Only the tip of Nanny Ogg’s hat was visible, but there were some muffled noises farther down the heap.

An arm thrust out, and Nanny Ogg forced her way through the wall of bread and sliced pig, chewing thoughtfully.

“No mustard, I notice. Hmm. Well, we can see that everyone around here has a good supper tonight,” she said. “And I can see I’m going to have to make an awful lot of soup, too. Best not to try it again in here, though, all right?”

“I don’t like it at all,” snapped Granny Weatherwax. “Where does all that stuff come from, eh? Magic food never fed anyone properly!”

“It’s not magic, it’s a god thing,” said Nanny Ogg. “Like manners from heaven, that sort of stuff. I expect it’s made out of raw firmament.”

In fact it’s merely a living metaphor for the boundless fecundity of the natural world, whispered Dr. Bustle in Tiffany’s head.

“You don’t get manners from heaven,” said Granny.

“This was in foreign parts, a long time ago,” said Nanny, turning to Tiffany. “If I was you, dear, I’d take it out into the woods tomorrow and see what it can do. Although, if you don’t mind, I could really do with some fresh grapes right now.”

“Gytha Ogg, you can’t use the Cornucopia of the Gods as a . . . a larder!” said Granny. “The feet business was bad enough!”

“But it is one,” said Nanny Ogg innocently. “It’s the larder. It’s, like, everything waiting to grow next spring.”

Tiffany put it down very carefully. There was something . . . alive about the Cornucopia. She wasn’t at all sure that it was just some magical tool. It seemed to be listening.

As it touched the tabletop, it began to shrink until it was the size of a small vase.

“’Scuse me?” said Rob Anybody. “But does it do beer?”

“Beer?” said Tiffany, without thinking.

There was a trickling noise. All eyes turned to look at the vase. Brown liquid was foaming over the lip.

Then all the eyes turned to Granny Weatherwax, who shrugged.

“Don’t look at me,” she said sourly. “You’re going to drink it anyway!”

It is alive, Tiffany thought, as Nanny Ogg hurried off to find some more mugs. It learns. It’s learned my language. . . .

Around midnight, Tiffany woke up because a white chicken was standing on her chest. She pushed it off and reached down for her slippers, and found only chickens. When she got the candle alight, she saw half a dozen chickens on the end of the bed. The floor was covered in chickens. So were the stairs. So was every room down below. In the kitchen, chickens had overflowed into the sink.

They weren’t making much noise, just the occasional werk a chicken makes when it’s a bit uncertain about things, which is more or less all the time.

The chickens were shuffling along patiently to make room. Werk. They were doing this because the Cornucopia, now grown just a bit bigger than a full-grown chicken, was gently firing out a chicken every eight seconds. Werk.

As Tiffany watched, another one landed on the mountain of ham sandwiches. Werk.

Marooned on top of the Cornucopia was You, looking very puzzled. Werk. And in the middle of the floor Granny Weatherwax snored gently in the big armchair, surrounded by fascinated hens. Werk. Apart from the snoring, the chorus of werks, and the rustle of shuffling chickens, it was all very peaceful in the candlelight. Werk.

Tiffany glared at the kitten. She rubbed up against things when she wanted to be fed, didn’t she? Werk. And made meep noises? Werk. And the Cornucopia could work out languages, couldn’t it? Werk.

Now she whispered: “No more chickens,” and after a few seconds the flow of chickens ceased. Werk.

But she couldn’t really leave it like that. She shook Granny by the shoulder and, as the old woman awoke, she said: “The good news is a lot of the ham sandwiches have gone . . . er. . . .”

Werk.

CHAPTER 9

Green Shoots

It was much colder the next morning, a numb dull coldness that could practically freeze the flames on a fire.

Tiffany let the broomstick settle between the trees a little way from Nanny Ogg’s cottage. The snow hadn’t drifted much here, but it came up to her knees, and cold had put a crispness on it that crackled like a stale loaf when Tiffany trod it.

In theory she was out in the woods to get the hang of the Cornucopia, but really she was there to keep it out of the way. Nanny Ogg hadn’t been too upset about the chickens. After all, she now owned five hundred hens, which were currently standing around in her shed going werk. But the floors were a mess, there were chicken doo-dahs even on the banisters, and as Granny had pointed out (in a whisper), supposing someone had said “sharks”?

The Cornucopia lay on her lap while she sat on a stump among snow-covered trees. Once the forest had been pretty. Now it was hateful. Dark trunks against snowdrifts, a striped world of black and white, bars against the light. She longed for horizons.

Funny . . . the Cornucopia was always very slightly warm, even out here, and seemed to know in advance what size it ought to be. “I grow, I shrink,” thought Tiffany. And I’m feeling pretty small.

What next? What now? She’d kept hoping that the . . . the power would drop on her, just like the Cornucopia had done. It hadn’t.

There was life under the snow. She felt it in her fingertips. Somewhere down there, out of reach, was the real Summer. Using the Cornucopia as a scoop, she scraped away at the snow until she reached dead leaves. There was life down there in the white webs of fungi and pale, new roots. A half-frozen worm crawled slowly away and burrowed under a leaf skeleton, fine as lace. Beside it was an acorn.

The woods weren’t silent. They were holding their breath. They were all waiting for her, and she didn’t know what to do.

I’m not the Summer Lady, she told herself. I can never be her. I’m in her shoes, but I can never be her. I might be able to make a few flowers grow, but I can never be her. She’ll walk across the world and oceans of sap will rise in these dead trees and a million tons of grass will grow in a second. Can I do that? No. I’m a stupid child with a handful of tricks, that’s all. I’m just Tiffany Aching, and I’m aching to go home.

Feeling guilty about the worm, she breathed some warm air on the soil and then pushed the leaves back to cover it. As she did so, there was a wet little sound, like the snapping of a frog’s fingers, and the acorn split. A white shoot escaped from it and grew more than half an inch as she watched it.

Hurriedly she made a hole in the mold with her fingers, pushed the acorn in, and patted the soil back again.

Someone was watching her. She stood up and turned around quickly. There was no one to be seen, but that didn’t mean a thing.

“I know you’re there!” she said, still turning around. “Whoever you are!”

Her voice echoed among the black trees. Even to her it sounded thin and scared.

She found herself raising the Cornucopia.

“Show yourself,” she quavered, “or—”

What? she wondered. I’ll fill you full of fruit?

Some snow fell off a tree with a thump, making her jump and then feel even more foolish. Now she was flinching at the fall of a handful of snowflakes! A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.

She raised the Cornucopia and said, halfheartedly: “Strawberry. . . .”

Something shot out of the Cornucopia with a pfut and made a red stain on a tree twenty feet away. Tiffany didn’t bother to check; it always delivered what you asked for.

Which was more than she could say for herself.

And on top of everything else, it was her day to visit Annagramma. Tiffany sighed deeply. She’d probably get that wrong too.

Slowly, astride her broomstick, she disappeared among the trees.

After a minute or two, a green shoot thrust up from the patch of soil that she had breathed on, grew to a height of about six inches, and put out two green leaves.

Footsteps approached. They were not as crunchy as footsteps on frozen snow usually are.

There was a crunch now, though, of someone kneeling on the frosted leaves.

A pair of skinny but powerful hands gently dragged and sculpted the snow and leaves together to make a tall, thin wall around the shoot, enclosing it and protecting it from the wind like a soldier in a castle.

A small white kitten tried to nuzzle at it and was carefully lifted out of the way.

Then Granny Weatherwax walked back into the woods, leaving no footprints. You never teach anyone else everything you know.

Days went by. Annagramma learned, but it was a struggle. It was hard to teach someone who wouldn’t admit that there was anything she didn’t know, so there were conversations like this:

“You know how to prepare placebo root, do you?”

“Of course. Everyone knows that.” And this was not the time to say, “Okay then, show me,” because she’d mess around for a while and then say she had a headache. This was the time to say, “Good, watch me to see if I’m doing it right,” and then do it perfectly. And you’d add things like: “As you know, Granny Weatherwax says that practically anything works instead of placebo root, but it’s best to use the real thing if you can get it. If prepared in syrup, it’s an amazing remedy for minor illnesses, but of course you already know this.”

And Annagramma would say: “Of course.”

A week later, in the forests, it was so cold some older trees exploded in the night. They hadn’t seen that for a long time, the older people said. It happened when the sap froze then tried to expand.

Annagramma was as vain as a canary in a room full of mirrors and panicked instantly when faced with anything she didn’t know, but she was sharp at picking things up, and very good at appearing to know more than she really did, which is a valuable talent for a witch. Once, Tiffany noticed the Boffo catalogue open on the table with some things circled. She asked no questions. She was too busy.

A week after that, wells froze.

Tiffany went around the villages with Annagramma a few times and knew that she would make it, eventually. She’d got built-in Boffo. She was tall and arrogant and acted as if she knew everything even when she didn’t have a clue. That would get her a long way. People listened to her.

They needed to. There were no roads open now; between cottages, people had cut tunnels full of cold blue light. Anything that needed to be moved was moved by broomstick. That included old people. They were lifted, bedclothes, walking sticks, and all, and moved into other houses. People packed together stayed warmer, and could pass the time by reminding one another that, however cold this was, it wasn’t as cold as the cold you got when they were young.

After a while, they stopped saying that.

Sometimes it would thaw, just a little, and then freeze again. That fringed every roof with icicles. At the next thaw, they stabbed the ground like daggers.

Tiffany didn’t sleep; at least, she didn’t go to bed. None of the witches did. The snow got trampled down into ice that was like rock, so a few carts could be moved about, but there still weren’t enough witches to go around or enough hours in the day. There weren’t enough hours in the day and the night put together. Petulia had fallen asleep on her stick and ended up in a tree two miles away. Tiffany slid off once and landed in a snowdrift.

Wolves entered the tunnels. They were weak with hunger, and desperate. Granny Weatherwax put a stop to them and never told anyone how she’d done it.

The cold was like being punched, over and over again, day and night. All over the snow were little dark dots that were dead birds, frozen out of the air. Other birds had found the tunnels and filled them with twittering, and people fed them scraps because they brought a false hope of spring to the world . . .

. . . because there was food. Oh, yes, there was food. The Cornucopia ran day and night.

And Tiffany thought: I should have said no to snowflakes. . . .

There was a shack, old and abandoned. And there was, in the rotted planks, a nail. If the Wintersmith had had fingers, they would have been shaking.

This was the last thing! There had been so much to learn! It had been so hard, so hard! Who would have thought a man was made of stuff like chalk and soot and gases and poisons and metals? But now ice formed under the rusty nail, and the wood groaned and squeaked as the ice grew and forced it out.

It spun gently in the air, and the voice of the Wintersmith could be heard in the wind that froze the treetops: “IRON ENOUGH TO MAKE A MAN!”

High up in the mountains the snow exploded. It mounded up into the air as if dolphins were playing under it, shapes forming and disappearing. . . .

Then, as suddenly as it had risen, the snow settled again. But now there was a horse there, white as snow, and on its back a rider, glittering with frost. If the greatest sculptor the world had ever known had been told to build a snowman, this is what it would have looked like.

Something was still going on. The shape of the horse and man still crawled with movement as they grew more and more lifelike. Details settled. Colors crept in, always pale, never bright.

And there was a horse, and there was a rider, shining in the comfortless light of the midwinter sun.

The Wintersmith extended a hand and flexed his fingers. Color is, after all, merely a matter of reflection; the fingers took on the color of flesh.

The Wintersmith spoke. That is, there were a variety of noises, from the roar of a gale to the rattle of the sucking of the surf on a pebble shore after a wrecking storm at sea. Somewhere among them all was a tone that seemed right. He repeated it, stretched it, stirred it around, and turned it into speech, playing with it until it sounded right.

He said: “Tasbnlerizwip? Ggokyziofvva? Wiswip? Nananana . . . Nyip . . . nap . . . Ah. . . . Ah! It is to speak!” The Wintersmith threw back his head and sang the overture to Überwald Winter by the composer Wotua Doinov. He’d overheard it once when driving a roaring gale around the rooftops of an opera house, and had been astonished to find that a human being, nothing more really than a bag of dirty water on legs, could have such a wonderful understanding of snow.

“!” he sang to the freezing sky.

The only slight error the Wintersmith made, as his horse trotted through the pine trees, was in singing the instruments as well as the voices. He sang, in fact, the whole thing, and rode like a traveling orchestra, making the sounds of the singers, the drums, and the rest of the orchestra all at once.

To smell the trees! To feel the pull of the ground! To be solid! To feel the darkness behind your eyes and know it was you! To be—and know yourself to be—a man!

He had never felt like this before. It was exhilarating. There was so much of . . . of everything, coming at him from every direction. The thing with the ground, for example. It tugged, all the time. Standing upright took a lot of thinking about. And the birds! The Wintersmith had always seen them as nothing more than impurities in the air, interfering with the flow of the weather, but now they were living things just like him. And they played with the tug of the wind, and owned the sky.

The Wintersmith had never seen before, never felt before, never heard before. You could not do those things unless you were . . . apart, in the dark behind the eyes. Before, he hadn’t been apart; he’d been a part, a part of the whole universe of tug and pressure, sound and light, flowing, dancing. He’d run storms against mountains forever, but he’d never known what a mountain was until today.

The dark behind the eyes . . . what a precious thing. It gave you your . . . you-ness. Your hand, with those laughable waggly things on it, gave you touch; the holes on either side of your head let in sound; the holes at the front let in the wonderful smell. How clever of holes to know what to do! It was amazing! When you were an elemental, everything happened all together, inside and outside, in one big . . . thing.

Thing. That was a useful word . . . thing. Thing was anything the Wintersmith couldn’t describe. Everything was . . . things, and they were exciting.

It was good to be a man! Oh, he was mostly made of dirty ice, but that was just better-organized dirty water, after all.

Yes, he was human. It was so easy. It was just a matter of organizing things. He had senses, he could move among humans, he could . . . search. That was how to search for humans. You became one! It was so hard to do it as an elemental; it was hard even to recognize a human in the churning thing-ness of the physical world. But a human could talk to other humans with the holes for the sound. He could talk to them and they would not suspect!

And now that he was human, there would be no going back. King Winter!

All he needed was a queen.

Tiffany woke up because someone was shaking her.

“Tiffany!”

She’d gone to sleep in Nanny Ogg’s cottage with her head against the Cornucopia. From somewhere close there was a strange pif noise, like a dry drip. Pale-blue snowlight filled the room.

As she opened her eyes, Granny Weatherwax was gently pushing her back into her chair.

“You’ve been sleeping since nine o’clock, my girl,” she said. “Time to go home, I think.”

Tiffany looked around. “I am here, aren’t I?” she said, feeling dizzy.

“No, this is Nanny Ogg’s house. And this is a bowl of soup—”

Tiffany woke up. There was a blurry bowl of soup in front of her. It looked . . . familiar.

“When did you last sleep in a bed?” said a wavering, shadowy figure.

Tiffany yawned. “What day is this?”

“Tuesday,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Mmm . . . what’s a Tuesday?”

Tiffany woke up for the third time and was grabbed and pulled upright.

“There,” said the voice of Granny Weatherwax. “This time stay awake. Drink soup. Get warm. You need to go home.”

This time Tiffany’s stomach took control of a hand and a spoon and, by degrees, Tiffany warmed up.

Granny Weatherwax sat opposite, the kitten You on her lap, watching Tiffany until the soup was gone.

“I expected too much from you,” she said. “I’d hoped that as the days grew longer, you’d find more power. That ain’t no fault of yours.”

The pif noises were getting more frequent. Tiffany looked down and saw barley dripping out of the Cornucopia. The number of grains increased even as she watched.

“You set it on barley before you fell asleep,” said Granny. “It slows right down when you’re tired. Just as well, really, otherwise we’d have been eaten alive by chickens.”

“It’s about the only thing I’ve got right,” said Tiffany.

“Oh, I don’t know. Annagramma Hawkin seems to be showing promise. Lucky in her friends, from what I hears.” If Miss Treason had tried to play poker against Granny Weatherwax’s face, she would have lost.

The patter of the new grains suddenly became much louder in the silence.

“Look, I—” Tiffany began.

Granny sniffed. “I’m sure no one has to explain themselves to me,” she said virtuously. “Will you promise me that you’ll go home? A couple of coaches got through this morning, and I hear it’s not too bad yet, down on the plains. You go back to your Chalk country. You’re the only witch they’ve got.”

Tiffany sighed. She did want to go home, more than anything. But it would be like running away.

“It might be like running to,” said Granny, picking up her old habit of replying to something that hadn’t actually been said.

“I’ll go tomorrow then,” said Tiffany.

“Good.” Granny stood up. “Come with me. I wants to show you something.”

Tiffany followed her through a snow tunnel that came out near the edge of the forest. The snow had been packed down here by people dragging firewood home, and once you got a little way from the edge of the forest, the drifts weren’t too bad; a lot of snow hung in the trees, filling the air with cold blue shadows.

“What are we looking for?” asked Tiffany.

Granny Weatherwax pointed.

There was a splash of green in the white and gray. It was young leaves on an oak sapling a couple of feet high. When Tiffany crunched her way through the snow crust and reached out to touch it, the air felt warm.

“Do you know how you managed that?” asked Granny.

“No!”

“Me neither. I couldn’t do it. You did, girl. Tiffany Aching.”

“It’s just one tree,” said Tiffany.

“Ah, well. You have to start small, with oak trees.”

They stared in silence at the tree for a few moments. The green seemed to reflect off the snow around it. Winter stole color, but the tree glowed.

“And now we’ve all got things to do,” said Granny, breaking the spell. “You, I believe, would normally be heading for Miss Treason’s old place about now. I’d expect no less of you. . . .”

There was a coaching inn. It was busy, even at this time in the morning. The Fast Mail coach had made a quick stop for fresh horses after the long haul into the mountains, and another one, bound for down on the plains, was waiting for the passengers. The breath of horses filled the air with steam. Drivers stamped their feet. Sacks and packages were being loaded. Men bustled around with nosebags. Some bandy-legged men just hung around, smoking and gossiping. In fifteen minutes the inn’s yard would be empty again, but for now everyone was too busy to pay much attention to one more stranger.

Afterward they all told different stories, contradicting one another at the tops of their voices. Probably the most accurate account came from Miss Dymphnia Stoot, the innkeeper’s daughter, who was helping her father serve breakfast:

“Well, he, like, came in, and right there I could see he was odd. He walked funny, you know, lifting his legs like a trotting horse does. Also, he was kind of like shiny. But we get all sorts here, and it does not pay to make pers’nal remarks. We had a bunch of werewolves in here last week and they were just like you and me except we had to put their plates on the floor. . . . All right, yes, this man . . . well, he sat down at a table and said: ‘I am a human just like you!’ He came out with it, just like that!

“Of course, no one else paid attention, but I told him I was glad to hear it and what did he want to eat, because the sausages was particular fine this morning, and he said he could only eat cold food, which was funny ’cuz everyone was grumbling about how cold it was in the room now, and it’s not like there wasn’t a big fire burning. Anyway . . . actually we did have some cold sausage left in the pantry and they were a bit on the turn, if you know what I mean, so I gave them to him, and he chewed one for a bit and then he says, with his mouth full if you please, ‘This is not what I expected. What do I do now?’ and I said you swallow and he said, ‘Swallow?’ and I said, yes, you swallow it down into your stomach, right, and he said, spraying bits of sausage all over the place, ‘Oh, a hollow bit!’ and sort of like wavers and then he says, ‘Ah, I am a human. I have successfully eaten human sausages!’ and I said there was no need to be like that, they were made of mostly pig, same as always.

“Then he says what is he supposed to do with them now and I says it’s not my place to tell him and that will be two pennies please and he puts down a gold coin so I curtsy because, well, you never know. Then he says, ‘I am a human just like you. Where are the pointy humans who fly through the sky?’ which was a funny way of putting it to my mind, but I told him if it was witches he wanted, there was plenty of ’em over the Lancre Bridge, and he said, ‘Name of Treason?’ and I said I heard she was dead but with witches who can say. And off he went. All the time he had this, like, smile, all shiny and a bit worrying. Something wrong with his clothes, too, like they were stuck to him or something. But you can’t be too choosy in this business. We had some trolls in here yesterday. They can’t eat our food, you know, being kind of like walking rocks, but we gave them a slap-up meal of broken cups and grease. But he was a rum ’un. The place got a lot warmer after he left, too.”

Expect no less of you . . .

The words kept Tiffany warm as she flew over the trees. The fire in her head burned with pride but contained one or two big crackly logs of anger.

Granny had known! Had she planned it? Because it looked good, didn’t it? All the witches would know. Mrs. Earwig’s pupil couldn’t cope, but Tiffany Aching organized all the other girls to help out and didn’t tell anyone. Of course, among witches, not telling anyone was a sure way of getting things found out. Witches were very good at listening to what you weren’t saying. So Annagramma held on to her cottage, and Mrs. Earwig was embarrassed and Granny would be smug. All that work and rushing around, to let Granny feel smug. Well, and for Mrs. Stumper’s pig and everyone else, of course. That made it complicated. If you could, you did what needed to be done. Poking your nose in was basic witchcraft. She knew it. Granny knew she knew it. So Tiffany had scurried around like a little clockwork mouse. . . .

There would be a reckoning!

The clearing was full of snow in great icy drifts, but a path had been worn to the cottage, she was pleased to see.

There was something new. There were people standing by Miss Treason’s grave, and some of the snow had been scraped off.

Oh no, Tiffany thought as she circled down, please say she hasn’t gone looking for the skulls!

It turned out to be, in some ways, worse.

She recognized the people around the grave. They were villagers, and they gave Tiffany the defiant, worried stares of people scared half to death by the small but possibly angry pointy hat in front of them. And there was something about the very deliberate way they weren’t looking at the mound that instantly drew her attention to it. It was covered in little torn scraps of paper, pinned down with sticks. They fluttered in the wind.

She snatched up a couple:

Miss Treason please keep my boy Joe save at see.

Miss treason, Im goin bald pleas help.

Miss Treason, please find our Girl Becky what run away Im sorry.

There were more. And just as she was about to speak sharply to the villagers for still bothering Miss Treason, she remembered the packets of Jolly Sailor tobacco that the shepherds even now left on the turf where the old shepherding hut had been. They didn’t write their petitions down, but they were there all the same, floating in the air:

“Granny Aching, who herds the clouds in the blue sky, please watch my sheep.” “Granny Aching, cure my son.” “Granny Aching, find my lambs.”

They were the prayers of small people, too afraid to bother the gods in their high places. They trusted in what they knew. They weren’t right or wrong. They were just . . . hopeful.

Well, Miss Treason, she thought, you’re a myth now, as sure as anything. You might even make it to goddess. It’s not much fun, I can tell you.

“And has Becky been found?” she said, turning to the people.

A man avoided her gaze as he said: “I reckon Miss Treason’ll understand why the girl won’t be wantin’ to come home anytime soon.”

Oh, thought Tiffany, one of those reasons.

“Any news of the boy, then?” she said.

“Ah, that one worked,” said a woman. “His mum got a letter yesterday sayin’ he’d been in a dreadful shipwreck but was picked up alive, which only goes to show.”

Tiffany didn’t ask what it was that it went to show. It was enough that it had gone to show it.

“Well, that’s good,” she said.

“But lots of poor seamen got drownded,” the woman went on. “They hit an iceberg in the fog. A big floating mountain of ice shaped like a woman, they said. What d’you think of that?”

“I expect if they’d been at sea long enough, anything would look like a woman, eh?” said the man, and chuckled. The women gave him a Look.

“He didn’t say who she—if she looked like, you know . . . anyone?” said Tiffany, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Depends where they were looking—” the man began cheerfully.

“You ought to wash your brain out with soap and water,” said the woman, prodding him sharply in the chest.

“Er, no, miss,” he said, looking down at his feet. “He just said her head was all covered with seagull—poo, miss.”

This time, Tiffany tried not to sound relieved. She looked down at the fluttering bits of paper on the grave and back to the woman, who was trying to hide what might be a fresh request behind her back.

“Do you believe in this stuff, Mrs. Carter?”

The woman suddenly looked flustered. “Oh no, miss, of course not. But it’s just that . . . well, you know. . . .”

It makes you feel better, thought Tiffany. It’s something you can do when there’s nothing more to be done. And who knows, it might work. Yes, I know. It’s—

Her hand itched. And now she realized that it had been itching for a while.

“Oh yes?” she said under her breath. “You dare?”

“Are you all right, miss?” said the man. Tiffany ignored him. A rider was approaching and snow followed after him, spreading and widening behind him like a cloak, soundless as a wish, thick as fog.

Without taking her eyes off him, Tiffany reached into her pocket and gripped the tiny Cornucopia. Hah!

She walked forward.

The Wintersmith dismounted from his snow-white horse when it had drawn level with the old cottage.

Tiffany stopped about twenty feet away, her heart pounding.

“My lady,” said the Wintersmith, and bowed.

He looked . . . better, and older.

“I warn you! I’ve got a Cornucopia and I’m not afraid to use it!” said Tiffany. But she hesitated. He did look almost human, except for that fixed, strange grin. “How did you find me?” she said.

“For you I have learned,” said the figure. “I learned how to search. I am human!”

Really? But his mouth doesn’t look right, said her Third Thoughts. It’s pale inside, like snow. That’s not a boy there. It just thinks it is.

One big pumpkin, her Second Thoughts urged. They get really hard at this time of year. Shoot him now!

Tiffany herself, the one on the outside, the one who could feel the air on her face, thought: I can’t just do that! All he’s doing is standing there talking. All this is my fault!

He wants never-ending winter, said her Third Thoughts. Everyone you know will die!

She was sure the eyes of the Wintersmith could see right into her mind.

The summer kills the winter, the Third Thoughts insisted. That’s how it works!

But not like this, Tiffany thought. I know it’s not supposed to be like this! It feels wrong. It’s not the right . . . story. The king of winter can’t be killed by a flying pumpkin!

The Wintersmith was watching her carefully. Thousands of Tiffany-shaped flakes were falling around him.

“We will finish the Dance now?” he said. “I am human, just like you!” He held out a hand.

“Do you know what human is?” said Tiffany.

“Yes! Easy! Iron enough to make a nail!” said the Wintersmith promptly. He beamed, as if he’d done a trick successfully. “And now, please, we dance. . . .”

He took a step forward. Tiffany backed away.

If you dance now, her Third Thoughts warned, that will be the end of it. You’ll be believing in yourself and trusting in your star, and big twinkly things thousands of miles up in the sky don’t care if they twinkle on everlasting snow.

“I’m . . . not ready,” Tiffany said, hardly above a whisper.

“But time is passing,” said the Wintersmith. “I am human, I know these things. Are you not a goddess in human form?”

The eyes bored into her.

No, I’m not, she thought. I’ll always be just . . . Tiffany Aching.

The Wintersmith drew closer, his hand still outstretched.

“Time to dance, Lady. Time to finish the Dance.”

Thoughts leaked out away from Tiffany’s grasp. The eyes of the Wintersmith filled her mind with nothing but whiteness, like a field of pure snow. . . .

“Aaaiiiiieeeee!”

The door of old Miss Treason’s cottage flew open and . . . something came out, staggering through the snow.

It was a witch. You could not mistake it. She— it was probably a she, but some things are so horrible that worrying about how to address a letter to them is silly—had a hat with a point that curled like a snake. It was on top of dripping strands of mad, greasy hair, which were perched on a nightmare of a face. It was green, like the hands that waved black fingernails that were really terrible claws.

Tiffany stared. The Wintersmith stared. The people stared.

As the horrible screaming, lurching thing drew nearer, the details got clearer, like the brown rotting teeth and the warts. Lots of warts. Even the warts on the warts had warts.

Annagramma had sent off for everything. Part of Tiffany wanted to laugh, even now, but the Wintersmith snatched at her hand—

—and the witch grabbed his shoulder.

“Don’t you take hold of her like that! How dare you! I’m a witch, you know!”

Annagramma’s voice wasn’t easy on the ear at the best of times, but when she was frightened or angry, it had a whine that bored right into the head.

“Let go of her, I say,” screamed Annagramma. The Wintersmith looked stunned. Having to listen to Annagramma in a rage was hard for someone who hadn’t had ears for very long.

“Let her go,” she yelled. Then she threw a fireball.

She missed. Possibly she meant to. A ball of flaming gas whizzing nearby usually makes most people stop what they are doing. But most people don’t melt.

The Wintersmith’s leg dropped off.

Later, on the journey through the blizzard, Tiffany wondered how the Wintersmith worked. He was made of snow, but he could make it walk and talk. That must mean he had to think about it all the time. He had to. Humans didn’t have to think about their bodies all the time, because their bodies knew what to do. But snow doesn’t even know how to stand up straight.

Annagramma was glaring at him as if he’d done something really annoying.

He looked around, as if puzzled, cracks appearing across his chest, and then he was just crumbling snow, collapsing into glittery crystals.

The snow began to pour down now, as if the clouds were being squeezed.

Annagramma pulled the mask to one side and stared first at the heap and then at Tiffany.

“All right,” she said, “what just happened? Was he supposed to do that?”

“I was coming to see you and . . . that’s the Wintersmith!” was all that Tiffany could manage at that point.

“You mean like . . . the Wintersmith?” said Annagramma. “Isn’t he just a story? What is he after you for?” she added accusingly.

“It’s . . . he . . . I . . .” Tiffany began, but there was nowhere to start. “He’s real! I’ve got to get away from him!” she said. “I’ve got to get away! It takes too long to explain!”

For a horrible moment she thought Annagramma was still going to demand the whole story, but she reached out and grabbed Tiffany’s hand with a black rubber claw.

“Then get out of here right now! Oh, no, you’ve still got Miss Treason’s old broom? Totally useless! Use mine!” She dragged Tiffany toward the cottage, as the snowflakes thickened.

“‘Iron enough to make a nail’!” said Tiffany, trying to keep up. She couldn’t think of anything else to say, and it was suddenly very important. “He thought he was human—”

“I’ve only knocked over his snowman, you fool. He’ll be back!”

“Yes, but iron enough, you see, to—”

A green hand slapped her face, but this hurt less than it might because of the rubber.

“Don’t babble! I thought you were clever! I really don’t know what this is about, but if I had that thing after me, I wouldn’t stand around babbling!” Annagramma pulled across the Wicked Witch De-Luxe Mask With Free Dangling Booger, adjusted the hang of the booger, and turned to the villagers, who’d been rooted to the spot all this time. “What are you all staring at? Haven’t you ever seen a witch before?” she shouted. “Go back home! Oh, and I’ll be down tomorrow with some physic for your little boy, Mrs. Carter!”

They stared at the green face, the rotted teeth, the stinking hair, and the huge booger, made in fact of glass, and fled.

Still drunk with terror and relief, Tiffany rocked gently, muttering “Iron enough to make a nail!” until Annagramma shook her. The thick flakes were dropping so fast that it was hard to see her face.

“Tiffany, broomstick. Broomstick fly,” said Annagramma. “Fly a long way! Do you hear me! Somewhere safe!”

“But he . . . the poor thing thinks that . . .”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure it’s all very important,” said Annagramma, dragging her toward the cottage wall, where her broomstick leaned. She half pushed, half lifted Tiffany onto it and looked up. Snow was pouring out of the sky like a waterfall now.

“He’s coming back!” she snapped, and said a few words under her breath. The broomstick shot straight up and disappeared into the fading, snow-filled light.

CHAPTER 10

Going Home

Granny Weatherwax looked up from the saucer of ink, in which a tiny Tiffany was disappearing into the whiteness of the blizzard. She was smiling, but with Granny Weatherwax this did not necessarily mean that something nice was happening.

“We could ha’ taken him doon easy,” said Rob Anybody reproachfully. “Ye should ha’ let us.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps he’d have frozen you solid?” said Granny. “Besides, there’s a bigger task ahead of the Nac Mac Feegles. Your big wee hag needs you to do two things. One of them is hard, the other one is very hard.”

The Feegles cheered up when they heard this. They were everywhere in Mrs. Ogg’s kitchen. Some were perched on Nanny Ogg herself, and Miss Tick looked very uncomfortable surrounded by them. Unlike Miss Tick, Feegles rarely had an opportunity for a bath.

“Firstly,” said Granny, “she will need you to go into the . . . Underworld, to fetch the Summer Lady.”

The significant pause did not seem to bother the Feegles at all.

“Oh aye, we can do that,” said Rob Anybody. “We can get into anywhere. An’ that’s the verra hard bit, is it?”

“And out again?” said Granny.

“Oh, aye,” said Rob firmly. “Mostly we get thrown oot!”

“The very hard part,” said Granny, “will be finding a Hero.”

“That’s no’ hard,” said Rob. “We’re a’ heroes here!” A cheer went up.

“Really?” said Granny. “Are you frightened to go into the Underworld, Rob Anybody?”

“Me? No!” Rob Anybody looked around at his brothers and grinned hugely.

“Spell the word ‘marmalade,’ then.” Granny Weatherwax pushed a pencil across Nanny Ogg’s table and sat back in her chair. “Go on. Right now. And no one is to help you!”

Rob backed away. Granny Weatherwax was the hag o’ all hags—he knew that. There was no telling what she might do to an errant Feegle.

He picked up the pencil nervously, and placed the pointy end against the wood of the table. Other Feegles clustered around, but under Granny’s frown no one dared to even cheer him on.

Rob stared upward, his lips moving and sweat beading his forehead.

“Mmmmaa . . .” he said.

“One,” said Granny.

Rob blinked. “Hey? Who’s countin’?” he protested.

“Me,” said Granny. The kitten You leaped onto her lap and curled up.

“Crivens, ye never said there wuz gonna be countin’!”

“Didn’t I? The rules can change at any time! Two!”

Rob scribbled a passable M, hesitated, and then drew an R just as Granny said “Three!”

“There’s gonna have tae be a ‘A’ in there, Rob,” said Billy Bigchin. He looked up defiantly at Granny and added: “I heard tell the rules can change at any time, right?”

“Certainly. Five!”

Rob scratched in an A and added another M in a burst of creativity.

“Six and a half,” said Granny, calmly stroking the kitten.

“Whut? Ach, crivens,” muttered Rob, and wiped a sweaty hand on his kilt. Then he gripped the pencil again and drew an L. It had a rather wavy foot because the pencil skidded out of his hands and the point broke.

He growled and drew his sword.

“Eight,” said Granny. Wood shavings flew as Rob hacked a rather ragged fresh point out of the pencil.

“Nine.” An A and a D were scribbled by a Rob, whose eyes were now bulging and whose cheeks were red.

“Ten.” Rob stood to attention, looking mostly nervous but slightly proud, beside MRAMLAD. The Feegles cheered, and those nearest to him fanned him with their kilts.

“Eleven!”

“Whut? Crivens!” Rob scurried back to the end of the word and plonked down a small e.

“Twelve!”

“Ye can count all ye want tae, mistress,” said Rob, flinging down the pencil, “but that’s all the marmalade there is!” This got another cheer.

“An heroic effort, Mr. Anybody,” said Granny. “The first thing a hero must conquer is his fear, and when it comes to fightin’, the Nac Mac Feegles don’t know the meanin’ of the word.”

“Aye, true enough,” Rob grunted. “We dinna ken the meanin’ o’ thousands o’ wurds!”

“Can you fight a dragon?”

“Oh, aye, bring it on!” He was still angry about the marmalade.

“Run up a high mountain?”

“Nae problemo!”

“Read a book to the very end to save your big wee hag?”

“Oh, aye.” Rob stopped. He looked cornered. He licked his lips. “How many o’ them pagey things would that be?” he said hoarsely.

“Hundreds,” said Granny.

“Wi’ wurds on both sides?”

“Yes, indeed. In quite small writing!”

Rob crouched. He always did that when he was cornered, the better to come up fighting. The mass of Feegles held their breath.

“I’ll do it!” he announced grimly, clenching his fists.

“Good,” said Granny. “Of course you would. That would be heroic—for you. But someone must go into the Underworld to find the real Summer Lady. That is a Story. It has happened before. It works. And he must do it in fear and terror like a real Hero should, because a lot of the monsters he must overcome are the ones in his head, the ones he brings in with him. It’s time for spring, and winter and its snow is still with us, so you must find him now. You’ve got to find him and set his feet on the path. The Path That Goes Down, Rob Anybody.”

“Aye, we ken that path,” said Rob.

“His name is Roland,” said Granny. “I reckon you should leave as soon as it is light.”

The broomstick barreled through the black blizzard. Sticks usually went where the witches wanted them to go, and Tiffany lay along the broom, tried not to freeze to death, and hoped it was taking her home. She couldn’t see anything except darkness and rushing snow that stung her eyes, so she lay with the hat pulled down to streamline the stick. Even so, snowflakes struck her like stones and piled up on the stick. She had to flail around every few minutes to stop things from icing up.

She did hear the roar of the falls below and felt the sudden depth of air as the stick glided out over the plains and began to sink. She felt cold to the bone.

She couldn’t fight the Wintersmith, not like Annagramma could. Oh, she could plan to do it, and go to bed determined, but when she saw him . . .

. . . iron enough to make a nail. . . . The words hung around in her head as the stick flew on and she remembered the old rhyme she’d heard years ago, when the wandering teachers came to the village. Everyone seemed to know it:

Iron enough to make a nail,

Lime enough to paint a wall,

Water enough to drown a dog,

Sulfur enough to stop the fleas,

Poison enough to kill a cow,

Potash enough to wash a shirt,

Gold enough to buy a bean,

Silver enough to coat a pin,

Lead enough to ballast a bird,

Phosphor enough to light the town,

And on, and on . . .

It was a kind of nonsense, the sort that you never remember being taught but always seem to have known. Girls skipped to it, kids dib-dibbed it to see who was O-U-T out.

And then one day a traveling teacher, who like all the others would teach for eggs, fresh vegetables, and clean used clothing, found he got more to eat by teaching things that were interesting rather than useful. He talked about how some wizards had once, using very skillful magic, worked out exactly what a human being was made of. It was mostly water, but there were iron and brimstone and soot and a pinch of just about everything else, even a tiny amount of gold, but all cooked up together somehow.

It made as much sense to Tiffany as anything else did. But she was certain of this: If you took all that stuff and put it in a big bowl, it wouldn’t turn into a human no matter how much you shouted at it.

You couldn’t make a picture by pouring a lot of paint into a bucket. If you were human, you knew that.

The Wintersmith wasn’t. The Wintersmith didn’t. . . .

He didn’t know how the song ended, either.

The words went around and around her mind as the borrowed broom plunged onward. At one point Dr. Bustle turned up, with his reedy, self-satisfied voice, and gave her a lecture on the Lesser Elements and how, indeed, humans were made up of nearly all of them but also contained a lot of narrativium, the basic element of stories, which you could detect only by watching the way all the others behaved. . . .

You run, you flee. How do you like this, sheep girl? You stole him from me. Is he all that you hoped for? The voice came out of the air right beside her.

“I don’t care who you are,” muttered Tiffany, too cold to think straight. “Go away. . . .”

Hours went by. The air down here was a bit warmer, and the snow not so fierce, but the cold still got through, no matter how much clothing you wore. Tiffany fought to stay awake. Some witches could sleep on a broomstick, but she didn’t dare try in case she dreamed she was falling and woke up to find that it was true but soon wouldn’t be.

But now there were lights below, fitful and yellow. It was probably the inn at Twoshirts, an important navigation point.

Witches never stayed at inns if they could help it, because in some areas that could be dangerous, and in any case most of them inconveniently required you to pay them money. But Mrs. Umbridge, who ran the souvenir shop opposite the inn, had an old barn around the back and was what Miss Tick called FTW, or Friendly To Witches. There was even a witch sign, scratched on the barn wall where no one who wasn’t looking for it would find it: a spoon, a pointy hat, and one big schoolmistressy checkmark.

A pile of straw had never seemed more wonderful, and inside two minutes Tiffany was inside the straw. At the other end of the little barn Mrs. Umbridge’s pair of cows kept the air warm and smelling of fermented grass.

It was a dark sleep. She dreamed of Annagramma taking off the De-Luxe Mask and revealing her face, and then taking her face off to show Granny Weatherwax’s face underneath. . . .

And then: Was it worth a dance, sheep girl? You have taken my power and I am weak. The world will become frost. Was it worth a dance?

She sat up in the pitch-black barn and thought she saw a writhing glow in the air, like a snake. Then she fell back into the darkness and dreamed of the Wintersmith’s eyes.

CHAPTER 11

Even Turquoise

Clang-clonk!

Tiffany sat bolt upright, straw tumbling off her. But it was only the sound of a handle clanging on the side of a metal pail.

Mrs. Umbridge was milking her cows. Pale daylight shone through the cracks in the walls. She looked up when she heard Tiffany.

“Ah, I thought one of my ladies must’ve arrived in the night,” she said. “Want some breakfast, dear?”

“Please!”

Tiffany helped the old woman with her buckets, helped make some butter, patted her very old dog, had beans on toast, and then—

“I think I’ve got something here for you,” said Mrs. Umbridge, heading for the little counter that was Twoshirts’s entire post office. “Now where did I—oh yes. . . .”

She handed Tiffany a small bundle of letters and a flat parcel, all held together by an elastic band and covered with dog hairs. She went on talking, but Tiffany barely noticed. There was something about how the carter had broken his leg, poor man, or maybe it was his horse that had broken a leg, poor creature, and one of the blizzards had brought down a lot of trees onto the track, and then the snow had set in so cruelly, dear, that not even a man on foot could get through, and so what with one thing and another the mail to and from the Chalk had been delayed and really there was hardly any of it anyway—

All this was a kind of background buzzing to Tiffany, because the letters were all addressed to her—three from Roland and one from her mother—and so was the parcel. It had a businesslike air, and when opened revealed a sleek black box, which itself opened to reveal—

Tiffany had never seen a box of watercolor paints before. She hadn’t known that so many colors existed in one place.

“Oh, a paint box,” said Mrs. Umbridge, looking over her shoulder. “That’s nice. I had one when I was a girl. Ah, and it’s got turquoise in it. That’s very expensive, turquoise. That’s from your young man, is it?” she added, because old women like to know everything, or a little bit more.

Tiffany cleared her throat. In her letters she’d kept right off the whole painful subject of painting. He must have thought she’d like to try it.

The colors in her hands gleamed like a trapped rainbow.

“It’s a lovely morning,” she said, “and I think I’d better go home. . . .”

On the chilly river just above the thundering Lancre Falls, a tree trunk was moored. Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg stood on a huge, water-worn stone in the middle of the torrent and watched it.

The log was covered in Feegles. They all looked cheerful. Admittedly, certain death awaited them, but it did not involve—and this is important—having to spell anything.

“You know, no man has ever gone over these falls and lived to tell the tale,” said Nanny.

“Mr. Parkinson did,” said Granny. “Don’t you remember? Three years ago?”

“Ah, yes, he lived, certainly, but he was left with a very bad stutter,” said Nanny Ogg.

“But he wrote it down,” said Granny. “He called it ‘My Fall Over the Falls.’ It was quite interestin’.”

“No one actually told a tale,” said Nanny. “That is my point.”

“Aye, weel, we’re as light as wee feathers,” said Big Yan. “An’ the wind blowin’ through the kilt keeps a man well aloft, ye ken.”

“I’m sure that’s a sight to see,” said Nanny Ogg.

“Are ye all ready?” said Rob Anybody. “Fine! Would ye be so good as to untie yon rope, Mrs. Ogg?”

Nanny Ogg undid the knot and gave the log a shove with her foot. It drifted a little way and then got caught by the current.

“‘Row, Row, Row Yer Boat’?” Daft Wullie suggested.

“Whut aboot it?” said Rob Anybody as the log began to speed up.

“Why don’t we all sing it?” said Daft Wullie. The walls of the canyon were closing in fast now.

“Okay,” said Rob. “After all, it is a pleasin’ naut-ickal ditty. And Wullie, ye’re tae keep yon cheese away fra’ me. I dinna like the way it’s lookin’ at me.”

“It hasna got any eyes, Rob,” said Wullie meekly, holding on to Horace.

“Aye, that’s whut I mean,” said Rob sourly.

“Horace didna mean tae try an’ eat ye, Rob,” said Daft Wullie meekly. “An’ ye wuz sae nice an’ clean when he spat ye oot.”

“An’ hoo come ye ken whut name a cheese has?” Rob demanded, as white water began to splash over the log.

“He told me, Rob.”

“Aye?” said Rob, and shrugged. “Oh, okay. I wouldna argue wi’ a cheese.”

Bits of ice were bobbing on the river. Nanny Ogg pointed them out to Granny Weatherwax.

“All this snow is making the ice rivers move again,” she said.

“I know.”

“I hope you can trust the stories, Esme,” said Nanny.

“They are ancient stories. They have a life of their own. They long to be repeated. Summer rescued from a cave? Very old,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“The Wintersmith will chase our girl, though.”

Granny watched the Feegles’ log drift around the bend.

“Yes, he will,” she said. “And, you know, I almost feel sorry for him.”

And so the Feegles sailed home. Apart from Billy Bigchin they couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but that minor problem was dwarfed by the major problem, which was that they didn’t bother with the idea of singing at the same pitch, or speed, or even with the same words. Also, minor fights soon broke out, as always happened even when Feegles were having fun, and so the sound that echoed among the rocks as the log sped toward the lip of the waterfall went something like:

“Rowaarghgently boat ouchgentlydoon boat boat boatiddley boat stream boatlymerrily boatarrgh . . . CRIVENnnnnns!”

And with its cargo of Feegles, the log tipped and disappeared, along with the accompanying song, into the mists.

Tiffany flew over the long whaleback of the Chalk. It was a white whale now, but the snow didn’t look too deep here. The bitter winds that blew the snow onto the downs also blew it away. There were no trees and few walls to make it drift.

As she drew nearer to home, she looked down onto the lower, sheltered fields. The lambing pens were already being set up. There was a lot of snow for this time of year—and whose fault was that?—but the ewes were on their own timetable, snow or not. Shepherds knew how bitter the weather could be at lambing; winter never gave in without a fight.

She landed in the farmyard and said a few words to the broomstick. It wasn’t hers, after all. It rose again and shot off back to the mountains. A stick can always find its way home, if you know the trick.

There were reunions, lots of laughter, a few tears, a general claiming that she had grown like a beanstalk and was already as tall as her mother and all the other things that get said at a time like this.

Apart from the tiny Cornucopia in her pocket, she’d left everything behind—her diary, her clothes, everything. It didn’t matter. She hadn’t run away, she’d run to, and here she was, waiting for herself. She could feel her own ground under her boots again.

She hung the pointy hat behind the door and went and helped the men setting up the pens.

It was a good day. A bit of sun had managed to leak through the murk. Against the whiteness of the snow all colors seemed bright, as if the fact that they were here gave them some special brilliance. Old harnesses on the stable wall gleamed like silver; even the browns and grays that might once have appeared so drab seemed, now, to have a life of their own.

She got out the box of paints and some precious paper and tried to paint what she was seeing, and there was a kind of magic there, too. It was all about light and dark. If you could get down on paper the shadow and the shine, the shape that any creature left in the world, then you could get the thing itself.

She’d only ever drawn with colored chalks before. Paint was so much better.

It was a good day. It was a day just for her. She could feel bits of herself opening up and coming out of hiding again. Tomorrow there would be the chores, and people very nervously coming up to the farm for the help of a witch. If the pain was strong enough, no one worried that the witch who was making it go away was someone you last remembered being two years old and running around with only her undershirt on.

Tomorrow . . . might become anything. But today the winter world was full of color.

CHAPTER 12

The Pike

There was talk of strangeness all across the plains. There was the rowing boat belonging to the old man who lived in a shack just below the waterfall. It rowed itself away so fast, people said, that it skipped over the water like a dragonfly—but there was no one inside it. It was found tied up at Twoshirts, where the river ran under the coach road. But then the overnight mail coach that had been waiting outside the inn ran away by itself, with all the mailbags left behind. The coachman borrowed a horse to give chase and found the coach in the shadow of the Chalk with all the doors open and one horse missing.

The horse was returned a couple of days later by a well-dressed young man who said he’d found it wandering. Surprisingly, then, it looked well fed and groomed.

Very, very thick would be the best way to describe the walls of the castle. There were no guards at night, because they locked up at eight o’clock and went home. Instead, there was Old Robbins, who’d once been a guard and was now officially the night watchman, but everyone knew he fell asleep in front of the fire by nine. He had an old trumpet that he was supposed to blow if there was an attack, although no one was entirely sure what this would achieve.

Roland slept in the Heron Tower because it was up a long flight of steps that his aunts didn’t much like climbing. It also had very, very thick walls, and this is just as well, because at eleven o’clock someone stuck a trumpet against his ear and blew on it hard.

He leaped out of bed, got caught in the eiderdown, slipped on a mat that covered the freezing stone floor, banged his head on a cupboard, and managed to light a candle with the third desperately struck match.

On the little table by his bed was a pair of huge bellows with Old Robbins’s trumpet stuck in the business end. The room was empty, except for the shadows.

“I’ve got a sword, you know,” he said. “And I know how to use it!”

“Ach, ye’re deid already,” said a voice from the ceiling. “Chopped tae tiny wee pieces in yer bed while ye snored like a hog. Only jokin’, ye ken. None of us mean ye any harm.” There was some hurried whispering in the darkness of the rafters, and then the voice continued: “Wee correction there, most o’ us dinna mean ye any harm. But dinna fash yersel’ aboot Big Yan, he disna like anybody verra much.”

“Who are you?”

“Aye, there ye go again, gettin’ it all wrong,” said the voice conversationally. “I’m up here an’ heavily armed, ye ken, while ye’re doon there in yer wee nightie, makin’ a bonny target, an’ ye think ye are the one who asks the questions. So ye know how to fight, do ye?”

“Yes!”

“So you’ll fight monsters tae save the big wee hag? Will ye?”

“The big wee hag?”

“That’s Tiffany tae ye.”

“You mean Tiffany Aching? What’s happened to her?”

“You’ll be ready for when she needs ye?”

“Yes! Of course! Who are you?”

“And ye know how tae fight?”

“I’ve read the Manual of Swordsmanship all the way through!”

After a few seconds the voice from the high shadows said: “Ah, I think I’ve put ma finger on a wee flaw in this plan. . . .”

There was an armory across the castle courtyard. It wasn’t much of one. There was a suit of armor made of various nonmatching pieces, a few swords, a battle-axe that no one had ever been able to lift, and a chain-mail suit that appeared to have been attacked by extremely strong moths. And there were some wooden dummies on big springs for sword practice. Right now the Feegles were watching Roland attack one with a great deal of enthusiasm.

“Ach weel,” said Big Yan despondently as Roland leaped about. “If he never meets anythin’ other than bits o’ wood that dinna fight back, he might be okay.”

“He’s willin’,” Rob Anybody pointed out as Roland put his foot against the dummy and tried to tug the sword point out of it.

“Oh, aye.” Big Yan looked glum.

“He’s got a bonny action, ye must admit,” said Rob.

Roland succeeded in pulling the sword out of the dummy, which sprang back on its ancient spring and hit him on the head.

Blinking a little, the boy looked down at the Feegles. He remembered them from the time he was rescued from the Queen of the Elves. No one who met the Nac Mac Feegles ever forgot them, even if they tried hard. But it was all vague. He’d been near crazy part of the time, and unconscious, and had seen so many strange things that it was hard to know what was real and what wasn’t.

Now he knew: They were real. Who’d make up a thing like this? Okay, one of them was a cheese that rolled around of its own accord, but nobody was perfect.

“What am I going to have to do, Mr. Anybody?” he asked.

Rob Anybody had been worried about this bit. Words like “Underworld” can give people the wrong idea.

“Ye must rescue a . . . lady,” he said. “Not the big wee hag. Another . . . lady. We can take ye to the place where she bides. It’s like . . . undergroound, ye ken. She’s like . . . sleepin’. An’ all ye ha’ tae do is bring her up tae the surface, kind o’ thing.”

“Oh, you mean like Orpheo rescuing Euniphon from the Underworld?” said Roland.

Rob Anybody just stared.

“It’s a myth from Ephebe,” Roland went on. “It’s supposed to be a love story, but it’s really a metaphor for the annual return of summer. There’s a lot of versions of that story.”

They still stared. Feegles have very worrying stares. They’re even worse than chickens in that respect.*

“A metaphor is a kind o’ lie to help people understand what’s true,” said Billy Bigchin, but this didn’t help much.

“And he won her freedom by playing beautiful music,” Roland added. “I think he played a lute. Or maybe it was a lyre.”

“Ach, weel, that’ll suit us fine,” said Daft Wullie. “We’re experts at lootin’ an’ then lyin’ aboot it.”

“They’re musical instruments,” said Billy Bigchin. He looked up at Roland. “Can ye play one, mister?”

“My aunts have a piano,” said Roland doubtfully. “But I’ll get into real trouble if anything happens to it. They’ll tear the walls down.”

“Swords it is, then,” said Rob Anybody reluctantly. “Ha’ ye never fought against a real person, mister?”

“No. I wanted to practice with the guards, but my aunts won’t let them.”

“But ye have used a sword before?”

Roland looked embarrassed. “Not lately. Not as such. Er . . . not at all, in fact. My aunts say—”

“So how d’ye practice?” asked Rob in horror.

“Well, there’s a big mirror in my room, you see, and I can practice . . . the . . . actual . . .” Roland began, stopping when he saw their expressions. “Sorry,” he added. “I don’t think I’m the type you’re looking for. . . .”

“Oh, I wouldna say that,” said Rob Anybody wearily. “Accordin’ tae the hag o’ hags, ye’re just the laddie. Ye just need someone tae fight with. . . .”

Big Yan, always suspicious, looked at his brother and followed his gaze to the battered suit of armor.

“Oh aye?” he growled. “Weel, Ah’m no’ gonna be a knee!”

The next day was a good day, right up to the point where it became a tight little bowl of terror.

Tiffany got up early and lit the fires. When her mother came down, she was scrubbing the kitchen floor, very hard.

“Er . . . aren’t you supposed to do that sort of thing by magic, dear?” said her mother, who’d never really got the hang of what witchcraft was all about.

“No, Mum, I’m supposed not to,” said Tiffany, still scrubbing.

“But can’t you just wave your hand and make all the dirt fly away, then?”

“The trouble is getting the magic to understand what dirt is,” said Tiffany, scrubbing hard at a stain. “I heard of a witch over in Escrow who got it wrong and ended up losing the entire floor and her sandals and nearly a toe.”

Mrs. Aching backed away. “I thought you just had to wave your hands about,” she mumbled nervously.

“That works,” said Tiffany, “but only if you wave them about on the floor with a scrubbing brush.”

She finished the floor. She cleaned under the sink. She opened all the cupboards, cleaned them out, and put everything back. She cleaned the table, and then turned it over and cleaned it underneath. She even washed the bottoms of the legs, where they touched the floor. It was then that Mrs. Aching went and found things to do somewhere, because this was clearly not just about good housekeeping.

It wasn’t. As Granny Weatherwax once said, if you wanted to walk around with your head in the air, then you needed to have both feet on the ground. Scrubbing floors, cutting wood, washing clothes, making cheese—these things grounded you, taught you what was real. You could set a small part of your mind to them, giving your thoughts time to line up and settle down.

Was she safe here from the Wintersmith? Was here safe from the Wintersmith?

Sooner or later she’d have to face him again— a snowman who thought he was human and had the power of the avalanche. Magic could only slow him down for a while, and make him angry. No ordinary weapon would work, and she didn’t have many extraordinary ones.

Annagramma had gone for him in a rage! Tiffany wished she could be that angry. She’d have to go back and thank her, too. Annagramma was going to be all right, at least. People had seen her turn into a screaming, green-skinned monster. They could respect a witch like that. Once you got respect, you’d got everything.

She’d have to try to see Roland, too. She didn’t know what to say. That was kind of all right, because he wouldn’t know what to say, either. They could spend whole afternoons together, not knowing what to say. He was probably in the castle right now. As she cleaned under the seat of a chair, she wondered what he was doing.

There was a hammering on the door of the armory. That was the aunts for you. The door was four thicknesses of oak and iron, but they banged on it anyway.

“We will not tolerate this waywardness!” said Aunt Danuta. There was a crash from the other side of the door. “Are you fighting in there?”

“No, I’m writing a flute sonata!” shouted Roland. Something heavy hit the door.

Aunt Danuta pulled herself together. She looked like Miss Tick in general outline, but with the eyes of the perpetually offended and the mouth of an instant complainer.

“If you don’t do as you’re told, I will tell your father—” she began, and stopped when the door was yanked open.

Roland had a cut on his arm, his face was red, sweat was dripping off his chin, and he was panting. He raised his sword in a trembling hand. Behind him, on the other side of the gray room, was a suit of very battered armor. It turned its helmet to look at the aunts. This made a squeaking noise.

“If you dare disturb my father,” Roland said as they stared at it, “I shall tell him about the money that’s being taken out of the big chest in the strong room. Don’t lie!”

For a moment—a blink would have missed it—Aunt Danuta’s face had guilt written on it, but it vanished with speed. “How dare you! Your dear mother—”

“Is dead!” shouted Roland, and slammed the door.

The helmet’s visor was pushed up and half a dozen Feegles peered out.

“Crivens, what a pair of ol’ corbies,” said Big Yan.

“My aunts,” said Roland darkly. “What’s a corbie?”

“It’s like a big ol’ crow that hangs around waitin’ for someone tae die,” said Billy Bigchin.

“Ah, then you’ve met them before,” said Roland with a glint in his eye. “Let’s have another go, shall we? I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

There was a grumble of protests from every part of the armor, but Rob Anybody shouted it down.

“All right! We’ll gi’e the lad one more chance,” he said. “Get tae yer posts!”

There were clangs and much swearing as the Feegles climbed around inside the suit, but after a few seconds the armor seemed to pull itself together. It picked up a sword and lumbered toward Roland, who could hear the muffled orders coming from inside.

The sword swung, but in one quick movement he deflected it, stepped sideways, swung his own sword in a blur, and chopped the suit in half with a clang that echoed around the castle.

The top part hit the wall. The bottom half just rocked, still standing.

After a few seconds, a lot of small heads slowly rose above the iron trousers.

“Was that supposed to happen?” Roland said. “Is everyone, er . . . whole?”

A quick count revealed that there were indeed no half Feegles, although there was a lot of bruising and Daft Wullie had lost his spog. A lot of Feegles were walking in circles and banging at their ears with their hands, though. It had been a very loud clang.

“No’ a bad effort, that time,” said Rob Anybody vaguely. “Ye seem tae be gettin’ the knowin’ o’ the fightin’.”

“It definitely seemed better, didn’t it,” said Roland, looking proud. “Shall I have another go?”

“No! I mean . . . no,” said Rob. “No, I reckon that’s enough for today, eh?”

Roland glanced up at the little barred window, high in the wall. “Yes, I’d better go and see my father,” he said, and the glow in his face faded. “It’s well past lunchtime. If I don’t see him every day, he forgets who I am.”

When the boy had gone, the Feegles looked at one another.

“That lad is no’ havin’ an easy life right noo,” said Rob Anybody.

“You’ve got tae admit he’s gettin’ better,” said Billy Bigchin.

“Oh, aye, I’ll warrant he’s no’ such a bunty as I thought, but that sword is far tae heavy for him, an’ it’ll take weeks tae get him any guid,” said Big Yan. “Ha’ we got weeks, Rob?”

Rob Anybody shrugged. “Who can tell?” he said. “He’s gonna be the Hero, come whut may. The big wee hag’ll meet the Wintersmith soon enough. She canna fight that. It’s like the hag o’ hags sez: Ye canna fight a story as old as that. It’ll find a way.” He cupped his hands. “C’mon lads, away tae the mound. We’ll come back tonight. Mebbe ye can’t make a Hero all in one go.”

Tiffany’s little brother was old enough to want to be considered older still, which is a dangerous ambition on a busy working farm, where there are big-hoofed horses and sheep dips and a hundred and one other places where a small person might not be noticed until it’s too late. But most of all he liked water. When you couldn’t find him, he was usually down by the river, fishing. He loved the river, which was a bit surprising since a huge green monster had once leaped out of it to eat him. However, Tiffany had hit it in the mouth with an iron frying pan. Since he’d been eating sweets at the time, Wentworth’s only comment afterward had been, “Tiffy hit fish go bang.” But he did seem to be growing up as a skilled angler. He was fishing this afternoon. He’d found the knack of knowing where the monsters were. The really big pike lurked in the deep, black holes, thinking slow hungry thoughts until Wentworth’s silver lure dropped almost into their mouths.

When Tiffany went to call him in, she met him staggering up the path, much disheveled, and carrying a fish that looked as if it weighed at least half as much as he did.

“It’s the big one!” he shouted as soon as he saw her. “Abe reckoned it was tucked in under the fallen willow, you know? He said they’ll snap at anything this time of year! It pulled me over, but I held on! Must weigh at least thirty pounds!”

About twenty, thought Tiffany, but fish are always much heavier to the man who catches them.

“Well done. But come on in, it’s going to freeze,” she said.

“Can I have it for supper? It took ages to get in the net! It’s at least thirty-five pounds!” Wentworth said, struggling under the load. Tiffany knew better than to offer to carry it. That would be an insult.

“No, it has to be cleaned and soaked for a day, and Mum’s done stew for tonight. But I’ll cook it for you tomorrow with ginger sauce.”

“And there’ll be enough for everyone,” said Wentworth happily, “because it weighs at least forty pounds!”

“Easily,” Tiffany agreed.

And that night, after the fish had been duly admired by everyone and found to weigh twenty-three pounds with Tiffany’s hand on the scales helping it along a bit, she went into the scullery and cleaned the fish, which was a nice way of talking about pulling out or cutting off everything that you shouldn’t eat, which if Tiffany had her way meant the whole fish. She didn’t much like pike, but a witch should never turn up her nose at food, especially free food, and at least a good sauce would stop it tasting of pike.

Then, as she was tipping the innards into the pig bucket, she saw the glint of silver. Well, you couldn’t exactly blame Wentworth for being too excited to extract the lure.

She reached down and pulled out, covered with slime and scales but very recognizably itself, the silver horse.

There should have been a roll of thunder. There was just Wentworth, in the next room, telling for the tenth time about the heroic capture of the monster fish. There should have been a rush of wind. Barely a draft disturbed the candles.

But he knew she’d touched it. She felt his shock.

She went to the door. As she opened it, a few snowflakes fell, but as if suddenly happy to have an audience, more began to pour down until—with no sound but a hiss—the night turned white. She held out her hand to catch some flakes and looked at them very closely. Little icy Tiffanys melted away.

Oh, yes. He had found her.

Her mind went cold, but crystal wheels of thought spun fast.

She could take a horse? . . . No, she’d not get far on a night like this. She should’ve kept that broomstick!

She shouldn’t have danced.

There was nowhere to run to. She’d have to face him again, and face him here, and stop him dead. In the mountains, with their black forests, endless winter was hard to imagine. It was easier here, and because it was easier it was worse, because he was bringing winter into her heart. She could feel it growing colder.

But the snow was inches deep already, in this short time. She was a shepherd’s daughter before she was a witch, and at this time, in this place, there were more immediate things to do.

She went into the golden warmth and light of the kitchen and said: “Dad, we must see to the flock.”

CHAPTER 13

The Crown of Ice

That was then. This is now.

“Ach, crivens,” moaned Wee Dangerous Spike, on the roof of the cart shed.

The fire went out. The snow that had filled the sky began to thin. Wee Dangerous Spike heard a scream high overhead and knew exactly what to do. He raised his arms in the air and shut his eyes just as the buzzard swooped out of the white sky and snatched him up.

He liked this bit. When he opened his eyes, the world was swinging beneath him and a voice nearby said, “Get up here quick, laddie!”

He grabbed the thin leather harness above him and pulled, and the talons gently released their grip. Then, hand over hand in the wind of the flight, he dragged himself across the bird’s feathers until he could grab the belt of Hamish the aviator.

“Rob says ye’re old enough tae come doon intae the Underworld,” said Hamish over his shoulder. “Rob’s gone tae fetch the Hero. Ye are a lucky wee laddie!”

The bird banked.

Below, the snow . . . fled. There was no more melting, it simply drew back from the lambing pen like the tide going out or a deep breath being taken, with no more sound than a sigh.

Morag skimmed over the lambing field, where men were looking around in puzzlement. “One deid ship and a dozen deid lambs,” said Hamish, “but no big wee hag! He’s taken her.”

“Where to?”

Hamish steered Morag up in a big wide circle. Around the farm the snow had stopped falling. But up on the downs it was still dropping like hammers.

And then it took a shape.

“Up there,” he said.

All right, I’m alive. I’m pretty sure about that.

Yes.

And I can feel the cold all around me, but I don’t feel cold, which would be pretty hard to explain to anyone else.

And I can’t move. Not at all.

White all around me. And inside my head, all white.

Who am I?

I can remember the name Tiffany. I hope that was me.

White all around me. That happened before. It was a kind of dream or memory or something else I don’t have a word for. And all around me, whiteness falling. And building up around me, and lifting me up. It was . . . the chalk lands being built, silently, under ancient seas.

That’s what my name means.

It means Land Under Wave.

And, like a wave, color came flooding back into her mind. It was mostly the redness of rage.

How dare he!

To kill the lambs!

Granny Aching wouldn’t have allowed that. She never lost a lamb. She could bring them back to life.

I should never have left here in the first place, Tiffany thought. Perhaps I should have stayed and tried to learn things by myself. But if I hadn’t gone, would I still be me? Know what I know? Would I have been as strong as my grandmother, or would I just be a cackler? Well, I’ll be strong now.

When the killing weather was blind nature, you could only cuss; but if it was walking about on two legs . . . then it was war. And there would be a reckoning!

She tried to move, and now the whiteness gave way. It felt like hard snow, but it wasn’t cold to her touch; it fell away, leaving a hole.

A smooth, slightly transparent floor stretched away in front of her. There were big pillars rising up to a ceiling that was hidden by some sort of fog.

There were walls made of the same stuff as the floor. They looked like ice—she could even see little bubbles inside them—but were no more than cool when she touched them.

It was a very large room. There was no furniture of any sort. It was just the sort of room a king would build to say “Look, I can afford to waste all this space!”

Her footsteps echoed as she explored. No, not even a chair. And how comfortable would it be if she found one?

She did, eventually, find a staircase that went up (unless, of course, you started at the top). It led to another hall that at least had furniture. They were the sort of couches that rich ladies were supposed to lounge on, looking tired but beautiful. Oh, and there were urns, quite big urns, and statues, too, all in the same warm ice. The statues showed athletes and gods, very much like the pictures in Chaffinch’s Mythology, doing ancient things like hurling javelins or killing huge snakes with their bare hands. They didn’t have a stitch of clothing between them, but all the men wore fig leaves, which Tiffany, in a spirit of inquiry, found would not come off.

And there was a fire. The first strange thing about it was that the logs were also of the same ice. The other strange thing was that the flames were blue—and cold.

This level had tall pointed windows, but they began a long way from the floor and showed nothing but the sky, where the pale sun was a ghost among the clouds.

Another staircase, very grand this time, led up to yet another floor with more statues and couches and urns. Who could live in a place like this? Someone who didn’t need to eat or sleep, that’s who. Someone who didn’t need to be comfortable.

“Wintersmith!”

Her voice bounced from wall to wall, sending back “ITH . . . Ith . . . ith . . .” until it died away.

Another staircase, then, and this time there was something new. On a plinth, where there might have been a statue, was a crown. It floated in the air a few feet above the base, turning gently, and glittered with frost. A little bit farther on was another statue, smaller than most, but around this one, blue and green and gold lights danced and shimmered.

They looked just like the Hublights that could sometimes be seen in the depths of winter floating over the mountains at the center of the world. Some people thought they were alive.

The statue was the same height as Tiffany.

“Wintersmith!” There was still no reply. A nice palace with no kitchen, no bed. . . . He didn’t need to eat or sleep, so who was it for?

She knew the answer already: me.

She reached out to touch the dancing lights, and they swarmed up her arm and spread across her body, making a dress that glittered like moonlight on snowfields. She was shocked, then angry. Then she wished she had a mirror, felt guilty about that, and went back to being angry again, and resolved that if by chance she did find a mirror, the only reason she’d look in it would be to check how angry she was.

After searching for a while, she found a mirror, which was nothing more than a wall of ice of such a dark green that it was almost black.

She did look angry. And immensely, beautifully sparkly. There were little glints of gold on the blue and green, just like there were in the sky on wintry nights.

“Wintersmith!”

He must be watching her. He could be anywhere.

“All right! I’m here! You know that!”

“Yes. I do,” said the Wintersmith behind her.

Tiffany spun around and slapped him across the face, then slapped him again with her other hand.

It was like hitting rock. He was learning very quickly now.

“That’s for the lambs,” she said, trying to shake some life back into her fingers. “How dare you! You didn’t have to!”

He looked much more human. Either he was wearing real clothes or he had worked hard on making them look real. He’d actually managed to look . . . well, handsome. Not cold anymore, just . . . cool.

He’s nothing but a snowman, her Second Thoughts protested. Remember that. He’s just too smart to have coal for eyes or a carrot for a nose.

“Ouch,” said the Wintersmith, as if he’d just remembered to say it.

“I demand that you let me go!” Tiffany snapped. “Right now!” That’s right, her Second Thoughts said. You want him to end up cowering behind the saucepans on top of the kitchen dresser. As it were . . .

“At this moment,” said the Wintersmith very calmly, “I am a gale wrecking ships a thousand miles away. I am freezing water pipes in a snowbound town. I am freezing the sweat on a dying man, lost in a terrible blizzard. I creep silently under doors. I hang from gutters. I stroke the fur of the sleeping bear, deep in her cave, and course in the blood of the fishes under the ice.”

“I don’t care!” said Tiffany. “I don’t want to be here! And you shouldn’t be here either!”

“Child, will you walk with me?” said the Wintersmith. “I will not harm you. You are safe here.”

“What from?” said Tiffany, and then, because too much time around Miss Tick does something to your conversation, even in times of stress, she changed this to: “From what?”

“Death,” said the Wintersmith. “Here you will never die.”

At the back of the Feegles’ chalk pit, more chalk had been carved out of the wall to make a tunnel about five feet high and perhaps as long.

In front of it stood Roland de Chumsfanleigh (it wasn’t his fault). His ancestors had been knights, and they had come to own the Chalk by killing the kings who thought they did. Swords, that’s what it had all been about. Swords and cutting off heads. That was how you got land in the old days, and then the rules were changed so that you didn’t need a sword to own land anymore, you just needed the right piece of paper. But his ancestors had still hung on to their swords, just in case people thought that the whole thing with the bits of paper was unfair, it being a fact that you can’t please everybody.

He’d always wanted to be good with a sword, and it had come as a shock to find they were so heavy. He was great at air sword. In front of a mirror he could fence against his reflection and win nearly all the time. Real swords didn’t allow that. You tried to swing them and they ended up swinging you. He’d realized that maybe he was more cut out for bits of paper. Besides, he needed glasses, which could be a bit tricky under a helmet, especially if someone was hitting you with a sword.

He wore a helmet now, and held a sword that was—although he wouldn’t admit it—far too heavy for him. He was also wearing a suit of chain mail that made it very hard to walk. The Feegles had done their best to make it fit, but the crotch hung down to his knees and flapped amusingly when he moved.

I’m not a hero, he thought. I’ve got a sword, which I need two hands to lift, and I’ve got a shield that is also really heavy, and I’ve got a horse with curtains around it that I’ve had to leave at home (and my aunts will go mad when they go into the drawing room), but inside I’m a kid who would quite like to know where the privy is. . . .

But she rescued me from the Queen of the Elves. If she hadn’t, I’d still be a stupid kid instead of . . . um . . . a young man hoping he isn’t too stupid.

The Nac Mac Feegles had exploded back into his room, fighting their way through the storm that had arrived overnight, and now, they said, it was time for him to be a Hero for Tiffany. . . . Well, he would be. He was sure of that. Fairly sure. But right now the scenery wasn’t what he’d expected.

“You know, this doesn’t look like the entrance to the Underworld,” he said.

“Ach, any cave can be the way in,” said Rob Anybody, who was sitting on Roland’s helmet. “But ye must ha’ the knowin’ o’ the crawstep. Okay, Big Yan, ye go first. . . .”

Big Yan strutted up to the chalk hole. He stuck out his arms behind him, bent at the elbows. He leaned backward, sticking out one leg to keep his balance. Then he wiggled the foot in the air a few times, leaned forward, and vanished as soon as the foot touched the ground.

Rob Anybody banged on Roland’s helmet with his fist.

“Okay, big Hero,” he shouted. “Off ye go!”

There was no way out. Tiffany didn’t even know if there was a way in.

“If you were the Summer Lady, then we would dance,” said the Wintersmith. “But I know now that you are not her, even though you seem to be. But for the sake of you I am now human, and I must have company.”

Tiffany’s racing mind showed her pictures: the sprouting acorn, the fertile feet, the Cornucopia. I’m just enough of a goddess to fool a few floorboards and an acorn and a handful of seeds, she thought. I’m just like him. Iron enough to make a nail doesn’t make a snowman human, and a couple of oak leaves don’t make me a goddess.

“Come,” said the Wintersmith, “let me show you my world. Our world.”

When Roland opened his eyes, all he could see were shadows. Not shadows of things—just shadows, drifting like cobwebs.

“I was expecting somewhere . . . hotter,” he said, trying to keep the relief out of his voice. Around him, Feegles popped out of nowhere.

“Ah, you’re thinkin’ o’ hells,” said Rob Anybody. “They tends to be on the toasty side, it’s true. Underworlds are more o’ the gloomy sort. It’s where folks end up when they’s lost, ye ken.”

“What? You mean if it’s a dark night and you take the wrong turning—”

“Ach, no! Like mebbe deid when they shouldn’t be an’ there’s nae place for ’em tae go, or they fall doon a gap in the worlds an’ dinna ken the way. Some o’ them don’t even ken where they are, poor souls. There’s an awful lot o’ that kind o’ thing. There’s no’ a lot o’ laughs in a underworld. This one used tae be called Limbo, ye ken, ’cuz the door was verra low. Looks like it’s gone way downhill since we wuz last here.” He raised his voice. “An’ a big hand, lads, for young Wee Dangerous Spike, oot wi’ us for the first time!” There was a ragged cheer, and Wee Dangerous Spike waved his sword.

Roland pushed his way through the shadows, which actually offered some resistance. The very air was gray down here. Sometimes he heard groans, or someone coughing in the distance . . . and then there were footsteps, shuffling toward him.

He drew his sword and peered through the gloom.

Shadows parted and a very old woman in tattered, threadbare clothes shuffled past, dragging a large cardboard box behind her. It bounced awkwardly as she tugged at it. She didn’t even glance at Roland.

He lowered the sword.

“I thought there’d be monsters,” he said as the old woman disappeared into the gloom.

“Aye,” said Rob Anybody grimly. “There are. Think o’ somethin’ solid, will ye?”

“Something solid?!”

“I’m nae jokin’! Think o’ a nice big mountain, or a hammer! Whatever ye do, dinna wish or regret or hope!”

Roland closed his eyes and then reached up to touch them.

“I can still see! But my eyes are shut!”

“Aye! And ye’ll see more wi’ yer een shut. Look aroond ye, if ye dare!”

Roland, his eyes shut, took a few steps forward and looked around. Nothing seemed to have changed. Perhaps things were slightly more gloomy. And then he saw it—a flash of bright orange, a line in the dark that came and went.

“What was that?” he asked.

“We dinna ken whut they call themselves. We call ’em bogles,” said Rob.

“They are flashes of light?”

“Ach, that one was a long way away,” said Rob. “If ye want tae see one close up, it’s standin’ right beside ye. . . .”

Roland spun around.

“Ah, ye see, ye made a classic mistake right there,” said Rob, conversationally. “Ye opened yer eyes!”

Roland shut his eyes. The bogle was standing six inches away from him.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t scream. Hundreds of Feegles were watching him, he knew.

At first he thought: It’s a skeleton. When it flashed again, it looked like a bird, a tall bird like a heron. Then it was a stick figure, like a kid would draw. Over and over again it scribbled itself against the darkness in thin, burning lines.

It scribbled itself a mouth and leaned forward for a moment, showing hundreds of needle teeth. Then it vanished.

There was a murmur from the Feegles.

“Aye, ye done weel,” said Rob Anybody. “Ye stared it in the mouth and ye didna take so much as a step back.”

“Mr. Anybody, I was too scared to run,” Roland muttered.

Rob Anybody leaned down until he was level with the boy’s ear.

“Aye,” he whispered, “I ken that well enough! There be a lot o’ men who became heroes ’cuz they wuz too scared tae run! But ye didna yell nor cack yer kecks, an’ that’s good. There’ll be more o’ them as we go on. Dinna let them intae yer heid! Keep ’em oot!”

“Why, what do they—? No, don’t tell me!” said Roland.

He walked on through the shadows, blinking so he wouldn’t miss anything. The old woman had gone, but the gloom began to fill up with people. Mostly they stood by themselves, or sat on chairs. Some wandered around quietly. They passed a man in ancient clothing who was staring at his own hand as though he were seeing it for the first time.

There was a woman swaying gently and singing a nonsense song in a quiet, little-girl voice. She gave Roland a strange, mad smile as he walked past. Right behind her stood a bogle.

“All right,” said Roland grimly. “Now tell me what they do.”

“They eat yer memories,” said Rob Anybody. “Yer thoughts is real tae them. Wishes an’ hope are like food! They’re vermin, really. This is whut happens when these places are no’ looked after.”

“And how can I kill them?”

“Oh, that was a verra nasty voice ye just used. Hark at the big wee hero! Dinna bother aboot them, laddie. They won’t attack ye yet, and we’ve got a job tae do.”

“I hate this place!”

“Aye, hells is a lot more lively,” said Rob Anybody. “Slow doon now—we’re at the river.”

A river ran through the Underworld. It was as dark as the soil, and lapped at its banks in a slow, oily way.

“Ah, I think I’ve heard of this,” said Roland. “There’s a ferryman, right?”

YES.

He was there, suddenly, standing in a long, low boat. He was all in black, of course in black, with a deep hood that entirely concealed his face and gave a definite feeling that this was just as well.

“Hi, pal,” said Rob Anybody cheerfully. “How’re ye doin’?”

OH NO, NOT YOU PEOPLE AGAIN, said the dark figure in a voice that was not so much heard as felt. I THOUGHT YOU WERE BANNED.

“Just a wee misunderstandin’, ye ken,” said Rob, sliding down Roland’s armor. “Ye have tae let us in, ’cuz we’s deid already.”

The figure extended an arm. The black robe fell away, and what pointed at Roland looked, to him, very much like a bony finger.

BUT HE MUST PAY THE FERRYMAN, he said accusingly, in a voice of crypts and graveyards.

“Not until I’m on the other side,” Roland said firmly.

“Oh, c’mon!” said Daft Wullie to the ferryman. “Ye can see he’s a Hero! If ye canna trust a Hero, who can ye trust?”

The cowl regarded Roland for what seemed like a hundred years.

OH, VERY WELL THEN.

The Feegles swarmed aboard the rotting boat with their usual enthusiasm and cries of “Crivens!” and “Where’s the booze on this cruise?” and “We’re right oot in the Styx noo!” and Roland climbed in with care, watching the ferryman suspiciously.

The figure pulled on the big oar, and they set off with a creak and then, regrettably, and to the ferryman’s disgust, to the sound of singing. More or less singing, that is, at every possible speed and tempo and with no regard at all for the tune:

“Row row yer row boat boat boaty boat down boat stream boat merrily stream like a bird on the boa—”

WILL YOU SHUT UP?

“—bonny boat row stream stream boat boat row yer boat down the merrily stream row merrily merrily boat—”

THIS IS HARDLY APPROPRIATE!

“Down the boat boat down the merrily stream stream stream merrily merrily merrily merrily merrily merrily boat!”

“Mr. Anybody?” said Roland as they glided jerkily along.

“Aye?”

“Why am I sitting next to a blue cheese with a bit of tartan wrapped around it?”

“Ah, that’d be Horace,” said Rob Anybody. “He’s Daft Wullie’s pal. He’s no’ bein’ a nuisance, is he?”

“No. But he’s trying to sing!”

“Aye, all blue cheeses hum a bit.”

“Mnamnam mnam mnamnam,” sang Horace.

The boat bumped against the far bank, and the ferryman stepped ashore quickly.

Rob Anybody scrambled up Roland’s ragged chain-mail sleeve and whispered: “When I gi’e ye the word, run for it!”

“But I can pay the ferryman. I have the money,” said Roland, patting his pocket.

“You whut?” said the Feegle, as if this were some strange and dangerous idea.

“I have the money,” Roland repeated. “Two pennies is the rate to cross the River of the Dead. It’s an old tradition. Two pennies to put on the eyes of the dead, to pay the ferryman.”

“Whut a clever man ye are, to be sure,” said Rob as Roland dropped two copper coins into the ferryman’s bony hand. “An’ did ye no’ think tae bring four pennies?”

“The book just said the dead take two,” said Roland.

“Aye, mebbe they do,” Rob agreed, “but that’s ’cuz the deid dinna expect tae be comin’ back!”

Roland looked back across the dark river. Flashes of orange light were thick on the bank they’d left.

“Mr. Anybody, I was once a prisoner of the Queen of Fairyland.”

“Aye, I ken that.”

“It was for a year in this world, but it only seemed like a few days there . . . except that the weeks passed like centuries. It was so . . . dull, I could hardly remember anything after a while. Not my name, not the feel of sunshine, not the taste of real food.”

“Aye, we ken that—we helped tae rescue ye. Ye niver say thanks, but ye wuz oot o’ yer skull the whole time, so we didna take offense.”

“Then allow me to thank you now, Mr. Anybody.”

“Dinna mention it. Anytime. Happy tae oblige.”

“She had pets that fed you dreams until you died of hunger. I hate things that try to take away what you are. I want to kill those things, Mr. Anybody. I want to kill all of them. When you take away memories, you take away the person. Everything they are.”

“’Tis a fine ambition ye’ve got there,” said Rob. “But we ha’ got a wee job tae do, ye ken. Aw crivens, this is whut happens when things get sloppy an’ bogles take over.”

There was a big pile of bones on the path. They were certainly animal bones, and the rotting collars and lengths of rusted chain were another clue.

“Three big dogs?” said Roland.

“One verra big dog wi’ three heads,” said Rob Anybody. “Verra popular in underworlds, that breed. Can bite right through a man’s throat. Three times!” he added with relish. “But put three doggy biscuits in a row on the groond, an’ the puir wee thing sits there strainin’ an’ whinin’ all day. It’s a wee laff, I’m tellin’ ye!” He kicked at the bones. “Aye, time wuz when places like this had some pers’nality. Look, see what they’ve done here, too.”

Farther along the path was what was probably a demon. It had a horrible face, with so many fangs that some of them must have been just for show. There were wings, too, but they couldn’t possibly have lifted it. It had found a piece of mirror, and every few seconds it took a peep into it and shuddered.

“Mr. Anybody,” said Roland, “is there anything down here that this sword I’m carrying could kill?”

“Ah, no. No’ kill,” said Rob Anybody. “No’ bogles. No’ as such. It’s no’ a magic sword, see?”

“Then why am I dragging it along?”

“’Cuz ye are a Hero. Who ever heard o’ a Hero wi’oot a sword?”

Roland tugged the sword out of its scabbard. It was heavy and not at all like the flying, darting silver thing that he’d imagined in front of the mirror. It was more like a metal club with an edge.

He gripped it in both hands and managed to hurl it out into the middle of the slow, dark river.

Just before it hit the water, a white arm rose and caught it. The hand waved the sword a couple of times and then disappeared with it under the water.

“Was that supposed to happen?” he asked.

“A man throwin’ his sword awa’?” yelled Rob. “No! Ye’re no’ supposed tae bung a guid sword intae the drinkie!”

“No, I mean the hand,” said Roland. “It just—”

“Ach, they turn up sometimes.” Rob Anybody waved a hand as if midstream underwater sword jugglers were an everyday occurrence. “But ye’ve got no weapon noo!”

“You said swords can’t hurt bogles!”

“Aye, but it’s the look o’ the thing, okay?” said Rob, hurrying on.

“But not having a sword should make me more heroic, right?” said Roland, as the rest of the Feegles trotted after them.

“Technic’ly, aye,” said Rob Anybody reluctantly. “But mebbe also more deid.”

“Besides, I have a Plan,” said Roland.

“Ye have a Plan?” said Rob.

“Yes. I mean aye.”

“Writted doon?”

“I’ve only just thought of—” Roland stopped. The ever-shifting shadows had parted, and a big cave lay ahead.

In the center of it, surrounding what looked like a rock slab, was a dim yellow glow. There was a small figure lying on the slab.

“Here we are,” said Rob Anybody. “That wasna so bad, aye?”

Roland blinked. Hundreds of bogles were clustered around the slab, but at a distance, as if they were not keen on going any closer.

“I can see . . . someone lying down,” he said.

“That’s Summer herself,” said Rob. “We have tae be canny aboot this.”

“Canny?”

“Like . . . careful,” said Rob helpfully. “Goddesses can be a wee bit tricky. Verra image conscious.”

“Don’t we just . . . you know, grab her and run?” said Roland.

“Oh, aye, we’ll end up doin’ somethin’ like that,” said Rob. “But you, mister, will have tae be the one tae kiss her first. You okay wi’ that?”

Roland looked a bit strained, but he said: “Yes . . . er, fine.”

“The ladies expect it, ye ken,” Rob went on.

“And then we run for it?” said Roland hopefully.

“Aye, ’cuz probably that’s when the bogles will try an’ stop us gettin’ awa.’ It’s people leavin’ that they don’t like. Off ye go, laddie.”

I’ve got a Plan, thought Roland, walking toward the slab. And I’ll concentrate on it so that I don’t think about the fact that I’m walking through a crowd of scribbly monsters that are only there if I blink and my eyes are watering. What’s in my head is real to them, right?

I’m going to blink, I’m going to blink, I’m going to . . .

. . . blink. It was over in a moment, but the shudder went on for a lot longer. They had been everywhere, and every toothy mouth was looking at him. It should not be possible to look with teeth.

He ran forward, eyes streaming with the effort of not closing, and looked down at the figure lying in the yellow glow. It was female, it was breathing, it was asleep, and it looked like Tiffany Aching.

From the top of the ice palace Tiffany could see for miles, and they were miles of snow. Only on the Chalk was there any sign of green. It was an island.

“You see how I learn?” said the Wintersmith. “The Chalk is yours. So there summer will come, and you will be happy. And you will be my bride and I will be happy. And everything will be happy. Happiness is when things are correct. Now I am human, I understand these things.”

Don’t scream, don’t shout, said her Third Thoughts. Don’t freeze up, either.

“Oh . . . I see,” she said. “And the rest of the world will stay in winter?”

“No, there are some latitudes that never feel my frost,” said the Wintersmith. “But the mountains, the plains as far as the circle sea . . . oh, yes.”

“Millions of people will die!”

“But only once, you see. That is what makes it wonderful. And after that, no more death!”

And Tiffany saw it, like a Hogswatch card: birds frozen to their twigs, horses and cows standing still in the fields, frozen grass like daggers, no smoke from any chimney; a world without death because there was nothing left to die, and everything glittering like tinsel.

She nodded carefully. “Very . . . sensible,” she said. “But it would be a shame if nothing moved at all.”

“That would be easy. Snow people,” said the Wintersmith. “I can make them human!”

“Iron enough to make a nail?” said Tiffany.

“Yes! It is easy. I have eaten sausage! And I can think! I never thought before. I was a part. Now I am apart. Only when you are apart do you know who you are.”

“You made me roses of ice,” said Tiffany.

“Yes! Already I was becoming!”

But the roses melted at dawn, Tiffany added to herself, and glanced at the pale-yellow sun. It had just enough strength to make the Wintersmith sparkle. He does think like a human, she thought, looking into the odd smile. He thinks like a human who’s never met another human. He’s cackling. He’s so mad, he will never understand how mad he is.

He just doesn’t have a clue what “human” means, he doesn’t know what horrors he’s planning, he just doesn’t . . . understand. And he’s so happy he’s almost sweet. . . .

Rob Anybody banged on Roland’s helmet.

“Get on wi’ it, laddie,” he demanded.

Roland stared at the glowing figure. “This can’t be Tiffany!”

“Ach, she’s a goddess, she can look like anythin’,” said Rob Anybody. “Just a wee peck on the cheek, okay? Dinna get enthusiastic, we havena got all day. A wee peck an’ we’re offski.”

Something butted Roland on the ankle. It was a blue cheese.

“Dinna fash yerself aboot Horace—he just wants ye tae do the right thing,” said the mad Feegle whom Roland had come to know as Daft Wullie.

He went closer, with the glow crackling around him, because no man wants to be a coward in front of a cheese.

“This is kind of . . . embarrassing,” he said.

“Crivens, get on wi’ it, will ye?”

Roland leaned forward and pecked the sleeping cheek.

The sleeper opened her eyes, and he took a step back very quickly.

“That’s not Tiffany Aching!” he said, and blinked. Bogles were as thick around him as grass stems.

“Now take her by the hand an’ run,” said Rob Anybody. “The bogles will turn nasty when they see we’re leavin’.” He banged cheerfully on the side of the helmet and added: “But that’s okay, right? ’Cuz ye have a Plan!”

“I hope I’ve got it right, though,” said Roland. “My aunts say I’m too clever by half.”

“Glad tae hear it,” said Rob Anybody, “’cuz that’s much better than bein’ too stupid by three quarters! Now grab the lady an’ run!”

Roland tried to avoid the stare of the girl as he took her hand and pulled her gently off the slab. She said something in a language he couldn’t understand, except that it sounded as though there were a question mark on the end of it.

“I’m here to rescue you,” he said. She looked at him with the golden eyes of a snake.

“The sheep girl is in trouble,” she said, in a voice full of unpleasant echoes and hisses. “So sad, so sad.”

“Well, er, we’d better run,” he managed, “whoever you are. . . .”

The not-Tiffany gave him a smile. It was an uncomfortable one, with a bit of a smirk in it. They ran.

“How do you fight the bogles?” he panted when the Feegle army jogged through the caves.

“Ach, they dinna like the taste o’ us overmuch,” said Rob Anybody as the shadows parted. “It may be ’cuz we think aboot the drinkin’ a lot—it makes ’em squiffy. Keep movin’!”

And it was at this point that the bogles struck, although that was hardly the right word. It was more like running into a wall of whispers. Nothing grabbed; there were no claws. If thousands of tiny weak things like shrimps or flies were trying to stop someone, this would be how it felt.

But the ferryman was waiting. He raised a hand as Roland staggered toward the boat.

THAT WILL BE SIX PENNIES, he said.

“Six?” said Roland.

“Ah, we wasna doon here more’n two hour, an’ bang went sixpence!” said Daft Wullie.

ONE ONE-DAY ROUND TRIP, ONE ONE-WAY, said the ferryman.

“I don’t have that much!” Roland shouted. He was beginning to feel little tugs in his head now. Thoughts had to push hard to get as far as his mouth.

“Leave this tae me,” said Rob Anybody. He turned to look down on his fellow Feegles and banged on Roland’s helmet for silence.

“Okay, lads,” he announced. “We’re no’ leavin’!”

WHAT? said the ferryman. OH NO, YOU LEAVE! I’M NOT HAVING YOU DOWN HERE AGAIN! WE’RE STILL FINDING THE BOTTLES FROM LAST TIME! COME ON, GET ON THE BOAT THIS MINUTE!

“Crivens, we canna do that, pal,” said Rob Anybody. “We’re under a geas to help this lad, ye ken. Where he disna go, we dinna go!”

PEOPLE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO WANT TO STAY HERE! snapped the ferryman.

“Ach, we’ll soon ha’ the old place jumpin’ again,” said Rob Anybody, grinning.

The ferryman drummed his fingers on the pole. They made a clicking sound, like dice.

OH, ALL RIGHT THEN. BUT—AND I WANT TO BE CLEAR ON THIS—THERE IS TO BE NO SINGING!

Roland dragged the girl onto the boat. The bogles kept clear of that, at least, but as the ferryman pushed away from the shore, Big Yan kicked Roland on the boot and pointed upward. Scribbles of orange light, hundreds of them, were moving across the roof of the cavern. There were more of them on the opposite shore.

“How’s the Plan goin’, Mister Hero?” asked Rob Anybody quietly as he climbed down from the boy’s helmet.

“I’m waiting for the opportune moment,” said Roland haughtily. He turned to look at the not-Tiffany. “I’m here to get you out,” he said, trying not to look directly at her eyes.

“You?” said the not-Tiffany, as if the idea were amusing.

“Well, us,” Roland corrected himself. “Everything is—”

There was a bump as the boat grounded on the farther shore, where the bogles were as thick as standing corn.

“Off ye go, then,” said Big Yan.

Roland pulled the not-Tiffany along the path for a few steps, and stopped. When he blinked, the path ahead was a writhing orange mass. He could feel the little pulls on him, no stronger than a breeze. But they were in his brain, too. Cold, and nibbling. This was stupid. It couldn’t work. He wouldn’t be able to do it. He wasn’t any good at this sort of thing. He was wayward and inconsiderate and disobedient, just like his . . . aunts . . . said.

Behind him, Daft Wullie shouted, in his cheerful way, “Make yer aunties proud of ye!”

Roland half turned, suddenly angry. “My aunts? Let me tell you about my aunts—”

“No time, laddie!” shouted Rob Anybody. “Get on wi’ it!”

Roland looked around, his mind on fire.

Our memories are real, he thought. And I will not stand for this!

He turned to the not-Tiffany and said: “Don’t be afraid.” Then he held out his left hand and whispered, under his breath: “I remember . . . a sword. . . .”

When he shut his eyes, there it was—so light he could barely feel it, so thin he could hardly see it, a line in the air that was made up mostly of sharpness. He’d killed a thousand enemies with it, in the mirror. It was never too heavy, it moved like part of him, and here it was. A weapon that chopped away everything that clung and lied and stole.

“Mebbe ye can make a Hero all in one go,” said Rob Anybody thoughtfully, as bogles scribbled themselves into existence and died. He turned to Daft Wullie. “Daft Wullie?” he said. “Can ye bring to mind when it was I told ye that sometimes ye say exactly the right thing?”

Daft Wullie looked baffled. “Noo that ye mention it, Rob, I dinna recall ye ever sayin’ that, ever.”

“Aye?” said Rob. “Weel, if I had done, just now would ha’ been one o’ those times.”

Daft Wullie looked worried. “That’s all right, though, aye? I said somethin’ right?”

“Aye. Ye did, Daft Wullie. A First. I’m proud o’ ye,” said Rob.

Daft Wullie’s face split in an enormous grin. “Crivens! Hey, lads, I said—”

“But dinna get carried awa’,” Rob added.

As Roland swung the airy blade, the bogles parted like spiderwebs. There were more, always more, but the silver line always found them, cutting him free. They backed away, tried new shapes, recoiled from the heat of the anger in his head. The sword hummed. Bogles curled around the blade and squealed, and sizzled into nothingness on the floor—

—and someone was banging on his helmet. They’d been doing so for quite a while.

“Huh?” he said, opening his eyes.

“Ye’ve run oot,” said Rob Anybody. His chest heaving, Roland looked around. Eyes open or shut, the caves were empty of orange streaks. The not-Tiffany was watching him with a strange smile on her face.

“Either we get oot noo,” said Rob, “or ye can hang aroond and wait for some more, mebbe?”

“An’ here they come,” said Billy Bigchin. He pointed across the river. A pure mass of orange was pouring into the cave, so many bogles that there was no space between them.

Roland hesitated, still fighting for breath.

“I’ll tell ye whut,” said Rob Anybody soothingly. “If ye are a guid boy an’ rescue the lady, we’ll bring ye doon here another time, wi’ some sandwiches so’s we can make a day o’ it.”

Roland blinked. “Er, yes,” he said. “Um . . . sorry. I don’t know what happened just then. . . .”

“Offski time!” yelled Big Yan. Roland grabbed the hand of the not-Tiffany.

“An’ don’t look back until we’re well oot o’ here,” said Rob Anybody. “It’s kind of traditional.”

On the top of the tower, the ice crown appeared in the Wintersmith’s pale hands. It shone more than diamonds could, even in the pale sunlight. It was purest ice, without bubbles, lines, or flaw.

“I made this for you,” he said. “The Summer Lady will never wear it,” he added sadly.

It fit perfectly. It didn’t feel cold.

He stepped back.

“And now it is done,” said the Wintersmith.

“There is something I have to do, too,” said Tiffany. “But first there’s something I have to know. You found the things that make a man?”

“Yes!”

“How did you find out what they were?”

The Wintersmith proudly told her about the children, while Tiffany breathed carefully, forcing herself to relax. His logic was very . . . logical. After all, if a carrot and two pieces of coal can make a heap of snow a snowman, then a big bucket of salts and gases and metal should certainly make him a human. It made . . . sense. At least, sense to the Wintersmith.

“But, you see, you need to know the whole song,” said Tiffany. “It is mostly only about what humans are made of. It isn’t about what humans are.”

“There were some things that I could not find,” said the Wintersmith. “They made no sense. They had no substance.”

“Yes,” said Tiffany, nodding sadly. “The last three lines, I expect, which are the whole point. I’m really sorry about that.”

“But I will find them,” said the Wintersmith. “I will!”

“I hope you do, one day,” said Tiffany. “Now, have you ever heard of Boffo?”

“What is this Boffo? It was not in the song!” said the Wintersmith, looking uneasy.

“Oh, Boffo is how humans change the world by fooling themselves,” said Tiffany. “It’s wonderful. And Boffo says that things have no power that humans don’t put there. You can make things magical, but you can’t magically make a human out of things. It’s just a nail in your heart. Only a nail.”

And the time has come and I know what to do, she thought dreamily. I know how the Story has to end. I must end it in the right kind of way.

She pulled the Wintersmith toward her and saw the look of astonishment on his face. She felt light-headed, as though her feet weren’t touching the floor. The world became . . . simpler. It was a tunnel, leading to the future. There was nothing to see but the Wintersmith’s cold face, nothing to hear but her own breathing, nothing to feel but the warmth of the sun on her hair.

It wasn’t the fiery globe of summer, but it was still much bigger than any bonfire could ever be.

Where this takes me, there I choose to go, she told herself, letting the warmth pour into her. I choose. This I choose to do. And I’m going to have to stand on tiptoe, she added.

Thunder on my right hand. Lightning in my left hand.

Fire above me. . . .

“Please,” she said, “take the winter away. Go back to your mountains. Please.”

Frost in front of me. . . .

“No. I am Winter. I cannot be anything else.”

“Then you cannot be human,” said Tiffany. “The last three lines are: ‘Strength enough to build a home, Time enough to hold a child, Love enough to break a heart.’”

Balance . . . and it came quickly, out of nowhere, lifting her up inside.

The center of the seesaw does not move. It feels neither upness nor downness. It is balanced.

Balance . . . and his lips were like blue ice. She’d cry, later, for the Wintersmith who wanted to be human.

Balance . . . and the old kelda had once told her: “There’s a little bitty bit inside ye that willna melt and flow.”

Time to thaw.

She shut her eyes and kissed the Wintersmith . . .

. . . and drew down the sun.

Frost to fire.

The entire top of the ice palace melted in a flash of white light that cast shadows on walls a hundred miles away. A pillar of steam roared up, stitched with lightning, and spread out above the world like an umbrella, covering the sun. Then it began to fall back as a soft, warm rain that punched little wormholes in the snow.

Tiffany, her head usually so full of thoughts, hadn’t got a thought to spare. She lay on a slab of ice in the soft rain and listened to the palace collapse around her.

There are times when everything that you can do has been done and there’s nothing for it now but to curl up and wait for the thunder to die down.

There was something else in the air, too, a golden glint that vanished when she tried to look at it and then turned up again in the corner of her eye.

The palace was melting like a waterfall. The slab she lay on half slid and half floated down a staircase that was turning into a river. Above her, huge pillars fell but went from ice to a gush of warm water in midair, so that what crashed down was spray.

Good-bye to the glittering crown, Tiffany thought with a touch of regret. Good-bye to the dress made of dancing light, and good-bye to the ice roses and the snowflakes. Such a shame. Such a shame.

And then there was grass under her, and so much water pouring past her that it was a case of get up or drown. She managed to get to her knees, at least, and waited until it was possible to stand up without being knocked over.

“You have something of mine, child,” said a voice behind her. She turned, and golden light rushed into a shape. It was her own shape, but her eyes were . . . odd, like a snake’s. Right here and now, with the roaring of the heat of the sun still filling her ears, this didn’t seem very amazing.

Slowly, Tiffany took the Cornucopia out of her pocket and handed it over.

“You are the Summer Lady, aren’t you?” she asked.

“And you are the sheep-girl who would be me?” There was a hiss to the words.

“I didn’t want to be!” said Tiffany hurriedly. “Why do you look like me?”

The Summer Lady sat down on the turf. It is very strange to watch yourself, and Tiffany noticed she had a small mole on the back of her neck.

“It’s called resonance,” she said. “Do you know what that is?”

“It means ‘vibrating with,’” said Tiffany.

“How does a sheep-girl know that?”

“I have a dictionary,” said Tiffany. “And I’m a witch, thank you.”

“Well, while you were picking up things from me, I’ve been picking up things from you, clever sheep-witch,” said the Summer Lady. She was beginning to remind Tiffany a lot of Annagramma. That was actually a relief. She didn’t sound wise, or nice . . . she was just another person, who happened to be very powerful but not frighteningly smart and was, frankly, a bit annoying.

“What’s your real shape?” Tiffany asked.

“The shape of heat on a road, the shape of the smell of apples.” Nice reply, Tiffany thought, but not helpful, as such.

Tiffany sat down next to the goddess. “Am I in trouble?” she asked.

“Because of what you did to the Wintersmith? No. He has to die every year, as do I. We die, and sleep and wake. Besides . . . you were entertaining.”

“Oh? I was entertaining, was I?” said Tiffany, her eyes narrowing.

“What is it you want?” asked the Summer Lady. Yes, thought Tiffany, just like Annagramma. Wouldn’t spot a hint a mile high.

“Want?” said Tiffany. “Nothing. Just the summer, thank you.”

The Summer Lady looked puzzled. “But humans always want something from gods.”

“But witches don’t accept payment. Green grass and blue skies will do.”

“What? You’ll get those anyway!” The Summer Lady sounded both confused and angry, and Tiffany was quite happy about this, in a small and spiteful way.

“Good,” she said.

“You saved the world from the Wintersmith!”

“Actually, I saved it from a silly girl, Miss Summer. I put right what I put wrong.”

“One simple mistake? You’d be a silly girl not to accept a reward.”

“I’d be a sensible young woman to refuse one,” said Tiffany, and it felt good to say that. “Winter is over. I know. I’ve seen it through. Where it took me, there I chose to go. I chose when I danced with the Wintersmith.”

The Summer Lady stood up. “Remarkable,” she said. “And strange. And now we part. But first, some more things must be taken. Stand up, young woman.”

Tiffany did so, and when she looked into the face of Summer, golden eyes became pits that drew her in.

And then the summer filled her up. It must have been for only a few seconds, but inside them it went on for much longer. She felt what it was like to be the breeze through green corn on a spring day, to ripen an apple, to make the salmon leap the rapids—the sensations came all at once and merged into one great big, glistening, golden-yellow feeling of summer . . .

. . . that grew hotter. Now the sun turned red in a burning sky. Tiffany drifted through air like warm oil into the searing calm of deep deserts, where even camels die. There was no living thing. Nothing moved except ash.

She drifted down a dried-up riverbed, with pure white animal bones on the banks. There was no mud, not one drop of moisture in this oven of a land. This was a river of stones—agates banded like a cat’s eye, garnets lying loose, thunder eggs with their rings of color, stones of brown, orange, creamy white, some with black veins, all polished by the heat.

“Here is the heart of the summer,” hissed the voice of the Summer Lady. “Fear me as much as the Wintersmith. We are not yours, though you give us shapes and names. Fire and ice we are, in balance. Do not come between us again. . . .”

And now, at last, there was movement. From out of gaps between the stones they came like stones brought alive: bronze and red, umber and yellow, black and white, with harlequin patterns and deadly gleaming scales.

The snakes tested the boiling air with their forked tongues and hissed triumphantly.

The vision vanished. The world came back.

The water had poured away. The everlasting wind had teased the fogs and steams into long streamers of cloud, but the unconquered sun was finding its way through. And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it’s gone.

Tiffany walked across the grass where the palace had been. There were a few pieces of ice left, but they would be gone in an hour. There were the clouds, but clouds drifted away. The normal world pressed in on her, with its dull little songs. She was walking on a stage after the play was over, and who now could say it had ever happened?

Something sizzled on the grass. Tiffany reached down and picked up a piece of metal. It was still warm with the last of the heat that had twisted it out of shape, but you could see that it had once been a nail.

No, I won’t take a gift to make the giver feel better, she thought. Why should I? I’ll find my own gifts. I was . . . “entertaining” to her, that’s all.

But him—he made me roses and icebergs and frost and never understood. . . .

She turned suddenly at the sound of voices. The Feegles came bounding over the slope of the downs, at a speed just fast enough for a human to keep up. And Roland was keeping up, panting a little, his overlarge chain mail making him run like a duck.

She laughed.

Two weeks later Tiffany went back to Lancre. Roland took her as far as Twoshirts, and the pointy hat took her the rest of the way. That was a bit of luck. The driver remembered Miss Tick, and since there was a spare space on the roof of the coach, he wasn’t prepared to go through all that again. The roads were flooded, the ditches gurgled, the swollen rivers sucked at the bridges.

First she visited Nanny Ogg, who had to be told everything. That saved some time, because once you’ve told Nanny Ogg, you’ve more or less told everyone else. When she heard exactly what Tiffany had done to the Wintersmith, she laughed and laughed.

Tiffany borrowed Nanny’s broomstick and flew slowly across the forests to Miss Treason’s cottage.

Things were going on. In the clearing, several men were digging the vegetable area, and lots of people were hanging around the door, so she landed back in the woods, shoved the broom into a rabbit hole and her hat under a bush, and walked back on foot.

Stuck in a birch tree where the track entered the clearing was . . . a doll, maybe, made out of lots of twigs bound together. It was new, and a bit worrying. That was probably the idea.

No one saw her raise the catch on the scullery door or slip inside the cottage. She leaned against the kitchen wall and went quiet.

From the next room came the unmistakable voice of Annagramma at her most typically Annagrammatical.

“—only a tree, do you understand? Cut it up and share the wood. Agreed? And now shake hands. Go on. I mean it. Properly, or else I’ll get angry! Good. That feels better, doesn’t it? Let’s have no more of this silliness—”

After ten minutes of listening to people being scolded, grumbled at, and generally prodded, Tiffany crept out again, cut through the woods, and walked into the clearing via the track. There was a woman hurrying toward her, but she stopped when Tiffany said: “Excuse me, is there a witch near here?”

“Ooooh, yes,” said the woman, and gave Tiffany a hard stare. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No,” said Tiffany, and thought: I lived here for months, Mrs. Carter, and I saw you most days. But I always wore the hat. People always talk to the hat. Without the hat, I’m in disguise.

“Well, there’s Miss Hawkin,” said Mrs. Carter, as if reluctant to give away a secret. “Be careful, though.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “She turns into a terrible monster when she’s angry! I’ve seen her! She’s all right with us, of course,” she added. “Lots of young witches have been coming to learn things from her!”

“Gosh, she must be good!”

“She’s amazing,” Mrs. Carter went on. “She’d only been here five minutes and she seemed to know all about us!”

“Amazing,” said Tiffany. You’d think that somebody wrote it all down. Twice. But that wouldn’t be interesting enough, would it? And who would believe that a real witch bought her face from Boffo?

“And she’s got a cauldron that bubbles green,” Mrs. Carter said with great pride. “All down the sides. That’s proper witching, that is.”

“It sounds like it,” said Tiffany. No witch she’d met had done anything with a cauldron apart from make stew, but somehow people believed in their hearts that a witch’s cauldron should bubble green. And that must be why Mr. Boffo sold Item #61 Bubbling Green Cauldron Kit, $14, extra sachets of Green, $1 each.

Well, it worked. It probably shouldn’t, but people were people. She didn’t think Annagramma would be particularly interested in a visit right now, especially from someone who’d read all the way through the Boffo catalogue, so she retrieved her broom and headed on to Granny Weatherwax’s cottage.

There was a chicken run out in the back garden now. It had been carefully woven out of pliable hazel, and contented werks were coming from the other side.

Granny Weatherwax was coming out of the back door. She looked at Tiffany as if the girl had just come back from a ten-minute stroll.

“I’ve got business down in the town right now,” she said. “It wouldn’t worry me if you came, too.” That was, from Granny, as good as a brass band and an illuminated scroll of welcome. Tiffany fell in alongside her as she strode off along the track.

“I hope I find you well, Mistress Weatherwax?” she said, hurrying to keep up.

“I’m still here after another winter, that’s all I know,” said Granny. “You look well, girl.”

“Oh, yes.”

“We saw the steam from up here,” said Granny.

Tiffany said nothing. That was it? Well, yes. From Granny, that would be it.

After a while Granny said: “Come back to see your young friends, eh?”

Tiffany took a deep breath. She’d been through this in her head dozens of times: what she would say, what Granny would say, what she would shout, what Granny would shout . . .

“You planned it, didn’t you?” she said. “If you’d suggested one of the others, they’d probably have got the cottage, so you suggested me. And you knew, you just knew that I’d help her. And it’s all worked out, hasn’t it? I bet every witch in the mountains knows what happened by now. I bet Mrs. Earwig is seething. And the best bit is, no one got hurt. Annagramma’s picked up where Miss Treason left off, all the villagers are happy, and you’ve won! Oh, I expect you’ll say it was to keep me busy and teach me important things and keep my mind off the Wintersmith, but you still won!”

Granny Weatherwax walked on calmly. Then she said: “I see you got your little trinket back.”

It was like having a bolt of lightning and then not getting any thunder, or throwing a pebble into a pool and not getting a splash.

“What? Oh. The horse. Yes! Look, I—”

“What kind of fish?”

“Er . . . pike,” said Tiffany.

“Ah? Some likes ’em, but they are too muddy for my taste.”

And that was it. Against Granny’s calm she had nowhere to go. She could nag, she could whine, and it wouldn’t make any difference. Tiffany consoled herself with the fact that at least Granny knew that she knew. It wasn’t much, but it was all she was going to get.

“And the horse ain’t the only trinket I see,” Granny continued. “Magick, is it?” She always stuck a K on the end of any magic she disapproved of.

Tiffany glanced down at the ring on her finger. It had a dull shine. It’d never rust while she wore it, the blacksmith had told her, because of the oils in her skin. He’d even taken the time to cut little snowflakes in it with a tiny chisel.

“It’s just a ring I had made out of a nail,” she said.

“Iron enough to make a ring,” said Granny, and Tiffany stopped dead. Did she really get into people’s minds? It had to be something like that.

“And why did you decide you wanted a ring?” said Granny.

For all sorts of reasons that never quite managed to be clear in Tiffany’s head, she knew. All she could think of to say was: “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” She waited for the explosion.

“Then it probably was,” said Granny mildly. She stopped, pointed away from the path—in the direction of the town and Nanny Ogg’s house—and said: “I put the fence around it. It’s got other things protectin’ it, you may be sure of that, but some beasts is just too stupid to scare.”

It was the oak tree sapling, already five feet high. A fence of poles and woven branches surrounded it.

“Growing fast, for oak,” said Granny. “I’m keeping an eye on it. But come on, I don’t want to miss it.” She set off again, covering the ground fast. Bewildered, Tiffany ran after her.

“Miss what?” she panted.

“The dance, of course!”

“Isn’t it too early for that?”

“Not up here. They starts up here!”

Granny hurried along little paths and behind gardens and came out into the town square, which was thronged with people. Small stalls had been set up. A lot of people were standing around in the slightly hopeless why-are-we-here? way of crowds who’re doing what their hearts want to do but their heads feel embarrassed about, but at least there were hot things on sticks to eat. There were lots of white chickens, too. Very good eggs, Nanny had said, so it would have been a shame to kill them.

Granny walked to the front of the crowd. There was no need to push people out of the way. They just moved sideways, without noticing.

They’d arrived just in time. Children came running along the road to the bridge, only just ahead of the dancers who, as they trudged along, seemed like quite homely and ordinary men—men Tiffany’d seen often, working in forges or driving carts. They all wore white clothes, or at least clothes that had been white once, and like the audience they looked a bit sheepish, their expressions suggesting that this was all just a bit of fun, really, not to be taken seriously. They were even waving to people in the crowd. Tiffany looked around and saw Miss Tick, and Nanny, and even Mrs. Earwig . . . nearly every witch she knew. Oh, and there was Annagramma, minus Mr. Boffo’s little devices, and looking very proud.

It wasn’t like this last autumn, she thought. It was dark and quiet and solemn and hidden, everything that this isn’t. Who watched it from the shadows?

Who is watching now from the light? Who is here in secret?

A drummer and a man with an accordion pushed their way through the crowd, along with the local pub owner carrying eight pints of beer on a tray (because no grown man is going to dance in front of his friends with ribbons around his hat and bells on his trousers without the clear prospect of a large drink).

When the noise had died down a bit, the drummer beat the drum a few times and the accordionist played a long-drawn-out chord, the legal signal that a Morris dance is about to begin, and people who hang around after this have only got themselves to blame.

The two-man band struck up. The men, in two lines of three facing each other, counted the beat and then leaped. . . . Tiffany turned to Granny as twelve hobnailed boots crashed to the ground, throwing up sparks.

“Tell me how to take away pain,” she said, above the noise of the dance.

Crash!

“It’s hard,” said Granny, not taking her eyes off the dancers. Crash went the boots again.

“You can move it out of the body?”

Crash!

“Sometimes. Or hide it. Or make a cage for it and carry it away. And all of it’s dangerous, and it will kill you if you don’t respect it, young woman. It is all price and no profit. You are asking me to tell you how to put your hand in the lion’s mouth.”

Crash!

“I must know, to help the Baron. It’s bad. There is a lot I have to do.”

“This you choose to do?” said Granny, still watching.

“Yes!”

Crash!

“This is your Baron who doesn’t like witches?” said Granny, her gaze going from face to face in the crowd.

“But who does like witches until they need one, Mistress Weatherwax?” said Tiffany sweetly.

Crash!

“This is a reckoning, Mistress Weatherwax,” Tiffany added. After all, once you’ve kissed the Wintersmith, you’re in the mood to dare. And Granny Weatherwax smiled, as if she’d done all that was expected of her.

“Ha! Is it now?” she said. “Very well. Come and see me again before you go, and we’ll see what you may take back with you. And I hopes you can close the doors you are opening. Now watch the people! Sometimes you see her!”

Tiffany paid attention to the dance. The Fool had turned up without her noticing, wandering around collecting money in his greasy top hat. If a girl looked as though she’d squeal if he kissed her, he gave her a kiss. And sometimes, without any warning, he’d spring off into the dance, spinning through the men with never a foot in the wrong place.

Then Tiffany saw it. The eyes of a woman on the other side of the dance flashed gold, just for a moment. Once she’d seen it, she saw it again— in the eyes of a boy, a girl, the man holding the beer, moving around to watch the Fool—

“Summer’s here!” said Tiffany, and realized that she was tapping her foot to the beat; she realized it because a heavier boot had just trodden on it and pinned it gently but firmly to the ground. Beside it, You looked up at her in blue-eyed innocence that became, for the briefest fragment of a second, the lazy golden eyes of a snake.

“She’s meant to be,” said Granny Weatherwax, removing her boot.

“A few coppers for luck, miss?” said a voice close by, and there was the sound of money being shaken in an ancient hat.

Tiffany turned and looked into purple-gray eyes. The face around them was lined and tanned and grinning. He had a gold earring. “A copper or two from the lovely lady?” he wheedled. “Silver or gold, maybe?”

Sometimes, Tiffany thought, you just know how it all should go. . . .

“Iron?” she said, taking the ring off her finger and dropping it into the hat.

The Fool picked it out, delicately, and flipped it into the air. Tiffany’s eye followed it, but somehow it wasn’t in the air anymore but was glistening on the man’s finger.

“Iron’s enough,” he said, and gave her a sudden kiss on the cheek.

It was only slightly chilly.

The galleries inside the Feegle mound were crowded but hushed. This was important. The honor of the clan was at stake here.

In the middle was a large book, taller than Rob and filled with colorful pictures. It was quite muddy from its journey down into the mound. Rob had been challenged. For years he’d thought himself to be a hero, and then the hag o’ hags had said he wasna, no’ really. Weel, you couldn’t argue wi’ the hag o’ hags, but he wuz goin’ to rise tae the challenge, oh aye, so he wuz, or his name wasna Rob Anybody.

“Where’s mah coo?” he read. “Is that mah coo? It gaes cluck! It is a . . . a . . . chicken! It is no’ mah coo! An’ then there’s this wee paintin’ o’ a couple o’ chickens. That’s another page, right?”

“It is indeed, Rob,” said Billy Bigchin.

There was a cheer from the assembled Feegles as Rob ran around the book, waving his hands in the air.

“An’ this one is a lot harder than Abker, right?” he said, when he’d done the circuit. “That one was easy! An’ a very predictable plot. Whoever writted that book didna stretch himself, in ma opinion.”

“You mean The ABC?” said Billy Bigchin.

“Aye.” Rob Anybody jumped up and down and punched the air a few times. “Got somethin’ a wee bit tougher?”

The gonnagle looked at the stack of battered books the Feegles had, in various ways, collected.

“Somethin’ I can get ma teeth intae,” Rob added. “A big book.”

“Well, this one’s called Principles of Modern Accountancy,” said Billy doubtfully.

“An’ is that a big heroic book to read?” said Rob, running on the spot.

“Aye. Probably, but—”

Rob Anybody held up a hand for silence and looked across at Jeannie, who had a crowd of little Feegles surrounding her. She was smiling at him, and his sons were staring at their father in silent astonishment. One day, Rob thought, they’ll be able to walk up to even the longest words and give them a good kicking. Not even commas and those tricksie semicolonses will stop them!

He had to be a hero.

“Ah’m feelin’ guid about this readin’,” said Rob Anybody. “Bring it on!”

And he read Principles of Modern Accountancy all morning, but just to make it interesting, he put lots of dragons in it.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Morris dance . . .

. . . is traditionally danced on May 1, to welcome in the summer. Its history is a bit confused, possibly because it’s often danced near pubs, but it is now the English folk dance. The dancers usually wear white, and have bells sewn on their clothes. It is danced by both men and women, and is certainly now danced in the United States too.

I know this because I saw the Dark Morris danced in a bookshop in Chicago some years ago.

I’d invented the Dark Morris for another book called Reaper Man (at least I think I invented it), and a Morris team (officially known as a side) turned up in all black, just for me. They danced it in silence and perfect time, without the music and bells of the “summer” dance.

It was beautifully done. But it was also a bit creepy. So it might not be a good idea to try it at home. . . .

CREDITS

Cover art and design © 2015
by Jim Tierney

COPYRIGHT

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

WINTERSMITH. Copyright © 2006 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harperteen.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pratchett, Terry.

Wintersmith / by Terry Pratchett.—1st ed.

p.    cm.

Summary: When witch-in-training Tiffany Aching accidentally interrupts the Dance of the Seasons and awakens the interest of the elemental spirit of Winter, she requires the help of the six-inch-high, sword-wielding, sheep-stealing Wee Free Men to put the seasons aright.

ISBN 978-0-06-089033-9

EPub Edition © May 2015 ISBN 9780061975325

[1. Winter—Fiction. 2. Witches—Fiction. 3. Fairies—Fiction.] I.Title.

PZ7.P8865Win 2006 | 2006003705
[Fic]—dc22 | CIP
| AC

First paperback edition, 2007

*Er . . . Witch Hunting for Dumb People.

*A room off a kitchen for washing pans and doing other wet and messy chores. Although Miss Treason had skulls, she did not keep them in the scullery. It would have been quite amusing, though, if she did.

*Kevin and Neville and Trevor.

*Steading: The area of a witch’s daily responsibilities. It may be just one village; it may be the whole world.

*It says something about witches that an old friend and an old enemy could quite often be the same person.

*Hexperiment: to use magic just to see what happens.

*This was reported in the newspapers, and shortly afterward a widow wrote to him saying how much she admired a man who really understood about hygiene. They later were seen walking together, so it’s an ill wind, as they say. . . .

*All witches are a bit odd. It’s best to get your oddness sorted out early.

*Werk . . .

CONTENTS

1. Chapter One              A Fine Big Wee Laddie

2. Chapter Two              Rough Music

3. Chapter Three            Those Who Stir in Their Sleep

4. Chapter Four             The Real Shilling

5. Chapter Five              The Mother of Tongues

6. Chapter Six                The Coming of the Cunning Man

7. Chapter Seven            Songs in the Night

8. Chapter Eight             The King’s Neck

9. Chapter Nine              The Duchess and the Cook

10. Chapter Ten                The Melting Girl

11. Chapter Eleven           The Bonfire of the Witches

12. Chapter Twelve           The Sin o’ Sins

13. Chapter Thirteen        The Shaking of the Sheets

14. Chapter Fourteen        Burning the King

15. Chapter Fifteen            A Shadow and a Whisper

16. Epilogue                        Midnight by Day

17. Author’s Note

18. Appendix                      A Feegle Glossary

19. Credits

20. Copyright

Guide

1. Cover
2. Contents
3. Chapter 1

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CHAPTER ONE

A Fine Big Wee Laddie

Why was it, Tiffany Aching wondered, that people liked noise so much? Why was noise so important?

Something quite close sounded like a cow giving birth. It turned out to be an old hurdy-gurdy organ, hand cranked by a raggedy man in a battered top hat. She sidled away as politely as she could, but as noise went, it was sticky; you got the feeling that if you let it, it would try to follow you home.

But that was only one sound in the great cauldron of noise around her, all of it made by people and all of it made by people trying to make noise louder than the other people making noise: Arguing at the makeshift stalls, bobbing for apples or frogs,* cheering the prizefighters and a spangled lady on the high wire, selling cotton candy at the tops of their voices, and, not to put too fine a point on it, boozing quite considerably.

The air above the green downland was thick with noise. It was as if the populations of two or three towns had all come up to the top of the hills. And so here, where all you generally heard was the occasional scream of a buzzard, you heard the permanent scream of, well, everyone. It was called having fun. The only people not making any noise were the thieves and pickpockets, who went about their business with commendable silence, and they didn’t come near Tiffany; who would pick a witch’s pocket? You would be lucky to get all your fingers back. At least, that was what they feared, and a sensible witch would encourage them in this fear.

When you were a witch, you were all witches, thought Tiffany Aching as she walked through the crowds, pulling her broomstick after her on the end of a length of string. It floated a few feet above the ground. She was getting a bit bothered about that. It seemed to work quite well, but nevertheless, since all around the fair were small children dragging balloons, also on the ends of pieces of string, she couldn’t help thinking that it made her look more than a little bit silly, and something that made one witch look silly made all witches look silly.

On the other hand, if you tied it to a hedge somewhere, there was bound to be some kid who would untie the string and get on the stick for a dare, in which case most likely he would go straight up all the way to the top of the atmosphere where the air froze, and while she could in theory call the stick back, mothers got very touchy about having to thaw out their children on a bright late-summer day. That would not look good. People would talk. People always talked about witches.

She resigned herself to dragging it again. With luck, people would think she was joining in with the spirit of the thing in a humorous way.

There was a lot of etiquette involved, even at something so deceptively cheerful as a fair. She was the witch; who knows what would happen if she forgot someone’s name or, worse still, got it wrong? What would happen if she forgot all the little feuds and factions, the people who weren’t talking to their neighbors and so on and so on and a lot more so and even further on? Tiffany had no understanding at all of the word “minefield,” but if she had, it would have seemed kind of familiar.

She was the witch. For all the villages along the Chalk, she was the witch. Not just for her own village anymore, but for all the other ones as far away as Ham-on-Rye, which was a pretty good day’s walk from here. The area that a witch thought of as her own, and for whose people she did what was needful, was called a steading, and as steadings went, this one was pretty good. Not many witches got a whole geological outcrop to themselves, even if this one was mostly covered in grass, and the grass was mostly covered in sheep. And today the sheep on the downs were left by themselves to do whatever it was that they did when they were by themselves, which would presumably be pretty much the same as they did if you were watching them. And the sheep, usually fussed and herded and generally watched over, were now of no interest whatsoever, because right here the most wonderful attraction in the world was taking place.

Admittedly, the scouring fair was only one of the world’s most wonderful attractions if you didn’t usually ever travel more than about four miles from home. If you lived around the Chalk you were bound to meet everyone that you knew* at the fair. It was quite often where you met the person you were likely to marry. The girls certainly all wore their best dresses, while the boys wore expressions of hopefulness and their hair smoothed down with cheap hair pomade or, more usually, spit. Those who had opted for spit generally came off better, since the cheap pomade was very cheap indeed and would often melt and run in the hot weather, causing the young men not to be of interest to the young women, as they had fervently hoped, but to the flies, who would make their lunch off the boys’ scalps.

However, since the event could hardly be called “the fair where you went in the hope of getting a kiss and, if your luck held, the promise of another one,” the fair was called the scouring.

The scouring was held over three days at the end of summer. For most people on the Chalk, it was their holiday. This was the third day, and it was said that if you hadn’t had a kiss by now, you might as well go home. Tiffany hadn’t had a kiss, but after all, she was the witch. Who knew what they might get turned into?

If the late-summer weather was clement, it wasn’t unusual for some people to sleep out under the stars, and under the bushes as well. And that was why, if you wanted to take a stroll at night, it paid to be careful, so as not to trip over someone’s feet. Not to put too fine a point on it, there was a certain amount of what Nanny Ogg—a witch who had been married to three husbands—called “making your own entertainment.” It was a shame that Nanny lived right up in the mountains, because she would have loved the scouring and Tiffany would have loved to see her face when she saw the giant.*

He—and he was quite definitely a he, there was no possible doubt about that—had been carved out of the turf thousands of years before. A white outline against the green, he belonged to the days when people had to think about survival and fertility in a dangerous world.

Oh, and he had also been carved, or so it would appear, before anyone had invented trousers. In fact, to say that he had no trousers on just didn’t do the job. His lack of trousers filled the world. You simply could not stroll down the little road that passed along the bottom of the hills without noticing that there was an enormous, as it were, lack of something—e.g., trousers—and what was there instead. It was definitely a figure of a man without trousers, and certainly not a woman.

Everyone who came to the scouring was expected to bring a small shovel, or even a knife, and work their way down the steep slope to grub up all the weeds that had grown there over the previous year, making the chalk underneath glow with freshness and the giant stand out boldly, as if he didn’t already.

There was always a lot of giggling when the girls worked on the giant.

And the reason for the giggling, and the circumstances of the giggling, couldn’t help but put Tiffany in mind of Nanny Ogg, who you normally saw somewhere behind Granny Weatherwax with a big grin on her face. She was generally thought of as a jolly old soul, but there was a lot more to the old woman. She had never been Tiffany’s teacher officially, but Tiffany couldn’t help learning things from Nanny Ogg. She smiled to herself when she thought that. Nanny knew all the old, dark stuff—old magic, magic that didn’t need witches, magic that was built into people and the landscape. It concerned things like death, and marriage, and betrothals. And promises that were promises even if there was no one to hear them. And all those things that make people touch wood and never, ever walk under a black cat.

You didn’t need to be a witch to understand it. The world around you became more—well, more real and fluid, at those special times. Nanny Ogg called it “numinous”—an uncharacteristically solemn word from a woman who was much more likely to be saying, “I would like a brandy, thank you very much, and could you make it a double while you are about it.” And she had told Tiffany about the old days, when it seemed that witches had a bit more fun. The things that you did around the changing of the seasons, for example; all the customs that were now dead except in folk memory, which, Nanny Ogg said, is deep and dark and breathing and never fades. Little rituals.

Tiffany especially liked the one about fire. Tiffany liked fire. It was her favorite element. It was considered so potent, and so scary to the powers of darkness, that people would even get married by jumping over a fire together.* Apparently it helped if you said a little chant, according to Nanny Ogg, who lost no time in telling Tiffany the words, which immediately stuck in Tiffany’s mind; a lot of what Nanny Ogg told you tended to be sticky.

But those were times gone by. Everybody was more respectable now, apart from Nanny Ogg and the giant.

There were other carvings on the chalk lands, too. One of them was a white horse that Tiffany thought had once broken its way out of the ground and galloped to her rescue. Now she wondered what would happen if the giant did the same thing, because it would be very hard to find a pair of pants sixty feet long in a hurry. And on the whole, you’d want to hurry.

She’d only ever giggled about the giant once, and that had been a very long time ago. There were really only four types of people in the world: men and women and wizards and witches. Wizards mostly lived in universities down in the big cities and weren’t allowed to get married, although the reason why not totally escaped Tiffany. Anyway, you hardly ever saw them around here.

Witches were definitely women, but most of the older ones Tiffany knew hadn’t gotten married either, largely because Nanny Ogg had already used up all the eligible husbands, but also probably because they didn’t have time. Of course, every now and then, a witch might marry a grand husband, like Magrat Garlick of Lancre had done, although by all accounts she only did herbs these days. But the only young witch Tiffany knew who had even had time for courting was her best friend up in the mountains: Petulia, a witch who was now specializing in pig magic and was soon going to marry a nice young man who was shortly going to inherit his father’s pig farm,* which meant he was practically an aristocrat.

But witches were not only very busy, they were also apart; Tiffany had learned that early on. You were among people, but not the same as them. There was always a kind of distance or separation. You didn’t have to work at it—it happened anyway. Girls she had known when they were all so young they used to run about and play with only their undershirts on would make a tiny little curtsy to her when she passed them in the lane, and even elderly men would touch their forelock, or probably what they thought was their forelock, as she passed.

This wasn’t just because of respect, but because of a kind of fear as well. Witches had secrets; they were there to help when babies were being born. When you got married, it was a good idea to have a witch standing by (even if you weren’t sure if it was for good luck or to prevent bad luck), and when you died there would be a witch there too, to show you the way. Witches had secrets they never told . . . well, not to people who weren’t witches. Among themselves, when they could get together on some hillside for a drink or two (or in the case of Mrs. Ogg, a drink or nine), they gossiped like geese.

But never about the real secrets, the ones you never told, about things done and heard and seen. So many secrets that you were afraid they might leak. Seeing a giant without his trousers was hardly worth commenting on compared to some of the things that a witch might see.

No, Tiffany did not envy Petulia her romance, which surely must have taken place in big boots, unflattering rubber aprons, and the rain, not to mention an awful lot of oink.

She did, however, envy her for being so sensible. Petulia had it all worked out. She knew what she wanted her future to be, and had rolled up her sleeves and made it happen, up to her knees in oink if necessary.

Every family, even up in the mountains, kept at least one pig to act as a garbage can in the summer and as pork, bacon, ham, and sausages during the rest of the year. The pig was important; you might dose Granny with turpentine when she was poorly, but when the pig was ill, you sent immediately for a pig witch, and paid her too, and paid her well, generally in sausages.

On top of everything else, Petulia was a specialist pig borer, and indeed she was this year’s champion in the noble art of boring. Tiffany thought you couldn’t put it better; her friend could sit down with a pig and talk to it gently and calmly about extremely boring things until some strange pig mechanism took over, whereupon it would give a happy little yawn and fall over, no longer a living pig and ready to become a very important contribution to the family’s diet for the following year. This might not appear the best of outcomes for the pig, but given the messy and above all noisy way pigs died before the invention of pig boring, it was definitely, in the great scheme of things, a much better deal all round.

Alone in the crowd, Tiffany sighed. It was hard, when you wore the black, pointy hat. Because, like it or not, the witch was the pointy hat, and the pointy hat was the witch. It made people careful about you. They would be respectful, oh, yes, and often a little bit nervous, as if they expected you to look inside their heads, which as a matter of fact you could probably do, using the good old witch’s standbys of First Sight and Second Thoughts.* But these weren’t really magic. Anyone could learn them if they had a lick of sense, but sometimes even a lick is hard to find. People are often so busy living that they never stopped to wonder why. Witches did, and that meant them being needed: Oh, yes, needed—needed practically all the time, but not, in a very polite and definitely unspoken way, not exactly wanted.

This wasn’t the mountains, where people were very used to witches; people on the Chalk could be friendly, but they weren’t friends, not actual friends. The witch was different. The witch knew things that you did not. The witch was another kind of person. The witch was someone that perhaps you should not anger. The witch was not like other people.

Tiffany Aching was the witch, and she had made herself the witch because they needed one. Everybody needs a witch, but sometimes they just don’t know it.

And it was working. The storybook pictures of the drooling hag were being wiped away, every time Tiffany helped a young mother with her first baby, or smoothed an old man’s path to his grave. Nevertheless, old stories, old rumors, and old picture books still seemed to have their own hold on the memory of the world.

What made it more difficult was that there was no tradition of witches on the Chalk—none would ever have settled there when Granny Aching had been alive. Granny Aching, as everybody knew, was a wise woman, and wise enough not to be a witch. Nothing ever happened on the Chalk that Granny Aching disapproved of, at least not for more than about ten minutes.

So Tiffany was a witch alone.

And not only was there no longer any support from the mountain witches like Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax, and Miss Level, but the people of the Chalk weren’t very familiar with witches. Other witches would probably come and help if she asked, of course, but although they wouldn’t say so, this might mean that you couldn’t cope with responsibility, weren’t up to the task, weren’t sure, weren’t good enough.

“Excuse me, miss?” There was a nervous giggle. Tiffany looked round, and there were two little girls in their best new frocks and straw hats. They were watching her eagerly, with perhaps just a hint of mischief in their eyes. She thought quickly and smiled at them.

“Oh, yes, Becky Pardon and Nancy Upright, yes? What can I do for the two of you?”

Becky Pardon shyly produced a small bouquet from behind her back and held it out. Tiffany recognized it, of course. She had made them herself for the older girls when she was younger, simply because it was what you did, it was part of the scouring: a little bunch of wildflowers picked from the downland, tied in a bunch with—and this was the important bit, the magic bit—some of the grass pulled up as the fresh chalk was exposed.

“If you put this under your pillow tonight, you will dream of your beau,” said Becky, her face quite serious now.

Tiffany took the slightly wilting bunch of flowers with care. “Let me see . . .” she said. “We have here sweet mumbles, ladies’ pillows, seven-leaf clover—very lucky—a sprig of old man’s trousers, jack-in-the-wall, oh—love-lies-bleeding, and . . .” She stared at the little white-and-red flowers.

The girls said, “Are you all right, miss?”

“Forget-me-lots!”* said Tiffany, more sharply than she had intended. But the girls hadn’t noticed, so she continued to say, brightly, “Quite unusual to see it here. It must be a garden escapee. And, as I’m sure you both know, you have bound them all together with strips of candle rush, which once upon a time people used to make into rush lights. What a lovely surprise. Thank you both very much. I hope you have a lovely time at the fair. . . .”

Becky raised her hand. “Excuse me, miss?”

“Was there something else, Becky?”

Becky went pink, and had a hurried conversation with her friend. She turned back to Tiffany, looking slightly more pink but nevertheless determined to see things through.

“You can’t get into trouble for asking a question, can you, miss? I mean, just asking a question?”

It’s going to be “How can I be a witch when I’m grown up?” Tiffany thought, because it generally was. The young girls saw her on her broomstick and thought that was what being a witch was. Out loud she said, “Not from me, at least. Do ask your question.”

Becky Pardon looked down at her boots. “Do you have any passionate parts, miss?”

Another talent needful in a witch is the ability not to let your face show what you’re thinking, and especially not allowing it, no matter what, to go as stiff as a board. Tiffany managed to say, without a single wobble in her voice and no trace of an embarrassed smirk, “That is a very interesting question, Becky. Can I ask you why you want to know?”

The girl looked a lot happier now that the question was, as it were, out in the public domain.

“Well, miss, I asked my granny if I could be a witch when I was older, and she said I shouldn’t want to, because witches have no passionate parts, miss.”

Tiffany thought quickly in the face of the two solemn owlish stares. These are farm girls, she thought, so they had certainly seen a cat have kittens and a dog have puppies. They’d have seen the birth of lambs, and probably a cow have a calf, which is always a noisy affair that you can hardly miss. They know what they are asking me about.

At this point Nancy chimed in with “Only, if that is so, miss, we would quite like to have the flowers back, now that we’ve shown them to you, because perhaps it might be a bit of a waste, meaning no offense.” She stepped back quickly.

Tiffany was surprised at her own laughter. It had been a long time since she had laughed. Heads turned to see what the joke was, and she managed to grab both the girls before they fled, and spun them round.

“Well done, the pair of you,” she said. “I like to see some sensible thinking every now and again. Never hesitate to ask a question. And the answer to your question is that witches are the same as everybody else when it comes to passionate parts, but often they are so busy rushing around that they never have time to think about them.”

The girls looked relieved that their work had not been entirely in vain, and Tiffany was ready for the next question, which came from Becky again. “So do you have a beau, miss?”

“Not right at the moment,” Tiffany said briskly, clamping down on her expression lest it give anything away. She held up the little bouquet. “But who knows—if you’ve made this properly, then I’ll get another one, and in that case you will be better witches than me, that is for certain.” They both beamed at this dreadful piece of outright fluff, and it stopped the questions.

“And now,” said Tiffany, “the cheese rolling will be starting at any minute. I’m sure you won’t want to miss that.”

“No, miss,” they said in unison. Just before they left, full of relief and self-importance, Becky patted Tiffany on her hand. “Beaus can be very difficult, miss,” she said with the assurance of, to Tiffany’s certain knowledge, eight years in the world.

“Thank you,” said Tiffany. “I shall definitely bear that in mind.”

When it came to the entertainments offered at the fair, such as people making faces through a horse collar or fighting with pillows on the greasy pole or even the bobbing for frogs, well, Tiffany could take them or leave them alone, and in fact much preferred to leave them alone. But she always liked to see a good cheese roll—that is to say, a good cheese roll all the way down a slope of the hill, although not across the giant because no one would want to eat the cheese afterward.

They were hard cheeses, sometimes specially made for the cheese-rolling circuit, and the winning maker of the cheese that reached the bottom unscathed won a belt with a silver buckle and the admiration of all.

Tiffany was an expert cheesemaker, but she had never entered. Witches couldn’t enter that sort of competition because if you won—and she knew she had made a cheese or two that could win—everyone would say that was unfair because you were a witch; well, that’s what they would think, but very few would say it. And if you didn’t win, people would say, “What kind of witch can’t make a cheese that could be beat by simple cheeses made by simple folk like we?”

There was a gentle movement of the crowd to the start of the cheese rolling, although the frog-bobbing stall still had a big crowd, it being a very humorous and reliable source of entertainment, especially to those people who weren’t actually bobbing. Regrettably, the man who put weasels down his trousers, and apparently had a personal best of nine weasels, hadn’t been there this year, and people were wondering if he had lost his touch. But sooner or later everyone would drift over to the start line for the cheese rolling. It was a tradition.

The slope here was very steep indeed, and there was always a certain amount of boisterous rivalry between the cheese owners, which led to pushing and shoving and kicking and bruises; occasionally you got a broken arm or leg. All was going as normal as the waiting men lined up their cheeses, until Tiffany saw, and seemed to be the only one to see, a dangerous cheese roll up all by itself. It was black under the dust, and there was a piece of grubby blue-and-white cloth tied to it.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Horace. And where you are, trouble can’t be far behind.” She spun around, carefully searching for signs of what should not be there. “Now you just listen to me,” she said under her breath. “I know at least one of you must be somewhere near. This isn’t for you; it’s just about people. Understand?”

But it was too late. The Master of the Revels, in his big floppy hat with lace around the brim, blew his whistle and the cheese rolling, as he put it, commenced—which is a far grander word than “started.” And a man with lace around his hat was never going to use a short word where a long word would do.

Tiffany hardly dared to look. The runners didn’t so much run as roll and skid behind their cheeses. But she could hear the cries that went up when the black cheese not only shot into the lead but occasionally turned round and went back uphill again in order to bang into one of the ordinary innocent cheeses. She could just hear a faint grumbling noise coming from it as it almost shot to the top of the hill.

Cheese runners shouted at it, tried to grab at it, and flailed at it with sticks, but the piratical cheese scythed onward, reaching the bottom again just ahead of the terrible carnage of men and cheeses as they piled up. Then it rolled back up to the top and sat there demurely while still gently vibrating.

At the bottom of the slope, fights were breaking out among the cheese jockeys who were still capable of punching somebody, and since everyone was now watching that, Tiffany took the opportunity to snatch up Horace and shove him into her bag. After all, he was hers. Well, that was to say, she had made him, although something odd must’ve gotten into the mix since Horace was the only cheese that would eat mice and, if you didn’t nail him down, other cheeses as well. No wonder he got on so well with the Nac Mac Feegles,* who had made him an honorary member of the clan. He was their kind of cheese.

Surreptitiously, hoping that no one would notice, Tiffany held the bag up to her mouth and said, “Is this any way to behave? Aren’t you ashamed?” The bag wobbled a little bit, but she knew that the word “shame” was not in Horace’s vocabulary, and neither was anything else. She lowered the bag and moved a little way from the crowd and said, “I know you are here, Rob Anybody.”

There he was, sitting on her shoulder. She could smell him. Despite the fact that they generally had little to do with bathing, except when it rained, the Nac Mac Feegles always smelled something like slightly drunk potatoes. “The kelda wanted me tae find out how ye were biding,” said the Feegle chieftain. “You havena bin tae the mound to see her these past two weeks,” he went on, “and I think she is afeared that a harm may come tae ye, ye are working sae hard an’ all.”

Tiffany groaned, but only to herself. She said, “That is very kind of her. There is always so much to do; surely the kelda knows this. It doesn’t matter what I do, there is always more to be done. There is no end to the wanting. But there is nothing to worry about. I am doing fine. And please don’t take Horace out again in public—you know he gets excited.”

“Well, in point of fact, it says up on that banner over there that this is for the folk of these hills, and we is more than folk. We is folklore! Ye canna argue with the lore! Besides, I wanted tae come and pay my ain respects to the big yin without his breeks. He is a fine big wee laddie and nae mistake.” Rob paused, and then said quietly, “So I can tell her that ye are quite well in yourself, aye?” There was a certain nervousness to him, as if he would have liked to say more but knew it wouldn’t be welcome.

“Rob Anybody, I would be very grateful if you would do just that,” said Tiffany, “because I have a lot of people to bandage, if I’m any judge.”

Rob Anybody, suddenly looking like a man on a thankless errand, frantically said the words he had been told by his wife to say: “The kelda says there’s plenty more fish in the sea, miss!”

And Tiffany stood perfectly still for a moment and then, without looking at Rob, said quietly, “Do thank the kelda for her angling information. I have to get on, if you don’t mind, Rob. Do thank the kelda.”

Most of the crowd was reaching the bottom of the slope by now, to gawk or rescue or possibly attempt some amateur first aid on the groaning cheese runners. For the onlookers, of course, it was just another show; you didn’t often see a satisfying pileup of men and cheeses, and—who knew?—there might be some really interesting casualties.

Tiffany, glad of something to do, did not have to push her way through; the pointy black hat could create a path through a crowd faster than a holy man through a shallow sea. She waved the happy crowd away, with one or two forceful shoves for those of slow uptake. As a matter of fact, as it turned out, the butcher’s bill wasn’t too high this year, with one broken arm, one broken wrist, one broken leg, and an enormous number of bruises, cuts, and rashes being caused by people sliding most of the way down—grass isn’t always your friend. There were several young men clearly in distress as a result, but they were absolutely definite that they were not going to discuss their injuries with a lady, thank you all the same. So she told them to put a cold compress on the afflicted area, wherever it was, when they got home, and watched them walk unsteadily away.

Well, she’d done all right, hadn’t she? She had used her skills in front of the rubbernecking crowd and, according to what she overheard from the old men and women, had performed well enough. Perhaps she imagined that one or two people were embarrassed when an old man with a beard to his waist said with a grin, “A girl who can set bones would have no trouble finding a husband,” but that passed, and with nothing else to do, people started the long climb back up the hill . . . and then the coach came past, and then, which was worse, it stopped.

It had the coat of arms of the Keepsake family on the side. A young man stepped out. Quite handsome in his way, but also so stiff in his way that you could have ironed sheets on him. This was Roland. He hadn’t gone more than a step when a rather unpleasant voice from inside the coach told him that he should have waited for the footman to open the door for him and to hurry up, because they didn’t have all day.

The young man hurried toward the crowd and there was a general smartening-up because, after all, here came the son of the Baron, who owned most of the Chalk and nearly all their houses, and although he was a decent old boy, as old boys go, a little politeness to his family was definitely a wise move. . . .

“What happened here? Is everybody all right?” he said.

Life on the Chalk was generally pleasant and the relationship between master and man was one of mutual respect; but nevertheless, the farmworkers had inherited the idea that it could be unwise to have too many words with powerful people, in case any of those words turned out to be a word out of place. After all, there was still a torture chamber in the castle, and even though it hadn’t been used for hundreds of years . . . well, best to be on the safe side, best to stand back and let the witch do the talking. If she got into trouble, she could fly away.

“One of those accidents that was bound to happen, I’m afraid,” said Tiffany, well aware that she was the only woman present who had not curtsied. “Some broken bones that will mend and a few red faces. All sorted out, thank you.”

“So I see, so I see! Very well done, young lady!”

For a moment Tiffany thought she could taste her teeth. Young lady, from . . . him? It was almost, but not entirely, insulting. But no one else seemed to have noticed. It was, after all, the kind of language that nobs use when they are trying to be friendly and jolly. He’s trying to talk to them like his father does, she thought, but his father did it by instinct and was good at it. You can’t talk to people as though they are a public meeting. She said, “Thank you kindly, sir.”

Well, not too bad so far, except that now the coach door opened again and one dainty white foot touched the flint. It was her: Angelica or Letitia or something else out of the garden; in fact Tiffany knew full well it was Letitia, but surely she could be excused just a tiny touch of nasty in the privacy of her own head? Letitia! What a name. Halfway between a salad and a sneeze. Besides, who was Letitia to keep Roland away from the scouring fair? He should have been there! His father would have been there if the old man possibly could! And look! Tiny white shoes! How long would they last on somebody who had to do a jot of work? She stopped herself there: A bit of nasty was enough.

Letitia looked at Tiffany and the crowd with something like fear and said, “Do let’s get going, can we please? Mother is getting vexed.”

And so the coach left and the hurdy-gurdy man thankfully left and the sun left, and in the warm shadows of the twilight some people stayed. But Tiffany flew home alone, up high where only bats and owls could see her face.

CHAPTER TWO

Rough Music

She got one hour’s sleep before the nightmare began.

What she remembered most of all about that evening was the thumping of Mr. Petty’s head against the wall and the banisters as she hauled him bodily out of his bed and dragged him by his filthy nightshirt down the stairs. He was a heavy man and half asleep, the other half of him being dead drunk.

The important thing was to not give him any time to think, even for one moment, as she towed him behind her like a sack. He was three times her weight, but she knew about leverage. You couldn’t be a witch if you couldn’t maneuver someone who was heavier than you. You would never be able to change an invalid’s sheets otherwise. And now he slithered down the last few steps into the cottage’s tiny kitchen and threw up on the floor.

She was quite glad about that; lying in stinking vomit was the very least the man deserved, but she had to be quick to take charge, before he had time to compose himself.

The terrified Mrs. Petty, a mouse of a woman, had run screaming along the lanes to the village pub as soon as the beating had begun, and Tiffany’s father had sent a lad to wake Tiffany up. Mr. Aching was a man with considerable foresight and must have known that the beery cheerfulness after a day at the fair could be the undoing of everybody, and as Tiffany had sped toward the cottage on her broomstick, she had heard the rough music begin.

She slapped Petty’s face. “Can you hear that?” she demanded, waving her hand towards the darkened window. “Can you hear it? That’s the sound of the rough music, and they are playing it for you, Mr. Petty, for you. And they have sticks! And they have stones! They have everything they can pick up, and they have their fists and your daughter’s baby died, Mr. Petty. You beat your daughter so hard, Mr. Petty, that the baby died, and your wife is being comforted by some of the women and everybody knows that you have done it, everybody knows.”

She stared into his bloodshot eyes. His hands had closed automatically into fists because he had always been a man who thought with them. Soon he would try to use them; she knew it, because it was easier to punch than think. Mr. Petty had punched his way through life.

The rough music was getting nearer slowly, because it’s hard to walk across fields on a dark night when you’ve had a skinful of beer, no matter how righteous you are currently feeling. She had to hope that they did not go into the barn first, because they would hang him there and then. If he was lucky, they would just hang him. When she had looked into the barn and seen that murder had been done, she knew that, without her, it would be done again. She had put a charm on the girl to take the pain away, holding it just above her own shoulder. It was invisible, of course, but in her mind’s eye it burned a fiery orange.

“It was that boy,” mumbled the man, with vomit trickling down his chest. “Coming round here, turning her head so as she wouldn’t listen to her mum or me. And her being only thirteen. It’s a scandal.”

“William is thirteen too,” said Tiffany, trying to keep her voice level. It was difficult; the rage was bursting to get out. “Are you trying to tell me that she was too young for a bit of romance, but old enough to be beaten so hard that she bled from places where no one should bleed?”

She couldn’t tell if he had really come to his senses, because the man had so few of them at the best of times, it was hard to know if he had any at all.

“It wasn’t right, what they were doing,” he said. “A man’s got to have discipline in his own house, after all, ain’t that right?”

Tiffany could imagine the fiery language in the pub as the overture to the music got wound up. There were not very many weapons in the villages of the Chalk, but there were such things as reaping hooks and scythes and thatching knives and big, big hammers. They weren’t weapons—until you hit somebody with them. And everyone knew about old Petty’s temper, and the number of times his wife told the neighbors that she had gotten her black eye by walking into a door.

Oh, yes—she could imagine the conversation in the pub, with the beer joining in and people remembering where all those things that weren’t weapons were hanging in their sheds. Every man was king in his little castle. Everyone knew about that—well, at least every man—and so you minded your own business when it came to another man’s castle until the castle began to stink, and then you had to do something about it lest all castles should fall. Mr. Petty was one of the neighborhood’s sullen little secrets, but he was not a secret anymore.

“I am your only chance, Mr. Petty,” she said. “Run away. Grab what you can and run away right now. Run away to where they’ve never heard of you, and then run a bit farther, just to be on the safe side, because I will not be able to stop them, do you understand? Personally, I could not care less what happens to your miserable frame, but I do not wish to see good people get turned into bad people by doing a murder, so you just leg it across the fields and I won’t remember which way you went.”

“You can’t turn me out of my own house,” he mumbled, finding some drunken defiance.

“You’ve lost your house, your wife, your daughter . . . and your grandson, Mr. Petty. You will find no friends here this night. I am just offering you your life.”

“It was the drink what done it!” Petty burst out. “It was done in drink, miss!”

“But you drank the drink, and then you drank another drink, and another drink,” she said. “You drank the drink all day at the fair, and you only came back because the drink wanted to go to bed.” Tiffany could feel only coldness in her heart.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not good enough, Mr. Petty, not good enough at all. Go away and become a better person and then, maybe, when you come back as a changed man, people here might find it in their hearts to say hello to you, or at least to nod.”

She had been watching his eyes, and she knew the man. Something inside him was boiling up. He was ashamed, bewildered, and resentful, and in those circumstances the Pettys of the world struck out.

“Please don’t, Mr. Petty,” she said. “Do you have any idea what would happen to you if you hit a witch?”

She thought to herself, With those fists, you could probably kill me with a punch and that is why I intend to keep you scared.

“You set the rough music on me, didn’t ya?”

She sighed. “No one controls the music, Mr. Petty—you know that. It just turns up when people have had enough. No one knows where it starts. People look around, and catch one another’s eye, and give each other a little nod, and other people see that. Other people catch their eye and so, very slowly, the music starts and somebody picks up a spoon and bangs it on a plate, and then somebody else bangs a jug on the table and boots start to stamp on the floor, louder and louder. It is the sound of anger; it is the sound of people who have had enough. Do you want to face the music?”

“You think you’re so clever, don’t ya?” Petty snarled. “With your broomstick and your black magic, ordering ordin-ery folks about.”

She almost admired him. There he was, with no friends in the world, covered in his own vomit and—she sniffed: yes, there was urine dripping from the bottom of his nightshirt—yet he was stupid enough to talk back like that. “Not clever, Mr. Petty, just cleverer than you. And that’s not hard.”

“Yeah? But clever gets you into trouble. Slip of a girl like you, pokin’ about in other people’s business . . . What are you going to do when the music comes for you, eh?”

“Run, Mr. Petty. Get out of here. It’s your last chance,” she said. And it probably was; she could hear individual voices now.

“Well, would your majesty let a man put his boots on?” he said sarcastically. He reached down for them beside the door, but you could read Mr. Petty like a very small book, one with finger marks on all the pages and a piece of bacon as a bookmark.

He came up with fists swinging.

She took one step backward, caught his wrist, and let the pain out. She felt it flow down her arm, leaving it tingling, into her cupped hand and into Petty: all his daughter’s pain in one second. It flung him clear across the kitchen, and it must have burned away everything inside him except animal fear. He rushed at the rickety back door like a bull, broke through it, and headed off into the darkness.

She staggered back into the barn, where a lamp was burning. According to Granny Weatherwax, you did not feel the pain that you carried, but that was a lie. A necessary lie. You did feel the pain that you carried, and because it wasn’t actually your pain you could somehow bear it, but its departure left you feeling weak and shocked.

When the charging, clanging mob arrived, Tiffany was sitting quietly in the barn with the sleeping girl. The noise went all around the house but did not go inside; that was one of the unwritten rules. It was hard to believe that the anarchy of the rough music had rules, but it did; it might go on for three nights, or stop at one, and no one came out of the house when the music was in the air and no one came sneaking home and went back into the house either, unless it was to beg for forgiveness, understanding, or ten minutes to pack their bags and run away. The rough music was never organized. It seemed to occur to everybody at once. It played when a village thought that a man had beaten his wife too hard or his dog too savagely, or if a married man and a married woman forgot that they were married to somebody else. There were other, darker crimes against the music, too, but they weren’t talked about openly. Sometimes people could stop the music by mending their ways; quite often they packed up and moved away before the third night.

Petty would not have taken the hint; Petty would have come out swinging. And there would have been a fight, and someone would have done something stupid, that is to say even more stupid than what Petty would have done. And then the Baron would find out and people might lose their livelihood, which would mean they would have to leave the Chalk and go for perhaps as much as ten miles to find work and a new life among strangers.

Tiffany’s father was a man of keen instinct, and he gently opened the barn door a few minutes later when the music was dying down. She knew it was a bit embarrassing for him; he was a well-respected man, but somehow, now, his daughter was more important than he was. A witch did not take orders from anybody, and she knew that he got teased about it by the other men.

She smiled, and he sat down on the hay next to her while the wild music found nothing to beat, stone, or hang. Mr. Aching didn’t waste words at the best of times. He looked around, and his gaze fell on the little bundle, hastily wrapped in straw and sacking, that Tiffany had put where the girl would not see it. “So it’s true—she was with child, then?”

“Yes, Dad.”

Tiffany’s father appeared to look at nothing at all. “Best if they don’t find him,” he said after a decent interval.

“Yes,” said Tiffany.

“Some of the lads were talking about stringing him up. We would have stopped them, of course, but it would have been a bad business with people taking sides. It’s like poison in a village.”

“Yes.”

They sat in silence for a while. Then her father looked down at the sleeping girl. “What have you done for her?” he asked.

“Everything I can,” said Tiffany.

“And you did that taking-away-pain thingy you do?”

She sighed. “Yes, but that’s not all I shall have to take away. I need to borrow a shovel, Dad. I’ll bury the poor little thing down in the woods, where no one will know.”

He looked away. “I wish it wasn’t you doing this, Tiff. You’re not sixteen yet, and I see you running around nursing people and bandaging people and who knows what chores. You shouldn’t have to be doing all of that.”

“Yes, I know,” said Tiffany.

“Why?” he asked again.

“Because other people don’t, or won’t, or can’t, that’s why.”

“It’s not your business, is it?”

“I make it my business. I’m a witch. It’s what we do. When it’s nobody else’s business, it’s my business,” Tiffany said quickly.

“Yes, but we all thought it was going to be about whizzing around on brooms and suchlike, not cutting old ladies’ toenails for them.”

“But people don’t understand what’s needed,” said Tiffany. “It’s not that they are bad; it’s just that they don’t think. Take old Mrs. Stocking, who’s got nothing in the world except her cat and a whole lot of arthritis. People were getting her a bite to eat often enough, that is true, but no one was noticing that her toenails were so long they were tangling up inside her boots and so she’d not been able to take them off for a year! People around here are okay when it comes to food and the occasional bunch of flowers, but they are not around when things get a little on the messy side. Witches notice these things. Oh, there’s a certain amount of whizzing about, that’s true enough, but mostly it’s only to get quickly to somewhere there is a mess.”

Her father shook his head. “And you like doing this?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Tiffany had to think about this, her father’s eyes never leaving her face. “Well, Dad, you know how Granny Aching always used to say, ‘Feed them as is hungry, clothe them as is naked, and speak up for them as has no voices’? Well, I reckon there is room in there for ‘Grasp for them as can’t bend, reach for them as can’t stretch, wipe for them as can’t twist,’ don’t you? And because sometimes you get a good day, that makes up for all the bad days and, just for a moment, you hear the world turning,” said Tiffany. “I can’t put it any other way.”

Her father looked at her with a kind of proud puzzlement. “And you think that’s worth it, do you?”

“Yes, Dad!”

“Then I am proud of you, jiggit; you are doing a man’s job!”

He’d used the pet name only the family knew, and so she kissed him politely and did not tell him that he was unlikely to see a man doing the job that she did.

“What are you all going to do about the Pettys?” she asked.

“Your mum and me could take Mrs. Petty and her daughter in and . . .” Mr. Aching paused and gave her a strange look, as if she frightened him. “It’s never simple, my girl. Seth Petty was a decent enough lad when we were young. Not the brightest piggy in the litter, I’ll grant you that, but decent enough in his way. It was his dad who was a madman; I mean, things were a bit rough and ready in those days and you could expect a clip around the head if you disobeyed, but Seth’s dad had a thick leather belt with two buckles on it, and he would lay into Seth just for looking at him in a funny way. No word of a lie. Always used to say that he would teach him a lesson.”

“It seems that he succeeded,” Tiffany said, but her father held up a hand.

“And then there was Molly,” he went on. “You couldn’t say that Molly and Seth were made for one another, because in truth neither of them was rightly made for anybody, but I suppose they were sort of happy together. In those days, Seth was a drover, driving the flocks all the way to the big city sometimes. It wasn’t the kind of job you needed much learning for, and it might be that some of the sheep were a bit brighter than he was, but it was a job that needed doing, and he picked up a wage and no one thought the worse of him for that. The trouble was, that meant he left Molly alone for weeks at a time, and . . .” Tiffany’s father paused here, looking embarrassed.

“I know what you’re going to tell me,” said Tiffany, to help him out, but he took care to ignore this.

“It’s not that she was a bad girl,” he said. “It’s just that she never really understood what it was all about, and there wasn’t anyone to tell her, and you got all kinds of strangers and travelers passing through all the time. Quite handsome chaps, some of them.”

Tiffany took pity on him, sitting there looking miserable, embarrassed about telling his little girl things his little girl shouldn’t know.

So she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek again. “I know, Dad, I really do know. Amber isn’t actually his daughter, right?”

“Well, I never said that, did I? She might be,” said her father awkwardly.

And that would be the trick, wouldn’t it? Tiffany thought. Maybe if Seth Petty had known one way or the other, he might have come to terms with the perhaps. Maybe. You never know.

But he didn’t know, either, and there would be some days when he thought he did know and some days when he thought the worst. And for a man like Petty, who was a stranger to thinking, the dark thoughts would roll around in his head until they tangled up his brain. And when the brain stops thinking, the fist steps in.

Her father was watching her very closely. “You know about this sort of thing?” he asked.

“We call it going round the houses. Every witch does it. Please try and understand me, Dad. I have seen horrible things, and some of them all the more horrible because they were, well, normal. All the little secrets behind closed doors, Dad. Good things and nasty things I am not going to tell you about. It’s just part of being a witch! You learn to sense things.”

“Well, you know, life is not exactly a bed of roses for any of us . . .” her father began. “There was the time when—”

“There was this old woman up near Slice,” Tiffany interrupted him. “And she died in her bed. Nothing particularly bad about that, really: She had just run out of life. But she lay there for two months before anyone wondered what had happened. They are a bit strange over in Slice. The worst part of it was that her cats couldn’t get out and started eating her; I mean, she was cat mad and probably would not have minded, but one of them had kittens in her bed. In her actual bed. It was really very difficult to find the kittens homes in places where people hadn’t already heard the story. They were beautiful kittens too, lovely blue eyes.”

“Er,” her father began. “When you say ‘in her bed,’ you mean . . .”

“With her still in it, yes,” said Tiffany. “I’ve had to deal with dead people, yes. You throw up a bit the first time, and then you just realize that death is, well, part of life. It is not so bad if you think of it as a list of things to do, and do them one at a time. You might have a bit of a cry as well, but that’s all part of it.”

“Didn’t anyone help you?”

“Oh, a couple of ladies helped me when I knocked on their doors, but really she was nobody’s business. It can happen like that. People disappear in the cracks.” She paused. “Dad, we’re still not using the old stone barn, are we? Can you get some of the lads to clean it out for me?”

“Of course,” said her father. “Do you mind if I ask why?”

Tiffany heard his politeness; he was talking to a witch. “I think I’m having a kind of idea,” she said. “And I think I can make good use of that barn. It’s only a thought, and it won’t do any harm to have it tidied up in any case.”

“Well, I still feel mightily proud when I see you rushing all over the place on that broomstick of yours,” said her father. “That’s magic, isn’t it?”

Everyone wants magic to exist, Tiffany thought to herself, and what can I say? No, it doesn’t? Or: Yes, it does, but it’s not what you think? Everyone wants to believe that we can change the world by snapping our fingers. “The dwarfs make them,” she said. “I don’t have a clue how they work. Staying on them, that’s the trick.”

The rough music had died down now, possibly because there was nothing for it to do, or perhaps because—and this was quite likely—if the rough musicians got back to the pub soon, there might be time for another drink before it closed.

Mr. Aching stood up. “I think we should take this girl home, don’t you?”

“Young woman,” corrected Tiffany, leaning over her.

“What?”

“Young woman,” said Tiffany. “She deserves that, at least. And I think I should take her somewhere else first. She needs more help than I can give her. Can you please go and scrounge some rope? I’ve got a leather strap on the broomstick, of course, but I don’t think it will be enough.” She heard a rustling from the hayloft above and smiled. Some friends could be so reliable.

But Mr. Aching looked shocked. “You are taking her away?”

“Not far. I have to. But look, don’t worry. If Mum makes up an extra bed, I’ll soon have her back.”

Her father lowered his voice. “It’s them, isn’t it? Do they still follow you?”

“Well,” Tiffany said, “they say they don’t, but you know what little liars the Nac Mac Feegle are!”

It had been a long day, and not a good one; otherwise she would not have been so unfair, but—strangely—there was no giveaway reply from above. To her surprise, a lack of Feegle was suddenly almost as distressing as an overdose.

And then, to her delight, a small voice said, “Ha ha ha, she didna catch us oot that time, aye, lads? We kept as quiet as little mices! The big wee hag didna suspect a thing! Lads? Lads?”

“Daft Wullie, I swear ye dinna have enough brains to blow your nose,” said a similar but angry voice. “What part o’ ‘nae one is tae say one wee word’ did ye nae understand? Och, crivens!”

This last remark was followed by the sounds of a scuffle.

Mr. Aching glanced nervously at the roof and leaned closer. “You know your mother is very worried about you? You know she’s just been a grandma again. She’s very proud of them all. And you too, of course,” he added hurriedly. “But all this witchy business, well, that’s not the sort of thing a young man looks for in a wife. And now that you and young Roland . . .”

Tiffany dealt with this. Dealing was part of witchcraft too. Her father looked so miserable that she put on her cheerful face and said, “If I was you, Dad, I would go home and get a decent night’s sleep. I’ll sort things out. Actually, there’s a coil of rope over there, but I’m certain I won’t need to use it now.”

He looked relieved at this. The Nac Mac Feegle could be pretty worrying to those who did not know them very well, although now that she thought about it, they could be pretty worrying however long you had known them; a Feegle in your life very soon changed it.

“Have you been here all this time?” she demanded as soon as her father had hurried off.

For a moment it rained bits of hay and whole Feegles.

The problem with getting angry at Nac Mac Feegles was that it was like getting angry at cardboard or the weather; it didn’t make any difference. She had a go anyway, because by now it was sort of traditional.

“Rob Anybody! You promised not to spy on me!”

Rob held up a hand. “Ah weel, there ye have it, right enough, but it is one of them miss apprehensions, miss, ’cause we wasn’t spying at all, was we, lads?”

The mass of little blue-and-red shapes that now covered the floor of the barn raised their voices in a chorus of blatant lying and perjury. It slowed down when they saw her expression.

“Why is it, Rob Anybody, that you persist in lying when you are caught red-handed?”

“Ah weel, that’s an easy one, miss,” said Rob Anybody, who was technically the head man of the Nac Mac Feegles. “After all, ye ken, what would be the point of lyin’ when you had nae done anything wrong? Anyway, now I am mortally wounded to my giblets on account of me good name being slandered,” he said, grinning. “How many times have I lied to you, miss?”

“Seven hundred and fifty-three times,” said Tiffany. “Every time you promise not to interfere in my business.”

“Ah weel,” said Rob Anybody, “ye are still our big wee hag.”

“That may or may not be the case,” said Tiffany haughtily, “but I am a lot more big and considerably less wee than I used to be.”

“And a lot more hag,” said a jolly voice. Tiffany did not have to look to know who was talking. Only Daft Wullie could put his foot in it as far up as his neck. She looked down at his beaming little face. And he never did quite understand what it was that he was doing wrong.

Hag! It didn’t sound pretty, but every witch was a hag to the Feegles, however young she was. They didn’t mean anything by it—well, probably didn’t mean anything by it, but you could never tell for certain—and sometimes Rob Anybody grinned when he said it, but it was not their fault that to anyone not six inches tall the word meant someone who combed her hair with a rake and had worse teeth than an old sheep. Being called a hag when you are nine can be sort of funny. It isn’t quite so amusing when you are nearly sixteen and have had a very bad day and very little sleep and could really, really do with a bath.

Rob Anybody clearly noticed this, because he turned to his brother and said, “Ye will bring tae mind, brother o’ mine, that there was times when ye should stick your head up a duck’s bottom rather than talk?”

Daft Wullie looked down at his feet. “Sorry, Rob. I couldna find a duck just noo.”

The head man of the Feegles glanced down at the girl on the floor, sleeping gently under her blanket, and suddenly everything was serious.

“If we had been here when that leathering was happening, it would have been a bad day for him, I’ll tell ye,” said Rob Anybody.

“Just as well that you weren’t here then,” said Tiffany. “You don’t want to find people coming up to your mound with shovels, do you? You keep away from bigjobs, you hear me? You make them nervous. When people get nervous, they get angry. But since you’re here, you can make yourselves useful. I want to get this poor girl up to the mound.”

“Aye, we know,” said Rob. “Was it not the kelda herself who was sending us down here to find you?”

“She knew about this? Jeannie knew about this?”

“I dinna ken,” said Rob nervously. He always got nervous when talking about his wife, Tiffany knew. He loved her to distraction, and the thought of her even frowning in his direction turned his knees to jelly. The life of all the other Feegles was generally about fighting, stealing, and boozing, with a few extra bits like getting food, which they mostly stole, and doing the laundry, which they mostly did not do. As the kelda’s husband, Rob Anybody had to do the Explaining as well, and that was never an easy job for a Feegle. “Jeannie has the kenning o’ things, ye ken,” he said, not looking directly at Tiffany. She felt sorry for him then; it must be better to be between a rock and a hard place than to be between a kelda and a hag, she thought.

CHAPTER THREE

Those Who Stir in Their Sleep

The moon was well up and turned the world into a sharp-edged jigsaw of black and silver as Tiffany and the Feegles headed up onto the downs. The Nac Mac Feegles could move in absolute silence when they wanted to; Tiffany had been carried by them herself, and it was always a gentle ride, and really quite pleasant, especially if they had had a bath in the last month or so.

Every shepherd on the hills must have seen the Feegle mound at some time or other. No one ever talked about it. Some things were best left unspoken, such as the fact that the loss of lambs on the down where the Feegles lived was much less than it was in more distant parts of the Chalk, but on the other hand a few sheep would disappear; they would be the weak lambs or the very old ewes (Feegles liked old strong mutton, the kind that you could chew for hours)—the flocks were guarded, and guards took their pay. Besides, the mound was very close to all that remained of Granny Aching’s shepherding hut, and that was almost holy ground.

Tiffany could smell the smoke leaking up through the thornbushes as they got nearer. Well, at least it was a blessing that she would not have to slide down the hole to get into the mound; that sort of thing was all very well when you were nine, but when you were nearly sixteen it was undignified, the ruination of a good dress, and, although she would not admit this, far too tight for comfort.

But Jeannie, the kelda, had been making changes. There was an old chalk pit quite close to the mound, reached by a passageway underground. The kelda had got the boys working on this with bits of corrugated iron and tarpaulin that they had “found” in that very distinctive way they had of “finding” things. It still looked like a typical upland chalk pit, because brambles and Climbing Henry and Twirling Betty vines had been trained over it so that barely a mouse would be able to find its way inside. Water could get in, though, dripping along the iron and filling barrels down below; there was a much larger space now for cooking, and even enough room for Tiffany to climb down if she remembered to shout out her name first, when hidden hands pulled strings and opened the way through the impassable brambles as if by magic. The kelda had her own private bathroom down there; the Feegles themselves took a bath only when something reminded them, such as an eclipse of the moon.

Amber was whisked down the hole and Tiffany waited impatiently close to the right spot in the bramble forest until the thorns magically “moved aside.”

Jeannie, the kelda, almost as round as a football, was waiting for her, a baby under each arm.

“I am very pleased to see you, Tiffany,” she said, and for some reason that sounded odd and out of place. “I have told the boys tae go and let off steam outside,” the kelda went on. “This is women’s work, and not a pretty errand at that, I’m sure ye will agree. They have laid her down by the fire, and I have started to put the soothings on her. I do think she will bide fine, but it was a good job that ye have done this night. Your famous Mistress Weatherwax her own self could not have done a better job.”

“She taught me to take away pain,” said Tiffany.

“Ye dinna say?” said the kelda, giving Tiffany a strange look. “I hope ye never have occasion to regret the day she did ye that . . . kindness.”

At this point several Feegles appeared down the tunnel that led into the main mound. They looked uneasily from their kelda to their hag, and a very reluctant spokesfeegle said, “Not to be barging in or anything, ladies, but we was cooking up a wee late-night snack, and Rob said tae ask if the big wee hag would like a wee tasty?”

Tiffany sniffed. There was a definite scent in the air, and it was the kind of scent you get when you have sheep meat in close conjunction with, for example, a roasting pan. All right, she thought, we know they do it, but they might have the good manners not to do it in front of me!

The spokesfeegle must have realized this because, while wringing the edge of his kilt madly with both hands, as a Feegle generally did when he was telling an enormous lie, he added, “Weel, I think I did hear that maybe a piece of sheep kind of accidentally fell intae the pan when it was cooking and we tried to drag it oot but—well, ye ken what sheep is like—it panicked and fought back.” At this point the speaker’s obvious relief at being able to cobble some kind of excuse together led him to attempt greater heights of fiction, and he went on: “It is my thinking that it must have been suicidal owing to having nothing to do all day but eat grass.”

He looked hopefully at Tiffany to see if this had worked, just as the kelda cut in sharply and said, “Wee Honeymouth Jock, just you go in there and say that the big wee hag would like a mutton sandwich, okay?” She looked up at Tiffany and said, “No arguing, girl. Ye look tae me to be all but swaying for want of a decent hot meal. I ken well that witches looks after everybody but theirselves. Run ye along, boys.”

Tiffany could still feel a tension in the air. The kelda’s solemn little gaze stayed fixed on her, and then Jeannie said, “Can you remember yesterday?”

It sounded like a silly question, but Jeannie was never silly. It was worth thinking about, although Tiffany yearned for some suicidal sheep and a decent night’s sleep.

“Yesterday—well, I suppose it’s the day before yesterday now—I was called over to Buckle-Without,” she said thoughtfully. “The blacksmith there had not been careful with his forge, and it had broken open and shot hot coals all down his leg. I treated him and took away the pain, which I put in his anvil. For the doing of this, I was paid twenty-four pounds of potatoes, three cured deerskins, half a bucket of nails, one old but serviceable sheet good enough to make bandages, and one small jar of hedgehog fat, which his wife swore was a capital remedy for inflammation of the pipes. I also had a good helping of stew with the family. Then, since I was in the vicinity, I went on to Buckle-With-Many, where I saw to Mr. Gower’s little problem. I mentioned to him about the hedgehog fat, and he said it was a wonderful cure for the unmentionables and traded me one whole ham for the jar. Mrs. Gower made me tea and allowed me to pick a bushel basket of love-in-a-pickle, which grows more freely in her garden than I have ever seen it grow anywhere else.” Tiffany paused a moment. “Oh, yes, and then I stopped off at Wits End to change a poultice, and then I went and saw to the Baron, and then, of course, the rest of the day was my own, hah! But on the whole it was not a bad day, as days go, as people were too busy thinking about the fair.”

“And as days go, the day has gone,” said the kelda, “and no doubt it was a busy and useful one. But all day I had premonitions about ye, Tiffany Aching.” Jeannie held up a small nut-brown hand as Tiffany began to protest and went on, “Tiffany, ye must know that I watch over you. Ye are the hag o’ the hills, after all, and I have the power to watch ye in my heid, to keep an eye on ye, because somebody must. I know ye know this because ye are clever, and I know that ye pretend to me that ye do not know, just as I pretend not to know that I know, and I am sure that ye know that too, yes?”

“I might have to work all that out with a pencil and paper,” Tiffany said, trying to laugh it off.

“It is nae funny! I can see ye clouded in my heid. Danger around ye. And the worst of it is, I canna see from whence it comes. And that is not right!”

Just as Tiffany opened her mouth, half a dozen Feegles came scurrying down the tunnel from the mound, carrying a plate between them. Tiffany couldn’t help noticing, because witches always noticed things if they possibly can, that the blue decoration around the edge of the plate looked very much like that on her mother’s second-best dinner service. The rest of the plate was obscured by a large piece of mutton, along with baked potatoes. It smelled wonderful, and her stomach took over her brain. A witch took her meals where she could, and was happy to get them.

The meat had been cut in half, although the half for the kelda was slightly smaller than the half for Tiffany. Strictly speaking, you cannot have a half that is smaller than the other half, because it wouldn’t be a half, but human beings know what it means. And keldas always had a huge appetite for their size, because they had babies to make.

This wasn’t time to talk anyway. A Feegle offered Tiffany a knife, which was, in fact, a Feegle claymore, and then held up a rather grubby tin can with a spoon stuck in it.

“Relish?” he suggested shyly.

This was a bit posh for a Feegle meal, although Jeannie was civilizing them somewhat, insofar as you could civilize a Feegle. At least they were getting the right idea. Nevertheless, Tiffany knew enough to be wary.

“What’s in it?” she asked, understanding that this was a dangerous question.

“Oh, wonderful stuff,” said the Feegle, rattling the spoon in the can. “There’s crabapple, there is, and mustardseed and horseradish and snails and wild herbs and garlic and a sprinkling of Johnny-come-lately—” But he had gabbled one word a bit too quickly for Tiffany’s taste.

“Snails?” she interrupted.

“Oh, aye, yes, very nourishing, full of vit’mins and min’rals, ye ken, and those wee pro-teenies, and the nice thing is, with enough garlic, they taste of garlic.”

“What do they taste of if you don’t use garlic?” said Tiffany.

“Snails,” said the kelda, taking pity on the waiter, “and I have to say they are good eating, my girl. The boys let them out at night to graze on wild cabbage and dog lettuce. They are quite tasty, and I think ye might approve of the fact that there is no stealing involved.”

Well, that was a good thing, Tiffany had to admit. Feegles did steal, joyously and repeatedly, as much for sport as anything else. On the other hand, to the right people, in the right place, at the right time, they could be very generous, and this was fortunately happening right now.

“Even so, Feegles farming?” she said aloud.

“Oh, no,” said the spokesfeegle, while his fellows behind him pantomimed insulted distaste by making yuck noises and sticking their fingers down their throats. “It is nae farming, it is livestock herding, as is suitable for them who is free o’ spirit and likes to feel the wind up their kilt. Mind ye, the stampedes can be a wee bit embarrassing.”

“Have some, please do,” the kelda pleaded. “It will encourage them.”

In fact, the new Feegle cuisine was quite tasty. Perhaps it’s true what they say, thought Tiffany, that anything goes with garlic. Except custard.

“Don’t mind my boys,” said Jeannie when they had both eaten their fill. “The times are changing, and I think they know it. For ye too. How do ye feel?”

“Oh, you know. The usual,” said Tiffany. “Tired, flustered, and upset. That sort of thing.”

“Ye work too hard, my girl. I fear ye do not have enough to eat, and I can certainly see ye don’t get enough sleep. When did ye last sleep the night in a proper bed, I wonder? Ye ken that ye must have sleep; ye canna think properly without some time to rest. I fear ye will soon need all the strength ye can muster. Would ye like me to put the soothings on ye?”

Tiffany yawned again. “Thank you for offering, Jeannie,” she said, “but I don’t think I need them, if it’s all the same to you.” There was a pile of greasy fleeces in the corner that had probably not long before belonged to sheep who had decided to say good-bye to the cruel world and commit suicide. They looked very inviting. “I had better go and see to the girl.” Tiffany’s legs did not seem to want her to move. “Still, I expect she is as safe as houses in a Feegle mound.”

“Oh, no,” said Jeannie softly as Tiffany’s eyes shut. “Much, much safer than houses.”

When Tiffany was actually snoring, Jeannie walked slowly into the mound itself. Amber was curled up near the fire, but Rob Anybody had stationed some of the older and wiser Feegles around her. This was because the evening fighting was going on. The Nac Mac Feegle fought as often as they breathed, and generally at the same time. It was by way of being a way of life, in a way. Besides, when you were only a few inches tall, you had the whole world to fight and so you might as well learn early.

Jeannie sat down by her husband and watched the brawling for a while. Young Feegles were bouncing off the walls, their uncles, and one another. Then she said, “Rob, do ye think we are bringing our boys up properly?”

Rob Anybody, who was sensitive to Jeannie’s mood, glanced across at the sleeping girl.

“Oh, aye, no doubt about it— Hey, did ye no’ see that? Slightly-more-wee-than-Wee-Jock-Jock kicked Daft Wullie in the pog! Wonderful dirty fightin’, and he’s still only three inches high!”

“He is going to make a grand warrior one day, Rob, that’s true enough,” said Jeannie, “but . . .”

“I always tell them,” Rob Anybody went on excitedly as the young Feegle flew over their heads, “that the way to success is always to attack only people who are much bigger than ye are! Important rule!”

Jeannie sighed as another young Feegle smacked into the wall, shook his head, and rushed back into the fight. It was almost impossible to hurt a Feegle. Any human who tried to stamp on a Feegle would find that the little man he thought was under his boot was now in fact climbing up his trouser leg, and after that the day could only get worse. Besides, if you saw one Feegle, there were probably many more around that you hadn’t spotted, and they had certainly spotted you.

Perhaps the bigjobs have bigger problems because they’re bigger than us, the kelda thought. She sighed inwardly. She would never let her husband know this, but sometimes she did wonder whether a young Feegle might profitably be taught something like, well, accountancy. Something that didna mean ye had to bounce off the walls, and didna mean ye had to fight all the time. But then, would he still be a Feegle?

“I’m feared for the big wee hag, Rob,” she said. “Something is wrong.”

“She wanted to be a hag, lassie,” said Rob. “Now she has to dree her weird, same as us. She is a bonny fighter, ye ken. She kissed the Lord of the Winter to his death and banged the Queen o’ the Fairies with a frying pan. And I mind the time that invisible beastie got into her heid, and she wrestled it and sent it away. She fights.”

“Oh, I ken that well enough,” said the kelda. “She kissed the face o’ winter and made springtime come again. It was a great thing that she did, sure enough, but she had the mantle of the summer about her. It was that power she dealt to him, not just her own. She did it well, mind—I can think of none who would have done it better—but she must beware.”

“What enemy can she have that we canna face with her?” Rob asked.

“I canna tell,” said the kelda, “but in my heid, it seems like this. When she kissed the winter, it shook me to my roots; it seemed like it shook the world and I canna but wonder that there might be those who stirred in their slumber. You mak’ certain, Rob Anybody, to keep more than one eye on her.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The Real Shilling

Tiffany woke hungry and to the sound of laughter. Amber was awake and, against all probability, happy.

Tiffany found out why when she managed to squeeze most of herself into the tunnel that led to the mound. The girl was still lying curled up on one side, but a group of young Feegles was entertaining her with somersaults and handsprings and occasionally tripping one another up in humorous ways.

The laughter was younger than Amber was; it sounded like the chuckle a baby makes when it sees shiny things in pretty colors. Tiffany did not know how the soothings worked, but they were better than anything a witch could do; they seemed to settle people down and make them better from inside their head outward. They made you well and, best of all, they made you forget. Sometimes, it seemed to Tiffany, the kelda talked about them as if they were alive—living thoughts, perhaps, or kindly creatures that somehow took away the bad things.

“She’s doing well,” said the kelda, appearing out of nowhere. “She will bide fine. There will be nightmares as the darkness comes out. The soothings can’t do everything. She’s coming back into herself now, right from the start, and that’s the best thing.”

It was still dark, but dawn edged the horizon. Tiffany had a dirty job to do before daylight.

“Can I leave her here with you for a little while?” she asked. “There’s a small task that needs doing.”

I shouldn’t have gone to sleep, she thought as she climbed out of the pit. I should have gone right back! I shouldn’t have left the poor little thing there!

She tugged the broomstick out of the thornbushes around the mound, and stopped dead. Someone was watching her; she could feel it on the back of her neck. She turned sharply and saw an old woman all in black, quite tall, but leaning on a walking stick. Even as Tiffany looked, the woman vanished, slowly, as if evaporating into the scenery.

“Mistress Weatherwax?” Tiffany said to the empty air, but that was silly. Granny Weatherwax would not be seen dead with a walking stick, and certainly wouldn’t be seen alive with one. And there was movement in the corner of her eye. When she spun round again, there was a hare, right up on her* hind legs, watching her with interest and no sign of fear.

It was what they did, of course. The Feegles didn’t hunt them, and the average sheepdog would run out of legs before a hare ran out of breath. The hare had no stuffy burrow to be trapped in; speed was where a hare lived, shooting across the landscape like a dream of the wind—she could afford to sit and watch the slow world go by.

This one burst into flames. She blazed for a moment and then, entirely unharmed, sped away in a blur.

All right, thought Tiffany as the broomstick came free, let’s approach this from the point of view of common sense. The turf isn’t scorched and hares are not known for bursting into flames, so— She stopped as a tiny trapdoor flicked open in her memory.

The hare runs into the fire.

Had she seen that written down anywhere? Had she heard it as part of a song? A nursery rhyme? What had the hare got to do with anything? But she was a witch, after all, and there was a job to do. Mysterious omens could wait. Witches knew that mysterious omens were around all the time. The world was always very nearly drowning in mysterious omens. You just had to pick the one that was convenient.

Bats and owls steered effortlessly out of Tiffany’s way as she sped over the sleeping village. The Petty house was on the very edge. It had a garden. Every house in the village had a garden. Most of them had a garden full of vegetables or, if the wife had the upper hand, half vegetables and half flowers. The Petty house was fronted by a quarter of an acre of stinging nettles.

That had always annoyed Tiffany right down to her country boots. How hard would it have been to grub up the weeds and put in a decent crop of potatoes? All they needed was muck, and there was plenty of that in a farming village; the trick was to stop it from getting into the house. Mr. Petty could have made an effort.

He had been back to the barn, or at least somebody had. The baby was now on top of the heap of straw. Tiffany had come prepared with some old, but still serviceable, linen, which was at least better than sacking and straw. But somebody had disturbed the little body, and put flowers around it, except that the flowers were, in fact, stinging nettles. They had also lit a candle in one of the tin-plate candlesticks that every house in the village owned. A candlestick. A light. On a pile of loose straw. In a barn full of tinder-dry hay and more straw. Tiffany stared in horror and then heard the grunt overhead.

A man was hanging from the barn’s rafters.

They creaked. A little dust and some shreds of hay floated down. Tiffany caught them quickly and picked up the candle before the next fall of wisps set the whole barn alight. She was about to blow it out when it struck her that this would leave her in the dark with the gently spinning figure that might or might not be a corpse. She put the candle down ever so carefully by the door and scrabbled around to find something sharp. But this was Petty’s barn, and everything was blunt, even the saw.

It had to be him up there! Who else could it be? “Mr. Petty?” she said, clambering into the dusty rafters.

There was something like a wheeze. Was this good?

Tiffany managed to hook one leg round a beam, leaving one hand free to wield the saw. The trouble was that she needed two more hands. The rope was tight round the man’s neck, and the blunt teeth of the saw bounced on it, making the man swing even more. And he was beginning to struggle, too, the fool, so that the rope not only swung, but twisted as well. In a moment, she would fall down.

There was a movement in the air, a flash of iron, and Petty dropped like a rock. Tiffany managed to hold her balance long enough to grab a dusty rafter and half climb and half slither after him.

Her fingernails clawed at the rope round his neck, but it was as tight as a drum . . . and there should have been a flourish of music because suddenly Rob Anybody was there, right in front of her; he held up a tiny, shiny claymore and looked at her questioningly.

She groaned inwardly. What good are you, Mr. Petty? What good have you been? You can’t even hang yourself properly. What good will you ever do? Wouldn’t I be doing the world and you a favor by letting you finish what you began?

That was the thing about thoughts. They thought themselves, and then dropped into your head in the hope that you would think so too. You had to slap them down, thoughts like that; they would take a witch over if she let them. And then it would all break down, and nothing would be left but the cackling.

She had heard it said that, before you could understand anybody, you needed to walk a mile in their shoes, which did not make a whole lot of sense, because probably after you had walked a mile in their shoes, you would understand that they were chasing you and accusing you of the theft of a pair of shoes—although, of course, you could probably outrun them, owing to their lack of footwear. But she understood what the proverb actually meant, and here was a man one breath away from death. She had no option, no option at all. She had to give him that breath, for the sake of a handful of nettles; something inside the wretched hulk had still managed to be good. It was a tiny spark, but it was there. And there was no argument.

Hating herself deep down for being so soppy, she nodded at the Big Man of the Feegle clan. “All right,” she said. “Try not to hurt him too much.”

The sword sparkled, and the cut was made with the delicacy of a surgeon, although the surgeon would have washed his hands first.

The rope actually sprang out as the Feegle severed it, and shot away as though it was a serpent. Petty gasped air so hard that the candle flame by the door seemed to flatten for a moment.

Tiffany got up off her knees and brushed herself down. “What did you come back for?” she said. “What were you looking for? What did you expect to find?”

Mr. Petty lay there. There wasn’t even a grunt in reply. It was hard to hate him now, wheezing on the floor.

Being a witch meant you had to make choices, usually the choices that ordinary people did not want to make or even to know about. So she washed his face with a bit of torn cloth moistened from the pump outside and wrapped the dead child in the rather larger and cleaner bit of cloth that she had brought for the purpose. It wasn’t the best of shrouds, but it was honest and civilized. She reminded herself, in a dreamy kind of way, that she needed to build up her store of makeshift bandages and realized how grateful she should be. “Thank you, Rob,” she said. “I don’t think I could have managed by myself.”

“I reckon that maybe ye could,” said Rob Anybody, while they both knew that she couldn’t. “It just so happened that I was passing by, ye ken, and not following ye at all. One of them coincidences.”

“There have been a lot of those coincidences lately,” said Tiffany.

“Aye,” said Rob, grinning, “it must be another coincidence.”

It was impossible to embarrass a Feegle. They just couldn’t grasp the idea.

He was watching her. “What happens now?” he asked.

That was the question, wasn’t it. A witch needed to make people believe she knew what to do next, even if she didn’t. Petty was going to live, and the poor child was not going to stop being dead. “I’ll take care of things,” she said. “It’s what we do.”

Only it’s just me; there is no “us,” she thought as she flew through the mists of morning to the place of flowers. I wish, I wish there was.

In the hazel woods there was a clearing of flowers from early spring to late autumn. There was meadowsweet and foxglove and old man’s trousers and Jack-jump-into-bed and ladies’ bonnets and three-times-Charlie and sage and southernwood and pink yarrow and ladies’ bedstraw and cowslips and primroses and two types of orchid.

It was where the old lady they had called the witch was buried. If you knew where to look, you could see what little was left of her cottage underneath all that greenery, and if you really knew where to look, you could see the place where she had been buried. If you really and truly knew where to look, you could find the spot where Tiffany had buried the old lady’s cat, too; there was catnip growing on it.

Once upon a time, the rough music had come for the old woman and her cat, oh, yes, it had, and the people walking to its drumming had dragged her out into the snow and pulled down the rickety cottage and burned her books because they had pictures of stars in them.

And why? Because the Baron’s son had gone missing and Mrs. Snapperly had no family and no teeth and, to be honest, cackled a bit as well. And that made her a witch, and the people of the Chalk didn’t trust witches, so she was pulled out into the snow, and while the fire ate up the thatch of the cottage, page after page of stars crackled and crinkled into the night sky while the men stoned the cat to death. And that winter, after she had hammered on doors that remained closed to her, the old woman died in the snow, and because she had to be buried somewhere, there was a shallow grave where the old cottage used to be.

But the old woman had had nothing to do with the loss of the Baron’s son, had she? And soon after, Tiffany had gone all the way to a strange fairyland to bring him back, hadn’t she? And nobody talked about the old lady these days, did they? But when they walked past the place in the summer, the flowers filled the air with delight and bees filled it with the colors of honey.

No one talked about it. After all, what would you say? Rare flowers growing on the grave of the old woman and catnip growing where the Aching girl had buried the cat? It was a mystery, and maybe a judgment, although whose judgment it was, on whom, for what and why, was best not thought about, let alone discussed. Nevertheless, wonderful flowers growing over the remains of the possible witch—how could that happen?

Tiffany didn’t ask that question. The seeds had been expensive to buy, and she had had to go all the way to Twoshirts to get them, but she had vowed that every summer the brilliance in the wood would remind people that there had been an old lady they had hounded to death, and she had been buried there. Tiffany did not quite know why she thought that was important, but she was certain to the center of her soul that it was.

When she had finished digging the deep but sad little hole in a patch of love-in-a-hurry, Tiffany looked around to make certain that no early-morning traveler was watching and used both hands to fill the hole with dirt, moving dead leaves and transplanting some forget-me-lots. They weren’t really right here, but they grew fast and that was important because . . . someone was watching her. It was important not to look around. She knew she couldn’t be seen. In all her life she had met only one person who was better than her at not being seen, and that was Granny Weatherwax. It was still misty, too, and she would have heard if anyone had come along the path. It wasn’t a bird or animal, either. They always felt different.

A witch should never have to look around because she should know who was behind her. Usually she could work it out, but every sense Tiffany had told her that no one but Tiffany Aching was there, and somehow, in some strange way, it felt wrong.

“Too much to do, not enough sleep,” she said aloud, and thought she heard a faint voice say, “Yes.” It was like an echo except there was nothing for it to echo from. She flew away as fast as she could make the broomstick go, which, not being very fast at all, at least served to prevent it from looking as though she was running away.

Going nuts. Witches didn’t often talk about it, but they were aware of it all the time.

Going nuts—or, rather, not going nuts—was the soul and center of witchcraft, and this was how it worked. After a while, a witch, who almost always worked by herself in the tradition of witches, had a tendency to go . . . strange. Of course, it depended on the length of time and the strength of mind of the witch, but sooner or later they tended to get confused about things like right and wrong and good and bad and truth and consequences. That could be very dangerous. So witches had to keep one another normal, or at least what was normal for witches. It didn’t take very much: a tea party, a singalong, a stroll in the woods, and somehow everything balanced up, and they could look at advertisements for gingerbread cottages in the builder’s brochure without putting a deposit on one.

On top of everything else, Tiffany was worried about going nuts. It was two months since she had last been up into the mountains and three months since she had last seen Miss Tick, the only other witch you ever saw down here. There wasn’t time to go visiting. There was always too much to do. Perhaps that was the trick of it, Tiffany thought. If you kept yourself busy, you wouldn’t have time to go nuts.

The sun was well up when she got back to the Feegle mound, and she was shocked to see Amber sitting out on the side of the mound, surrounded by Feegles and laughing. The kelda was waiting for Tiffany by the time she had garaged the broomstick in the thornbushes.

“I hope ye do not mind,” she said when she saw Tiffany’s face. “The sunshine is a great healer.”

“Jeannie, it was wonderful of you to put the soothings on her, but I don’t want her to see too much of you. She might tell people.”

“Oh, it will all seem like a dream tae her—the soothings will see to that,” said Jeannie calmly, “and who will take much heed of a wee girl prattling about the fairies?”

“She is thirteen!” said Tiffany. “It’s not supposed to happen!”

“Is she no’ happy?”

“Well, yes, but . . .”

There was a steely look in Jeannie’s eye. She had always been very respectful to Tiffany, but respect requires respect in its turn. It was Jeannie’s mound, after all, and probably her land as well.

Tiffany settled for saying, “Her mother will be worrying.”

“Is that so?” said Jeannie. “And did her mam worry when she left the poor thing taking a beating?”

Tiffany wished the kelda wasn’t so astute. People used to tell Tiffany that she was so sharp she would cut herself, but the kelda’s steady gray gaze could chop iron nails.

“Well, Amber’s mother is . . . she’s not very . . . clever.”

“So I hear,” said Jeannie, “but most beasts is short on brains, and yet still the doe will stand her ground to defend her fawn, and a fox for her cub will face down the dog.”

“Humans are more complicated,” said Tiffany.

“So it seems,” said the kelda, her voice chilly just for that moment. “Well, the soothings is working fine, so maybe the girl needs to be back in your complicated world?”

Where her father is still alive, Tiffany reminded herself. I know he is. He was bruised, but he was breathing, and I hope to goodness he sobers up. And is this problem ever going to end? It has to be sorted out! I’ve got other things to do! And I’ve got to go and see the Baron this afternoon!

Tiffany’s father met them when they walked into the farmyard; Tiffany generally left the broomstick tied to a tree just outside, in theory because flying overhead frightened the chickens, but mostly because she was never able to land very gracefully and certainly didn’t want an audience.

He looked from Amber to his daughter. “Is she all right? She looks a bit . . . dreamy.”

“She’s had something to calm her down and make her feel better,” said Tiffany, “and she shouldn’t run around.”

“Her mum has been in a dreadful state, you know,” Tiffany’s father went on reproachfully, “but I told her you were looking after Amber in a very safe place.”

There was more than a hint of “You are sure about that, aren’t you?” in the way he spoke, and Tiffany was careful to ignore it, and simply said, “I was.” She tried to imagine Mrs. Petty in a dreadful state, and it didn’t work. Every time Tiffany had ever seen the woman she had a look of baffled apprehension, as if life had too many puzzles and you just had to wait until the next one hit you.

Tiffany’s father pulled his daughter to one side and lowered his voice. “Petty came back in the night,” he hissed, “and they say that someone tried to kill him!”

“What?”

“True as I’m standing here.”

Tiffany turned to Amber. The girl was staring at the sky as if hoping patiently for something interesting to happen.

“Amber,” she said carefully, “you know how to feed chickens, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, miss.”

“Well, go and feed ours, will you? There’s grain in the barn.”

“Your mum fed them hours ago—” her father began, but Tiffany dragged him away quickly.

“When did this happen?” she asked, watching Amber walking obediently into the barn.

“Sometime last night. Mrs. Petty told me. He was beaten badly. In that rackety old barn. Right where we were sitting last night.”

“Mrs. Petty went back? After everything that happened? What does she see in him?”

Mr. Aching gave a shrug. “He is her husband.”

“But everyone knows he beats her up!”

Her father looked a bit embarrassed. “Well,” he said, “I suppose to some women any husband is better than none.”

Tiffany opened her mouth to reply, looked into her father’s eyes, and saw the truth of what he had said. She had seen some of them up in the mountains, worn-out by too many children and not enough money. Of course, if they knew Nanny Ogg, something could be done about the children at least, but you still found the families who sometimes, in order to put food on the table, had to sell the chairs. And there was never anything you could do about it.

“Mr. Petty wasn’t beaten up, Dad, although it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if he was. I found him trying to hang himself, and I cut him down.”

“He’s got two broken ribs, and bruises all over him.”

“It was a long way down, Dad—he was choking to death! What should I have done? Let him swing? He has lived to see another day, whether he deserves to or not! It’s not my job to be an executioner! There was a bouquet, Dad! Weeds and nettles! His hands were swollen with nettle stings! There’s at least some part of him that deserves to live, do you see?”

“But you did steal the baby away.”

“No, Dad, I stole away with the baby. Listen, Dad, do get it right. I buried the child, which was dead. I saved the man who was dying. I did those things, Dad. People might not understand—might make up stories. I don’t care. You do the job that is in front of you.”

There was a clucking, and Amber walked across the yard with the chickens following her in a line. The clucking was being done by Amber, and as Tiffany and her father watched, the chickens marched back and forth as if under the command of a drill sergeant. The girl was giggling to herself in between clucks, and after managing to get the chickens to walk solemnly in a circle, she looked up at Tiffany and her father as if nothing had happened and led the fowls back into the barn.

After a pause Tiffany’s father said, “That did just happen, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “I have no idea why.”

“I’ve been talking to some of the other lads,” said her father, “and your mother has been talking to the women. We’ll keep an eye on the Pettys. Things have been let go that shouldn’t have. People can’t expect to leave everything to you. People mustn’t think that you can fix everything, and if you’ll take my advice, neither will you. There are some things a whole village has to do.”

“Thanks, Dad,” said Tiffany, “but I think I had better go and see to the Baron now.”

Tiffany could only just remember ever seeing the Baron as a well man. Nor did anyone seem to know what was wrong with him. But, like many other invalids she had seen, he somehow kept on going, living in a holding pattern and waiting to die.

She had heard one of the villagers call him a creaking door that never slammed; he was getting worse now, and in her opinion it was not going to be very long before his life slammed shut.

But she could take away the pain, and even frighten it a little so it wouldn’t come back for a while.

Tiffany hurried to the castle. The nurse, Miss Spruce, was waiting when she arrived, and her face was pale.

“It’s not one of his good days,” she said, then added with a modest little smile, “I have been praying for him all morning.”

“I’m sure that was very kind of you,” said Tiffany. She had taken care to keep any sarcasm out of her voice, but she got a frown from the nurse anyway.

The room Tiffany was ushered into smelled like sickrooms everywhere: all too much of people, and not enough air. The nurse stood in the doorway as if she was on guard. Tiffany could feel her permanently suspicious gaze on the back of her neck. There was more and more of that sort of attitude about. Sometimes you got wandering preachers around who didn’t like witches, and people would listen to them. It seemed to Tiffany that people lived in a very strange world sometimes. Everybody knew, in some mysterious way, that witches blighted crops and ran away with babies, and all the other nonsense. And at the same time, they would come running to the witch when they needed help.

The Baron lay in a tangle of sheets, his face gray, his hair totally white now, with little pink patches where it was all gone. He looked neat, though. He had always been a neat man, and every morning one of the guards would come and give him a shave. It cheered him up, as far as anyone could tell, but right now he looked straight through Tiffany. She was used to this; the Baron was what they called “a man of the old school.” He was proud and did not have the best of tempers, but he would stand up for himself at all times. To him, the pain was a bully, and what did you do to bullies? You stood up to them, because they always ran away in the end. But the pain didn’t know about that rule. It just bullied even more. And the Baron lay with thin white lips; Tiffany could hear him not screaming.

Now, she sat down on a stool beside him, flexed her fingers, took a deep breath, and then received the pain, calling it out of the wasted body and putting it into the invisible ball just above her shoulder.

“I don’t hold with magic, you know,” said the nurse from the doorway.

Tiffany winced like a tightrope walker who has just felt someone hit the other end of the rope with a big stick. Carefully, she let the flow of pain settle down, a little bit at a time.

“I mean,” said the nurse, “I know it makes him feel better, but where does all this healing power come from, that’s what I’d like to know?”

“Perhaps it comes from all your praying, Miss Spruce,” said Tiffany sweetly, and was glad to see the moment of fury on the woman’s face.

But Miss Spruce had the hide of an elephant. “We must be sure that we don’t get involved with dark and demonic forces. Better a little pain in this world than an eternity of suffering in the next!”

Up in the mountains there were sawmills driven by water, and they had big circular saws that spun so fast they were nothing but a silver blur in the air . . . until an absent-minded man forgot to pay attention, when it became a red disk and the air was raining fingers.

Tiffany felt like that now. She needed to concentrate, and the woman was determined to go on talking, while the pain was waiting for just one moment’s lack of attention. Oh, well, nothing for it . . . she threw the pain at a candlestick beside the bed. It shattered instantly, and the candle flashed into flame; she stamped on it until it went out. Then she turned to the astonished nurse.

“Miss Spruce, I am sure that what you have to say is very interesting, but on the whole, Miss Spruce, I don’t really care what you think about anything. I don’t mind you staying in here, Miss Spruce, but what I do mind, Miss Spruce, is that this is very difficult and can be dangerous for me if it goes wrong. Go away, Miss Spruce, or stay, Miss Spruce, but most of all, shut up, Miss Spruce, because I’ve only just started and there is still a lot of pain to shift.”

Miss Spruce gave her a look. It was fearsome.

Tiffany returned this with another look of her own, and if there is one thing that a witch learns how to do, it is how to look.

The door shut behind the enraged nurse.

“Talk quietly—she listens at doors.”

The voice came from the Baron, but it was hardly a voice at all; you could just hear in it the tones of someone used to command, but now it was cracked and failing, every word pleading for enough time to say the next word.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I must concentrate,” said Tiffany. “I would hate for this to go wrong.”

“Of course. I shall remain silent.”

Taking away pain was dangerous, difficult, and very tiring, but there was, well, a wonderful compensation in seeing the gray face of the old man come back to life. There was already some pinkness to his skin, and it was fleshing out as more and more pain flowed out of him and through Tiffany and into the new little invisible ball floating above her right shoulder.

Balance. It was all about balance. That had been one of the first things that she had learned: The center of the seesaw has neither up nor down, but upness and downness flow through it while it remains unmoved. You had to be the center of the seesaw so that pain flowed through you, not into you. It was very hard. But she could do it! She prided herself on it; even Granny Weatherwax had grunted when Tiffany had shown her one day how she had mastered the trick. And a grunt from Granny Weatherwax was like a round of applause from anybody else.

But the Baron was smiling. “Thank you, Miss Tiffany Aching. And now I would like to sit in my chair.”

This was unusual, and Tiffany had to think about it. “Are you sure, sir? You are still very weak.”

“Yes, everybody tells me that,” said the Baron, waving a hand. “I can’t imagine why they think I don’t know. Help me up, Miss Tiffany Aching, for I must speak to you.”

It wasn’t very difficult. A girl who could heave Mr. Petty out of his bed had little problem with the Baron, whom she handled like a piece of fine china, which he resembled.

“I do not think that you and I, Miss Tiffany Aching, have had more than the simplest and most practical of conversations in all the time you have been seeing to me, yes?” he said when she had him settled with his walking stick in his hands so that he could lean on it. The Baron was not a man to lounge in a chair if he could sit on the edge of it.

“Well, yes, sir, I think you are right,” said Tiffany carefully.

“I dreamed I had a visitor here last night,” said the Baron, giving her a wicked little grin. “What do you think of that, then, Miss Tiffany Aching?”

“At the moment I have no idea, sir,” said Tiffany, thinking, Not the Feegles! Let it not be the Feegles!

“It was your grandmother, Miss Tiffany Aching. She was a fine woman, and extremely handsome. Oh, yes. I was rather upset when she married your grandfather, but I suppose it was for the best. I miss her, you know.”

“You do?” said Tiffany.

The old man smiled. “After my dear wife passed on, she was the only person left who would dare to argue with me. A man of power and responsibility nevertheless needs somebody to tell him when he is being a bloody fool. Granny Aching fulfilled that task with commendable enthusiasm, I must say. And she needed to, because I was often a bloody fool who needed a kick up the arse, metaphorically speaking. It is my hope, Miss Tiffany Aching, that when I am in my grave you will perform the same service for my son, Roland, who, as you know, is inclined to be a bit too full of himself at times. He will need somebody to kick him up the arse, metaphorically speaking, or indeed in real life if he gets altogether too snotty.”

Tiffany tried to hide a smile, then took a moment to adjust the spin of the ball of pain as it hovered companionably by her shoulder. “Thank you for your trust in me, sir. I shall do my best.”

The Baron gave a polite little cough and said, “Indeed, at one point I harbored hopes that you and the boy might make a more . . . intimate arrangement?”

“We are good friends,” said Tiffany carefully. “We were good friends, and I trust that we will continue to be . . . good friends.” She hurriedly had to stop the pain from wobbling dangerously.

The Baron nodded. “Jolly good, Miss Tiffany Aching, but please don’t let the bond of friendship prevent you from giving him a righteous kick up the arse if he needs one.”

“I will take some pleasure in doing so, sir,” said Tiffany.

“Well done, young lady,” said the Baron, “and thank you for not chiding me for using the word ‘arse’ or asking me the meaning of the word ‘metaphorical.’”

“No, sir. I know what ‘metaphorical’ means, and ‘arse’ is a traditional usage—nothing to be ashamed of.”

The Baron nodded. “It has a commendable grown-up sharpness to it. ‘Ass,’ on the other hand, is quite frankly for spinsters and little children.”

Tiffany turned the words on her tongue for a moment and said, “Yes, sir. I think that is probably the long and the short of it.”

“Very good. Incidentally, Miss Tiffany Aching, I cannot conceal my interest in the fact that you do not curtsy in my presence these days. Why not?”

“I am a witch now, sir. We don’t do that sort of thing.”

“But I am your Baron, young lady.”

“Yes. And I am your witch.”

“But I have soldiers out there who will come running if I call. And I am sure you know, too, that people around here do not always respect witches.”

“Yes, sir. I know that, sir. And I am your witch.”

Tiffany watched the Baron’s eyes. They were a pale blue, but there was a foxy glint of mischief in them.

The worst thing you could possibly do right now, she told herself, would be to show any kind of weakness at all. He’s like Granny Weatherwax: He tests people.

As if he was reading her mind exactly at that point, the Baron laughed. “Then you are your own person, Miss Tiffany Aching?”

“I don’t know about that, sir. Just lately I feel as if I belong to everybody.”

“Hah,” said the Baron. “You work very hard and conscientiously, I’m told.”

“I am a witch.”

“Yes,” said the Baron. “So you have said, clearly and consistently and with some considerable repetition.” He leaned both skinny hands on his walking stick and looked at her over the top of them. “It is true then,” he said, “that some seven years ago you took an iron skillet and went into some sort of fairyland, where you rescued my son from the Queen of the Fairies—a most objectionable woman, I have been given to understand?”

Tiffany hesitated about this. “Do you want it to be so?” she said.

The Baron chuckled and pointed a skinny finger at her. “Do I want it to be? Indeed! A good question, Miss Tiffany Aching, who is a witch. Let me think . . . let us say . . . I want to know the truth.”

“Well, the bit about the frying pan is true, I must admit, and well, Roland had been pretty well knocked about, so I, well, had to take charge. A bit.”

“A . . . bit?” said the old man, smiling.

“Not an unreasonably large bit,” said Tiffany quickly.

“And why didn’t anybody tell me this at the time, pray?” said the Baron.

“Because you are the Baron,” said Tiffany simply, “and boys with swords rescue girls. That’s how the stories go. That’s how stories work. No one really wanted to think the other way round.”

“Didn’t you mind?” He wasn’t taking his eyes off her, and he hardly seemed to blink. There was no point in lying.

“Yes,” she said. “A bit.”

“Was it a reasonably large bit?”

“I would say so, yes. But then I went off to learn to be a witch, and it didn’t seem to matter anymore. That’s the truth of it, sir. Excuse me, sir, who told you this?”

“Your father,” said the Baron. “And I am grateful to him for telling me. He came to see me yesterday, to pay his respects, seeing as I am, as you know, dying. Which is, in fact, another truth. And don’t you dare tell him off, young lady, witch or otherwise. Promise me?”

Tiffany knew that the long lie had hurt her father. She’d never really worried about it, but it had worried him.

“Yes, sir, I promise.”

The Baron was silent for a moment, staring at her. “You know, Miss Tiffany Aching, who is, by regular repetition, a witch, I am at a time when my eyes are cloudy, but my mind, somehow, sees farther than you think. But perhaps it is not too late for me to make amends. Under my bed is a chest bound with brass. Go and open it. Go on! Do that now.”

Tiffany pulled out the chest, which felt as if it was full of lead.

“You will find some leather bags,” said the old man behind her. “Take one of them out. It will contain fifteen dollars.” The Baron coughed. “Thank you for saving my son.”

“Look, I can’t take—” Tiffany began, but the Baron banged his stick on the floor.

“Shut up and listen, please, Miss Tiffany Aching. When you fought the Queen of the Fairies, you were not a witch and therefore the tradition against witches taking money does not apply,” he said sharply, his eyes glittering like sapphires. “With regard to your personal services to myself, I believe you have been paid in food and clean used linen, secondhand footwear, and firewood. I trust my housekeeper has been generous? I told her not to stint.”

“What? Oh, oh, yes, sir.” And that was true enough. Witches lived in a world of secondhand clothes, old sheets (good for making bandages), boots with some life left in them, and, of course, hand-me-downs, hand-me-outs, hands-me-ups, hand-me-rounds, and hand-me-overs. In such a world, the pickings to be had from a working castle were like being given the key to a mint. As for the money . . . she turned the leather bag over and over in her hands. It was very heavy.

“What do you do with all that stuff, Miss Tiffany Aching?”

“What?” she said absentmindedly, still looking at the bag. “Oh, er, trade it, pass it on to people who need it . . . that sort of thing.”

“Miss Tiffany Aching, you are suddenly vague. I believe that you were engrossed in thinking that fifteen dollars isn’t much, is it, for saving the life of the Baron’s son?”

“No!”

“I’ll take that as a yes then, shall I?”

“You will take it from me as a no, sir! I am your witch!” She glared at him, panting. “And I am trying to balance a rather difficult ball of pain, sir.”

“Ah, Granny Aching’s granddaughter. I humbly beg your forgiveness, as I occasionally should have asked for hers. But nevertheless, will you please do me the favor and honor of taking that bag, Miss Tiffany Aching, and putting its contents to such use as you may determine in memory of me. I’m sure it’s more money than you have ever seen before.”

“I don’t often see any money at all,” she protested, stunned by this.

The Baron banged his stick on the floor again, as if applauding. “I doubt very much if you have ever seen money like this,” he said merrily. “You see, although there are fifteen dollars in the bag, they are not the dollars that you are used to, or would be if you were used to them at all. They are old dollars, from before they started mucking about with the currency. The modern dollar is mostly brass, in my opinion, and contains as much gold as seawater. These, however, are the real shilling, if you’ll excuse my little joke.”

Tiffany excused his little joke, because she didn’t get it. He smiled at her puzzlement. “In short, Miss Tiffany Aching, if you take these coins to the right dealer, he should pay you, oh, I would estimate somewhere in the region of five thousand Ankh-Morpork dollars. I don’t know what that would be in terms of old boots, but quite possibly it could buy you an old boot the size of this castle.”

And Tiffany thought: I can’t take this. Apart from anything else, the bag had become extremely heavy. Instead, she said, “That’s far too much for a witch.”

“But not too much for a son,” said the Baron. “Not too much for an heir, not too much for continuity down the generations. Not too much for removing a lie from the world.”

“But it can’t buy me another pair of hands,” said Tiffany, “or change one second of the past.”

“Nevertheless, I must insist that you take it,” said the Baron, “if not for your sake, then for mine. It will take a burden off my soul, and believe me, it could do with a bit of shining up at this time, don’t you agree? I am going to die soon, am I not?”

“Yes, sir. Very soon, I think, sir.”

Tiffany was beginning to understand something about the Baron by now, and she wasn’t surprised when he laughed.

“You know,” he said, “most people would have said, ‘Oh, no, old chap, you’ve got ages yet, you will be up and out of here in no time, lots of life left in you!’”

“Yes, sir. I’m a witch, sir.”

“And in this context that means . . . ?”

“I try very hard not to have to tell lies, sir.”

The old man shifted in his chair and was suddenly solemn. “When the time comes . . .” he began, and hesitated.

“I will keep you company, sir, if you wish,” said Tiffany.

The Baron looked relieved. “Have you ever seen Death?”

She had been expecting this and was ready. “Usually you just feel him passing, sir, but I have seen him twice, in what would have been the flesh, if he had any. He’s a skeleton with a scythe, just like in the books—in fact, I think it’s because that’s what he looks like in the books. He was polite but firm, sir.”

“I’ll bet he is!” The old man was silent for a little while and then went on. “Did he . . . drop any hints about the afterlife?”

“Yes, sir. Apparently it contains no mustard, and I got the impression that it contains no pickles either.”

“Really? Bit of a blow, that. I suppose that chutney is out of the question?”

“I did not go into the subject of pickled condiments in any depth, sir. He had a big scythe.”

There was a loud knocking at the door, and Miss Spruce called loudly, “Are you all right, sir?”

“In tip-top condition, dear Miss Spruce,” said the Baron loudly, then lowered his voice to say conspiratorially, “I believe our Miss Spruce does not like you very much, my dear.”

“She thinks I’m unhygienic,” said Tiffany.

“Never really understood about all that nonsense,” said the Baron.

“It’s quite easy,” said Tiffany. “I have to stick my hands in the fire at every opportunity.”

“What? You put your hands in the fire?”

Now she was sorry she had mentioned it, but she knew the old man would not be satisfied until she had shown him. She sighed and crossed over to the fireplace, pulling a large iron poker out of its stand. She admitted to herself that she liked showing off this trick occasionally, and the Baron would be an appreciative audience. But should she do it? Well, the fire trick was not that complicated and the balance of the pain was fine, and it wasn’t as if the Baron had much time left.

She drew a bucket of water from the little well at the far end of the room. The well had frogs in it, and therefore so did the bucket, but she was kind and dropped them back into their well. No one likes boiling a frog. The bucket of water was not strictly necessary, but it did have a part to play. Tiffany coughed theatrically. “Do you see, sir? I have one poker and one bucket of cold water. Cold metal poker, cold bucket of water. And now . . . I hold in my left hand the poker, and I stick my right hand into the hottest part of the fire, like this.”

The Baron gasped as flames burst around her hand and the tip of the poker in her other hand suddenly glowed red-hot.

With the Baron suitably impressed, Tiffany dowsed the poker in the bucket of water, from which erupted a cloud of steam. Then she stood in front of the Baron, holding up her hand, quite unscathed.

“But I saw flames come up!” said the Baron, his eyes wide. “Well done! Very well done! Some sort of trick, yes?”

“More of a skill, sir. I put my hand in the fire and sent the heat into the poker. I just moved the heat around. The flame you saw was caused by the burning of bits of dead skin, dirt, and all those nasty, invisible little biting things that unhygienic people might have on their hands. . . .” She paused. “Are you all right, sir?” The Baron was staring at her. “Sir? Sir?”

The old man spoke as if he was reading from an invisible book:

“The hare runs into the fire.

The hare runs into the fire.

The fire, it takes her, she is not burned.

The fire, it loves her, she is not burned.The hare runs into the fire.

The fire, it loves her, she is free. . . .

“It all comes back to me! How did I ever forget it! How did I dare to forget it? I told myself I would remember it forever, but time goes on and the world fills up with things to remember, things to do, calls on your time, calls on your memory. And you forget the things that were important, the real things.”

Tiffany was shocked to see tears streaming down his face.

“I remember it all,” he whispered, his voice punctuated with sobs. “I remember the heat! I remember the hare!”

At which point the door banged open and Miss Spruce stepped into the room. What happened next took a moment, but seemed to Tiffany to go on for an hour. The nurse looked at her holding the poker, and then at the old man in tears, then at the cloud of steam, then back to Tiffany as she let the poker go, and then back to the old man, and then back to Tiffany as the poker landed in the hearth with a clang that echoed around the world. And then Miss Spruce took a deep breath like a whale preparing to dive to the bottom of the ocean and screamed, “What do you think you are doing to him? Get out of here, you brazen hussy!”

Tiffany’s ability to speak came back quickly, and then grew into an ability to shout. “I am not brazen and I don’t huss!”

“I’m going to fetch the guards, you black and midnight hag!” the nurse screamed, heading for the door.

“It’s only eleven thirty!” Tiffany shouted after her and hurried back to the Baron, totally at a loss as to what to do next. The pain shifted. She could feel it. She wasn’t keeping her mind straight. Things were getting out of balance. She concentrated for a moment and then, trying to smile, turned to the Baron.

“I’m very sorry if I have upset you, sir,” she began, and then realized that he was smiling through his tears and his whole face seemed full of sunlight.

“Upset me? Good gracious no, I’m not upset.” He tried to pull himself upright in the chair and pointed toward the fire with a trembling finger. “I am, in fact, set up! I feel alive! I am young, my dear Miss Tiffany Aching! I remember that perfect day! Can you not see me? Down in the valley? A perfect, crisp September day. A little boy in the tweed jacket that was far too itchy, as I recall, yes, was far too itchy and smelled of wee! And my father was singing ‘The Larks They Sang Melodious,’ and I was trying to harmonize, which of course I couldn’t do then because I had about as much voice as a rabbit, and we were watching them burn the stubbles. There was smoke everywhere, and as the fire swept along, mice, rats, and even foxes were running toward us away from the flames. Pheasants and partridges were taking off like rockets at the last minute, as they do, and suddenly there was no sound at all and I saw this hare. Oh, she was a big one—did you know that country people used to think all hares were female?—and she just stood there, looking at me, with bits of burning grass falling around us, and the flames behind her, and she was looking directly at me, and I will swear that when she knew that she had caught my eye, she flicked herself into the air and jumped straight into the fire. And of course I cried like anything, because she was so fine. And my father picked me up and said he’d tell me a little secret, and he taught me the hare song, so that I would know the truth of it, and stop crying. And then later on, we walked over the ashes and there was no dead hare.” The old man turned his head awkwardly toward her and beamed, really beamed. He shone.

Where is that coming from? Tiffany wondered. It’s too yellow for firelight, but the curtains are shut. It’s always too gloomy in here, but now it is the light of a crisp September day. . . .

“I remember doing a crayon picture of it when we got home, and my father was so proud of it, he took it all around the castle so that everybody could admire it,” the old man went on, as enthusiastic as a boy. “A child’s scrawl, of course, but he talked about it as if it were a work of genius. Parents do such things. I found it among his documents after he died, and in fact, if you are interested, you will find it in a leather folder within the money chest. It is, after all, a precious thing. I’ve never told anyone else that,” said the Baron. “People and days and memories come and go, but that memory has always been there. No money that I could give you, Miss Tiffany Aching, who is the witch, could ever repay you for bringing back to me that wonderful vision. Which I shall remember until the day I—”

For a moment the flames on the fire stood still and the air was cold. Tiffany was never actually sure that she ever saw Death, not actually saw; perhaps in some strange way it had all happened inside her head. Though wherever he was, well, he was there.

WASN’T THAT APPROPRIATE? Death said.

Tiffany didn’t step back. There was no point. “Did you arrange that?” she asked.

MUCH AS I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE THE CREDIT, OTHER FORCES ARE AT WORK. GOOD MORNING TO YOU, MISS ACHING.

Death left, and the Baron followed, a little boy in his new tweed jacket, which was terribly itchy and sometimes smelled of wee,* following his father across the smoking field.

Then Tiffany placed her hand on the dead man’s face and, with respect, closed his eyes, where the light of burning fields was dimming.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Mother of Tongues

There should have been a moment of peace; in fact there was a moment of metal. Some of the castle guard were approaching, their armor making even more noise than armor usually does because none of it fitted properly. There hadn’t been any battles here for hundreds of years, but they still wore armor, because it seldom needed mending and didn’t wear out.

The door was pushed open by Brian, the sergeant. He wore a complicated expression. It was the expression of a man who has just been told that an evil witch, whom he has known since she was a kid, has killed the boss, and the boss’s son is away, and the witch is still in the room, and a nurse, whom he does not like very much, is prodding him on the bottom and shouting, “What are you waiting for, man? Do your duty!”

All this was getting on his nerves.

He gave Tiffany a sheepish look. “Morning, miss. Is everything all right?” Then he stared at the Baron in his chair. “He’s dead then, is he?”

Tiffany said, “Yes, Brian, he is. He died only a couple of minutes ago, and I have reason to believe that he was happy.”

“Well, that’s good then, I suppose,” said the sergeant, and then his face twisted into tears so that the next words were gulped and damp. “You know, he was really very good to us when my granny was ill; he had hot meals sent over to her every day, right up until the end.”

She held his unprotesting hand and looked over his shoulder. The other guards were crying too, and crying all the more because they knew they were big strong men, or so they hoped, and shouldn’t cry at all. But the Baron had always been there, part of life, like the sunrise. All right, maybe he’d give you a dressing-down if you were asleep on duty or had a blunt sword (despite the fact that no guard in living memory had needed to use his sword for anything more than levering the lid off a tin of jam), but when all was said and done, he was the Baron and they were his men and now he was gone.

“Ask her about the poker!” screamed the nurse behind Brian. “Go on, ask her about the money!”

The nurse could not see Brian’s face. Tiffany could. He had probably been prodded on the bottom again and was suddenly livid.

“Sorry, Tiff . . . I mean, miss, but this lady here says she thinks you done a murder and a robbery,” he said, and his face added that its owner right now was not thinking the same thing and didn’t want to get into trouble with anyone, especially Tiffany.

Tiffany rewarded him with a little smile. Always remember you are a witch, she told herself. Don’t start shouting your innocence. You know you are innocent. You don’t have to shout anything. “The Baron was kind enough to give me some money for . . . looking after him,” she said, “and I suppose Miss Spruce must have inadvertently heard him doing so and formed a wrong impression.”

“It was a lot of money!” Miss Spruce insisted, red in the face. “The big chest under the Baron’s bed was open!”

“All that is true,” said Tiffany, “and it would appear that Miss Spruce was accidentally hearing for quite some time.”

Some of the guards sniggered, which made Miss Spruce even more angry, if that was possible. She pushed her way forward.

“Do you deny that you were standing there with a poker and your hand on fire?” she demanded, her face as red as a turkey.

“I would like to say something, please,” said Tiffany. “It’s rather important.” She could feel the impatient pain now, fighting to get free. Her hands were clammy.

“You were doing black magic, admit it!”

Tiffany took a deep breath. “I don’t know what that is,” she said, “but I know I am holding just above my shoulder the last pain that the Baron will ever know, and I have to get rid of it soon, and I can’t get rid of it in here, what with all these people. Please? I need an open space right now!” She pushed Miss Spruce out of the way and the guards swiftly stood aside for her, to the nurse’s extreme annoyance.

“Don’t let her go! She will fly away! That’s what they do!”

Tiffany knew the layout of the castle very well; everybody did. There was a courtyard down some steps, and she headed there rapidly, feeling the pain stirring and unfolding. You had to think of it as a kind of animal you could keep at bay, but that only worked for so long. About as long as . . . well, now, in fact.

The sergeant appeared beside her, and she grabbed his arm. “Don’t ask me why,” she managed to say through gritted teeth, “but throw your helmet in the air!”

He was bright enough to follow orders, and he spun the helmet in the air like a soup plate. Tiffany hurled the pain after it, feeling its dreadful silkiness as it found its freedom. The helmet stopped in midair as if it had hit an invisible wall, and dropped onto the cobblestones in a cloud of steam, bent almost in half.

The sergeant picked it up and immediately dropped it again. “It’s bloody hot!” He stared at Tiffany, who was leaning against the wall and trying to catch her breath. “And you’ve been taking away pain like that every day?”

She opened her eyes. “Yes, but I normally get plenty of time to find somewhere to dump it. Water and rock aren’t very good, but metal is quite reliable. Don’t ask me why. If I try to think about how it works, it doesn’t work.”

“And I’ve heard that you can do all kinds of tricks with fire, too?” said Sergeant Brian admiringly.

“Fire is easy to work with if you keep your mind clear, but pain . . . pain fights back. Pain is alive. Pain is the enemy.”

The sergeant gingerly attempted to reclaim his helmet, hoping that by now it was cool enough to hold. “I will have to make certain I knock the dent out of it before the boss sees it,” he began. “You know what a stickler he is for smartness. . . . Oh.” He stared down at the ground.

“Yes,” said Tiffany as kindly as she could. “It’s going to take a bit of getting used to, isn’t it?” Wordlessly, she handed him her handkerchief, and he blew his nose.

“But you can take away pain,” he began, “so does that mean you can . . . ?”

Tiffany held up a hand. “Stop right there,” she said. “I know what you’re going to ask, and the answer is no. If you chopped your hand off, I could probably make you forget about it until you tried to eat your dinner, but things like loss, grief, and sadness? I can’t do that. I wouldn’t dare meddle with them. There is something called the soothings, and I know only one person in the world who can do that, and I’m not even going to ask her to teach me. It’s too deep.”

“Tiff . . .” Brian hesitated and looked around as though he expected the nurse to appear and prod him from behind again.

Tiffany waited. Please don’t ask, she thought. You’ve known me all your life. You can’t possibly think . . .

Brian looked at her pleadingly. “Did you . . . take anything?” His voice tailed off.

“No, of course not,” Tiffany said. “What maggot’s got into your head? How could you think such a thing?”

“Dunno,” said Brian, flushing with embarrassment.

“Well, that’s all right then.”

“I suppose I had better make sure the young master knows,” said Brian after another good nose blow, “but all I know is that he’s gone to the big city with his—” He stopped again, embarrassed.

“With his fiancée,” said Tiffany determinedly. “You can say it out loud, you know.”

Brian coughed. “Well, you see, we thought . . . well, we all thought that you and him were, well, you know . . .”

“We have always been friends,” said Tiffany, “and that’s all there is to it.”

She felt sorry for Brian, even though he too often opened his mouth before he got it attached to his brain, so she patted him on the shoulder. “Look, why don’t I fly down to the big city and find him?”

He almost melted with relief. “Would you do that?”

“Of course. I can see you have a lot to do here, and it will take a load off your mind.”

Admittedly it will put the load on mine, she thought as she hurried away through the castle. The news had spread. People were standing around, crying or just looking bewildered. The cook ran up to her just as she was leaving. “What am I to do? I’ve got the poor soul’s dinner on the stove!”

“Then take it off and give it to someone who needs a good dinner,” said Tiffany briskly. It was important to keep her tone cool and busy. The people were in shock. She would be too, when she had the time, but right at this moment it was important to bounce people back into the world of the here and now.

“Listen to me, all of you,” and her voice echoed around the big hall. “Yes, your Baron is dead but you still have a Baron! He will be here soon with his . . . lady, and you must have this place spotless for them! You all know your jobs! Get on with them! And remember him kindly, and clean the place up for his sake.”

It worked. It always did. A voice that sounded as if its owner knew what she was doing could get things done, especially if its owner was wearing a pointy black hat. There was a sudden rush of activity.

“I suppose you think you’ve gotten away with it, do you?” said a voice behind her.

Tiffany waited a moment before turning round, and when she did turn round, she was smiling. “Why, Miss Spruce,” she said, “are you still here? Well, perhaps there are some floors that need scrubbing?”

The nurse was a vision of fury. “I do not scrub floors, you arrogant little—”

“No, you don’t scrub anything, do you, Miss Spruce? I’ve noticed that! Now, Miss Flowerdew, who was here before you, now she could scrub a floor. She could scrub a floor so that you could see your face in it, although in your case, Miss Spruce, I can imagine why that would not appeal. Miss Jumper, who we had before her, would even scrub floors with sand, white sand! She chased dirt like a terrier chasing a fox!”

The nurse opened her mouth to speak, but Tiffany didn’t allow the words any space. “The cook has told me that you are a very religious woman, always on your knees, and that is fine by me, absolutely fine, but didn’t it ever occur to you to take a mop and bucket down there with you? People don’t need prayers, Miss Spruce; they need you to do the job in front of you, Miss Spruce. And I have had enough of you, Miss Spruce, and especially of your lovely white coat. I think Roland was very impressed by your wonderful white coat, but I am not, Miss Spruce, because you never do anything that will get it dirty.”

The nurse raised a hand. “I could slap you!”

“No,” said Tiffany firmly. “You couldn’t.”

The hand stayed where it was. “I have never been so insulted before in my life!” screamed the enraged nurse.

“Really?” said Tiffany. “I’m genuinely surprised.” She turned on her heel, left the nurse standing, and marched over to a young guard who had just come into the hall. “I’ve seen you around. I don’t think I know who you are. What’s your name, please?”

The trainee guard gave what he probably thought was a salute. “Preston, miss.”

“Has the Baron been taken down to the crypt, Preston?”

“Yes, miss, and I’ve took down some lanterns and some cloths and a bucket of warm water, miss.” He grinned when he saw her expression. “My grandma used to do the laying out when I was a little boy, miss. I could help, if you wanted.”

“Did your grandma let you help?”

“No, miss,” said the young man. “She said men weren’t allowed to do that sort of thing unless they had a certificate in doctrine.”

Tiffany looked puzzled for a moment. “Doctrine?”

“You know, miss. Doctrine: pills and potions and sawing off legs and similar.”

Light dawned. “Oh, you mean doctoring. I should hope not. This isn’t about making the poor soul better. I will do it by myself, but thank you for asking, anyway. This is women’s work.”

Exactly why it is women’s work I don’t know, she said to herself as she arrived in the crypt and rolled up her sleeves. The young guard had even thought to bring down a dish of soil and a dish of salt.* Your granny did well, she thought. At last someone had taught a boy something useful!

She cried as she made the old man “presentable,” as Granny Weatherwax called it. She always cried. It was a needful thing. But you didn’t do it where anyone else could see, not if you were a witch. People wouldn’t expect that. It would make them uneasy.

She stood back. Well, the old boy looked better than he had yesterday, she had to admit. As a final touch, she took two pennies out of her pocket and laid them gently over his eyelids.

Those were the old customs, taught to her by Nanny Ogg, but now there was a new custom, known only to her. She leaned on the edge of the marble slab with one hand and held the bucket of water in the other. She stayed there, motionless, until the water in the bucket began to boil and ice was forming on the slab. She took the bucket outside and tipped its contents down the drain.

The castle was bustling when she had finished, and she left people to get on with things. She hesitated as she stepped out of the castle and stopped to think. People often didn’t stop to think. They thought as they went along. Sometimes it was a good idea just to stop moving, in case you moved the wrong way.

Roland was the Baron’s only son and, as far as Tiffany knew, his only relative, or at least his only relative who was allowed to come anywhere near the castle; after some horrible and expensive legal fighting, Roland had succeeded in banishing the dreadful aunts, the Baron’s sisters who, frankly, even the old Baron thought were as nasty a pair of old ferrets as any man should find down the trousers of his life. But there was another person who should know, who was in no conceivable way at all kin to the Baron but was nevertheless, well, someone who should know something as important as this, as soon as possible. Tiffany headed up to the Feegle mound to see the kelda.

Amber was sitting outside when Tiffany arrived, doing some sewing in the sunlight.

“Hello, miss,” she said cheerfully. “I’ll just go and tell Mrs. Kelda that you’re here.” And with that she disappeared down the hole as easily as a snake, just as Tiffany had once been able to do.

Why had Amber gone back there? Tiffany wondered. She had taken her to the Aching farm to be safe. Why had the girl walked up the Chalk to the mound? How had she even remembered where it was?

“Very interesting child, that,” said a voice, and the Toad* stuck his head out from under a leaf. “I must say you look extremely flustered, miss.”

“The old Baron is dead,” said Tiffany.

“Well, only to be expected. Long live the Baron,” said the Toad.

“He’s not going to live long,” said Tiffany. “He’s dead.”

“No,” croaked the Toad. “It’s what you’re supposed to say. When a king dies, you have to immediately announce that there is another king. It’s important. I wonder what the new one will be like. Rob Anybody says that he’s a wet nelly who is not fit to lick your boots. And has scorned you very badly.”

Whatever the circumstances of the past, Tiffany was not going to let that go by unchallenged. “I don’t need anybody to lick anything for me, thank you very much. Anyway,” she added, “he’s not their Baron, is he? The Feegles pride themselves on not having a lord.”

“You are correct in your submission,” said the Toad ponderously, “but you must remember that they also pride themselves on having as much as possible to drink at the slightest possible excuse, which leaves them of an uncertain temper, and that the Baron quite definitely believes that he is, de facto, the owner of all the property hereabouts. A claim that stands up in law. Although I am sorry to say that I can no longer do the same. But the girl, now, she is something strange. Haven’t you noticed?”

Haven’t I noticed? Tiffany thought quickly. What should I have noticed? Amber was just a kid;* she had seen her around—not so quiet as to be worrying, not so noisy as to be annoying. And that was it. But then she thought, The chickens. That was strange.

“She can speak Feegle!” said the Toad. “And I don’t mean all that crivens business; that’s just the patois. I mean the serious old-fashioned stuff that the kelda speaks, the language they spoke from wherever it was they came from before they came from there. I am sorry, with preparation I am sure I could have made a better sentence.” He paused. “I don’t understand a word of Feegle myself, but the girl seems to have just picked it up. And another thing, I’ll swear she’s been trying to talk to me in Toad. I’m not much good at it myself, but a little bit of understanding did come with the . . . shape change, as it were.”

“Are you saying that she understands unusual words?” said Tiffany.

“I’m not certain,” said the Toad. “I think she understands meaning.”

“Are you sure?” said Tiffany. “I’ve always thought she was a bit simple.”

“Simple?” said the Toad, who seemed to be enjoying himself. “Well, as a lawyer I can tell you that something that looks very simple indeed can be incredibly complicated, especially if I’m being paid by the hour. The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.”

Amber poked her head out of the hole. “Mrs. Kelda says to meet her in the chalk pit,” she said excitedly.

There was a faint cheering coming from the chalk pit as Tiffany lowered herself gingerly through the careful camouflage.

She liked the pit. It seemed impossible to be truly unhappy there, with the damp white walls cradling her and the light of the blue day pricking through the briars. Sometimes, when she was much younger, she had seen the ancient fish swimming in and out of the chalk pit, ancient fish from the time when the Chalk was the land under the waves. The water had gone long ago, but the souls of the ghost fish hadn’t noticed. They were as armored as knights and ancient as the Chalk. But she didn’t see them anymore. Perhaps your eyesight changes as you get older, she thought.

There was a strong smell of garlic. A large part of the bottom of the pit was full of snails. Feegles were walking carefully among them, painting numbers on their shells. Amber was sitting next to the kelda with her hands clasped round her knees. Seen from above, it looked for all the world like a sheepdog trials, but with less barking and a lot more stickiness.

The kelda spotted Tiffany and raised a tiny finger to her lips, followed by a brief nod at Amber, who was now engrossed in the proceedings. Jeannie patted the space on the other side of her and said, “We are watching the lads putting our brand on the livestock, ye ken.” There was a slight touch of strangeness to her voice. It was the kind of voice a grown-up uses when it tells a child, “We are having fun, aren’t we?” in case the child hasn’t reached that conclusion yet. But Amber really did look as if she was enjoying herself. It occurred to Tiffany that being around the Feegles seemed to make Amber happy.

She got the impression that the kelda wanted to keep the conversation light, so she simply asked, “Why mark them? Who’s going to try to steal them?”

“Other Feegles, of course. My Rob reckons they will be queuing up to steal our snails while they are left unprotected, ye ken.”

Tiffany was mystified. “Why would they be unprotected?”

“Because my lads, ye ken, will be away stealing their livestock. It’s an old Feegle tradition; it means everyone gets in lots of fighting, rustling, and stealing and, of course, the all-time favorite, boozing.” The kelda winked at Tiffany. “Well, it keeps the lads happy and stops them from fretting and getting under our feet, ye ken.”

She winked at Tiffany again and patted Amber on the leg, and said something to her in the language that sounded like a very old version of Feegle. Amber answered in the same language. The kelda nodded meaningfully at Tiffany and pointed to the other end of the pit.

“What did you just say to her?” said Tiffany, looking back at the girl, who was still watching the Feegles with the same smiling interest.

“I told her that you and I were going to have a conversation for grown-ups,” said the kelda, “and she just said the boys were very funny, and I don’t know how, but she has picked up the Mother of Tongues. Tiffany, I only use it to a daughter and the gonnagle,* ye ken, and I was talking to him on the mound last night when she joined in! She picked it up just by listening! That shouldn’t happen! That’s a rare gift she has, and no mistake. She must ken the meanings in her head, and that’s magic, missy, it’s the pure quill and no mistake.”

“How could it happen?”

“Who knows?” said the kelda. “It’s a gift. And if ye take my advice, ye will set this girl to training.”

“Isn’t she a bit too old to be starting?” said Tiffany.

“Put her to the craft, or find some channel for her gift. Believe me, my girl, I wouldna want ye to believe that beating a girl nigh unto death is a good thing, but who kens how our paths are chosen? And so she ended up here, with me. She has the gift of understandin’. Would she have found it else? Ye know full well that the meaning of life is to find your gift. To find your gift is happiness. Never tae find it is misery. Ye said she’s a bit simple: find her a teacher who can bring out the complicated in her. The girl learned a difficult language just by listening to it. The world sore needs folk that can do that.”

It made sense. Everything the kelda said made sense.

Jeannie paused and then said, “I am very sorry the Baron is dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Tiffany said. “I meant to tell you.”

The kelda smiled at her. “Do you think a kelda would need to be told something like that, my girl? He was a decent man, and ye did right by him.”

“I’ve got to go and find the new Baron,” said Tiffany. “And I’ll need the boys to help me find him. There’s thousands of people in the city, and the lads are very good at finding things.”* She glanced up at the sky. Tiffany had never flown all the way to the big city before and didn’t much fancy flying there in the darkness. “I shall leave at first light. But first of all, Jeannie, I think I’d better take Amber home. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Amber,” she said hopelessly.

Three quarters of an hour later, Tiffany flew her stick back down toward the village, the screams still ringing in her head. Amber wasn’t going back. She had, in fact, made her reluctance to leave the mound abundantly clear by bracing her arms and legs in the hole and staying there screaming at the top of her voice every time Tiffany gave a gentle pull; when Tiffany let go, the girl went back to sit next to the kelda. So that was that. You try to make plans for people, and the people make other plans.

However you looked at it, Amber had parents; pretty awful parents, you might say, and you might add that that was giving them the best of it. At least they had to know that she was safe. . . . And in any case, what possible harm could come to Amber in the care of the kelda?

Mrs. Petty slammed the door shut when she saw that it was Tiffany on the step, then opened it again almost immediately, in a flood of tears. The place stank, not just of stale beer and bad cooking but also of helplessness and bewilderment. A cat, the mangiest that Tiffany had ever seen, was almost certainly another part of the problem.

Mrs. Petty was frightened out of whatever wits she had and dropped to her knees on the floor, pleading incoherently. Tiffany made her a cup of tea, which was no errand for the squeamish, given that such crockery as the cottage possessed was piled up in the stone sink, which was otherwise filled with slimy water that occasionally bubbled. Tiffany spent several minutes of heavy scrubbing before she had a cup she’d care to drink from, and even then something was rattling inside the kettle.

Mrs. Petty sat on the one chair that had all four legs and babbled about how her husband was really a good man provided his dinner was on time and Amber wasn’t naughty. Tiffany had grown used to those sorts of desperate conversations when she was “going round the houses” up in the mountains. They were generated by fear—fear of what would happen to the speaker when they were left alone again. Granny Weatherwax had a way of dealing with this, which was to put the fear of Granny Weatherwax into absolutely everyone, but Granny Weatherwax had had years of being, well, Granny Weatherwax.

Careful nonaggressive questioning brought news that Mr. Petty was asleep upstairs, and Tiffany simply told Mrs. Petty that Amber was being looked after by a very kind lady while she healed. Mrs. Petty started to cry again. The misery of the place was getting on Tiffany’s nerves too, and she tried to stop herself from being cruel; but how hard was it to slosh a bucket of cold water over a stone floor and swoosh it out of the door with a broom? How hard was it to make some soap? You could make quite a serviceable one out of wood ash and animal fat. And as her mother had said once, “No one is too poor to wash a window,” although her father, just to annoy her mother, occasionally changed it to “No one is too poor to wash a widow.” But where could you start with this family? And whatever it was that was in the kettle was still rattling, presumably trying to get out.

Most of the women in the villages had grown up to be tough. You needed to be tough to raise a family on a farm laborer’s wages. There was a local saying, a sort of recipe for dealing with a troublesome husband. It was: “Tongue pie, cold barn, and the copper stick.” It meant that a troublesome husband got a nagging instead of his dinner; he would be shoved out to the barn to sleep; and if he raised his hand to his wife, he might get a good wallop from the long stick every cottage had for stirring the washing in the washtub. They usually learned the error of their ways before the rough music played.

“Wouldn’t you like a short holiday away from Mr. Petty?” Tiffany suggested.

The woman, pale as a slug and skinny as a broom, looked horrified. “Oh, no!” she gasped. “He wouldn’t know what to do without me!”

And then . . . it all went wrong, or rather, a lot more wrong than it was already. And it was all so innocent, because the woman was so downcast. “Well, at least I can clean your kitchen for you,” Tiffany said cheerfully. It would have been fine if she had simply grabbed a broom and gotten to work but, oh, no, she had to go and look up at the gray, cobweb-filled ceiling and say, “All right, I know you’re here, you always follow me, so make yourself useful and clean this kitchen thoroughly!” Nothing happened for a few seconds, and then she heard, because she was listening for it, a muffled conversation from up near the ceiling.

“Did ye no’ hear that? She kens we is here! How come she always gets it right?”

A slightly different Feegle voice said, “It’s because we always follow her, ye wee dafty!”

“Oh aye, I ken that well enough, but my point is, did we not promise faithfully not to follow her around anymore?”

“Aye, it was a solemn oath.”

“Exactly, and so I canna but be a wee bit disappointed that the big wee hag will nae take heed of a solemn promise. It’s a wee bit hurtful to the feelings.”

“But we have broken the solemn oath; it’s a Feegle thing.”

A third voice said, “Look lively, ye scunners, it’s the tapping o’ the feets!”

A whirlwind hit the grubby little kitchen. Foaming water swirled across Tiffany’s boots, which had indeed been tapping. It has to be said that no one could create a mess more quickly than a party of Feegles, but strangely, they could clean one up as well, without even the help of bluebirds and miscellaneous woodland creatures.*

The sink emptied in an instant and filled again with soapsuds. Wooden plates and tin mugs hummed through the air as the fire burst into life. With a bang bang bang the log box filled. After that, things speeded up, and a fork shuddered in the wall beside Tiffany’s ear. Steam rose like a fog, with strange noises coming out of it; the sunlight flooded in through the suddenly clean window, filling the room with rainbows; a broom shot past, pushing the last of the water in front of it; the kettle boiled; a vase of flowers appeared on the table—some of them, admittedly, upside down—and suddenly the room was fresh and clean and no longer smelled of rotted potatoes.

Tiffany looked up at the ceiling. The cat was holding on to it by all four paws. It gave her what was definitely a look. Even a witch can be out-looked by a cat that has had it up to here and is still up here.

Tiffany finally located Mrs. Petty under the table, with her hands over her head. When she had been persuaded to come out and sit down on a nice clean chair in front of a cup of tea from a wonderfully clean mug, she was very keen to agree that there had been a great improvement, although later on Tiffany couldn’t help but admit that Mrs. Petty would probably have agreed to absolutely anything if only Tiffany would go away.

Not a success, then, but at least the place was a whole lot cleaner and Mrs. Petty was bound to be grateful when she’d had time to think about it. A snarl and a thump that Tiffany heard as she was leaving the ragged garden was probably the cat, parting company with the ceiling.

Halfway back to the farm, carrying her broomstick over her shoulder, she thought aloud, “Perhaps that was a bit stupid.”

“Dinna fash yourself,” said a voice. “If we had had the time, we could have made some bread as well.” Tiffany looked down, and there was Rob Anybody, along with half a dozen others known variously as the Nac Mac Feegle, the Wee Free Men, and, sometimes, the Defendants, the Culprits, people wanted by the police to help them with their enquiries, and sometimes as “that one, second on the left, I swear it was him.”

“You keep on following me!” she complained. “You always promise not to and you always do!”

“Ah, but ye dinna take into account the geas that is laid on us, ye ken. Ye are the hag o’ the hills and we must always be ready to protect ye and help ye, no matter what ye say,” said Rob Anybody stoutly. There was a rapid shaking of heads among the other Feegles, causing a fallout of bits of pencil, rats’ teeth, last night’s dinner, interesting stones with holes in them, beetles, promising pieces of snot tucked away for leisurely examination later, and snails.

“Look,” said Tiffany, “you can’t just go around helping people whether they want you to or not!”

Rob Anybody scratched his head, put back the snail that had fallen out, and said, “Why not, miss? You do.”

“I don’t!” she said aloud, but inside an arrow struck her heart. I wasn’t kind to Mrs. Petty, was I? she thought. Yes, it was true that the woman seemed to have the brains as well as the demeanor of a mouse, but filthy though it was, the stinking house was Mrs. Petty’s house, and Tiffany had burst in with a lot of, well, not to put too fine a point on it, Nac Mac Feegles, and just messed it up, even if it was less of a mess than it had been before. I was brusque and bossy and self-righteous. My mother could have handled it better. If it comes to that, probably any other woman in the village could have handled it better, but I am the witch and I blundered in and blundered about and scared the wits out of her. Me, a slip of a girl with a pointy hat.

And the other thing she thought about herself was that if she didn’t actually lie down very soon, she was going to fall over. The kelda was right; she couldn’t remember when she’d last slept in a proper bed, and there was one waiting for her at the farm. And, she thought suddenly and guiltily, she still had to let her own parents know that Amber Petty was back with the Feegles. . . .

There’s always something, she thought, and then there’s another something on top of the something, and then there is no end to the somethings. No wonder witches were given broomsticks. Feet just couldn’t do it by themselves.

Her mother was tending to Tiffany’s brother, Wentworth, who had a black eye.

“He’s been fighting the big boys,” her mother complained. “Got a black eye, didn’t we, Wentworth?”

“Yes, but I did kick Billy Teller in the fork.”

Tiffany tried to starve a yawn. “What have you been fighting for, Went? I thought you were more sensible.”

“They said you was a witch, Tiff,” said Wentworth. And Tiffany’s mother turned with a strange expression on her face.

“Yes, well, I am,” said Tiffany. “That’s my job.”

“Yeah, but I doubt you do the kind of things they said you was doing,” said her brother.

Tiffany met her mother’s gaze. “Were these bad things?” she said.

“Hah! That’s not the half of it,” said Wentworth. Blood and snot covered his shirt, where they had dripped from his nose.

“Wentworth, you go upstairs to your room,” Mrs. Aching ordered—and probably, Tiffany thought, not even Granny Weatherwax would have been able to speak an order that was so instantly obeyed. And so full of the implicit threat of doomsday if it was not.

When the boots of the reluctant boy had disappeared around the staircase, Tiffany’s mother turned to her youngest daughter, folded her arms, and said, “It’s not the first time he’s been in a fight like this.”

“It’s all down to the picture books,” said Tiffany. “I’m trying to teach people that witches aren’t mad old women who go around putting spells on people.”

“When your dad comes in, I’ll get him to go and have a word with Billy’s dad,” said her mother. “Billy’s a foot taller than Wentworth, but your dad . . . he’s two foot taller than Billy’s dad. There won’t be any fighting. You know your dad. He’s a calm man, your dad. Never seen him punch a man more than about twice, never has to. He’ll keep people calm. They’ll be calm or else. But something’s not quite right, Tiff. We’re all very proud of you, you know, what you’re doing and everything, but it’s getting to people somehow. They’re saying some ridiculous things. And we’re having difficulties selling the cheeses. And everybody knows you are the best at cheeses. And now Amber Petty. You think it is right that she is running around with . . . them?”

“I hope so, Mum,” said Tiffany. “But the girl has a very strong mind of her own and, Mum, when it comes right down to it, all I can do is the best that I can.”

Later that night, Tiffany, dozing in her ancient bed, could hear her parents talking very quietly in the room below. And although, of course, witches didn’t cry, she had an overwhelming urge to do so.

CHAPTER SIX

The Coming of the Cunning Man

Tiffany was angry at herself for oversleeping. Her mother actually had to bring her up a cup of tea. But the kelda had been right. She hadn’t been sleeping properly, and the ancient but homey bed had just closed around her.

Still, it could have been worse, she told herself as they set off. For example, there could have been snakes on the broomstick. The Feegles had been only too glad, as Rob Anybody put it, to “feel the wind beneath their kilts.” Feegles were probably better than snakes, but that was only a guess. They would do things like run from one side of the stick to the other to look at interesting things they were flying over, and on one occasion she glanced over her shoulder to see about ten of them hanging on to the back of the stick or, to put it more precisely, one of them was hanging on to the back of the stick, and then one was hanging on to his heels, and one was hanging on to his heels, and so on, all the way to the last Feegle. They were having fun, screaming with laughter, their kilts indeed flapping in the wind. Presumably the thrill of it made up for the danger and the lack of a view or, at least, of a view that anyone else would want to look at.

One or two actually did lose their grip on the bristles, floating away and down while waving at their brothers and making Yahoo! noises and generally treating it as a big game. Feegles tended to bounce when they hit the ground, although sometimes they damaged it a little. Tiffany wasn’t worried about their journey home; undoubtedly there would be lots of dangerous creatures prepared to jump out on a little running man, but by the time he got home, there would in fact be considerably fewer of them. Actually, the Feegles were—by Feegle standards—pretty well behaved on the flight, and didn’t actually set fire to the broomstick until they were about twenty miles from the city, an incident heralded by Daft Wullie saying “Whoops!” very quietly, and then guiltily trying to conceal the fact that he’d set fire to the bristles by standing in front of the blaze to hide it.

“You’ve set fire to the broomstick again, haven’t you, Wullie,” Tiffany stated firmly. “What was it that we learned last time? We don’t light fires on the broomstick for no good reason.”

The broomstick began to shake as Daft Wullie and his brothers tried to stamp out the flames. Tiffany searched the landscape below them for something soft and preferably wet to land on.

But it was no use getting angry with Wullie; he lived in a Wullie-shaped world of his own. You had to try thinking diagonally.

“I just wonder, Daft Wullie,” she said as the broomstick developed a nasty rattle, “if, working together, we might find out why my broomstick is on fire? Do you think it might be something to do with the fact that you are holding a match in your hand?”

The Feegle looked at the match as if he had never seen one before, and then put it behind his back and stared at his feet, which was quite brave of him in the circumstances. “Don’t really know, miss.”

“You see,” said Tiffany as the wind whipped around them, “without enough bristles I can’t steer very well, and we are losing height but still, regrettably, going quite fast. Perhaps you could help me with this conundrum, Wullie?”

Daft Wullie stuck his little finger in his ear and wiggled it about as if rummaging in his own brain. Then he brightened up. “Should we no’ land, miss?”

Tiffany sighed. “I would like to do that, Daft Wullie, but, you see, we are going quite fast and the ground is not. What we have in those circumstances is what they call ‘a crash.’”

“I wasna considering that ye should land in the dirt, miss,” said Wullie. He pointed down and added, “I was just considering that ye might like to land on that.”

Tiffany followed the line of his pointing finger. There was a long white road below them, and on it, not too far ahead, was something oblong, moving almost as fast as the broomstick itself. She stared, listening to her brain calculating, and then said, “We will still have to lose some speed. . . .”

And that was how a smoldering broomstick carrying one terrified witch and about two dozen of the Nac Mac Feegles, holding out their kilts to slow themselves down, landed on the roof of the Lancre-to-Ankh-Morpork parcel express.

The coach had good springs, and the driver got the horses back under control quite quickly. There was silence as he climbed down from his seat, while white dust began to settle back on the road. He was a heavy-looking man who winced at every step, and in one hand he held a half-eaten cheese sandwich and in the other an unmistakable length of lead pipe. He sniffed. “My supervisor will have to be told. Damage to paintwork, see? Got to do a report when it’s damage to paintwork. I hate reports, never been a man what words come to with ease. Got to do it, though, when it’s damage to paintwork.” The sandwich and, more importantly, the lead pipe disappeared back into his very large overcoat, and Tiffany was amazed at how happy she felt about that.

“I really am very sorry,” she said as the man helped her down from the coach roof.

“It’s not me, you understand, it’s the paintwork. I tell them, look, I tell them there’s trolls, there’s dwarfs, huh, and you know how they drive, eyes half closed most of the time ’cause of them not liking the sun.”

Tiffany sat still as he inspected the damage and then looked up at her and noticed the pointy hat.

“Oh,” he said flatly. “A witch. First time for everything, I suppose. Do you know what I’m carrying in here, miss?”

What could be the worst thing? Tiffany thought. She said, “Eggs?”

“Hah,” said the man. “That we should be so lucky. It’s mirrors, miss. One mirror, in point of fact. Not a flat one, either; it’s a ball, they tell me. It’s all packed up very snug and sound, or so they say, not knowing that somebody was going to drop out of the sky on it.” He didn’t sound angry, just worn-out, as if he permanently expected the world to hand him the dirty end of the stick. “It was made by the dwarfs,” he added. “They say it cost more than a thousand Ankh-Morpork dollars, and you know what it’s for? To hang up in a dance hall in the city, where they intend to dance the waltz, which a well-brought-up young lady such as you should not know about, on account of the fact, it says in the paper, that it leads to depravity and goings-on.”

“My word!” said Tiffany, thinking that something like this was expected of her.

“Well, I suppose I’d better go and see what the damage is,” said the driver, laboriously opening the back of the coach. A large box filled quite a lot of the space. “It’s mostly packed with straw,” he said. “Give me a hand to get it down, will you? And if it tinkles, we’re both in trouble.”

It turned out not to be as heavy as Tiffany expected. Nevertheless, they lowered it gently onto the road, and the coachman rummaged amid the straw inside, bringing out the mirror ball, holding it aloft like a rare jewel, which, indeed, it resembled. It filled the world with sparkling light, dazzling the eyes and sending beams of flashing rays across the landscape. And at this point the man screamed in pain and dropped the ball, which shattered into a million pieces, filling the sky just for a moment with a million images of Tiffany, while he, curling up, landed on the road, raising more white dust, making little whimpering noises as the glass dropped around him.

In slightly less than an instant, the moaning man was surrounded by a ring of Feegles, armed to whatever teeth they still possessed with claymores, more claymores, bludgeons, axes, clubs, and at least one more claymore. Tiffany had no idea where they had been hiding; a Feegle could hide behind a hair.

“Don’t hurt him,” she shouted. “He wasn’t going to hurt me! He’s very ill! But make yourselves useful and tidy up all this broken glass!” She crouched down in the road and held the man’s hand. “How long have you had jumping bones, sir?”

“Oh, I’ve been a martyr to them these past twenty years, miss, a martyr,” the coachman moaned. “It’s the jolting of the coach, you see. It’s the suspenders—they don’t work! I don’t think I get more than just one decent night’s sleep in five, miss, and that’s the truth; I have a little snooze, turn over, like you do, and there’s this little click and then it’s agony, believe me.”

Except for a few dots on the edge of sight, there was no one else around apart from, of course, a bunch of Nac Mac Feegles who, against all common sense, had perfected the art of hiding behind one another.

“Well, I think I may be able to help you,” Tiffany said.

Some witches used a shambles to see into the present, and, with any luck, into the future as well. In the smoky gloom of the Feegle mound, the kelda was practicing what she called the hiddlins—the things you did and passed on but, on the whole, passed on as a secret. And she was acutely aware of Amber watching with clear interest. A strange child, she thought. She sees, she hears, she understands. What would we give for a world full of people like her? She had set up the cauldron* and lit a small fire underneath the leather.

The kelda closed her eyes, concentrated, and read the memories of all the keldas who had ever been and would ever be. Millions of voices floated through her brain in no particular order, sometimes soft, never very loud, often tantalizingly beyond her reach. It was a wonderful library of information, except that all the books were out of order and so were all the pages, and there wasn’t an index anywhere. She had to follow threads that faded as she listened. She strained as small sounds, tiny glimpses, stifled cries, currents of meaning pulled her attention this way and that. . . . And there it was, in front of her as if it had always been there, coming into focus.

She opened her eyes, stared at the ceiling for a moment, and said, “I look for the big wee hag and what is it that I see?”

She peered forward into the mists of memories old and new, and jerked her head back, nearly knocking over Amber, who said with interest, “A man with no eyes?”

“Well, I think I may be able to help you, Mr., er . . .”

“Carpetlayer, miss. William Glottal Carpetlayer.”

“Carpetlayer?” said Tiffany. “But you’re a coachman.”

“Yes, well, there’s a funny story attached to that, miss. Carpetlayer, you see, is my family name. We don’t know how we got it because, you see, none of us have ever laid a carpet!”

Tiffany gave him a kind little smile. “And . . . ?”

Mr. Carpetlayer gave her a puzzled look. “And what? That was the funny story!” He started to laugh, and screamed again as a bone jumped.

“Oh, yes,” said Tiffany. “Sorry, I’m a bit slow.” She rubbed her hands together. “And now, sir, I will sort out your bones.”

The coach horses watched with quiet interest as she helped the man up, lent a hand as he took off his huge overcoat (with many a grunt and minor scream), and stood him so that his hands rested on the coach.

Tiffany concentrated, feeling the man’s back through his thin undershirt, and—yes, there it was, a jumping bone.

She stepped across to the horses, whispering a word into each fly-flicking ear, just to be on the safe side. Then she went back to Mr. Carpetlayer, who was waiting obediently, not daring to move. As she rolled up her sleeves, he said, “You’re not going to turn me into anything unnatural, are you, miss? I wouldn’t want to be a spider. Mortally afraid of spiders, and all my clothes are made for a man with two legs.”

“Why in the world would you think I’d turn you into anything, Mr. Carpetlayer?” said Tiffany, gently running her hand down his spine.

“Well, saving your honor’s presence, miss, I thought that’s what witches do, miss—nasty things, miss, earwigs and all that.”

“Who told you that?”

“Can’t rightly say,” said the coachman. “It’s just sort of . . . you know, what everybody knows.”

Tiffany placed her fingers carefully, found the jumping bone again, said, “This might smart a little,” and pushed the bone back into place. The coachman screamed again.

His horses tried to bolt, but their legs were not doing business as usual, not with the word still ringing in their ears. Tiffany had felt ashamed at the time, a year ago, when she had acquired the knowing of the horseman’s word; but then again, the old blacksmith she had helped to his death, with kindness and without pain, well, he had felt ashamed that he had nothing with which to pay her for her painstaking work, and you had to pay the witch, the same as you had to pay the ferryman, and so he had whispered into her ear the horseman’s word, which gave you the control of any horse that heard it. You couldn’t buy it, you couldn’t sell it, but you could give it away and still keep it, and even if it’d been made of lead, it would have been worth its weight in gold. The former owner had whispered in her ear, “I promised to tell no man the word, and I ain’t!” And he was chuckling as he died, his sense of humor being somewhat akin to that of Mr. Carpetlayer.

Mr. Carpetlayer was also pretty heavy and had slipped gently down the side of the coach and—

“Why are you torturing that old man, you evil witch? Can you not see that he’s in dreadful pain?”

Where had he come from? A shouting man, his face white with fury, his clothes as dark as an unopened cave or—and the word came to Tiffany suddenly—as a crypt. There had been no one around, she was sure of it, and no one on either side except the occasional farmer watching the stubbles burn as they cleared the land.

But his face was now a few inches from hers. And he was real, not some kind of monster, because monsters don’t usually have little blobs of spittle on their lapel. And then she noticed—he stank. She’d never smelled anything so bad. It was physical, like an iron bar, and it seemed to her that she wasn’t smelling it with her nose but with her mind. A foulness that made the average privy as fragrant as a rose.

“I’m asking you politely to step back, please,” said Tiffany. “I think you might have got hold of the wrong idea.”

“I assure you, fiendish creature, that I have only the right idea! And that is to return you to the miserable and stinking hell from which you spawned!”

All right, a madman, thought Tiffany, but if he—

Too late. The man’s waggling finger got too close to her nose, and suddenly the empty road contained a lifetime’s supply of Nac Mac Feegles. The man in black flailed at them, but that sort of thing does not work very well with a Feegle. He did manage, despite the Feegle onslaught, to shout, “Begone, nefarious imps!”

Every Feegle head turned hopefully when they heard this. “Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody. “If there’s any imps aboot, we are the boys to deal with them! Yer move, mister!” They leaped at him and ended up in a heap on the road behind him, having passed straight through. They automatically punched one another as they staggered up, on the basis that if you’re having a good fight, you don’t want to spoil the rhythm.

The man in black glanced at them and then paid them no attention whatsoever.

Tiffany stared down at the man’s boots. They gleamed in the sunlight, and that was wrong. She had been standing in the dust of the road for only a few minutes and her boots were gray. And there was the ground that the man was standing on, and that was wrong too. Very wrong, on a hot, cloudless day. She glanced at the horses. The word was holding them, but they were trembling with fear, like rabbits in the gaze of a fox. Then she closed her eyes and looked at him with First Sight, and saw. And said, “You cast no shadow. I knew something wasn’t right.”

And now she looked directly into the man’s eyes, almost hidden beneath the wide hat brim, and . . . he . . . had . . . no eyes. The understanding dawned on her like ice melting. . . . No eyes at all, not ordinary eyes, not blind eyes, no eye sockets . . . just two holes in his head: She could see right through to the smoldering fields beyond. She didn’t expect what happened next.

The man in black glared at her again and hissed, “You are the witch. You are the one. Wherever you go, I will find you.”

And then he vanished, leaving only a pile of fighting Feegles in the dust.

Tiffany felt something on her boot. She looked down, and a hare, which must have fled the burning stubbles, stared back at her. They held each other’s gaze for a second, and then the hare jumped into the air like a leaping salmon and headed off across the road. The world is full of omens and signs, and a witch did indeed have to pick the ones that were important. Where could she begin here?

Mr. Carpetlayer was still slumped against the coach, totally ignorant of what had just happened. So was Tiffany, in a way, but she would find out. She said, “You can get up again now, Mr. Carpetlayer.”

He did so very gingerly, grimacing as he waited for the lightning strokes of agony all down his back. He shifted experimentally and gave a little jump in the dust, as if he was squashing an ant. That seemed to work, and he tried a second jump, and then, throwing his arms out wide, he shouted “Yippee!” and spun like a ballerina. His hat fell off and his hobnailed boots smacked into the dust and Mr. Carpetlayer was a very happy man as he twirled and hopped, very nearly turned a cartwheel, and when it turned out to be about half a cartwheel, he rolled back onto his feet, picked up the astonished Tiffany, and danced her along the road, shouting, “One two three, one two three, one two three,” until she managed to shake herself loose, laughing. “Me and the wife is going to go out tonight, young lady, and we are going to go waltzing!”

“But I thought that led to depraved behavior?” said Tiffany.

The coachman winked at her. “Well, we can but hope!” he said.

“You don’t want to overdo it, Mr. Carpetlayer,” she warned.

“As a matter of fact, miss, I rather think I do, if it’s all the same to you. After all the creaking and groaning and not sleeping hardly at all, I think I would like to overdo it a little, or if possible a lot! Oh, what a good girl to think of the horses,” he added. “That shows a kind nature.”

“I am pleased to see you in such fine spirits, Mr. Carpetlayer.”

The coachman did a little twirl in the middle of the road. “I feel twenty years younger!” He beamed at her, and then his face clouded just a little. “Er . . . how much do I owe you?”

“How much will the damage to the paintwork cost me?” said Tiffany.

They looked at each other, and then Mr. Carpetlayer said, “Well, I can’t ask you for anything, miss, given that it was me that busted the mirror ball.”

A little tinkling sound made Tiffany look behind them, where the mirror ball, apparently unharmed, was spinning gently and, if you looked carefully, just above the dirt.

She knelt down on a road totally free of broken glass and said, apparently to nothing at all, “Did you stick it back together again?”

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody happily from behind the ball.

“But it was smashed to smithereens!”

“Oh, aye, but a smithereen is easy, ye ken. See, the tinier bits are, the more they all fit together again. Ye just hae to give them a little push and the wee molly cules remembers where they should be and they sticks together again, nae problemo! Ye dinna have to act surprised—we dinna just smash things.”

Mr. Carpetlayer stared at her. “Did you do that, miss?”

“Well, sort of,” said Tiffany.

“Well, I should say so!” said Mr. Carpetlayer, all smiles. “So I says quid pro quo, give and take, knock for knock, tit for tat, one thing for another, an eye for an eye, and me for you.” He winked. “I’ll say it worked out even, and the company can put their paperwork where the monkey put his jumper—what you say to that, eh?” He spat on his hand and held it out.

Oh, dear, thought Tiffany, a handshake with spit seals an unbreakable accord; thank goodness I have a reasonably clean handkerchief.

She nodded speechlessly. And there had been a broken ball, and now it appeared to have mended itself. The day was hot, a man with holes where his eyes should be had vanished into nothing. . . . Where would you even begin? Some days you trimmed toenails, removed splinters, and sewed up legs, and some days were days like this.

They shook hands, rather damply, the broomstick was shoved among the bundles behind the driver, Tiffany climbed up alongside him, and the journey continued, dust rising up from the road as it passed and forming strangely unpleasant shapes until it settled down again.

After a while Mr. Carpetlayer said, in a careful kind of voice, “Er, that black hat you’ve got on, are you going to carry on wearing it?”

“That’s right.”

“Only, well, you are wearing a nice green dress and, if I may say so, your teeth are lovely and white.” The man seemed to be wrestling with a problem.

“I clean them with soot and salt every day. I can recommend it,” said Tiffany.

It was turning into a difficult conversation. The man seemed to reach a conclusion. “So you are not really a witch then?” he said hopefully.

“Mr. Carpetlayer, are you scared of me?”

“That’s a scary question, miss.”

Actually it is, Tiffany thought. Aloud, she said, “Look, Mr. Carpetlayer, what’s this all about?”

“Well, miss, since you ask, there have been some stories lately. You know, about babies being stolen, that sort of thing. Kids running off and that.” He brightened up a bit. “Still, I expect those were wicked old . . . you know, with, like, hooked noses, warts, and evil black dresses—not nice girls like you. Yes, that’s just the sort of thing they would do!” Having sorted out that conundrum to his satisfaction, the coachman said little for the rest of the journey, although he did whistle a lot.

Tiffany, on the other hand, sat quietly. For one thing, she was now very worried, and for another thing she could just about hear the voices of the Feegles back among the mailbags, reading people’s letters to each other.* She had to hope that they were putting them back in the right envelopes.

The song went:

Ankh-Morpork! It’s a wonderful town!

The trolls are up and the dwarfs are down!

Slightly better than living in a hole in the ground!

Ankh-Morpork! It’s a wonderfuuuuuulllll townnn!

It wasn’t, really.

Tiffany had been there only once before and didn’t like the big city very much. It stank, and there were too many people, and far too many places. And the only green was on the surface of the river, which could only be called mud because a more accurate word would not have been printable.

The coachman pulled up outside one of the main gates, even though they were open.

“If you take my advice, miss, you’ll take your hat off and walk in by yourself. That broomstick looks like firewood now, in any case.” He gave her a nervous grin. “Best of luck, miss.”

“Mr. Carpetlayer,” she said loudly, aware of people around her. “I do hope that when you hear people talk about witches, you will mention that you met one and she made your back better—and, may I suggest, saved your livelihood. Thank you for the ride.”

“Oh, well, I’ll definitely tell people I met one of the good ones,” he said.

With her head held high, or at least as high as is appropriate when you are carrying your own damaged broomstick over your shoulder, Tiffany walked into the city. The pointy hat got one or two glances, and perhaps a couple of frowns, but mostly people didn’t look at her at all; in the country, everyone you meet is someone you know or a stranger worth investigating, but here it seemed there were so many people that it was a waste of time even to look at them at all, and possibly dangerous in any case.

Tiffany bent down. “Rob, you know Roland, the Baron’s son?”

“Ach, the wee streak o’ nothing,” said Rob Anybody.

“Well, nevertheless,” said Tiffany, “I know you can find people, and I would like you to go and find him for me now, please.”

“Would you no’ mind if we had just the one wee drink while we are looking?” said Rob Anybody. “A man could drown o’ thirst around here. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t boggin’ for a wee dram or ten.”

Tiffany knew that it would be foolish to say either yes or no and settled for “Just the one then. When you’ve found him.”

There was the faintest of whooshing noises behind her, and no more Feegles. Still, they would be easy to find; you just had to listen for breaking glass. Oh, yes, breaking glass that repaired itself. Another mystery: She had looked at the mirror ball very carefully as they put it back in its box, and there hadn’t been even a scratch on it.

She glanced up at the towers of Unseen University, crammed with wise men in pointy hats, or at least men in pointy hats, but there was another address, well-known to witches, which was in its own way just as magical: Boffo’s Joke Emporium, number four, Tenth Egg Street. She had never been there, but she did get a catalog occasionally.

People started to notice her more when she got off the main streets and made her way through the neighborhoods, and she could feel eyeballs on her as she walked over the cobbles. People weren’t angry or unfriendly as such. They were just . . . watching, as if wondering what to make of her, and she had to hope that it was not, for example, stew.

There wasn’t a bell on the door of Boffo’s Joke Emporium. There was a whoopee cushion, and for most of the people who came to buy things in the emporium, a whoopee cushion, perhaps in conjunction with a generous dollop of fake vomit, was the last word in entertainment, which indeed it is, unfortunately.

But real witches often needed Boffo, too. There were times when you had to look like a witch, and not every witch was good at it and many were just too busy to get their hair in a mess. So Boffo’s was where you bought your fake warts and wigs, stupidly heavy cauldrons, and artificial skulls. And, with any luck, you might get the address of a dwarf who could help you repair your broomstick.

Tiffany stepped inside and admired the deep-throated farting of the whoopee cushion, pushed her way round and more or less through a ludicrous fake skeleton with glowing red eyes, and reached the counter, at which point somebody blew a squeaker at her. It disappeared, to be replaced by the face of a small, worried-looking man, who asked, “Did you by any chance find that even remotely amusing?”

His voice suggested that he expected the answer to be no, and Tiffany saw no reason to disappoint him. “Absolutely not,” she said.

The man sighed and pushed the unfunny squeaker down the counter. “Alas, no one ever does,” he said. “I’m sure I’m doing something wrong somewhere. Oh, well. What can I do for you, miss—oh—you are a real one, aren’t you? I can always tell, you know!”

“Look,” said Tiffany, “I’ve never ordered anything from you, but I used to work with Miss Treason, who . . .”

But the man wasn’t listening to her. Instead he was shouting at a hole in the floor. “Mother? We’ve got a real one!”

A few seconds later, a voice by Tiffany’s ear said, “Derek is sometimes mistaken, and you might have found the broomstick. You are a witch, aren’t you? Show me!”

Tiffany vanished. She did it without thinking—or, rather, thinking so fast that her thoughts had no time to wave to her as they flashed by. Only when the man, who was apparently Derek, was staring openmouthed at nothing at all did she realize that she had faded into the foreground so quickly because disobeying that voice would definitely be an unwise thing to do. A witch was standing behind her: most definitely a witch, and a skilled one too.

“Very good,” said the voice approvingly. “Very good indeed, young woman. I can still see you, of course, because I was watching very carefully. My word, a real one.”

“I’m going to turn round, you know,” Tiffany warned.

“I don’t recall saying that you couldn’t, my dear.”

Tiffany turned round and was faced with the witch of nightmares: battered hat, wart-encrusted nose, clawlike hands, blackened teeth, and—Tiffany looked down—oh, yes, big black boots. You did not have to be very familiar with Boffo’s catalog to see that the speaker was wearing the full range of cosmetics in the Hag in a Hurry line(“Because You’re Worthless”).

“I think we should continue this conversation in my workshop,” said the horrible hag, disappearing into the floor. “Just stand on the trapdoor when it comes back up, will you? Make some coffee, Derek.”

When Tiffany arrived in the basement, the trapdoor working wonderfully smoothly, she found what you would expect in the workshop of the company that made everything needed by a witch who felt she needed some Boffo in her life. Rows of rather scary hag masks were hanging on a line, benches were full of brightly colored bottles, racks of warts had been laid out to dry, and various things that went bloop were doing so in a big cauldron by the fireplace. It was a proper cauldron too.*

The horrible hag was working at a bench, and there was a terrible cackle. She held a small square wooden box with a piece of string sticking out of it. “First-class cackle, don’t you think? A simple thread-and-resin arrangement with a sounding board because, quite frankly, cackling is a bit of a pain in the neck, don’t you think? I believe I can make it work by clockwork, too. Let me know when you’ve seen the joke.”

“Who are you?” Tiffany burst out.

The hag had put the box on her workbench. “Oh, dear,” she said, “where are my manners?”

“I don’t know,” said Tiffany, who was getting a bit fed up. “Perhaps the clockwork has run down?”

The hag grinned a black-toothed grin. “Ah, sharpness. I like that in a witch, but not too much.” She held out a claw. “Mrs. Proust.”

The claw was less clammy than Tiffany had expected. “Tiffany Aching,” she said. “How do you do?” Feeling that something further was expected of her, Tiffany added, “I used to work with Miss Treason.”

“Oh, yes, a fine witch,” said Mrs. Proust. “And a good customer. Very keen on her warts and skulls, as I recall.” She smiled. “And since I doubt that you want to get hagged up for a girls’ night out, I must assume you need my help? The fact that your broomstick has about half the bristles needed for aerodynamic stability confirms my initial surmise. Incidentally, have you seen the joke yet?”

What should she say? “I think so. . . .”

“Go on then.”

“I’m not going to say until I’m sure,” said Tiffany.

“Very wise,” said Mrs. Proust. “Well, let’s get your broomstick mended, shall we? It will mean a little stroll, and if I were you I would leave your black hat behind.”

Instinctively Tiffany grabbed at the brim of her hat. “Why?”

Mrs. Proust frowned, causing her nose to very nearly catch her chin. “Because you might find . . . No, I know what we can do.” She rummaged on the workbench and, without asking any permission, stuck something on Tiffany’s hat, right at the back. “There,” she said. “No one will take any notice now. Sorry, but witches are a little bit unpopular at the moment. Let’s get that stick of yours repaired as soon as possible, just in case you need to leave in a hurry.”

Tiffany pulled off her hat and looked at what Mrs. Proust had stuck in the hatband. It was a brightly colored piece of cardboard on a string, and it said: Apprentice witch hat with evil glitter. Size 7. Price: AM$2.50. Boffo! A name to conjure with!!!

“What’s all this?” she demanded. “You’ve even sprinkled evil glitter on it.”

“It’s a disguise,” said Mrs. Proust.

“What? Do you think any self-respecting witch would walk down the street wearing a hat like this?” said Tiffany angrily.

“Of course not,” said Mrs. Proust. “The best disguise for a witch is a rather cheap witch’s outfit! Would a real witch buy clothes from a shop that also does a pretty good trade in naughty Fido jokes, indoor fireworks, laughable fake wigs, and—our best and most profitable line—giant inflatable pink willies, suitable for hen nights? That would be unthinkable! It’s Boffo, my dear, pure, unadulterated Boffo! “Disguise, subterfuge and misdirection” are our watchwords. All watchwords. And “Amazing value for money,” they’re our watchwords too. “No refunds under any circumstances,” they’re important watchwords. As is our policy of dealing terminally with shoplifters. Oh, and we also have a watchword about people smoking in the shop, although that’s not a very important word.”

“What?” said Tiffany, who, out of shock, had not heard the list of watchwords because she was staring at the pink “balloons” hanging from the ceiling. “I thought they were piglets!”

Mrs. Proust patted her hand. “Welcome to life in the big city, my dear. Shall we go?”

“Why are witches so unpopular at the moment?” asked Tiffany.

“It’s amazing the ideas people get into their heads sometimes,” said Mrs. Proust. “Generally speaking, I find it best just to keep your head down and wait until the problem goes away. You just need to be careful.”

And Tiffany thought that she did indeed need to be careful. “Mrs. Proust,” she said, “I think I know the joke by now.”

“Yes, dear?”

“I thought you were a real witch disguising herself as a fake witch. . . .”

“Yes, dear?” said Mrs. Proust, her voice like treacle.

“Which would be quite amusing, but I think there’s another joke, and it’s not really very funny.”

“Oh, and what would that be, dear?” said Mrs. Proust in a voice that now had sugary gingerbread cottages in it.

Tiffany took a deep breath. “That really is your face, isn’t it? The masks you sell are masks of you.”

“Well spotted! Well spotted, my dear! Only you didn’t spot it exactly, did you? You felt it, when you shook hands with me. And . . . But come on now, let’s get your broomstick over to those dwarfs.”

When they stepped outside, the first thing Tiffany saw was a couple of boys. One of them was poised to throw a stone at the shopwindow. He spotted Mrs. Proust, and a sort of dreadful silence descended. Then the witch said, “Throw it, my lad.”

The boy looked at her as if she was mad.

“I said throw it, my lad, or the worst will happen.”

Clearly assuming now that she was mad, the boy threw the stone, which the window caught and threw back at him, knocking him to the ground. Tiffany saw it. She saw the glass hand come out of the glass and catch the stone. She saw it throw the stone back. Mrs. Proust leaned over the boy, whose friend had taken to his heels, and said, “Hmm, it will heal. It won’t if I ever see you again.” She turned to Tiffany. “Life can be very difficult for the small shopkeeper,” she said. “Come on, it’s this way.”

Tiffany was a bit nervous about how to continue the conversation, and so she opted for something innocent, like “I didn’t know there were any real witches in the city.”

“Oh, there’s a few of us,” said Mrs. Proust. “Doing our bit, helping people when we can. Like that little lad back there, who will now have learned to mind his own business. It does my heart good to think that I may have dissuaded him from a lifetime of vandalism and disrespect for other people’s property that would, you mark my words, have resulted in him getting a new collar courtesy of the hangman.”

“I didn’t know you could be a witch in the city,” said Tiffany. “I was told once that you need good rock to grow witches, and everyone says the city is built on slime and mud.”

“And masonry,” said Mrs. Proust gleefully. “Granite and marble, chert, and miscellaneous sedimentary deposits, my dear Tiffany. Rocks that once leaped and flowed when the world was born in fire. And do you see the cobbles on the streets? Surely every single one of them, at some time, has had blood on it. Everywhere you look, stone and rock. Everywhere you can’t see, stone and rock! Can you imagine what it feels like to reach down with your bones and feel the living stones? And what did we make from the stone? Palaces and castles and mausoleums and gravestones, and fine houses, and city walls, oh, my! Not just in this city either. The city is built on itself, all the cities that came before. Can you imagine how it feels to lie down on an ancient flagstone and feel the power of the rock buoying you up against the tug of the world? And it’s mine to use, all of it, every stone of it, and that’s where witchcraft begins. The stones have life, and I’m part of it.”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “I know.”

Suddenly Mrs. Proust’s face was a few inches from hers, the fearsome hooked nose almost touching her own, the dark eyes ablaze. Granny Weatherwax could be fearsome, but at least Granny Weatherwax was, in her way, handsome; Mrs. Proust was the evil witch from the fairy stories, her face a curse, her voice from the sound of the oven door slamming on the children. The sum of all nighttime fears, filling the world.

“Oh, you know, do you, little witch in your jolly little dress? What is it that you know? What is it that you really know?” She took a step back and blinked. “More than I suspected, as it turns out,” she said, relaxing. “Land under wave. In the heart of the chalk, the flint. Yes, indeed.”

Tiffany had never seen dwarfs on the Chalk, but up in the mountains they were always around, generally with a cart. They bought, and they sold, and for witches they made broomsticks. Very expensive broomsticks. On the other hand, witches seldom ever bought one. They were heirlooms, passed down the generations from witch to witch, sometimes needing a new handle, sometimes needing new bristles, but, of course, always remaining the same broomstick.

Tiffany’s stick had been left to her by Miss Treason. It was uncomfortable and not very fast and had the occasional habit of going backward when it rained. When the dwarf who was in charge of the clanging, echoing workshop saw it, he shook his head and made a sucking noise through his teeth, as if the sight of the thing had really spoiled his day and he might have to go away and have a little cry.

“Well, it’s elm, isn’t it,” he said to an uncaring world in general. “It’s a lowland wood, your elm, heavy and slow, and of course there’s your beetles to consider. Very prone to beetles, your elm. Struck by lightning, was it? Not a good wood for lightning, your elm. Attracts it, so they say. Tendency to owls as well.”

Tiffany nodded and tried to look knowledgeable; she had made up the lightning strike, because the truth, while a valuable thing, was just too stupid, embarrassing, and unbelievable.

Another, and almost identical, dwarf materialized behind his colleague. “Should have gone for ash.”

“Oh, yes,” said the first dwarf gloomily. “Can’t go wrong with ash.” He prodded Tiffany’s broomstick and sighed again.

“Looks like it’s got the start of bracket fungus in the base joint,” the second dwarf suggested.

“Wouldn’t be surprised at anything, with your elm,” said the first dwarf.

“Look, can you just patch it up enough to get me home?” Tiffany asked.

“Oh, we don’t ‘patch things up,’” said the first dwarf loftily or, rather, metaphorically loftily. “We do a bespoke service.”

“I just need a few bristles,” said Tiffany desperately, and then, because she forgot she hadn’t been going to admit to the truth, “Please? It wasn’t my fault the Feegles set fire to the broomstick.”

Up until that point, there had been quite a lot of background noises in the dwarf workshop as dozens of dwarfs had been working away on their own benches and not taking much heed of the discussion, but now there was a silence, and in that silence a single hammer dropped to the floor.

The first dwarf said, “When you say Feegles, you don’t mean Nac Mac Feegles, do you, miss?”

“That’s right.”

“The wild ones? Do they say . . . crivens?” he asked very slowly.

“Practically all the time,” said Tiffany. She thought she ought to make things clear and added, “They are my friends.”

“Oh, are they?” said the dwarf. “And are any of your little friends here at this moment?”

“Well, I told them to go and find a young man of my acquaintance,” said Tiffany, “but they are probably in a pub by now. Are there many pubs in the city?”

The two dwarfs looked at one another. “About three hundred, I should say,” said the second dwarf.

“That many?” said Tiffany. “Then I don’t expect they’ll come looking for me for at least half an hour.”

And suddenly the first dwarf was all frantic good humor. “Well, where are our manners?” he said. “Anything for a friend of Mrs. Proust! Tell you what: It will be our pleasure to give you our express service gratis and for nothing, including free bristles and creosote at no charge whatsoever!”

“Express service meaning you leave straightaway afterward,” said the second dwarf flatly. He took off his iron helmet, wiped the sweat from the inside with his handkerchief, and put it back on his head quickly.

“Oh, yes, indeed,” said the first dwarf. “Right away; that’s what express means.”

“Friends with the Feegles, are you?” said Mrs. Proust as the dwarfs hurried to deal with Tiffany’s broomstick. “They don’t have many, I understand. But talking of friends,” she continued in a suddenly chatty tone, “you did meet Derek, didn’t you? He’s my son, you know. I met his father in a dance hall with very bad lighting. Mr. Proust was a very kind man who was gracious enough to say that kissing a lady without warts was like eating an egg without salt. He passed on twenty-five years ago, of the crisms. I am very sorry I couldn’t help him.” Her face brightened. “But I’m glad to say that young Derek is the joy of my”—she hesitated—“middle age. A wonderful lad, my dear. It’s going to be some lucky girl who takes her chance on young Derek, I can tell you. He’s totally devoted to his work and pays such attention to detail. Do you know, he tunes all the whoopee cushions every morning and frets if any of them are wrong. And conscientious? When we were developing our forthcoming Pearls of the Pavement hilarious artificial dog poo collection, he must have spent weeks following just about every type of dog in the city with a notebook, a scoop, and a color chart, just to get everything exactly right. A very meticulous lad, clean in his ways, with all his own teeth. And very careful about his company. . . .” She gave Tiffany a hopeful but rather sheepish look. “This isn’t working, is it?”

“Oh, dear, did it show?” said Tiffany.

“I heard the spill words,” said Mrs. Proust.

“What’s a spill word?”

“You don’t know? A spill word is a word that somebody almost says but doesn’t. For a moment they hover in the conversation but aren’t spoken—and may I say that in the case of my son, Derek, it is as well that you didn’t say them aloud.”

“I’m really very sorry,” said Tiffany.

“Yes, well, be told,” said Mrs. Proust.

Five minutes later, they walked out of the workshop with Tiffany towing a fully functional broomstick behind her.

“Actually,” said Mrs. Proust as they walked, “now I come to think about it, your Feegles remind me a lot of Wee Mad Arthur. Tough as nails and about the same size. Haven’t heard him say ‘crivens,’ though. He’s a policeman in the Watch.”

“Oh, dear, the Feegles really don’t like policemen,” said Tiffany, but she felt she ought to balance this somewhat, so she added, “But they are very loyal, mostly helpful, good-natured in the absence of alcohol, honorable for a given value of honor, and—after all, they did introduce the deep-fried stoat to the world.”

“What’s a stoat?” said Mrs. Proust.

“Well, er . . . you know a weasel? It’s very much like a weasel.”

Mrs. Proust raised her eyebrows. “My dear, I treasure my ignorance of stoats and weasels. Sounds like countryside stuff to me. Can’t abide countryside. Too much green makes me feel bilious,” she said, giving Tiffany’s dress a shuddering glance.

At which point, on some celestial cue, there was a distant cry of “Crivens!” followed by the ever-popular sound, at least to a Feegle, of breaking glass.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Songs in the Night

When Tiffany and Mrs. Proust got to the source of the shouting, the street was already covered with a rather spectacular layer of broken glass, and worried-looking men with armor and the kind of helmets that you could eat your soup out of in an emergency. One of them was putting up barricades. Other watchmen were clearly unhappy about being on the wrong side of the barricades, especially since at that moment an extremely large watchman came flying out of one of the pubs that occupied almost all of one side of the street. The sign on it proclaimed it to be the King’s Head, but by the look of it, the King’s Head now had a headache.

The watchman took what remained of the glass with him, and when he landed on the pavement, his helmet, which could have held enough soup for a large family and all their friends, rolled off down the street making a gloing! gloing! noise.

Tiffany heard another watchman shout, “They got Sarge!”

As more watchmen came running from both ends of the street, Mrs. Proust tapped Tiffany on the shoulder and said sweetly, “Tell me again about their good points, will you?”

I’m here to find a boy and tell him that his father is dead, said Tiffany to herself. Not to pull the Feegles out of yet another scrape!

“Their hearts are in the right place,” she said.

“I don’t doubt it,” said Mrs. Proust, who looked as though she was enjoying herself no end, “but their arses are on a pile of broken glass. Oh, here come the reinforcements.”

“I don’t think they will do much good,” said Tiffany—and to her surprise, she turned out to be wrong.

The guards were fanning out now, leaving a clear path to the pub entrance; Tiffany had to look hard to see a small figure walking purposefully along it. It looked like a Feegle, but it was wearing . . . She stopped and stared . . . Yes, it was wearing a watchman’s helmet slightly bigger than the top of a salt shaker, which was unthinkable. A legal Feegle? How could there be such a thing?

Nevertheless, it reached the doorway of the pub and shouted, “You scunners are all under arrest! Now this is how it’s going to go, ye ken: Ye can hae it the hard way, or . . .” He paused for a moment. “No, that’s about it, aye,” he finished. “I don’t know any other way!” And with that he sprang through the doorway.

Feegles fought all the time. For them, fighting was a hobby, exercise, and entertainment all combined.

Tiffany had read in Professor Chaffinch’s famous book on mythology that many ancient peoples thought that when heroes died, they went to some kind of feasting hall, where they would spend all eternity fighting, eating, and boozing.

Tiffany thought that this would be rather boring by about day three, but the Feegles would love it, and probably even the legendary heroes would throw them out before eternity was half done, having first shaken them down to get all the cutlery back. The Nac Mac Feegle were indeed ferocious and fearsome fighters, with the minor drawback—from their point of view—that seconds into any fight, sheer enjoyment took over, and they tended to attack one another, nearby trees, and, if no other target presented itself, themselves.

The watchmen, after reviving their sergeant and finding his helmet for him, sat down to wait for the noise to die away, and it seemed that it was after only a minute or two that the tiny watchman came back out of the stricken building, dragging by one leg Big Yan, a giant among Feegles and now, it appeared, fast asleep. He was dropped; the policeman went back in again and came out with an unconscious Rob Anybody over one shoulder and Daft Wullie over the other.

Tiffany stared, with her mouth open. This could not be happening. The Feegles always won! Nothing beats a Feegle! They were unstoppable! But there they were: stopped, and stopped by a creature so small that he looked like one half of a salt and pepper set.

When he had run out of Feegles, the little man ran back into the building and came out very quickly, carrying a turkey-necked woman who was trying to hit him with her umbrella, a fruitless endeavor since he was balancing her carefully over his head. She was followed by a trembling young maidservant clutching a voluminous carpetbag. The little man put the woman down neatly alongside the pile of Feegles and, while she screamed at the watchmen to arrest him, went back inside and came out again balancing three heavy suitcases and two hatboxes.

Tiffany recognized the woman, but not with any pleasure. She was the Duchess, the mother of Letitia, and fairly fearsome. Did Roland really understand what he was letting himself in for? Letitia herself was all right, if you liked that kind of thing, but her mother apparently had so much blue blood in her veins that she ought to explode and right now looked as if that was going to happen. And how appropriate that the Feegles should have trashed the very building that the nasty old baggage was staying in. How lucky could one witch get? And what would the Duchess think about Roland and his watercolor-painting wife-to-be being left in the building unchaperoned?

This question was answered by the sight of the little man dragging both of them out of the building by some very expensive clothing. Roland was wearing a dinner jacket slightly too big for him, while Letitia’s apparel was simply a mass of flimsy frills upon frills, in Tiffany’s mind not the clothing of anyone who was any use whatsoever. Hah.

Still more watchmen were turning up, presumably because they had dealt with Feegles before and had had the sense to walk, not run, to the scene of the crime. But there was a tall one—more than six feet in height—with red hair and wearing armor so polished that it blinded, who was taking a witness statement from the owner; it sounded like a long-drawn-out scream to the effect that the watchmen should make this terrible nightmare not have happened.

Tiffany turned away and found herself staring directly into the face of Roland.

“You? Here?” he managed. In the background, Letitia was bursting into tears. Hah, just like her!

“Look, I have to tell you something very—”

“The floor fell in,” said Roland before she could finish, like someone still in a dream. “The actual floor actually fell in!”

“Look, I must—” she began again, but this time Letitia’s mother was suddenly in front of Tiffany.

“I know you! You’re his witch girl, yes? Don’t deny it! How dare you follow us here!”

“How did they make the floor fall in?” Roland demanded, his face white. “How did you make the floor fall in? Tell me!”

And then the smell came. It was like being hit, unexpectedly, with a hammer. Under her bewilderment and horror Tiffany sensed something else: a stink, a stench, a foulness in her mind, dreadful and unforgiving, a compost of horrible ideas and rotted thoughts that made her want to take out her brain and wash it.

That’s him: the man in black with no eyes! And the smell! A toilet for sick weasels couldn’t smell worse! I thought it was bad last time, but that was a bed of primroses! She looked around desperately, hoping against hope not to see what she was looking for.

Letitia’s sobs were getting louder and mixing very badly with the sounds of the Feegles groaning and swearing as they started to wake up.

The mother-in-law-to-be grabbed Roland by his jacket. “Come away from her right now; she is nothing but a—”

“Roland, your father is dead!”

That silenced everybody, and Tiffany was suddenly in a thicket of stares.

Oh, dear, she thought. It shouldn’t have happened like this.

“I’m sorry,” she managed in the accusing silence. “There was nothing I could do.” She saw color flow into his face.

“But you were looking after him,” said Roland, as if trying to work out a puzzle. “Why did you stop keeping him alive?”

“All I could do was take the pain away. I’m so very sorry, but that’s all I could do. I’m sorry.”

“But you’re a witch! I thought you were good at it. You’re a witch! Why did he die?”

What did the bitch do to him? Do not trust her! She is a witch! Do not suffer a witch to live!

Tiffany didn’t hear the words; they seemed to crawl across her mind like some kind of slug, leaving slime behind it, and later she wondered how many other minds it had crawled across, but now she felt Mrs. Proust grip her by the arm. She saw Roland’s face contort into fury, and she remembered the screaming figure on the road, shadowless in full sunlight, delivering abuse as if it was vomit and leaving her with a sick feeling that she would never be able to get clean again.

And the people around her had worried, hunted looks, like rabbits who have smelled a fox.

Then she saw him. Hardly visible, at the edge of the crowd. There they were, or rather there they weren’t. The two holes in the air staring at her just for a moment before vanishing. And not knowing where they had gone made them worse.

She turned to Mrs. Proust. “What is that?”

The woman opened her mouth to answer, but the tall watchman’s voice said, “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, or rather just one gentleman in fact. I am Captain Carrot, and since I am the duty officer this evening, the doubtful pleasure of dealing with this incident falls to me, and so . . .” He opened his notebook, pulled out a pencil, and gave them a confident smile. “Who is going to be the first to help me unravel this little conundrum? To begin with, I would very much like to know what a bunch of Nac Mac Feegle are doing in my city, apart from recovering?”

The glint off his armor hurt the eyes. And also he smelled strongly of soap, and that was good enough for Tiffany.

She began to raise her hand, but Mrs. Proust grabbed it and held it firmly. This caused Tiffany to shake off Mrs. Proust even more firmly and then say in a voice firmer than the grip, “That would be me, Captain.”

“And you would be . . . ?”

Running away as soon as possible, Tiffany said to herself, but she spoke up with “Tiffany Aching, sir.”

“Off to a girls’ night out, are you?”

“No,” said Tiffany.

“Yes!” said Mrs. Proust quickly.

The captain put his head on one side. “So only one of you is going? That doesn’t sound like much fun,” he said with his pencil poised over the page.

This was clearly too much for the Duchess, who pointed an accusing finger at Tiffany; it trembled with anger. “It is as clear as the nose on your face, Officer! This . . . this . . . this witch knew we were traveling down to the city in order to buy jewelry and gifts, and clearly, I repeat clearly, conspired with her imps to rob us!”

“I never did!” Tiffany yelled.

The captain held up a hand, as if the Duchess was a line of traffic. “Miss Aching, did you indeed encourage Feegles into the city?”

“Well, yes, but I didn’t really intend to. It was a sort of spur-of-the-moment thing. I didn’t intend—”

The captain held up his hand again. “Stop talking, please.” He rubbed his nose. Then he sighed. “Miss Aching, I’m arresting you on suspicion of . . . well, I’m just feeling suspicious. Besides, I am well aware that it is impossible to lock up a Feegle who doesn’t want to be locked up. If they are friends of yours, I trust”—he looked around meaningfully—“they will not do anything to get you into further trouble, and with luck, all of us will be able to get a decent night’s sleep. My fellow officer, Captain Angua, will escort you down to the Watch House. Mrs. Proust, would you be so good as to go along with them and explain the way of the world to your young friend?” Captain Angua stepped forward; she was female and beautiful and blond—and . . . odd.

Captain Carrot turned to her ladyship. “Madam, my officers will be happy to escort you to any other hotel or inn of your choice. I see that your maidservant is holding a rather strong-looking bag. Would this be containing the jewelry of which you spoke? In which case, can we ascertain that it has not been stolen?”

Her ladyship was not happy about this, but the captain cheerfully did not notice, in that very professional way policemen have of not seeing things they don’t want to see. And there was a definite sense that he wouldn’t have paid much attention in any case.

It was Roland who opened the bag and held the purchase up to the light. The tissue paper was carefully pulled off, and in the light of the lamps something sparkled so brilliantly that it seemed not only to reflect the light but to generate it too, somewhere inside its glowing stones. It was a tiara. Several of the watchmen gasped. Roland looked smug. Letitia looked objectionably winsome. Mrs. Proust sighed. And Tiffany . . . went back in time, just for a second. But in that second she was a little girl again, reading the well-thumbed book of fairy stories that all her sisters had read before her.

But she had seen what they had not seen; she had seen through it. It lied. No, well, not exactly lied, but told you truths that you did not want to know: that only blond and blue-eyed girls could get the prince and wear the glittering crown. It was built into the world. Even worse, it was built into your hair coloring. Redheads and brunettes sometimes got more than a walk-on part in the land of story, but if all you had was a rather mousy shade of brown hair, you were marked down to be a servant girl.

Or you could be the witch. Yes! You didn’t have to be stuck in the story. You could change it, not just for yourself, but for other people. You could change the story with a wave of your hand.

She sighed anyway, because the jeweled headdress was such a wonderful thing. But the sensible witch part of her said, “How often would you wear it, miss? Once in a blue moon? Something as expensive as that will spend all its time in a vault!”

“Not stolen then,” said Captain Carrot happily. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Miss Aching, I suggest you tell your little chums to follow you quietly, yes?”

Tiffany looked down at the Nac Mac Feegle, who were silent, as if in shock. Of course, when about thirty deadly fighters have found themselves being beaten into submission by one tiny man, it takes a while to come up with a face-saving excuse.

Rob Anybody looked up at her with a very rare expression of shame. “Sorry, miss. Sorry, miss,” he said. “We just had considerably too much of the booze. And ye ken, the more ye have of the booze, ye ken ye want to have even more of the booze, until ye falls over, which is when ye know ye’ve had enough of the booze. By the way, what the heel is crème de menthe? A nice green color, ye ken, I must have drunk a bucket of that stuff! I suppose there is no point in saying we are verra sorry? But ye ken, we did find the useless streak of rubbish for ye.”

Tiffany looked up at what remained of the King’s Head. Flickering in the torchlight, it looked like some kind of skeleton of a building. Even as she watched, a large beam began to creak and dropped apologetically onto a pile of broken furniture.

“I told you to find him; I didn’t tell you you were supposed to pull the doors off,” she said. She folded her arms, and the little men huddled even closer together; the next stage of female anger would be the tapping o’ the feets, which generally led them to burst into tears and walk into trees. Now, though, they formed up neatly behind her and Mrs. Proust and Captain Angua.

The captain nodded at Mrs. Proust and said, “I’m sure we can all agree that handcuffs won’t be necessary—yes, ladies?”

“Oh, you know me, Captain,” said Mrs. Proust.

Captain Angua’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, but I don’t know anything about your little friend. I would like you to carry the broomstick, Mrs. Proust.”

Tiffany could see there was no point in arguing and handed the stick over without complaining. They walked on in silence apart from the muted mumbling of the Nac Mac Feegles.

After a while the captain said, “Not a good time to be wearing pointy black hats, Mrs. Proust. There’s been another case, out on the plains. Some hole-in-the-wall place you would never go to. They beat up an old lady for having a book of spells.”

“No!”

They turned to look at Tiffany, and the Feegles walked into her ankles.

Captain Angua shook her head. “Sorry, miss, but it’s true. Turned out to be a book of Klatchian poetry, you know. All that wiggly writing! I suppose it looks like a spell book for those inclined to think that way. She died.”

“I blame The Times,” said Mrs. Proust, “when they put that sort of thing in the paper. It gives people ideas.”

Angua shrugged. “From what I hear, the people who did it weren’t much for reading.”

“You’ve got to stop it!” said Tiffany.

“How, miss? We are the City Watch. We don’t have any real jurisdiction outside the walls. There are places out there in the woods that we probably haven’t even heard of. I don’t know where this stuff comes from. It’s like some mad idea dropping out of the air.” The captain rubbed her hands together. “Of course, we don’t have any witches in the city,” she said, “although there are quite a lot of hen nights, eh, Mrs. Proust?” And the captain winked. She really winked, Tiffany was certain of it, in the same way she had been certain that Captain Carrot really did not like the Duchess very much.

“Well, I think real witches would soon stop it,” Tiffany said. “They certainly would in the mountains, Mrs. Proust.”

“Oh, but we don’t have real witches in the city. You heard the captain.” Mrs. Proust glared at Tiffany and then hissed, “We do not argue around the normal people. It makes them jittery.”

They stopped outside a large building with blue lamps on either side of the doors. “Welcome to the Watch House, ladies,” said Captain Angua. “Now, Miss Aching, I shall have to lock you in a cell, but it will be a clean one—no mice, hardly at all—and if Mrs. Proust will keep you company, then, shall we say, I might be a bit forgetful and leave the key in the lock, do you understand? Please do not leave the building, because you will be hunted.” She looked directly at Tiffany and added, “And no one should be hunted. It is a terrible thing, being hunted.”

She led them through the building and down to a row of surprisingly cozy-looking cells, gesturing for them to go inside one of them. The door of the cell clanged behind her, and they heard the sound of her boots as she went back up the stone corridor.

Mrs. Proust walked over to the door and reached through the bars. There was a tinkle of metal, and her hand came back in with the key in it. She put the key in the keyhole on their side and turned it. “There,” she said. “Now we are doubly safe.”

“Och, crivens!” said Rob Anybody. “Will ye no’ look at us? Slammed up in the banger!”

“Again!” said Daft Wullie. “I dinna ken if I will ever look m’self in the face.”

Mrs. Proust sat back down and stared at Tiffany. “All right, my girl, what was that we saw? No eyes, I noticed. No windows into the soul. No soul, perhaps?”

Tiffany felt wretched. “I don’t know! I met him on the road here. The Feegles walked right through him! He seems like a ghost. And he stinks. Did you smell it? And the crowd was turning on us! What harm were we doing?”

“I’m not certain he’s a him,” said Mrs. Proust. “He might even be an it. Could be a demon of some sort, I suppose . . . but I don’t know much about them. Small-trade retail is more my forte. Not that that can’t be a bit demonic at times.”

“But even Roland turned on me,” said Tiffany. “And we’ve always been . . . friends.”

“Aha,” said Mrs. Proust.

“Don’t you aha me,” snapped Tiffany. “At least I don’t go around making witches look ridiculous!”

Mrs. Proust slapped her. It was like being hit with a rubber pencil. “You’re a rude slip of a girl, you young hussy. And I go around keeping witches safe.”

Up in the shadows of the ceiling, Daft Wullie nudged Rob Anybody and said, “We canna let somebody smack oor big wee hag, eh, Rob?”

Rob Anybody put a finger to his lips. “Ah weel, it can be a wee bit difficult with womenfolk arguing, ye ken. Keep right oot of it, if ye’ll tak’ ma advice as a married man. Any man who interferes in the arguin’ of women is gonna find both of them jumping up and doon on him in a matter o’ seconds. I’m nae talkin’ about the foldin’ of the arms, the pursin’ of the lips, and the tappin’ of the feets. I’m talking about the smacking around with the copper stick.”

The witches stared at each other. Tiffany felt suddenly disoriented, as if she had gone from A to Z without passing through the rest of the alphabet.

“Did that just happen, my girl?” said Mrs. Proust.

“Yes, it did,” said Tiffany sharply. “It still stings.”

Mrs. Proust said, “Why did we do it?”

“To tell the truth, I hated you,” said Tiffany. “Just for a moment. It frightened me. I just wanted to be rid of you. You were just—”

“All wrong?” said Mrs. Proust.

“That’s right!”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Proust. “Discord. Turning on the witch. Always blame the witch. Where does it start? Perhaps we have found out.” Her ugly face stared at Tiffany. Then she said, “When did you become a witch, my girl?”

“I think it was when I was about eight,” said Tiffany. And she told Mrs. Proust the story about Mrs. Snapperly, the witch in the hazel woods.

The woman listened carefully and settled down on the straw. “We know it happens sometimes,” she said. “Every few hundred years or so, suddenly everyone thinks witches are bad. No one knows why it is. It just seems to happen. Have you been doing anything lately that might attract attention? Any especially important piece of magic or something?”

Tiffany thought back and then said, “Well, there was the hiver. But he wasn’t all that bad. And before that there was the Queen of the Fairies, but that was ages ago. It was pretty awful, too, but generally speaking, I think hitting her over the head with a frying pan was the best thing I could have done at the time. And, well, I suppose I’d better say that a couple of years ago, I did kiss the winter. . . .”

Mrs. Proust had been listening to this with her mouth open, and now she said, “That was you?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany.

“Are you sure?” said Mrs. Proust.

“Yes. It was me. I was there.”

“What was it like?”

“Chilly, and then damp. I didn’t want to have to do it. I’m sorry, okay?”

“About two years ago?” said Mrs. Proust. “That’s interesting. The trouble seemed to start around then, you know. Nothing particularly major; it was just as though people didn’t respect us anymore. Just something in the air, you might say. I mean, that kid with the stone this morning. Well, he would never have dared try that a year ago. People always gave me a nod when I passed by in those days. And now they frown. Or they make some little sign, just in case I bring bad luck. The others have told me about this too. What’s it been like where you are?”

“Can’t really say,” said Tiffany. “People were a bit nervous about me, but on the whole I suppose I was related to a lot of them. But everything felt odd. And I thought that was how it had to feel. I’d kissed the winter, and everybody knew it. Honestly, they do go on about it. I mean, it was only once.”

“Well, people are packed a little more closely together around here. And witches have long memories. I mean, not individual witches, but all the witches put together can remember the really bad times. When wearing a pointy hat got a stone thrown at you, if not something worse. And when you go back further than that . . . It’s like a disease,” Mrs. Proust said. “It sort of creeps up. It’s in the wind, as if it goes from person to person. Poison goes where poison’s welcome. And there’s always an excuse, isn’t there, to throw a stone at the old lady who looks funny. It’s always easier to blame somebody. And once you’ve called someone a witch, then you’d be amazed how many things you can blame her for.”

“They stoned her cat to death,” said Tiffany, almost to herself.

“And now there’s a man without a soul who’s following you. And the stink of him makes even witches hate witches. You don’t feel inclined to set fire to me, by any chance, Miss Tiffany Aching?”

“No, of course not,” said Tiffany.

“Or press me flat on the ground with lots of stones on me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It wasn’t just stones,” said Mrs. Proust. “You hear people talk about witches being burned, but I don’t reckon many real witches ever did get burned unless they were tricked in some way; I think it was mostly poor old women. Witches are mostly too soggy, and it was probably a wicked waste of good timber. But it’s very easy to push an old lady down to the ground and take one of the doors off the barn and put it on top of her like a sandwich and pile stones on it until she can’t breathe anymore. And that makes all the badness go away. Except that it doesn’t. Because there are other things going on, and other old ladies. And when they run out, there are always old men. Always strangers. There’s always the outsider. And then, perhaps, one day, there’s always you. That’s when the madness stops. When there’s no one left to be mad. Do you know, Tiffany Aching, that I felt it when you kissed the winter? Anyone with an ounce of magical talent felt something.” She paused and her eyes narrowed. Now she was staring at Tiffany. “What did you wake up, Tiffany Aching? What rough thing opened the eyes that it had not got and wondered who you were? What have you brought upon us, Miss Tiffany Aching? What have you done?”

“You think that . . .” Tiffany hesitated and then said, “That he is after me?” She closed her eyes so that she couldn’t see the accusing face, and she remembered the day she had kissed the winter. There had been terror, and dreadful apprehension, and the strange feeling of being warm while surrounded by ice and snow. And as for the kiss, well, it had been as gentle as a silk handkerchief falling on a carpet. Until she had poured all the heat of the sun into the lips of winter and melted him into water. Frost to fire. Fire to frost. She’d always been good with fire. Fire had always been her friend. It wasn’t as if the winter had ever died; there had been other winters since, but not so bad, never so bad. And it hadn’t just been a snog. She had done the right thing at the right time. It was what you did. Why had she had to do it? Because it was her fault; because she had disobeyed Miss Treason and joined in a dance that wasn’t just a dance but the curving of the seasons and the turning of the year.

And, with horror, she wondered: Where does it end? You do one foolish thing and then one thing to put it right, and when you put it right, something else goes wrong. Where did it ever stop? Mrs. Proust was watching her as though fascinated.

“All I did was dance,” said Tiffany.

Mrs. Proust put a hand on her shoulder. “My dear, I think you will have to dance again. Could I suggest you do something very sensible at this point, Tiffany Aching?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany.

“Listen to my advice,” said Mrs. Proust. “I don’t usually give things away, but I feel quite chipper about catching that lad who kept breaking my windows. So I’m in the mood for a good mood. There is a lady who I am sure would be very keen to talk to you. She lives in the city, but you’ll never find her no matter how hard you try. She will find you, though, in the blink of a second, and my advice is that when she does, you listen to everything she might tell you.”

“So how do I find her?” said Tiffany.

“You’re feeling sorry for yourself and not listening,” said Mrs. Proust. “She will find you. You’ll know it when she does. Oh my word, yes.” She reached into a pocket and produced a small round tin, the lid of which she flicked open with a black fingernail. The air suddenly felt prickly. “Snuff?” she said, offering the tin to Tiffany. “Dirty habit, of course, but it clears the tubes and helps me think.” She took a pinch of the brown powder, tipped it onto the back of the other hand, and sniffed it up with a sound like a honk in reverse. She coughed and blinked once or twice and said, “Of course, brown bogeys are not to everybody’s liking, but I suppose they add to that nasty witch look. Anyway, I expect they’ll soon give us dinner.”

“They’re going to feed us?” said Tiffany.

“Oh, yes, they’re a decent bunch, although the wine last time was a bit off in my opinion,” said Mrs. Proust.

“But we’re in prison.”

“No, my dear, we’re in the police cells. And though nobody’s saying it, we’re locked in here for our protection. You see, everyone else is locked out, and although they sometimes act dumb, policemen can’t help being clever. They know that people need witches; they need the unofficial people who understand the difference between right and wrong, and when right is wrong and when wrong is right. The world needs the people who work around the edges. It needs the people who can deal with the little bumps and inconveniences. And little problems. After all, we are almost all human. Almost all of the time. And almost every full moon Captain Angua comes to me to make up a prescription for her hardpad.”

The snuff tin was produced again.

After a while Tiffany said, “Hardpad is a disease of dogs.”

“And werewolves,” said Mrs. Proust.

“Oh. I thought there was something odd about her.”

“She stays on top of it, mind you,” said Mrs. Proust. “She shares lodgings with Captain Carrot and doesn’t bite anybody—although, come to think about it, she possibly bites Captain Carrot, but least said soonest mended, I’m sure you will agree. Sometimes what is legal isn’t what is right, and sometimes it needs a witch to tell the difference. And sometimes a copper too, if you have the right kind of copper. Clever people know this. Stupid people don’t. And the trouble is, stupid people can be oh so very clever. And by the way, miss, your boisterous little friends have escaped.”

“Yes,” Tiffany said. “I know.”

“Isn’t that a shame, despite the fact that they faithfully promised the Watch to stay?” Mrs. Proust evidently did like to retain a reputation for nastiness.

Tiffany cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, “I suppose Rob Anybody would tell you that there are times when promises should be kept and times when promises should be broken, and it takes a Feegle to know the difference.”

Mrs. Proust grinned hugely. “You could almost be from the city, Miss Tiffany Aching.”

If you needed to guard something that didn’t need guarding, possibly because no one in their right mind would want to steal it, then Corporal Nobbs of the City Watch was, for want of a better way of describing him, and in the absence of any hard biological evidence to the contrary, your man. And now he stood in the dark and crunching ruins of the King’s Head, smoking a horrible cigarette made by rolling up all the stinking butts of previously smoked cigarettes into some fresh cigarette paper and sucking the horrible mess until some kind of smoke appeared.

He never noticed the hand that lifted his helmet off, hardly even felt the forensic blow to the head, and certainly did not feel the callused little hands that placed the helmet back on his head as they lowered his sleeping body to the ground.

“Okay,” said Rob Anybody in a hoarse whisper, looking around at the blackened timbers. “Now, we don’t have much time, ye ken, so—”

“Well, well, I just knew that you wee scunners would come back here if I waited long enough for ye,” said a voice in the dark. “As a dog returneth to his vomit and a fool to his folly, so the criminal returns to the scene of his crime.”

The watchman known as Wee Mad Arthur struck a match, which was, for a Feegle, a pretty good torch. There was a clink as something that was the size of a shield for a Feegle, but would have been a badge for a human policeman, landed on the floor in front of him. “That’s tae show ye wee fools that I’m nae on duty, okay? Canna be a policeman withoot a badge, ain’t that so? I just wanted tae see why ye wee deadbeats talks properly, like what I do, because ye ken, I’m no’ a Feegle.”

The Feegles looked at Rob Anybody, who shrugged and said, “What the heel do you think ye are, then?”

Wee Mad Arthur ran his hands through his hair, and nothing fell out. “Well, my ma an’ poppa told me I was a gnome, like them—”

He stopped talking because the Feegles were hooting and slapping their legs with mirth, which tends to go on for a long time.

Wee Mad Arthur watched for a little while before shouting, “I do not find this funny!”

“Will ye no’ listen to yourself?” said Rob Anybody, wiping his eyes. “Ye are speaking Feegle, sure enough! Did yer mammy and yer pappy nae tell ye? We Feegles are born knowing how to speak! Crivens! It’s just like a dog knowing how to bark! Ye canna tell me ye are a gnome! Ye’ll be telling me ye are a pixie next!”

Wee Mad Arthur looked down at his boots. “My dad made me these boots,” he said. “I couldna bring mesel’ to tell him I didna like boots on my feet. The whole family had been making and repairing shoes for hundreds of years, ye ken, and I wasna good at the cobbling at all, and then one day all the elders of the tribe called me together and told me I was a lost foundling. They was moving to a new camp, and they ha’ found me, a tiny wee bairn, sobbing by the road, right next to a sparrow hawk that I had strangled to death after it had snatched me from me cradle; they reckoned it was taking me home to feed me tae its chicks. And the old gnomes put their hats together and said that while they were very happy to let me stay, what with being able to bite foxes to death and everything, it might be time for me to go out into the big world and find out who my people were.”

“Well, laddie, ye have found them,” said Rob Anybody, slapping him on the back. “Ye did well to listen to a load of old cobblers. That was wisdom they told you, sure enough.”

He hesitated for a moment and then went on, “However, it’s a wee bitty difficult that ye are—no offense meant—a policeman.” He jumped back slightly, just in case.

“Granted,” said Wee Mad Arthur with satisfaction. “Whereas ye are a bunch of thieving drunken reprobates and scofflaws with no respect for the law whatsoever!”

The Feegles nodded happily, although Rob Anybody said, “Would you no’ mind adding the words ‘drunk’ and ‘disorderly’? We would nae want to be sold short here.”

“And what about the snail rustling, Rob?” said Daft Wullie happily.

“Weel,” said Rob Anybody, “in actual point of fact, the snail rustling is still in the early stages of development at this time.”

“Have ye no good points?” said Wee Mad Arthur desperately.

Rob Anybody looked puzzled. “We kind of thought them is our good points, but if you want to get picky, we never steal from them as has nae money, we has hearts of gold, although maybe—okay, mostly—somebody else’s gold, and we did invent the deep-fried stoat. That must count for something.”

“How is that a good point?” said Arthur.

“Weel, it saves some other poor devil having tae do it. It’s what ye might call a taste explosion; ye take a mouthful, taste it, and then there is an explosion.”

Despite himself, Wee Mad Arthur was grinning. “Have you boys got no shame?”

Rob Anybody matched him grin for grin. “I couldna say,” he replied, “but if we have, it probably belonged tae somebody else.”

“And what about the poor wee big lassie locked up and down in the Watch House?” said Wee Mad Arthur.

“Oh, she’ll bide fine till the morning,” said Rob Anybody, as loftily as he could in the circumstances. “She is a hag o’ considerable resource.”

“Ye think so? You wee scunners punched an entire pub to death! How can anyone put that right?”

This time Rob Anybody gave him a longer, more thoughtful look before saying, “Well, Mr. Policeman, it seems ye are a Feegle and a copper. Well, that’s the way the world spins. But the big question for the pair of ye is: Are ye a sneak and a snitch?”

In the Watch House, the shift was changing. Somebody came in and shyly handed Mrs. Proust quite a large plate of cold meats and pickles, and a bottle of wine with two glasses. After a nervous look at Tiffany, the watchman whispered something to Mrs. Proust, and in one movement she took a small packet out of her pocket and shoved it into his hand. Then she came back and sat down on the straw again.

“And I see he’s had the decency to open the bottle and let the wine breathe for a while,” she said, and added, when she saw Tiffany’s glance, “Lance Constable Hopkins has a little problem that he’d rather his mother never found out about, and I make a rather helpful ointment. I don’t charge him, of course. One hand washes the other, although in the case of young Hopkins I hope he scrubs it first.”

Tiffany had never drunk wine before; at home you drank small beer or small cider, which had just enough alcohol to kill off the nasty invisible tiny biting things but not enough alcohol to make you more than a bit silly.

“Well,” she said, “I never thought prison would be like this!”

“Prison? I told you, my dear girl, this isn’t prison! If you want to know what a prison is like, visit the Tanty! That’s a dark place if you like! In here the watchmen don’t gob in your grub—at least when you’re watching, and certainly never in mine, you can be sure of that. The Tanty is a tough place; they like to think that anyone who gets put in there will think more than twice before doing anything that will get them put in there again. And they’ve tidied it up a bit these days, and not everybody who goes in comes out in a pine box, but the walls still scream silently to those with hearing. I hear them.” She opened her snuffbox with a click. “And worse than the screaming is the sound of the canaries in D wing, where they lock up the men who they don’t dare hang. They bang up each one by himself in a little room, and they give him a canary as company.” At this point Mrs. Proust took a pinch of snuff at such speed and volume that Tiffany was surprised that it didn’t come out of her ears.

The box’s lid snapped back down. “Those men, mark you, are not your average murderer—oh, no, they killed people for a hobby, or for a god or for something to do, or because it wasn’t a very nice day. They did worse things than just murder, but murder was how it always ended. I see you haven’t touched your beef . . . ? Oh, well, if you’re quite sure . . .” Mrs. Proust paused with rather a large piece of heavily pickled lean beef on her knife and went on: “Funny thing, though, these cruel men used to look after their canaries, and cried when they died. The warders used to say it was all a sham; they said it gave them the creeps, but I’m not sure. When I was young, I used to run errands for the warders, and I would look at those great heavy doors and I would listen to the little birds, and I would wonder what it is that makes the difference between a good man and a man so bad that no hangman in the city—not even my dad, who could have a man out of his cell and stone-cold dead in seven and a quarter seconds—would dare to put a rope round his neck in case he escaped from the fires of evil and came back with a vengeance.” Mrs. Proust stopped there and shivered, as if shaking off the memories. “That’s life in the big city, my girl; it’s not an easy bed of sweet primroses, like in the country.”

Tiffany wasn’t very happy with being called a girl again, but that wasn’t the worst of it. “Sweet primroses?” she said. “It wasn’t sweet primroses the other day when I had to cut down a hanged man.” And she had to tell Mrs. Proust all about Mr. Petty and Amber. And about the bouquet of nettles.

“And your dad told you about the beatings?” said Mrs. Proust. “Sooner or later, it’s all about the soul.”

The meal had been tasty, and the wine surprisingly strong. And the straw was a lot cleaner than you might have expected. It had been a long day, piled on top of other long days. “Please,” Tiffany said, “can we get some sleep? My father always says that things will look better in the morning.”

There was a pause. “Upon reflection,” Mrs. Proust said, “I think your father will turn out to be wrong.”

Tiffany let the clouds of tiredness take her. She dreamed about canaries singing in the dark. And perhaps she imagined it, but she thought she woke up for a moment and saw the shadow of an old lady looking at her. It certainly wasn’t Mrs. Proust, who snored something terrible. The shape was there for a moment, and then it vanished. Tiffany remembered: The world is full of omens, and you picked the ones you liked.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The King’s Neck

Tiffany was woken by the squeak of a cell door opening. She sat up and looked around. Mrs. Proust was still asleep, and snoring so hard that her nose wobbled. Correction: Mrs. Proust appeared to be asleep. Tiffany liked her, in a wary kind of way, but could she trust her? Sometimes she seemed to almost . . . read her mind.

“I don’t read minds,” said Mrs. Proust, turning over.

“Mrs. Proust!”

Mrs. Proust sat up and started to pull bits of straw off her dress. “I don’t read minds,” she said, flicking the straw onto the floor. “I really have keen, but not supernatural, skills, which I have honed to the sharpest of edges, and don’t you forget it, please. I hope to goodness they’re going to give us a cooked breakfast.”

“Nae problemo there—what would ye like us to fetch for ye?”

They looked up to see the Feegles sitting on the beam overhead and dangling their feet happily.

Tiffany sighed. “If I asked you what you were doing last night, would you lie to me?”

“Absolutely not, on our honor as Feegles,” said Rob Anybody with his hand on where he thought his heart was.

“Well, that seems conclusive,” said Mrs. Proust, standing up.

Tiffany shook her head and sighed again. “No, it’s not quite as simple as that.” She looked up at the beam and said, “Rob Anybody, was the answer you gave me just then truthful? I’m asking you as the hag o’ the hills.”

“Oh, aye.”

“And that one?”

“Oh, aye.”

“And that one?”

“Oh, aye.”

“And that one?”

“Oh . . . well, only a tiny wee lie, ye ken, hardly a lie, just something that it would nae be good for ye tae know.”

Tiffany turned to Mrs. Proust, who was grinning. “The Nac Mac Feegles feel that the truth is so precious that it shouldn’t be waved about too much,” she said apologetically.

“Ah, people after my own heart,” said Mrs. Proust, and then, remembering herself, she added, “If I had one, that is.”

There was a sound of heavy boots, which got nearer and no less heavy very quickly, and which turned out to belong to a tall and skinny watchman, who touched his helmet politely to Mrs. Proust and gave Tiffany a nod.

“Good morning, ladies! My name is Constable Haddock, and I have been told to tell you that you’ve been let go with a warning,” he said. “Although I have to tell you that no one quite knows what to warn you about, as far as I can tell, so if I was you, I’d consider myself generally in the situation of being warned, as it were, in a general and generically nonspecific way, and hopefully slightly chastened by the experience, no offense meant, I’m sure.” He coughed, and went on, after giving Mrs. Proust a nervous look, “And Commander Vimes has asked me to make it clear that the individuals known jointly as the Nac Mac Feegle are to be out of this city by sunset.”

There was a chorus of complaints from the Feegles on the beam, who in Tiffany’s opinion were as good at astonished indignation as they were at drunkenness and thievery:

“Och, ye wouldna pick on us if we was big!”

“It wasna us! A big boy did it and ran awee!”

“I wasna there! Ye can ask them! They wasna there either!”

And otherrr excuses o’ that ilk, ye ken.

Tiffany banged her tin plate on the bars until they subsided into silence. Then she said, “Excuse me, please, Constable Haddock. I’m sure they’re all very sorry about the pub—” she began, and he waved a hand at her.

“If you’ll take my advice, miss, you’ll just leave quietly and not talk to anybody about pubs.”

“But look . . . we all know that they smashed up the King’s Head, and—”

The constable stopped her again. “I went past the King’s Head this morning,” he said, “and it was very definitely not smashed up. In fact, there were crowds of people there. Everyone in the city is going to have a look at it. The King’s Head is just like it’s always been, as far as I can see, with just the one tiny little detail, which is, to wit, that it is now back to front.”

“What do you mean, ‘back to front’?” asked Mrs. Proust.

“I mean that it is the wrong way round,” said the policeman patiently, “and when I was over there just now, you can bet they weren’t calling it the King’s Head anymore.”

Tiffany’s forehead wrinkled. “So . . . they’re calling it the King’s Neck?”

Constable Haddock smiled. “Well, yes, I can see you are a well-brought-up young lady, miss, because most of the people out there are calling it the King’s—”

“I cannot abide smut!” said Mrs. Proust severely.

Really? Tiffany thought. With half a shopwindow full of pink inflatable wossnames and other mysterious items that I didn’t get a chance to see very clearly? But I suppose it would be a strange world if we were all the same, and especially if we were all the same as Mrs. Proust.

And overhead she could hear the susurration of the Nac Mac Feegles, with Daft Wullie making more noise than usual. “I told ye, didn’t I tell ye, I said this lot is back to front, I said, but no, ye would nae pay heed! I may be daft, but I’m no’ stupid.”

The King’s Head, or at least whatever part of the king’s anatomy it now was, was not very far away, but the witches had to push their way through the crowds when they were at least a hundred yards from it, and many of the people making up the crowd were holding pint mugs in their hands. Mrs. Proust and Tiffany both wore hobnailed boots, a boon to anyone who must get through a crowd in a hurry, and there in front of them was, for want of a better word—although the Feegles would have used a different word, and indeed the Feegles would not have hesitated to use a different word—was, in fact, the King’s Back, which came as a relief. Standing in front of the back door, which was now doing the duty formerly left to the front door, and handing out mugs of beer with one hand while taking money with the other, was Mr. Wilkin, the landlord. He looked like a cat on the day it rained mice.

Every now and again he managed to find time in this heroic endeavor to say a few words to a skinny but purposeful-looking lady who was writing things down in a notebook.

Mrs. Proust nudged Tiffany. “See her? That’s Miss Cripslock of The Times, and over there”—she pointed at a tall man in the uniform of the Watch—“see there, the man she’s talking to is Commander Vimes of the City Watch. Decent man, always looks grumpy, won’t stand any nonsense. This is going to be interesting, because he doesn’t like kings of any sort; one of his ancestors chopped off the head of the last king we had.”

“That’s dreadful! Did he deserve it?”

Mrs. Proust hesitated for a moment and then said, “Well, if it’s true about what they found in his private dungeon, then the answer is yes in great big letters. They put the commander’s ancestor on trial anyway, because chopping heads off kings always causes a certain amount of comment, apparently. When the man stood in the dock, all he said was ‘Had the beast a hundred heads I would not have rested until I had slain every last one.’ Which was taken as a guilty plea. He was hanged, and then much later they put up a statue to him, which tells you more about people than you might wish to know. His nickname was Old Stoneface, and as you can see, it runs in the family.”

Tiffany could, and this was because the commander was moving purposefully toward her, his expression that of a man who had a lot of things to do, all of them more important than what he was having to do right now. He gave a respectful little nod to Mrs. Proust and tried unsuccessfully not to glare at Tiffany.

“Did you do this?”

“No, sir!”

“Do you know who did?”

“No, sir!”

The commander frowned. “Young lady, if a burglar breaks into a house and then comes back later and puts everything back where it was, a crime has still happened, do you understand? And if the building that has been badly damaged, along with its contents, is found the next morning looking all shiny and new, albeit facing the wrong way, that too—and therefore those involved—are, nevertheless, still criminals.” Except that I have no idea what to call it, and quite frankly I would rather be done with the whole damn business.

Tiffany blinked. She hadn’t heard that last sentence, not exactly heard it, but she could remember it anyway. They must have been spill words! She glanced at Mrs. Proust, who nodded happily, and in Tiffany’s head there was a little spill word that said yes.

Out loud Mrs. Proust said, “Commander, it seems to me that no real harm has been done, given that, if I’m any judge, Mr. Wilkin here is doing a roaring trade in the King’s Back and would probably not welcome it becoming the King’s Head again.”

“Too right!” said the landlord, who was shoveling money into a bag.

Commander Vimes was frowning, and Tiffany caught the words that he was almost but not actually saying: No king’s coming back while I’m here!

Mrs. Proust butted in again. “How about letting it be called the King’s Neck?” she suggested. “Especially since he appears to have dandruff, greasy hair, and a big ripe boil?”

To Tiffany’s delight, the commander’s face stayed as stony as ever, but she caught a tremble of a spill word that was a triumphant Yes! And at that point Mrs. Proust, who believed in securing victory by every means at her disposal, chimed in again with “This is Ankh-Morpork, Mr. Vimes; in the summer the river catches fire, and it has been known to rain fish and bedsteads, so, in the great scheme of things, when you think about it, what’s so wrong about a pub spinning on its axis? Most of its customers do the same! How is your little boy, by the way?”

This innocent enquiry appeared to floor the commander. “Oh! He . . . oh, I . . . he’s fine. Oh, yes, fine. You were right. All he needed was a fizzy drink and a really big burp. Could I have a word with you in private, Mrs. Proust?” The look he gave Tiffany made it quite clear that “private” didn’t include her, so she carefully made her way through the crowds of jolly—and sometimes too jolly—people waiting to have their pictures taken in front of the King’s Neck, and she let herself fade into the foreground and listened to Rob Anybody command the troops who would listen to him when there was nothing better to do.

“All right,” he said, “which one of you scunners decided tae paint a real neck on the sign? I’m sure it’s no’ normally done like that.”

“That was Wullie,” said Big Yan. “He reckoned people would think it had always been like that. He is daft, ye ken.”

“Sometimes daft works,” said Tiffany. She looked around. . . . And there he was, the man with no eyes, walking through the crowd, walking through the crowd, as if they were ghosts, but she could see that they felt his presence in some way; one man brushed his hand across his face, as if feeling the footsteps of a fly; another one slapped at his own ear. But afterward they were . . . changed. When their eyes saw Tiffany, they narrowed, and the ghostly man headed toward her, and the whole of the crowd became one huge frown. And here came the stench, trailing behind him and turning the daylight gray. It was like the bottom of a pond, where things had died and rotted for centuries.

Tiffany looked around desperately. The turning of the King’s Head had filled the street with the curious and the thirsty. People were trying to go about their business but were being hemmed in by the crowd in front and the crowd behind them and, of course, by the people with trays and little carts who swarmed through the city and would try to sell something to anyone who stood still for more than two seconds. She could feel the menace in the air, but in fact it was more than a menace—it was hatred, growing like a plant after rain, and still the man in black came nearer. It scared her. Of course, she had the Feegles with her, but generally speaking the Feegles got you out of trouble by getting you into a different kind of trouble.

The ground moved quite suddenly underneath her. There was a metallic scraping noise, and the bottom dropped out of her world, but only by about six feet. As she staggered in the gloom under the pavement, someone pushed past her with a cheerful “Excuse me.” There were more inexplicable metal noises, and the round hole now above her head vanished in darkness.

“Real piece of luck there,” said the polite voice. “The only one we’re going to get today, I fancy. Please try not to panic until I have lit the safety lantern. If you want to panic thereafter, that is entirely up to you. Stay close to me, and when I say, ‘Walk as fast as possible while holding your breath,’ do so, for the sake of your sanity, your throat, and possibly your life. I don’t care if you understand or not—just do it, because we may not have much time.”

A match flared. There was a small popping noise and a green-blue glow in the air just in front of Tiffany. “Only a bit of marsh gas,” said the invisible informant. “Not too bad, nothing to worry about yet, but stay close, mind you!”

The green-blue glow began to move very fast, and Tiffany had to walk quickly to keep up, which was no mean feat, because the ground beneath her boots was, by turns, like gravel, mud, or occasionally a liquid of some sort but probably not a sort that you would want to know about. Here and there, in the distance, there were tiny little glows of other mysterious lights, like will-o’-the-wisps you sometimes got over marshy ground.

“Do keep up!” said the voice ahead of her.

Soon Tiffany lost all sense of direction and, for that matter, time.

Then there was a click, and the figure was outlined against what looked like a perfectly ordinary doorway, except that it was in an arch, and the door itself came to a point at the top.

“Please be so good as to wipe your feet very thoroughly on the mat just inside; it pays to take precautions down here.”

Behind the still-shadowy figure, candles were lighting themselves, and now they illuminated someone in heavy, stiff clothing, big boots, and a steel helmet on her head—although as Tiffany watched, the figure carefully lifted the helmet off. She shook out her ponytail, which suggested that she was young, but her hair was white, suggesting that she was old. She was, Tiffany thought, one of those people who pick for themselves a look that suits them and doesn’t get in the way, and never change it until they die. There were wrinkles too, and Tiffany’s guide had the preoccupied air of somebody who is trying to think of several things at once, and by the look on her face she was trying to think of everything. There was a small table in the room, set with a teapot, cups, and a pile of small cupcakes.

“Do come on in,” said the woman. “Welcome. But where are my manners? My name is Miss . . . Smith, for the moment. I believe Mrs. Proust may have mentioned me? And you are in the Unreal Estate, quite possibly the most unstable place in the world. Would you like some tea?”

Things tend to look better when the world has stopped spinning and you have a warm drink in front of you, even if the cup is standing on an old packing case.

“I’m sorry it’s not a palace,” said Miss Smith. “I never stay here for more than a few days at a time, but I do need to be close to the University, and to have absolute privacy. This was a little cottage outside the University walls, you see, and the wizards just used to chuck all their waste over. After a while, all the different bits of magical rubbish started to react with one another in what I can only call unpredictable ways. Well, what with talking rats, and people’s eyebrows growing up to six feet long, and shoes walking around by themselves, the people who lived nearby ran away, and so did their shoes. And since there was no one complaining anymore, the University simply chucked even more stuff over the wall. Wizards are like cats going to the toilet in that respect; once you’ve walked away from it, it isn’t there anymore.

“Of course, it then became a free-for-all, with just about anybody throwing over just about anything and running away very quickly, often pursued by shoes, but not always successfully. Would you like a cupcake? And don’t worry, I bought them off quite a reliable baker tomorrow, so I know they’re fresh, and I pretty much tamed the magic around here a year ago. It wasn’t too hard; magic is largely a matter of balance, but of course you’d know that. Anyway, the upshot is that there is such a magical fog over this place that I doubt if even a god could see into it.” Miss Smith delicately ate half a cupcake and balanced the other half on her saucer. She leaned closer to Tiffany. “How did it feel, Miss Tiffany Aching, when you kissed the winter?”

Tiffany stared at her for a moment. “Look, it was just a peck, okay? Certainly no tongues!” Then she said, “You are the person that Mrs. Proust said was going to find me, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Miss Smith. “I would hope that is obvious. I could give you a long, complicated lecture,” she continued brusquely, “but I think it would be better if I told you a story. I know you have been taught by Granny Weatherwax, and she will tell you that the world is made up of stories. I had better admit that this one is one of the nasty ones.”

“I am a witch, you know,” said Tiffany. “I have seen nasty things.”

“So you may think,” said Miss Smith. “But for now I want you to picture a scene, more than a thousand years ago, and imagine a man, still quite young, and he is a witchfinder and a book burner and a torturer, because people older than him who are far more vile than him have told him that this is what the Great God Om wants him to be. And on this day he has found a woman who is a witch, and she is beautiful, astonishingly beautiful, which is rather unusual among witches, at least in those days—”

“He falls in love with her, doesn’t he?” Tiffany interrupted.

“Of course,” said Miss Smith. “Boy meets girl, one of the greatest engines of narrative causality in the multiverse, or as some people might put it, ‘It had to happen.’ I would like to continue this discourse without interruptions, if you don’t mind?”

“But he is going to have to kill her, isn’t he?”

Miss Smith sighed. “Since you ask, not necessarily. He thinks that if he rescues her and they can get to the river, then they might have a chance. He is bewildered and confused. He has never had feelings like this before. For the first time in his life, he is really having to think for himself. There are horses not far away. There are a few guards, and some other prisoners, and the air is full of smoke because there is a pile of burning books, which is making people’s eyes water.”

Tiffany leaned forward in her seat, listening to the clues, trying to work out the ending in advance.

“There are some apprentices he is training, and also some very senior members of the Omnian Church who have come to watch and bless the proceedings. And finally there are a number of people from the nearby village who are cheering very loudly because it is not them who are going to be killed, and generally they don’t get much entertainment. In fact, it’s pretty much another day at the office, except that the girl being tied to the stake by the apprentices has caught his eye and is now watching him very carefully, not saying a word, not even screaming a word, not yet.”

“Does he have a sword?” asked Tiffany.

“Yes, he does. May I continue? Good. Now, he walks toward her. She is staring at him, not shouting, just watching, and he is thinking . . . what is he thinking? He is thinking, ‘Could I take on both of the guards? Will the apprentices obey me?’ And then, as he gets nearer, he wonders if they could make it to the horses in all this smoke. And this is a moment eternally frozen in time. Huge events await his decision. One simple deed either way and history will be different, and you are thinking it depends on what he does next. But you see, what he is thinking doesn’t matter, because she knows who he is and what he has done, and the bad things that he has done and is famous for, and as he walks toward her, uncertain, she knows him for what he is, even if he wishes he wasn’t, and she reaches with both hands smoothly through the wicker basket they’ve put around her to keep her upright, and grabs him, and holds him tight as the torch drops down onto the oily wood and the flames spring up. She never takes her eyes off him and never loosens her grip. . . . Would you like a fresh cup of tea?”

Tiffany blinked away smoke and flames and shock. “And how do you know so much about it, please?” she said.

“I was there.”

“A thousand years ago?”

“Yes.”

“How did you get there?”

“I walked,” said Miss Smith. “But that is not the point. The point is that then was the death—and birth—of the thing we call the Cunning Man. And he was still a man, to begin with. He was terribly injured, of course. For quite some time. And witchfinding went on—oh, my word, didn’t it just. You couldn’t tell who the other witchfinders feared most: the witches, or the wrath of the Cunning Man if they didn’t find him the witches he demanded. And believe me, with the Cunning Man on your heels, you will find as many witches as he wants, oh, yes.

“And the Cunning Man himself could always find witches. It was quite amazing. You would have some quiet little village where everybody got on reasonably well and no one had noticed any witches at all. But when the Cunning Man arrived, suddenly there were witches everywhere, but unfortunately not for very long. He believed that witches were the reason for just about everything bad that happened, and that they stole babies and caused wives to run away from their husbands and milk to go sour. I think my favorite one was that witches went to sea in eggshells in order to drown honest sailors.” At this point Miss Smith held up a hand. “No, don’t say that it would be impossible for even a small witch to get inside an eggshell without crushing it, because that is what we in the craft would call a logical argument and therefore no one who wanted to believe that witches sank ships would pay any attention to it.

“It couldn’t go on, of course. People can be very stupid, and people can be easily frightened, but sometimes you find people who aren’t that stupid and aren’t that fearful, and so the Cunning Man is thrust out of the world. Thrown out like the rubbish he is.

“But that wasn’t the end of him. So great, so fearsome was his hatred for anything that he thought of as witchcraft that he somehow managed to live on despite finally having no body. Though there was no skin to him, no bone anymore, his rage was such that he lived on. As a ghost, perhaps. And, every so often, finding someone who would let him in. There are plenty of people out there whose poisonous minds will open for him. And there are those who would rather be behind evil than in front of it, and one of them wrote for him the book known as The Bonfire of the Witches.

“But when he takes over a body—and believe me, in the past, there were those unpleasant people who have thought that their terrible ambitions would be furthered by allowing him to do so—the owner of the body becomes a part of him, too. They have no control. And not until it is too late do they realize that there is no escape, no release. Except death. . . .”

“Poison goes where poison’s welcome,” said Tiffany. “But it looks as though it can push its way in, welcome or not.”

“I’m sorry,” said Miss Smith, “but I will say ‘Well done.’ You are as good as they say. There really is nothing physical now to the Cunning Man. Nothing you can see. Nothing you can possess. And while he often kills those who have been so generous in their hospitality, he nevertheless still appears to thrive. Without a body to call his own, he drifts on the wind and, I suppose, sleeps in some way. And if he does, I know what he dreams of. He dreams of a beautiful young witch, the most powerful of all the witches. And he thinks of her with such hatred that, according to elasticated string theory, it goes all the way round the universe and comes back from a different direction so that it seems to be a kind of love. And he wants to see her again. In which case she will almost certainly die.

“Some witches—real flesh-and-blood witches—have tried to fight him and have won. And sometimes they tried and died. And then one day a girl called Tiffany Aching, because of her disobedience, kissed the winter. Which, I have to say, no one has ever done before. And the Cunning Man woke up.” Miss Smith put down her cup. “As a witch, you know you must have no fear?”

Tiffany nodded.

“Well, Tiffany, you must make a place for fear, fear under control. We think that the head is important, that the brain sits like a monarch on the throne of the body. But the body is powerful too, and the brain cannot survive without it. If the Cunning Man takes over your body, I don’t think you would be able to fight him. He would be like nothing you have met before. To be caught will be, ultimately, to die. What is worse, to be his creature. In which case, death will be a longed-for release. And there you have it, Miss Tiffany Aching. He wakes up, he drifts, he looks for her. He looks for you.”

“Well, at least we’ve found her,” said Rob Anybody. “She’s somewhere in that festering midden.”

The Feegles stood with their mouths open in front of the bubbling, suppurating mess of the Unreal Estate. Mysterious things plopped, spun, and exploded under the debris.

“It will be certain death to go in there,” said Wee Mad Arthur. “Certain death! You’ll be doomed.”

“Oh, aye, we’re all doomed sooner or later,” said Rob Anybody jovially. He sniffed. “What the heel is that stink?”

“Sorry, Rob, that was me,” said Daft Wullie.

“Ach no, I ken your smell,” Rob said. “But I ken I smelled this before. It was that walking gawky that we smelled on the road. Ye ken? All in black. Very lacking in the eyeball department. Bad cess to him, and bad cess he smelled. And I recollect he used very bad words about oor big wee hag. My Jeannie said we must stay close to the big wee hag, and I reckon this scunner needs a bath.”

Wee Mad Arthur precipitated matters. “Weel, Rob, ye going in there is against the law, ye ken?” He pointed to an ancient and half-melted sign on which, just readable, were the words: Access Strictly Forbidden. By Order.

Rob Anybody stared at it. “Ach, now you give me nae choice at all,” he said, “and you made me remember that we’re all dead already.* Charge!”

There were dozens of questions that Tiffany could ask but the one struggling to the top was: “What will happen if the Cunning Man catches up with me?”

Miss Smith stared at the ceiling for a moment. “Well, I suppose from his point of view, it will be rather like a wedding. From your point of view, it will be exactly like being dead. No, worse, because you will be inside, looking out at what he can do with all your powers and all your skills to all the people you know. Did we have the last cupcake?”

I’m not going to show any fear, said Tiffany to herself.

“I’m glad to hear that,” said Miss Smith out loud.

Tiffany leaped off the chair in a rage. “Don’t you dare do that, Miss Smith!”

“I’m sure there was one more cupcake,” said Miss Smith, and then added, “That’s the spirit, Miss Tiffany Aching.”

“You know, I did defeat a hiver. I can look after myself.”

“And your family? And everybody you know? From an attack that they won’t even know is happening? You don’t understand. The Cunning Man isn’t a man, although he was once, and now he’s not even a ghost. He is an idea. Unfortunately he is an idea whose time has come.”

“Well, at least I know when he’s near me,” Tiffany said thoughtfully. “There’s a dreadful stink. Even worse than the Feegles.”

Miss Smith nodded. “Yes, it’s coming from his mind. It’s the smell of corruption—corruption of thinking and of action. Your mind picks it up and doesn’t know what to do with it, so it files it under ‘stink.’ All the magically inclined can smell it; but when people encounter it, it changes them, makes them a little bit like him. And so trouble follows wherever he goes.”

And Tiffany knew exactly what kind of trouble she meant, even though her memories shot her back in time to before the Cunning Man had woken again.

In her mind’s eye she could see the black-edged pieces blowing back and forth in the late-autumn wind, which sighed with despair in her mind’s ear; and worst of all, oh, yes, worst of all, her mind’s nose snuffed up the sharp acrid stink of ancient, half-burned paper. In her memory some of the pieces fluttered in the pitiless wind like moths that had been swatted and broken but were still hopelessly trying to fly.

And there were stars on them.

People had marched to the rough music and roughly dragged out the cracked old woman whose only crime, as far as Tiffany could see, was that she had no teeth left and smelled of wee. They had thrown stones, they had smashed windows, they had killed the cat, and all this had been done by good people, nice people, people she knew and met every day, and they had done all these things that, even now, they never talked about. It was a day that somehow had vanished from the calendar. And on that day, with a pocketful of charred stars, not knowing what it was she was doing, but determined to do it, she had become a witch.

“You said that others have fought him?” she said now to Miss Smith. “How did they manage it?”

“That last cupcake was still in the bag with the baker’s name on it, I’m sure of it. You’re not sitting on it, are you?” Miss Smith cleared her throat and said, “By being very powerful witches, by understanding what it means to be a powerful witch, and by taking every chance, using every trick, and, I suspect, understanding the Cunning Man’s mind before he understands theirs. I have trudged through a long time to learn about the Cunning Man,” she added, “and the one thing I can tell you for certain is that the way to kill the Cunning Man is with cunning. You will need to be more cunning than he is.”

“He can’t be that cunning if he’s taken all this time to find me,” said Tiffany.

“Yes, that puzzles me,” said Miss Smith. “And it should puzzle you. I would have expected it to have taken him a very long time. More than two years, anyway. He’s either been very clever—and frankly he has nothing to be clever with—or somehow something else has drawn you to his attention. Someone magical, I would guess. Do you know any witches who aren’t your friend?”

“Certainly not,” said Tiffany. “Are any of the witches who have defeated him still alive?”

“Yes.”

“I was wondering, if I found one—perhaps they could tell me how they did it?”

“I’ve told you. He’s the Cunning Man. Why should he fall for the same trick twice? You have to find your own way. Those who have trained you would expect nothing less.”

“This isn’t some kind of test, is it?” said Tiffany, and then felt embarrassed at how lame that sounded.

“Don’t you remember what Granny Weatherwax always says?” said Miss Smith.

“Everything is a test.” They said it together with one voice, looked at each other and laughed.

At which point there was a squawk. Miss Smith opened the door and a small white chicken walked in, looked around curiously, and exploded. Where it had been was an onion, fully rigged with mast and sails.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” said Miss Smith. She sighed. “Happens all the time, I’m afraid. The Unreal Estate is never static, you see. All the magic, banging together, bits of spells winding themselves around other spells, whole new spells being created that nobody has ever thought of before . . . it’s a mess. It generates things quite randomly. Yesterday I found a book on growing chrysanthemums, printed in copper on water. You would think it would tend to slosh about a bit, but it all seemed to hang together until the magic ran out.”

“That was bad luck for the chicken,” said Tiffany nervously.

“Well, I can guarantee that it wasn’t a chicken two minutes ago,” said Miss Smith, “and now it’s probably enjoying being a seagoing vegetable. Perhaps you can see why I don’t spend too much time down here. I had an incident with a toothbrush once that I will not forget in a hurry.” She pushed open the door still farther, and Tiffany saw the shambles.

There was no mistaking a shambles.* Well, there was at first, and she mistook it for a heap of rubbish.

“It’s amazing what you can find in your pockets if you’re in a magical junkyard,” said Miss Smith calmly.

Tiffany stared at the giant shambles again. “Isn’t that a horse’s skull?** And isn’t that a bucket of tadpoles?”

“Yes. Something alive always helps, don’t you find?”

Tiffany’s eyes narrowed. “But that is a wizard’s staff, isn’t it? I thought they stopped working if a woman touched one!”

Miss Smith smiled. “Well, I’ve had mine ever since I was in my cradle. If you know where to look, you can see the marks I made when I was teething. It’s my staff and it works, although I have to say it started to work better when I took the knob off the end. It didn’t do anything practical, and it upsets the balance. Now, will you stop standing there with your mouth open?”

Tiffany’s mouth clamped shut and then sprang open again. A penny had dropped and it felt as if it had dropped from the moon. “You’re her, aren’t you? You must be, you’re her! Eskarina Smith, right? The only woman who ever became a wizard!”

“Somewhere inside, I suppose so, yes, but it seems such a long time ago, and you know, I never really felt like a wizard, so I never really worried about what anyone said. And anyway, I had the staff, and no one could take that away from me.” Eskarina hesitated for a moment and then went on, “That’s what I learned at university: to be me, just what I am, and not worry about it. That knowledge is an invisible magical staff, all by itself. Look, I don’t really want to talk about this. It brings back bad memories.”

“Please forgive me,” said Tiffany. “I just couldn’t stop myself. I’m very sorry if I have dredged up any scary recollections.”

Eskarina smiled. “Oh, the scary ones are never a problem. It’s good ones that can be difficult to deal with.” There was a click from the shambles. Eskarina stood up and walked over to it. “Oh, dear, of course only the witch who makes it can read her own shambles, but trust me when I say that the way the skull has turned and the position of the pincushion along the axis of the spinning wheel means that he is very close. Almost right on top of us, in fact. Or the random magic in this place may be confusing him, and you seem to be everywhere and nowhere, so he’ll go away soon and try to pick up the trail somewhere else. And as I mentioned, somewhere on the trail he will eat. He’ll get into some fool’s head, and some old lady or some girl who is wearing quite dangerous cult symbols without an inkling of what they really mean will suddenly find herself hounded. Let us hope she can run.”

Tiffany looked around, bewildered. “And what happens will be my fault?”

“Is that the sarcastic whine of a little girl or the rhetorical question of a witch with her own steading?”

Tiffany began to reply and then stopped. “You can travel in time, can’t you?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Then you know what I’m going to answer?”

“Well, it’s not quite as simple as that,” said Eskarina, and looked slightly uncomfortable for a moment, much to Tiffany’s surprise and, it has to be said, delight. “I know, let me see, there are fifteen different replies you might make, but I don’t know which one it will be until you make it, because of the elasticated string theory.”

“Then all I will say,” said Tiffany, “is thank you very much. I am sorry to have taken up your time. But I need to be getting on; I have so many things to do. Do you know what the time is?”

“Yes,” said Eskarina. “It is a way of describing one of the notional dimensions of four-dimensional space. But for your purposes, it’s about ten forty-five.”

That seemed to Tiffany to be a bafflingly complicated way of answering the question, but as she opened her mouth to say so, the shambles collapsed and the door opened to let in a stampede of chickens—which did not, however, explode.

Eskarina grabbed Tiffany’s hand, shouting, “He has found you! I don’t know how!”

A chicken half jumped, half flapped, and half tumbled onto the wreck of the shambles and crowed, Cock-a-doodle-crivens!

Then the chickens exploded; they exploded into Feegles.

On the whole there wasn’t a great deal of difference between the chickens and the Feegles, since both run around in circles making a noise. An important distinction, however, is that chickens are seldom armed. The Feegles, on the other hand, are armed all the time, and once they had shaken off the last of their feathers, they fell to fighting one another out of embarrassment—and for something to do.

Eskarina took one look at them and kicked at the wall behind her, revealing a hole that a person might just be able to crawl through, and snapped at Tiffany: “Go! Get him away from here! Get on the stick as soon as you can and go! Don’t worry about me! Don’t be afraid—you will be all right! You just have to help yourself.”

Heavy, nasty smoke was filling the room. “What do you mean?” Tiffany managed, struggling with the stick.

“Go!”

Not even Granny Weatherwax could command Tiffany’s legs so thoroughly.

She went.

CHAPTER NINE

The Duchess and the Cook

Tiffany liked flying. What she objected to was being in the air, at least at a height greater than her own head. She did it anyway, because it was ridiculous and unbecoming to witchcraft in general to be seen flying so low that her boots scraped the tops off ant-hills. People laughed and sometimes pointed. But now, navigating the stick through the ruined houses and gloomy, bubbling pools, she ached for the open sky. It was a relief when she slid out from behind a stack of broken mirrors to see good clean daylight, despite the fact that she had emerged next to a sign that said: If You Are Close Enough to Read This Sign, You Really, Really, Shouldn’t Be.

That was the last straw. She tipped the stick until it was leaving a groove in the mud behind it and ascended like a rocket, clinging desperately to the strap, which was creaking, to avoid slipping off. She heard a small voice say, “We are experiencing some turbulence, ye ken. If ye look to the right and tae the left, ye will see that there are no emergency exits—”

The speaker was interrupted by another voice, which said, “In point o’ fact, Rob, the stick has got emergency exits all round, ye ken.”

“Oh, aye,” said Rob Anybody, “but there is such a thing as style, okay? Waiting until ye have nearly hit the ground and stepping off makes us look like silly billys.”

Tiffany hung on, trying not to listen and also trying not to kick Feegles, who had no sense of danger, feeling as they always did that they were more dangerous than anything else.

Finally she had the broomstick flying level and risked a look down. There seemed to be a fight going on outside whatever it was they were going to decide was the new name of the King’s Head, but she couldn’t see any sign of Mrs. Proust. The witch of the city was a woman of resource, wasn’t she? Mrs. Proust could look after herself.

Mrs. Proust was looking after herself by running very fast. She hadn’t waited a second once she sensed the danger, but headed for the nearest alley as the smog rose around her. The city was always full of smokes and smogs and fumes, easy work for a witch who had the knack. They were the breath of the city, and its halitosis, and she could play them like a foggy piano. And now she leaned against a wall and got some breath of her own.

She had felt it building up like a thunderstorm in a city that was normally remarkably easygoing. Any woman who even looked like a witch was becoming a target. She had to hope that old and ugly women everywhere were going to be as safe as she was.

A moment later, a couple of men burst out of the smog, one of them holding a large stick; the other one didn’t need a stick, because he was huge and therefore was his own stick.

As the man with the stick ran toward her, Mrs. Proust tapped her foot on the pavement and the stone under the man’s feet tilted up, tripping him so that he landed safely on his chin with a crack, the stick rolling away.

Mrs. Proust folded her arms and glared at the heavy man. He wasn’t as stupid as his friend, but his fists were opening and closing, and she knew it would only be a matter of time. She tapped her foot on the stones again before he plucked up courage.

The big man was trying to work out what might happen next, but didn’t expect the equestrian statue* of Lord Alfred Rust—famed for bravely and valiantly losing every military engagement in which he had ever taken part—to gallop out of the fog on bronze hooves and kick him so hard between the legs that he flew backward and knocked his head on a lamppost before sliding to the ground.

Mrs. Proust then recognized him as a customer who sometimes bought itching powder and exploding cigars from Derek; it didn’t do to kill customers. She picked him up, groaning, by his hair, and whispered into his ear, “You weren’t here. Nor was I. Nothing happened, and you did not see it.” She thought for a moment and, because business is business, added, “And when you next go past Boffo’s Joke Emporium, you will be taken with its range of extremely droll practical jokes for all the family, and this week’s new Pearls of the Pavement naughty Fido jokes for the connoisseur who takes his laughter seriously. I look forward to the pleasure of your custom. P.S. Our new line of Thunderbolt exploding cigars are a laugh a minute, and please do try our hilariously funny rubber chocolate. Take a moment also to browse in our new gentlemen’s necessaries department for all that is best in mustache waxes, mustache cups, cutthroat razors, a range of first-class snuffs, ebony-backed nose-hair clippers, and our ever-popular glandular trousers, supplied in a plain wrapper and limited to one pair per customer.”

Satisfied, Mrs. Proust let the head fall backward and was forced to accept that unconscious people don’t buy anything, so she turned her attention to the previous owner of the stick, who was moaning. Well, yes, it was the fault of the man with no eyes, she thought, and perhaps that might be an excuse, but Mrs. Proust wasn’t known for her forgiving nature. “Poison goes where poison’s welcome,” she said to herself. She snapped her fingers, then climbed onto the bronze horse, taking a cold but comfortable seat in the late Lord Rust’s metal lap. Clanking and groaning, the bronze horse walked away into the bank of smog that followed Mrs. Proust all the way to her shop.

Back in the alleyway, though, it seemed to be snowing, until you realized that what was falling from the sky onto the unconscious bodies had previously been in the stomachs of the pigeons who were now flocking in from every quarter of the city at Mrs. Proust’s command. She heard them and smiled grimly. “In this neighborhood we don’t just watch!” she said with satisfaction.

Tiffany felt better when the reek and smoke of the city was behind them again. How do they live with the smell? she wondered. It’s worse than a Feegle’s spog.*

But now there were fields below her, and although the smoke from the burning stubbles reached this high, it was a fragrance compared to the world within the city walls.

And Eskarina Smith lived there . . . well, sometimes lived there!

Eskarina Smith! She really was real! Tiffany’s mind raced almost as fast as the broomstick itself. Eskarina Smith! Every witch had heard something about her, but no two witches agreed.

Miss Tick had said that Eskarina was the girl who got a wizard’s staff by mistake!

The first witch ever trained by Granny Weatherwax! Who got her into Unseen University by giving the wizards there a piece of her—that is to say, Granny Weatherwax’s—mind. Quite a large piece, if you listened to some of the stories, which included tales of magical battles.

Miss Level had assured Tiffany that she was some kind of fairy story.

Miss Treason had changed the subject.

Nanny Ogg had tapped the side of her nose conspiratorially and whispered, “Least said, soonest mended.”

And Annagramma had loftily assured all the young witches that Eskarina had existed but was dead.

But there was one story that just would not go away and curled around truth and lies like honeysuckle. It told the world that the young Eskarina had met at the University a young man called Simon who, it seemed, had been cursed by the gods with almost every possible ailment that mankind was prone to. But, because the gods have a sense of humor, even though it’s a rather strange one, they had granted him the power to understand—well—everything. He could barely walk without assistance but was so brilliant that he managed to keep the whole universe in his head.

Wizards with beards that went down to the floor would flock to hear him talk about space and time and magic as if they were all part of the same thing. And young Eskarina had fed him and cleaned him and helped him get about and learned from him—well—everything.

And, the rumors went, she had learned secrets that made the mightiest of magics look like nothing more than conjuring tricks. And the story was true! Tiffany had talked to it and had cupcakes with it, and there really was a woman, then, who could walk through time and make it take orders from her. Wow!

Yes, and there was something very strange about Eskarina—a sense not that she wasn’t all there, but that somehow she was everywhere else at the same time; and at this point Tiffany saw the Chalk on the skyline, shadowy and mysterious, like a beached whale. It was still a long way off, but her heart leaped. That was her ground; she knew every inch of it, and part of her was always there. She could face anything there. How could the Cunning Man, some old ghost, beat her on her own ground? She had family there, more than she could count, and friends, more than . . . well, not so many now that she was a witch, but that was the way of the world.

Tiffany was aware of somebody climbing up her dress. This was not the problem it might have been; a witch would not, of course, dream of not wearing a dress, but if you were going to ride on a broomstick you definitely invested in some really tough pants, if possible with some padding. It made your bum look bigger but it also made it warmer, and at a hundred feet above the ground, fashion rather took second place to comfort. She glanced down. There was a Feegle there, wearing a watchman’s helmet that appeared to have been hammered out of the top of an old salt shaker, an equally small breastplate, and, amazingly, trousers and boots. You never normally saw boots on a Feegle.

“You’re Wee Mad Arthur, aren’t you? I saw you at the King’s Head! You’re a policeman!”

“Oh, aye.” Wee Mad Arthur grinned a grin that was pure Feegle. “It’s a grand life in the Watch, and the money is good. A penny goes a lot further when it buys you food for a week!”

“So are you coming over here to keep our lads in order? Are you planning to stay?”

“Oh no, I dinna believe so. I like the city, ye ken. I like coffee that is nae made from them wee acorns, and I goes to the theater and the opera and the ballet.” The broomstick wobbled a little. Tiffany had heard of ballet, and had even seen pictures in a book, but it was a word that somehow did not fit in any sentence that included the word “Feegle.”

“Ballet?” she managed.

“Oh, aye, it’s grand! Last week I saw Swan on a Hot Tin Lake, a reinterpretation of a traditional theme by one of our up-and-coming young performance artists; and the day after that, of course, there was a reworking of Die Flabbergast at the Opera House; and ye ken, they had a whole week of porcelain at the Royal Art Museum, with a free thimble of sherry. Oh, aye, it’s the city of culture, right enough.”

“Are you sure that you are a Feegle?” said Tiffany in a fascinated voice.

“That’s what they tell me, miss. There is nae law says I cannot be interested in culture, is there? I told the lads that when I go back, I will take them along to see the ballet for themselves.”

The stick seemed to fly itself for a while as Tiffany stared at nothing, or rather at a mental picture of Feegles in a theater. She had never been inside one herself, but she had seen pictures, and the thought of Feegles among ballerinas was so unthinkable that it was better to just let her mind boggle and then forget about it. She remembered in time that she had a broomstick to land, and brought it down very neatly near the mound.

To her shock there were guards outside it. Human guards.

She stared in disbelief. The Baron’s guards never came up onto the downland. Never! It was unheard of! And . . . she felt the anger rising—one of them was holding a shovel.

She jumped off the stick so fast that it was left to skim over the turf, scattering Feegles until it fetched up against an obstruction, shaking off the last few Feegles who had managed to hang on.

“You hold on to that shovel, Brian Roberts!” she screamed at the sergeant of the guard. “If you let it cut the turf, there will be a reckoning! How dare you! Why are you here? And nobody is to cut anybody into pieces, do you all understand?”

This last order was to the Feegles, who had surrounded the men with a ring of small but ever so sharp swords. A Feegle claymore was so sharp that a human might not know his legs had been cut off until he tried to walk. The guards themselves suddenly had the look of men who knew they were supposed to be big and strong but were now faced with the realization that “big” or “strong” wouldn’t be nearly enough. They’d heard the stories, of course—oh, yes, everyone on the Chalk had heard the stories about Tiffany Aching and her little . . . helpers. But they had only been stories, hadn’t they? Until now. And the little blue men were threatening to run up their trousers.

In a shocked silence, Tiffany looked around, panting for breath. Everyone was watching her, which was better than everyone fighting, wasn’t it?

“Very well,” she said like a schoolteacher who is only just satisfied with the naughty class. She added a sniff, which would usually be translated to mean: I’m only just satisfied, mark you. She sniffed again. “Very well, then. Is anybody going to tell me what’s going on here?”

The sergeant actually raised his hand. “Can I have a word in private, miss?” Tiffany was impressed that he had even been able to speak, given that his mind was trying to suddenly make sense of what his eyes were telling him.

“Very well, follow me.” She spun round suddenly, causing both guards and Feegles to jump. “And nobody, and I mean nobody, is to dig up anybody’s home or cut off anybody’s legs while we are gone, is that understood? I said, is that understood?” There was a mumbled chorus of yeses and oh, ayes, but it didn’t include one from the face she was looking down at. Rob Anybody was trembling with rage and crouching, ready to spring. “Did you hear me, Rob Anybody?”

He glared at her, eyes ablaze. “I will give ye nae promise on that score, miss, hag though you may be! Where is my Jeannie? Where are the others? These scunners hae swords! What were they going to do with them? I will have an answer!”

“Listen to me, Rob,” Tiffany began, but stopped. Rob Anybody’s face was dripping tears, and he was pulling desperately at his beard as he fought the horrors of his own imagination. They were an inch from a war, Tiffany reckoned.

“Rob Anybody! I am the hag o’ these hills, and I put an oath on you not to kill these men until I tell you to! Understand?”

There was a crash as one of the guards fell over backward in a faint. Now the girl was talking to the creatures! And about killing them! They weren’t used to this sort of thing. Usually the most exciting thing that happened was that the pigs got into the vegetable garden.

The Big Man of the Feegles hesitated as his spinning brain digested Tiffany’s order. True, it wasn’t an order to kill anybody right now, but at least it held out the possibility that he might be able to do so very soon, so he could free his head from the terrible pictures in his mind. It was like holding a hungry dog on a leash of cobweb, but at least it bought her time.

“You will see that the mound has not been touched,” said Tiffany, “so whatever may have been intended has not yet been achieved.” She turned back to the sergeant, who had gone white, and said, “Brian, if you want your men to live with all their arms and legs, you will tell them right now, and very carefully, to put down their weapons. Your lives depend on the honor of one Feegle, and he is driving himself mad with horror. Do it now!”

To Tiffany’s relief he gave the command, and the guards—glad to have their sergeant ordering them to do something that every atom in their bodies was telling them was exactly what they should be doing—dropped their weapons from their shaking hands. One even raised his arms in the universal sign of surrender. Tiffany pulled the sergeant a little way away from the glowering Feegles and whispered, “What do you think you are doing, you stupid idiot?”

“Orders from the Baron, Tiff.”

“The Baron? But the Baron is—”

“Alive, miss. He’s been back for three hours. Drove through the night, they say. And people have been talking.” He looked down at his boots. “We were . . . we were, well, we were sent up here to find the girl that you gave to the fairies. Sorry, Tiff.”

“Gave? Gave?”

“I didn’t say it, Tiff,” said the sergeant, backing away, “but, well, you hear stories. I mean, no smoke without fire, right?”

Stories, thought Tiffany. Oh, yes, once upon a time there was a wicked old witch. . . . “And you think they apply to me, do you? Am I on fire or just smoking?”

The sergeant shifted uneasily and sat down. “Look, I’m just a sergeant, okay? The young Baron’s given me orders, yes? And his word is law, right?”

“He may be the law down there. Up here, it’s me. Look over there. Yes, there! What do you see?”

The man looked where she pointed and his face paled. The old cast-iron wheels and stove with its short chimney were clearly visible, even though a flock of sheep was happily grazing around them as usual. He leaped to his feet as if he had been sitting on an ant’s nest.

“Yes,” said Tiffany with some satisfaction. “Granny Aching’s grave. Remember her? People said she was a wise woman, but at least they had the decency to make up better stories about her! Proposing to cut the turf? I’m amazed that Granny doesn’t rise up through the turf and bite your bum! Now take your men down the hill a little way and I will sort this out, you understand? We don’t want anyone to get jumpy.”

The sergeant nodded. It was not as if he had any other option.

As the guards moved away, dragging their unconscious colleague with them and trying not to look like, well, guards who were turning a walk away as closely into a running away as was possible, Tiffany knelt down by Rob Anybody and lowered her voice.

“Look, Rob, I know about the secret tunnels.”

“What scunner told ye about the secret tunnels?”

“I am the hag o’ the hills, Rob,” said Tiffany soothingly. “Shouldn’t I know about the tunnels? You are Feegles, and no Feegle will sleep in a house with only one entrance, right?”

The Feegle was calming down a bit now. “Oh, aye, ye have a point there.”

“Then can I please suggest you go and fetch young Amber? Nobody is going to touch the mound.”

After a little hesitation, Rob Anybody sprang into the entrance hole and was gone. It took some time for him to return—time Tiffany thankfully used by getting the sergeant to come back and help her gather up the guards’ dropped weapons—and when Rob did resurface, he was accompanied by a great many more Feegles and the kelda. And also by a rather reluctant Amber, who blinked nervously in the daylight and said, “Oh, crivens!”

Tiffany knew that her own smile was false when she said, “I’ve come to take you home, Amber.” Well, at least I’m not stupid enough to say something like “Won’t that be nice?” she added to herself.

Amber glared at her. “Ye willna get me back in that place,” she announced, “and ye can stick it where the monkey put his jumper!”

And I don’t blame you, thought Tiffany, but now I can pass for being a grown-up and I have to say some stupid grown-up things. . . .

“But you do have a mother and father, Amber. I’m sure they miss you.”

She winced at the look of scorn the girl gave her.

“Oh, aye, and if the old scunner misses me, he’ll aim another blow!”

“Maybe we can go together and help him change his ways?” Tiffany volunteered, despising herself, but the image of those thick fingers heavy with nettle stings from that awful bouquet wouldn’t go away.

This time Amber actually laughed. “Sorry, mistress, but Jeannie told me you were clever.”

What was it that Granny Weatherwax had said once? “Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.” And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together you had a thing called a happy family.

Aloud, she said, “Amber, I want you to come with me to see the Baron, so that he knows you are safe. After that, you can do as you please. That’s a promise.”

Tiffany felt a knocking on her boot and looked down at the kelda’s worried face. “Can I have a wee word with ye?” said Jeannie. Beside her, Amber was crouching down so that she could hold the kelda’s other hand.

Then Jeannie spoke again, if it was speech and not song. But what could you sing that stayed in the air, so that the next note twisted around it? What could be sung that seemed to be a living sound that sung itself right back to you?

And then the song was gone, leaving only a hole and a loss.

“That’s a kelda song,” said Jeannie. “Amber heard me singing it to the little ones. It’s part of the soothings, and she understood it, Tiffany! I gave her nae help but she understood it! I know the Toad has tol’ ye this. But do ye ken what I am telling ye now? She recognizes meaning and learns it. She is as close to being a kelda as any human could be. She is a treasure not tae be thrown away!”

The words came out with unusual force for the kelda, who was usually so softly spoken. And Tiffany recognized it as helpful information that, ever so nicely, was a kind of threat.

Even the journey off the downland and into the village had to be negotiated. Tiffany, holding Amber by the hand, walked past the waiting guards and continued on, much to the embarrassment of the sergeant. After all, if you have been sent to bring somebody in, then you are going to look pretty silly if they go and bring themselves in by, as it were, themselves. But on the other hand, if Tiffany and Amber walked behind the guards, it looked as though they were being driven; this was sheep country, after all, and everybody knew, didn’t they, that the sheep walked in front and a shepherd walked behind.

Finally they compromised on a rather awkward method where they all moved forward with a certain amount of revolving and shuffling that made it look as if they were traveling by square dance. Tiffany had to spend a lot of the time stopping Amber from giggling.

That was the funny part. It would have been nice if the funny part could have lasted longer.

“Look, I was only told to fetch the girl,” said the sergeant desperately as they walked through the castle gates. “You don’t have to come.” He said this in a way that meant: Please, please, don’t barge in and show me up in front of my new boss. But it didn’t work.

The castle was what was once called abustle, which meant extremely busy, with cross people running around at cross-purposes in every direction except straight up. There was going to be a funeral and then there was going to be a wedding, and two big occasions so close together could test the resources of a small castle to the utmost, especially since people who would come a long way for one would probably stay for the other, saving time but causing extra work for everybody. But Tiffany was glad for the absence, now, of Miss Spruce, who had been altogether too unpleasant by half and had never been one to get her hands dirty.

And then there would always be the problem of seating. Most of the guests would be aristocrats, and it was vitally important that no one had to sit next to somebody who was related to someone who had killed one of their ancestors at some time in the past. Given that the past is a very big place, and taking into account the fact that everybody’s ancestors were generally trying to kill everybody else’s ancestors, for land, money, or something to do, it needed very careful trigonometry to avoid another massacre taking place before people had finished their soup.

None of the servants seemed to pay any particular attention to Tiffany, Amber, or the guards, though at one point Tiffany thought she saw someone making one of those tiny little signs people make when they think they need protection from evil—here, in her place!—and she had the strong feeling that somehow people were not paying attention in a very definite way of not paying attention, as if looking at Tiffany might be dangerous to their health. When Tiffany and Amber were ushered into the Baron’s study, it seemed that he was not going to take much notice of them either. He was bent over a sheet of paper that covered the whole of his desk and was holding in his hand a bundle of different colored pencils.

The sergeant coughed, but even choking to death would not have shaken the Baron’s concentration. Finally, Tiffany shouted, “Roland!” quite loudly. He spun round, his face red with embarrassment and a side order of anger.

“I would prefer ‘my lord,’ Miss Aching,” he said sharply.

“And I would prefer ‘Tiffany,’ Roland,” said Tiffany, with a calmness that she knew annoyed him.

He laid down his pencils with a click. “The past is past, Miss Aching, and we are different people. It would be just as well if we remembered that, don’t you think?”

“The past was only yesterday,” said Tiffany, “and it would be just as well if you remembered that there was a time when I called you Roland and you called me Tiffany, don’t you think?” She reached up to her neck and pulled off the necklace with the silver horse that he had given her. It felt like a hundred years ago now, but this necklace had been important. She had even stood up to Granny Weatherwax for this necklace! And now she held the necklace like an accusation. “The past needs to be remembered. If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going.”

The sergeant looked from one to the other and, with that instinct for survival that any soldier develops by the time he’s become a sergeant, decided to leave the room before things started getting thrown.

“I’ll just go and see to the, er . . . the . . . things that need seeing to, if that’s okay?” he said, opening and closing the door so quickly that it slammed back tightly on the last syllable. Roland stared at it for a moment and then turned.

“I know where I am, Miss Aching. I am standing in my father’s shoes, and he is dead. I have been running this estate for years, but everything I did, I did in his name. Why did he die, Miss Aching? He wasn’t all that old. I thought you could do magic!”

Tiffany looked down at Amber, who was listening with interest. “Is this best discussed later?” she said. “You wanted your men to bring you this girl, and here she is, healthy in mind and body. And I did not, as you say, give her to the fairies: She was a guest of the Nac Mac Feegle, whose help you have had on more than one occasion. And she went back there of her own free will.” She looked carefully at Roland’s face and said, “You don’t remember them, do you?”

She could see that he didn’t, but his mind was struggling with the fact that there was definitely something that he should have remembered. He had been a prisoner of the Fairy Queen, Tiffany reminded herself. Forgetfulness can be a blessing, but I wonder what horrors were in his mind when the Pettys told him that she had taken their girl to the Feegles. To fairies. How could I imagine what he felt?

She softened her voice a little. “You remember something vague about fairies, yes? Nothing bad, I hope, but nothing very clear, as if perhaps it was something you read in a book, or the story that somebody told you when you were little. Am I right?”

He glowered at her, but the spill word that he had strangled on his lips told her that she was right.

“They call it the last gift,” she said. “It’s part of the soothings. It is for when it is best for everybody that you forget the things that were too awful, and also the things that were too wonderful. I’m telling you this, my lord, because Roland is still in there somewhere. By tomorrow you will forget even what I have told you. I don’t know how it works, but it works for nearly everybody.”

“You took the child from her parents! They came to see me as soon as I arrived this morning! Everyone came to see me this morning! Did you kill my father? Did you steal money from him? Did you try to throttle old Petty? Did you beat him with nettles? Did you fill his cottage with demons? I can’t believe I just asked you that question, but Mrs. Petty appears to think so! Personally, I don’t know what to think, especially since some fairy woman might be messing around with my thoughts! Do you understand me?”

While Tiffany was trying to put together some kind of coherent answer, he flopped down in the ancient chair behind the desk and sighed.

“I have been told you were standing over my father with a poker in your hand, and that you demanded money from him,” he said sadly.

“That’s not true!”

“And would you tell me if it was?”

“No! Because there never would be a was! I would never do such a thing! Well, perhaps I was standing over him . . .”

“Aha!”

“Don’t you dare aha me, Roland, don’t you dare! Look, I know people have been telling you things, but they are not true.”

“But you just admitted that you were standing over him, yes?”

“It’s simply that he wanted me to show him how I keep my hands clean!” She regretted this as soon as she said it. It was true, but what did that matter? It didn’t sound true. “Look, I can see that it—”

“And you didn’t steal a bag of money?”

“No!”

“And you don’t know anything about a bag of money?”

“Yes, your father asked me to take one out of the metal chest. He wanted to—”

Roland interrupted her. “Where is that money now?” His voice was flat and without expression.

“I have no idea,” said Tiffany. And as his mouth opened again, she shouted, “No! You will listen, understand? Sit there and listen! I attended your father for the better part of two years. I liked the old man and I would do nothing to hurt him or you. He died when it was his time to die. When that time comes, there is nothing anyone can do.”

“Then what is magic for?”

Tiffany shook her head. “Magic, as you call it, kept the pain away, and don’t you dare think that it came without a price! I have seen people die, and I promise you your father died well, and thinking of happy days.”

Tears were streaming down Roland’s face, and she sensed his anger at being seen like that, stupid anger, as if tears made him less of a man and less of a Baron.

She heard him mutter, “Can you take away this grief?”

“I’m sorry,” she replied quietly. “Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.”

She stood up and took Amber’s hand; the girl was watching the Baron intently.

“I’m going to take Amber home with me,” Tiffany announced, “and you look as if you need a decent sleep.”

This didn’t get a response. He sat there, staring at the paperwork as if hypnotized by it. That wretched nurse, she thought. I might have known she would make trouble. Poison goes where poison’s welcome, and in Miss Spruce’s case, it would have been welcomed with cheering crowds and possibly a small brass band. Yes, the nurse would have invited the Cunning Man in. She was exactly the sort of person who would let him in, give him power, envious power, jealous power, prideful power. But I know I haven’t done anything wrong, she told herself. Or have I? I can only see my life from the inside, and I suppose that on the inside nobody does anything wrong. Oh, blast it! Everybody brings their troubles to the witch! But I can’t blame the Cunning Man for everything people have said. I just wish there was somebody—other than Jeannie—to talk to who would take no notice of the pointy hat. So what do I do now? Yes, what do I do now, Miss Aching? What would you advise, Miss Aching, who is so good at making decisions for other people? Well, I would advise that you get some sleep as well. You didn’t sleep too well last night, what with Mrs. Proust being a champion snorer, and an awful lot has happened since then. Also, I cannot remember when you last ate regular meals, and may I also point out that you are talking to yourself?

She looked down at Roland slumped in the chair, his gaze far away. “I said I am taking Amber home with me for now.”

Roland shrugged. “Well, I can hardly stop you, can I?” he said sarcastically. “You are the witch.”

Tiffany’s mother uncomplainingly made up a bed for Amber, and Tiffany dropped off to sleep in her own bed at the other end of the big bedroom.

She woke up on fire. Flames filled the entire room, flickering orange and red but burning as gently as the kitchen stove. There was no smoke, and although the room felt warm, nothing was actually burning. It was as if fire had just dropped in for a friendly visit, not for business. Its flames rustled.

Enthralled, Tiffany held a finger to the flame and raised it as if the little flame was as harmless as a baby bird. It seemed to get colder, but she blew on it anyway, and it plopped back into life.

Tiffany got carefully out of the burning bed, and if this was a dream it was doing a very good job of the tinkles and pings that the ancient bed traditionally made. Amber was lying peacefully on the other bed under a blanket of flame; as Tiffany watched, the girl turned over, and the flames moved with her.

Being a witch meant that you didn’t simply run around shouting just because your bed was on fire. After all, it was no ordinary fire, a fire that did not harm. So it’s in my head, she thought. Fire that does no harm. The hare runs into the fire. . . . Somebody is trying to tell me something.

Silently, the flames went out. There was an almost imperceptible blur of movement in the window, and she sighed. The Feegles never gave up. Ever since she was nine years old, she had known that they watched over her at night. They still did, which was why she bathed in a hip bath behind a sheet. In all probability she hadn’t got anything that the Nac Mac Feegles would be interested in looking at, but it made her feel better.

The hare runs into the fire. . . . It certainly sounded like a message that she had to work out, but who from? From the mysterious witch who had been watching her, maybe? Omens were all very well, but sometimes it would help if people just wrote things down! It never paid, though, to ignore those little thoughts and coincidences, those sudden memories, little whims. Quite often they were another part of your mind, trying hard to get a message through to you—one that you were too busy to notice. But it was bright daylight outside, and puzzles could wait. Other things couldn’t. She’d start at the castle.

“My dad beat me up, didn’t he?” said Amber in a matter-of-fact voice as they walked toward the gray towers. “Did my baby die?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” said Amber in the same flat voice.

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “I’m sorry.”

“I can sort of remember, but not exactly,” said Amber. “It’s all a bit . . . fuzzy.”

“That’s the soothings working. Jeannie has been helping you.”

“I understand,” said the girl.

“You do?” said Tiffany.

“Yes,” said Amber. “But my dad, is he going to get into trouble?”

He would if I told how I found you, Tiffany thought. The wives would see to it. The village people had a robust attitude to the punishing of boys, who almost by definition were imps of mischief and needed to be tamed, but hitting a girl that hard? Not good. “Tell me about your young man,” she said aloud instead. “He is a tailor, isn’t he?”

Amber beamed, and Amber could light up the world with a smile. “Oh, yes! His granddad learned him a lot before he died. He can make just about anything out of cloth, can my William. Everyone around here says he should be put to an apprenticeship and he’d be a master himself in a few years.” Then she shrugged. “But masters want paying for the learning of the knowing, and his mum is never going to find the money to buy him an indenture. Oh, but my William has wonderful fine fingers, and he helps his mum with the sewing of her corsets and making beautiful wedding dresses. That means working with satins and suchlike,” said the girl proudly. “And William’s mum is much complimented on the fineness of the stitching!” Amber beamed with secondhand pride. Tiffany looked at the glowing face, where the bruises, despite the kelda’s soothing touch, were still quite plain.

So the boyfriend is a tailor, she thought. To big beefy men like Mr. Petty, a tailor was hardly a man at all, with his soft hands and indoor work. And if he stitched clothes for ladies, too, well, that was even more shame that the daughter would be bringing to the unhappy little family.

“What do you want to do now, Amber?” she said.

“I’d like to see my mum,” said the girl promptly.

“But supposing you meet your dad!”

Amber turned to her. “Then I’ll understand . . . please don’t do anything nasty to him, like turn him into a pig or something?”

A day as a pig might help him mend his ways, thought Tiffany. But there was something of the kelda in the way that Amber had said, “I’ll understand.” A shining light in a dark world.

Tiffany had never seen the gates of the castle closed shut except at night. By day it was a mixture of the village hall, a place for the carpenter and the blacksmith to set up shop, a space for the children to play in when it rained and, for that matter, for temporarily storing the harvests of hay and wheat at those times when the barns alone could not cope. There wasn’t much room in even the biggest cottage; if you wanted a bit of peace and quiet, or somewhere to think, or somebody to talk to, you wandered over to the castle. It always worked.

At least by now the shock of the new Baron’s return had worn off. The place was still humming with activity when Tiffany entered, but it was rather subdued and people were not talking very much. Possibly the reason for this was the Duchess, Roland’s mother-in-law-to-be, who was striding around in the great hall and occasionally prodding people with a stick. Tiffany didn’t believe it the first time that she saw it, but there it was again—a shiny black stick with a silver knob on the end with which she prodded a maid carrying a basket of laundry. It was only at this point that Tiffany noticed, too, the future bride trailing behind her mother as if she was too embarrassed to go much closer to somebody who prodded people with sticks.

Tiffany was going to protest and then felt curious as she glanced around. She stepped back a few paces and let herself disappear. It was a knack, and a knack that she was good at. It wasn’t invisibility, just that people didn’t notice you. All unseen, she drifted close enough to hear what the pair of them were saying, or at least what the mother was saying and the daughter was listening to.

The Duchess was complaining. “Been allowed to go to rack and ruin. Really, it needs a thorough overhaul! You cannot afford to be lax in a place like this! Firmness is everything! Heaven knows what this family thought it was doing!”

Her speech was punctuated by the whack of the stick on the back of another maid who was hurrying, but clearly not hurrying fast enough, under the weight of a basket full of laundry.

“You must be rigorous in your duty to see that they are equally rigorous in theirs,” the Duchess went on, scanning the hall for another target. “The laxity will stop. You see? You see? They do learn. You must never relax your guard in your pursuit of slovenliness, both in deed and manner. Do not suffer any undue familiarity! And that, of course, includes smiles. Oh, you may think, what could be so bad about a happy smile? But the innocent smile can so easily become a knowing smirk, and suggests perhaps the sharing of a joke. Are you listening to what I’m telling you?”

Tiffany was astonished. Single-handedly the Duchess had made her do something that she had never thought she would do, which was to feel sorry for the bride-to-be, who at this point was standing in front of her mother like a naughty child.

Her hobby, and quite possibly her one activity in life, was painting in watercolors, and although Tiffany was trying, against the worst of her instincts, to be generous to the girl, there was no denying that she looked like a watercolor—and not just a watercolor, but a watercolor painted by someone who had not much color but large supplies of water, giving her the impression of not only being colorless but also rather damp. You could add, too, that there was so little of her that in a storm it might be quite possible that she would snap. Unseen as she was, Tiffany felt just the tiniest pang of guilt and stopped inventing other nasty things to think. Besides, compassion was setting in, blast it!

“Now, Letitia, recite again the little poem that I taught you,” said the Duchess.

The bride-to-be, not just blushing but melting in embarrassment and shame, looked around like a stranded mouse on a great wide floor, uncertain of which way to run.

“If you,” her mother prompted irritably, and gave her a prod with the stick.

“If you . . .” the girl managed. “If you . . .

“If you grasp the nettle lightly,
it will sting you for your pain,
but if you grasp the nettle boldly,
soft as silk it will remain.

So it is with human nature,
treat them kindly, they rebel,
but if you firmly grasp the nettle,
then your bidding they do well.”

Tiffany realized, as the damp little voice faded away, that there was otherwise absolute silence in the hall and everybody was staring. She rather hoped that somebody might forget themselves sufficiently to start clapping, although that would probably mean the end of the world. Instead, the bride took one look at the open mouths and fled, sobbing, as fast as her very expensive but seriously impractical shoes would carry her; Tiffany heard them clicking madly all the way up the stairs, followed very shortly afterward by the slamming of a door.

Tiffany walked away slowly, just a shadow in the air to anyone who wasn’t paying attention. She shook her head. Why had he done it? Why in the world had Roland done it? Roland could have married anyone! Not Tiffany herself, of course, but why had he chosen that, well—not to be unpleasant—skinny girl?

And her father had been a Duke, her mother was a Duchess, and she was a duckling—well, one might try to be charitable, but she did tend to walk like one. Well, she did. If you looked carefully you could see her feet stuck out.

And if you cared about these things, the dreadful mother and the soppy daughter outranked Roland! They could officially bully him!

The old Baron, now, had been a different sort of person. Oh, yes, he liked it if the children gave a little bow or curtsied if he passed them in the lane, but he knew everybody’s name, and generally their birthdays as well, and he was always polite. Tiffany remembered him stopping her one day and saying, “Would you be so kind as to ask your father to come and see me, please?” It was such a gentle phrase for a man with such power.

Her mother and father used to argue about him, when they thought she was safely tucked up in bed. In between the symphony of the bedsprings she often heard them almost, but not exactly, having a row. Her father would say things like “It’s all very well you saying he is generous and all that, but don’t you tell me that his ancestors didn’t get their money by grinding the faces of the poor!” And her mother would retort, “I have never seen him grind anything! Anyway, that was the olden days. You’ve got to have someone to protect us. That stands to reason!” And her father would come back with something along the lines of “Protect us from who? Another man with a sword? I reckon we could do that by ourselves!”

And around this time the conversation would peter out, since her parents were still in love, in a comfortable type of way, and neither of them really wanted anything to change at all.

It seemed to her, looking down the length of the hall, that you didn’t need to grind the faces of the poor if you taught them to do their own grinding.

The shock of the thought made her giddy, but it stayed in her mind. The guards were all local boys, or married to local girls, and what would happen if everybody in the village got together and said to the new Baron: “Look, we will let you stay here, and you can even sleep in the big bedroom, and of course we will give you all your meals and flick a duster around from time to time, but apart from that this land is ours now, do you understand?” Would it work?

Probably not. But she remembered asking her father to get the old stone barn cleaned up. That would be a start. She had plans for the old barn.

“You there! Yes! You there in the shadows! Are you lollygagging?”

This time she paid attention. All that thinking had meant that she hadn’t paid enough attention to her little don’t-see-me trick. She stepped out of the shadows, which meant that the pointy black hat was not just a shadow. The Duchess glared at it.

It was time for Tiffany to break the ice, even though it was so thick as to require an ax. She said politely, “I don’t know how to lollygag, madam, but I will do my best.”

“What? What! What did you call me?”

The people in the hall were learning fast, and they were scuttling as quickly as they could to get out of the place, because the Duchess’s tone of voice was a storm warning, and nobody likes to be out in a storm.

The sudden rage overtook Tiffany. It wasn’t as if she had done anything to deserve being shouted at like that. She said, “I’m sorry, madam; I did not call you anything, to the best of my belief.”

This did not do anything to help; the Duchess’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I know you. The witch—the witch girl who followed us to the city on who knows what dark errand? Oh, we know about witches where I’m from! Meddlers, sowers of doubt, breeders of discontent, lacking all morality, and charlatans into the bargain!”

The Duchess pulled herself right up and glowered at Tiffany as if she had just won a decisive victory. She tapped her stick on the ground.

Tiffany said nothing, but nothing was hard to say. She could sense the watching servants behind curtains and pillars, or peering around doors. The woman was smirking, and she really needed that smirk removed, because Tiffany owed it to all witches to show the world that a witch could not be treated like this. On the other hand, if Tiffany spoke her mind, it would certainly be taken out on the servants. This needed some delicate wording. It did not get it, because the old bat gave a nasty little snigger and said, “Well, child? Aren’t you going to try to turn me into some kind of unspeakable creature?”

Tiffany tried. She really tried. But there are times when things are just too much. She took a deep breath.

“I don’t think I shall bother, madam, seeing as you are making such a good job of it yourself!”

The sudden silence was nevertheless peppered with little sounds like a guard behind a pillar sticking his hand over his mouth so that his shocked laughter would not be heard, and a splutter as—on the other side of a curtain—a maid almost achieved the same thing. But it was the tiny little click of a door high above that stayed in Tiffany’s memory. Was that Letitia? Had she overheard? Well, it didn’t matter, because the Duchess was gloating now, with Tiffany safely in the palm of her hand.

She shouldn’t have risen to the stupid insults, whoever was listening. And now the woman was going to take terrible delight in making trouble for Tiffany, anyone near to her, and quite probably everyone she’d ever known.

Tiffany felt chilly sweat running down her back. It had never been like this before—not even with the Wintersmith; not even Annagramma being unpleasant on a bad day; not even the Fairy Queen, who was good at spite. The Duchess beat them all: She was a bully, the kind of bully who forces her victim into retaliation, which therefore becomes the justification for further and nastier bullying, with collateral damage to any innocent bystanders who would be invited by the bully to put the blame for their discomfiture onto the victim.

The Duchess looked around the shadowy hall. “Is there a guard here?” She waited in delighted malice. “I know there is a guard here somewhere!”

There was the sound of hesitant footsteps and Preston, the trainee guard, appeared from out of the shadows and walked a nervous walk toward Tiffany and the Duchess. Of course, it would have to be Preston, Tiffany thought; the other guards would be too experienced to risk a generous helping of the Duchess’s wrath. And he was smiling nervously too, not a good thing to do when dealing with people like the Duchess. At least he had the sense to salute when he reached her, and by the standards of people who had never been told how to salute properly, and in any case had to do so very rarely, it was a good salute.

The Duchess winced. “Why are you grinning, young man?”

Preston gave the question some serious thought, and said, “The sun is shining, madam, and I am happy being a guard.”

“You will not grin at me, young man. Smiling leads to familiarity, which I will not tolerate at any price. Where is the Baron?”

Preston shifted from one foot to the other. “He is in the crypt, madam, paying his respects to his father.”

“You will not call me madam! ‘Madam’ is a title for the wives of grocers! Nor can you call me ‘my lady,’ which is a title for the wives of knights and other riffraff! I am a Duchess and am therefore to be addressed as ‘your grace.’ Do you understand?”

“Yes . . . m . . . your grace!” Preston threw in another salute in self-defense.

For a moment, at least, the Duchess seemed satisfied, but it was definitely among the shorter kinds of moments.

“Very well. And now you will take this creature”—she waved a hand toward Tiffany—“and lock her in your dungeon. Do you understand me?”

Shocked, Preston looked to Tiffany for guidance. She gave him a wink, just to keep his spirits up. He turned back to the Duchess. “Lock her in the dungeon?”

The Duchess glared at him. “That is what I said!”

Preston frowned. “Are you sure?” he said. “It means taking the goats out.”

“Young man, it is not my concern what you do with the goats! I order you to incarcerate this witch immediately! Now, get on with it, or I will see to it that you lose your position.”

Tiffany was already impressed with Preston, but now he won a medal. “Can’t do that,” he said, “’cause of happy ass. The sergeant told me all about it. Happy ass. Happy ass corp ass. Means you can’t just lock somebody away if they haven’t broken the law. Happy ass corp ass. It’s all written down. Happy ass corp ass,” he repeated helpfully.

This defiance seemed to push the Duchess beyond rage and into some sort of fascinated horror. This spotty-faced youth in ill-fitting armor was defying her over some stupid words. Such a thing had never happened to her before. It was like finding out that frogs talked. That would be very fascinating and everything, but sooner or later a talking frog has to be squashed.

“You will hand in your armor and leave this castle forthwith, do you understand? You are sacked. You have lost your position, and I will make it my business to see that you never get a job as a guard ever again, young man.”

Preston shook his head. “Can’t happen like that, your lady grace. ’Cause of happy ass corp ass. The sergeant said to me, ‘Preston, you stick to happy ass corp ass. It is your friend. You can stand on happy ass corp ass.’”

The Duchess glared at Tiffany, and since Tiffany’s silence appeared to annoy her even more than anything she would have to say, Tiffany smiled and said nothing, in the hope that the Duchess might possibly explode. Instead, and as expected, she turned on Preston.

“How dare you talk back to me like that, you scoundrel!” She raised the shiny stick with the knob on it. But suddenly it seemed immovable.

“You will not hit him, madam,” said Tiffany in a calm voice. “I will see your arm break before you strike him. We do not strike people in this castle.”

The Duchess snarled and tugged at the stick, but neither stick nor arm seemed to want to move.

“In a moment, the stick will come free,” said Tiffany. “If you attempt to strike anyone with it again, I will break it in half. Please understand that this is not a warning—it is a forecast.”

The Duchess glared at her but must have seen something in Tiffany’s face that her own resolute stupidity could worry about. She let go of the stick, and it fell to the floor. “You have not heard the last of this, witch girl!”

“Just witch, madam. Just witch,” said Tiffany as the woman strutted at top speed out of the hall.

“Are we going to get into trouble?” asked Preston quietly.

Tiffany gave a little shrug. “I will see to it that you don’t,” she said. And she thought, And so will the sergeant. I’ll make sure of it. She looked around the hall and saw the faces of the watching servants hurriedly turn away, as if they were afraid. There wasn’t any real magic, she thought. I just stood my ground. You have to stand your ground, because it’s your ground.

“I was wondering,” said Preston, “if you were going to turn her into a cockroach and stamp on her. I’ve heard that witches can do that,” he added hopefully.

“Well, I won’t say that it is impossible,” said Tiffany, “but you won’t see a witch doing it. Besides, there are practical problems.”

Preston nodded sagely. “Well, yes,” he said. “The different body mass for one thing, which would mean you would end up with either one enormous human-sized cockroach, which I think would probably collapse under its own weight, or dozens or even hundreds of people-shaped cockroaches. But the snag there, I think, might be that their brain might work very badly—though, of course, if you had the right spells, I suppose you could magic all the bits of the human that wouldn’t fit into the cockroach into some kind of big bucket so they could use it to get themselves bigger again when they were tired of being small. But the problem there would be what happened if some hungry dog came along when the lid was off? That would be quite bad. Sorry, have I said something wrong?”

“Er, no,” said Tiffany. “Er, don’t you think that you’re a bit too smart to be a guard, Preston?”

Preston shrugged. “Well, the lads all think that I am useless,” he said cheerfully. “They think that there’s got to be something wrong with someone who can pronounce the word ‘marvelous.’”

“But, Preston . . . I know you are very clever and sufficiently erudite to know the meaning of the word ‘erudite.’ Why do you sometimes pretend to be stupid—you know, like ‘doctrine’ and ‘happy ass corp ass’?”

Preston grinned. “I was unfortunately born clever, miss, and I’ve learned that sometimes it’s not such a good idea to be all that clever. Saves trouble.”

Right now, it seemed to Tiffany that the clever thing would be not to be in the hall any longer. Surely the horrible woman couldn’t do too much damage, could she? But Roland had been so strange, acting as if they had never been friends, sounding as though he believed every complaint against her. . . . He had never been like that before. Oh, yes . . . he was mourning his father, but he just didn’t seem . . . himself. And that dreadful old baggage had just bundled off to harry him while he was saying good-bye to his father in the coolness of the crypt, trying to find a way of saying the words that there had never been time for, trying to make up for too much silence, trying to bring back yesterday and nail it firmly to now.

Everyone did that. Tiffany had come back from quite a few deathbeds, and some were very nearly merry, where some decent old soul was peacefully putting down the weight of their years. Or they could be tragic, when Death had needed to bend down to harvest his due; or, well, ordinary—sad but expected, one light blinking off in a sky full of stars. And she had wondered, as she made tea, and comforted people, and listened to the tearful stories about the good old days from people who always had words left over that they thought should have been spoken. And she had decided that they weren’t there to be said in the past but remembered in the here and now.

“What do you think about the word ‘conundrum’?”

Tiffany stared at Preston, her mind still full of words people never said. “What was that you asked?” she said, frowning.

“The word ‘conundrum,’” Preston repeated helpfully. “When you say the word, doesn’t it look in your head like a copper-colored snake, curled up asleep?”

Now, Tiffany thought, during a day like this, anyone who wasn’t a witch would dismiss that as a bit of silliness, so that means I shouldn’t.

Preston was the worst-dressed guard in the castle; the newest guard always was. To him were given chain-mail trousers that were mostly full of holes* and suggested, against everything we know about moths, that moths could eat through steel. To him was given the helmet that, no matter what size your head was, would slide down and make your ears look big; and this was not forgetting that he had also inherited a breastplate with so many holes in it that it might be more useful for straining soup.

But his gaze was always alert, to the point where it made people uneasy. Preston looked at things. Really looked at things, so intensely that afterward they must have felt really looked at. She had no idea what went on in his head, but it was surely pretty crowded.

“Well, I must say I’ve never thought about that word ‘conundrum,’” she said slowly, “but it is certainly metallic and slithery.”

“I like words,” said Preston. “‘Forgiveness’: Doesn’t it sound like what it is? Doesn’t it sound like a silk handkerchief gently falling down? And what about ‘susurration’? Doesn’t it sound to you like whispered plots and dark mysteries? . . . Sorry, is something wrong?”

“Yes, I think something may be wrong,” said Tiffany, looking at Preston’s worried face. “Susurration” was her favorite word; she had never met anyone else who even knew it. “Why are you a guard, Preston?”

“Don’t like sheep very much, not very strong so I can’t be a plowman, too ham-fisted to be a tailor, too scared of drowning to run away to sea. My mother taught me to read and write, much against my dad’s wishes, and since that meant I was no good for a proper job, I got packed off to be an apprentice priest in the Church of Om. I quite liked that; I learned a lot of interesting words, but they threw me out for asking too many questions, such as ‘Is this really true or what?’” He shrugged. “Actually, I quite like the guarding.” He reached down and pulled a book out of his breastplate, which in fact could have accommodated a small library, and went on, “There’s plenty of time for reading if you keep out of sight, and the metaphysics is quite interesting as well.”

Tiffany blinked. “I think you just lost me there, Preston.”

“Really?” said the boy. “Well, for example, when I’m on night duty and somebody comes to the gate, I have to say ‘Who goes there, friend or foe?’ To which, of course, the correct answer is ‘Yes.’”

It took Tiffany a moment to work this one out, and she began to have some insight into how Preston might have a problem holding down a job. He continued, “The conundrum begins if the person at the gate says ‘Friend,’ since he may well be lying; but the lads who have to go out at night have very cleverly devised their own shibboleth with which to answer my question, and that is: ‘Get your nose out of that book, Preston, and let us in right now!’”

“‘Shibboleth’ being . . . ?” The boy was fascinating. It was not often you found somebody who could make nonsense sound wonderfully sensible.

“A kind of code word,” said Preston. “Strictly speaking, it means a word that your enemy would be unable to say. For example, in the case of the Duchess, it might be a good idea to choose a word like ‘please.’”

Tiffany tried not to laugh. “That brain of yours is going to get you into trouble one day, Preston.”

“Well, so long as it’s good for something.”

There was a scream from the distant kitchen, and one thing that makes humans different from animals is that they run toward a distress call rather than away from it. Tiffany arrived only seconds behind Preston, and even they weren’t the first. A couple of girls were comforting Mrs. Coble the cook, who was sobbing on a chair while one of the girls was wrapping a kitchen towel around her arm. The floor was steaming, and a black cauldron was lying on its side.

“I tell you, they were there!” the cook managed between sobs. “All wriggling. I shall always remember it. And kicking and crying out ‘Mother!’ I shall remember their little faces for as long as I live!” She began sobbing again, great big sobs that threatened to choke her. Tiffany beckoned to the nearest kitchen maid, who reacted as though she’d been struck and tried to cower back.

“Look,” said Tiffany, “can someone please tell me what— What are you doing with that bucket?” This was to another maid, who was dragging a bucket up from the cellar and who, at the sound of a command on top of the turmoil, dropped it. Shards of ice flew across the floor. Tiffany took a deep breath. “Ladies, you don’t put ice on a scald, however sensible it seems. Cool some tea—but don’t make it cold—and soak her arm in it for at least a quarter of an hour. Everybody understand? Good. Now, what happened?”

“It was full of frogs!” the cook screamed. “They was puddings and I set them to boiling, but when I opened it up, they was little frogs, all shouting for their mother! I told everyone, I told them! A wedding and a funeral from the same house, that’s bad luck, that is. It’s witchcraft, that’s what it is!” Then the woman gasped and clamped her free hand over her mouth.

Tiffany kept a straight face. She looked into the cauldron, and she looked around on the floor. There was no sign of any frogs anywhere, although there were two enormous puddings, still wrapped in their pudding cloths, at the bottom of the cauldron. When she picked them out, still very hot, and placed them on the table, she couldn’t help noticing that the maids backed away from them.

“Perfectly good plum duff,” she said cheerily. “Nothing to worry about here.”

“I have often noticed,” said Preston, “that in some circumstances, boiling water can seethe in a very strange way, with water droplets appearing to jump up and down just above the surface, which I might suggest is one reason why Mrs. Coble thought she was seeing frogs?” He leaned closer to Tiffany and whispered, “And another reason may quite possibly be that bottle of finest cream sherry I can see on the shelf over there, which appears to be almost empty, coupled with the lone glass noticeable in the washing-up bowl over there.” Tiffany was impressed; she hadn’t noticed the glass.

Everyone was watching her. Somebody ought to have been saying something, and since nobody was, it had better be her.

“I’m sure the death of our Baron has upset us all,” she began, and got no further because the cook sat bolt upright in the chair and pointed a trembling finger at her.

“All except you, you creature!” she accused. “I seed you, oh, yes, I seed you! Everyone was sobbing and crying and wailing, but not you! Oh, no! You were just strutting around, giving orders to your elders and betters! Just like your granny! Everybody knows! You was sweet on the young Baron, and when he chucked you over, you killed the old Baron, just to spite him! You was seen! Oh, yes, and now the poor lad is beside himself with grief and his bride is in tears and won’t come out of her room! Oh, how you must be laughing inside! People is saying that the marriage should be put off! I’d bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you? That would be a feather in your black hat, and no mistake! I remember when you were small, and then off you went up to the mountains, where the folks are so strange and wild, as everybody knows, and what comes back? Yes, what comes back? What comes back, knowing everything, acting so hoity-toity, treating us like dirt, tearing a young man’s life apart? And that ain’t the worst of it! You just talk to Mrs. Petty! Don’t tell me about frogs! I know frogs when I sees them, and that’s what I saw! Frogs! They must—”

Tiffany stepped out of her body. She was good at this now. Sometimes she practiced the trick on animals, who were generally very hard to fool: Even if only a mind seemed to be there, they got nervous and eventually ran away. But humans? Humans were easy to fool. Provided your body stayed where you left it, blinking its eyes, and breathing, and keeping its balance, and all the other little things bodies are good at doing even when you are not there, other humans thought you were.

She let herself drift toward the drunken cook, who muttered and shouted and repeated herself, spitting out hurtful idiocies and bile and hatred, and also little flecks of spittle that stayed on her chins.

And now Tiffany could smell the stench. It was faint, but it was there. She wondered: If I turn round, will I see two holes in a face? No, things weren’t that bad, surely. Perhaps he was just thinking about her. Should she run? No. She might be running to rather than from. He could be anywhere! But at least she could try to stop this mischief.

Tiffany was careful not to walk through people; it was possible, but even though she was in theory as insubstantial as a thought, walking through a person was like walking through a swamp—sticky and unpleasant and dark.

She had got past the kitchen girls, who seemed hypnotized; time always seemed to pass more slowly when she was out of her body.

Yes, the bottle of sherry was almost empty, and there was another empty one just visible behind a sack of potatoes. Mrs. Coble herself reeked of it. She had always been partial to a drop of sherry, and possibly another drop as well; it could be a work-related illness among cooks, along with three wobbly chins. But all that foul stuff? Where had that come from? Was it something she’d always wanted to say, or had he put it into her mouth?

I have done nothing wrong, she thought again. It might be useful to keep that firmly in mind. But I have been stupid, too, and I shall have to remember that as well.

The woman, still hypnotizing the girls with her ranting, looked very ugly in the slow-motion world. Her face was a vicious red, and every time she opened her mouth her breath stank, and there was a piece of food stuck in her uncleaned teeth. Tiffany shifted sideways a little. Would it be possible to reach an invisible hand into her stupid body and see if she could stop the beating of the heart?

Nothing like that had ever occurred to Tiffany before. It was a fact that you could not, of course, pick up anything when you were outside your body, but perhaps it would be possible to interrupt some little flow, some tiny spark? Even a big fat wretched creature like the cook could be brought down by the tiniest of upsets, and that stupid red face would shudder, and that stinking breath would gasp, and that foul mouth would shut—

First Thoughts, Second Thoughts, Third Thoughts, and the very rare Fourth Thoughts lined up in her head like planets to scream in chorus: That’s not us! Watch what you are thinking!

Tiffany slammed back into her body, nearly losing her balance, and was caught by Preston, who was standing right behind her.

Quick! Remember that Mrs. Coble had lost her husband only seven months ago, she told herself, and remember that she used to give you biscuits when you were small, and remember that she had a row with her daughter-in-law and doesn’t get to see her grandchildren anymore. Remember this, and see a poor old lady who has drunk too much and has listened to too much gossip—from that nasty Miss Spruce, for one. Remember this, because if you hit back at her, you will become what he wants you to be! Don’t give him space in your head again!

Behind her, Preston grunted and said, “I know it’s not the right thing to say to a lady, miss, but you are sweating like a pig!”

Tiffany, trying to get her shattered thoughts together, muttered, “My mother always said that horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies merely glow. . . .”

“Is that so?” said Preston cheerfully. “Well, miss, you are glowing like a pig!”

This caused a lot of giggling from the girls, already shaken up by the cook’s ranting, but any laughter would be better than that, and, it occurred to Tiffany, maybe Preston had worked that out.

But Mrs. Coble had managed to get to her feet and waved a threatening finger at Tiffany—although she was swaying so much that for some of the time, depending on which way she was leaning, she was also threatening Preston, one of the girls, and a rack of cheeses.

“You don’t fool me, you evil-looking minx,” she said. “Everyone knows you killed the old Baron! The nurse saw you! How dare you show your face in here? You’ll take us all sooner or later, and I won’t have that! I hope the ground opens up and swallows you!” the cook snarled. She tottered backward. There was a heavy thud, a creak, and, just for a moment until it was cut off, the beginning of a scream as the cook fell into the cellar.

CHAPTER TEN

The Melting Girl

“Miss Aching, I must ask you to leave the Chalk,” said the Baron, his face wooden.

“I will not!”

The Baron’s expression did not change. Roland could be like that, she remembered, and it was worse now, of course. The Duchess had insisted on being in his office for this interview, and had further insisted on having two of her own guards there, as well as two from the castle. That pretty much filled all the space in the study, and the two pairs of guards glared at each other in all-out professional rivalry.

“It is my land, Miss Aching.”

“I know I have some rights!” said Tiffany.

Roland nodded like a judge. “That is a very important point, Miss Aching, but regrettably you have no rights at all. You are not a leaseholder, you are not a tenant, and you own no land. In short, you have nothing on which rights are based.” He said all this without looking up from the foolscap paper in front of him.

Deftly, Tiffany reached across and snatched it from his fingers, was back in her chair before the guards could react. “How dare you talk like that without looking me in the eye!” But she knew what the words meant. Her father was a tenant of the farm. He had rights. She did not. “Look,” she said, “you can’t just turn me out. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Roland sighed. “I really hoped that you would see reason, Miss Aching, but since you assert total innocence, I must spell out the following facts. Item: You admit that you took the child Amber Petty away from her parents and lodged her with the fairy folk who live in holes in the ground. Did you think this was the right place for a young girl? According to my men, there seemed to be a lot of snails in the vicinity.”

“Now just hold on, Roland—”

“You will address my future son-in-law as ‘my lord,’” snapped the Duchess.

“And if I don’t, will you hit me with your stick, your grace? Will you grasp the nettle firmly?”

“How dare you!” the Duchess said, her eyes blazing. “Is this how you like your guests to be addressed, Roland?”

At least his bewilderment seemed genuine. “I haven’t the faintest idea what is being talked about here,” he said.

Tiffany pointed her finger at the Duchess, causing the Duchess’s bodyguards to reach for their weapons, thus causing the castle guards to draw theirs, too, so as not to be left out. By the time swords were safely disentangled and put where they belonged, the Duchess was already launching a counterattack. “You should not put up with this insubordination, young man! You are the Baron, and you have given this . . . this creature notice to leave your lands. She is not conducive to public order, and if she still willfully insists on not leaving, do I need to remind you that her parents are your tenants?”

Tiffany was already seething because of “creature,” but to her surprise the young Baron shook his head and said, “No, I cannot punish good tenants for having a wayward daughter.”

“Wayward?” That was worse than “creature”! How dare he . . . And her thoughts ran together. He wouldn’t dare. He never had dared, not in all the time they’d known each other, all the time when she had been just Tiffany and he had been just Roland. It had been a strange relationship, mostly because it wasn’t a relationship at all. They hadn’t been drawn to each other; they had been pushed toward each other by the way the world worked. She was a witch, which meant that she was automatically different from the village kids, and he was the Baron’s son, which automatically meant he was different from the village kids.

And where they had gone wrong was in believing, somewhere in their minds, that because two things were different, they must therefore be alike. Slowly finding out that this wasn’t true hadn’t been nice for either of them, and there had been a certain number of things that both of them wished hadn’t been said. And then it wasn’t over, because it had never begun, not really, of course. And so it was best for both of them. Of course. Certainly. Yes.

And in all that time he’d never been like this, never so cold, never so stupid in such a meticulous kind of way that you couldn’t blame it all on the wretched Duchess, although Tiffany would have loved to. No, there were other things happening. She had to be on her guard. And there, watching them watching her, she realized how a person could be both stupid and clever.

She picked up her chair, placed it neatly in front of the desk, sat down on it, folded her hands, and said, “I am very sorry, my lord.” She turned to the Duchess, bowed her head, and said, “And to you, too, your grace. I temporarily forgot my place. It will not happen again. Thank you.”

The Duchess grunted. It would have been impossible for Tiffany to have thought any less of her but, well, a grunt? After a backing-down like that? Humbling an uppity young witch deserved a lot better than that—some remark so cutting that it blunted on the bone. Honestly, she might have made an effort.

Roland was staring at Tiffany, so nonplussed he was nearly minused. She confused him a little more by handing him the now-crumpled sheet of paper and saying, “Do you want to deal with the other matters, my lord?”

He struggled for a moment, managed to flatten the paper on the desk to his satisfaction, smoothed it out, and said, “There is the matter of the death of my father and the theft of money from his strongbox.”

Tiffany fixed him with a helpful smile, which made him nervous. “Anything else, my lord? I am anxious that everything should be dealt with.”

“Roland, she is up to something,” said the Duchess. “Be on your guard.” She waved a hand toward the guards. “And you guards should be on your guard as well, mind!”

The guards, having some difficulty with the idea of being even more on their guard when they were already—through nervousness—much further on their guard in any case than they had ever been before, strained to look a bit taller.

Roland cleared his throat. “Ahem, then there is the matter of the late cook, who fell to her death almost coincidentally with, I believe, insulting you. Do you understand these charges?”

“No,” said Tiffany.

There was a moment of silence before Roland said, “Er, why not?”

“Because they aren’t charges, my lord. You are not declaring outright that you think I stole the money and killed your father and the cook. You are simply sort of waving the idea in front of me in the hope that I will burst into tears, I suppose. Witches don’t cry, and I want something that probably no other witch has ever asked for before. I want a hearing. A proper hearing. And that means evidence. And that means witnesses, and that means that the people who say have to say it in front of everybody. And that means a jury of my peers, which means people like me, and that means habeas corpus, thank you very much.” She stood up and turned toward the doorway, which was blocked by a struggling crowd of guards. Now she looked at Roland and bobbed a little curtsy. “Unless you feel entirely confident enough to have me arrested, my lord, I am leaving.”

They watched with open mouths as she walked up to the guards.

“Good evening, Sergeant, good evening, Preston, good evening, gentlemen. This won’t take a minute. If you would just excuse me, I am leaving.” She saw Preston wink at her as she pushed past his sword, and then she heard the guards suddenly collapse in a heap.

She walked along the corridor to the hall. There was a huge fire in the even bigger fireplace, which was large enough to be a room all by itself. The fire was peat. It couldn’t do much to heat most of the hall, which never got warm even in the heart of summer, but it was cozy to be close to, and if you have to breathe smoke, then you can’t do better than peat smoke, which rose up to the chimney and drifted like a warm mist around the sides of bacon that were hung up there to smoke.

It was all going to get complicated again, but for the moment Tiffany sat there simply for a rest and, while she was about it, to shout at herself for being so stupid. How much poison can he seep into their heads? How much does he need to?

That was the problem with witchcraft: It was as if everybody needed the witches but hated the fact that they did, and somehow the hatred of the fact could become the hatred of the person. People then started thinking: Who are you to have these skills? Who are you to know these things? Who are you to think you’re better than us? But Tiffany didn’t think she was better than them. She was better than them at witchcraft, that was true; but she couldn’t knit a sock, she didn’t know how to shoe a horse, and while she was pretty good at making cheese, she had to have three tries to bake a loaf that you could actually bite into with your teeth. Everybody was good at something. The only wicked thing was not finding out what it was in time.

There was fine dust on the floor of the fireplace, because there is nothing like peat for dust, and as Tiffany watched, tiny little footprints appeared in it.

“All right,” she said, “what did you do to the guards?”

A shower of Feegles landed lightly on the seat beside her.

“Weel,” Rob Anybody said, “personally I would have liked to take them to the cleaners, the mound-digging Cromwells that they are, but I could see where that might make it a wee bit difficult for ye, so we just tied their bootlaces together. Maybe they’ll blame it on the wee mice.”

“Look, you’re not to hurt anybody, all right? The guards have to do what they are told.”

“Nae, they dinna,” said Rob scornfully. “That’s nae errand for a warrior, doing what you’re told. And what would they have done to ye, doing what they were told? That old carlin of a mother-in-law was glaring claymores at ye the whole time, bad cess to her! Hah! Let’s see how she likes her bathwater tonight!”

The edge to his voice put Tiffany on the alert. “You are not to hurt anybody, do you understand? Nobody at all, Rob.”

The Big Man grumbled. “Och yes, miss, I’ve taken what you said on board!”

“And you promise on your honor as a Feegle not to throw it over the side as soon as my back is turned, do you?”

Rob Anybody started grumbling again, using crackling Feegle words that she had never heard before. They sounded like curses, and once or twice, when he spat them out, smoke and sparks came out with them. He was stamping his feet, too, always a sign of a Feegle at the end of his tether. “They came arrayed with sharp steel tae dig up me home, dig up me clan, and dig up me family,” he said, and his words were all the more menacing because they were so level and quiet. Then he spat a short sentence toward the fire, which burned green for a moment when the words hit the flames.

“I’ll no’ disobey the hag o’ the hills, ye ken, but I put ye on firm notice that if I see a shovel near my mound again, the owner will find it shoved up his kilt blunt end first, so that he hurts his hands trying to pull it oot. And that will only be the start of his problems! And if there is any clearances here, I swear on my spog that it will be us that is doing the clearing!” He stamped up and down a bit and then added, “And what is this we are hearing about ye demanding the law? We is nae friends o’ the law, ye ken.”

“What about Wee Mad Arthur?” said Tiffany.

It was almost impossible to make a Feegle look sheepish, but Rob Anybody looked as if he was about to say “Bah.” “Oh, it’s a terrible thing them gnomes did to him,” he said, looking sad. “Do ye ken he washes his face every day? I mean, that sort of thing is okay when the mud gets too thick, but every day? I ask ye, how can a body stand it?”

One moment there were the Feegles, and then there was a faint whoosh, followed by a total lack of Feegles, and the next moment there was a more than adequate supply of guards. Fortunately they were the sergeant and Preston, stamping to attention.

The sergeant cleared his throat. “Am I addressing Miss Tiffany Aching?” he said.

“It looks to me as if you are, Brian,” said Tiffany, “but you be the judge.”

The sergeant glanced around and then leaned closer. “Please, Tiff,” he whispered, “it’s all gone serious on us.” He straightened up quickly and then said, far louder than was necessary, “Miss Tiffany Aching! I am commanded by my lord the Baron to inform you that it is his command that you must stay within the irons of the castle—”

“The what?” said Tiffany.

Wordlessly, his eyes on the ceiling, the sergeant handed her a piece of parchment.

“Oh, you mean the environs,” she said. “That means the castle and the places around it, too,” she told him helpfully. “But I thought the Baron wanted me to leave?”

“Look, I’m just reading out what it says here, Tiff, and I am ordered to lock your broomstick in the dungeon.”

“That’s an impressive errand that you have there, Officer. It’s leaning against the wall; help yourself.”

The sergeant looked relieved. “You’re not going to make any . . . trouble?” he said.

Tiffany shook her head. “Not at all, Sergeant. I have no quarrel with a man who is only doing his duty.”

The sergeant walked cautiously up to the broomstick. They all knew it, of course; they had seen it going overhead, and generally only just overhead, practically every day. But he hesitated, with his hand a few inches from the wood. “Er, what happens when I touch it?” he said.

“Oh, then it’s ready to fly,” said Tiffany.

The sergeant’s hand very slowly drew back from the vicinity, or possibly the environs, of the broomstick. “But it won’t fly for me, right?” he said in a voice full of airsickness and pleading.

“Oh, not very far or very high, probably,” said Tiffany, without looking round. The sergeant was well-known to get vertigo simply by standing on a chair. She walked over to him and picked up the stick. “Brian, what were your orders if I refused to obey your orders, if you see what I mean?”

“I was supposed to arrest you!”

“What? And lock me up in the dungeon?”

The sergeant winced. “You know I wouldn’t want to do that,” he said. “Some of us are grateful, and we all knew that poor old Mrs. Coble was drunk as a skunk, poor woman.”

“Then I won’t put you to the trouble,” said Tiffany. “Why don’t I put this broomstick, which you seem so worried about, down in the dungeon and lock it in. Then I won’t be going anywhere, yes?”

Relief flooded the sergeant’s face, and as they walked down the stone steps to the dungeon, he lowered his voice and said, “It’s not me, you understand, it’s them upstairs. It seems like her grace is calling the shots now.”

Tiffany hadn’t seen very many dungeons, but people said that the one in the castle was pretty good by dungeon standards and would probably earn at least five ball-and-chains if anybody ever decided to write a Good Dungeon Guide. It was spacious and well drained, with a handy gutter right down the middle that ended up in the inevitable round hole, which did not smell very bad on, as it were, the whole.

Neither did the goats, which unfolded themselves from their snug beds in piles of straw and watched her through slot eyes in case she did anything interesting, such as feed them. They didn’t stop eating, because being goats, they were already eating their dinner for the second time.

The dungeon had two entrances. One went straight outdoors: It was probably there to drag the prisoners in by, back in the old days, because that would save having to pull them across the great hall, getting the floor all mucky with blood and mud.

These days the dungeon was mostly used as a goat shed and, on racks higher up—high enough to be out of reach of all but the most determined goat—an apple store.

Tiffany lifted the broomstick onto the lowest apple rack while the sergeant petted one of the goats, taking care not to look up in case it made him feel dizzy. That meant he was entirely unprepared when Tiffany pushed him back out of the doorway, took the keys out of the lock, swung herself back into the dungeon, and locked the door on the inside.

“I’m sorry, Brian, but, you see, it is you. Not just you, of course, and not even mostly you, and it was rather unfair of me to take advantage of you; but if I’m going to be treated like a criminal, I might as well act like one.”

Brian shook his head. “We do have another key, you know.”

“Hard to use it if I blocked the keyhole,” said Tiffany, “but look on the bright side. I’m under lock and key, which I think some people would rather like, so all you are worried about is the fine detail. You see, I think you might be looking at this the wrong way round. I’m safe in a dungeon. I haven’t been locked away from you; the rest of you have been locked away from me.” Brian looked as if he was about to cry, and she thought, No, I can’t do it. He’s always been decent to me. He’s trying to be decent now. Just because I’m cleverer than he is doesn’t mean that he should lose his job. And besides, I already know the way out of here. That’s the thing about people who have dungeons; they don’t spend enough time in them themselves. She handed the keys back.

His face brightened with relief. “Obviously we will bring you food and water,” he said. “You can’t live on apples all the time!”

Tiffany sat down on the straw. “You know, it’s quite cozy in here. It’s funny how goat burps make everything sort of warm and comfortable. No, I won’t eat the apples, but some of them do need turning or else they will rot, so I will take care of that while I’m in here too. Of course, when I’m locked in here I can’t be out there. I can’t make medicines. I can’t clip toenails. I can’t help. How is your old mum’s leg these days? Still well, I hope? Would you mind leaving now, please, because I’d like to use the hole.”

She heard his boots on the stairs. It had been a bit cruel, but what else could she have done? She looked around and lifted up a pile of very old and very dirty straw that hadn’t been touched for a long time. All sorts of things crawled, hopped, or slithered away. Around her, now that the coast was clear, Feegle heads rose, bits of straw dropping off them.

“Fetch my lawyer, please,” Tiffany said brightly. “I think he’s going to like working here. . . .”

The Toad turned out to be quite enthusiastic, for a lawyer who knew that he was going to be paid in beetles.

“I think we will start with wrongful imprisonment. Judges don’t like that sort of thing. If anyone’s going to be put in prison, they like to be the ones who do it.”

“Er, actually I locked myself in,” said Tiffany. “Does that count?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that at the moment. You were under duress, your freedom of movement was being curtailed, and you were put in fear.”

“I certainly was not! I was extremely angry!”

The Toad slapped a claw down on an escaping centipede. “You were interrogated by two members of the aristocracy in the presence of four armed men, yes? Nobody warned you? Nobody read you your rights? And you say the Baron apparently believes on no evidence that you killed his father, and the cook, and stole some money?”

“I think Roland’s trying hard not to believe it,” said Tiffany. “Someone has told him a lie.”

“Then we must challenge it, indeed we must. He can’t go around making allegations of murder when they can’t be substantiated. He can get into serious trouble for that!”

“Oh,” said Tiffany, “I don’t want any harm to come to him!” It was hard to see when the Toad was smiling, so Tiffany had to take a guess. “Did I say something funny?”

“Not funny at all, not really, but in its way rather sad and rather droll,” said the Toad. “Droll, in this case, meaning somewhat bittersweet. This young man is making accusations against you that could, if true, lead to you being executed in many places in this world, and yet you do not wish him to be put to any inconvenience?”

“I know it’s soppy, but the Duchess is pushing him all the time, and the girl he’s going to marry is as wet as—” She stopped. There were footfalls on the stone stairs that led from the hall to the dungeon, and they certainly did not have the heavy ring of guards’ hobnails.

It was Letitia, the bride-to-be, all in white and all in tears. She reached the bars of Tiffany’s cell, hung on to them, and carried on crying; not big sobs, but just an endless sniveling, nose-dripping, fumbling-in-the-sleeve-for-the-lace-hankie-that-is-already-totally-soaking-wet kind of tears.

The girl didn’t really look at Tiffany, just sobbed in her general direction. “I’m so sorry! I really am very sorry! What can you think of me?”

And there, right there, was the drawback of being a witch. Here was a person whose mere existence had led Tiffany, one evening, to wonder about that whole business of sticking pins into a wax figure. She hadn’t actually done it, because it was something that you shouldn’t do, something that witches greatly frowned on, and because it was cruel and dangerous, and above all because she hadn’t been able to find any pins.

And now the wretched creature was in some kind of agony, so distraught that modesty and dignity were all being washed away in a rolling flood of gummy tears. How could they not wash away hatred as well? And, in truth, there had never been all that much hatred, more of a kind of miffed feeling. She’d known all along that she’d never be a lady, not without the long blond hair. It was totally against the whole book of fairy tales. She just hadn’t liked being rushed into accepting it.

“I really never wanted things to happen like this!” gulped Letitia. “I really am very, very sorry—I don’t know what I could’ve been thinking about!” And so many tears, rolling down that silly, lacy dress and— Oh, no, there was a perfect snot balloon on a perfect nose.

Tiffany watched in fascinated horror as the weeping girl had a great bubbling blow and— Oh no, she wasn’t going to, was she? Yes, she was. Yes. She squeezed out the dripping handkerchief onto the floor, which was already wet from the incessant crying.

“Look, I’m sure things can’t be as bad as all that,” said Tiffany, trying not to hear the ghastly blobby noises on the stone. “If you would only stop crying for a moment, I’m sure everything can be sorted out, whatever it is.”

This caused more tears and some actual, genuine, old-fashioned sobs, the kind you never heard in real life—well, at least, up until now. Tiffany knew that when people cried, they said boo-hoo—or at least, that’s how it was written down in books. No one said it in real life. But Letitia did, while projectile crying all over the steps. There was something else there, too, and Tiffany caught the spill words as they were well and truly spilled, and read them as, somewhat soggy, they landed in her brain.

She thought, Oh, really? But before she could say anything, there was a clattering on the steps again. Roland, the Duchess, and one of her guards came hurrying down, followed by Brian, who had clearly been getting very annoyed about other people’s guards clattering on his home cobbles and so was making sure that whenever a clattering was taking place, he was fully involved.

Roland skidded on the damp patch and threw his arms protectively around Letitia, who squelched and oozed slightly. The Duchess loomed over the pair of them, which left little looming space available for the guards, who had to put up with looking angrily at each other.

“What have you done to her?” Roland demanded. “How did you lure her down here?”

The Toad cleared his throat, and Tiffany gave him an undignified nudge with her boot. “Don’t you say a word, you amphibian,” she hissed. He might be her lawyer, but if the Duchess saw a toad acting as her legal counsel, then it could only make things worse.

As it happens, her not seeing the Toad did make things worse, because the Duchess screamed, “Did you hear that? Is there no end to her insolence? She called me an amphibian.”

Tiffany was about to say “I didn’t mean you, I meant the other amphibian,” but stopped herself in time. She sat down, one hand shoveling straw over the Toad, and turned to Roland. “Which question would you like me not to answer first?”

“My men know how to make you talk!” said the Duchess over Roland’s shoulder.

“I already know how to talk, thank you,” said Tiffany. “I thought that maybe she had come to gloat, but things seem to be more . . . afloat.”

“She can’t get out, can she?” said Roland to the sergeant.

The sergeant saluted smartly and said, “No, sir. I have the keys to both doors firmly in my pocket, sir.” He gave a smug look to the Duchess’s guard when he said this, as if to say: “Some people get asked important questions and come back with accurate and snappy answers around here, thank you so very much!”

This was rather spoiled by the Duchess saying, “He twice called you ‘sir’ instead of ‘my lord,’ Roland. You must not let the lower orders act so familiarly to you. I have told you this before.”

Tiffany would cheerfully have kicked Roland for not coming back sharply on that one. Brian had taught him to ride a horse, she knew, and taught him how to hold a sword and how to hunt. Perhaps he should have taught him manners, too.

“Excuse me,” she said sharply. “Do you intend to keep me locked up forever? I wouldn’t mind some more socks and a couple of spare dresses and, of course, some unmentionables if that is going to be the case.”

Possibly the mention of the word “unmentionables” was what flustered the young Baron. But he rallied quite quickly and said, “We, er . . . that is to say, I, er . . . feel we should perhaps keep you carefully but humanely where you can do no mischief until after the wedding. You do seem to be the center of a lot of unfortunate events recently. I’m sorry about this.”

Tiffany didn’t dare say anything, because it isn’t polite to burst out laughing after such a solemn and stupid sentence as that.

He went on, trying to smile, “You will be made comfortable, and of course we will take the goats out, if you wish.”

“I’d like you to leave them in here, if it’s all the same to you,” said Tiffany. “I am beginning to enjoy the pleasure of their company. But may I ask a question?”

“Yes, of course.”

“This is not going to be about spinning wheels, is it?” Tiffany asked. Well, after all, there was only one way this stupid reasoning could be taking them.

“What?” said Roland.

The Duchess laughed triumphantly. “Oh, yes, it would be just like the saucy and all-too-confident young madam to taunt us with her intentions! How many spinning wheels do we have in this castle, Roland?”

The young man looked startled. He always did when his future mother-in-law addressed him. “Er, I don’t really know. I think the housekeeper has one, my mother’s wheel is still in the high tower . . . there’s always a few around. My father likes—liked—to see people busy with their hands. And . . . really, I don’t know.”

“I shall tell the men to search the castle and destroy every single one of them!” said the Duchess. “I shall call her bluff! Surely everyone knows about spiteful witches and spinning wheels? One little prick upon the finger and we’ll all end up going to sleep for a hundred years!”

Letitia, who had been standing in a state of snuffle, managed to say, “Mother, you know you’ve never let me touch a spinning wheel.”

“And you never will touch a spinning wheel, ever, Letitia, never in your life. Such things are there for the laboring classes. You are a lady. Spinning is for servants.”

Roland had gone red. “My mother used to spin,” he said in a deliberate kind of way. “I used to sit up in the high tower when she was using it sometimes. It was inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Nobody is to touch it.” It seemed to Tiffany, watching through the bars, that only someone with half a heart, very little kindness, and no common sense at all would say anything at this point. But the Duchess had no common sense, probably because it was, well, too common.

“I insist—” she began.

“No,” said Roland. The word wasn’t loud, but it had a quietness that was somehow louder than a shout, and undertones and overtones that would have stopped a herd of elephants in their tracks. Or, in this case, one Duchess. But she gave her son-in-law-to-be a look that promised him a hard time when she could be bothered to think of one.

Out of sympathy, Tiffany said, “Look, I only mentioned about the spinning wheels to be sarcastic. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen anymore. I’m not sure that it ever did. I mean, people going to sleep for a hundred years while all the trees and plants grow up over the palace? How is that supposed to work? Why weren’t the plants sleeping as well? Otherwise you would get brambles growing up people’s nostrils, and I bet that would wake up anybody. And what happened when it snowed?” As she said this, she fixed her attention on Letitia, who was almost screaming some interesting spill words, which Tiffany noted for later consideration.

“Well, I can see that a witch causes disruption wherever she walks,” said the Duchess, “and so you will stay here, being treated with more decency than you deserve, until we say so.”

“And what will you tell my father, Roland?” said Tiffany sweetly.

He looked as if he’d been punched, and probably he would be if Mr. Aching got wind of this. He’d need an awful lot of guards if Mr. Aching found out that his youngest daughter had been locked up with goats.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Tiffany. “Why don’t we say that I am staying in the castle to deal with important matters? I’m sure the sergeant here can be trusted to take a message to my dad without upsetting him?” She made this into a question and saw Roland nod, but the Duchess couldn’t help herself.

“Your father is a tenant of the Baron and will do what he is told!”

Now Roland was trying not to squirm. When Mr. Aching had worked for the old Baron, they had, as men of the world, reached a sensible arrangement, which was that Mr. Aching would do whatever the Baron asked him to do. Provided the Baron asked Mr. Aching to do what Mr. Aching wanted to do and it needed to be done.

That was what loyalty meant, her father had told her one day. It meant that good men of all sorts worked well when they understood about rights and duties and the dignity of everyday people. And people treasured that dignity all the more because that was, give or take some bed linen, pots and pans, and a few tools and cutlery, more or less all they had. The arrangement didn’t need to be talked about, because every sensible person knew how it worked: While you’re a good master, I will be a good worker. I will be loyal to you while you are loyal to me, and while the circle is unbroken, this is how things will continue to be.

And Roland was breaking the circle, or at least allowing the Duchess to do it for him. His family had ruled the Chalk for a few hundred years and had pieces of paper to prove it. There was nothing to prove when the first Aching had set foot on the Chalk; no one had invented paper then.

People weren’t happy about witches right now—they were upset and confused—but the last thing Roland could do with was Mr.Aching seeking an answer. Even with some gray in his hair, Mr. Aching could ask some very hard questions. And I need to stay here now, Tiffany thought. I’ve found a thread, and what you do with threads is pull them. Aloud, she said, “I don’t mind staying here. I’m sure we don’t want any little problems.”

Roland looked relieved about this, but the Duchess turned to the sergeant and said, “Are you sure she’s locked in?”

Brian stood up straight; he’d been standing up straight already, and was probably now on tiptoe. “Yes, m— your graceship, like I said, there’s one key for each door, and I have them both in my pocket right here.” He slapped his right-hand pocket, which jingled. Apparently the jingle was enough to satisfy the Duchess, who said, “Then I think we might rest a little happier in our beds tonight, Sergeant. Come, Roland, and do take care of Letitia. I fear she needs her medicine again—goodness knows what the wretched girl said to her.”

Tiffany watched them go, all except Brian, who had the decency to look embarrassed. “Could you come over here please, Sergeant?”

Brian sighed and walked a little nearer to the bars. “You’re not going to make trouble for me, are you, Tiff?”

“Certainly not, Brian, and I hope and trust that you will not try to make trouble for me.”

The sergeant shut his eyes and groaned. “You’re planning something, aren’t you? I knew it!”

“Let me put it like this,” said Tiffany, leaning forward. “How likely is it, do you think, that I’m going to stay in the cell tonight?”

Brian went to pat his pocket. “Well, don’t forget I’ve got the—” It was terrible to see his face crumple up like a little puppy that’s been given a sharp telling-off. “You picked my pocket!” He looked at her pleadingly, like a little puppy that was now expecting much worse than a telling-off.

To the sergeant’s shock and awe, Tiffany handed the keys back to him again, with a smile. “You surely don’t think a witch needs keys? And I promise you that I will be back in here by seven o’clock in the morning. I think you will agree, in the circumstances, that this is a very good deal, especially since I will find some time to change the bandage on your mother’s leg.”

The look on his face was enough. He grabbed the keys thankfully. “I suppose it’s no good me asking you how you intend to get out?” he said hopefully.

“I don’t think you ought to ask that question in the circumstances, do you, Sergeant?”

He hesitated, and then smiled. “Thank you for thinking about my mother’s leg,” he said. “It’s looking a bit purple at the moment.”

Tiffany took a deep breath. “The trouble is, Brian, you and I are the only ones thinking about your mother’s bad leg. There’s old folks out there who need someone to help them in and out of the bathtub. There’s pills and potions that need making and taking to people in the hard-to-get-to places. There is Mr. Bouncer, who can hardly walk at all unless I give him a good rubbing of embrocation.” She pulled out her diary, held together with bits of string and elastic bands, and waved it at him. “This is full of things for me to do, because I am the witch. If I don’t do them, who will? Young Mrs. Trollope is due to have twins soon, I’m sure of it—I can hear the separate heartbeats. First-time births, too. She is already scared stiff, and the nearest other midwife is ten miles away and, I have to say, a bit shortsighted and forgetful. You are an officer, Brian. Officers are supposed to be men of resource, so if the poor young mother comes looking for help, I am sure you will know what to do.”

She had the pleasure of seeing his face go very nearly white. Before he could stutter a reply, she continued, “But I can’t help, you see, because the wicked witch must be locked up in case she gets her hands on a loaded spinning wheel! Locked up for a fairy story! And the trouble is, I think somebody might die. And if I let them die, then I am a bad witch. The trouble is, I am a bad witch anyway. I must be, because you have locked me up.”

She did actually feel sorry for him. He hadn’t become a sergeant to deal with things like this; most of his tactical experience lay in catching escaped pigs. Should I blame him for what he’s been ordered to do? she wondered. After all, you can’t blame the hammer for what the carpenter does with it. But Brian has got a brain, and the hammer hasn’t. Maybe he should try to use it.

Tiffany waited until the sound of his boots indicated that the sergeant had decided quite correctly that it might be a good idea to have a plausible distance between the cell and himself that evening, and also perhaps to have a little think about his future. Besides, the Feegles began to appear from every crevice, and they had a wonderful instinct for not getting spotted.

“You shouldn’t have pickpocketed his keys,” she said as Rob Anybody spat out a piece of straw.

“Aye? He wants to keep you locked up!”

“Well, yes, but he’s a decent person.” She knew that sounded stupid, and Rob Anybody must have known that too.

“Oh, aye, sure, a decent person who will lock you up at the bidding of that snotty old carlin?” he snarled. “And what about that big wee strip o’ dribbling in the white dress? I was reckoning we’d have to build guttering in front of her.”

“Was she one o’ them water nymphs?” said Daft Wullie, but the majority view was that the girl was somehow made of ice and had been melting away. Lower down the steps, a mouse was swimming to safety.

Almost without her knowing it, Tiffany’s left hand slid into her pocket and pulled out a piece of string, which was temporarily dropped onto Rob Anybody’s head. The hand went back into her pocket and came out with one interesting small key she had picked up by the side of the road three weeks ago, an empty packet that had once contained flower seeds, and a small stone with a hole in it. Tiffany always picked up small stones with holes in them, because they were lucky; she kept them in her pocket until the stone wore through the cloth and fell out, leaving only the hole. That was enough to make an emergency shamble, except that you usually needed something alive, of course. The Toad’s dinner of beetles had entirely disappeared, mostly into the Toad, so she picked him up and tied him gently into the pattern, paying no attention to his threats of legal action.

“I don’t know why you don’t use one of the Feegles,” he said. “They like this sort of thing!”

“Yes, but half the time the shamble ends up pointing me to the nearest pub. Now, just hang on, will you?”

The goats carried on chewing as she moved the shamble this way and that, searching for a clue. Letitia had been sorry, deeply, damply sorry. And that last set of spill words was a set of words she wasn’t brave enough to say but not quick enough to stop. They were: I didn’t mean it!

No one knew how a shamble worked. Everybody knew that it did. Perhaps all it did do was make you think. Maybe what it did do was give your eyes something to look at while you thought, and Tiffany thought, Someone else in this building is magical. The shamble twisted, the Toad complained, and the silver thread of a conclusion floated across Tiffany’s Second Sight. She turned her eyes toward the ceiling. The silver thread glittered, and she thought, Someone in this building is using magic. Someone who is very sorry that they did.

Was it possible that the permanently pale, permanently damp, and irrevocably watercoloring Letitia was actually a witch? It seemed unthinkable. Well, there was no sense in wondering what was happening when you could simply go and find out for yourself.

It was nice to think that the Barons of the Chalk had gotten along with so many people over the years that they’d forgotten how to lock anybody up. The dungeon had become a goat shed, and the difference between a dungeon and a goat shed is that you don’t need a fire in a goat shed, because goats are pretty good at keeping themselves warm. You do need one in a dungeon, however, if you want to keep your prisoners nice and warm, and if you really don’t like your prisoners, then you’ll need a fire to get them nasty and warm. Terminally hot. Granny Aching had told Tiffany once that when she was a girl, there had been all kinds of horrible metal things in the dungeon, mostly for taking people apart a little bit at a time, but as it turned out there was never a prisoner bad enough to use them on. And, if it came to that, no one in the castle wanted to use any of the things, which often trapped your fingers if you weren’t careful, so they were all sent down to the blacksmith for turning into more sensible things like shovels and knives, except for the iron maiden, which had been used as a turnip clamp until the top fell off.

And so, because nobody in the castle had ever been very enthusiastic about the dungeon, everybody had forgotten that it had a chimney. And that is why Tiffany looked up and saw, high above her, that little patch of blue that a prisoner calls the sky, but that she, as soon as it was dark enough, intended to call the exit.

It turned out to be a little more tricky to use than she had hoped; it was too narrow for her to go up sitting on the stick, so she had to hang on to the bristles and let the broomstick drag her up while she fended herself off the walls with her boots.

At least she knew her way around up there. All the kids did. There probably wasn’t a boy growing up on the Chalk who hadn’t scratched his name in the lead on the roof, quite probably alongside the names of his father, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and even great-great-grandfathers, until the names got lost in the scratches.

The whole point about a castle is that nobody should get in if you don’t want them to, and so there were no windows until you got nearly to the top, where the best rooms were. Roland had long ago moved into his father’s room—she knew that because she had helped him move his stuff in when the old Baron had finally accepted that he was too sick to manage the stairs any longer. The Duchess would be in the big guest room, halfway between that room and the Maiden Tower—which really was its name—where Letitia would be sleeping. No one would draw attention to this, but the arrangement meant that the bride’s mother would be sleeping in the room between the groom and the bride, possibly with her ears highly tuned at all times for any sound of hanky or even panky.

Tiffany crept quietly through the gloom and stepped neatly into an alcove when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. They belonged to a maid, carrying a jug on a tray, which she very nearly spilled when the door to the Duchess’s room was flung open and the Duchess herself was glaring at her, just to check that nothing was going on. When the maid moved on again, Tiffany followed her, silently, and, as she had the trick of it, invisibly, too. The guard sitting by the door looked up hopefully when the tray arrived, and was told sharply to go downstairs and get his own supper; then the maid stepped into the room, the tray was placed beside the big bed, and the maid left, wondering for a moment whether her eyes had been playing tricks on her.

Letitia looked as though she was sleeping under freshly fallen snow, and it rather spoiled the effect when you realized that mostly it was screwed-up tissue paper. Used tissue paper, at that. It was very rare indeed on the Chalk, because it was quite expensive, and if you had any, it was not considered bad manners to dry it out in front of the fire for reuse later on. Tiffany’s father said that when he was a little boy he had to blow his nose on mice, but this was probably said in order to make her squeal.

Right now, Letitia blew her nose with an unladylike honking noise and, to Tiffany’s surprise, looked suspiciously around the room. She even said, “Hello? Is there anybody there?”—a question that, considered sensibly, is never going to get you anywhere.

Tiffany pulled herself farther into a shadow. She could sometimes fool Granny Weatherwax on a good day, and a soppy princess had no business sensing her presence.

“I can scream, you know,” said Letitia, looking around. “There’s a guard right outside my door!”

“Actually, he’s gone down to get his dinner,” said Tiffany, “which frankly I call very unprofessional. He should have waited to be relieved by another guard. Personally, I think your mother is more worried about how her guards look than about how they think. Even young Preston guards better than they do. Sometimes people never know he’s there until he taps them on the shoulder. Did you know that people very seldom start screaming while someone is still talking to them? I don’t know why. I suppose it’s because we are brought up to be polite. And if you think you’re going to do so now, I would like to point out that if I was planning to do anything nasty, I would have done so already, don’t you think?”

The pause was rather longer than Tiffany liked. Then Letitia said, “You have every right to be angry. You are angry, aren’t you?”

“Not at the moment. By the way, aren’t you going to drink your milk before it gets cold?”

“Actually, I always tip it down the privy. I know that it’s a wicked waste of good food and that there are a lot of poor children who would love a nightcap of warm milk, but they don’t deserve mine because my mother makes the maids put a medicine in it to help me sleep.”

“Why?” asked Tiffany incredulously.

“She thinks I need it. I don’t, really. You have no idea what it’s like. It’s like being in prison.”

“Well, I think I know what that’s like now,” said Tiffany. The girl in the bed started to cry again, and Tiffany hushed her into silence.

“I didn’t mean it to get that bad,” said Letitia, blowing her nose like a hunting horn. “I just wanted Roland not to like you so much. You can’t imagine what it’s like, being me! The most I’m allowed to do is paint pictures, and only watercolors at that. Not even charcoal sketches!”

“I wondered about that,” said Tiffany absentmindedly. “Roland once used to write to Lord Diver’s daughter, Iodine, and she used to paint watercolors all the time too. I wondered if it was some kind of punishment.”

But Letitia wasn’t listening. “You don’t have to just sit and paint pictures. You can fly around all the time,” she was saying. “Order people about, do interesting things. Hah, I wanted to be a witch when I was little. But just my luck, I had long blond hair and a pale complexion and a very rich father. What good was that? Girls like that can’t be witches!”

Tiffany smiled. They were getting to the truth, and it was important to stay helpful and friendly before the dam broke again and they were all flooded. “Did you have a book of fairy stories when you were young?”

Letitia blew her nose again. “Oh, yes.”

“Was it the one with a very frightening picture of the goblin on page seven, by any chance? I used to shut my eyes when I came to that page.”

“I scribbled all over him with a black crayon,” said Letitia in a low voice, as if it was a relief to tell somebody.

“You didn’t like me. And so you decided to do some magic against me. . . .” Tiffany said it very quietly, because there was something brittle about Letitia. In fact the girl did reach for some more tissue but appeared to have run out of sobs for a moment—as it turned out, only for a moment.

“I am so sorry! If only I had known, I would never have—”

“Perhaps I should tell you,” Tiffany went on, “that Roland and I were . . . well, friends. More or less the only friend the other one had. But in a way it was the wrong kind of friendship. We didn’t come together; things happened that pushed us together. And we didn’t realize that. He was the Baron’s son, and once you know that you’re the Baron’s son and all the kids have been told how to act toward the Baron’s son, then you don’t have many people you can talk to. And then there was me. I was the girl smart enough to be a witch, and I have to say that this is not a job that allows you to have that much of a social life. If you like, two people who were left out thought they were the same kind of person. I know that now. Unfortunately, Roland was the first to realize that. And that’s the truth of it. I am the witch, and he is the Baron. And you will be the Baroness, and you should not worry if the witch and the Baron—for the benefit of everybody—are on good terms. And that is all there is to it, and in fact there isn’t even an it, just the ghost of an it.”

She saw relief travel across Letitia’s face like the rising sun.

“And that’s the truth from me, miss, so I would like the truth from you. Look, can we get out of here? I’m afraid that some guards might rush in at any moment and try and put me in a place I can’t get out of.”

Tiffany managed to get Letitia onto the broomstick with her. The girl fidgeted but simply gasped as the stick sailed down gently from the castle battlements, drifted over the village, and touched down in a field.

“Did you see those bats?” said Letitia.

“Oh, they often fly around the stick if you don’t move very fast,” said Tiffany. “You’d think they would avoid it, really. And now, miss, now we’re both far from any help, tell me what you did that made people hate me.”

Panic filled Letitia’s face.

“No, I’m not going to hurt you,” said Tiffany. “If I was going to, I would have done it a long time ago. But I want to clean up my life. Tell me what you did.”

“I used the ostrich trick,” said Letitia promptly. “You know, it’s called unsympathetic magic. You make a model of the person and stick them upside down in a bucket of sand. I really am very, very sorry. . . .”

“Yes, you already said so,” said Tiffany, “but I’ve never heard of this trick. I can’t see how it could work. It doesn’t make sense.”

But it worked on me, she thought. This girl isn’t a witch, and whatever she tried wasn’t a real spell, but it worked on me.

“It doesn’t have to make sense if it’s magic,” said Letitia hopefully.

“It has to make some sense somewhere,” said Tiffany, staring up at the stars that were coming out.

“Well,” said Letitia, “I got it out of Spells for Lovers by Anathema Bugloss, if that’s any help.”

“That’s the one with the picture of the author sitting on a broomstick, isn’t it?” said Tiffany. “Sitting on it the wrong way round, I might add. And it hasn’t got a safety strap. And no witch I’ve ever met wears goggles. And as for having a cat on it with you, that doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s a made-up name, too. I’ve seen the book in the Boffo catalog. It’s rubbish. It’s for soppy girls who think all you need to do to make magic is buy a very expensive stick with a semiprecious stone glued on the end, no offense meant. You might as well pick a stick out of the hedge and call it a wand.”

Without saying anything, Letitia walked a little way down to the hedge that lay between the field and the road. There’s always a useful stick under a hedge if you poke around enough. She waved it vaguely in the air, and it left a light blue line after it.

“Like this?” she said. For quite a while, there was no sound apart from the occasional hoot of an owl and, for the really good of hearing, the rustling of the bats.

“I think it’s time we had a proper little chat, don’t you?” said Tiffany.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Bonfire of the Witches

“I told you I always wanted to be a witch,” said Letitia. “You don’t know how hard that can be when your family lives in a great big mansion and is so old that the coat of arms has even got a few legs on it as well. All that gets in the way, and if you excuse me, I really wish that I had been born with your disadvantages. I only found out about the Boffo catalog when I heard two of the maids giggling over it when I went into the kitchen one day. They ran away, still giggling, I might add, but they left it behind. I can’t order as much stuff as I would like to, because my maid spies on me and tells Mother. But the cook is a decent sort, so I give her money and the catalog numbers and they get delivered to her sister in Ham-on-Rye. I can’t order anything very big, though, because the maids are always dusting and cleaning everywhere. I would really like one of the cauldrons that bubble green, but from what you tell me, it’s just a joke.”

Letitia had taken a couple of other sticks from the hedge and stuck them in the ground in front of her. There was a blue glow on the tip of each one.

“Well, for everybody else it’s a joke,” Tiffany said, “but for you I expect it would produce fried chickens.”

“Do you really think so?” said Letitia eagerly.

“I’m not sure I can think at all if I am upside down with my head in a bucket of sand,” said Tiffany. “You know that sounds a bit like wizard magic. This trick . . . it was in Mistress Bugloss’s book, you say. Look, I’m sorry, but that really is Boffo stuff. It’s not real. It’s just for people who think that witchcraft is all about flowers and love potions and dancing around without your drawers on—something I can’t imagine any real witch doing. . . .” Tiffany hesitated, because she was naturally honest, and went on, “Well, maybe Nanny Ogg, when the mood takes her. It’s witchcraft with all the crusts cut off, and real witchcraft is all crusts. But you took one of her silly spells for giggling housemaids and used it on me and it’s worked! Is there a real witch in your family?”

Letitia shook her head, and her long blond hair sparkled, even in the moonlight. “I’ve never heard of one. My grandfather was an alchemist—not professionally, of course. He was the reason why the hall has no east wing anymore. My mother . . . I can’t imagine her doing magic, can you?”

“Her? Absolutely!”

“Well, I’ve never seen her do any and she does mean well. She says that all she wants is the best for me. She lost all her family in a fire, don’t you know. Lost everything,” said Letitia.

Tiffany couldn’t dislike the girl. It would be like disliking a rather baffled puppy, but she couldn’t help saying, “And did you mean well? You know, when you made a model of me and put it upside down in a bucket of sand?”

There must have been reservoirs in Letitia. She was never more than a teacup away from a tear.

“Look,” Tiffany said, “I don’t mind, honestly. Though frankly I wish I believed that it was only a spell! Just take it out again then, and we can forget all about it. Please don’t start crying again; it makes everything so soggy.”

Letitia sniffed. “Oh, it’s just that, well, I didn’t do it here. I left it at home. It’s in the library.”

The last word in that sentence tinkled in Tiffany’s head. “A library? With books?” Witches were not supposed to be particularly bothered about books, but Tiffany had read every one she could. You never knew what you could get out of a book. “It’s a very warm night for the time of year,” she said, “and your place is not too far, is it? You could be back in the tower and in bed in a couple of hours.”

For the first time since Tiffany had met her, Letitia smiled, genuinely smiled. “Can I go on the front this time then?” she said.

Tiffany flew low over the downs.

The moon was well on the way to full, and it was a real harvest moon, the copper color of blood. That was the smoke from the stubble burning, hanging in the air. How the blue smoke from burning wheat stalks made the moon go red she didn’t know, and she wasn’t going to fly all that way to find out.

And Letitia seemed to be in some kind of personal heaven. She chattered the whole time, which was admittedly better than the sobbing. The girl was only eight days younger than herself. Tiffany knew that, because she had taken great care to find out. But that was just numbers. It didn’t feel like that. In fact, she felt old enough to be the girl’s mother. It was strange, but Petulia and Annagramma and the rest of them back in the mountains had all told her the same thing: Witches grew old inside. You had to do things that needed doing but that turned your stomach like a spinning wheel. You saw things sometimes that no one should have to see. And, usually alone and often in darkness, you needed to do the things that had to be done. Out in distant villages, when a new mother was giving birth and things had run into serious trouble, you hoped that there was an old local midwife who might at least give you some moral support; but still, when it came down to it and the life-or-death decision had to be made, then it was made by you, because you were the witch. And sometimes it wasn’t a decision between a good thing and a bad thing, but a decision between two bad things: no right choices, just . . . choices.

And now she saw something speeding over the moonlit turf and easily keeping up with the stick. It kept pace for several minutes and then, with a spinning jump, headed back into the moonlight shadows.

The hare runs into the fire, Tiffany thought, and I have a feeling that I do too.

Keepsake Hall was at the far end of the Chalk, and it was truly the far end of the Chalk because there the chalk gave way to clay and gravel. There was parkland here, and tall trees—forests of them—and fountains in front of the house itself, which stretched the word “hall” to the breaking point, since it looked like half a dozen mansions stuck together. There were outbuildings, wings, a large ornamental lake, and a weather vane in the shape of a heron, which Tiffany nearly ran into. “How many people live here?” she managed to ask as she steadied the stick and landed on what she had expected to be a lawn but turned out to be dried grass almost five feet deep. Rabbits scattered, alarmed at the aerial intrusion.

“Just me and Mother now,” said Letitia, the dead grass crackling under her feet as she jumped down, “and the servants, of course. We have quite a lot of them. Don’t worry, they will all be in bed by now.”

“How many servants do you need for two people?” Tiffany asked.

“About two hundred and fifty.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Letitia turned as she led the way to a distant door. “Well, including families, there’s about forty on the farm and another twenty in the dairy, and another twenty-four for working in the woodlands, and seventy-five for the gardens, which include the banana house, the pineapple pit, the melon house, the water-lily house, and the trout fishery. The rest work in the house and the pension rooms.”

“What are they?”

Letitia stopped with her hand on the corroded brass doorknob. “You think my mother is a very rude and bossy person, don’t you?”

Tiffany couldn’t see any alternative to telling the truth, even at the risk of midnight tears. She said, “Yes, I do.”

“And you are right,” said Letitia, turning the doorknob. “But she is loyal to people who are loyal to us. We always have been. No one is ever sacked for being too old or too ill or too confused. If they can’t manage in their cottages, they live in one of the wings. In fact, most of the servants are looking after the old servants! We may be old-fashioned and a bit snobbish and behind the times, but no one who works for the Keepsakes will ever need to beg for their food at the end of their life.”

At last the cranky doorknob turned, opening into a long corridor that smelled of . . . that smelled of . . . that smelled of old. That was the only way to describe it, but if you had enough time to think, you would say it was a mix of dry fungi, damp wood, dust, mice, dead time, and old books, which have an intriguing smell of their own. That was it, Tiffany decided. Days and hours had died quietly in here while nobody noticed.

Letitia fumbled on a shelf inside the door and lit a lamp. “No one ever comes in here these days except me,” she said, “because it’s haunted.”

“Yes,” said Tiffany, trying to keep her voice matter-of-fact. “By a headless lady with a pumpkin under her arm. She is walking toward us right now.”

Had she expected shock? Or tears? Tiffany certainly hadn’t expected Letitia to say, “That would be Mavis. I shall have to change her pumpkin as soon as the new ones are ripe. They start to get all, well, manky after a while.” She raised her voice. “It’s only me, Mavis, nothing to be frightened of!”

With a sound like a sigh, the headless woman turned and began to walk back up the corridor.

“The pumpkin was my idea,” Letitia continued chattily. “She was just impossible to deal with before that. Looking for her head, you know? The pumpkin gives her some comfort, and frankly I don’t think she knows the difference, poor soul. She wasn’t executed, by the way. I think she wants everybody to know that. It was simply a freak accident involving a flight of stairs, a cat, and a scythe.”

And this is the girl who spends all her time in tears, thought Tiffany. But this is her place. Aloud, she said, “Any more ghosts to show me, just in case I want to wet myself?”

“Well, not now,” said Letitia, setting off along the corridor. “The screaming skeleton stopped screaming when I gave him an old teddy bear, although I’m not certain why that worked, and oh, yes, the ghost of the first duke now sticks to haunting the lavatory next to the dining room, which we don’t use very often. He has a habit of pulling the chain at inconvenient moments, but that’s better than the rains of blood we used to have.”

“You are a witch.” The words came out of Tiffany’s mouth all by themselves, unable to stay in the privacy of her mind.

The girl looked at her in astonishment. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “We both know how it goes, don’t we? Long blond hair, milk-white skin, noble—well, a reasonably noble birth—and rich, at least technically. I’m officially a lady.”

“You know,” said Tiffany, “maybe it’s wrong to base one’s future on a book of fairy stories. Normally, girls of the princess persuasion don’t help out distressed headless ghosts by giving them a pumpkin to carry. As for stopping the screaming skeleton from screaming by giving it a teddy bear, I have to say I am impressed. That is what Granny Weatherwax calls headology. Most of the craft is headology, when you get right down to it: headology and Boffo.”

Letitia looked flustered and gratified at the same time, making her face blotch white and pink. It was, Tiffany had to agree, the kind of face that peered out of tower windows, waiting for a knight with nothing better to do with his time than save its owner from dragons, monsters, and, if all else failed, boredom.

“You don’t have to do anything about it,” Tiffany added. “The pointy hat is optional. But if Miss Tick was here, she would definitely suggest a career. It is not good to be a witch alone.”

They had reached the end of the corridor. Letitia turned another creaky doorknob, which complained as the door opened, and so did the door. “I’ve certainly found that out,” said Letitia. “And Miss Tick is . . . ?”

“She travels around the country finding girls who have the talent for the craft,” said Tiffany. “They say that you don’t find witchcraft, it finds you, and generally it’s Miss Tick who taps you on the shoulder. She’s a witchfinder, but I don’t suppose she goes into many big houses. They make witches nervous. Oh, my!” And this was because Letitia had lit an oil lamp. The room was full of bookcases, and the books on them gleamed. These weren’t cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures. The books gleamed as Letitia moved around the large room lighting other lamps. She hauled them up toward the ceiling on their long chains, which swung gently as she pulled so that the shine from the books mixed with the gleam from the brasswork until the room seemed to be full of rich, ripe gold.

Letitia was clearly pleased by the way Tiffany stood and stared. “My great-grandfather was a huge collector,” she said. “Do you see all the polished brass? That’s not for show, that’s for the point-three-oh-three bookworm, which can move so fast that it can bore a hole all the way through an entire shelf of books in a fraction of a second. Hah, but not when they run into solid brass at the speed of sound! The library used to be bigger, but my uncle Charlie ran away with all the books on . . . I think it was called Erotica? I’m not sure, but I can’t find it on any map. I may be the only one who comes in here now, anyway. Mother thinks that reading makes people restless. Pardon me, but why are you sniffing? I hope another mouse hasn’t died in here.”

There is something very wrong about this place, thought Tiffany. Something . . . strained . . . straining. Maybe it’s all the knowledge in the books, just bursting to get out. She had heard talk of the library at Unseen University—of the soulful books all pressed together in space and time so that at night, it was said, they spoke to one another and a kind of lightning flashed from book to book. Too many books in one place—who knew what they could do? Miss Tick had told her one day: “Knowledge is power, power is energy, energy is matter, matter is mass, and mass changes time and space.” But Letitia looked so happy among the shelves and desks that Tiffany didn’t have the heart to object.

The girl beckoned her over. “And this is where I do my little bits of magic,” she said as if she was telling Tiffany this was where she played with her dollies.

Tiffany was sweating now; all the little hairs on her skin were trembling, a signal to herself that she should turn and run, but Letitia was chattering away, quite oblivious to the fact that Tiffany was trying not to throw up.

His stink was terrible. It rose in the cheery library like a long-dead whale rising again to the surface, full of gas and corruption.

Tiffany looked around desperately for something to take her mind off that image. Mrs. Proust and Derek had certainly benefited from Letitia Keepsake. She had bought the whole line, warts and all.

“But I only use warts at the moment. I think they have the right feel without going overboard, don’t you?” she was saying.

“I’ve never bothered with them,” said Tiffany weakly.

Letitia sniffed. “Oh, dear, I am so sorry about the smell; it’s the mice, I think. They eat the glue out of the books, although I’d say that they must have found a particularly unpleasant book.”

The library was really beginning to upset Tiffany. It was like, well, waking up and finding a family of tigers had wandered in during the night and were fast asleep on the end of the bed: Everything was peaceful at the moment, but at any minute now, somebody was going to lose an arm. There was the Boffo stuff, which was sort of witchcraft for show. It impressed people, and maybe helped a novice get into the mood, but surely Mrs. Proust wasn’t sending out stuff that actually worked, was she?

There was a clank of a bucket handle behind her as Letitia came round a bookcase holding the bucket in both hands. Sand tipped out of it as she dropped it on the floor, and she scrabbled in it for a moment. “Ah, there you are,” she said, pulling out something that looked like a carrot that had been chewed by a mouse that wasn’t really very hungry.

“Is that supposed to be me?” said Tiffany.

“I’m afraid I’m not very good at woodcarving,” said Letitia, “but the book says it’s what you’re thinking that counts?” It was a nervous statement with a wiry little question clinging to the end of it, waiting to burst into tears.

“Sorry,” said Tiffany. “The book has got that wrong. It’s not as nice as that. It’s what you do that counts. If you want to put a hex on someone, you need something that has belonged to them—hair, a tooth maybe? And you shouldn’t mess about with it, because it’s not nice and it’s very easy to get wrong.” She looked closely at the very badly carved witch. “And I see you’ve written the word ‘witch’ on it in pencil. Er . . . you know I said it’s easy to get it wrong? Well, there are times when ‘getting it wrong’ just doesn’t cover messing up somebody else’s life.”

Her lower lip trembling, Letitia nodded.

The pressure on Tiffany’s head was getting worse, and the horrible stench was now so powerful that it felt like a physical thing. She tried to concentrate on the small pile of books on the library table. They were sad little volumes, of the sort that Nanny Ogg, who could be uncharacteristically scathing when she felt like it, called “tiddly twinkle-poo” for girls who played at being witches for fun.

But at least Letitia had been thorough; there were a couple of notebooks on the lectern that dominated the table. Tiffany turned to say something to the girl, but somehow her head did not want to stay turned. Her Second Sight was dragging it back. And her hand rose slowly, almost automatically, and moved aside the little pile of silly books. What she had thought was the top of the lectern was in fact a much larger book, so thick and dark it seemed to merge with the wood itself. Dread trickled into her brain like black syrup, telling her to run and . . . No, that was all. Just run, and go on running, and not stop. Ever.

She tried to keep her voice level. “Do you know anything about this book?”

Letitia looked over her shoulder. “It’s very ancient. I don’t even recognize the writing. Wonderful binding, though, and the funny thing is, it’s always slightly warm.”

Here and now, thought Tiffany, it’s facing me here and now. Eskarina said that there was a book of his. Could this possibly be a copy? But a book can’t hurt, can it? Except that books contain ideas, and ideas can be dangerous.

At this point the book on the lectern opened itself with a leathery creak and a little flap noise as the cover turned over. The pages rustled like a lot of pigeons taking flight, and then there it was, one page filling the midnight room with brilliant, eye-watering sunlight. And in that sunlight, running toward her, across the scorching desert, was a figure in black. . . .

Automatically, Tiffany slammed the book shut and held it shut in both hands, clutching it like a schoolgirl. He saw me, she thought. I know he did. The book jumped in her arms as something heavy hit it, and she could hear . . . words, words she was glad she couldn’t understand. Another blow struck the book, and the cover bulged, nearly knocking her over. When the next thump came, she fell forward, landing with the cover under her and all her weight on the book.

Fire, she thought. He hates fire! But I don’t think I could carry this very far, and, well, you don’t set fire to libraries, you just don’t. And besides, this whole place is as dry as a bone.

“Is something trying to get out of the book?” said Letitia.

Tiffany looked up at her pink-and-white face. “Yes,” she managed, and slammed the book down on the table as it jumped again in her arms.

“It’s not going to be like that goblin in the fairy-tale book, is it? I was always so scared that it would squeeze itself out between the pages.”

The book sprang up into the air and slammed back down again on the table, knocking the wind out of Tiffany. She managed to grunt, “I think this is a lot worse than the goblin!” Which was our goblin, she remembered inconveniently. They had the same book, after all. It wasn’t a good book in many respects, but then you grow up and it’s just a silly picture, but part of you never forgets.

It seemed to be something that happened to everybody. When she had mentioned to Petulia about being frightened by a picture in a book, the girl confessed that she had been hugely frightened by a happy-looking skeleton in a picture book when she was young. And it turned out all the other girls remembered something like that, too. It was as if it was a fact of life. A book would start out by scaring you.

“I think I know what to do,” said Letitia. “Can you keep it occupied for a while? I won’t be a moment.” And with that she disappeared from view, and after a few seconds Tiffany, still straining to keep the book closed, heard a squeaking noise. She did not take much notice, because her arms, clinging tightly to the bouncing book, felt red-hot. Then, behind her, Letitia said quietly, “Look, I’m going to guide you to the book press. When I say so, push the book in and get your hands out of the way really, really quickly. It is quite important that you do it quickly!”

Tiffany felt the girl help her turn, and together they edged along to something metallic waiting in the gloom, while all the time the book rocked with anger and thumped on her chest; it was like holding an elephant’s heart while it was still beating.

She hardly heard Letitia’s voice above the pounding as she shouted, “Put the book down on the metal plate, push it a little way forward, and get your fingers out of the way—right now!”

Something spun. In one pants-wetting moment, Tiffany saw a hand thrust its way through the book’s cover before a metal plate slammed down on it, clipping the ends of Tiffany’s fingernails.

“Help me with this bar, will you? Let’s tighten it down as far as we can.” That was from Letitia, who was leaning on . . . what? “It’s the old book press,” she said. “My grandfather used to use it all the time when he was tidying up old books that got damaged. It helps when you have to glue a page back in, for example. We hardly use it except at Hogswatch. Very good for the precision cracking of walnuts, you see? Just wind the handle until you hear them start to crack. They look like tiny little human brains.”

Tiffany risked a look at the press, the top and bottom plates of which were now pressed tightly together, to see if any human brains were dripping down the outside. They weren’t, but it didn’t help very much at this point, as a small human skeleton walked out of the wall and through the library shelves as though they were smoke, then disappeared. It had been holding a teddy bear. It was one of those things that the brain files under “something I would rather not have seen.”

“Was that some kind of ghost?” said Letitia. “Not the skeleton—I told you about him, didn’t I? Poor little thing. I mean, the other one. The one in the book . . .”

“He is, well, I suppose you could say that he is something like a disease, and also something like a nightmare that turns out to be standing in your bedroom when you wake up. And I think you may have called him. Summoned him, if you like.”

“I don’t like either of those! All I did was a simple little spell out of a book that cost one dollar! All right, I know I must’ve been a silly girl, but I didn’t mean anything like . . . that!” She pointed to the press, which was still creaking.

“Stupid woman,” said Tiffany.

Letitia blinked. “What did you say?”

“Stupid woman! Or silly woman, if you prefer. You’re going to get married in a few days, remember? And you tried to do a spell on somebody out of jealousy. Did you see the title of that book? I did. It was right in front of me! It was The Bonfire of the Witches! It was dictated by an Omnian priest who was so mad that he wouldn’t have been able to see sanity with a telescope. And you know what? Books live. The pages remember! Have you heard about the library at Unseen University? They have books in there that have to be chained down, or kept in darkness or even underwater! And you, miss, played at magic a matter of inches away from a book that boils with evil, vindictive magic. No wonder you got a result! I woke him up, and ever since then he’s been searching, hunting me. And you—with your little spell—have shown him where I was! You helped him! He’s come back, and he’s found me now! The witch burner. And he is infectious, just as I told you, a kind of disease.”

She paused for breath, which came, and the torrent of tears, which didn’t. Letitia just stood there as if she was thinking deeply. Then she said, “I suppose that sorry isn’t enough, right?”

“As a matter of fact, it would be rather a good start,” said Tiffany, but she thought, This young woman, who has never realized it’s time to stop wearing girly dresses, gave a headless ghost a pumpkin to carry under its arm so that it would feel better and presented a screaming little skeleton with a teddy bear. Would I have thought to do that? It’s absolutely something that a witch would do.

“Look,” she said, “you have definitely got some magical talent, I really mean it. But you’ll get into a terrible amount of trouble if you start mucking about when you don’t know what you are doing. Although giving the teddy bear to the poor little skeleton was a stroke of genius. Build on that thought and get some training, and you might have quite a magical future. You will have to go and spend some time with an old witch, just like I did.”

“Well, that’s wonderful, Tiffany,” Letitia said. “But I have to go and spend some time getting married! Shall we get back now? And what do you suggest we do with the book? I don’t like the idea of him being in there. Supposing he gets out!”

“He is out, already. But the book is . . . well, a kind of window that makes it easy for him to come through. To reach me. You get that sort of thing occasionally. It’s a sort of way into another world, or perhaps somewhere else in this world.”

Tiffany had felt rather lofty when she explained this, and so was somewhat chastened when Letitia said, “Oh, yes, the bluebell wood with the cottage that sometimes has smoke coming out of the chimney and sometimes does not, and the girl feeding the ducks on the pond, where the pigeons on the house behind her are sometimes flying and sometimes perched. They are mentioned in H. J. Toadbinder’s book Floating Worlds. Would you like it? I know where it is.” And before Tiffany could say a word, the girl hurried off among the bookshelves. She came back within a minute, much to Tiffany’s relief, and she was carrying a large, shiny leather volume that was suddenly dropped into Tiffany’s hands.

“It’s a present. You’ve been kinder to me than I was to you.”

“You can’t give me that! It’s part of the library! It’ll leave a gap!”

“No, I insist,” said Letitia. “I’m the only one who comes in here now, in any case. My mother keeps all the books of family history, genealogy, and heraldry in her own room, and she’s the only one who is interested in them. Apart from me, the only other person who ever comes in here these days is Mr. Tyler, and I think I hear him now, making his last round of the night. Well,” she added, “he’s very old and very slow, and it takes him about a week to go about his night watching, bearing in mind he sleeps through the day.”

There was indeed a creaking sound of a distant doorknob.

Letitia lowered her voice. “Do you mind if we sneak out the other way? He might have a nasty turn if he actually discovers anybody.”

A light was coming down the long corridor, although you needed to watch it for quite some time to see that it was moving. Letitia opened the door to the outer world and they hurried onto what would have been the lawn if anyone had mowed it in the past ten years. Tiffany got the impression that lawnmowing here went at the same speed as Mr Tyler. There was dew on the grass, and a certain sense that daylight was a distinct possibility sometime in the future. As soon as they reached the broomstick, Letitia made yet another muttered apology and hurried back into the sleeping house via a different door, coming out again five minutes later carrying a large bag. “My mourning clothes,” she said as the broomstick rose into the soft air. “It will be the old Baron’s funeral tomorrow, the poor man. My mother always travels with her funeral clothes. She says you never know when someone is going to drop down dead.”

“That is a very interesting point of view, Letitia, but when you get back to the castle, I would like you to tell Roland what you did, please. I don’t care about anything else, but please tell him about the spell you did.” Tiffany waited. Letitia was sitting behind her and, right now, silent. Very silent. So much silence that you could hear it.

Tiffany spent the time looking at the landscape as it wound past. Here and there, smoke rose from kitchen fires, even though the sun was still below the horizon. Generally speaking, women in the villages raced to be the first to show smoke; it proved you were a busy housewife. She sighed. The thing about the broomstick was that when you rode it, you looked down on people. You couldn’t help it, however much you tried. Human beings seemed to be nothing but a lot of scurrying dots. And when you started thinking like that, it was time you found the company of some other witches, to get your head straight. You shall not be a witch alone, the saying went. It wasn’t so much advice as a demand.

Behind her, Letitia said, in a voice that sounded as though she had weighed out every word very carefully before deciding to speak, “Why aren’t you angrier with me?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know! After what I did! You are just being dreadfully . . . nice!”

Tiffany was glad the girl couldn’t see her face—and for that matter, she couldn’t see hers.

“Witches don’t often get angry. All that shouting business never really gets anybody anywhere.”

After another pause, Letitia said, “If that is true, then maybe I’m not cut out to be a witch. I feel very angry sometimes.”

“Oh, I feel very angry a lot of the time,” said Tiffany, “but I just put it away somewhere until I can do something useful with it. That’s the thing about witchcraft—and wizardry, come to that. We don’t do much magic at the best of times, and when we do, we generally do it on ourselves. Now, look, the castle’s right ahead. I’ll drop you off on the roof, and frankly I’m looking forward to seeing how comfortable the straw is going to be.”

“Look, I really am very, very—”

“I know. You said. There’s no hard feelings, but you have to clear up your own mess. That’s another part of witchcraft, that is.” And she added to herself: And don’t I know it!

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Sin o’ Sins

The straw turned out to be comfortable enough; little cottages usually do not have spare rooms, so a witch there on business, such as the birthing of a child, was lucky to get a bed in the cowshed. Very lucky, in fact. It often smelled better, and Tiffany wasn’t alone in thinking that the breath of a cow, warm and smelling of grass, was a kind of medicine in itself.

The goats in the dungeon were nearly as good, though. They sat placidly chewing their supper over and over again, while never taking their solemn gaze off her, as if they expected her to start juggling or doing some kind of song-and-dance act.

Her last thought before falling asleep was that somebody must have given them the feed, and must therefore have noticed that the dungeon was minus one prisoner. In that case, she was in more trouble, but it was hard to see how much more trouble she could be in. Possibly not that much, it seemed, because when she woke again, just an hour or so later, somebody had put a cover over her while she was asleep. What was happening?

She found out when Preston appeared with a tray of eggs and bacon, the eggs and bacon being slightly coffee flavored on account of slopping on the way down the long stone staircase. “His lordship says it is with his compliments and apologies,” said Preston, grinning, “and I’m to tell you that if you would like it, he could arrange for a hot bath to be waiting for you in the black-and-white chamber. And when you’re ready, the Baron . . . the new Baron would like to see you in his study.”

The idea of a bath sounded wonderful, but Tiffany knew that there just wouldn’t be any time, and besides, even a halfway useful bath meant that some poor girls had to drag a load of heavy buckets up four or five flights of stone stairs. She would have to make do with a quick swill out of a washbasin when the opportunity arose.* But she was certainly ready for the bacon and eggs. She made a mental note, as she wiped the plate, that if this was going to be a Be Nice to Tiffany Day, she might try for another helping later on. Witches liked to make the most of gratitude while it was still warm. People tended to become a little bit forgetful after a day or so. Preston watched with the expression of a boy who had eaten salt porridge for breakfast and, when she had finished, said carefully, “And now will you go and see the Baron?”

He is concerned for me, Tiffany thought. “First I’d like to go and see the old Baron,” she said.

“He’s still dead,” Preston volunteered, looking worried.

“Well, that’s some comfort anyway,” said Tiffany. “Imagine the embarrassment otherwise.” She smiled at Preston’s puzzlement. “And his funeral is tomorrow, and that’s why I should see him today, Preston, and right now. Please? Right now, he is more important than his son.”

Tiffany felt people’s eyes on her as she strode toward the crypt with Preston almost running to keep up and clattering down the long steps after her. She felt a bit sorry for him, because he had always been kind and respectful, but no one was to think that she was being led anywhere by a guard. There had been enough of that. The looks that people gave her seemed rather more frightened than angry, and she didn’t know if this was a good sign or not.

At the bottom of the steps, she took a deep breath. There was just the usual smell of the crypt, chilly with a hint of potatoes. She smiled a little smile of self-congratulation. And there was the Baron, lying peacefully just as she had left him, with his hands crossed on his chest, looking for all the world as though he was sleeping.

“They thought I was doing witchcraft down here, didn’t they, Preston?” she said.

“There was some gossip, yes, miss.”

“Well, I was. Your granny taught you about the care of the dead, right? So you know it’s not right for the dead to be too long in the land of the living. The weather is warm, and the summer has been hot, and the stones that could be as chilly as the grave are not as chilly as all that. So, Preston, go and get me two pails of water, please.” She sat quietly by the side of the slab as he scurried away.

Earth and salt and two coins for the ferryman, those were the things that you gave to the dead, and you watched and listened like the mother of a newborn baby. . . .

Preston came back carrying two large pails with—she was pleased to see—only a limited amount of slopping. He put them down quickly and turned to go.

“No, stay here, Preston,” she commanded. “I want you to see what I do, so that if anyone asks, you can tell them the truth.”

The guard nodded mutely. She was impressed. She placed one of the buckets beside the slab and knelt down by it, put one hand in the cold bucket, pressed the other hand against the stone of the slab, and whispered to herself, “Balance is everything.”

Anger helped. It was amazing how useful it could be, if you saved it up until it could do some good, just as she had told Letitia. She heard the young guard gasp as the water in the bucket began to steam and then to bubble.

He jumped to his feet. “I understand, miss! I’ll take the boiling bucket away and bring you another cold one, yes?”

Three buckets of boiling water had been tipped away by the time the air in the crypt once again had the chill of the midwinter. Tiffany walked up the steps with her teeth very nearly chattering. “My granny would have loved to be able to do something like that,” Preston whispered. “She always said the dead don’t like the heat. You put cold into the stone, right?”

“Actually, I moved heat out of the slab and the air and put it in the bucket of water,” said Tiffany. “It’s not exactly magic. It’s just a . . . a skill. You just have to be a witch to do it, that’s all.”

Preston sighed. “I cured my granny’s chickens of fowl crop. I had to cut them open to clean up the mess, and then I sewed them up again. Not one of them died. And then when my mum’s dog got run over by a wagon, I cleaned him up, pushed all the bits back, and he ended up right as rain except for the leg I couldn’t save, but I carved him a wooden one, with a leather harness and everything, and he still chases wagons!”

Tiffany tried not to look doubtful. “Cutting into chickens to cure fowl crop hardly ever works,” she said. “I know a pig witch who treats chickens when necessary, and she said it never worked for her.”

“Ah, but maybe she didn’t have the knowin’ of twister root,” said Preston cheerfully. “If you mix the juice with a little pennyroyal, they heal really well. My granny had the knowing of the roots, and she passed it on to me.”

“Well,” said Tiffany, “if you can sew up a chicken’s gizzard, then you could mend a broken heart. Listen, Preston, why don’t you get yourself apprenticed to be a doctor?”

They had reached the door to the Baron’s study. Preston knocked on it and then opened it for Tiffany. “It’s them letters you get to put after your name,” he whispered. “They are very expensive letters! It might not cost money to become a witch, miss, but when you need them letters, oh, don’t you need that money!”

Roland was standing facing the door when Tiffany stepped in, and his mouth was full of spill words, tumbling over themselves not to be said. He did manage to say, “Er, Miss Aching . . . I mean, Tiffany, my fiancée assures me that we are all the victim of a magical plot aimed at your good self. I do hope you will forgive any misunderstanding on our part, and I trust that we have not inconvenienced you too much, and may I add that I take some heart from the fact that you were clearly able to escape from our little dungeon. Er . . .”

Tiffany wanted to shout, “Roland, do you remember that we first met when I was four years old and you were seven, running around in the dust with only our undershirts on? I liked you better when you didn’t talk like some old lawyer with a broomstick stuck up his bum. You sound as if you are addressing a public meeting.” But instead she said, “Did Letitia tell you everything?”

Roland looked sheepish. “I rather suspect that she did not, Tiffany, but she was very forthright. I may go so far as to say that she was emphatic.” Tiffany tried not to smile. He looked like a man who was beginning to understand some of the facts of married life. He cleared his throat. “She tells me that we have been a victim of some kind of magical disease, which is currently trapped inside a book in Keepsake Hall?” It certainly sounded like a question, and she wasn’t surprised that he was puzzled.

“Yes, that’s true.”

“And . . . apparently, everything is all right now that she has taken your head out of a bucket of sand.” He looked truly lost at this point, and Tiffany didn’t blame him.

“I think things may have gotten a bit garbled,” she said diplomatically.

“And she tells me she is going to be a witch.” He looked a little miserable at this point. Tiffany felt sorry for him, but not very much.

“Well, I think she’s got the basic talent. It’s up to her how much further she wants to take it.”

“I don’t know what her mother will say.”

Tiffany burst out laughing. “Well, you can tell the Duchess that Queen Magrat of Lancre is a witch. It’s no secret. Obviously the queening has to come first, but she is one of the best there is when it comes to potions.”

“Really?” said Roland. “The King and Queen of Lancre have graciously accepted an invitation to our wedding.” And Tiffany was sure she could see his mind working. In this strange chess game that was nobility, a real live queen beat just about everybody, which meant that the Duchess would have to curtsy until her knees clicked. She saw the spill words: That would of course be very unfortunate. Amazingly, Roland could be careful even with his spill words. However, he couldn’t stop the little grin.

“Your father gave me fifteen Ankh-Morpork dollars in real gold. It was a gift. Do you believe me?”

He saw the look in her eye, and said, “Yes!” immediately.

“Good,” said Tiffany. “Then find out where the nurse went.”

Some small part of broomstick might still have been in Roland’s bum when he said, “Do you think my father understood the full worth of what he was giving you?”

“His mind was as clear as water up until the end, you know that. You can trust him, just as you can trust me, and you can trust me now when I say to you that I will marry you.”

Her hand clamped itself over her mouth just too late. Where had that come from? And he looked as shocked as she felt.

He spoke first, loudly and firmly to drive away the silence. “I didn’t quite hear what you just said, Tiffany. . . . I expect all your hard work in recent days has overwhelmed your sensibilities in some way. I think we would all be a lot happier if we knew that you are having a good rest. I . . . love Letitia, you know. She is not very, well, complicated, but I would do anything for her. When she is happy, that makes me happy. And generally speaking, I am not very good at happy.” She saw a tear trickle down his face and, unable to stop herself, handed him a reasonably clean handkerchief. He took it and tried to blow his nose, laugh, and cry all at the same time. “And you, Tiffany, I am very fond of, really fond of . . . but it’s as if you have a handkerchief for the whole world. You are smart. No, don’t shake your head. You are smart. I remember once, when we were younger, you were fascinated by the word ‘onomatopoeia.’ Like making a name or a word from a sound, like cuckoo or hum or . . . ?”

“Jangle?” said Tiffany, before she could stop herself.

“That’s right, and I remember that you said ‘Humdrum’ was the sound boredom made because it sounded like a very tired fly buzzing at the closed window of an old attic room on a boiling hot summer’s day. And I thought, I couldn’t understand that! It makes no sense to me, and I know you are clever and it makes sense to you. I think you need a special kind of head to think like that. And a special kind of clever. And I haven’t got that kind of head.”

“What sound does kindness make?” said Tiffany.

“I know what kindness is, but I can’t imagine it making a noise. There you go again! I just don’t have the head that lives in a world where kindness has its own sound. I have a head that lives in a world where two and two make four. It must be very interesting, and I envy you like hell. But I think I understand Letitia. Letitia is uncomplicated, if you see what I mean.”

A girl who once exorcised a noisy ghost from the privy as if it was just another chore, Tiffany thought. Well, good luck with that one, sir. But she didn’t say it out loud. Instead, she said, “I think you have made a very wise match, Roland.” To her surprise, he looked relieved and went behind his desk again as a soldier might hide behind the battlements.

“This afternoon, some of the more distant guests will be arriving here for the funeral tomorrow, and indeed some will be staying on for the wedding. Fortuitously”—that was another little piece of broom handle—“Pastor Egg is passing through on the circuit and has kindly agreed to say a few good words over my father, and he will remain with us as our guest to officiate at the wedding. He is a member of a modern Omnian sect. My future mother-in-law approves of the Omnians but, regrettably, not of this sect, so that is all a little strained.” He rolled his eyes. “Moreover, I understand he is fresh from the city, and as you know, city preachers don’t always do well here.*

“I would deem it a great favor, Tiffany, if you can help in any way to prevent any little difficulties and disturbances, especially those of an occult nature, in the trying days to come. Please? There are enough stories already going about.”

Tiffany was still blushing after her outburst. She nodded and managed to say, “Look, about what I just said back then, I didn’t—”

She stopped, because Roland had raised a hand. “This is a bewildering time for all of us. There’s a reason for all the superstitions. The time around weddings and funerals is fraught with stress for all concerned, except, in the case of the funeral, for the chief, as it were, player,” he said. “Let us just be calm and careful. I’m very pleased that Letitia likes you. I don’t think she has many friends. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more arrangements to supervise.”

Tiffany’s own voice still bounced around in her head as she walked out of the room. Why had she said that about marrying? She’d always thought it was going to be true. Well, when she was a bit younger she had thought it was going to be true, but all that was past, wasn’t it? Yes, it was! And to come out with something as wet and stupid as that was so embarrassing.

And where was she going now? Well, there were plenty of things to do; there always were. There was no end to the wanting. She was halfway across the hall when one of the maids approached her nervously and told her that Miss Letitia wanted to see her in her room.

The girl was sitting on her bed, twisting a handkerchief—a clean one, Tiffany was pleased to see—and looking worried, which was to say more worried than her usual expression, which was that of a hamster that had had its treadmill stopped.

“So kind of you to come, Tiffany. Can I have a private word?” Tiffany looked around. There was no one else there. “Privately,” said Letitia, and gave the handkerchief another twist.

Hasn’t got many friends of her own age, Tiffany thought. I bet she wasn’t allowed to play with the village children. Doesn’t get out much. Getting married in a couple of days. Oh, dear. It wasn’t a very difficult conclusion to reach. A tortoise with a bad leg could have jumped to it. And then there was Roland. Kidnapped by the Queen of the Fairies, held in her nasty country for ages without growing older, bullied by his aunts, worried sick about his elderly father, finds it necessary to act as if he is twenty years older than he really is. Oh, dear.

“How can I help you?” she said brightly.

Letitia cleared her throat. “After the wedding we will have a honeymoon,” she said, her face shading to a delicate pink. “What exactly is supposed to happen?” The last few words were mumbled quickly, Tiffany noticed.

“Do you have any . . . aunts?” she asked. Aunts were generally good at this sort of thing. Letitia shook her head. “Have you tried talking about it with your mother?” Tiffany attempted, and Letitia turned on her a face that was as red as a boiled lobster.

“Would you talk about this sort of thing with my mother?”

“I can see the problem. Well, broadly speaking, and I don’t speak exactly as an expert here . . .” But she was.* A witch couldn’t help being some kind of expert as to the ways people came into the world; by the time she was twelve, the older witches had trusted her to go out to a birth by herself. Besides, she had helped lambs to be born, even when she was quite small. It came naturally, as Nanny Ogg said, although not as naturally as you might think. She remembered Mr. and Mrs. Hamper, quite a decent couple who had three children in a row before they worked out what was causing it. Ever since then she had tried to have a chat with the village girls of a certain age, just to be on the safe side.

Letitia listened like someone who was going to make notes afterward, and possibly get tested on Friday. She didn’t ask any questions until about halfway through, when she said, “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m pretty certain,” said Tiffany.

“Well, er, it sounds reasonably straightforward. Of course, I suppose boys know all about this sort of thing. . . . Why are you laughing?”

“It’s a matter of opinion,” said Tiffany.

Oh, now I see you. I see you, you filth, you plague, you noxious abomination!

Tiffany looked at Letitia’s mirror, which was big and had around it lots of fat, golden cherubs who were clearly catching their death of cold. There was Letitia’s reflection, and there was—faint but visible—the eyeless face of the Cunning Man. The outline of the Cunning Man began to thicken. Tiffany knew that nothing in her face had changed. She knew it. I won’t answer him, she thought. I had almost forgotten all about him. Don’t answer. Don’t let him get a hold on you!

She managed to smile while Letitia hauled out from cases and chests what she called her trousseau, which, in Tiffany’s opinion, contained the world’s entire supply of frilliness. She tried to focus on it, to let frilliness fill her mind and somehow chase away the words that came pouring from him. The ones she understood were bad enough; the ones that she didn’t were worse. Despite everything, the creaking, choking voice got through again: You think you have been lucky, witch. You hope you will be lucky again. You need to sleep. I never sleep. You have to be lucky time after time. I have to be lucky just once. Just once, and you will . . . burn. That last word was soft, almost gentle, after the creaking, coughing, scraping words that came before. It sounded worse.

“You know,” said Letitia, looking thoughtfully at a garment that Tiffany knew she could never afford, “while I am truly looking forward to being the mistress of this castle, I must say that the drainage system here smells dreadful. In fact, it smells like it has never been cleaned since the world began. Honestly, I could believe that prehistoric monsters have done their business in it.”

So she can smell him, Tiffany thought. She is a witch. A witch who needs training because without it she’s going to be a menace to everybody, not least herself. Letitia was still prattling on—there was no other word for it. Tiffany, still trying to defeat the voice of the Cunning Man by sheer will, said aloud, “Why?”

“Oh, because I think the bows look a lot more fetching than buttons,” said Letitia, who was holding up a nightdress of considerable splendor, another reminder to Tiffany that witches never really had any money.

You burned before and so did I! croaked the voice in her head. But this time you will not take me! I will take you and your confederacy of evil!!!!!

Tiffany thought she could actually see the exclamation marks. They shouted for him, even when he spoke softly. They jumped and slashed at his words. She could see his contorted face and the little flecks of foam that accompanied the finger waving and shouting—gobs of liquid madness flying through the air behind the mirror.

How lucky for Letitia that she couldn’t hear him yet, but her mind was currently full of frills, bells, rice, and the prospect of being at the center of a wedding. Not even the Cunning Man could burn his way through that.

She managed to say, “It’s not going to work for you.” And part of her kept repeating, inside her head: No eyes. No eyes at all. Two tunnels in his head.

“Yes, I think you’re right. Possibly the mauve one would look better,” said Letitia, “although I have always been told that eau-de-nil is really my color. By the way, could I make things up to you in some way by having you as my chief bridesmaid? Of course, I’ve already got a load of tiny distant cousins who I understand have been wearing their bridesmaids’ dresses for the past two weeks.”

Tiffany was still staring at nothing, or rather, at two holes into nothing. At the moment, they were the most important things in her mind, and they were quite bad enough without adding tiny little cousins into the mixture. “I don’t think that witches are bridesmaid material, thank you all the same,” she said.

Bridesmaids? A wedding?

Tiffany’s heart sank further. There was no help for it. She ran out of the room before the creature could learn anything more. How did it search? What was it looking for? Had they just given it a clue? She fled down to the dungeon, which was right now a place of refuge.

There was the book that Letitia had given to her. She opened it and began to read. She had learned to read fast up in the mountains, when the only books you could get were from the traveling library, and if you were late returning them they charged you an extra penny, an appreciable amount when your standard unit of currency is an old boot.

The book told stories of windows. Not ordinary windows, although some might be. And behind them . . . things—monsters, sometimes. A painting, a page in a book—even a puddle in the right place—could be a window. She remembered once more the nasty goblin in the old book of fairy tales; sometimes it was laughing and at other times it was grinning. She had always been sure about that. It wasn’t a big change, but it was still a change. And you always wondered: What was it like that last time? Did I remember it wrong?

The book rustled under Tiffany’s hands like a hungry squirrel waking up in a hollow tree full of nuts. The author was a wizard, and a long-winded one at that, but the book was fascinating even so. There had been people who walked into a picture, and people who had walked out of one. Windows were a way of getting from one world into another, and anything could be a window and anything could be a world. She had heard that the sign of a good painting was that the eyes followed you around the room, but according to the book it was quite likely that they might follow you home and upstairs to bed, as well—an idea that she would rather not think about right now. Being a wizard, the author had tried to explain it all with graphs and charts, none of which helped in any way.

The Cunning Man had run toward her inside a book, and she had slammed it shut before he got out. She had seen his fingers just as the press had spun down. But he couldn’t have been squashed inside the book, she thought, because he wasn’t really in the book at all, except in some magical way, and he’s been finding me in other ways too. How? Right now, those tiresome days of seeing to broken legs, bad stomachs, and ingrown toenails suddenly seemed quite attractive. She’d always told people that was what witchcraft was all about, and that was true, right up until the time something horrible could jump out of nowhere. That was when a poultice just wouldn’t do the trick.

A piece of straw floated down and landed on the book. “It’s safe for you to come out,” said Tiffany. “You are here, aren’t you?”

And right by her ear a voice said, “Oh aye, that we are.” They appeared from behind straw bales, spiderwebs, apple shelves, goats, and one another.

“Aren’t you Wee Mad Arthur?”

“Aye, miss, that is correct. I have to tell ye, to my embarrassment, that Rob Anybody is placing a big trust in me because I am a polisman and Rob appeared to think, ye ken, that if ye are dealing with bigjobs, a polisman will make them even more afeared. Besides, I can speak bigjob! Rob is spending more time up at the mound right now, ye ken. An’ he doesna trust yon Baron not tae come up there with shovels.”

“I will see that does not happen,” said Tiffany firmly. “There has been a misunderstanding.”

Wee Mad Arthur did not look convinced. “It is glad I am to hear you say that, miss, and so will the Big Man be, because I can tell ye that when the first shovel breaks into the mound, there willna be a living man left in yonder castle, and great will be the lamentation of the women, present company excepted.” There was a general murmuring from the other Feegles, on the broad theme of slaughter for whoever laid a hand on a Feegle mound, and how personally each and every one of them would regret what he would have to do.

“It’s yon troosers,” said Slightly-thinner-than-Fat-Jock-Jock. “Once a man gets a Feegle up his troosers, his time of trial and tribulation is only just beginning.”

“Oh, aye, it will be a great time o’ jumpin’ and leapin’ up and doon for such as them,” said Wee Jock o’ the White Head.

Tiffany was shocked. “When was the last time Feegles fought with bigjobs, then?”

After some discussion among the Feegles, this was declared to be the Battle o’ the Middens, when, according to Wee Jock o’ the White Head, “There was never such a screaming and rushing about and stamping on the ground, and pitiable sobbing, the like of which was never before heard, along with the coarse tittering of the ladies as the men scrambled to divest themselves of troosers that were suddenly no longer their friends, if ye ken what I’m saying.”

Tiffany, who had been listening to the tale with an open mouth, had the presence of mind to shut it, and then opened it again to say, “But have Feegles ever killed a human?”

This led to a certain amount of deliberate lack of eye contact among the Feegles, plus quite a lot of foot shuffling and head scratching, with the usual fallout of insects, hoarded food, interesting stones, and other unspeakable items. In the end, Wee Mad Arthur said, “Being as I am, miss, a Feegle who has only but recently learned that he is not a fairy cobbler, I ha’ nae pride tae lose by telling ye that it is true that I have been speaking to my new brothers and learned that, when they lived up in the far mountains, they did have tae fight humans sometimes, when they came a-digging for the fairy gold, and a terror-err-able fighting did take place and, indeed, those bandits as were too stupid to run may have found themselves clever enough to die.” He coughed. “However, in defense of my new brethren, I must point out that they always made certain that the odds were fair and just, which is to say one Feegle to every ten men. Ye canna say fairer than that. And it wasna their fault that some men just wanted tae commit suicide.”

There was a glint in Wee Mad Arthur’s eye that prompted Tiffany to ask, “How exactly did they commit suicide?”

The policeman Feegle shrugged his small broad shoulders. “They took a shovel to a Feegle mound, miss. I am a man who knows the law, miss. I never saw a mound until I met these fine gentlemen, but even so my blood boils, miss, it boils, so it does. My heart it does thump, my pulse it does race, and my gorge it arises like the breath of some dragon at the very thought of a bright steel shovel slicing through the clay of a Feegle mound, cutting and crushing. I would kill the man that does this, miss. I would kill him dead, and chase him through the next life to kill him another time, and I would do it again and again, because it would be the sin o’ sins, to kill an entire people, and one death would nae be enough for recompense. However, as I am an aforesaid man of the law, I very much hope that the current misunderstanding can be resolved withoot the need for wholesale carnage and bloodletting and screaming and wailing and weeping and people having bits of themselves nailed to trees, such as has never been seen before, ye ken?” Wee Mad Arthur, holding his full-sized policeman’s badge like a shield, stared at Tiffany with a mixture of shock and defiance.

And Tiffany was a witch. “I must tell you something, Wee Mad Arthur,” she said, “and you must understand what I say. You have come home, Wee Mad Arthur.”

The shield dropped out of his hand. “Aye, miss, I ken that now. A polisman should not say the words I just said. He should talk about judges and juries and prisons and sentences, and he would say ye canna take the law intae your own hands. So I will hand in my badge, indeed, and stay here among my own folk, although I have to say, with better standards o’ hygiene.”

This got a round of applause from the assembled Feegles, although Tiffany wasn’t sure that most of them fully understood the concept of hygiene or, for that matter, obeying the law.

“You have my word,” said Tiffany, “that the mound will not be touched again. I will see to it, do you understand?”

“Och, weel,” said Wee Mad Arthur tearfully. “That might be all very well, miss, but what will happen behind your back when ye are a-flying and a-whizzing aboot your verra important business across the hills? What will happen then?”

All eyes turned to Tiffany, including those of the goats. She didn’t do this kind of thing anymore because she knew it was bad manners, but Tiffany picked up Wee Mad Arthur bodily and held him at eye level. “I am the hag o’ the hills,” she said. “And I will vow to you and all other Feegles that the home of the Feegles will never be threatened with iron again. It will never be behind my back but will always be in front of my eyes. And while this is so, no living man will touch it if he wants to remain a living man. And if I fail the Feegles in this, may I be dragged through the seven hells on a broomstick made of nails.”

Strictly speaking, Tiffany admitted to herself, these were pretty much empty threats, but the Feegles did not think an oath was an oath if it didn’t have lots of thunder and lightning and boasting and blood in it. Blood, somehow, made it official. I will see to it that the mound is never touched again, she thought. There is no way that Roland can refuse me now. And besides, I have a secret weapon: I have the trust and confidence of a young lady who is soon going to be his wife. No man can be safe in those circumstances.

In the glow of reassurance Wee Mad Arthur said happily, “Well spoken, mistress, and may I take the opportunity on behalf of my new friends and relatives tae thank ye for explaining all aboot the business of the wedding nuptials. It was verra interesting to those of us who have little to do with such things. Some of us was wondering if we could ask questions?”

Being threatened by a spectral horror was terrible enough right now, but somehow the thought of the Nac Mac Feegle asking questions about the facts of married life among humans was even worse. There was no point in explaining why she wasn’t going to explain; Tiffany simply said no in a tone of voice like steel and very carefully put him back down on the ground. She added, “You shouldn’t have been listening.”

“Why not?” said Daft Wullie.

“You just shouldn’t! I’m not going to explain. You just shouldn’t. And now, gentlemen, I’d like a bit of time to myself, if it’s all the same to you.”

Some of them would follow her, of course, she thought. They always did. She went back up to the hall and sat down as close as possible to the huge fire. Even in late summer, the hall was cold. It was hung with tapestries as insulation from the chill of the stone walls. They were the usual sort of thing: men in armor waving swords and bows and axes at other men in armor. Given that battle is very fast and noisy, they presumably had to stop fighting every couple of minutes to give the ladies who were making the tapestry a little time to catch up. Tiffany knew the one nearest the fire by heart. All the kids did. You learned your history off the tapestries, if there was some old man around to explain what was going on. But generally, when she was a lot younger, it had been more fun to make up stories about the different knights, like the one who was desperately running to catch up with his horse, and the one who had been thrown by his horse and, because he had a helmet with a point on it, was now upright headfirst in the ground, which, even as children, they had recognized was not a good position to be in on the battlefield. They were like old friends, frozen in a war whose name nobody on the Chalk could remember.

And . . . suddenly there was another one, one that had never been there before, running toward Tiffany through the battle. She stared at him, her body demanding that she get some sleep right now, and whatever bits were still working in her brain insisting that she do something. In the middle of this, her hand gripped a log on the edge of the fire, and she raised it purposefully toward the tapestry.

The cloth practically crumbled with age as it was. It would burn like dry grass.

The figure was walking cautiously now. She couldn’t see any details yet and didn’t want to. The knights on the tapestry had been woven in without any perspective; they were as flat as a child’s nursery painting.

But the man in black, who had begun as a distant streak, was getting bigger as he approached and now . . . She could see the face and the empty eyeholes, which even from here changed color as he walked past the painted armor of knight after knight, and now he had started running again, getting bigger. And the smell was oozing toward her again. . . . How much was the tapestry worth? Did she have any right to destroy it? With that thing stepping out of it? Oh, yes, oh, yes!

Wouldn’t it be nice to be a wizard and to conjure up those knights to fight one last battle!

Wouldn’t it be nice to be a witch who wasn’t here! She raised the crackling log and glared into the holes where the eyes should be. You had to be a witch to be prepared to stare down a stare that wasn’t there, because somehow you felt that it was sucking your own eyeballs out of your head.

Those tunnels in the skull were hypnotic, and now he moved from side to side slowly, like a snake.

“Please don’t.”

She wasn’t expecting that; the voice was urgent but quite friendly—and it belonged to Eskarina Smith.

The wind was silver and cold.

Tiffany, lying on her back, looked up into a white sky; at the edge of her vision, dried grasses shook and rattled in the wind, but, curiously, behind this little bit of countryside there was the big fireplace and the battling knights.

“It is really quite important that you don’t move,” said the same voice behind her. “The place where you are now has been, as we say, cobbled together for this conversation and did not exist until you arrived here, and will cease to exist the moment you leave. Strictly speaking, by the standards of most philosophical disciplines, it cannot be said to have any existence at all.”

“So it’s a magic place, yes? Like the Unreal Estate?”

“Very sensible way of putting it,” said the voice of Eskarina. “Those of us who know about it call it the traveling now. It’s an easy way to talk to you in private; when it closes, you will be exactly where you were and no time will have passed. Do you understand?”

“No!”

Eskarina sat down on the grass next to her. “Thank goodness for that. It would be rather disturbing if you did. You are, you know, an extremely unusual witch. As far as I can tell, you have a natural talent for making cheese, and as talents go, it is a pretty good talent to have. The world needs cheesemakers. A good cheesemaker is worth her weight in, well, cheese. So you were not born with a talent for witchcraft.”

Tiffany opened her mouth to reply before she had any idea what she was going to say, but that is not unusual among human beings. The first thing to push through the throng was: “Hang on, I was holding a burning brand. But now you have brought me here, wherever here is exactly. What happened?” She looked at the fire. The flames were frozen. “People will notice me,” she said, and then, given the nature of the situation, she added, “Won’t they?”

“The answer is no; the reason is complicated. The traveling now is . . . tame time. It’s time that is on your side. Believe me, there are stranger things in the universe. Right now, Tiffany, we are truly living on borrowed time.”

The flames were still frozen. Tiffany felt that they should be cold, but she could feel the warmth. And she had time to think, too. “And when I go back?”

“Nothing will have changed,” said Eskarina, “except the contents of your head, which are, at the moment, very important.”

“And you’ve gone to all this trouble to tell me I have no talent for witchcraft?” Tiffany said flatly. “That was very kind of you.”

Eskarina laughed. It was her young laugh, which seemed strange when you saw the wrinkles on her face. Tiffany had never seen an old person looking so young. “I said you weren’t born with a talent for witchcraft: It didn’t come easily; you worked hard at it because you wanted it. You forced the world to give it to you, no matter the price, and the price is, and will always be, high. Have you heard the saying ‘The reward you get for digging holes is a bigger shovel’?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany, “I heard Granny Weatherwax say it once.”

“She invented it. People say you don’t find witchcraft; witchcraft finds you. But you’ve found it, even if at the time you didn’t know what it was you were finding, and you grabbed it by its scrawny neck and made it work for you.”

“This is all very . . . interesting,” said Tiffany, “but I have got things I must be doing.”

“Not in the traveling now,” said Eskarina firmly. “Look, the Cunning Man has found you again.”

“I think he hides in books and pictures,” Tiffany volunteered. “And tapestries.” She shuddered.

“And mirrors,” said Eskarina, “and puddles, and the glint of light on a piece of broken glass, or the gleam on a knife. How many ways can you think of? How frightened are you prepared to be?”

“I’m going to have to fight him,” Tiffany said. “I think I knew I would have to. He doesn’t seem to me to be someone you can run away from. He’s a bully, isn’t he? He attacks where he thinks he will win, and so I have to find a way to be stronger than he is. I think I can work out a way—after all, he is a bit like the hiver. And that was really quite easy.”

Eskarina did not shout; she spoke very quietly and in a way that seemed to make more noise than a scream would have done. “Will you persist in not recognizing how important this is, Tiffany Aching the cheesemaker? You have a chance to defeat the Cunning Man, and if you fail, witchcraft fails—and falls with you. He will possess your body, your knowledge, your talents, and your soul. And for your own good—and for the good of all—your sister witches will settle their differences and take the pair of you into oblivion before you can do any more harm. Do you understand? This is important! You have to help yourself.”

“The other witches will kill me?” said Tiffany, aghast.

“Of course. You are a witch and you know what Granny Weatherwax always says: ‘We do right, we don’t do nice.’ It will be you or him, Tiffany Aching. The loser will die. In his case, I regret to say we might see him again in a few centuries; in your case, I don’t propose to guess.”

“But hold on a moment,” said Tiffany. “If they are prepared to fight him and me, why don’t we all band together to fight him now?”

“Of course. Would you like them to? What is it you really want, Tiffany Aching, here and now? It’s your choice. The other witches will not, I am sure, think any the worse of you.” Eskarina hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Well, I expect they will be very kind about it.”

The witch who faced the trial and ran away? thought Tiffany. The witch they were kind to, because they knew she wasn’t good enough? And if you think you’re not good enough, then you are already no kind of witch. Aloud she said, “I’d rather die trying to be a witch than be the girl they were all kind to.”

“Miss Aching, you are showing an almost sinful self-assurance and overwhelming pride and certainty, and may I say that I wouldn’t expect anything less of a witch.”

The world wobbled a bit and then changed. Eskarina vanished, even as her words were still sinking into Tiffany’s mind. The tapestry was back in front of her again, and she was still raising the burning log, but this time she raised it confidently. She felt as if she was full of air, lifting her up. The world had gone strange, but at least she knew that fire would burn dry tapestry like tinder the moment it touched it.

“I would burn this old sheet in an instant, mister, trust me. Back to where you came from, mister!”

To her astonishment, the dark figure retreated. There was a momentary hiss, and Tiffany felt as if a weight had dropped away, dragging the stench with it.

“That was all very interesting.” Tiffany spun round and looked into Preston’s cheerful grin. “Do you know,” he said, “I was really worried when you went so stiff for a few moments. I thought you were dead. When I touched your arm—very respectfully, no hanky-panky—it felt like the air on a thundery day. So I thought, This is witch business, and decided to keep an eye on you, and then you threatened an innocent tapestry with fiery death!”

She stared at the boy’s eyes as if they were a mirror. Fire, she thought. Fire killed him once, and he knows it. He won’t go anywhere near fire. Fire is the secret. The hare runs into the fire. Hmm.

“Actually, I quite like fire,” said Preston. “I don’t think it’s my enemy at all.”

“What?” said Tiffany.

“I’m afraid you were speaking just under your breath,” said Preston. “I’m not going to ask what it was about. My granny said, ‘Don’t meddle in the affairs of witches because they clout you around the ear.’”

Tiffany stared at him and made an instant decision. “Can you keep a secret?”

Preston nodded. “Certainly! I have never told anybody that the sergeant writes poetry, for example.”

“Preston, you have just told me!”

Preston grinned at her. “Ah, but a witch isn’t anybody. My granny told me that telling your secret to a witch is like whispering to a wall.”

“Well, yes,” Tiffany began, and then paused. “How do you know he writes poetry?”

“It was hard not to know,” said Preston. “But you see, he writes it on pages of the events ledger in the guardhouse, probably when he’s on night duty. He carefully tears out the pages, and does it so neatly that you wouldn’t guess, but he presses so hard with his pencil that it’s quite easy to read the impression on the paper underneath.”

“Surely the other men notice?” said Tiffany.

Preston shook his head, which caused his oversized helmet to spin a little. “Oh, no, miss, you know them: They think reading is sissy stuff for girls. Anyway, if I get in early, I tear out the paper underneath so that they don’t laugh at him. I have to say, for a self-taught man he is a pretty good poet—good grasp of the metaphor. They are all written to somebody called Millie.”

“That would be his wife,” said Tiffany. “You must have noticed her in the village—more freckles than anyone I’ve ever seen. She is very sensitive about it.”

Preston nodded. “That might explain why his latest poem is entitled ‘What Good Is the Sky Without Stars’?”

“You wouldn’t know it from looking at the man, would you?”

Preston looked thoughtful for a moment. “Excuse me, Tiffany,” he said, “but you don’t look well. In fact, no offense meant, you look absolutely dreadful. If you were somebody else and took a look at you, you would say that you were very ill indeed. You don’t look as if you’ve had any sleep.”

“I had at least an hour’s worth last night. And a nap the day before!” said Tiffany.

“Really?” said Preston, looking stern. “And apart from breakfast this morning, when did you last have a proper meal?”

For some reason Tiffany still felt full of light inside. “I think I might have had a snack yesterday. . . .”

“Oh, really?” said Preston. “Snacks and naps? That’s not how somebody is supposed to live; it’s how people die!”

He was right. She knew he was. But that only made things worse.

“Look, I’m being tracked by a horrible creature who can take over somebody else completely, and it’s up to me to deal with it!”

Preston looked around with interest. “Could it take me over?”

Poison goes where poison’s welcome, thought Tiffany. Thank you for that useful phrase, Mrs. Proust. “No, I don’t think so. I think you have to be the right kind of person—which is to say, the wrong kind of person. You know, somebody with a touch of evil.”

For the first time, Preston looked worried. “I have done a few bad things in my time, I’m sorry to say.”

Despite her sudden tiredness, Tiffany smiled. “What was the worst one?”

“I once stole a packet of colored pencils off a market stall.” He looked at her defiantly, as if expecting her to scream or point the finger of scorn.

Instead, she shook her head and said, “How old were you then?”

“Six.”

“Preston, I don’t think this creature could ever find its way into your head. Quite apart from anything else, it seems pretty crowded and complicated to me.”

“Miss Tiffany, you need a rest, a proper rest in a proper bed. What kind of witch can look after everybody if she’s not sensible enough to look after herself? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. That means, Who guards the guards, that does,” Preston went on. “So who watches the witches? Who cares for the people who care for the people? Right now, it looks like it needs to be me.”

She gave in.

The fog of the city was as thick as curtains when Mrs. Proust hurried toward the dark, brooding shape of the Tanty, but the billows obediently separated as she approached, and closed again after her.

The warden was waiting at the main gate, a lantern in his hand. “Sorry, missus, but we thought you ought to see this one before it gets all official. I know witches seem a bit unpopular right now, but we’ve always thought of you as family, if you know what I mean. Everyone remembers your dad. What a craftsman! He could hang a man in seven and a quarter seconds! Never been beat. We shall never see his likes again.” He went solemn. “And may I say, missus, I hope I never see again the like of what you will be seeing now. It’s got us rattled, and no mistake. It’s right up your street, I reckon.”

Mrs. Proust shook the water droplets off her cloak in the prison office and could smell the fear in the air. There was the general clanging and distant yelling that you always got when things were going bad in a prison: a prison, by definition, being a lot of people all crammed together and every fear and hatred and worry and dread and rumor all sitting on top of one another, choking for space. She hung the cloak on a nail by the door and rubbed her hands. “The lad you sent said something about a breakout?”

“D wing,” said the warder. “Macintosh. You remember? Been in here about a year.”

“Oh, yes, I recall,” said the witch. “They had to stop the trial because the jury kept throwing up. Very nasty indeed. But no one has ever escaped from D wing, right? The window bars are steel?”

“Bent,” said the warder flatly. “You’d better come and see. It’s giving us the heebie-jeebies, I don’t mind telling you.”

“Macintosh wasn’t a particularly big man, as I recall,” said the witch as they hurried along the dank corridors.

“That’s right, Mrs. Proust. Short and nasty, that was him. Due to hang next week, too. Tore out bars that a strong man wouldn’t have been able to shift with a crowbar and dropped thirty feet to the ground. That’s not natural, that’s not right. But it was the other thing he did—oh, my word, it makes me sick thinking about it.”

A warder was waiting outside the cell recently vacated by the absent Macintosh, but for no reason that Mrs. Proust could recognize, given that the man had definitely gone. He touched the brim of his hat respectfully when he saw her.

“Good morning, Mrs. Proust,” he said. “May I say it’s an honor to meet the daughter of the finest hangman in history. Fifty-one years before the lever, and never a client down. Mr. Trooper now, decent bloke, but sometimes they bounce a bit, and I don’t consider that professional. And your dad wouldn’t forgo a well-deserved hanging out of the fear that fires of evil and demons of dread would haunt him afterward. You mark my words, he’d go after them and hang them, too! Seven and a quarter seconds, what a gentleman.”

But Mrs. Proust was staring down at the floor.

“Terrible thing for a lady to have to see,” the warder went on.

Almost absentmindedly Mrs. Proust said, “Witches are not ladies when on business, Frank,” and then she sniffed the air and swore an oath that made Frank’s eyes water.

“It makes you wonder what got into him, aye?”

Mrs. Proust straightened up. “I don’t have to wonder, my lad,” she said grimly. “I know.”

The fog piled up against the buildings in its effort to get out of the way of Mrs. Proust as she hurried back to Tenth Egg Street, leaving behind her a Mrs. Proust–shaped tunnel in the gloom.

Derek was drinking a peaceful mug of cocoa when his mother burst in to the strains, as it were, of a large fart. He looked up, his brow wrinkling. “Did that sound like B-flat to you? It didn’t sound like B-flat to me.” He reached into the drawer under the counter for his tuning fork, but his mother rushed past him.

“Where’s my broomstick?”

Derek sighed. “In the basement, remember? When the dwarfs told you last month how much it would cost to repair, you told them they were a bunch of chiseling little lawn ornaments, remember? Anyway, you never use it.”

“I’ve got to go into the . . . country,” said Mrs. Proust, looking around the crowded shelves in case there was another working broomstick there.

Her son stared. “Are you sure, Mother? You’ve always said it’s bad for your health.”

“Matter of life or death,” Mrs. Proust mumbled. “What about Long Tall Short Fat Sally?”

“Oh, Mother, you really shouldn’t call her that,” said Derek reproachfully. “She can’t help being allergic to tides.”

“She’s got a stick, though! Hah! If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Make me some sandwiches, will you?”

“Is this about that girl who was in here last week?” said Derek suspiciously. “I don’t think she had much of a sense of humor.”

His mother ignored him and rummaged under the counter, coming back with a large leather cosh. The small traders of Tenth Egg Street worked on narrow margins and had a very direct approach to shoplifting. “I don’t know, I really don’t,” she moaned. “Me? Doing good at my time of life? I must be going soft in the head. And I’m not even going to get paid! I don’t know, I really don’t. Next thing you know, I’ll start giving people three wishes, and if I start doing that, Derek, I would like you to hit me very hard on the head.” She handed him the cosh. “I’m leaving you in charge. Try to sell some of the rubber chocolate and the humorous fake fried eggs, will you? Tell people they are novelty bookmarks or something.”

And with that, Mrs. Proust ran out into the night. The lanes and alleyways of the city were very dangerous at night, what with muggers, thieves, and similar unpleasantnesses. But they disappeared back into the gloom as she passed. Mrs. Proust was bad news, and best left undisturbed if you wanted to keep all the bones in your fingers pointing the right way.

The body that was Macintosh ran through the night. It was full of pain. This didn’t matter to the ghost; it wasn’t his pain. Its sinews sang with agony, but it was not the ghost’s agony. The fingers bled where they had torn steel bars out of the wall. But the ghost did not bleed. It never bled.

It couldn’t remember when it had had a body that was really its own. Bodies had to be fed and had to drink. That was an annoying feature of the wretched things. Sooner or later they ran out of usefulness. Often that didn’t matter; there was always somebody—a little mind festering with hatred and envy and resentment that would welcome the ghost inside. But it had to be careful, and it had to be quick. But above all it had to be safe. Out here, on the empty roads, another suitable container would be hard to find. Regretfully, it allowed the body to stop and drink from the murky waters of a pond. It turned out to be full of frogs, but a body had to eat, too, didn’t it?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Shaking of the Sheets

Her proper bed in the castle’s black-and-white chamber was so much better than the dungeon, even though Tiffany missed the soothing burps of the goats.

She dreamed of fire again. And she was being watched. She could feel it, and it wasn’t the goats this time. She was being watched inside her head. But it wasn’t bad watching; someone was caring for her. And in the dream the fire raged, and a dark figure pulled aside the flames as though they were curtains, and there was the hare sitting by the dark figure as if she was a pet. The hare caught Tiffany’s eye and jumped into the fire. And Tiffany knew.

Somebody knocked at the door. Tiffany was suddenly awake. “Who’s there?”

A voice on the other side of the heavy door said, “What sound does forgetfulness make?”

She hardly had to think. “It’s the sound of the wind in dead grasses on a hot summer’s day.”

“Yes, I think that would about do it,” said Preston’s voice from the other side of the door. “To get right to the point, miss, there’s a lot of people downstairs, miss. I think they need their witch.”

It was a good day for a funeral, Tiffany thought, looking out the narrow castle window. It shouldn’t rain on a funeral. It made people too gloomy. She tried not to be gloomy at funerals. People lived, and died, and were remembered. It happened in the same way that winter follows summer. It was not a wrong thing. There were tears, of course, but they were for those who were left; those who had gone on did not need them.

The staff had been up very early, and the long tables had been put out in the hall to make a breakfast for all comers. That was a tradition. Rich or poor, lord or lady: The funeral breakfast was there for everyone, and out of respect for the old Baron, and also out of respect for a good meal, the hall was filling up. The Duchess was there, in a black dress that was more black than any black Tiffany had ever seen before. The dress gleamed. The black dress of the average witch was usually only theoretically black. In reality, it was often rather dusty, and quite possibly patched in the vicinity of the knees and somewhat ragged at the hem and, of course, very nearly worn through by frequent washings. It was what it was: working clothes. You couldn’t imagine the Duchess delivering a baby in that dress. . . . Tiffany blinked. She could imagine the Duchess doing just that; if it was an emergency, she would. She would bully and complain and order people around, but she would do it. She was that kind of person.

Tiffany blinked again. Her head felt crystal clear. The world seemed understandable but slightly fragile, as if it could be broken, like a mirror ball.

“Morning, miss!” That was Amber, and behind her both her parents, Mr. Petty looking scrubbed and sheepish and also quite bashful. He clearly didn’t know what to say. Nor did Tiffany.

There was a stir at the main doors, and Roland hurried in that direction and came back with King Verence of Lancre and Magrat, his Queen. Tiffany had met them before. You couldn’t help meeting them in Lancre, which was a very small kingdom, and even smaller when you took into consideration that Granny Weatherwax lived there too.

And Granny Weatherwax was here, right here and now, with You* lying across her shoulders like a scarf, behind the King and Queen and just in front of a huge jolly voice that shouted, “Watcha, Tiff! How’s your belly off for spots!”—which meant that a couple of feet below it, but hidden by reasons of size, was Nanny Ogg, rumored by some to be cleverer than Granny Weatherwax, and clever enough at least not to let her find out.

Tiffany bowed to them, as was the custom. She thought, They gather, do they? She smiled at Granny Weatherwax and said, “Very pleased to see you here, Mistress Weatherwax, and a little surprised.”

Granny stared at her, but Nanny Ogg said, “It’s a long bumpy trip down from Lancre, and so the two of us thought we’d give Magrat and her King a nice ride down.”

Possibly Tiffany was imagining it, but Nanny Ogg’s explanation sounded like something she had been working on for a little while. It felt as if she was reciting a script.

But there was no more time to talk. The arrival of the King had triggered something in the air, and for the first time Tiffany saw Pastor Egg, in a black-and-white robe. She adjusted her pointy hat and walked over to him. He seemed quite glad of the company, which is to say that he gave her a grateful smile.

“Hah, a witch, I see.”

“Yes, the pointy hat is a bit of a giveaway, isn’t it?” she said.

“But not a black dress, I notice . . . ?”

Tiffany heard the question mark as it went past. “When I am old, I shall wear midnight,” she said.

“Entirely appropriate,” said the pastor, “but now you wear green, white, and blue, the downland colors, I can’t help remarking!”

Tiffany was impressed. “So, you’re not interested in witchfinding, then?” She felt a bit silly for asking outright, but she was on edge.

Pastor Egg shook his head. “I can assure you, madam, that the Church has not been seriously involved in that sort of thing for hundreds of years! Unfortunately some people have long memories. Indeed, it was only a matter of a few years ago that the famous Pastor Oats said in his renowned Testament from the Mountains that the women known as witches embody, in a caring and practical way, the very best ideals of Brutha the prophet. That’s good enough for me. I hope it is good enough for you?”

Tiffany gave him her sweetest smile, which wasn’t all that sweet, however hard you tried; she’d never really gotten the hang of sweet.

“It’s important to be clear about these things, don’t you think?”

She sniffed and noticed no odor other than a hint of shaving cream. Even so, she was going to have to be on her guard.

It was a good funeral, too; from Tiffany’s point of view, a good funeral was one where the main player was very old. She had been to some—too many—where they were small and wrapped in a shroud. Coffins were barely known on the Chalk, and indeed nearly anywhere else. Decent timber was too expensive to be left to rot underground. A practical white woolen shroud did for most people; it was easy to make, not too expensive, and good for the wool industry. The Baron, however, went to his eternal rest inside a tomb of white marble, which, being a practical man, he had designed, bought, and paid for twenty years ago. There was a white shroud inside it, because marble can be a bit chilly to lie on.

And that was the end of the old Baron, except that only Tiffany knew where he really was. He was walking with his father in the stubbles, where they burned the cornstalks and the weeds, a perfect late-summer day, one never-changing perfect moment held in time. . . .

She gasped. “The drawing!” Even though she’d spoken under her breath, people around her turned to look. She thought, How selfish of me! And then thought, Surely it will still be there?

As soon as the lid of the stone tomb had been slid into place with a sound that Tiffany would always remember, she went and found Brian, who was blowing his nose. When he looked up at her he was pink around the eyes.

She took him gently by the arm, trying not to sound urgent. “The room that the Baron was living in, is it locked?”

He looked shocked. “I should say so! And the money is in the big safe in the office. Why d’you want to know?”

“There was something very valuable in there. A leather folder. Did that get put in the big safe too?”

The sergeant shook his head. “Believe me, Tiff, after the”—he hesitated—“bit of trouble, I did an inventory of everything in that room. Not a thing went out from there without me seeing it and putting it down in my notebook. With my pencil,” he added, for maximum accuracy. “Nothing like a leather folder was taken out, I’m sure of it.”

“No. Because Miss Spruce had already taken it,” Tiffany said. “That wretched nurse! I didn’t mind about the money, because I never expected the money! Maybe she thought it had deeds in it or something!”

Tiffany hurried back to the hall and looked around. Roland was the Baron now, in every respect. And it was in respect that people were clustering around him, saying things like “He was a very good man,” and “He’d had a good innings,” and “At least he didn’t suffer,” and all the other things people say after a funeral when they don’t know what to say.

And now Tiffany headed purposefully toward the Baron, and stopped when a hand landed on her shoulder. She followed the arm up to the face of Nanny Ogg, who had managed to obtain the biggest flagon of ale that Tiffany had ever seen. To be precise, she noticed it was a half-full flagon of ale.

“Nice to see something like this done well,” said Nanny. “Never knew the old boy, of course, but he sounds like a decent fellow. Nice to see you, Tiff. Managing all right?”

Tiffany looked into those innocent smiling eyes, and past them to the much sterner face of Granny Weatherwax and the brim of her hat. Tiffany bowed.

Granny Weatherwax cleared her throat with a sound like gravel. “We ain’t here on business, my girl. We just wanted to help the King make a good entrance.”

“We are not here about the Cunning Man neither,” Nanny Ogg added cheerfully. It sounded like a simple and silly giveaway, and Tiffany heard a disapproving sniff from Granny. But generally speaking, when Nanny Ogg came out with a silly, embarrassing comment by accident, it was because she had thought about it very carefully beforehand. Tiffany knew this, and Nanny certainly knew that Tiffany knew, and Tiffany knew that too. But it was often the kind of way that witches behaved, and it all worked perfectly if nobody picked up an ax.

“I know this is my problem. I will sort it out,” she said.

This was, on the face of it, a really stupid thing to say. The senior witches would be very useful to have at her side. But how would that look? This was a new steading, and she had to be proud.

You couldn’t say, “I have done difficult and dangerous things before,” because that was understood. What did matter was what you did today. It was a matter of pride. It was a matter of style.

And it was also a matter of age. In twenty years’ time, perhaps, if she asked for help, people would think, Well, even an experienced witch can run up against something really unusual. And they would help as a matter of course. But now, if she asked for help, well . . . people would help. Witches always helped other witches. But everyone would think, Was she really any good? Can’t she last the distance? Is she strong enough for the long haul? No one would say anything, but everyone would think it.

All this was the thought of a second, and when she blinked, the witches were watching her.

“Self-reliance is a witch’s best friend,” said Granny Weatherwax, looking stern.

Nanny Ogg nodded in agreement, and added, “You can always rely on self-reliance, I’ve always said so.” She laughed at Tiffany’s expression. “Do you think you are the only one to have to deal with the Cunning Man, love? Granny here had to deal with him when she was your age. She sent him back to where he came from in very short order, trust me on that.”

Knowing that it was useless, but attempting it anyway, Tiffany turned to Granny Weatherwax and said, “Can you give me any tips, Mistress Weatherwax?”

Granny, who was already drifting purposefully toward the buffet lunch, stopped for a moment, then turned and said, “Trust yourself.” She walked a few steps farther, stood as if lost in thought, and added, “And don’t lose.”

Nanny Ogg slapped Tiffany on the back. “Never met the bugger myself, but I hear he is pretty bad. Here, is the blushing bride having a hen night tonight?” The old lady winked and poured the remaining contents of the flagon down her throat.

Tiffany tried to think quickly. Nanny Ogg got on with everyone. Tiffany had only a vague idea of what a hen night was, but some of Mrs. Proust’s stock gave her a few clues, and if Nanny Ogg knew about them too, it was a certainty that alcohol was involved.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to have a party like that on a night of a funeral, do you, Nanny? Though I think Letitia might enjoy a little talk,” she added.

“She’s your chum, isn’t she? I would have thought you’d have had a little talk with her yourself.”

“I did!” Tiffany protested. “But I don’t think she believed me. And you’ve had at least three husbands, Nanny!”

Nanny Ogg stared at her for a moment and then said, “That’s quite a lot of conversation, I suppose. All right. But what about the young man? When’s his stag night going to be?”

“Ah, I’ve heard of those! It’s where his friends get him drunk, take him a long way away, tie him to a tree, and then . . . I think a bucket of paint and a brush are involved sometimes, but usually they throw him in the pigsty. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, the stag night is always much more interesting than the hen night,” said Nanny, a look of mischief in her eyes. “Has the lucky groom got any chums?”

“Well, there are some nobby lads from other posh families, but the only people he really knows live here in the village. We all grew up together, you see? And none of them would dare throw the Baron in a pigsty!”

“What about your young man over there?” Nanny gestured toward Preston, who was standing nearby. He always seemed to be standing nearby.

“Preston?” said Tiffany. “I don’t think he knows the Baron very well. And in any case—” She stopped and thought, Young man? She turned and looked at Nanny, who was standing with her hands behind her back and her face turned toward the ceiling with the expression of an angel, although admittedly one who might have met a few demons in her time. And that was Nanny all over. When it came to affairs of the heart—or indeed, of any other parts—you couldn’t fool Nanny Ogg.

But he’s not my young man, she insisted to herself. He’s just a friend. Who is a boy.

Preston stepped forward and removed his helmet in front of Nanny. “I fear, madam, that it would be against the rules for me as a military man to lay a hand on my commanding officer,” he said. “Were it not for that, I would do so with alacrity.”

Nanny nodded appreciatively at the polysyllabic response and gave Tiffany a wink that made her blush to the soles of her boots. Nanny Ogg’s grin was now so wide, you could fit it onto a pumpkin. “Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear,” she said. “I can see this place needs a little fun. Thank goodness I’m here!”

Nanny Ogg had a heart of gold, but if you were easily shocked then it was best to stick your fingers in your ears when she said anything. Yet there had to be common sense, didn’t there? “Nanny, we’re at a funeral!”

But her tone of voice would never make Nanny Ogg swerve. “Was he a good man?”

Tiffany hesitated only for a moment. “He grew into goodness.”

Nanny Ogg noticed everything. “Oh, yes, your Granny Aching taught him his manners, I believe. But he died a good man, then? Good. Will he be remembered with fondness?”

Tiffany tried to ignore the lump in her throat and managed to say, “Oh, yes, by everybody.”

“And you saw to it that he died well? Kept the pain away?”

“Nanny, if I say it myself, he had a perfect death. The only better death would have been not to die.”

“Well done,” said Nanny. “Did he have a favorite song, do you know?”

“Oh, yes! It’s ‘The Larks They Sang Melodious,’” said Tiffany.

“Ah, I reckon that’s the one we call ‘Pleasant and Delightful’ back home. Just follow me, will you, and we’ll soon get them in the right mood.”

And with that Nanny Ogg grabbed a passing waiter by the shoulder, took a full flagon from his tray, jumped up onto a table, as lively as a girl, and shouted for silence in a voice as brisk as a sergeant-major. “Ladies and gentlemen! To celebrate the good life and easeful passing of our late friend and Baron, I have been asked to sing his favorite song. Do join in with me if you’ve got the breath!”

Tiffany listened, enthralled. Nanny Ogg was a one-woman master class, or rather mistress class, in people. She treated perfect strangers as if she had known them for years, and somehow they acted as if she really had. Dragged along, as it were, by an extremely good singing voice for an old woman with one tooth, perplexed people were raising their voices beyond a mumble by the second line, and by the end of the first verse were harmonizing like a choir, and she had them in her hand. Tiffany wept and saw through the tears a little boy in his new tweed jacket that smelled of wee, walking with his father under different stars.

And then she saw the glisten of tears on the faces, including the faces of Pastor Egg and even the Duchess. The echoes were of loss and remembrance, and the hall itself breathed.

I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people. I should have learned how not to sing like a turkey. . . .

The song had finished, and people were looking around sheepishly at one another, but Nanny Ogg’s boot was already making the table rock. “Dance, dance, the shaking of the sheets. Dance, dance, when you hear the piper playing,” she sang.

Tiffany thought, Is this the right song for a funeral? And then she thought, Of course it is! It’s a wonderful tune and it tells us that one day all of us will die but—and this is the important thing—we are not dead yet.

And now Nanny Ogg jumped off the table, grabbed ahold of Pastor Egg, and, as she spun him round, sang, “Be assured no preacher can keep death away from any man,” and he had the grace to smile and dance with her.

People applauded—not something Tiffany would ever have expected at a funeral. She wished, oh, how she wished, to be like Nanny Ogg, who understood things and knew how to hammer silence into laughter.

And then, as the applause died away, a male voice sang, “Down in the valley, the valley so low, hang your head over, hear the wind blow. . . .” And silence stood aside in the face of the unexpectedly silver voice of the sergeant.

Nanny Ogg drifted to where Tiffany was standing. “Well, it looks like I’ve warmed them up. Hear them clearing their throats? I reckon the pastor will be singing by the end of the evening! And I could do with another drink. It’s thirsty work, singing.” There was a wink; then she said to Tiffany, “Human being first, witch second; hard to remember, easy to do.”

It was magic; magic had turned a hall full of people who mostly did not know very many of the other people there into human beings who knew they were among other human beings and, right now, that was all that needed to matter. At which point Preston tapped her on the shoulder. He had a curious kind of worried smile on his face.

“Sorry, miss, but I’m on duty, worst luck, and I think you ought to know we have three more visitors.”

“Can’t you just show them in?” said Tiffany.

“I would like to do that, miss, only they are stuck on the roof at the moment. The sound made by three witches is a lot of swearing, miss.”

If there had been swearing, the new arrivals had apparently run out of breath by the time Tiffany located the right window and crawled out onto the lead roof of the castle. There wasn’t very much to hold on to and it was pretty misty, but she carefully made her way out there on her hands and knees and headed toward the grumbling.

“Are there any witches up here?” she said.

And out of the gloom came the voice of somebody not even trying to keep her temper. “And what in the seven hells would you do if I said no, Miss Tiffany Aching?”

“Mrs. Proust? What are you doing here?”

“Holding on to a gargoyle! Get us down right now, my dear, because these are not my stones and Mrs. Happenstance needs the privy.”

Tiffany crawled a little farther, well aware of the sheer drop an inch away from her hand. “Preston has gone to fetch a rope. Do you have a broomstick?”

“A sheep crashed into it,” said Mrs. Proust.

Tiffany could just make her out now. “You crashed into a sheep in the air?”

“Maybe it was a cow, or something. What are those things that go snuffle snuffle?”

“You ran into a flying hedgehog?”

“No, as it happened. We were down low, looking for a bush for Mrs. Happenstance.” There was a sigh in the gloom. “It’s because of her trouble, poor soul. We’ve stopped at a lot of bushes on the way here, believe me! And do you know what? Inside every single one of them is something that stings, bites, kicks, screams, howls, squelches, farts enormously, goes all spiky, tries to knock you over, or does an enormous pile of poo! Haven’t you people up here heard about porcelain?”

Tiffany was taken aback. “Well, yes, but not in fields!”

“They would be all the better for it,” said Mrs. Proust. “I’ve ruined a decent pair of boots, I have.”

There was a clinking noise in the mist, and Tiffany was relieved to hear Preston say, “I have forced open the old trapdoor, ladies—if you would be kind enough to crawl this way?”

The trapdoor opened into a bedroom, clearly one that had been slept in last night by a woman. Tiffany bit her lip. “I think this is where the Duchess is staying. Please don’t touch anything; she’s bad enough as it is.”

“Duchess? Sounds posh,” said Mrs. Proust. “What kind of a Duchess, may I ask?”

Tiffany said, “The Duchess of Keepsake. You saw her when we had that bit of difficulty in the city. You know? At the King’s Head? They’ve got a huge property about thirty miles away.”

“That’s nice,” said Mrs. Proust in a way that suggested that it probably wasn’t going to be very nice but would be very interesting, and probably embarrassing to somebody who wasn’t Mrs. Proust. “I remember her, and I remember thinking when I got back from all that, Where have I seen you before, my lady? Do you know anything about her, my dear?”

“Well, her daughter told me that a terrible fire took away her property and her whole family before she married the Duke.”

Mrs. Proust brightened up, although it was the brightness on the edge of a knife. “Oh, really?” she said, her voice all treacle. “Just fancy that. I look forward to meeting the lady again and offering my condolences. . . .”

Tiffany decided that this was a puzzle she had no time to unravel, but there were other things to think about. “Er . . . ?” she began, looking at the very tall lady somehow trying to hide behind Mrs. Proust, who turned round and said, “Oh, dear me, where are my manners? I know, I never had any to start with. Tiffany Aching, this is Miss Cambric, better known as Long Tall Short Fat Sally. Miss Cambric is being trained by old Mrs. Happenstance, who was the one you briefly saw hurrying down the stairs with one aim in mind. Sally suffers terribly from tides, poor thing. I had to bring them both because Sally had the only working broomstick I could find, and she wouldn’t leave Mrs. Happenstance behind. It was the devil, keeping the broomstick trim. Don’t worry, she’ll be back to about five foot six in a few hours. Of course, she’s a martyr to ceilings. And Sally, you’d better get after Mrs. Happenstance right now.”

She waved a hand and the younger witch scurried off, looking nervous. When Mrs. Proust gave orders, they tended to be obeyed. She turned back to Tiffany. “The thing that is after you has got a body now, young lady. He has stolen the body of a murderer locked up in the Tanty. You know what? Before the bloke got out of the building, he killed his canary. They never kill their canary. It’s what you don’t do. You might beat another prisoner over the head with an iron bar in a riot, but you never kill a canary. That would be evil.”

It was a strange way to introduce the subject, but Mrs. Proust didn’t do small talk or, for that matter, reassurance.

“I thought something like this would happen,” said Tiffany. “I knew it would. What does he look like?”

“We lost him a couple of times,” said Mrs. Proust. “Calls of nature, and so on. He might have broken into a house for better clothes, I couldn’t say. He won’t care about the body. He’ll run it until he finds another one or it falls to pieces. We’ll keep an eye out for him. And this is your steading?”

Tiffany sighed. “Yes. And now he is chasing me like a wolf after a lamb.”

“Then if you care about people, you must get rid of him quick,” said Mrs. Proust. “If a wolf gets hungry enough, it will eat anything. And now, where are your manners, Miss Aching? We’re cold and wet, and by the sound of it there is food and drink downstairs, am I right?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, and you’ve come all this way to warn me,” said Tiffany.

Mrs. Proust waved a hand as if it wasn’t important. “I’m sure Long Tall Short Fat Sally and Mrs. Happenstance would like some refreshment after our long ride, but I’m just tired,” she said. And then, to Tiffany’s horror, she flung herself backward and landed on the Duchess’s bed with only her boots sticking off the end, dripping water. “This Duchess,” she said, “has she been giving you any more grief at all?”

“Well, yes, I’m afraid so,” said Tiffany. “She doesn’t seem to have any respect for anybody lower than a king, and even then I suspect that’s only a maybe. She bullies her daughter, too,” she added, and as an afterthought pointed out, “One of your customers, in fact.” And then she told Mrs. Proust everything about Letitia and the Duchess, because Mrs. Proust was the kind of woman you told everything to, and as the story unfolded, Mrs. Proust’s grin grew wider, and Tiffany needed no witch skill to suspect that the Duchess was going to be in some trouble.

“I thought so. I never forget a face. Have you ever heard of the music hall, my dear? Oh, no. You wouldn’t have, not out here. It’s all about comedians and singers and talking-dog acts—and, of course, dancing girls. I think you are getting the picture here, are you not? Not such a bad job for a girl who could shake a handsome leg, especially since after the show all the posh gentlemen would be waiting outside the stage door to take them out for a lovely dinner and so on.” The witch took off her pointy hat and dropped it on the floor beside the bed. “Can’t abide broomsticks,” she said. “They give me calluses in places where nobody should have calluses.”

Tiffany was at a loss. She couldn’t demand that Mrs. Proust get off the bed; it wasn’t her bed. It wasn’t her castle. She smiled. In fact, it really wasn’t her problem. How nice to find a problem that wasn’t yours.

“Mrs. Proust,” she said, “could I persuade you to come downstairs? There are some other witches here who I would really like you to meet.” Preferably when I’m not in the room, she thought to herself, but I doubt if that would be possible.

“Hedge witches?” Mrs. Proust sniffed. “Although there’s nothing actually wrong with hedge magic,” she went on. “I met a hedge witch once who could run her hands over a privet hedge and three months later it had grown into the shape of two peacocks and an offensively cute little dog holding a privet bone in its mouth, and all this, mark you, without a pair of shears being anywhere near it.”

“Why did she want to do that?” asked Tiffany, astounded.

“I doubt very much that she actually wanted to do it, but someone asked her to do it, and paid good money, too, and, strictly speaking, topiary is not actually illegal, although I rather suspect that one or two folk are going to be the first up against the hedge when the revolution comes. Hedge witches—that’s what we call country witches in the city.”

“Oh, really,” said Tiffany innocently. “Well, I don’t know what we call city witches in the country, but I am sure that Mistress Weatherwax will tell you.” She knew she should have felt guilty about this, but it had been a long day, after a long week, and a witch has got to have some fun in her life.

The way downstairs took them past Letitia’s room. Tiffany heard voices and a laugh. It was Nanny Ogg’s laugh. You couldn’t mistake that laugh; it was the kind of laugh that slapped you on the back. Then Letitia’s voice said, “Does that really work?” And Nanny said something under her breath that Tiffany couldn’t quite hear, but whatever it was, it made Letitia almost choke with giggling. Tiffany smiled. The blushing bride was being instructed by somebody who had probably never blushed in her life, and it seemed quite a happy arrangement. At least she was not bursting into tears every five minutes.

Tiffany led Mrs. Proust down into the hall. It was amazing to see that all people needed to make them happy was food and drink and other people. Even with Nanny Ogg no longer chivvying them along, they were filling the place with, well, people being people. And, standing where she could see very nearly everybody, Granny Weatherwax. She was talking to Pastor Egg.

Tiffany drifted up to her carefully, judging from the priest’s face that he wouldn’t mind at all if she intruded. Granny Weatherwax could be very forthright on the subject of religion. She saw him relax as she said, “Mistress Weatherwax, may I introduce to you Mrs. Proust? From Ankh-Morpork, where she runs a remarkable emporium.” Swallowing, Tiffany turned to Mrs. Proust and said, “May I present to you Granny Weatherwax?”

She stepped back as the two elderly witches looked at each other and then held her breath. The hall fell silent and neither of them blinked. And then—surely not—Granny Weatherwax winked and Mrs. Proust smiled.

“Very pleased to make your acquaintance,” said Granny.

“How very nice to see you,” said Mrs. Proust.

They exchanged a further glance and turned to Tiffany Aching, who suddenly understood that old, clever witches had been older and cleverer for much longer than her.

Granny Weatherwax almost laughed when Mrs. Proust said, “We don’t need to know each other’s names to recognize each other, but can I suggest, young lady, that you start breathing again.”

Granny Weatherwax lightly and primly took Mrs. Proust’s arm and turned to where Nanny Ogg was coming down the stairs, followed by Letitia, who was blushing in places where people don’t often blush, and said, “Do come with me, my dear. You must meet my friend Mrs. Ogg, who buys quite a lot of your merchandise.”

Tiffany walked away. For a brief moment in time, there was nothing for her to do. She looked down the length of the hall, where people were still gathering in little groups, and saw the Duchess by herself. Why did she do it? Why did she walk over to the woman? Maybe, she thought, if you know you are going to be facing a horrible monster, it is as well to get in a little practice. But to her absolute amazement, the Duchess was crying.

“Can I help in any way?” Tiffany asked.

She was the immediate subject of a glare, but the tears were still falling. “She’s all I’ve got,” said the Duchess, looking over at Letitia, who was still trailing Nanny Ogg. “I’m sure Roland will be a very considerate husband. I hope she will think that I have given her a good grounding to get her safely through the world.”

“I think you’ve definitely taught her many things,” said Tiffany.

But the Duchess was now staring at the witches, and without looking at Tiffany, she said, “I know we’ve had our differences, young lady, but I wonder if you can tell me who that lady is up there, one of your sister witches, talking to the remarkably tall one.”

Tiffany glanced around for a moment. “Oh, that’s Mrs. Proust. She’s from Ankh-Morpork, you know. Is she an old friend of yours? She was asking about you, only a little while ago.”

The Duchesss smiled, but it was a strange little smile. If smiles had a color, it would have been green. “Oh,” she said. “That was, er”—she paused, swaying a little—“very kind of her.” She coughed. “I am so glad that you and my daughter appear to be close chums, and I would like to tender you my apologies for any hastiness on my part in recent days. I would also very much like to tender you and the hardworking staff here my apologies for what may have appeared to be high-handed behavior, and I trust you will accept that these stemmed from a mother’s determination to do the very best for her child.” She spoke very carefully, the words coming out like children’s colored building blocks, and between the blocks—like mortar—were the unspoken words: Please, please, don’t tell people I was a dancer in a music hall. Please!

“Well, of course, we’re all on edge,” said Tiffany. “Least said, soonest mended, as they say.”

“Regrettably,” said the Duchess, “I don’t think I said least.” Tiffany noticed that there was a large wineglass in her hand, and it was almost empty. The Duchess watched Tiffany for a while and then continued, “A wedding almost straight after a funeral, is that right?”

“Some people think that it’s bad luck to move a wedding once it’s planned,” said Tiffany.

“Do you believe in luck?” said the Duchess.

“I believe in not having to believe in luck,” said Tiffany. “But, your grace, I can tell you in truth that at such times the universe gets a little closer to us. They are strange times, times of beginnings and endings. Dangerous and powerful. And we feel it even if we don’t know what it is. These times are not necessarily good, and not necessarily bad. In fact, what they are depends on what we are.”

The Duchess looked down at the empty glass in her hand. “For some reason, I think I should be taking a nap.” She turned to head toward the stairs, nearly missing the first step.

There was a burst of laughter from the other end of the hall. Tiffany followed the Duchess but stopped to tap Letitia on the shoulder.

“If I was you, I’d go and talk to your mum before she goes upstairs. I think she’d like to talk to you now.” She bent down and whispered in her ear, “But don’t tell her too much about what Nanny Ogg said.”

Letitia looked about to object, saw Tiffany’s expression, thought better of it, and intercepted her mother.

And now, suddenly, Granny Weatherwax was at Tiffany’s side. After a while, as if addressing the air, Granny said, “You have a good steading here. Nice people. And I’ll tell you one thing. He is near.”

Tiffany noticed that the other witches—even Long Tall Short Fat Sally—were now lining up just behind Granny Weatherwax. She was the focus of their stares, and when a lot of witches are staring at you, you can feel it like the sun. “Is there something you want to say?” said Tiffany. “There is, isn’t there?”

It wasn’t often, and in fact now Tiffany came to think of it, it wasn’t ever that she had seen Granny Weatherwax look worried.

“You are certain that you can best the Cunning Man, are you not? I see you don’t wear midnight yet.”

“When I am old, I shall wear midnight,” said Tiffany. “It’s a matter of choice. And Granny, I know why you are here. It is to kill me if I fail, isn’t it?”

“Blast it,” Granny Weatherwax said. “You are a witch, a good witch. But some of us think that it might be best if we insisted on helping you.”

“No,” said Tiffany. “My steading. My mess. My problem.”

“No matter what?” said Granny.

“Definitely!”

“Well, I commend you for your adherence to your position and wish you . . . no, not luck, but certainty!” There was a susurration among the witches and Granny snapped sharply, “She has made her decision, and that, ladies, is it.”

“No contest,” said Nanny Ogg with a grin. “I very nearly pity him. Kick him in the— Kick him anywhere you can, Tiff!”

“It’s your ground,” said Mrs. Proust. “How can a witch do anything but succeed on her own home ground?”

Granny Weatherwax nodded. “If you have let pride get the better of you, then you have already lost, but if you grab pride by the scruff of the neck and ride it like a stallion, then you may have already won. And now I think it’s time for you to prepare, Miss Tiffany Aching. Do you have a plan for the morning?”

Tiffany looked into the piercing blue eyes. “Yes. Not to lose.”

“That’s a good plan.”

Mrs. Proust shook Tiffany with a hand that was prickly with warts and said, “By happy coincidence, my girl, I think I should go and slay a monster myself. . . .”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Burning the King

Tiffany knew she wouldn’t go to sleep that night, and she didn’t try. People sat together in little groups, talking, and there was still food and drink on the tables. Possibly because of the drink, the people didn’t actually notice how fast the food and drink were disappearing, but Tiffany was certain she could hear faint noises in the beams high above. Of course, witches were proverbially good at stuffing food into their pockets for later, but probably the Feegles outdid them by sheer numbers.

Tiffany moved aimlessly from group to group, and when the Duchess finally left to go upstairs, she didn’t follow her. She was quite emphatic to herself that she wasn’t following. She just happened to be going in the same direction. And, when she darted across the stone floor to reach the door of the Duchess’s room, just after it closed behind the woman, she wasn’t doing this in order to eavesdrop. Certainly not.

She was just in time to hear the beginning of an angry scream, and then Mrs. Proust’s voice: “Why, Deirdre Parsley! Long time, no sequins! Can you still high kick a man’s top hat off his head?” And then there was silence. And Tiffany left hurriedly, because the door was very thick and someone would be bound to notice if she stood there any longer with her ear pressed to it.

So she went back down in time to talk to Long Tall Short Fat Sally and Mrs. Happenstance, who she now realized was blind, which was unfortunate but not—for a witch—too much of a tragedy. They always had a few extra senses to spare.

And then she went down into the crypt.

There were flowers all around the old Baron’s tomb, but not on it because the marble lid was so beautifully made that it would be a shame even to cover it with roses. On the stone, stonemasons had carved the Baron himself, in armor and holding his sword; it was so perfectly done that it looked as if he might, at any moment, get up and walk away. At the four corners of the slab, candles burned.

Tiffany walked to and fro past other dead barons in stone. Here and there was a wife, carved with her hands peacefully folded; it was . . . strange. There were no gravestones on the Chalk. Stone was too precious. There were burying grounds, and in the castle somewhere was an ancient book of faded maps that showed where people had been put. The only common person to have a memorial, who was in most respects an extremely uncommon person, was Granny Aching; the cast-iron wheels and pot-bellied stove, which were all that remained of her shepherding hut, would certainly survive for another hundred years. It had been good metal, and the endlessly nibbling sheep kept the ground around it as smooth as a tabletop, and besides, the grease from the sheep’s fleeces as they rubbed up against the wheels was as good as oil for keeping the metal as fine as the day it was cast.

In the old days, before a knight became a knight, he would spend a night in his hall with his weapons, praying to whichever gods were listening to give him strength and good wisdom.

She was sure she heard those words spoken, at least in her head if not in her ears. She turned and looked at the sleeping knights, and she wondered if Mrs. Proust was right, and stone had a memory.

And what are my weapons? she thought. And the answer came to her instantly: pride. Oh, you hear them say it’s a sin; you hear them say it goes before a fall. And that can’t be true. The blacksmith prides himself on a good weld; the carter is proud that his horses are well turned out, gleaming like fresh chestnuts in the sunshine; the shepherd prides himself on keeping the wolf from the flock; the cook prides herself on her cakes. We pride ourselves on making a good history of our lives, a good story to be told.

And I also have fear—the fear that I will let others down—and because I fear, I will overcome that fear. I will not disgrace those who have trained me.

And I have trust, even though I am not sure what it is I am trusting.

“Pride, fear, and trust,” she said aloud. And in front of her the four candles streamed fire, as if driven by the wind, and for a moment she was certain, in the rush of light, that the figure of an old witch was melting into the dark stone. “Oh, yes,” said Tiffany. “And I have fire.”

And then, not knowing exactly why, she said, “When I am old, I shall wear midnight. But not today.”

Tiffany held up her lantern and the shadows moved, but one, which looked very much like an old woman in black, faded completely. And I know why the hare leaps into the fire, and tomorrow . . . no, today, I am leaping into it too. She smiled.

When Tiffany got back to the hall, the witches were all watching her from the stairs. Tiffany had wondered how Granny and Mrs. Proust would get on, given that both of them were as proud as a cat full of sixpences. But they seemed to be getting on well enough in a talking-about-the-weather, the-manners-of-young-people-these-days, and the-scandalous-price-of-cheese sort of way. But Nanny Ogg looked unusually worried. Seeing Nanny Ogg looking worried was worrying. It was past midnight—technically speaking, the witching hour. In real life, every hour was a witching hour, but nevertheless the way the two hands on the clock stood straight up was slightly eerie.

“I hear that the lads came back from their stag-night fun,” said Nanny, “but it seems to me they’ve forgotten where they left the groom. I don’t think he is going to go anywhere, though. They are pretty certain they took his trousers down and tied him to something.” She coughed. “That’s generally the usual procedure. Technically the best man is supposed to remember where, but they found him and he can’t remember his own name.”

The clock in the hall struck midnight; it was never on time. Each strike may as well have hit Tiffany’s backbone.

And there, marching toward her, was Preston. And it seemed to Tiffany that for quite some time, wherever she had looked, there was Preston, looking smart and clean and—somehow—hopeful.

“Look, Preston,” she said. “I haven’t got time to explain things, and I’m not certain you would believe them—no, you probably would believe them if I told you. I have to go out there to kill that monster before it kills me.”

“Then I will protect you,” said Preston. “Anyway, my commander in chief might be out there somewhere in the pigsty with a sow sniffing his unmentionables! And I represent the temporal power here!”

“You?” Tiffany snapped.

Preston stuck out his chest, although it didn’t go very far. “As a matter of fact, yes. The lads made me Officer of the Watch so that they could all have a drink, and right now the sergeant is in the kitchen, throwing up in the sink. He thought he could outdrink Mrs. Ogg!” He saluted. “I’m going out there with you, miss. And you can’t stop me. No offense meant, of course. However, by virtue of the power vested in me by the sergeant, in between him throwing up into the sink, I would like to commandeer you and your broomstick to assist me in my search, if that is all right with you?”

It was a dreadful question to ask a witch. On the other hand, it was being asked by Preston. “All right then,” she said, “but do try not to scratch it. And there is one thing that I have to do first. Do excuse me.” She walked a little way over to the open door of the hall and leaned against the cold stonework. “I know there are Feegles listening to me,” she said.

“Oh, aye,” said a voice about one inch from her ear.

“Well, I don’t want you to help me tonight. This is a hag thing, you understand?”

“Oh, aye, we seen the big posse of hags. It’s a big hag night.”

“I must—” Tiffany began. And then an idea struck her. “I have to fight the man with no eyes. And they are here to see how good a fighter I am. And so I mustn’t cheat by using Feegles. That’s an important hag rule. Of course, I respect the fact that cheating is an honorable Feegle tradition, but hags don’t cheat,” she went on, aware that this was a huge lie. “If you help me, they will know, and all the hags will put me to scorn.”

And Tiffany thought, And if I lose, it will be Feegles versus hags, and that’s a battle that the world will remember. No pressure, eh?

Aloud, she said, “You understand, right? This once, just this once, you will do as I tell you and not help me.”

“Aye, we understand ye. But ye ken that Jeannie says we must look out for ye at all times, because ye are our hag o’ the hills,” said Rob.

“I’m sorry to say that the kelda is not here,” said Tiffany, “but I am, and I have to tell you that if you help me this once, I will no longer be your hag o’ the hills. I’m under a geas, ye ken. It’s a hag geas, and that’s a big geas indeed.” She heard a group groan, and added, “I mean it. The chief hag is Granny Weatherwax, and you know her.” There was another groan. “There you are then,” said Tiffany. “This time, please, let me do things my way. Is that understood?”

There was a pause, and then the voice of Rob Anybody said, “Och, aye.”

“Very well,” said Tiffany, and took a deep breath and went to find her broomstick.

Taking Preston with her didn’t seem such a good idea as they rose above the roofs of the castle.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you were scared of flying?” she said.

“That’s hardly fair,” said Preston. “This is the first time I’ve ever flown.”

When they were at a decent height, Tiffany looked at the weather. There were clouds above the mountains, and the occasional flash of summer lightning. She could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. You were never far from a thunderstorm in the mountains. The mist had lifted, and the moon was up; it was a perfect night. And there was a breeze. She had hoped for this. And Preston had his arms around her waist; she wasn’t sure whether she had hoped for that or not.

They were well down onto the plains at the foot of the Chalk now, and even by moonlight Tiffany could see dark rectangles where earlier fields had been cleared. The men were always meticulous about not letting the fires get out of hand; nobody wanted wildfire—there was no telling what that would burn. The field they reached was the very last one. They always called it the King. Usually when the King was burned, half the village was waiting to catch any game that fled the flames. That should have happened today, but everybody had been . . . otherwise occupied.

The chicken houses and the pigsty were in a field just above it at the top of a bank, and it was said that the King grew such bountiful crops because the men found it much easier to cart the mulch onto the King rather than take it all to the lower fields.

They landed by the pigsties, to the usual ferocious screaming of piglets, who believe that no matter what is actually happening, the world is trying to saw them in half.

She sniffed. The air smelled of pig; she was sure, absolutely sure, that she would nevertheless smell the ghost if and when he was here. Mucky though they were, the pigs had a natural smell; the smell of the ghost, on the other hand, would make a pig smell like violets by comparison. She shuddered. The wind was getting up.

“Are you sure you can kill it?” whispered Preston.

“I think I can make it kill itself. And Preston, I absolutely forbid you to help me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Preston. “Temporal power, you understand. You can’t give me orders, Miss Aching, if that’s all right by you.”

“You mean your sense of duty and your obedience to your commander mean that you must help me?” she said.

“Well, yes, miss,” said Preston, “and a few other considerations.”

“Then I really need you, Preston, I really do. I think I could do this myself, but it will make it so much easier if you help me. What I want you to do is—”

She was almost certain that the ghost would not be able to overhear, but she lowered her voice anyway, and Preston absorbed her words without blinking and simply said, “That sounds pretty straightforward, miss. You can rely on the temporal power.”

“Yuck! How did I end up here?”

Something gray and sticky and smelling very much of pig and beer tried to pull itself over the pigsty wall. Tiffany knew it was Roland, but only because it was highly improbable that two bridegrooms had been thrown into the pigsty tonight. And he rose like something nasty from the swamp, dripping . . . well, just dripping; there was hardly any necessity to go into details. Bits of him splashed off.

He hiccupped. “There appears to be an enormous pig in my bedroom, and it would seem that I have mislaid my trousers,” he said, his voice baffled by alcohol. The young Baron peered around, understanding not so much dawning as bursting. “I don’t think this is my bedroom, is it?” he said, and slowly slipped back into the sty,

She smelled the ghost. Over and above the mix of smells coming from the pigsty, it stood out like a fox among chickens. And now the ghost spoke, in a voice of horror and decay. I can feel you here, witch, and others, too. I do not care about them, but this new body, while not very robust, has . . . a permanent agenda of its own. I am strong. I am coming. You cannot save everybody. I doubt if your fiendish flying stick can carry four people. Who will you leave behind? Why not leave them all? Why not leave the tiresome rival, the boy who spurned you, and the persistent young man? Oh, I know how you think, witch!

But I don’t think that way, Tiffany thought to herself. Oh, I might have liked to see Roland in the pigsty, but people aren’t just people; they are people surrounded by circumstances.

But you aren’t. You’re not even people anymore.

Beside her, with a horrible sucking noise, Preston pulled Roland out of the pigsty, against the protest of the sow. How lucky for both of them that they couldn’t hear the voice.

She paused. Four people? The tiresome rival? But there was only herself, Roland, and Preston, wasn’t there?

She looked toward the far end of the field, in the moon shadow of the castle. A white figure was running toward them at top speed.

It had to be Letitia. Nobody around here wore so much billowing white all the time. Tiffany’s mind spun with the algebra of tactics.

“Preston, off you go. Take the broomstick.”

Preston nodded and then saluted, with a grin. “At your service, miss.”

Letitia arrived in a flurry and expensive white slippers. She stopped dead when she saw Roland, who was sober enough to try to cover, with his hands, what Tiffany knew she would always now think of as his passionate parts. This simply made a squelching noise, since he was thickly encrusted in pig muck.

“One of his chums told me they threw him in the pigsty for a laugh!” Letitia said indignantly. “And they call themselves his friends!”

“I think they think that’s what friends are for,” said Tiffany absentmindedly. To herself she thought, Is this going to work? Have I overlooked something? Have I understood what I should do? Who do I think I’m talking to? I suppose I’m looking for a sign, just a sign.

There was a rustling noise. She looked down. A hare looked up at her and then, without panicking, lost herself in the stubbles.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” said Tiffany, and felt panicked herself. After all, was that an omen, or was it just a hare who was old enough not to run instantly when she saw people? And it wasn’t good manners, she was sure, to ask for a second sign to tell you if the first sign wasn’t just a coincidence . . . was it?

At this point, this very point, Roland started to sing, possibly because of drink, but also perhaps because Letitia was industriously wiping him down while keeping her eyes closed so that, as an unmarried woman, she wouldn’t see anything unseemly or surprising. And the song that Roland sang went: “Tis pleasant and delightful on the bright summer’s morn, to see the fields and meadows all covered in corn, and the small birds were singing on every green spray, and the larks they sang melodious, at the dawning of the day. . . .” He paused. “My father used to sing that quite a lot when we walked in these fields . . .” he said. He was at that stage when drunken men start to cry, and the tears left little trails of pink behind as the muck was washed from his cheeks.

But Tiffany thought, Thank you. An omen was an omen. You picked the ones that worked. And this was the big field, the field where they burned the last of the stubbles. And the hare runs into the fire. Oh, yes, the omens. They were always so important.

“Listen to me, both of you. I am not going to be argued with by you, because you, Roland, are rascally drunk and you, Letitia, are a witch”—Letitia beamed at that point—“who is junior to me, and therefore both of you will do what I tell you. And that way, all of us may get back to the castle alive.”

They both stopped and listened, Roland swaying gently.

“When I shout,” Tiffany continued, “I want you to each grab one of my hands and run! Turn if I turn, stop if I stop, although I doubt very much that I shall want to stop. Above all, don’t be afraid, and trust me. I’m almost sure I know what I’m doing.” Tiffany realized that this wasn’t the best assurance, but they didn’t seem to notice. She added, “And when I say leap, leap as if a devil is behind you, because it will be.”

The stink was suddenly unbearable. The sheer hatred in it seemed to beat on Tiffany’s brain. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes, she thought as she stared into the nighttime gloom. By the stinking of my nose, something evil this way goes, she added, to stop herself from gibbering as she scanned the distant hedge for movement.

And there was a figure.

There, heavyset, walking toward them down the length of the field. It moved slowly but was gathering speed. There was an awkwardness about it. “When he takes over a body, the owner of the body becomes a part of it, too. No escape, no release.” That’s what Eskarina had told her. Nothing good, nothing capable of redemption, could have thoughts that stank like that. She gripped the hands of the arguing couple and dragged them into a run. The . . . creature was between them and the castle. And was going more slowly than she’d expected. She risked another look and saw the glint of metal in its hands. Knives.

“Come on!”

“These aren’t very good shoes for running in,” Letitia pointed out.

“My head aches,” Roland supplied as Tiffany towed them toward the bottom of the field, ignoring all complaints as dry cornstalks snatched at them, caught hair, scratched legs, and stung feet. They were barely going at a jog. The creature was following them doggedly. As soon as they turned to run up toward the castle and safety, it would gain on them. . . .

But the creature was having difficulties as well, and Tiffany wondered how far you could push a body if you didn’t feel its pain, couldn’t feel the agony of the lungs, the pounding of the heart, the cracking of the bones, the dreadful ache that pushed you to the last gasp and beyond. Mrs. Proust had whispered to her, eventually, the things that the man Macintosh had done, as if saying the words aloud would pollute the air. Against that, how did you rank the crushing of the little songbird? And yet somehow that lodged in the mind as a crime beyond mercy.

There will be no mercy for a song now silenced. No redemption for killing hope in the darkness. I know you.

You are what whispered in Petty’s ear before he beat up his daughter.

You are the first blast of the rough music.

You look over the shoulder at the man as he picks up the first stone, and although I think you are part of us all and we will never be rid of you, we can certainly make your life hell.

No mercy. No redemption.

Glancing back, she saw its face looming bigger now and redoubled her efforts to drag the tired and reluctant couple over the rough ground. She managed a breath to say, “Look at him! Look at it! Do you want him to catch us?” She heard a brief scream from Letitia and a groan of sudden sobriety from her husband-to-be. The eyes of the luckless Macintosh were bloodshot and wide-open, the lips stuck in a frenzied grin. It tried to take advantage of the sudden narrowed gap, but the other two had found fresh strength in their fear, and they were almost pulling Tiffany along.

And now there was a clear run up the field. It all depended on Preston. Amazingly, Tiffany felt confident. He is trustworthy, she thought, but there was a horrible gurgle behind them. The ghost was driving its host harder, and she could imagine the swish of a long knife. Timing had to be everything. Preston was trustworthy. He had understood, hadn’t he? Of course he had. She could trust Preston.

Later on, what she remembered most was the silence, broken only by the crackling of the stalks and the heavy breathing of Letitia and Roland and the horrible wheezing of their pursuer. In her head, the silence was broken by the voice of the Cunning Man.

You are setting a trap. Filth! Do you think I can be so easily caught again? Little girls who play with fire will get burned, and you will burn, I promise you, oh, you will burn. Where then will be the pride of witches? Vessels of iniquity! Handmaidens of uncleanliness! Defilers of all that is holy!

Tiffany kept her eyes fixed on the end of the field as tears streamed out. She couldn’t help it. It was impossible to keep the vileness out; it drizzled in like poison, seeping into her ears and flowing under her skin.

Another swish in the air behind them made all three runners find new strength, but she knew it couldn’t go on. Was that Preston she saw in the gloom ahead? Then who was the dark figure beside him, looking like an old witch in a pointy hat? Even as she stared at it, it faded away.

But suddenly fire burst up, and Tiffany could hear the crackling as it spread like a sunrise across the field toward them, sparks filling the sky with extra stars. And the wind blew hard, and she heard the stinking voice again: You will burn. You will burn!

And the wind gusted and the flames blew up, and now a wall of fire was racing through the stubbles as fast as the wind itself. Tiffany looked down, and the hare was back, running along beside them without any apparent effort; she looked at Tiffany, flicked up her legs, and ran, ran directly toward the fire now, seriously ran.

“Run!” Tiffany commanded. “The fire will not burn you if you do what I say! Run fast! Run fast! Roland, run to save Letitia. Letitia, run to save Roland.”

The fire was almost on them. I need the strength, she thought. I need the power. And she remembered Nanny Ogg saying, “The world changes. The world flows. There’s power there, my girl.”

Weddings and funerals are a time of power . . . yes, weddings.

Tiffany grasped their two hands even tighter. And here it came. A crackling, roaring wall of flame . . .

“Leap!”

And as they leaped, she screamed “Leap, knave. Jump, whore.” She felt them lift as the fire reached them.

Time hesitated. A mouse sped past beneath them, fleeing in terror from the flames. He will flee, she thought. He will run from the fire, but the fire will run to him. And the fire runs much faster than a dying body.

Tiffany floated in a ball of yellow flame. The hare drifted past her, a creature happy in her element. We are not as fast as you, she thought. We will get singed. She looked right and left at the bride and groom, who were staring ahead as if hypnotized, and pulled them toward her. She understood. I am going to marry you, Roland. I said I would.

She would make something beautiful out of this fire.

“Back to the hells you came from, you Cunning Man,” she yelled above the flames. “Leap, knave! Jump, whore!” she screamed again. “Be married now forever more!” And this is a wedding, she said to herself. A fresh start. And for a few seconds in the world, this is a place of power. Oh, yes, a place of power.

They landed, rolling, behind the wall of fire. Tiffany was ready, stamping out embers and kicking the small flames that remained. Preston was suddenly there too, picking up Letitia and carrying her out of the ash. Tiffany put an arm round Roland, who had had a soft landing (possibly on his head, part of Tiffany thought), and followed him.

“Looks like very minor burns and some frizzled hair,” said Preston, “and as for your old boyfriend, I think his mud is now baked on. How did you manage it?”

Tiffany took a deep breath. “The hare jumps through the flames so fast that she barely feels them,” she said, “and when she lands, she lands on hot ash, mostly. A grass fire burns out quickly under a strong wind.”

There was a scream from behind them, and she imagined a lumbering figure trying to outrun the wind-driven flames bearing down on it, and failing. She felt the pain of a creature that had twisted through the world for hundreds of years.

“The three of you, stay right here. Do not follow me! Preston, look after them!”

Tiffany walked across the cooling ash. I have to see, she thought. I have to witness. I have to know what it is that I have done!

The dead man’s clothes were smoldering. There was no pulse. He did terrible things to people, she thought, things that made even the prison warders sick. But what was done to him first? Was he just a much worse version of Mr. Petty? Could he ever have been good? How do you change the past? Where does evil begin?

She felt the words slide into her mind like a worm: Murderer, filth, killer! And she felt she should apologize to her ears for what they had to hear. But the voice of the ghost was weak and thin and querulous, sliding backward into history.

You can’t reach me, she thought. You are used up. You are too weak now. How hard was it, forcing a man to run himself to death? You can’t get in. I can feel you trying. She reached down into the ash and picked up a lump of flint, still warm from the fire; the soil was full of it, the sharpest of stones. Born in the chalk, and so, in a way, was Tiffany. Its smoothness was the touch of a friend.

“You never learn, do you?” she said. “You don’t understand that other people think too. Of course you wouldn’t run into the fire; but in your arrogance you never realized that the fire would run to you.”

Your power is only rumor and lies, she thought. You bore your way into people when they are uncertain and weak and worried and frightened, and they think their enemy is other people when their enemy is, and always will be, you—the master of lies. Outside, you are fearsome; inside, you are nothing but weakness.

Inside, I am flint.

She felt the heat of the whole field, steadied herself, and gripped the stone. How dare you come here, you worm! How dare you trespass on what is mine! She felt the flint get hotter in her hand and then melt and flow between her fingers and drip onto the soil as she concentrated. She had never tried this before, and she took a deep breath of air that somehow the flames had cleansed.

And if you come back, Cunning Man, there will be another witch like me. There will always be another witch like me, because there are always going to be things like you, because we make space for them. But right now, on this bleeding piece of earth, I am the witch and you are nothing. By the blinking of my eyes, something wicked this way dies.

A hiss in her mind faded away and left her alone among her thoughts.

“No mercy,” she said aloud, “no redemption. You forced a man to kill his harmless songbird, and somehow I think that was the greatest crime of them all.”

By the time she had walked back up the field, she had managed to become, once again, the Tiffany Aching who knew how to make cheese and deal with everyday chores and didn’t squeeze molten rock between her fingers.

The happy but slightly singed couple was beginning to take some notice of things. Letitia sat up. “I feel cooked,” she said. “What’s that smell?”

“Sorry, it’s you,” said Tiffany, “and I’m afraid that wonderful lace nightshirt might just about be usable to clean windows from now on. I’m afraid we didn’t leap as fast as the hare.”

Letitia looked around. “Is Roland . . . is he all right?”

“Right as rain,” said Preston cheerily. “The wet pig muck really helped.”

Letitia paused for a moment. “And that . . . thing?”

“Gone,” said Tiffany.

“Are you sure Roland is all right?” Letitia insisted.

Preston grinned. “Absolutely tickety-boo, miss. Nothing important has been burned away, although it might be a little painful when we take the crusts off. He’s somewhat baked on, if you get my meaning.”

Letitia nodded and then turned, slowly, to Tiffany. “What was that you said when we were jumping?”

Tiffany took a deep breath. “I married you.”

“You, that is to say you, married, which is to say, wedded . . . us?” said Letitia.

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “That is to say, certainly. Jumping over the fire together is a very ancient form of marriage. Doesn’t need any priests either, which is a great saving on the catering.”

The possible bride weighed this one up. “Are you sure?”

“Well, that’s what Mrs. Ogg told me,” said Tiffany, “and I’ve always wanted to try it.”

This seemed to meet with Letitia’s approval, because she said, “Mrs. Ogg is a very knowledgeable lady, I must admit. She knows a surprising number of things.”

Tiffany, keeping her face as straight as possible, said, “A surprising number of surprising things.”

“Oh, yes . . . Er.” Letitia cleared her throat rather hesitantly and followed up “er” with an “um.”

“Is something wrong?” said Tiffany.

“That word you used about me while we were jumping. I think it was a bad word.”

Tiffany had been expecting this. “Well, apparently it’s traditional.” Her voice almost as hesitant as Letitia’s, she added, “And I don’t think Roland is a knave, either. And, of course, words and their usage do change over the years.”

“I don’t think that one does!” said Letitia.

“Well, it depends on circumstance and context,” said Tiffany. “But frankly, Letitia, a witch will use any tool at hand in an emergency, as you might learn one day. Besides, the way we think about some words does change. For example, do you know the meaning of the word ‘buxom’?”

Tiffany thought to herself, Why am I making this small talk? I know: because it’s an anchor, and reassures me that I am a human being among other humans, and it helps wash the terror out of my soul. . . .

“Yes,” said the bride-to-be. “I’m afraid I’m not, very, um, large in that department.”

“That would have been a bit unfortunate a couple of hundred years ago, because the wedding service in those days required a bride to be buxom toward her husband.”

“I’d have had to push a cushion down my bodice!”

“Not really; it used to mean kind, understanding, and obedient,” said Tiffany.

“Oh, I can do those,” said Letitia. “At least, the first two,” she added with a grin. She cleared her throat. “What is it, apart from getting married, of course—and I am very amused about that—that we have just done?”

“Well,” said Tiffany. “You have helped me trap one of the worst monsters that has ever fouled the world.”

The new bride brightened up. “Did we? Well, that’s good,” she said. “I’m very glad we did that. I don’t know how we can repay you for all your help though.”

“Well, clean used linen and old boots are always welcome,” said Tiffany seriously. “But you don’t have to thank me for being a witch. I’d much prefer that you thanked my friend Preston. He put himself in real danger for the pair of you. At least we were together. He was out here all by himself.”

“That is, in point of actual fact,” said Preston, “not entirely accurate. Apart from anything else, all my matches were damp, but fortuitously Mr. Daft Wullie and his chums were very kind enough to lend me some. And I’ve been told to tell ye that that was okay, because they was helping me, not ye! And although there are ladies present, I have to say that they did assist in getting things going quickly by flapping the flames with their kilts. A sight, I may say, that once seen is never forgotten.”

“I would very much have liked to see it,” said Letitia politely.

“Anyway,” said Tiffany, trying to get the mental picture out of her mind, “it might be best to concentrate on the fact that you will be somewhat more acceptably married by Pastor Egg tomorrow. And you know something very important about tomorrow? It’s today!”

Roland, who was holding his head and groaning, blinked and said, “What is?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A Shadow and a Whisper

It was, on the whole, a pretty good wedding in Tiffany’s opinion, a pretty good wedding. Pastor Egg, aware of the unusual number of witches in the audience, kept the religion to a minimum. The blushing bride walked up the hall, and Tiffany saw her blush a little more when she caught sight of Nanny Ogg, who gave her a cheerful thumbs-up as she passed. And then there was the throwing of the rice, followed of course by the careful sweeping up of the rice, because it is wicked to waste good food.

Then there was general cheering and congratulations and, to the surprise of some, a happy, beaming Duchess, who chatted merrily, even to the maids, and appeared to have a kind and reassuring word for everybody. And only Tiffany knew why the woman shot occasional nervous glances toward Mrs. Proust.

Tiffany left then, to sneak away and help Preston in the King field, where he was digging a hole deep enough so that the plow would never find the charred remains that were collected and thrown down it. They washed their hands with vicious lye soap, because you could never be too careful. It was not, strictly speaking, a very romantic occasion.

“Do you think he will ever come back?” asked Preston as they leaned on their shovels.

Tiffany nodded. “The Cunning Man will, at least. Poison is always welcome somewhere.”

“What will you do now that he’s gone?”

“Oh, you know, all the exciting stuff; somewhere there is always a leg that needs bandaging or a nose that needs blowing. It’s busy, busy all day long.”

“It doesn’t sound very exciting.”

“Well, I suppose so,” said Tiffany, “but compared to yesterday, that kind of day suddenly seems to be a very good day.” They headed toward the hall, where the wedding breakfast was now being served as lunch. “You are a young man of considerable resourcefulness,” Tiffany said to Preston, “and I thank you very much for your help.”

Preston nodded happily. “Thank you very much for that, miss, thank you very much indeed, but with just one little—how can I put it—correction. You are, after all, sixteen, more or less, and I am seventeen, so I think you will conclude that calling me young man . . . I will own up to a cheerful and youthful disposition, but I am older than you, my girl.”

There was a pause. Then Tiffany said carefully, “How do you know how old I am?”

“I asked around,” said Preston, his eager smile never leaving his face.

“Why?”

Tiffany didn’t get an answer because the sergeant came out of the main door with confetti cascading off his helmet. “Oh, there you are, miss. The Baron’s been asking after you, and so has the Baroness.” He paused to smile and said, “Nice to have one of them again.” His gaze fell on Preston and the sergeant frowned. “Lollygagging again, as usual, Lance Private Preston?”

Preston saluted smartly, “You are correct in your surmise, Sergeant; you have voiced an absolute truth.” This got Preston the puzzled glare he always got from the sergeant, and there was also a disapproving grunt, which meant: One day I’ll work out what it is you are saying, my lad, and then you’ll be in trouble.

Weddings can be rather similar to funerals in that, apart from the main players, when it’s all over, people are never quite sure what they should be doing next, which is why they see if there is any wine left. But Letitia was looking radiant, which is compulsory for brides, and the slightly frizzled bits of her hair had been neatly concealed by her brilliant, sparkly tiara. Roland had also scrubbed up quite well, and you had to be quite close to him to smell pig.

“About last night . . .” he began nervously. “Er, it did happen, didn’t it? I mean, I remember the pigsty, and we were all running, but . . .” His voice faded away.

Tiffany looked at Letitia, who mouthed the words, “I remember everything!”

Yes, she really is a witch, Tiffany thought. That’s going to be interesting.

Roland coughed. Tiffany smiled. “Dear Miss Aching,” he said, and for once Tiffany forgave him his public-meeting voice, “I am well aware that I have been party to a miscarriage of natural justice vis-à-vis your good self.” He stopped to clear his throat again, and Tiffany thought, I really hope that Letitia can wash some of the starch out of him. “With this in mind, I spoke to young Preston here, who talked to the kitchen girls in his cheery way and found out where the nurse had gone. She had spent some of the money, but most of it is here, and it is, I am happy to say, yours.”

At this point somebody nudged Tiffany.

It was Preston, who hissed, “We’ve found this, too.”

She looked down, and he pressed a worn leather folder into her hand. She nodded in grateful thanks and looked at Roland. “Your father wanted you to have this,” she said. “It may be worth more to you than all that money. I would wait until you are alone before you look at it.”

He turned it over in his hands. “What is it?”

“Just a memory,” said Tiffany. “Just a memory.”

The sergeant stepped forward then and tipped a heavy leather bag onto the table, among the glasses and flowers. There was a gasp from the guests.

I’m being watched like hawks by my sister witches, thought Tiffany, and I am also being watched by practically everyone I know, and who knows me. I’ve got to do this right. And I’ve got to do this so that everybody remembers it.

“I think you should keep it, sir,” she said. Roland looked relieved, but Tiffany went on, “However, I have a few simple requests on behalf of other people.”

Letitia nudged her husband in the ribs, and he spread out his hands. “This is my wedding day! How can I refuse any request?”

“The girl Amber Petty needs a dowry, which, incidentally, would allow her young man to buy his indenture to a master craftsman, and you might not be aware that he sewed the gown that is currently adorning your beautiful young wife. Have you ever seen anything finer?”

This got an immediate round of applause, along with whistles from Roland’s chums, who whimsically called out things like “Which one? The girl or the dress!” When that was over, Tiffany said, “And furthermore, sir, and with your indulgence, I would like your pledge that any boy or girl from the Chalk with such a similar request will find you obliging. I think you will agree that I am asking for a lot less than I am returning to you?”

“Tiffany, I believe you are correct,” said Roland, “but I suspect you have more up your sleeve?”

“How well you know me, sir,” said Tiffany, and Roland, just for a moment, went pink.

“I want a school, sir. I want a school here on the Chalk. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time—in fact, for longer than I had worked out the name for what I wanted. There’s an old barn on Home Farm that isn’t being used right now, and I think we could make it quite acceptable in a week or so.”

“Well, the traveling teachers do come through every few months,” said the Baron.

“Yes, sir, I know, sir, and they’re useless, sir. They teach facts, not understanding. It’s like teaching people about forests by showing them a saw. I want a proper school, sir, to teach reading and writing, and most of all thinking, sir, so people can find what they’re good at, because someone doing what they really like is always an asset to any country, and too often people never find out until it’s too late.” She deliberately looked away from the sergeant, but her words had caused a susurration around the room that Tiffany was glad to hear. She drowned it out with “There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having. And I’d like the boys to learn about girls and I’d like the girls to learn about boys. Learning is about finding out who you are, what you are, where you are and what you are standing on and what you are good at and what’s over the horizon and, well, everything. It’s about finding the place where you fit. I found the place where I fit, and I would like everybody else to find theirs. And may I please propose that Preston be the school’s first teacher? He pretty much knows everything there is to know as it is.”

Preston bowed low with his helmet off, which got a laugh.

Tiffany went on, “And his reward for a year’s teaching work for you will be, yes, enough money for him to buy the letters to go after his name so that he can become a doctor. Witches can’t do everything, and we could do with a doctor in these parts.”

All this got a big cheer, which is what generally happens when people have worked out that they are likely to get something that they won’t have to pay for. When that had died down, Roland looked the sergeant in the eye and said, “Do you think you can manage without Preston’s military prowess, Sergeant?”

This precipitated another laugh. That’s good, Tiffany thought; laughter helps things slide into the thinking.

Sergeant Brian tried to look solemn, but he wasn’t concealing a smile. “It would be a bit of a blow, sir, but I think we might just about manage. Yes, I think I can say that the departure of Lance Private Preston will enhance the overall efficiency of the squad, sir.”

This caused more general applause from people who hadn’t worked it out and laughter from those who had.

The Baron clapped his hands together. “Well then, Miss Aching, it would appear that you have gotten everything you asked for, yes?”

“Actually, sir, I haven’t finished asking yet. There is one more thing, and it won’t cost you anything, so don’t worry about that.” Tiffany took a deep breath and tried to make herself look taller. “I require that you give to the peoples known as the Nac Mac Feegle all the downland above Home Farm, that it should be theirs forever in law as well as in justice. A proper deed can be drawn up, and don’t worry about the cost—I know a toad who will do it for a handful of beetles—and it will say that for their part the Feegles will allow all shepherds and sheep untrammeled access to the downs, but there will be—and this is important—no sharp metal beyond a knife. All this will cost you nothing, my lord Baron, but what you and your descendants, and I hope you are intending to have descendants—” Tiffany had to stop there because of the gale of laughter, in which Nanny Ogg took a large part, and then she continued. “My lord Baron, I think you will assure yourself of a friendship that will never die. Gain all, lose nothing.”

To his credit, Roland hardly hesitated, and said, “I would be honored to present the Nac Mac Feegle with the deeds to their land, and I regret, no, I apologize for any misunderstandings between us. As you say, they deserve their land by right and by justice.”

Tiffany was impressed by the short speech. The language was slightly stuffy, but his heart was in the right place, and slightly stuffy language suited the Feegles very well. To her joy, there was another susurration in the beams high over the castle’s hall. And the Baron, looking a lot more like a real Baron now, went on, “I only wish that I could tell them this personally right now.”

And from the darkness above came one mighty cry of:

“CRIVENS!”

The wind was silver and cold. Tiffany opened her eyes, with the cheer of the Feegles still ringing in her ears. It was replaced by the rattle of dried grass in the wind. She tried to sit up but got nowhere, and a voice behind her said, “Please don’t wriggle—this is very difficult.”

Tiffany tried to turn her head. “Eskarina?”

“Yes. There is somebody here who wants to talk to you. You may get up now; I have balanced the nodes. Don’t ask questions, because you would not understand the answers. You are in the traveling now again. Now and again, you might say. I will leave you to your friend . . . and I am afraid you cannot have much time, for a given value of time. But I must protect my son . . .”

Tiffany said, “You mean you’ve got—” She stopped because a figure was forming in front of her and became a witch, a classic witch with the black dress, black boots—rather nice ones, Tiffany noted—and, of course, the pointy hat. She had a necklace, too. On the chain was a golden hare.

The woman herself was old, but it was hard to say how old. She stood proudly, like Granny Weatherwax, but like Nanny Ogg she seemed to suggest that old age, or something, wasn’t really being taken seriously.

But Tiffany concentrated on the necklace. People wore jewelry to show you something. It always had a meaning, if you concentrated.

“All right, all right,” she said, “I have just one question: I’m not here to bury you, am I?”

“My word, you are quick,” said the woman. “You have immediately devised a remarkably interesting narrative and instantly guessed who I am.” She laughed. The voice was younger than her face. “No, Tiffany. Interestingly macabre though your suggestion is, the answer is no. I remember Granny Weatherwax telling me that when you get right down to it, the world is all about stories, and Tiffany Aching is extremely good at endings.”

“I am?”

“Oh, yes. Classic endings to a romantic story are a wedding or a legacy, and you have been the engineer for one of each. Well done.”

“You are me, right?” said Tiffany. “That’s what the ‘you have to help yourself’ business was about, yes?”

The older Tiffany grinned, and Tiffany could not help noticing that it was a very nice grin. “As a matter of fact, I only interfered in a few small ways. Like, for example, making certain the wind really did blow very hard for you . . . although, as I recall, a certain colony of little men added their own special excitement to the venture. I’m never quite certain if my memory is good or bad. That’s time travel for you.”

“You can travel in time?”

“With some help from our friend Eskarina. And only as a shadow and a whisper. It’s a bit like the don’t-see-me thing that I . . . that we— You have to persuade time not to take any notice.”

“But why did you want to talk to me?” said Tiffany.

“Well, the infuriating answer is that I remembered that I did,” said old Tiffany. “Sorry, that’s time travel again. But I think I wanted to tell you that it all works out, more or less. It all falls into place. You’ve taken the first step.”

“There’s a second step?” said Tiffany.

“No; there’s another first step. Every step is a first step if it’s a step in the right direction.”

“But hold on,” said Tiffany. “Won’t I be you one day? And then will I talk to me now, as it were?”

“Yes, but the you that you talk to won’t exactly be you. I’m very sorry about this, but I am having to talk about time travel in a language that can’t really account for it. But in short, Tiffany, according to the elasticated string theory, throughout the rest of time, somewhere an old Tiffany will be talking to a young Tiffany, and the fascinating thing is that every time they do, they will be a little bit different. When you meet your younger self, you will tell her what you think she needs to know.”

“But I have got a question,” said Tiffany. “And it’s one I want to know the answer to.”

“Well, do be quick,” said old Tiffany. “The elasticated string thingy, or whatever it is that Eskarina uses, does not allow us very much time.”

“Well,” said Tiffany, “can you at least tell me: Do I ever get—?”

Old Tiffany faded, smiling into nothingness, but Tiffany heard one word. It sounded like “Listen.”

And then she was in the hall again, as if she’d never left it at all, and people were cheering and there seemed to be Feegles everywhere. And Preston was by her side. It was as if ice had suddenly melted. But when she got her balance back and stopped asking herself what had just happened, had really happened, Tiffany looked for the other witches and saw that they were talking among themselves, like judges adding up a score.

The huddle broke up, and they came toward her purposefully, led by Granny Weatherwax. When they reached her, they bowed and raised their hats, which is a mark of respect in the craft.

Granny Weatherwax looked at her sternly. “I see you have burned your hand, Tiffany.”

Tiffany looked down. “I didn’t notice,” she said. “Can I ask you now, Granny? Would you all have killed me?” She saw the expressions of the other witches change.

Granny Weatherwax looked around and paused for a moment. “Let us say, young woman, we would have done our best not to. But all in all, Tiffany, it seems to us that you’ve done a woman’s job today. The place where we looks for witches is at the center of things. Well, we looks around here and we see that you is so central that this steading spins on you. You are your own mistress, nevertheless, and if you don’t start training somebody, that will be a waste. We leave this steading in the best of hands.”

The witches clapped, and some of the other guests joined in, even though they did not understand what those few sentences had meant. What they did recognize, however, was that these were mostly elderly, experienced, important, and scary witches. And they were paying their respect to Tiffany Aching, one of them, their witch. And she was a very important witch, and so the Chalk had to be a very important place. Of course, they had known that all along but it was nice to have it acknowledged. They stood a little straighter and felt proud.

Mrs. Proust removed her hat again and said, “Please don’t be afraid to come back to the city, Miss Aching. I think I can promise you a thirty percent discount on all Boffo products, except for perishables or consumables, an offer not to be sneezed at.”

The group of witches raised their hats in unison again and walked back into the crowd.

“You know all that just now was organizing people’s lives for them,” said Preston behind her, but as she spun round, he backed away laughing and added, “But in a good way. You are the witch, Tiffany. You are the witch!”

And people drank a toast and there was more food, and more dancing and laughter and friendship and tiredness, and at midnight Tiffany Aching lay alone on her broomstick high above the chalk hills and looked up at the universe, and then down on the bit of it that belonged to her. She was the witch, floating high over everything but, it must be said, with the leather strap carefully buckled.

The stick rose and fell gently as warm breezes took it, and as tiredness and darkness took her, she stretched out her arms to the dark and, just for a moment, as the world turned, Tiffany Aching wore midnight.

She didn’t come down until the sun was crusting the horizon with light. And she woke up to birdsong. All across the Chalk, the larks were rising as they did every morning in a symphony of liquid sound. They did indeed sing melodious. They streamed up past the stick, paying it no attention at all, and Tiffany listened, entranced, until the last bird had gotten lost in the brilliant sky.

She landed, made breakfast for an old lady who was bed bound, fed her cat, and went to see how Trivial Boxer’s broken leg was doing.* She was stopped halfway there by the neighbor of old Miss Swivel, who had apparently become suddenly unable to walk overnight, but Tiffany was fortunately able to point out that she had regrettably put both feet through one knicker leg.

Then she went down into the castle to see what else needed doing.

After all, she was the witch.

EPILOGUE

Midnight by Day

It was the scouring fair again, the same noisy hurdy-gurdy, the bobbing for frogs, the fortune-telling, the laughter, the pickpockets (though never of a witch’s pocket), but this year, by common consent, no cheese rolling. Tiffany walked through it all, nodding at people she knew, which was everybody, and generally enjoying the sunshine. Had it been a year? So much had happened, it all swam together, like the sounds of the fair.

“Good afternoon, miss.”

And there was Amber, with her boy—with her husband. . . .

“Nearly didn’t recognize you, miss,” said Amber cheerfully, “what with you not having your pointy hat on, if you see what I mean.”

“I thought I’d just be Tiffany Aching today,” said Tiffany. “It is a holiday, after all.”

“But you are still the witch?”

“Oh, yes, I’m still the witch, but I’m not necessarily the hat.”

Amber’s husband laughed. “I know what you mean, miss! Sometimes I swear that people think I’m a pair of hands!” Tiffany looked him up and down. They had met properly when she had married him to Amber, of course, and she had been impressed; he was what they called a steady lad and as sharp as his needles. He would go far, and take Amber with him. And after Amber finished her training under the kelda, who knew where she would take him?

Amber hung on his arm as if it was an oak. “My William done a little present for you, miss,” she said. “Go on, William, show her!”

The young man proffered the package he had been carrying and cleared his throat. “I don’t know if you keep up with the fashions, miss, but they are doing wonderful fabrics now down in the big city, so when Amber suggested this to me, I thought of them. But it also has to be washable, for a start, with perhaps a split skirt for the broomstick, and leg-of-mutton sleeves, which are all the rage this season, and with buttons tight at the wrists to keep them out of the way, and pockets on the inside and styled to be hardly noticeable. I hope it fits, miss. I’m good at measuring without a tape. It’s a knack.”

Amber bounced up and down at his side. “Put it on, miss! Go on, miss! Put it on!”

“What? In front of all these people?” said Tiffany, embarrassed and intrigued at the same time.

Amber was not to be denied. “There’s the mother-and-baby tent, miss! No men in there, miss, no fear! They’d be afraid that they would have to burp somebody, miss!”

Tiffany gave in. The package had a rich feel to it; it felt soft, like a glove. Mothers and babies watched her as she slid into the dress, and she heard the envious sighs that interspersed burps.

Amber, on fire with enthusiasm, pushed her way in through the flap and gasped.

“Oh, miss, oh, miss, it does suit you so! Oh, miss! If only you could see yourself, miss! Do come and show William, miss, he’ll be as proud as a king! Oh, miss!”

You couldn’t disappoint Amber. You just couldn’t. It would be like, well, kicking a puppy.

Tiffany felt different without the hat. Lighter, perhaps. And William gasped and said, “I wish my master was here, Miss Aching, because you are a masterpiece. I just wish you could see yourself . . . miss?”

And just for a moment, because people shouldn’t get too suspicious, Tiffany stood outside herself and watched herself twirl the beautiful dress as black as a cat full of sixpences, and she thought: I shall wear midnight, and I will be good at it. . . .

She hurried back to her body and shyly thanked the young tailor. “It’s wonderful, William, and I will happily fly over to show your master. The cuffs are wonderful!”

Amber was jumping up and down again. “We’d better hurry if we’re going to see the tug-of-war, miss—it’s Feegles versus humans! It’s going to be fun!”

And in fact, they could hear the roar of the Feegles warming up, though they had made a slight alteration to their traditional chant: “Nae king, nae quin, nae laird! One baron—and underrr mutually ag-rreeeed arrr-angement, ye ken!”

“You go on ahead,” said Tiffany. “I’m waiting for somebody.”

Amber paused for a moment. “Don’t wait too long, miss, don’t wait too long!”

Tiffany walked slowly in the wonderful dress, wondering if she would dare wear it every day and . . . hands came past her ears and covered her eyes.

A voice behind her said, “A nosegay for the pretty lady? You never know—it might help you find your beau.”

She spun round. “Preston!”

They talked as they strolled away from the noise, and Tiffany listened to news about the bright young lad that Preston had trained to take over as the school’s new teacher; and about exams and doctors and the Lady Sybil Free Hospital, which had—and this was the really important part—just taken on one new apprentice, this being Preston, possibly because since he could talk the hind leg off a donkey, he might have a talent for surgery.

“I don’t reckon I’ll get many holidays,” he said. “You don’t get many when you’re an apprentice, and I shall have to sleep under the autoclave every night and look after all the saws and scalpels, but I know all the bones by heart!”

“Well, it’s not too far by broomstick, after all,” said Tiffany.

Preston’s expression changed as he reached into his pocket and pulled out something wrapped in fine tissue, which he handed to her without saying a word.

Tiffany unwrapped it, knowing—absolutely knowing—that it would be the golden hare. There was no possibility in the world that it wouldn’t have been. She tried to find the words, but Preston always had an adequate supply.

He said, “Miss Tiffany, the witch . . . would you be so good as to tell me: What is the sound of love?”

Tiffany looked at his face. The noise from the tug-of-war was silenced. The birds stopped singing. In the grass, the grasshoppers stopped rubbing their legs together and looked up. The earth moved slightly as even the chalk giant (perhaps) strained to hear, and the silence flowed over the world until all there was was Preston, who was always there.

And Tiffany said, “Listen.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

My job is to make things up, and the best way to make things up is to make them out of real things. . . .

When I was a small boy, just after the last Ice Age, we lived in a cottage that Tiffany Aching would recognize: We had cold water, no electricity, and took a bath once a week, because the tin bath had to be brought in from its nail, which was outside on the back of the kitchen wall; and it took a long time to fill it, when all my mother had to heat water with was one kettle. Then I, as the youngest, had the first bath, followed by Mum and then Dad, and finally the dog if Dad thought it was getting a bit whiffy.

There were old men in the village who had been born in the Jurassic period and looked, to me, all the same, with flat caps and serious trousers held up with very thick leather belts. One of them was called Mr. Allen, who wouldn’t drink water from a tap because, he said, “It’s got neither taste nor smell.” He drank water from the roof of his house, which fed a rain barrel.

Presumably he drank more than rainwater, because he had a nose that looked like two strawberries that had crashed into each other.*

Mr. Allen used to sit out in the sun in front of his cottage on an old kitchen chair, watching the world go by, and we kids used to watch his nose, in case it exploded. One day I was chatting to him, and out of the blue he said to me, “You seen stubbles burning, boy?”

I certainly had: not near our home, but when we drove down to the coast on holiday, though sometimes the smoke from the burning stubbles was so thick that it looked like a fog. The stubbles were what was left in the ground after most of the corn stems had been cut. The burning was said to be good for getting rid of pests and diseases, but the process meant lots of small birds and animals were burned. The practice has long since been banned, for that very reason.

One day when the harvest wagon went down our lane, Mr. Allen said to me, “You ever seen a hare, boy?”

I said, “Yes, of course.” (If you haven’t seen a hare, then imagine a rabbit crossed with a greyhound, one that can leap magnificently.) Mr. Allen said, “The hare ain’t afraid of fire. She stares it down, and jumps over it, and lands safe on the other side.”

I must have been about six or seven years old, but I remembered it, because Mr. Allen died not long afterward. Then when I was much older, I found in a secondhand bookshop a book called The Leaping Hare, written by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson, and I learned things that I would not have dared to make up.

Mr. Evans, who died in 1988, spoke—during his long life—to the men who worked on the land—not from the cab of a tractor, but with horses—and they saw the wildlife around them. I suspect that maybe they had put a little bit of a shine on the things they told him, but everything is all the better for a little bit of shine, and I have not hesitated to polish up the legend of the hare for you. If it is not the truth, then it is what the truth ought to be.

I dedicate this book to Mr. Evans, a wonderful man who helped many of us to learn about the depths of history over which we float. It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong.

Terry Pratchett

Wiltshire

27 May 2010

Appendix

A Feegle Glossary, adjusted for
those of a delicate disposition
(A Work In Progress By Miss Perspicacia Tick, witch)

Bigjobs: Human beings.

Big Man: Chief of the clan (usually the husband of the kelda).

Blethers: Rubbish, nonsense.

Boggin’: To be desperate, as in “I’m boggin’ for a cup of tea.”

Bunty: A weak person.

Carlin: Old woman.

Cludgie: The privy.

Crivens!: A general exclamation that can mean anything from “My goodness!” to “I’ve just lost my temper and there is going to be trouble.”

Dree your/my/his/her weird: Facing the fate that is in store for you/me/him/her.

Een: Eyes.

Eldritch: Weird, strange; sometimes means oblong too, for some reason.

Fash: Worry, upset.

Geas: A very important obligation, backed up by tradition and magic. Not a bird.

Gonnagle: The bard of the clan, skilled in musical instruments, poems, stories, and songs.

Hag: A witch, of any age.

Hag o’ hags: A very important witch.

Hagging/Haggling: Anything a witch does.

Hiddlins: Secrets.

Kelda: The female head of the clan, and eventually the mother of most of it. Feegle babies are very small, and a kelda will have hundreds in her lifetime.

Lang syne: Long ago.

Last World: The Feegles believe that they are dead. This world is so nice, they argue, that they must have been really good in a past life and then died and ended up here. Appearing to die here means merely going back to the Last World, which they believe is rather dull.

Mudlin: Useless person.

Pished: I am assured that this means “tired.”

Schemie: An unpleasant person.

Scuggan: A really unpleasant person.

Scunner: A generally unpleasant person.

Ships: Woolly things that eat grass and go baa. Easily confused with the other kind.

Spavie: See Mudlin.

Special Sheep Liniment: Probably moonshine whisky, I am very sorry to say. No one knows what it’d do to sheep, but it is said that a drop of it is good for shepherds on a cold winter’s night and for Feegles at any time at all. Do not try to make this at home.

Spog: A small leather bag at the front of a Feegle’s kilt, which covers whatever he presumably thinks needs to be hidden and generally holds things like something he is halfway through eating, something he’s found that now therefore belongs to him, and quite often—because even a Feegle can catch a cold—it might hold whatever he was using as a handkerchief, which might not necessarily be dead.

Steamie: Only found in the big Feegle mounds in the mountains, where there’s enough water to allow regular bathing; it’s a kind of sauna. Feegles on the Chalk tend to rely on the fact that you can only get so much dirt on you before it starts to fall off of its own accord.

Waily: A general cry of despair.

CREDITS

Cover art and design © 2015
by Jim Tierney

COPYRIGHT

I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT. Copyright © 2010 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pratchett, Terry.

I shall wear midnight / Terry Pratchett.—1st ed.

p.       cm.

Summary: Fifteen-year-old Tiffany Aching, the witch of the Chalk, seeks her place amid a troublesome populace and tries to control the ill-behaved, six-inch-high Wee Free Men who follow her as she faces an ancient evil that agitates against witches.

ISBN 978-0-06-143306-1

EPub Edition © May 2015 ISBN 9780062012715

[1. Witches—Fiction. 2. Fairies—Fiction. 3. Ghosts—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.P8865Ial    2010 | 2010024442
[Fic]—dc22 | CIP
| AC

11 12 13 14 15    CG/BV    10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First paperback edition, 2011

*This was done blindfolded.

*Speaking as a witch, she knew them very well.

*Later on, Tiffany realized that all the witches had probably flown across the giant, especially since you could hardly miss him if you were flying from the mountains to the big city. He kind of stood out, in any case. But in Nanny Ogg’s case, she would probably turn round to look at him again.

*Obviously, Tiffany thought, when jumping over a fire together, one ought to be concerned about wearing protective clothing and having people with a bucket of water on hand, just in case. Witches may be a lot of things, but first and foremost, they are practical.

*Possibly Petulia’s romantic ambitions had been helped by the mysterious way the young man’s pigs were forever getting sick and requiring treatment for the scours, the blind heaves, brass neck, floating teeth, scribbling eyeball, grunge, the smarts, the twisting screws, swiveling, and gone knees. This was a terrible misfortune, since more than half of those ailments are normally never found in pigs, and one of them is a disease known only in freshwater fish. But the neighbors were impressed at the amount of work Petulia put in to relieve their stress. Her broomstick was coming and going at all hours of the day and night. Being a witch, after all, was about dedication.

*First Sight means that you can see what really is there, and Second Thoughts mean thinking about what you are thinking. And in Tiffany’s case, there were sometimes Third Thoughts and Fourth Thoughts, although these were quite difficult to manage and sometimes led her to walk into doors.

*The forget-me-lots is a pretty red-and-white flower usually given by young ladies to signal to their young men that they never want to see them again ever, or at least until they’ve learned to wash properly and gotten a job.

*If you do not yet know who the Nac Mac Feegles are: 1) Be grateful for your uneventful life; and 2) Be prepared to beat a retreat if you hear anyone about as high as your ankle shout “Crivens!” They are, strictly speaking, one of the faerie folk, but it is probably not a good idea to tell them this if you are looking forward to a future in which you still have your teeth.

*Whatever sex a hare is, to a true countryman, all hares are referred to as her.

*The old cloth makers used urine as a mordant for the dyes used in making woolen clothes, so that the colors would be fixed and not run; as a result, they could be a bit smelly for years. Not even Miss Tick could have explained it better and stayed so calm, although she would probably have used the term “evacuated bodily juices.”

*The soil and the salt were an ancient tradition to keep ghosts away. Tiffany had never seen a ghost, so they probably worked, but in any case they worked on the minds of people, who felt better for knowing that they were there, and once you understood that, you understood quite a lot about magic.

*The Toad had no other name but that of the Toad and had joined the Feegle clan some years previously, and found life in the mound much to be preferred over his former existence as a lawyer or, to be precise, as a lawyer who had gotten too smart in the presence of a fairy godmother. The kelda had offered several times to turn him back, but he always refused. The Feegles themselves considered him the brains of the outfit, since he knew words that were longer than he was.

*That was to say, from Tiffany’s point of view, that meant a couple of years younger than Tiffany.

*See Glossary.

*She kept to herself any thought about the fact that what they were most good at finding was things that belonged to other people. It was true, though, that the Feegles could hunt like dogs, as well as drink like fish.

*Tiffany had earned the admiration of other witches by persuading the Feegles to do chores. The unfortunate fact was that Feegles would do any chore, provided it was loud, messy, and flamboyant. And, if possible, included screams.

*A message from the author. Not all cauldrons are metal. You can boil water in a leather cauldron, if you know what you are doing. You can even make tea in a paper bag if you are careful and know how to do it. But please don’t, or if you do, don’t tell anyone I told you.

*Jeannie, a modern kelda, had encouraged literacy among her sons and brothers. With Rob Anybody’s example to follow, they had found the experience very worthwhile, because now they could read the labels on bottles before they drank them, although this didn’t make too much of a difference, because unless there was a skull and crossbones on it, a Feegle would probably drink it anyway, and even then it would have to be a very scary skull and crossbones.

*Most people who cook with cauldrons use them as a kind of double boiler, with small saucepans filled with water around the edge, picking up the heat of the big cauldron, into which perhaps you might put a leg of pork weighted down, and possibly a few dumplings in a bag. This way, quite a large meal for several people can be cooked cheaply all in one go, including the pudding. Of course, it meant you had to stomach a lot of boiled food—but eat it up, it’s good for you!

*In truth, the Nac Mac Feegle believe that the world is such a wonderful place that in order to have gotten into it, they must have been very good in another existence and now have arrived in, as it were, heaven. Of course, they appear to die sometimes, even here, but they like to think of it as going off to be born again. Numerous theologians have speculated that this is a stupid idea, but it is certainly more enjoyable than many other beliefs.

*A witch made a shambles out of anything you happened to have in your pockets, but if you care about appearances, you paid attention to the things you “accidentally” had in your pockets. It wouldn’t make any difference to how the shambles worked, but if there were going to be other people around, then a mysterious nut, or an interesting bit of wood, a piece of lace, and a silver pin suggested “witch” rather more flatteringly than did, say, a broken shoelace, a torn piece of paper bag, half a handful of miscellaneous and unspeakable fluff, and a handkerchief that had been used so many times that, dreadfully, it needed both hands to fold it. Tiffany generally kept one pocket just for shambles ingredients, but if Miss Smith had made this shambles the same way, then she had pockets larger than a wardrobe; it nearly touched the ceiling.

**A horse’s skull always looks scary, even if someone has put lipstick on it.

*There is a lot of folklore about equestrian statues, especially the ones with riders on them. There is said to be a code in the number and placement of the horse’s hooves: If one of the horse’s hooves is in the air, the rider was wounded in battle; two legs in the air means that the rider was killed in battle; three legs in the air indicates that the rider got lost on the way to the battle; and four legs in the air means that the sculptor was very, very clever. Five legs in the air means that there’s probably at least one other horse standing behind the horse you’re looking at; and the rider lying on the ground with his horse lying on top of him with all four legs in the air means that the rider was either a very incompetent horseman or owned a very bad-tempered horse.

*See Glossary.

*In fact, chain-mail trousers are always full of holes, but they shouldn’t be full of holes seven inches wide.

*Witches always made certain that their hands were scrupulously clean; the rest of the witch had to wait for some time in the busy schedule—or possibly for a thunderstorm.

*There was no tradition of holy men on the Chalk, but since the hills were between the cities and the mountains, there was generally—in good weather, at least—a steady procession of priests of one sort or another passing through who would, for a decent meal or a bed for the night, spread some holy words and generally give people’s souls a decent scrubbing. Provided that the priests were clearly of the decent sort, people didn’t worry unduly who their god was, so long as he—or occasionally she and sometimes it—kept the sun and moon spinning properly and didn’t want anything ridiculous or new. It also helped if the preacher knew a little something about sheep.

*If not through actual personal practice.

*You had been a sad little white kitten when Tiffany had given her to the old witch. Now she was a Queen, far more snobbish than the Duchess. She must have recognized Tiffany, because she graciously condescended to blink at her and then look away as if bored. There were never any mice in Granny’s cottage these days; You just stared at them until they realized how worthless they were and slunk away.

*Mr. and Mrs. Boxer had been slightly more educated than was good for them and thought that Trivial was a good name for their third child.

*My dad told me it’s called “drinker’s nose,” but he was probably wrong about the nose, as the condition, I’m told, is a type of adult acne (called rhinophyma, but I suspect that this is too much information).

Dedication

For Esmerelda Weatherwax—mind how you go

Contents

1. Dedication

2. Prologue                            A Crown in the Chalk

3. Chapter One                     Where the Wind Blows

4. Chapter Two                     A Voice in the Darkness

5. Chapter Three                   An Upside-down World

6. Chapter Four                    A Farewell—and a Welcome

7. Chapter Five                     A Changing World

8. Chapter Six                       Around the Houses

9. Chapter Seven                  A Force of Nature

10. Chapter Eight                   The Baron’s Arms

11. Chapter Nine                    Good with Goats

12. Chapter Ten                      Treasure

13. Chapter Eleven                 The Big City

14. Chapter Twelve                 An Elf among the Feegles

15. Chapter Thirteen              Mischief . . . and Worse

16. Chapter Fourteen             A Tale of Two Queens

17. Chapter Fifteen                The God in the Barrow

18. Chapter Sixteen                Mr. Sideways

19. Chapter Seventeen           An Argument of Witches

20. Chapter Eighteen             The Shepherd’s Crown

21. Chapter Nineteen             Peace

22. Epilogue                            A Whisper on the Chalk

23. Appendix                          A Feegle Glossary

24. Acknowledgments
25. Afterword
26. Credits
27. Copyright

Guide

1. Cover
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PROLOGUE

A Crown in the Chalk

It was born in the darkness of the Circle Sea; at first just a soft floating thing, washed back and forth by tide after tide. It grew a shell, but in its rolling, tumbling world there were huge creatures that could have cracked it open in an instant. Nevertheless, it survived. Its little life might have gone on like this forever until the dangers of the surf and other floating things brought an end, were it not for the pool.

It was a warm pool, high on a beach, replenished by occasional storms blown in from the Hub, and there the creature lived on things even smaller than itself and grew until it became king. It would have got even bigger if it were not for the hot summer, when the water evaporated under the glare of the sun.

And so the little creature died, but its carapace remained, carrying within itself the seed of something sharp. On the next stormy tide it was washed away onto the littoral, where it lodged, rolling back and forth with the pebbles and other detritus of the storms.

The sea rolled down the ages until it dried and withdrew from the land, and the spiky shell of the long-dead creature sank beneath layers of the shells of other small creatures that had not survived. And there it lay, with the sharp core growing slowly inside, until the day when it was found by a shepherd minding his flock on the hills that had become known as the Chalk.

He picked up the strange object that had caught his eye, held it in his hand, and turned it over and over. Lumpy, but not lumpy, and it fitted in the palm of his hand. Too regular a shape to be a flint, and yet it had flint in its heart. The surface was gray, like stone, but with a hint of gold beneath the gray. There were five distinct ridges spaced evenly, almost like stripes, rising from a flattish base to its top. He had seen things like this before. But this one seemed different—it had almost jumped into his hand.

The little piece tumbled as he turned it around and about, and he had a feeling that it was trying to tell him something. It was silly, he knew, and he hadn’t had a beer yet, but the strange object seemed to fill his world. Then he cursed himself as an idiot but nevertheless kept it and took it to show his mates in the pub.

“Look,” he said, “it looks like a crown.”

Of course, one of his mates laughed and said, “A crown? What would you want with one of them? You’re no king, Daniel Aching.”

But the shepherd took his find home and placed it carefully on the shelf in his kitchen where he kept the things he liked.

And there, eventually, it was forgotten and was lost to history.

But not to the Achings, who handed it down, generation to generation. . . .

CHAPTER ONE

Where the Wind Blows

It was one of those days that you put away and remember. High on the downs, above her parents’ farm, Tiffany Aching felt as though she could see to the end of the world. The air was as clear as crystal, and in the brisk wind the dead leaves from the autumn swirled around the ash trees as they rattled their branches to make way for the new spring growth.

She had always wondered why the trees grew there. Granny Aching had told her there were old tracks up here, made in the days when the valley below had been a swamp. Granny said that was why the ancient people had made their homes high up—away from the swamp, and away from other people who would like to raid their livestock.

Perhaps they had found a sense of refuge near the old circles of stones they found there. Perhaps they had been the ones who built them? No one knew for certain where they had come from . . . but even though they didn’t really believe it, everyone knew that they were the kind of thing it was probably better to leave alone. Just in case. After all, even if a circle did hide some old secrets or treasure, well, what use was that when it came to sheep? And although many of the stones had fallen down, what if the person buried underneath didn’t want to be dug up? Being dead didn’t mean you couldn’t get angry, oh no.

But Tiffany herself had once used one particular set of stones to pass through an arch to Fairyland—a Fairyland most decidedly not like the one she had read about in The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales—and she knew the dangers were real.

Today, for some reason, she had felt the need to come up to the stones. Like any sensible witch, she wore strong boots that could march through anything—good, sensible boots. But they did not stop her feeling her land, feeling what it told her. It had begun with a tickle, an itch that crept into her feet and demanded to be heard, urging her to tramp over the downs, to visit the circle, even while she was sticking her hand up a sheep’s bottom to try and sort out a nasty case of colic. Why she had to go to the stones, Tiffany did not know, but no witch ignored what could be a summons. And the circles stood as protection. Protection for her land—protection from what could come through . . .

She had headed up there immediately, a slight frown on her face. But somehow, up there, on top of the Chalk, everything was right. It always was. Even today.

Or was it? For, to Tiffany’s surprise, she had not been the only one drawn to the old circle that day. As she spun in the crisp, clean air, listening to the wind, the leaves dancing across her feet, she recognized the flash of red hair, a glimpse of tattooed blue skin—and heard a muttered “Crivens” as a particularly joyful surge of leaves got caught on the horns of a rabbit’s-skull helmet.

“The kelda hersel’ sent me here to keep an eye on these stones,” said Rob Anybody from his vantage point on a rocky outcrop close by. He was surveying the landscape as if he were watching for raiders. Wherever they came from. Particularly if they came through a circle.

“And if any of them scuggans wants to come back and try again, we’re always ready for them, ye ken,” he added hopefully. “I’m sure we can give them oor best Feegle hospitality.” He drew his wiry blue frame up to its full six inches and brandished his claymore at an invisible enemy.

The effect, Tiffany thought, not for the first time, was quite impressive.

“Those ancient raiders are all long dead,” she said before she could stop herself, even though her Second Thoughts were telling her to listen properly. If Jeannie—Rob’s wife and the kelda of the Feegle clan—had seen trouble a-brewing, well, it was likely that trouble was on the way.

“Dead? Weel, so are we,” said Rob.*

“Alas,” Tiffany sighed. “In those long-ago days, mortals just died. They didn’t come back like you seem to do.”

“They would if they had some of our brose.”

“What’s that?” asked Tiffany.

“Weel, it’s a kind of porridge with everything in it and, if possible, ye ken, a dram of brandy or some of your old granny’s Sheep Liniment.”

Tiffany laughed, but that uneasiness remained. I need to speak to Jeannie, she thought. Need to know why she and my boots are both feeling the same thing.

When they arrived at the large grassy mound nearby that housed the intricate warren of the Feegle dwelling, Tiffany and Rob made their way over to the patch of briars that concealed the main entrance and found Jeannie sitting outside, eating a sandwich.

Mutton, Tiffany thought with just a tinge of annoyance. She was well aware of the agreement with the Feegles that they could have the occasional old ewe in exchange for the fun of fightin’ off the corbies that would otherwise swoop down on the young lambs, who were doing their best to do what lambs did best: get lost, and get dead. The lost lambs up on the Chalk had a new trick now—heading at speed across the downs, sometimes backward, with a Feegle under each tiny foot, as they were returned to the flock.

A kelda needed a big appetite, for there was only one kelda in a Nac Mac Feegle clan, and she had a lot of sons, plus the occasional lucky daughter popping out.* Each time Tiffany saw Jeannie, the little kelda was a bit wider and a bit rounder. Those hips took work, and Jeannie was certainly working hard at getting them bigger right now as she tackled what looked like half a lamb’s leg between two bits of bread. No mean feat for a Feegle only six inches high, and as Jeannie grew to become a wise old kelda, the word “belt” would no longer signify something to hold up her kilt but just something to mark her equator.

Young Feegles were herding snails and wrestling. They were bouncing off each other, off the walls, and sometimes off their own boots. They were in awe of Tiffany, seeing in her a kind of kelda, and they stopped brawling and looked at her nervously as she approached.

“Line up, lads, show oor hag how hard ye ha’ been workin’,” their mother said with pride in her voice, wiping a smear of mutton fat off her lips.

Oh no, Tiffany thought. What am I going to see? I hope it doesn’t involve snails. . . .

But Jeannie said, “Let yon hag hear your ABC now. Come on, you start, Slightly-more-wee-than-Wee-Jock-Jock.”

The first Feegle in the line scratched at his spog and flicked a small beetle out. It seems to be a fact of life that a Feegle’s spog will always be itchy, Tiffany thought, possibly because what is kept in it might still be alive. Slightly-more-wee-than-Wee-Jock-Jock swallowed. “A is for . . . ax,” he bellowed. “To cut yer heid off, ye ken,” he added with a proud boast.

“B is for boot!” shouted the next Feegle, wiping something that looked like snail slime down the front of his kilt. “So as to stamp on yer heid.”

“An’ C is for claymore . . . and crivens, I’ll gi’e ye sich a guid kickin’ if’n you stick that sword intae me one muir time,” shouted the third, turning and hurling himself at one of his brothers.

A yellowing crescent-shaped object fell to the ground as the brawl spun off into the brambles, and Rob snatched it up and tried to hide it behind his back.

Tiffany narrowed her eyes. That had looked suspiciously like . . . yes, a bit of old toenail!

“Weel,” said Rob, shuffling his feet, “ye is always cuttin’ these little chunks off’n them old gentl’men you goes to visit most days. They fly out o’ the winders, jus’ waitin’ for a body to pick ’em up. An’ they is hard as nails, ye ken.”

“Yes, that’s because they are nails—” Tiffany began, then stopped. After all, maybe someone like old Mr. Nimlet would like to know that parts of his body were still ready for a scrap. Even if he himself couldn’t get out of a chair without help these days.

The kelda drew her to one side now, and said, “Weel, hen, your name is in the soil. It talks to you, Tir-far-thóinn, Land under Wave. Do you talk to it?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “Only sometimes, though. But I do listen, Jeannie.”

“Not every day?” said the kelda.

“No, not every day. So much to do, so much to do.”

“I ken that,” said the kelda. “Ye know that I watch over you. I watch ye in my heid, but I also see ye whizzing aboot over me heid. And ye must remember ye are a long time deid.”

Tiffany sighed, weary to her bones. Going around the houses—that was what you did if you were a compassionate witch, what she and all the other witches did to fill in the gaps in the world, doing things that had to be done: carrying logs in for an old lady or popping on a pot of stew for a dinner, bringing an herbal remedy for a sore leg or a troublesome ache, fetching a basket of “spare” eggs or secondhand clothes for a new baby in a house where money was scarce, and listening, oh yes, always listening to people’s troubles and worries. And the toenails . . . those toenails, they seemed to be as hard as flint, and sometimes an old boy without friends or family would have his toenails twisting inside his boots.

But the reward for lots of work seemed to be lots more. If you dug the biggest hole, they just gave you a bigger shovel. . . .

“Today, Jeannie,” she said slowly, “I did listen to the land. It told me to go to the circle . . . ?” There was a question hanging in the air.

The kelda sighed. “I dinnae see it clear yet, but there is . . . something not right, Tiffan,” she said. “The veil between oor worlds is thin and can be easily brake, ye ken. The stones stand, so the gateway is nae open—and the Quin of the Elves will nae be strong after ye sent her back to Fairyland afore. She will nae be in a hurry to get past ye agin, but . . . I am still a-feared. I can feel it noo, like a fog driftin’ oor way.”

Tiffany bit her lip. If the kelda was worried, she knew she should be too.

“Dinnae fash yesel’,” Jeannie said softly, watching Tiffany closely. “Whin ye need the Feegles, we will be there. And until that time, we will keep a watch for ye.” She took a last bite of her sandwich, and then gave Tiffany a different sort of look as she changed the subject. “Ye ha’ a young man—Preston, I think you call him. Do ye see him much?” Her gaze was suddenly as sharp as an ax.

“Well,” said Tiffany, “he works hard, just like I do. Him in the hospital and me in the Chalk.” To her horror, she felt herself begin to blush, the kind of blush that begins in your toes and works its way up to your face until you look like a tomato. She couldn’t blush! Not like a young country girl with a beau. She was a witch! “We write to each other,” she added in a small voice.

“And is that enough? Letters?”

Tiffany swallowed. She had once thought—everyone had thought—that she and Preston might have an Understanding, him being an educated boy, running the new school at the barn on the Achings’ farm until he had enough saved to go study in the big city to be a doctor. Now everyone still thought they had an Understanding, including Tiffany and Preston. Except . . . did she have to do what everyone expected her to do? “He is very nice and tells wonderful jokes and is great with words,” she tried to explain. “But . . . we like our work, both of us, in fact you might say we are our work. Preston is working so hard at the Lady Sybil Free Hospital. And I can’t help thinking about Granny Aching and how much she liked her life, up on the downs, just her and the sheep and her two dogs, Thunder and Lightning, and . . .” She tailed off and Jeannie laid a small nut-brown hand on her arm.

“Do ye think this is the way to live, my girl?”

“Well, I do like what I am doing and it helps people.”

“But who helps you? That broomstick of yours flies everywhere and I think sometimes it might burst into flames. Ye look after everybody—but who looks after ye? If Preston is away, weel, there’s your friend the Baron and his new wife. Surely they care about their people. Care enough to help.”

“They do care,” said Tiffany, remembering with a shudder how everyone had once also thought that she and Roland, now the Baron, had an Understanding. Why were they so keen to try and find her a husband? Were husbands that difficult to find if she wanted one? “Roland is a decent man, although not yet as good as his father became. And Letitia . . .”

Letitia, she thought. Both she and Letitia knew that Letitia could do magic but right now was just playing the role of the young Baroness. And she was good at it—so good that Tiffany wondered if the Being a Baroness might come to win over Being a Witch in the end. It certainly involved a lot less mess.

“Already ye have done such things other folk wouldnae credit,” Jeannie continued.

“Well,” said Tiffany, “there’s too much to be done and not enough people to do it.”

The smile that the kelda gave her was a strange one. The little woman said, “Do ye let them try? Ye mustn’t be afraid to ask for help. Pride is a good thing, my girl, but it will kill you in time.”

Tiffany laughed. “Jeannie, you are always right. But I am a witch, so pride is in the bones.” That brought to mind Granny Weatherwax—the witch all the other witches thought of as the wisest and most senior of them all. When Granny Weatherwax said things, she never sounded proud—but she didn’t need to. It was just there, built right into her essence. In fact, whatever a witch needed in her bones, Granny Weatherwax had it in great big shovelfuls. Tiffany hoped, one day, that she might be that strong a witch herself.

“Weel, that’s guid, so it is,” said the kelda. “Ye’re oor hag o’ the hills and we need oor hag to ha’ some pride. But we’d also like ye to have a life of your ain.” Her solemn little gaze was fixed on Tiffany now. “So off ye gae and follow where the wind blows ye.”

The wind down in the Shires was angry, blowing everywhere as if it was upset, howling around the chimneys of Lord Swivel’s mansion, which stood surrounded by acres of parkland and could only be reached by a long drive—ruling out visits by anyone not in possession of at least a decent horse.

That put paid to the majority of the ordinary people thereabouts, who were mostly farmers, and who were too busy to do any such thing anyway. Any horse they had was generally large and hairy-legged and usually seen attached to carts. The skinny, half-mad horses that pranced up the drive or pulled coaches up it were normally conveying a very different class of man: one who always had land and money, but often very little chin. And whose wife sometimes resembled his horse.

Lord Swivel’s father had inherited money and the title from his father, a great master builder, but he had been a drunkard and had wasted almost all of it.* Nevertheless young Harold Swivel had wheeled and dealed, and yes, swiveled and swindled, until he had restored the family fortune, and had added two wings to the family mansion, which he filled with expensively ugly objects.

He had three sons, which pleased him greatly in that his wife had produced one extra over and above the usual “heir and spare.” Lord Swivel liked to be one up on everyone else, even if the one up was only in the form of a son he didn’t overly care for.

Harry, the eldest, didn’t go to school much because he was now dealing with the estate, helping his father and learning who was worth talking to and who wasn’t.

Number two was Hugh, who had suggested to his father that he would like to go into the church. His father had said, “Only if it’s the Church of Om, but none of the others. I’m not having no son of mine fooling around with cultic activities!”* Om was handily silent, thereby enabling his priests to interpret his wishes how they chose. Amazingly, Om’s wishes rarely translated into instructions like “Feed the poor” or “Help the elderly” but more along the lines of “You need a splendid residence” or “Why not have seven courses for dinner?” So Lord Swivel felt that a clergyman in the family could in fact be useful.

His third son was Geoffrey. And nobody quite knew what to make of Geoffrey. Not least, Geoffrey himself.

The tutor Lord Swivel employed for his boys was named Mr. Wiggall. Geoffrey’s older brothers called him “Wiggler,” sometimes even to his face. But for Geoffrey, Mr. Wiggall was a godsend. The tutor had arrived with a huge crate of his own books, only too aware that some great houses barely had a single book in them, unless the books were about battles of the past in which a member of the family had been spectacularly and stupidly heroic. Mr. Wiggall and his wonderful books taught Geoffrey about the great philosophers Ly Tin Weedle, Orinjcrates, Xeno, and Ibid, and the celebrated inventors Goldeneyes Silverhand Dactylos and Leonard of Quirm, and Geoffrey started to discover what he might make of himself.

When they weren’t reading and studying, Mr. Wiggall took Geoffrey to dig up things—old bones and old places around the Shires—and told him about the universe, which he previously had not thought about. The more he learned, the more he thirsted for knowledge and longed to know all about the Great Turtle A’Tuin, and the lands beyond the Shires.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said to his tutor one day. “How did you become a teacher?”

Mr. Wiggall laughed and said, “Someone taught me, that’s how it goes. And he gave me a book, and after that I would read any book that I could find. Just like you do, young sir. I see you reading all the time, not just in lessons.”

Geoffrey knew that his father sneered at the teacher, but his mother had intervened, saying that Geoffrey had a star in his hand.

His father scoffed at that. “All he’s got in his hand is mud, and dead people, and who cares where Fourecks is? No one ever goes there!”*

His mother looked tired, but took his side, saying, “He’s very good at reading and Mr. Wiggall has taught him three languages. He can even speak a bit of Offleran!”

Again his father sneered. “Only handy if he wants to be a dentist! Ha, why waste time on learning languages. After all, everyone speaks Ankh-Morpork these days.”

But Geoffrey’s mother said to him, “You read, my boy. Reading is the way up. Knowledge is the key to everything.”

Shortly afterward, the tutor was sent away by Lord Swivel, who said, “Too much nonsense around here. It’s not as if the boy will amount to much. Not like his brothers.”

The walls of the manor could pick up voices a long way away, and Geoffrey had heard that and thought, Well, whatever I do choose to become, I am not going to be like my father!

With his tutor gone, Geoffrey wandered about the place, learning new things, hanging around a lot with McTavish, the stable-lad who was as old as the hills but somehow still was known as a “lad.” He knew all the birdsongs in the world and could imitate them too.

And McTavish was there when Geoffrey found Mephistopheles. One of the old nanny goats had given birth, and while she had two healthy kids, there was a third kid hidden in the straw, a little runt that its mother had rejected.

“I’m going to try and save this little goat,” Geoffrey declared. And he spent all night laboring to keep the newborn alive, squeezing milk from its mother and letting the little kid lick it off his finger until it slept peacefully beside him in a broken-up bale of hay, which kept them both warm.

He is such a small thing, Geoffrey thought, looking into the kid’s letter-box eyes. I must give him a chance.

And the kid responded, and grew into a strong young goat with a devilish kick. He would follow Geoffrey everywhere, and lower his head and prepare to charge anyone he thought threatened his young master. Since this often meant anyone within reach, many a servant or visitor found themselves skipping rather smartly out of the way when faced with the goat’s lowered horns.

“Why did thee call that hell-goat Mephistopheles?” asked McTavish one day.

“I read it in a book.* You can tell it is a very good name for a goat,” Geoffrey replied.

Geoffrey grew older, turning from a little boy into a young lad and then a bigger lad, wisely catching his father’s eye only occasionally.

Then one day McTavish saddled a horse for him and they rode over to the fields at the edge of Lord Swivel’s estate and crept quietly to a fox’s earth in the woods. There, as they had done many times before, they watched the vixen play with her cubs.

“Nice to see ’un like so,” whispered McTavish. “A fox mun eat and feed yon cubs. But they has too much of a taste for me chickens for my liking. They kill things as matter to us, an’ so we kill them. ’Tis the way of the world.”

“It shouldn’t be,” said Geoffrey, sorrow in his voice as his heart went out to the vixen.

“But we needs the hens and mun protect ’em. That’s why we hunts foxes,” said McTavish. “I brings you here today, Geoffrey, for the time is coming when your father will want you to join the hunt. Of yon vixen mebbe.”

“I understand,” Geoffrey said. He knew about the hunt, of course, as he had been made to watch them ride out every year since he was a baby. “We must protect our hens, and the world can be cruel and merciless. But making a game of it is not right. That’s terrible! It’s just execution. Must we kill everything? Kill a mother who is feeding her cubs? We take so much and we give back nothing.” He rose to his feet and went back to his horse. “I do not want to hunt, McTavish. My word, I do not like to hate—I don’t even hate my father—but the hunt I would like to see put in a dark place.”

McTavish looked worried. “I think thee needs to be careful, young Geoffrey. You knows what your father is like. He’s a bit of a stick-in-the-mud.”

“My father is not a stick-in-the-mud; he is the mud!” Geoffrey said bitterly.

“Well then, if you tries talking to him—or your mother—mebbe he might understand that you are not ready to join the hunt?”

“No point,” said Geoffrey. “When he has made up his mind, you cannot get through to him. I hear my mother crying sometimes—she doesn’t like to be seen crying, but I know she cries.”

Then it was, as he looked up to watch a hawk hovering, that he thought to himself, There is freedom. Freedom is what I want.

“I would like to fly, McTavish,” he said, adding, “Like the birds. Like Langas.”*

And almost immediately, he saw a witch flying overhead on a stick, following the hawk, and he pointed up and said, “I want one of those. I want to be a witch.”

But the old man said, “It’s not for thee, boy. Everybody knows men can’t be witches.”

“Why not?” asked Geoffrey.

The old man shrugged and said, “Nobody knows.”

And Geoffrey said, “I want to know.”

On the day of Geoffrey’s first hunt he trotted out with the rest, pale-faced but determined, and thought, This is the day I must try to stand up for myself.

Soon the local gentry were galloping across the countryside, some taking it to the extreme by careering into ditches, through hedges, or over gates, often minus their mounts, while Geoffrey carefully held his position well to the back of the throng, until he could slip away unnoticed. He circled the woods in the opposite direction of the hunt, his heart aching, especially when the baying of the hounds turned to joyous yelps as the prey was brought down.

Then it was time to return to the house. There, everyone was at that happy stage of a hunt where “tomorrow” is a word that still means something and you have a mug of hot beverage that is liberally laced with something not too dissimilar to Tiffany’s grandmother’s Special Sheep Liniment. A reward for the returning heroes! They had survived the hunt. Huzzah! They swigged and swilled and the drink ran over their nonexistent chins.

But Lord Swivel looked at Geoffrey’s horse—the only animal not to be lathered in sweat with its legs besplattered in mud—and his wrath was unquenchable.

Geoffrey’s brothers held him while his mother looked on imploringly, but to no avail. She averted her face as Lord Swivel smeared vixen’s blood on Geoffrey’s face.

His lordship was almost incandescent in his rage. “Where were you? You should have been there at the kill!” he roared. “You will do this, young man—and like it! I had to do it when I was young, and so did my father before me. And so will you. It is a tradition. Do you understand? Every male member of our family has been blooded at your age. Who are you to say it’s wrong? I’m ashamed of you!”

There it came, the swish of the crop, across Geoffrey’s back.

Geoffrey, his face dripping with the vixen’s blood, looked to his mother. “She was a beautiful thing! Why kill her in such a way? For fun?”

“Please don’t upset your father,” his mother pleaded.

“I see them in the woods, and you just hunt them. Can you eat them? No. We—the unspeakable—chase and kill what we cannot eat, just for the blood. For fun.”

Swish.

It hurt. But Geoffrey was suddenly full of . . . what? All at once he had the amazing feeling that things could be made right, and he told himself, I could do it. I know I can. He drew himself up to his full height and shook himself free of his brothers’ grasp.

“I must thank you, Father,” he said with unexpected vigor. “I have learned something important today. But I won’t let you hit me again—never—and nor will you see me again unless you can change. Do you understand me?” His tone was oddly formal now, as if befitting the occasion.

Harry and Hugh looked at Geoffrey with a kind of awe and waited for the explosion, while the rest of the hunt, which had given Lord Swivel space in which to deal with his son, stopped pretending that they weren’t watching. The world of the hunt was out of kilter, the air frozen but somehow contriving also to seem to hold its breath.

In the charged silence, Geoffrey led his horse off to the stables, leaving Lord Swivel standing there like a stone.

He gave the horse some hay, took off its saddle and bridle, and was rubbing the beast down when McTavish walked up to him and said, “Well done, young Geoffrey.” Then, surprisingly outspoken, the stable-lad added under his breath, “You stood up for yourself, right enough. Don’t let that bastard grind thee down.”

“If you talk like that, McTavish, my father could turn you out,” Geoffrey warned. “And you like it here, don’t you?”

“Well, lad, you’re right there. I’m too old to be changing my ways now, I reckon,” McTavish replied. “But you stood your ground and no man could do better nor that. I expect thee’ll be leaving us now, Master Geoffrey?”

“Alas, yes,” said Geoffrey. “But thank you, McTavish. I hope my father doesn’t take it out on you for talking to me.”

And the oldest stable-lad in the world said, “He won’t do that, not never, not while I’m still useful like. Anyways, after all these years, I know him—like one of them volcanee things, he is. Powerful dangerous explosions for a while, and no care for who gets caught by the red-hot boulders spewing every which way, but it still blows out in the end. Smart folks just keep out of sight until it’s over. You’ve been very pleasant and respectful to me, Master Geoffrey. I reckons you take after your mother. A lovely lady, always so good to me and so helpful when my Molly was dying. I remember that. And I’ll remember you too.”

“Thank you,” said Geoffrey. “And I will remember you.”

McTavish lit up a most enormous pipe and the smoke billowed. “I reckon you’ll be wanting to take away that dratted goat of yourn.”

“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “But I don’t think I have any say in the matter—Mephistopheles will make up his own mind. He usually does.”

McTavish gave him a sideways look. “Got any food, Master Geoffrey? Got any money? I reckon you won’t want to go into the house now. I tell you what, I’ll loan thee a bit o’ cash till you finds out where you wants to be.”

“No!” said Geoffrey. “I can’t possibly!”

“I’m your friend, Master Geoffrey. Like I said, your mother has been good to me and I owes her a lot. You come back and see her sometime. And when you do that, just make sure you look up old McTavish.”

Geoffrey went to fetch Mephistopheles and hitched him up to the little cart McTavish had made for him. He loaded a few things into the cart, picked up the reins, clicked his tongue, and they set off out of the stable yard.

As the goat’s dainty hooves echoed down the drive, McTavish said to himself, “How does the boy do it? That hell-goat kicks the arse of everybody who comes here. But not Geoffrey.”

If Geoffrey had looked back, he would have seen his mother’s beseeching look as she sobbed, while his father still stood there like a statue, amazed at such defiance. His brothers made as if to follow, but halted when they saw the rage in their father’s eyes.

And so Geoffrey and his goat went off to find a new life. Now, he thought, as they rounded the first of the drive’s many bends and he rode into his future, I’ve got nowhere to go.

But the wind whispered, “Lancre.”

In Lancre, it hadn’t been a good day for Granny Weatherwax. A young lumberjack at work higher up in the Ramtop Mountains had nearly severed his own foot. And on a day when the resident Igor was elsewhere so unable to patch him up. When Granny arrived at the camp on her rickety old broomstick, she immediately saw that the lad was in an even worse mess than she had expected. He had been doing his best to look brave in front of his mates, who were clustered around him trying to cheer him up, but she could see the pain in his face.

As she examined the damage, he cried out for his mother.

“You, lad,” Granny said sharply, turning a piercing look on the nearest of his mates. “You know where this lad’s family live?” And at the boy’s scared nod—a witch’s pointy hat often seemed to make young lads suddenly very scared—she went on, “Go then. Run. Tell the lady I’m bringing her son back and she’ll need hot water on and a clean bed. Clean, mind.” And as the boy raced off, Granny glared at the others standing sheepishly around. “You others,” she said sharply, “don’t just stand around. Make a stretcher from some of that there wood lying about so’s I can take your friend there.”

The lad’s foot was all but hanging off and his boot was full of blood. Granny gritted her teeth, and set to with everything in her armory and all the knowledge accumulated over many years, quietly, gently, taking his pain away from him, drawing it into herself to hold until she could release it.

His face came alive and his eyes sparkled and he started chatting to the witch like an old friend. She cleaned and she stitched, all the while telling the lad what she was doing in a cheerful and calm voice before giving him what she called “a little tincture.” To the onlookers it looked like the boy was almost himself again when they brought to her a rather makeshift stretcher and found the lad dreamily telling Granny how to get to his home.

The habitations of the lumberjacks up in the mountains were often no better than sheds, and it turned out the boy—a lad by the name of Jack Abbott—and his mother lived in one of these. It was a rickety little hut held together more with dirt than with anything else, and when Granny Weatherwax arrived outside with the stretcher lashed underneath her broomstick, she frowned, wondering how this lad’s injury could possibly be kept clean in such surroundings. The mother ran out to her boy and flapped around as the lad who had run down to her with the news helped Granny carry the stretcher inside and move the boy onto a pallet onto which the mother had heaped blankets to create a bed fit for an invalid.

Granny Weatherwax said quietly to the injured boy, “You lie right there and don’t get up.” And to the distraught mother, who was wringing her hands and making noises about paying something, she said, “No payment necessary, mistress—that’s not how we witches work—and I’ll come back to see him in a few days, and if I can’t make it, then send for Mrs. Ogg. I know boys, and your son’ll want to be up and doing as soon as possible, but mark my words, bed rest is the thing for him now.”

The boy’s mother stared at Granny and said, “Thank you so much, Mrs. . . . um . . . well, I ain’t never had need to call on a witch before, and I’ve heard some folks round here say witches do nasty things. But I can tell ’em now as I ain’t seen nothing of that sort.”

“Really?” said Granny, struggling to keep her temper. “Well, I would like to do some nasty things to the overseer for not keeping an eye on these lads, and don’t you let that man tell your boy to get up until I do. If he does, tell him that Granny Weatherwax will be after him for using these young men who don’t really know how to climb trees. I’m a good witch, as it happens, but if I find your boy working before that foot is healed, there will be a reckoning.”

As the mother waved Granny away she said, “I will pray to Om for you, Mrs. Weatherwax.”

“Well, do tell me what he says,” said Granny sharply. “And that’s Mistress Weatherwax, thank you. But if you’ve got some old clothing I could take back with me when I come again—well, that would help. I’ll see you in a day or so, along with your boy. And mind you keep that wound clean.”

You, Granny’s white cat, was waiting for her when she arrived back at her cottage, along with several people wanting potions and poultices. One or two were looking for advice, but generally people were careful not to ask Granny Weatherwax, as she had a tendency to dish out advice whether wanted or not, such as the wisdom of not giving little Johnny handmade soldiers until he was old enough to know not to stuff them up his nose.

She bustled around for another hour, dishing out medicaments to person after person, and it was only much later that she realized that although she had fed the cat, obviously, she herself had had nothing to eat or drink since the dawn. So she heated up some pottage—not a great meal, but it filled her up.

Then she lay on her bed for a while, even though sleeping in the daytime was something that only very grand ladies did, and so Granny Weatherwax allowed herself not forty winks but just the one. After all, there were always more people to see and things to do.

Then she pulled herself up, and despite it being now quite late, she went out and cleaned the privy. And she scrubbed it. She scrubbed it so hard that she could see her face in it. . . .

But somehow, in the shimmering water, her face could also see her, and she sighed and said, “Drat, and tomorrow was going to be a much better day.”

CHAPTER TWO

A Voice in the Darkness

It was a bright sunny day, thought Granny Weatherwax, a perfect day, in fact. She had been up all night and cleaned the hall and kitchen in her cottage until everything that could shine was shining—the stove polished, the rag rug shaken, and the flagstones scrubbed.

She moved up her corkscrew staircase and concentrated next on the floor in the bedroom. She had made some very good soap this year,* and the jug and little washbasin by the bed were gleaming. The spiders in the corners, who had thought they had tenure unto Doomsday, were carefully shown the window, webs and all. Even the mattress looked clean and wholesome. Every so often You, her cat, appeared to see what was going on, and to lie on the patchwork quilt that was so flat it looked like someone had trodden on a huge tortoise.

Then Granny cleaned the privy once again, just for good measure. Not an errand for a fine day, but Esmerelda Weatherwax was meticulous in these things and the privy yielded to her efforts and, yes, it shone. Amazingly so.

Watching her, the intensity that showed on her cat’s face was remarkable. This was a different day, You sensed. A day not yet experienced. A day that bustled as if there would never be another day, and with the inside of the cottage up to scratch, You now followed Granny into the scullery.

A bucket of water, filled from the pump by the well, did the trick there. Granny smiled. She had always liked the scullery. It smelled of hard work being done properly. Here there were also spiders, mostly hiding around the bottles and jars on the shelves, but she thought scullery spiders didn’t really count. Live and let live.

She went outside next, to the walled paddock at the back of the cottage, to check on her goats. The itinerary of her thinking was declaring that once again all things were in their rightful place.

Satisfied, or as satisfied as a witch ever could be, Granny Weatherwax went to her beehives.

“You are my bees,” she said to them. “Thank you. You’ve given me all my honey for years, and please don’t be upset when someone new comes. I hope that you will give her as much honey as you have given me. And now, for the last time, I will dance with you.” But the bees hummed softly and danced for her instead, gently pushing her mind out of their hive. And Granny Weatherwax said, “I was younger when I last danced with you. But I am old now. There will be no more dances for me.”

You kept away from the bees, but stalked through the garden, following Granny as she moved through the herbs, touching a frond or a leaf as she passed, and the whole garden seemed to answer her, the plants almost nodding their heads in respect.

You narrowed her eyes and looked sideways at the plants with what might be called feline disfavor. An onlooker might swear Granny’s herbs were sapient, as they often moved without the wind blowing. On at least one occasion, to the cat’s horror, they had actually turned round to watch her as she sneaked past on a hunting expedition. She preferred plants that did what they were told, that was mostly to stay dead still so that she could go back to sleep.

At the far end of the herbs, Granny came to the apple tree old Mr. Parsons had given her only last year, planting it roughly where anyone else would have a fence around their garden—for no witch’s cottage ever needed an actual fence or wall. Who would cross a witch? The wicked old witch in the woods? Sometimes stories can be useful for a witch without, it must be said, any fence-building skills. Granny eyed the tiny apples appearing on the bough—they had only just begun to grow and, well, time was waiting. And so she walked again back to her cottage door, acknowledging every root, stem, and fruit she passed.

She fed the goats, who looked at her askance with their slotted eyes. Their gaze followed her as she turned to the chickens, who always squabbled over their feed. Today, however, they didn’t squabble, but looked at the old witch as if she wasn’t there.

With the animals fed, Granny Weatherwax went into the scullery and came back with a switch of willows. She got to work, teasing every piece of resilient willow into the right place. Then, when the thing she had made was clearly excellent and fit for purpose, Granny Weatherwax left it near the foot of the stairs where it would be noticed, for those with eyes to see.

She tidied the remnants of her work back to the scullery and came out again with a small bag. A white one. And a red ribbon coiled in her other hand. She looked to the sky. Time was wasting.

She walked briskly into the woods, You trailing behind, curious as only a cat can be until at least the first eight of its lives have been used up. Then, her task completed, Granny Weatherwax retraced her steps toward the little stream which ran through the woods close by. It gurgled and tinkled.

She knew the woodlands. Every log. Every bough. Every creature that lived in there. More intimately than anyone not a witch could ever know. When her nose told her there was no one around apart from You, she opened the bag, took out a bar of her soap, and undressed.

She stepped into the stream, getting as clean as could be. And now, drying herself off and wrapping just her cloak around her washed body, she went back to the cottage, where she gave You an extra meal, stroked her head, and climbed the squeaking staircase to her bedroom, humming an old dirge as she went.

Then Esmerelda Weatherwax brushed out her long gray hair and repinned it into its usual bun with an army of pins, and dressed again, this time choosing her best witch’s dress and least-mended pair of drawers. She paused to open the little wooden window to the soft evening air and carefully placed two pennies on the small bedside table, beside her pointy witch’s hat festooned with unused hatpins.

The last thing she did before she lay down was to pick up a familiar card she had written on earlier.

And a little later, when the cat jumped up onto the bed, it appeared to You that something strange was happening. She heard an owl hoot, and a fox barked in the darkness.

And there was just the cat, You. All alone.

But if cats could smile, this one did.

It was a strange night; the owls hooted almost nonstop, and the wind outside for some reason made the wicks of the candles inside wobble with a vengeance and then blow out; but Granny Weatherwax was dressed in her best and ready for anything.

And now in the deep warm darkness, as dawn began to stealthily steal the night, her soul had a visitor, an individual with a scythe—a scythe with a blade so shadow-thin that it could separate a soul from a body.

Then the darkness spoke.

ESMERELDA WEATHERWAX, YOU KNOW WHO COMES, AND MAY I SAY IT’S A PRIVILEGE TO DEAL WITH YOU.

“I know it is you, Mr. Death. After all, we witches always knows what’s coming,” said Granny, looking down at her body on the bed.

Her visitor was no stranger, and the land she knew she was going to was a land she had helped many others to step through to over the years. For a witch stands on the very edge of everything, between the light and the dark, between life and death, making choices, making decisions so that others may pretend no decisions have even been needed. Sometimes they need to help some poor soul through the final hours, help them to find the door, not to get lost in the dark.

And Granny Weatherwax had been a witch for a long, long time.

ESMERELDA WEATHERWAX, WE HAVE MET SO MANY TIMES BEFORE NOW, HAVEN’T WE?

“Too many to count, Mr. Reaper. Well, you’ve finally got me, you old bugger. I’ve had my season, no doubt about it, and I was never one for pushing myself forward, or complaining.”

I HAVE WATCHED YOUR PROGRESS WITH INTEREST, ESMERELDA WEATHERWAX, said the voice in the dark. He was firm, but oh so polite. But now there was a question in his voice. PRAY TELL ME, WHY WERE YOU CONTENT TO LIVE IN THIS TINY LITTLE COUNTRY WHEN, AS YOU KNOW, YOU COULD HAVE BEEN ANYTHING AND ANYBODY IN THE WORLD?

“I don’t know about the world, not much; but in my part of the world I could make little miracles for ordinary people,” Granny replied sharply. “And I never wanted the world—just a part of it, a small part that I could keep safe, that I could keep away from storms. Not the ones of the sky, you understand: there are other kinds.”

AND WOULD YOU SAY YOUR LIFE BENEFITED THE PEOPLE OF LANCRE AND ENVIRONS?

After a minute the soul of Granny Weatherwax said, “Well, not boasting, your willingness, I think I have done right, for Lancre at least. I’ve never been to Environs.”

MISTRESS WEATHERWAX, THE WORD “ENVIRONS” MEANS, WELL, THEREABOUTS.

“All right,” said Granny. “I did get about, to be sure.”

A VERY GOOD LIFE LIVED INDEED, ESMERELDA.

“Thank you,” said Granny. “I did my best.”

MORE THAN YOUR BEST, said Death. AND I LOOK FORWARD TO WATCHING YOUR CHOSEN SUCCESSOR. WE HAVE MET BEFORE.

“She’s a good witch, to be sure,” said the shade of Granny Weatherwax. “I have no doubts whatsoever.”

YOU ARE TAKING THIS VERY WELL, ESME WEATHERWAX.

“It’s an inconvenience, true enough, and I don’t like it at all, but I know that you do it for everyone, Mr. Death. Is there any other way?”

NO, THERE ISN’T, I’M AFRAID. WE ARE ALL FLOATING IN THE WINDS OF TIME. BUT YOUR CANDLE, MISTRESS WEATHERWAX, WILL FLICKER FOR SOME TIME BEFORE IT GOES OUT—A LITTLE REWARD FOR A LIFE WELL LIVED. FOR I CAN SEE THE BALANCE AND YOU HAVE LEFT THE WORLD MUCH BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT, AND IF YOU ASK ME, said Death, NOBODY COULD DO ANY BETTER THAN THAT. . . .

There was no light, no point of reference except for the two tiny blue pinpricks sparkling in the eye sockets of Death himself.

“Well, the journey was worth taking and I saw many wonderful things on the way, including you, my reliable friend. Shall we go now?”

MADAM, WE’VE ALREADY GONE.

In the early morning light, in a village pond near Slice, bubbles came to the surface, followed by Miss Tick, witchfinder. There was no one there to observe this remarkable occurrence, apart from her mule, Joseph, grazing steadily on the riverbank. Of course, she told herself sadly as she picked up her towel, they all leave me alone these days.

She sighed. It was such a shame when old customs disappeared. A good witch-ducking was something she had liked doing in the bad old days—she had even trained for it. All those swimming lessons, and practice with knots at the Quirm College for Young Ladies. She had been able to defeat the mobs under water if necessary. Or at least work at breaking her own record for untying the simple knots they all thought worked on the nasty witch.

Now, a bit of pond-dipping had become more like a hobby, and she had a nasty feeling that others were copying her after she passed through their villages. She’d even heard talk of a swimming club being started in one small hamlet over by Ham-on-Rye.*

Miss Tick picked up her towel to dry herself off and went back to her small caravan, gave Joseph his breakfast nose bag, and put the kettle on. She settled down under the trees to have her snack—bread and dripping, a thank-you the day before from a farmer’s wife for an afternoon’s knowledge of reading. Miss Tick had smiled as she left because the eyes of the rather elderly woman had been sparkling—“Now,” she had said, “I can see what’s in those letters Alfred gets, especially the ones that smell of lavender.” Miss Tick wondered if it might be a good idea to get moving soon. Before Alfred got another letter anyway.

Her stomach filled, ready for the day ahead, she sensed an uneasiness in the air, so there was nothing for it but to make a shamble.

A shamble is a witch’s aid to inner concentration and always has to be made right there and then, when needed, to catch the moment. It could be made of pretty much anything, but had to include something alive. An egg would do, though most witches would prefer to save the egg for dinner, in case it exploded on them. Miss Tick dug in her pockets. A woodlouse, a dirty handkerchief, an old sock, an ancient horse chestnut, a stone with a hole in it, and a toadstool that Miss Tick couldn’t quite identify and so couldn’t risk eating. She expertly strung them all together with a bit of string and a spare length of knicker elastic.

Then she pulled at the threads. But there was something wrong. With a twang that reverberated around the clearing, the tangle of objects threw itself into the air and spun, twisting and turning.

“Well, that’s going to complicate things,” Miss Tick groaned.

Just across the woods from Granny Weatherwax’s cottage, Nanny Ogg nearly dropped a flagon of her best homemade cider on her cat, Greebo. She kept her flagons of cider in the shady spring by her cottage. The tomcat considered a growl, but after one look at his mistress he tried to be a good boy, for the normally cheerful face of Nanny Ogg was like thunder this morning.

And he heard her mutter, “It should have been me.”

In Genua, on a royal visit with her husband Verence, Queen Magrat of Lancre, former witch, discovered that even though she might think she had retired from magic, magic had not retired from her. She shuddered as the shock wave was carried across the world like a tsunami, an intimation that things were going to be . . . otherwise.

In Boffo’s Novelty and Joke Emporium in Ankh-Morpork, all the whoopee cushions trumpeted in a doleful harmony; while over in Quirm, Agnes Nitt, both witch and singer, woke with the sinking feeling known to many that she might have made a fool of herself at the previous evening’s first-night party.* It certainly still seemed to be going on behind her eyeballs. Then she suddenly heard her inner Perdita wail. . . .

Over in the great city of Ankh-Morpork, at Unseen University, Ponder Stibbons had just finished a lengthy breakfast when he entered the basement of the High Energy Magic Building. He stopped and gaped in amazement. In front of him, Hex was calculating at a speed that Ponder had never seen before. And he hadn’t even entered a question yet! Or pulled the Great Big Lever. The ant tubes that the ants crawled through to make their calculations were blurred with their motion. Was that . . . was that an ant crash by the cogwheel?

Ponder tapped a question into Hex: What do you know that I don’t? Please, Hex.

There was a scuffling in the anthills and the answer spat out: Practically everything.

Ponder rephrased his question more carefully with the requisite number of IF and BEFORE clauses. It was wordy and complicated, a huge ask for a wizard with only one meal in him, and no one else would have understood what Ponder even meant, but after a big hiccup of ants, Hex shot out: We are dealing with the death of Granny Weatherwax.

And then Ponder went to see the Archchancellor, Mustrum Ridcully, who would definitely want to hear this news. . . .

In the Oblong Office of the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari watched amazed as his Times crossword filled itself in. . . .

High above the Ramtops, in the monastery of Oi Dong, the Abbot of the History Monks licked his mystic pencil and made a note of it. . . .

The cat called You purred like a kind of feline windmill.

And in the traveling now, Eskarina, a woman who had once been a wizard, held the hand of her son and knew sorrow. . . .

But in a world shimmering just the other side of the Disc, a world where dreams could become real—where those who lived there liked to creep through to other worlds and hurt and destroy and steal and poison—an elf lord by the name of Peaseblossom felt a powerful quiver shoot through the air, as a spider might feel a prey land on his web.

He rubbed his hands in glee. A barrier has gone, he whispered to himself. They will be weak. . . .

Back on the Chalk, the kelda of the Wee Free Men watched her fire flicker and thought, The witch of witches is away to the fair lands.

“Mind how ye go, hag o’ hags. Ye’ll be sore missed.” She sighed, then called to her husband, the Big Man of the clan. “Rob, I’m afeared for oor big wee hag. She is going to ha’ need of ye. Gae to her, Rob. Take a few of the lads and get ye awa’ to her.”

Jeannie bustled into her chamber to fetch her cauldron. The edges of oor world will nae be as strong, she said to herself. I need to ken what may be comin’ oor way. . . .

And far away, in someplace unthinkable, a white horse was being unsaddled by a figure with a scythe with, it must be said, some sorrow.

CHAPTER THREE

An Upside-down World

In a small cottage in a little hamlet on the rolling fields of the sheep-haunted Chalk, Tiffany Aching had her sleeves rolled up and was sweating just as much as the mother-to-be—a young girl only a few years older than she herself was—who was leaning on her. Tiffany had already helped more than fifty babies into the world, plus lots and lots of lambs, and was generally held to be an expert midwife.

Unfortunately, Miss Milly Standish’s mother and several other women of varying ages, who had all claimed to be relatives and asserted their right to a place in the very small room, thought they were experts themselves and were generously telling Tiffany what she was doing wrong.

Already one or two of them had given her old-fashioned advice, wrong advice, and possibly dangerous advice, but Tiffany kept her calm, tried not to shout at anybody, and concentrated on dealing with the fact that Milly was having twins. She hoped that people couldn’t hear her teeth grinding.

It was always going to be a difficult birth with two boisterous babies fighting one another to be the first out. But Tiffany was focused on the new lives, and she would not allow Mr. Death a place in this room. Another sweating push from the young mother, and first one and then another baby came yelling into the world to be handed to their grandmother and a neighbor.

“Two lads! How wonderful!” said Old Mother Standish with a distinct note of satisfaction.

Tiffany wiped her hands, mopped her brow, and continued to look after the mother while the crowd cooed over the new arrivals. And then she noticed something. There was another child in that capacious young woman. Yes, a third baby was arriving, hardly noticed because of the battling brothers ahead of it.

Just then, Tiffany looked down and in a slight greenish-yellow haze saw a cat, pure white and as aloof as a duchess, staring at her. It was Granny Weatherwax’s cat, You—Tiffany knew the cat well, having given her to Granny Weatherwax herself only a few years ago. To her horror, one of the older ladies went to shoo You away. Tiffany almost screamed.

“Ladies, that cat belongs to Granny Weatherwax,” she said sharply. “It might not be a good idea to make a very senior witch angry.”

Suddenly the gaggle backed away. Even here on the Chalk, the name of Mistress Weatherwax worked a treat. Her reputation had spread far and wide, farther and wider than Granny Weatherwax had been in the habit of traveling herself—the dwarfs over in Sto Plains even had a name for her that translated as “Go Around the Other Side of the Mountain.”

But Tiffany, sweating again, wondered why Granny’s cat was here. Usually You would be hanging around Granny Weatherwax’s cottage back in Lancre, not all the way down here on the Chalk. Witches saw omens everywhere, of course. So was it some kind of omen? Something to do with what Jeannie had said? Not for the first time, she wondered how it was that cats seemed to be able to be in one place one moment, and then almost at the same time, reappear somewhere else.*

There was a cry of pain from the young mother, and Tiffany gritted her teeth and turned her attention back to the job in hand. Witches do the task that is in front of them, and what was in front of her right at that moment was a struggling young mother and another small head.

“One big push, Milly, please. You’re having triplets.”

Milly groaned.

“Another one. A small one,” said Tiffany cheerfully, as a girl child arrived, unscathed, quite pretty for a newborn and small. She handed the baby girl to another relative, and then reality was back again.

As Tiffany began clearing up, she noticed—because noticing was the ground state of her being as a witch—that there was a lot more cooing over the two boys than there was for their sister. It was always good to recognize those things and put them away and keep them in mind, so that a little trouble wouldn’t, one day, become a larger trouble.

The ladies had produced the family groaning chair for Milly, so that she could sit in state to receive the congratulations of the throng. They were also busy congratulating each other, nodding sagely about the advice given, which had, clearly, been the right advice since here was the evidence. Two strapping boys! Oh, and a little girl.

Bottles were opened, and a child was fetched and told to go across the fields to find Dad, who was working on the barley with his dad. Mum was beaming, especially since young Milly was very soon to be Mrs. Robinson, because Mum had put her foot down very, very hard about that and made certain that young Mr. Robinson was definitely going to do his duty by her girl. There hadn’t been a problem about this; this was the country, after all, where boy would meet girl, as Milly had met her beau at Hogswatch, and nature would eventually take its course, right up until the moment when the girl’s mother would notice the bump. She would then tell her husband and her husband, over a convivial pint of beer, would have a word with the boy’s father, who would then talk to the boy. And usually it worked.

Tiffany went over to the old lady holding the little girl. “Can I see her for just a moment, please, just to see if she’s, you know, if she’s all right?”

The rather toothless old crone handed over the little girl with alacrity. After all, she knew that Tiffany, apart from being a midwife, was a witch, and you never knew what a witch might do if you got on the wrong side of one. And when the old granny went to get her share of the drink, Tiffany took the child in her arms and whispered a promise to her in a voice so low that no one could have heard. This little girl would clearly need some luck in her life. And with luck, now, she would get some. She took her back to her mother, who didn’t seem very impressed with her.

By now, Tiffany noticed, the little boys had names, but the girl didn’t. Worried about this, Tiffany said, “What about your girl? Can’t she have a name?”

The mother looked over. “Name her after yourself. Tiffany is a nice name.”

Tiffany was flattered, but it didn’t take the worry away about baby Tiffany. Those big, strapping boys were going to get most of the milk, she thought. But not if she could do something about it, and so she decided that this particular family was going to be visited almost every week for a time.

Then there was nothing for it, but to say, “Everything looks fine, you know where to find me, I’ll pop in and see you next week. And if you’ll excuse me, ladies, I have other people to see.”

She kept on smiling, right up to the time when she came out of the cottage, picked up her broomstick and the white cat leaped onto the handle of it like a figurehead. The world is changing, Tiffany thought—I can feel it.

Suddenly she caught a flash of the red that showed a Feegle or two lurking behind a milk churn. Tiffany had, if only for a few days, once been the kelda of the Nac Mac Feegle, and this created a bond between them that could never be broken. And they were always there—always, watching over her, making sure no harm came to their big wee hag.

But there was something different today. This lurking was somehow not like their usual lurking, and . . .

“Oh, waily waily,” came a voice. It was Daft Wullie, a Feegle who had been somewhere else when the brains of a Feegle—small enough to begin with—had been handed out. He was shut up suddenly with a “whmpf” as Rob slapped a hand over his mouth.

“Shut yer gob, Wullie. This is hag business, ye ken,” he said, stepping out to stand in front of Tiffany, shuffling his feet and twiddling his rabbit-skull helmet in his hands. “It’s the big hag,” he continued. “Jeannie tol’ me to come fetch ye. . . .”

All the birds of the day, the bats and the owls of the night knew Tiffany Aching and didn’t fly in her way when she was busy, and the stick ploughed on through the air to Lancre. The little kingdom was a long flight from the Chalk, and Tiffany found her mind filling up with an invisible gray mist, and in that thought there was nothing but grief. She could feel herself trying to push back time, but even the best witchcraft could not do that. She tried not to think, but it’s hard to stop your brain working, no matter how much you try. Tiffany was a witch, and a witch learned to respect her forebodings, even if she hoped that what she feared was not true.

It was early evening by the time she settled her broomstick down quietly outside Granny Weatherwax’s cottage, where she saw the unmistakable rotund shape of Nanny Ogg. The older witch had a pint mug in one hand and looked gray.

The cat, You, jumped off the broomstick instantly and headed into the cottage. The Nac Mac Feegles followed, making You scuttle just a little faster in that way cats scuttle when they want to look like, oh yes, it was their decision to speed up and, oh no, nothing to do with the little red-haired figures melting into the shadows of the cottage.

“Good to see you, Tiff,” said Nanny Ogg.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” said Tiffany.

“Yes,” said Nanny. “Esme’s gone. In her sleep, last night, by the looks of it.”

“I knew it,” said Tiffany. “Her cat came to tell me. And the kelda sent Rob. . . .”

Nanny Ogg looked Tiffany in the face and said, “Glad to see you’re not cryin’, my dear; that’s for later. You knows how Granny wanted things: no fuss or shoutin’, and definitely no cryin’. There’s other things as must be done first. Can you help, Tiff? She’s upstairs and you know what them stairs is like.”

Tiffany looked and saw the long, thin wicker basket that Granny had made, waiting by the stairs. It was almost exactly the same size as Granny. Minus her hat, of course.

Nanny said, “That’s Esme for you, that is. Does everything for ’erself.”

Granny Weatherwax’s cottage was largely built of creaks, and you could play a tune with them if you wanted to. With accompaniment from the harmonious woodwork, Tiffany followed Nanny Ogg as she huffed and puffed up the cramped little staircase that wound up and round like a snake—Nanny always said that you needed a corkscrew to get through it—until they arrived at the bedroom and the small, sad deathbed.

It could, Tiffany thought, have been the bed of a child, and there, laid out properly, was Granny Weatherwax herself, looking as if she was just sleeping. And there too, on the bed by her mistress, was You the cat.

There was a familiar card on Granny’s chest, and a sudden thought struck Tiffany like a gong.

“Nanny, you don’t suppose Granny could just be Borrowing, do you? Do you think that while her body is here, her actual self is . . . elsewhere?” She looked at the white cat curled upon the bed and added hopefully, “In You?”

Granny Weatherwax had been an expert at Borrowing—moving her mind into that of another creature, using its body, sharing its experiences.* It was dangerous witchery, for an inexperienced witch risked losing herself in the mind of the other and never coming back. And, of course, while away from one’s body, people could get the wrong idea. . . .

Nanny silently picked up the card from Granny’s chest. They looked at it together:

I ATE’NT IS PROBABLY DEAD

Nanny Ogg turned it over as Tiffany’s hand crept toward Granny Weatherwax’s wrist and—even now, even when every atom of her witch being told her that Granny was no longer there—the young girl part of her tried to feel for even the slightest beat of life.

On the back of the card, however, there was a scrawled message that pretty much put the final strand in the willow basket below.

I PROBABLY AIN’T ALIVE, GYTHA OGG. YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO AND WHO TO TELL. ALL OF IT GOES TO TIFFANY ACHING EXCEPT THE CAT, YOU. SHE’LL GO WHERE SHE WANTS TO.

Quietly Tiffany said, “No longer ‘probably.’” And then the rest of the note rocketed into her mind. “What? What does she mean by ‘All of it goes to Tiffany . . .’?” Her voice tailed off as she looked at Nanny Ogg, aghast.

“Yes,” said Nanny. “That’s Granny’s writing, right enough. Good enough for me. You gets the cottage and the surroundin’ grounds, the herbs and the bees an’ everything else in the place. Oh, but she always promised me the pink jug and basin set.” She looked at Tiffany and went on, “I hopes you don’t mind?”

Mind? Tiffany thought. Nanny Ogg is asking me if I mind? And then her mind rattled on to: Two steadings? I mean, I won’t need to live with my parents. . . . But it will be a lot of travel. . . . And the main thought hit her like a thunderbolt. How can I possibly tread in the footsteps of Granny Weatherwax? She is . . . was . . . unfollowable!

Nanny didn’t get to be an old senior witch without learning a thing or two along the way. “Don’t get your knickers in a knot just yet, Tiff,” she said briskly. “It won’t solve anything an’ will just make you walk odd. There’s plenty of time later to talk about . . . all of that. Right now, we needs to get on with what must be done. . . .”

Tiffany and Nanny had dealt with death many times. Out in the Ramtops, witches did the things that had to be done to make the departed presentable for the next world—the slightly messy things that weren’t talked about, and other little things like opening a window for the soul to get out. Granny Weatherwax had, in fact, already opened the window, though her soul, Tiffany thought, could probably get out of anywhere and go anywhere she chose.

Nanny Ogg held up the two pennies from the bedside table and said, “She left ’em ready for us. Just like Esme, thoughtful to the end-like. Shall we begin?”

Unfortunately Nanny had brought Granny Weatherwax’s bottle of triple-distilled peach brandy—for medicinal use only—from the scullery; she said it would help her as she went through the rites for their sister in the craft, and although they dealt with Granny Weatherwax as if she were a precious gem, Nanny Ogg’s drinking was not helping.

“She looks good, don’t she?” said Nanny after the nasty bits—and, thank goodness, Granny had still had all her own teeth—were over and done with. “It’s a shame. Always thought as I’d be the first to go, what with my drinkin’ and suchlike, especially the suchlike. I’ve done a lot o’ that.” In fact, Nanny Ogg had done a great deal of everything, and was commonly held to be so broad-minded that you could pull her mind out through her ears and tie a hat on with it.

“Is there going to be a funeral?” asked Tiffany.

“Well, you know Esme. She wasn’t one for that kind of thing—never one to push herself forward*—and we witches don’t much like funerals. Granny called them fuss.”

Tiffany thought of the only other witch’s funeral she had been to. The late Miss Treason, for whom she had worked, had wanted a lot of fuss. She hadn’t wanted to miss the event herself either, so she had sent out invitations in advance. It had been . . . memorable.

As they put Granny Weatherwax to bed—as Granny had called it—Nanny said, “Queen Magrat has to be told. She’s away in Genua at the moment with the King, but I daresay as she’ll be along as soon as possible, what with all these railways and whatnot. Anyone else as needs to know will probably know already, you mark my words. But first thing tomorrow, before they get here, we’ll bury Esme the way she wanted, quiet-like an’ no fuss, in that wickerwork basket downstairs. Very cheap, wickerwork baskets are, and quick to make, Esme always said. An’ you know Esme, she’s such a frugal person—nothing goes to waste.”

Tiffany spent the night on the truckle bed, a tiny thing that was usually pushed away when it wasn’t needed. Nanny Ogg had settled for the rocking chair downstairs, which squeaked and complained every time she rocked back. But Tiffany didn’t sleep. There were a series of half-sleeps as the light of the moon filtered into the room, and every time she looked up there was You, the cat, asleep at the foot of Granny’s bed, curled up like a little white moon herself.

Tiffany had watched the dead before many times, of course—it was the custom for a departing soul to have company the night before any funeral or burial, as if to make a point to anything that might be . . . lurking: this person mattered, there is someone here to make sure nothing evil creeps in at this time of danger. The nighttime creaking of woodwork filled the room now and Tiffany, fully awake, listened as Granny Weatherwax began making sounds of her own as her body settled down. I’ve done this often, she told herself. It’s what we witches do. We don’t talk about it, but we do it. We watch the dead to see that no harm comes to them out of the darkness. Although, as Nanny said, maybe it’s the living you have to watch—for despite what most people thought, the dead don’t hurt anybody.

What do I do now? she thought in the small hours of the night. What’s going to happen tomorrow? The world is upside down. I can’t replace Granny. Never in a hundred years. And then she thought, What did young Esmerelda say when Nanny Gripes told her that her steading was the whole world?

She twisted and turned, then opened her eyes and looked up suddenly to see an owl gazing in at her from the windowsill, its huge eyes hanging in the darkness like a lantern to another world. Another omen? Granny had liked owls. . . .

Now her Second Thoughts were at work, thinking about what she was thinking. You can’t say you’re not good enough—no witch would ever say that, they told her. I mean, you know you are pretty good, yes; the senior witches know that you once threw the Queen of the Fairies from our world, and they saw you go through the gate with the hiver. They all saw you return too.

But is that enough? her First Thoughts butted in. After . . . after we have done what we need to do, I could just put on my number-two drawers and go home on my broomstick. I have to go anyway, even if I take on the steading. I have to tell my parents. And I’m going to need help on the Chalk . . . it’s going to be a nightmare if I have to be in two places at once. I’m not like a cat. . . .

And as she thought that, she looked down, and there was You looking at her, but not just looking—a penetrating stare of the kind that only cats can achieve, and it seemed to Tiffany that this meant: Get on with your job, there is a lot of work to be doing. Don’t think of yourself. Think for all.

Then tiredness was finally her friend, and Tiffany Aching had a few hours’ sleep.

The clacks rattled as the news of Granny Weatherwax went down the lines in the morning, and people who got the message faced it in their various ways.

In the study of her manor house, Mrs. Earwig* got the news while she was writing her next book on “Flower Magick” and there was a sudden sense of wrongness, of the world going askew. She put the right expression of grief on her face and went to tell her husband, an elderly wizard, trying to keep her joy hidden as she realized what this could mean: she, Mrs. Earwig, was going to be one of the most senior witches in Lancre. Perhaps she could get her latest girl into that old cottage in the woods? Her sharp face went even sharper as she thought how magickal she could make it look with the help of a few curse-nets, charms, runic symbols, silver stars, black velvet drapes, and—oh yes, the essential crystal ball.

She called to her latest young trainee to fetch her cape and broomstick, and pulled on her very best pair of black lacy gloves, the ones with the silver symbols stitched over each fingertip. She would need to Make an Entrance. . . .

In Boffo’s Novelty and Joke Emporium, 4 Tenth Egg Street, Ankh-Morpork—“Everything for the Hag in a Hurry”—Mrs. Proust said, “What a shame, but the old girl had a good innings.”

Witches don’t have leaders, of course, but everyone knew that Granny Weatherwax had been the best leader they didn’t have, so now someone else would need to step forward to generally steer the witches. And to keep an eye too on anyone prone to a bit of cackling.

Mrs. Proust put down an imitation cackle she had taken from her Compare the Cackle display, and looked toward her son Derek and said, “There’s going to be an argument now, or my name’s not Eunice Proust. But it will surely be young Tiffany Aching who gets that steading. We all saw what she can do. My word, we did!” And in her mind, she said, Go to it, Tiffany, before somebody else does.

In the palace, Drumknott the clerk hurried with the Ankh-Morpork Times to the Oblong Office where Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of the city, had been waiting for his daily crossword to arrive.

But Vetinari already knew the news that mattered. “There will be some trouble. Mark my words, I expect squabbling on the distaff side.” He sighed. “Any ideas, Drumknott? Who will rise to the top of the brew, do you think?” He tapped the top of his ebony cane as he considered his own question.

“Well, my lord,” said Drumknott, “the rumor on the clacks is that it’s likely to be Tiffany Aching. Quite young.”

“Quite young, yes. And any good?” asked Vetinari.

“I believe so, sir.”

“What about this woman called Mrs. Earwig?”

Drumknott made a face. “All show, my lord, doesn’t get her hands dirty. Lot of jewelry, black lace, you know the type. Well-connected, but that’s about all I can say.”

“Ah yes, now you tell me, I’ve seen her. Pushy and full of herself. She’s the kind who goes to soirees.”

“So do you, my lord.”

“Yes, but I am the tyrant, so it’s the job I have to do, alas. Now, this Aching young lady—what else do we know about her? Wasn’t there some bother the last time she was in the city?”

“My lord, the Nac Mac Feegles are very fond of her and she of them. They consider themselves an honor guard to her on occasions.”

“Drumknott.”

“Yes, my lord?”

“I’m going to use a word I’ve not used before. Crivens! We don’t want Feegles around here again. We can’t afford it!”

“Unlikely, my lord. Mistress Aching has them in hand and she’s unlikely to want to repeat the events of her last visit, which after all had no long-lasting damage.”

“Didn’t the King’s Head become the King’s Neck?”*

“Yes indeed, my lord, but it has in fact proved a welcome change to many, most of all to the publican, who is still getting wealthy because of the tourists. It’s in the guidebooks.”

“If she has the Nac Mac Feegles on her side, she is a force to be reckoned with,” Vetinari mused.

“The young lady is also known to be thoughtful, helpful, and clever.”

“Without being insufferable? I wish I could say the same of Mrs. Earwig. Hmm,” said Vetinari, “we should keep a careful eye on her. . . .”

Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University, stared at his bedroom wall, and cried again, and once he’d pulled himself together he sent for Ponder Stibbons, his right-hand wizard.

“The clacks confirms what Hex told you, Mr. Stibbons,” he said sadly. “The witch Esme Weatherwax of Lancre, known to many as Granny Weatherwax, has died.” The Archchancellor looked slightly embarrassed. There was a bundle of letters on his lap, which he was turning over and over. “There was a bond, you see, when we were both young, but she wanted to be the best of all witches and I hoped one day to be Archchancellor. Alas for us, our dreams came true.”*

“Oh dear, sir. Would you like me to arrange your schedule so that you can attend the funeral? There will be a funeral, I assume. . . .”

“Mr. Stibbons, schedules be damned. I am leaving now. Right now.”

“With respect, Archchancellor, I must tell you, sir, that you promised to go to a meeting with the Guild of Accountants and Usurers.”

“Those penny-pinchers! Tell them that I have got an urgent matter of international affairs to deal with.”

Ponder hesitated. “That is not strictly true, is it, Archchancellor.”

Ridcully riposted with, “Oh yes, it is!” Rules were for other people. Not for him. Nor, he thought with a pang, had they been for Esme Weatherwax . . . “How long have you been working for the University, young man?” he boomed at Stibbons. “Dissembling is our stock in trade. Now I am going to get on my broomstick, Mr. Stibbons, and I will leave the place in your very capable hands.”

And in that . . . other world, that parasite with its evil little hooks in the gateways of stone, an elf was hatching his plans. Plotting to seize Fairyland from the control of a Queen who had never fully recovered her powers after her humiliating defeat at the hands of a young girl named Tiffany Aching. Plotting to pounce, to spring through a gateway that—for a time, at least—would be gossamer-thin. For a powerful hag no longer stood in their way. And those in that world would be vulnerable.

The Lord Peaseblossom’s eyes gleamed and his mind filled with glorious images of victims, of the pleasures of cruelty, the splendors of a land where the elves could toy once more with new playthings.

When the moment was right . . .

CHAPTER FOUR

A Farewell—and a Welcome

Getting Granny Weatherwax’s corpse down the winding stair with its tiny little steps in the tiny little cottage the following morning was not helped by the big jug of cider that Nanny Ogg was emptying speedily, but nevertheless they got it done without a bump.

They laid Granny’s body carefully in the wicker casket, and Tiffany went out to the barn to fetch the wheelbarrow and shovels while Nanny Ogg caught her breath. Then, together, they gently lifted the basket into the wheelbarrow, and placed the shovels on either side of her.

Tiffany picked up the handles of the barrow. “Ye stay here now, Rob,” she said to the Feegle as he and his little band appeared from their varied hiding places and lined up behind her. “This is a hag thing, ye ken. Ye cannot help me.”

Rob Anybody shuffled his feet. “But ye are oor hag, and ye ken that Jeannie—” he began.

“Rob Anybody.” Tiffany’s steely gaze pinned him to the ground. “Ye remember the chief hag? Granny Weatherwax? Do ye want her shade to come back and . . . tell ye what tae do for ever and ever?” There was a group moan and Daft Wullie backed away, whimpering. “Then understand this: this is something we hags must do by ourselves.” She turned to Nanny Ogg, resolute. “Where are we going, Nanny?”

“Esme marked a spot in the woods, Tiff, where she wanted to be planted,” Nanny replied. “Follow me, I know where it is.”

Granny Weatherwax’s garden was cheek by jowl with the woodland beyond, but the journey felt a long way to Tiffany before they arrived at the heart of the forest, where a stick was pushed into the ground, a red ribbon tied to the top of it.

Nanny passed Tiffany a shovel and the two of them started digging in the cool early morning air. It was hard work, but Granny had chosen her place well and the soil was soft and friable.

The hole finally dug—mostly, it has to be said, by Tiffany—Nanny Ogg, sweating cobs (according to her), rested on the handle of her shovel and took a swig from her flagon as Tiffany brought the wheelbarrow over. They laid the wicker basket gently in the hole and then stood back for a moment.

Without a word being said, together, solemnly, they bowed to Granny’s grave. And then they picked up the shovels again and started to fill it back in. Ker-thunk! Ker-thunk! The earth built up over the wicker until all that could be seen was soil, and Tiffany watched it flow in until the last crumb had stopped moving.

As they smoothed the fresh mound of earth, Nanny told Tiffany that Granny had said she wanted no urns, no shrines, and definitely no gravestone.

“Surely there should be a stone,” said Tiffany. “You know how badgers and mice and other creatures can lift the earth. Even though we know the bones are not her, I for one would want to be sure that nothing is dug up until . . .” She hesitated.

“The ends of time?” said Nanny. “Look, Tiff, Esme tol’ me to say, if you wants to see Esmerelda Weatherwax, then just you look around. She is here. Us witches don’t mourn for very long. We are satisfied with happy memories—they’re there to be cherished.”

The memory of Granny Aching suddenly shone in Tiffany’s mind. Her own granny had been no witch—though Weatherwax had been very interested in hearing about her—but when Granny Aching had died, her shepherding hut had been burned and her bones had gone down into the hills, six feet deep in the chalk. Then the turf had been put back with the spot marked only by the iron wheels of the hut. But it was a sacred spot now, a place for memories. And not only for Tiffany. No shepherd ever passed without a glance at the skies and a thought for Granny Aching, who had tramped those hills night after night, her light zigzagging in the darkness. Her nod of approval had meant the world on the Chalk.

This spot in the woods, Tiffany realized, would be the same. Blessed. It had been a nice day for it, she thought, if there ever was such a thing as a good day to die, a good day to be buried.

And now the birds were singing overhead, and there was a soft rustling in the undergrowth, and all the sounds of the forest that showed that life was still being lived blended with the souls of the dead in a woodland requiem.

The whole forest now sang for Granny Weatherwax.

Tiffany saw a fox sidle up, bow, and then run away because a wild boar had arrived, with its family of piglets. Then there was a badger, paying no heed to those who had come earlier, and it remained, and Tiffany was astounded when creature after creature settled down near the grave and sat there as if they were domestic pets.

Where is Granny now? Tiffany wondered. Could a part of her still be . . . here? She jumped as something touched her on the shoulder; but it was just a leaf. Then, deep inside, she knew the answer to her question: Where is Granny Weatherwax?

It was: She is here—and everywhere.

To Tiffany’s surprise, Nanny Ogg was weeping gently. Nanny took another swig from her flagon and wiped her eyes. “Cryin’ helps sometimes,” she said. “No shame in tears for them as you’ve loved. Sometimes I remember one of my husbands and shed a tear or two. The memories’re there to be treasured, and it’s no good to get morbid-like about it.”

“How many husbands have you actually had, Nanny?” asked Tiffany.

Nanny appeared to be counting. “Three of my own, and let’s just say I’ve run out of fingers on the rest, as it were.” But she was smiling now, perhaps remembering a very treasured husband, and then, bouncing back from the past, she was suddenly her normal cheerful self again. “Come on, Tiff,” she said, “let’s go back to your cottage. Like I always says, a decent wake don’t happen by itself.”

As they made their way back to the cottage, Tiffany asked Nanny the question that had been burning in her mind. “What do you think will happen next?”

Nanny looked at Tiffany. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Granny wasn’t exactly the head witch . . . except that most people thought she was. . . .”

“There ain’t no such thing as a head witch, Tiff, you know that.”

“Yes, but . . . if Granny’s not here anymore, do you become the not-head-witch?”

“Me?” Nanny Ogg laughed. “Oh no, dear, I’ve had a very good life, me, lots of children, lots of men, lots of fun and, yes, as witches go, I’m pretty good. But I never thought of steppin’ into Esme’s shoes. Ever.”

“Well, who is, then? Someone’s got to.”

Nanny Ogg scowled and said, “Granny never said as she was better than others. She just got on with it and showed ’em and people worked it out for themselves. You mark my words, the senior witches will get together soon enough to talk about this, but I know who Granny would choose—and it’s as I would too.” She stopped and looked serious for a moment. “It’s you, Tiff. Esme’s left you her cottage. But more’n that. You must step into the shoes of Granny Weatherwax or else’n someone less qualified will try an’ do it!”

“But—I can’t! And witches don’t have leaders! You’ve just said that, Nanny!”

“Yes,” said Nanny. “And you must be the best damn leader that we don’t have. Don’t look at me sideways like that, Tiffany Aching. Just think about it. You didn’t try to earn it, but earn it you has, and if you don’t believe me, believe Granny Weatherwax. She tol’ me that you was the only witch who could seriously take her place, she said that on the night after you run with that hare.”

“She never said anything to me,” said Tiffany, feeling suddenly very young.

“Well, she wouldn’t say nothing, o’ course she wouldn’t,” said Nanny. “That’s not Esme’s way, you know that. She would have given a grunt, and maybe said, ‘Well done, girl.’ She just liked people to know their own strengths—and your strengths are formidable.”

“But, Nanny, you are older, more experienced, than me—you know lots more!”

“And some of it I wants to forget,” said Nanny.

“I’m far too young,” Tiffany wailed. “If I wasn’t a witch, I’d still just be thinking of boyfriends.”

Nanny Ogg almost jumped on her. “You’re not too young,” she said. “Years ain’t what’s important here. Granny Weatherwax said to me as you is the one who’s to deal with the future. An’ bein’ young means you’ve got a lot of future.” She sniffed. “Lot more’n me, that’s for sure.”

“But that’s not how it works,” Tiffany said. “It ought to be a senior witch. It has to be.” But her Second Thoughts then leaped up in her head, challenging her. Why? Why not do things differently? Why should we do things how they have always been done before? And something inside her suddenly thrilled to the challenge.

“Huh!” Nanny retorted. “You danced with the hare to save the lives of your friends, my girl. Do you remember being so . . . angry that you picked up a lump of flint and let it dribble between your fingers as if it was water? All the senior witches were there, and they took their hats off to you. You! Hats!” She stomped off toward the cottage, with just one parting shot. “And remember, You chose you. That cat there, she went to you when Esme up and left.”

And there the white cat was, sitting on the stump of an old birch, preening herself, and Tiffany wondered. Oh yes, she wondered.

Just as they got back to the cottage, a disheveled but very large wizard was trying to land his broomstick by the goat shed.

“It is good of you to come, Mustrum,” Nanny Ogg shouted across the garden, as the gentleman smoothed down his robes, trod carefully past the herbs, and doffed his hat to them—Tiffany noticed with glee that he had tied it onto his head with string. “Tiff, this is Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University.”

Tiffany had only met one or two wizards, and they had mostly been of the type that relied on the robes, pointy hat, and staff to make their point, hoping that they never had to actually do anything magical. On the face of it, Ridcully looked exactly the same—beard, big staff with a knob on the top, a pointy hat . . . wait, a pointy hat with a crossbow tucked into the hatband? The witch side of her stepped back and watched carefully. But Ridcully was not interested in her at all. To her astonishment, the Archchancellor actually appeared to be crying.

“Is it true, then, Nanny? Has she really gone?”

Nanny gave him a handkerchief and as he blew noisily into it, she whispered to Tiffany, “He and Esme were, well, you know, good friends when they were younger.” She winked.

The Archchancellor seemed to be overcome. Nanny handed him her flagon. “My famous remedy, your worship. Best to drink it down in one great gulp. Works a right treat for melancholy, it does. Whenever I’m a bit unsure of myself, I drinks a lot of it. Medicinal use only, o’ course.”

The Archchancellor took the flagon, swigged down a couple of gulps in one go, and then flourished it at Nanny. “Here’s to Esmerelda Weatherwax and lost futures,” he said in a voice choked with sorrow. “May we all go round again!” He removed his hat, unscrewed the pointy bit, and brought out a small bottle of brandy and a cup. “For you, Mrs. Ogg,” he boomed. “And now, may I see her, please?”

“We have laid her down already, where she wanted to rest,” said Nanny. “You know how it is. She didn’t want no fuss.” She looked at him and continued, “I’m very sorry about that, Mustrum, but we’ll take you to the spot where she is now. Tiffany, why don’t you lead the way?”

And thus the most important wizard in the world respectfully followed Tiffany and Nanny Ogg through the woods to the last resting place of the most important witch in the world. The trees surrounding the little clearing were full of birds, singing their souls out. Nanny and Tiffany held back to allow the wizard a private moment by the grave. He sighed. “Thank you, Mistress Ogg, Mistress Aching.”

Then the Archchancellor turned to Tiffany and looked at her properly.

“For the sake of Esmerelda Weatherwax, my dear, if you ever need a friend, you can call on me. Being the most important wizard in the world must mean something.” He paused. “I have heard of you,” he said, and at her gasp, he added, “No, don’t be surprised. You must know that we wizards keep an . . . eye on what you witches do. We know when the magic is disturbed, when something . . . happens. And so I heard about the flint. Was it true?” His voice was brusque now—a man who did not do small talk, only big talk, and in a big voice too.

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “All of it.”

“My word,” said Ridcully. “And now I feel certain that your future is going to be, let us say, very speckled. I can see the signs in you, Mistress Tiffany Aching—and I know many people of power, people who have so much power that they don’t have to wield it. You are hardly into your prime, yet I see this in you, and so I live in wonder about what you might do next.” His face now fell and he continued, “Would you ladies now leave me alone with my feelings? I am sure I can find my way back to the cottage.”

Later on, the Archchancellor walked back to his broomstick and Tiffany and Nanny Ogg watched him disappear in the general direction of Ankh-Morpork. The broomstick itself was wobbling about as he rose over the woods in a final salute.

Nanny smiled. “He is a wizard. He can be sober when he likes, and if he ain’t, well, he can fly a broomstick well enough with a brandy or two inside him. After all, there’s not much to bump into up there!”

As the morning progressed, more and more people were coming to pay their respects at the little cottage. The news had spread, and it seemed like everybody wanted to leave a gift for Granny Weatherwax. For the witch who had always been there for them, even if they hadn’t actually liked her. Esme Weatherwax hadn’t done nice. She’d done what was needed. She’d been there for them when they called at the cottage, she’d come out at whatever time of day or night when asked (and sometimes when not, which hadn’t always been comfortable), and somehow she had made them feel . . . safer. They brought hams and cheeses, milk and pickles, jams and beer, bread and fruit. . . .

It also seemed that broomsticks were coming through the trees from everywhere, and there was nothing a witch appreciated more than a bit of free food—Tiffany caught one elderly witch trying to stuff an entire chicken up her knickers. And as the witches turned up, the villagers began to melt away. It didn’t do to be around that many witches. Why risk it? Nobody wanted to be turned into a frog—after all, who would bring in the harvest then? They started to make their excuses and sidle off, with those who had partaken of Nanny Ogg’s famous cocktails sidling in a rather wobbly fashion.

None of the witches had been invited, but it seemed to Tiffany they had been drawn there, just like the Archchancellor. Even Mrs. Earwig turned up. She came in a carriage and pair, complete with black plumes, and her arms jingled with bangles and charms—as if the percussion section of an orchestra had suddenly fallen off a cliff—while her hat was festooned in silver stars. Her husband was dragged along beside her. Tiffany felt sorry for the man.

“Hail, sisters, and may the runes protect us on this momentous occasion,” Mrs. Earwig pronounced, just loud enough to be heard by the remaining villagers—she did like to advertise her witchiness. She gave Tiffany a long stare, which infuriated Nanny Ogg.

Nanny made the briefest possible bow, then turned and said, “Look, Tiffany, here’s Agnes Nitt. Wotcha, Agnes!”

Agnes—a witch with a waistline that suggested she had a similar attitude to eating as the Feegles’ kelda—was out of breath, saying, “I’ve been touring in Stackpole’s Much Ado About Everybody. I was in Quirm when I heard and I came as fast as I could.”

Tiffany hadn’t met Agnes before, but from one look at her sensible face and good-natured smile, she thought she would probably get along with her very well indeed. Then she was overcome with delight as a broomstick wobbled down to land and she heard the familiar “Um” of her friend Petulia.

“Um, Tiffany, I heard you were here. Um, do you want some help with making any sandwiches?” Petulia offered, waving a big side of bacon as she landed. Petulia was married to a pig farmer and was acknowledged to be Lancre’s best pig borer.* She was also one of Tiffany’s very best friends. “Dimity is here too, and, um, Lucy Warbeck,” Petulia continued—the “um”s always got worse when she was in the company of other witches; amazingly, she never used the word when pig boring, which had to say something about Petulia and pigs.

Tiffany and Nanny Ogg’s grandsons had put up some makeshift tables. After all, everybody knows what a funeral is really for, and most people like eating and drinking whatever the occasion. There was music, and over it all, Agnes’s heavenly voice. She sang the “Columbine Lament,” and as its soft tune wafted over the roof and into the forest beyond, Nanny said to Tiffany, “That voice could make the trees cry.”

And there was dancing, no doubt helped along by Nanny Ogg’s brews. Nanny Ogg could get any party singing and dancing. It was a gift, Tiffany thought. Nanny could jolly up a graveyard if she put her mind to it.

“No long faces for Granny Weatherwax, please,” Nanny proclaimed. “She’s had a good death at home, just as anyone might wish for. Witches know that people die; and if they manages to die after a long time, leavin’ the world better than they went an’ found it, well then, that’s surely a reason to be happy. All the rest of it is just tidyin’ up. Now, let’s dance! Dancin’ makes the world go round. And it goes round even faster with a drop o’ my home liquor inside you.”

Up in the roof of Granny’s cottage, swinging from the boughs of the little tree that grew out of the thatch, the Nac Mac Feegles—Rob Anybody, Daft Wullie, Big Yan, and the gonnagle, Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin—were in agreement with the latter part of that statement, though they were keeping the dancing for later, mind. They stayed mostly out of sight, spotted only by one or two of the more observant witches, but now they came down to the scullery, where Tiffany was starting on what the elderly, more senior witches always expected the younger girls to do—clearing up. The senior witches were beginning to gather together outside; it was time to discuss the appointment of a new incumbent to Granny Weatherwax’s steading, and Tiffany wanted to keep out of the way while she thought about what she might say.

As the haunting tones of Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin’s mousepipes played a soft lament for the soul of the hag o’ hags, the other Feegles began raiding the tables for any leftovers the witches had missed.

“Alas, poor Granny, I knew her well,” sighed Big Yan, swigging from a bottle of Nanny’s homemade hooch.

“No, you didn’t,” Tiffany snapped. “Only Granny Weatherwax really knew Granny Weatherwax.” The day was still too raw for her, and the witches outside were making her nervous.

“Ha-ha,” laughed Daft Wullie. “It weren’t me, this time, Rob. Nae me what put my foot in it. I sez the hag were upset, Rob, didnae I?”

“I’ll put my boot inta yer face if ye don’t shut up,” Big Yan growled. They’d had the drinkin’ and eatin’, postponed the dancin’, but wasn’t it time for a wee fight? He clenched his fists, but then had to suddenly retreat as Tiffany’s friends came into the scullery.

“I think it’s going to be you, Tiffany,” Dimity hissed, poking her in the back. “Nanny Ogg just stood up and asked for you. You’d better get out there.”

“Go on, Tiff,” Petulia urged. “Everyone knows, um, what Granny Weatherwax thought of you. . . .”

And so, pushed and pulled by her friends, Tiffany left the scullery, but she hovered by the back door of the cottage, unwilling to take that final step. To make a claim. This was Granny’s cottage, she still felt. Even though the not-Granny-ness was beginning to feel like a huge hole in the air around her. Tiffany looked down at her feet; You was twining around her legs, arching her back and rubbing her hard little head against Tiffany’s boot.

Outside, some of the witches were looking at Nanny Ogg, who was saying, “Yes, ladies, Esme did tell us who her successor was to be.” She turned and gestured to Tiffany to come nearer. “I wish I’d been there,” she added, “when Esme Weatherwax was made witch by Nanny Gripes. You think who makes you a witch is the kind of witch you’re goin’ to become, but we all has to find our own way, as we go along like. Granny Weatherwax was always her own true witch self—never just another Nanny Gripes. And though I think we can all talk for ourselves, people like the Archchancellor, and Lord Vetinari, and indeed someone like the Low Queen of the dwarfs—well, they want to know sometimes that they can talk to somebody who can speak, officially like, for all witches. And I’m pretty certain they looked on Esme as bein’ that voice of witchcraft. So we needs to listen to her voice too. And she tol’ me who her successor should be. Yes, and wrote it on this here card.” Nanny brandished in the air the card Granny Weatherwax had left on her chest.

Someone had clearly raised the idea of Mrs. Earwig taking over the steading—or Mrs. Earwig had raised the prospect of her latest trainee getting the cottage. Nanny glared at her, and there was no trace of the jolly witch in her now, oh no.

“Letice Earwig just makes shiny things for her would-be witches!” she stated. She ignored the “Humph” from Mrs. Earwig as she continued, “But Tiffany Aching—yes, sisters, Tiffany Aching—we’ve all seen what she can do. It’s not about shiny charms. Not about books. It’s about bein’ a witch to the bone in the darkness, an’ dealing with the lamentation an’ the tears! It’s about bein’ real. Esme Weatherwax knew this, knew this with every bone in her body. And so does Tiffany Aching, and this steadin’ is hers.”

Tiffany gasped as the other witches turned to look at her. And as the muttering began, she stepped forward hesitantly.

Then You meowed, the cry cutting through the murmuring in the crowd, and the white cat came again to Tiffany’s side. Suddenly there was a humming in the air, and the bees were there too. They flowed out of Granny Weatherwax’s hive, circling Tiffany like a halo, crowning her, and swarm and girl stood on the threshold of the cottage and Tiffany reached out her arms and the bees settled along them, and welcomed her home.

And after that, on that terrible day when a farewell was said to the witch of witches, there was no more argument as Tiffany Aching became in all eyes the witch to follow.

CHAPTER FIVE

A Changing World

The Queen of the Elves sat in state on a diamond throne in her palace, surrounded by her courtiers, foundlings and lost boys, and creeping creatures with no names—all the detritus of the fairy folk.

She had chosen to sparkle today. The everlasting sunlight shining through the exquisitely carved stone windows had been pitched exactly to strike the tiny gems on her wings so that delicate rainbows of light danced around the audience chamber as she moved. The courtiers lounging about the place in lace-trimmed velvet and feathers were almost, but not quite, as beautifully dressed.

Her eyes slid sideways, ever alert to the actions of her lords and ladies. Was that Lord Lankin over there in the corner with Lord Mustardseed? Whispering . . . And where was Lord Peaseblossom? One day, she thought, she would have his head on a pole! She didn’t trust him at all, and his glamour had been strong of late, almost as glorious as her own. Or, she reminded herself bitterly, as glorious as her own had been . . . before.

Before that young witch—Tiffany Aching—had come into Fairyland and humiliated her.

Lately she had felt shivers between their two worlds, understood that things were shifting, the edges becoming more blurred. Softer. A few of the stronger elves had even been slipping through from time to time for a little mischief. Perhaps soon she could lead the elves on a proper raiding party . . . fetch another child to play with. Have her revenge on the Aching witch. The Queen smiled at the thought, licking her lips in anticipation of the fun ahead.

But for now there was other troubling news to deal with. Goblins! Mere worms, who should be grateful if an elvish lord or lady even looked their way, but who were now foolishly refusing to do her bidding. She would show them all, she thought. Lords Lankin, Mustardseed, Peaseblossom—they would all see how powerful she was again. They would see her strike down this goblin filth. . . .

But where was Peaseblossom?

The goblin prisoner was brought into the audience chamber under guard. The whole effect was visually stunning, the goblin thought sourly. Exactly as a fairy court would look in a human child’s storybook. Until you looked at the faces and realized that there was something not quite right about the eyes and the expressions of the beautiful creatures in the scene.

The Queen considered the goblin for a while, resting her fine-boned chin on the fingers of one exquisitely thin hand. Her alabaster brow furrowed.

“You, goblin, you call yourself Of the Dew the Sunlight, I believe. You and your kind have long enjoyed the protection of this court. Yet I hear talk of rebellion. A refusal to do my bidding. Before I hand you over to my guards for their . . . amusement, tell me why this is.”

Her melodious voice was rich with charm as the words were spoken, but the goblin seemed unmoved. He should have fallen to his knees and begged for her forgiveness, hypnotized by the power of the Queen’s glamour, but instead he stood his ground stockily and grinned at her. Grinned at the Queen!

“Well, Queenie, it’s like this, you see. Goblins is now treated as upright citizens in human world. Humans say goblins useful. We likes being useful. We gets paid for being useful and finding out things and making things.”

The Queen’s beautiful visage slipped and she glared at the cheeky creature in front of her.

“That’s impossible,” she shouted. “You goblins are the dregs, everyone knows that!”

“Ah ha!” laughed the goblin. “Queenie not so clever as she thinks. Goblins riding on hog’s back now. Goblins know how to drive the iron horses.”

There was a shiver in the court as the goblin uttered the word “iron” and the magical glimmer dimmed. The Queen’s dress changed color from silver gossamer to bloodred velvet and her blond ringlets turned into straight, raven-black locks. Her courtiers followed suit as the pastel silks and lace made way for leather breeches, scarlet sashes, and scraps of fur over woad-covered torsos. Elven stone knives were drawn and sharp teeth bared.

The little goblin did not flinch.

“I don’t believe you,” said the Queen. “After all, you are just a goblin.”

“Just a goblin, yess, your queeniness,” he said quietly. “A goblin what understands iron and steel. Steel as goes round and round and chuffs. Takes people to faraway places. And a goblin what is a citizen of Ankh-Morpork, and you know what that means, my lady. The dark one there gets upset when his citizens get killed.”

“You are lying,” said the Queen. “The Lord Vetinari would not care what happens to you. You goblins always lie, Of the Dew the Sunlight.”

“Not my name anymore. I am now Of the Lathe the Swarf,” said the goblin proudly.

“Swarf,” said the Queen. “What is that?”

“Itty bits of iron, they is, Queenie,” said the goblin, his eyes hardening. “Of the Lathe the Swarf no liar. You talks to me like that again, your majisteriousness, I opens my pockets. Then we sees what swarf is!”

The Queen drew back, her eyes fixed on the goblin’s hands hovering near the pockets of his dark blue jacket, wooden toggles fastening it over his skinny chest.

“You dare threaten me?” she said. “Here in my own realm, you worm? When I could shrivel your heart within you with just a word? Or have you dropped where you stand?” She gestured to the guards standing ready with their crossbows aimed at the goblin.

“I is no worm for you, Queenie. I have the swarf. Tiny bits of steel that can float in the air. But I is here to bring news. A warning. Of the Lathe the Swarf still has fancy for the old days. I likes to see humans squirm. Likes to see you fairy folk stirring things up, I does. Some goblins thinks as I does, but not so many now. Some goblins almost not goblins now. Almost human. I don’t likes it but they says the times they is a-changing. The money is good, see, Queenie.”

“Money?” sneered the Queen. “I give you goblins money, you wor—” She paused as she saw the goblin’s hand move into his pocket. Could the horrible little creature really be bringing iron into her world? Iron—a terrible substance for any of the fairy folk. Painful. Destructive. It blinded, deafened, made an elf feel more alone than any human could ever feel. She finished her sentence with gritted teeth. “Worthy creature.”

“Gold as melts away as sun rises,” said the goblin. “They—we—gets real money now. I just wants goblins to remain goblins. Goblins with status. Respect. Not pushed around no more by you or anyone else.” He glared at Peaseblossom, who had suddenly stepped to the side of the Queen.

“I don’t believe you,” said the Queen.

“Your funeral, Queenie,” said the goblin. “Don’t believe me. Go to gate. Not so much trouble now old witch gone. You sees for yourself. World has changed, Queenie.”

And the Queen thought, Changed, yes. She had felt the tremors, known something momentous was afoot, but not known exactly what. So the old witch was gone. With no hag to stop them, why, she realized, we can ride through in splendor once more. Then her face fell. Except for this . . . swarf. This iron.

“Bind this maggot’s arms behind him,” she ordered her guards, pointing at the goblin. “I wish to see if he speaks true. And he will ride with us. . . .” She smiled. “If he speaks false, we will tear out his tongue.”

Next morning, alone in Granny Weatherwax’s cottage—her cottage, now—Tiffany woke early knowing that her world had changed. You was watching her like a hawk.

She sighed. It was going to be a busy day. She had been in many houses where death had recently visited, and always the lady of the house, if there was one, would be shining anything that shined and cleaning everything that could be cleaned. And so, with rags and polishing cloths, Tiffany Aching cleaned everything that was already spick-and-span clean: it was a kind of unspoken mantra—the world had gone bad, but at least the grate had been polished and now had a fire ready to light in it.

All the time, like a statue, there was You, staring at her. Did cats know about death? she wondered. What about the cats of witches? Especially . . . what about Granny Weatherwax’s cat?

Tiffany tidied that thought away for now and started on the kitchen, burnishing anything that could be burnished, and yes, it shone. She was cleaning things already clean, but the algebra of mourning required the effort of getting all the death out of the house; and there was no shrinking from it: you cleaned everything, regardless.

She’d finished in the kitchen and the scullery, leaving everything so bright that her eyes watered, and then there was nothing for it but to go upstairs. On her hands and knees, with bucket and brush and rags and grease—that is, elbow grease—Tiffany cleaned and cleaned until her knuckles were red and she was satisfied.

But that wasn’t the end of it: there was Granny’s small wardrobe, with its few well-worn and serviceable dresses hanging in there along with a cloak. All black, of course. Tucked away on a shelf was the Zephyr Billow Cloak Tiffany herself had given Granny—unworn, as far as she could see, but kept carefully, like a special possession. She felt her eyes begin to prickle. . . .

Beside the bed were Granny Weatherwax’s boots. Good, serviceable boots, Tiffany thought. And Granny had hated waste. But . . . to actually wear them? She was going to find it hard enough to follow in Granny’s footsteps. She swallowed. She was sure she could find a good home for the boots. In the meantime, well, she poked forward a toe and pushed them out of sight, beneath the bed.

Then of course there was the kitchen garden and, above all, the herbs. Tiffany found a pair of heavy gloves in the scullery—you didn’t go into Granny’s herbs without heavy gloves until they knew you. Granny had foraged, bartered and been given herbs from just about everywhere, and she had Rotating Spinach, and Doubting Plums, Ginny Come Nether, Twirlabout, Tickle My Fancy Root, Jump in the Basin and Jack-go-to-bed-and-never-get-up, Daisy-upsy-Daisy and Old Man Root. There was a clump of Love Lies Oozing by the Jack by Moonlight and a very active Maiden’s Respite. Tiffany did not know what all of them were for; she would have to ask Nanny Ogg. Or Magrat Garlick, who—like her husband Verence, the King of Lancre—was very enthusiastic about herbs.* Though unlike her husband, Magrat did actually know her Troubling Tony from her Multitude Root.

It was never easy being a witch. Oh, the broomstick was great, but to be a witch you needed to be sensible, so sensible that sometimes it hurt. You dealt with the reality—not what people wanted. The reality right now was suddenly You, meowing and banging her head against Tiffany’s legs, demanding food, which she then ignored completely when Tiffany went back into the kitchen and placed a dish of it down for her on the floor.

Tiffany went outdoors again and fed the chickens, let the goats out to graze, had a word with the bees, and then thought, I’ve done my bit. The place is spotless, the bees are happy, even the lean-to is clean. If Nanny can come in and feed the animals, keep an eye on You, then I can go back home for a few days. . . .

Reaching the Chalk after a flight that was long and, sadly, very wet, since the rain was teeming down,* she flew to the house of young Milly Robinson, the Feegles clinging on behind, under and actually on her in their usual style.

Milly’s two baby boys looked well fed, but the little girl—baby Tiffany—didn’t. Unfortunately Witch Tiffany was used to this sort of thing, especially when the mothers weren’t very clever or had bossy mothers and thought feeding the boys was the main thing in life. It was why, just after the baby’s birth, she had whispered that spell into the baby’s ear. A simple tracking magic, so she would know if any harm befell the little girl. Just a precaution, she had told herself at the time.

There was no use getting nasty about all this, so she took the young woman aside and said, “Milly, listen. Yes, your boys have to be straight and strong when they grow up, but my mother always used to say to me: Your son’s your son until he takes a wife, but your daughter is your daughter all of your life. And I think that’s right enough. You help your mother out still, don’t you? And she helps you. So fair shares for the little girl is the right thing to do. Please.” Then, because the carrot—or in this case, the breast milk—sometimes needed to be accompanied by the stick, she added sternly, the pointy hat making her seem older and wiser than she would otherwise appear, “I shall be watching after her interests.” A little bit of menace often did the trick, she had learned. And, of course, she would watch.

Then there was only one person she wanted to talk to; and the rain was getting harder still as her stick drifted down toward the Feegle mound on the hill, Rob and the other Feegles toppling off as she approached. Daft Wullie made a spectacularly bad landing, headfirst into the gorse, and a rabble of young Feegles rushed up joyously to unscrew him.

There were a couple of Rob’s older sons lounging around outside the entrance. They were scrawny, even by Feegle standards, with barely a wisp of beard hair between them and impractically low-slung spogs knocking about their knees, their kilts hung low on their skinny hips. To Tiffany’s amazement, she could see the top bands of colored pants riding high above them. Pants? On a Feegle? The times were indeed changing.

“Pull yon kilts up, lads!” Rob muttered as they pushed their way past.

The kelda was in her chamber, surrounded by Feegle babies, all rolling around on a floor covered with the fleeces of sheep gone to another land. And the first words she said were, “I know . . .” She sighed and added, “It’s grieving I am, but the wheel takes all in time.” Her face crinkled into a huge smile. “It’s happy I am to see you as leader of the witches, Tiffan.”

“Well, thank you,” said Tiffany. How did Jeannie know? she wondered for a moment. But every kelda used the way of the hiddlins to see things past, present, and future . . . and it was a secret known only to the keldas, passed down one to the other.

She understood too that although Jeannie was very small, she was someone to whom she could tell every secret, in the assurance that it would never be passed on to anyone. And now she hesitantly said, “Jeannie, I don’t think I could ever fill her boots.”

“Really?” said the kelda sharply. “Dinna you think Esmerelda Weatherwax may nae have kenned the same thing when the position was gi’n to her? Do ye suppose yon hag then said, ‘Nae me. I’m nae guid enough’?” The wise little pictsie was looking at Tiffany as if she was some kind of specimen, a new plant perhaps, and then she lowered her voice and said, “I ken well enough that ye will be a guid leader.”

“Though only the first among equals rather than a leader,” Tiffany added. “At least, I’m sure that’s what the other witches think. . . .” Her voice trailed off, her doubts hanging in the air.

“Is that so?” said the kelda. She went quiet for a moment, then said softly, “Ye who kissed the spirit of winter and sent him packing, aye. Yet I ken that ye have in front of ye something less easy, Tiffan. There is a change coming in the heavens, and ye will need to be there.” Her voice grew even more somber and her small eyes were fixed on Tiffany now. “Be aware, Tir-far-thóinn; this is a time of transition,” she said. “Mistress Weatherwax is nae longer wi’ us, and her goin’ leaves a . . . hole that others will nae fail to see. We mus’ watch the gateways, and ye mus’ tak’ great care. For them ye don’t wish to know might be seeking ye out.”

It was good to be home, Tiffany thought, when at last she arrived there. Back at her parents’ farm—it was even called Home Farm—back where her mother cooked a hot dinner every night. Back where she could sit at the big wooden kitchen table, which was scarred by generations of Achings, and become a little girl again.

But she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was a witch. One with two steadings to look after. And over the next week as she flew back and forth from the Chalk to Lancre, from Lancre to the Chalk, in weather that seemed to be enjoying a competition to be the wettest ever for the time of year, it seemed to her that she was always arriving late, wet, and tired. People were nearly always polite—to her face, anyway, and certainly to the pointy hat—but she could tell from what they didn’t say that somehow, indefinably, whatever she did, it wasn’t quite enough. She got up earlier every day and went to bed later, but it still wasn’t enough.

She needed to be a good witch. A strong witch. And in between the carrying and the healing, the helping and the listening, she could feel sudden prickles of alarm run up and down her body. Jeannie had warned her that something dreadful might be coming. . . . Would she be up to the job? She didn’t even think she was doing very well with all the usual stuff.

She couldn’t be Granny Weatherwax for them in Lancre.

And it was getting harder and harder to be Tiffany Aching for the Chalk.

Even at home. Even there. She struggled in wearily one night, longing for food, peace, and her bed, and as her mother pulled a huge pot from the big black oven and placed it in the center of the table, a family row was just starting.

“I met Sid Pigeon outside the Baron’s Arms today,” her brother Wentworth, a strapping lad not quite old enough for the pub yet, but certainly old enough to hang around outside, was saying.

“Sid Pigeon?” Mrs. Aching wondered.

“The younger of the two Pigeon brothers,” her father said.

Younger, thought Tiffany. That counted for a lot in farming country. It meant the older brother got the farm. Though if she remembered correctly, the Pigeon farm was a pretty poor place, not very well run. Wasn’t Mr. Pigeon a regular at the Baron’s Arms? She tried to remember Mrs. Pigeon, and failed. But yes, she remembered Sid. She’d seen him only a few weeks back, up near Twoshirts—a small boy who had seemingly grown into his name when someone had given him a peaked cap and a whistle to hang around his neck.

“He was telling me about them railway jobs,” Wentworth went on enthusiastically. “He’s earning good money, is Sid. Says they need more men. It’s the future, Dad. Railways, not sheep!”

“Don’t get any daft ideas, lad,” his father warned. “Railways is for them as don’t take on land to farm. Not like us Achings. Not like you. You know what your future holds for you. It’s right here, where it’s always been for an Aching lad.”

“But—” Wentworth wasn’t happy. Tiffany shot him a look. She knew how he felt. And after all, she herself wasn’t doing what had been expected of her, was she? If she had, she’d be getting married about now, like her sisters had, getting ready to produce a few more grandchildren for her mother to fuss over.

Her mother seemed to be thinking of the same thing. “You always seem to be somewhere else these days,” she said, changing the subject from Wentworth to Tiffany, trying hard not to sound like she was complaining. “I wish you could be with us more, Tiff,” she added a bit sadly.

“Don’t bother the lass. She’s some kind of top witch now, you know. She can’t be everywhere,” her father said.

Feeling like a little girl, Tiffany said, “I try to be around here as much as possible, but we don’t really have enough witches to do the work that’s needed.”

Her mother smiled nervously and said, “I know you work hard, dear. There’s lots of people who stop me in the road to say that my girl has helped their kid or their father. Everybody sees that you are running about like nobody’s business. And you know what people are saying? They are saying to me, you are growing up like your granny. After all, she used to tell the Baron what to do. And you do the same.”

“Well, Granny Aching wasn’t a witch,” said Tiffany.

“That depends,” said her father, turning away from Wentworth, who stomped out and slammed the kitchen door behind him. Joe Aching looked after him for a moment, then sighed and winked at Tiffany. “There are surely different kinds of witches. You remember how your granny wanted the shepherd’s hut burned down once she was dead? ‘Burn everything,’ she told me.” He smiled and said, “I almost did what I was told. But there was a thing she had and it was not for the burning, so I wrapped it up and now, seeing you, my girl, here’s a little memento from Granny Aching.”

To Tiffany’s surprise her father was crying, under his smiles, as he gave her a little package wrapped up in crinkled paper and tied with a piece of old wool. She opened it and turned the little ridged object over in her hand.

“It’s a shepherd’s crown,” she said. “I’ve seen them before—they are quite easy to find.”

Joe Aching laughed and said, “Not this one. Your granny said it was special—the crown of crowns. And if the Shepherd of Shepherds picked it up, it would turn into gold. Look, beneath the gray you can see the hints of gold.”

Tiffany looked at the little object while she ate her stew, made as only her mother could make it, and she thought about the days when Granny Aching would come down to the farm for a meal.

It seemed to some that the old woman had lived on Jolly Sailor tobacco; and there was no doubt about it—when it came to sheep, Granny Aching knew everything. But the mind starts running all by itself and Tiffany thought about all the things Granny had done and the things that Granny had said. Then the memories came as a cavalcade, whether she wanted them or not, settling on her like snow.

Tiffany thought of the times she had walked with her granny. Mostly in silence, sometimes with Thunder and Lightning—Granny Aching’s sheepdogs—at their heels. She had learned a lot from the old woman.

She taught me so much, she said to herself. She built me as we were walking around after the sheep, and she told me all those things that I needed to know, and the first thing was to look after people. Of course, the other thing had been to look after the sheep.

And all she had ever asked for was her shepherd’s hut and some horrible tobacco.

Tiffany dropped her spoon. It was all right to sob in this familiar kitchen like she had when she was a girl.

Immediately, her father was there beside her. “You can do a lot, jigget, but no one could do it all.”

“Yes,” said her mother. “And we keep your bed ready every day. And we know you are doing a lot of good and I am proud when I see you flying around. But you can’t do everything for everybody. Don’t go out again tonight. Please.”

“We like seeing our girl, but it’d be nice to see her properly and not always in a blur,” her father added, putting his arm around her.

They finished their dinner in silence, a warm silence, and as Tiffany prepared to go up the stairs to her childhood bedroom, Mrs. Aching stood and pulled out an envelope from where she had tucked it out of the way on the dresser, among the blue and white jars that, surprisingly in a working farm kitchen, were simply for show. “There’s a letter here for you. From Preston, I expect.” Her tone was very mother-ish now; she only had to say “Preston” and there was a question there.

And Tiffany crept up the stairs, feeling the care and love of her parents flowing around her, and into her room, relishing the familiar creak of the boards. She placed the shepherd’s crown on the shelf by her few books—a new treasure—and pulled on her nightdress wearily. Tonight, she decided, she would try to forget her fears, allow herself to just be Tiffany Aching for a while. Not Tiffany Aching, the Witch of the Chalk.

Then, while there was still light to see, she read Preston’s letter, and the weariness fled for a moment, replaced by a wave of sheer happiness. Preston’s letter was wonderful! Filled with new language, new words—today he wrote about taking up a scalpel—“such a sharp, strong word”—and how he had learned a new way to suture. “Suture,” Tiffany said quietly to herself. A soft word, so much smoother than “scalpel,” almost healing. And in a way she needed healing. Healing from the loss of Granny Weatherwax, healing from the strain of too much to do—and healing from the effort of trying to match the expectations of the other witches.

She carefully read every word, twice, then folded the letter up and put it away in a small wooden box in which she kept all his letters, as well as the beautiful golden hare pendant he had once given her. There was no point resealing it: she could keep nothing secret from the Feegles, and she preferred not to have the box full of the snail slime they used to restick anything they had opened.

Then she slept in her childhood bedroom. And beside her there was the cat, You.

And Tiffany was a child again. A child with parents who loved her very much.

But also a young girl. A girl with a boy who sends her letters.

And a witch. A witch with a cat that was very . . . special.

While her parents lay in bed, talking about their daughter. . . .

“It’s right proud of our girl I am,” Joe Aching began.

“And of course she is a really good midwife,” Mrs. Aching said, adding rather sadly, “But I wonder if she might ever have children of her own. She doesn’t talk about Preston to me, you know, and I don’t much like to ask. Not like with her sisters.” She sighed. “But so much is changing. Even Wentworth, tonight . . .”

“Oh, don’t worry about him,” Mr. Aching said. “ ’Tis right for a lad to want to find his own feet, and most likely he’ll bluster for a bit and shout and argue, but he’ll be here when we’ve gone, looking after the Aching land, you mark my words. There’s nothing to beat land.” He sniffed. “Certainly not them railways.”

“But Tiffany’s different,” his wife continued. “What she’s going to do I really don’t know, though I do hope, in time, that she and Preston might settle round here. If he’s a doctor and she’s a witch, that’s no reason why they can’t be together, is it? Tiffany could have children too then, like Hannah and Fastidia . . .” They thought of their other daughters, of their grandchildren.

Joe sighed. “She’s not like our other daughters, love. I believe Tiffany may even surpass her grandmother,” he said.

And then he blew out the candles, and they slept, thinking of their Tiffany, a skylark among the sparrows.

CHAPTER SIX

Around the Houses

Walking steadily along the road to Lancre with Mephistopheles trotting beside him and his little cart rattling behind, and swallows swooping overhead, Geoffrey realized that his old home seemed a long way away now. It had only been a week or so, but as they climbed higher into the Ramtops he began to understand what “geography” meant in reality, rather than in the books Mr. Wiggall had let him read—Lancre and its surrounding villages had a lot of geography.

At the end of a day’s long but satisfying walk for both boy and goat, they arrived outside a village pub that proclaimed its name as the Star, the sign promising excellent ales and food. Well, let’s see how excellent it is, Geoffrey thought. He unhitched the cart and went into the pub with the goat following close behind.

The pub was full of working men, who were now not working but enjoying a pint or two before dinner. It was rather stuffy inside with the usual rural tint of agricultural armpit. The regulars were used to people bringing a working dog in with them, but they were amazed to see a dusty but well-dressed lad bringing a goat into their pub.

The rather skinny barman said, “We only allow dogs in here, mister.”

All eyes in the pub were by now focused on Mephistopheles, and Geoffrey said, “My goat is cleaner and more knowledgeable than any dog. He can count to twenty, and when the time comes he’ll go outside to do his business. In fact, sir, if I can show him your privy now, he will use it when he needs it.”

One worker appeared to take umbrage at this point. “Do you think that just because we work on the land, we don’t know nothing? I have a pint here that says that the goat can’t do it.”

Innocently Geoffrey said, “You have a knowledgeable pint there, sir.” And everyone in the pub laughed. Now every eye was on Geoffrey as he said, “Mephistopheles, how many people are in this pub?”

The goat looked down his nose—and it was a nose a dowager would have been proud of—at the men around the bar and started his count, delicately hitting the floor with his hoof, the noise suddenly being the only sound in the place.

He hit the floor eight times. “He got it right!” declared the barman.

“I saw something like that afore,” said one of the men. “There was a traveling show. You know, clowns and tightrope walkers and folk with no arms and traveling doctors.* They called it a carnival. And they had a horse they said could count. But it was just a trick.”

Geoffrey smiled and said, “If a couple of you gentlemen would care to step out for a moment, I will ask my goat to do it again, and you will see that there is no trick involved.”

Intrigued now, several of the men stepped out while the others started to take bets among themselves.

“Gentlemen, my goat will tell you how many people are still in the room,” said Geoffrey.

Once again, daintily, Mephistopheles tapped out the correct number.

Hearing the cheers, the men who had gone out came back in again, looking curious—and Mephistopheles’s hoof registered each one as he entered. The barman laughed. “This trick deserves a meal for you and your remarkable goat, mister. What does he like?”

“It’s no trick, I assure you, but thank you. Mephistopheles will eat almost anything—he’s a goat. Some scraps would be most acceptable. And for myself, just some bread would be welcome.”

A bowl of kitchen scraps was produced for Mephistopheles, and Geoffrey sat down beside him with his pint and a slab of bread and butter, chatting to some of the men who were interested in the goat. An interest that only deepened when Mephistopheles went out in the direction of the privy and after a while came back again.

“You actually managed to get him to do that?” said one of them in wonder.

“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “I trained him from when he was very small. He’s quite docile, really. Well, if I’m around.”

“What do you mean?”

“It means he does what he’s told, but he has a mind of his own as well. I wouldn’t lose him for anything.”

Just then, there were raised voices at the other end of the bar as one drinker, filled with the bluster that ale can give to a man, started a fight with someone else who had just come in. The more sensible people moved away as the two began to trade blows, seemingly intent on beating one another to death, while the barman bellowed about the damage to his furniture and threatened to wallop them with his grandfather’s knobkerrie, a souvenir from the Klatchian campaign, if they didn’t stop.

Mephistopheles was suddenly alert at Geoffrey’s side, and every drinker who was sober understood in his soul that this was no time to be unpleasant to the lad. They didn’t know how they knew, but there was a kind of visceral power there waiting to be unleashed.

“Why are they fighting? What’s wrong?” Geoffrey asked his neighbor.

“An old grudge about a young lady,” said the man, rolling his eyes. “A bad business. Someone’s going to get hurt, you mark my words.”

To everyone’s astonishment Geoffrey strolled across the pub, his goat watching his every step, dodged the wildly swinging blows, and stood between the two men, saying, “There’s no need to fight, you know.”

The barman’s face fell—he knew what happened to people who tried to get between two idiots smelling blood. And then he could hardly believe his eyes, for the two men abruptly stopped fighting and were standing there, looking rather bemused.

“Why don’t you two just meet the young lady and see what she thinks before you start beating each other to death?” Geoffrey said softly.

The men looked at one another and the bigger of the two said, “He’s right, you know.”

And the pub audience laughed as the two looked around at the wreckage, seemingly amazed that this could have had anything to do with them.

“There, that was easy, wasn’t it?” said Geoffrey, returning to the bar.

“Ah,” said the landlord, astonished that he wasn’t having to pick a battered Geoffrey off the floor. “You’re not a wizard, are you?”

“No,” said Geoffrey. “It’s a knack. It happens to me all the time, when I need it.” He smiled. “Mostly with animals and sometimes with people.” But alas, he thought to himself, not with my father, never with him.

“Well, you must be some kind of wizard,” said the barman. “You’ve broken up a fight between two of the nastiest bruisers we have around here.” He glared at the two miscreants. “As for you two,” he said, “don’t come back here until you are sober. Look at the mess you’ve made.” He grabbed both of them and pushed them out the door.

The rest of the drinkers got back to their pints.

The barman turned back to Geoffrey and looked at him in shrewd appraisal.

“You want a job, lad? No pay, but you get your keep.”

“I can’t take a job, but I’d be happy to stay for a few days,” said Geoffrey with alacrity. “If you can find some vegetables for me—I eat no meat. And can there be a place for Mephistopheles as well? He’s not very smelly.”

“Probably no worse than the people we have in here,” said the barman, laughing. “I tell you what. You and your goat can stay in the barn and I’ll give you your dinner and breakfast, and then after that, we’ll see.” The man held out a rather dirty hand. “A deal, then?”

“Oh yes, thank you. My name is Geoffrey.”

The man hesitated. “My name’s Darling. Darling Dove.” He looked at Geoffrey mournfully and said, “Have a laugh about it, will you? Everyone does. Might as well get it out of the way.”

“Why?” said Geoffrey. “Darling is a kind word and so is Dove. How can these be anything to worry about?”

That night, Mr. Dove told his wife, “I got us a new bar boy. Funny cove he is too. But he seems, well, harmless. Sort of easy to talk to.”

“Can we afford it, Darling?” his wife said.

“Oh,” said Darling Dove, “he just wants feeding—doesn’t even want meat—and somewhere to sleep. And he’s got a goat. Quite a smart one, really. Does tricks and all. Might bring some more customers in.”

“Well, dear, if you think it’s a good idea. What are his clothes like?” asked Mrs. Dove.

“Pretty good,” said Mr. Dove. “And he talks like a toff. I wonder if he is running away from something. Best not to ask any questions, I reckon. I tell you what, though: between him and his goat, we won’t have any trouble in the bar.”

And indeed Geoffrey stayed at the Star for two days, simply because Mr. Dove liked him hanging around the place. And Mrs. Dove said she was sad when he told her husband that he had to move on. “A strange boy, young Geoffrey. He kind of gives me the idea that everything is all right, even if I don’t know what it is that is right. A sort of rightness, floating in the air. I’m really sorry that he’s going,” she said.

“Yes, dear,” said Mr. Dove. “I asked him to stay, I really did, but he said he must go to Lancre.”

“That’s where they have the witches,” said his wife. She made a face.

“Well,” Mr. Dove said, “that’s where he wants to go.” He paused, and added, “He said the wind is blowing him there.”

Battling into a bitter headwind on her long journey back to her parents’ farm, Tiffany felt that there was altogether too much wind in and around Lancre. Still, at least it wasn’t raining, she told herself. Yesterday’s rain had been awful—the kind of joyous rain where every cloud had decided to join the party once one cloud had cracked open the first deluge.

She had felt proud of having the two steadings at first, flying between Lancre and the Chalk every few days, but broomsticks are not very fast. Or warm.* It was good that she could go back home to where her mother did the cooking, but even back home there was no time to rest, and being away in Lancre for half the week meant she was facing a plethora of demands from the Chalk. People weren’t getting nasty about it—after all, she was a witch, and Lancre had more people than the Chalk—but there were these little strains beginning to develop. A few mutters. And she had a horrible feeling that some of the muttering was coming from other witches—witches who were finding queues at their doors, people who had gone to find Granny Weatherwax and just found an empty cottage.

Some of the problem in both steadings was with the old men left behind when their wives had died; a lot of them didn’t know how to cook. Occasionally some of the old ladies would help and you would see them carrying a pot of stew round for the old man next door. But the witch part of Tiffany couldn’t help but notice that this happened more often if the old lady was a widow and the old man had a nice cottage and a bit of money put by. . . .

There was always something that had to be done—and some days it seemed mostly to be about toenails. There was one old man in Lancre—a decent old boy—whose toenails were as sharp as a lethal weapon, and Tiffany had to ask Jason Ogg, a blacksmith, to make her a pair of pruning shears tough enough to break through them. She always closed her eyes until she heard the patter of his toenails banging off the ceiling, but the old man called her his lovely lady and tried to give her money. And at least she now knew that the Feegles had a use for the toenail clippings.

Witches liked useful things, Tiffany mused, as she tried to take her mind off the chill wind whipping around her. A witch would never have to ask for anything—oh no, no one wanted to owe a witch anything—and a witch didn’t take money either. Instead she accepted things she could make use of: food, and old clothing, and bits of cloth for bandages, and spare boots.

Boots. She had tripped over Granny Weatherwax’s boots again that very day. She had put them in the corner of the room now, and there they sat, almost staring at her when she was too weary to think. You’re not good enough yet to fill these boots, they seemed to say. You’ll have to do a lot more first.

Of course, there always was such a lot to do. So many people never seemed to think about the consequences of their everyday actions. And then a witch on her broom would have to set out from her bed in the rain in the dead of night because of “I only” and its little friends “I didn’t know” and “It’s not my fault.”

I only wanted to see if the copper was hot. . . .

I didn’t know a boiling pot was dangerous. . . .

It’s not my fault—no one told me dogs that bark might also bite.

And her favorite, I didn’t know it would go off bang—when it said “goes bang” on the box it came in. That had been when little Ted Cooper had put an explosive banger* into the carcass of a chicken after his mum’s birthday party and nearly killed everybody around the table. Yes, she had bandaged and treated everybody, even the joker, but she hoped very much his dad had kicked his arse afterward.

And when the witch wasn’t there, well, what harm was there in trying out a few things for yourself? Most people knew about using plants to cure things. They were certain about that. But the thing about plants is that many of them look like all the others, and so Mistress Holland, wife of the miller of the Chalk, had treated her husband’s unfortunate skin condition with Love Lies Oozing rather than with Merryday Root and now his skin had turned purple.

Tiffany had treated the man, but then it had been time for her to go back to Lancre, and she was up, up, and away again on her stick, hoping that they had both learned their lesson.

She was very thankful that Nanny Ogg was not too far away from Granny’s . . . no, her cottage. There were a lot of things that Tiffany was good at, but cookery wasn’t one of them, and so just as she relied on her mum and dad for meals in the Chalk, in Lancre she relied on Nanny. Strictly speaking, this meant she was relying on Nanny’s army of daughters-in-law, who couldn’t do enough for their old Nanny.*

But wherever the pair of them took their meals—either in Tiffany’s little cottage in the woods, or at Tir Nani Ogg, the overcrowded but very comfortable home where Nanny Ogg ruled the roost—it seemed that You was there too. No cat could move as fast as her, but you never saw her move fast, she just arrived. It was baffling. What was also baffling was how Greebo—Nanny’s ancient tomcat, who treated a bit of eyeball scratching as a friendly hello—slunk away when You appeared.

The white cat had clearly made her decision and was a constant presence in Tiffany’s life in Lancre. Now, when Tiffany got ready for an afternoon of going round the houses, You would jump on the broomstick before Tiffany had even looked at it, which made Nanny laugh, saying, “She’s got you down pat, my girl. Maybe she could go round the houses by herself!”

Nanny Ogg was actually rather impressed by Tiffany. But also worried. “Really,” she said to her one day as they shared a quick meal, “you know you’re good, Tiff. I know you’re good. Granny, wherever she is now, knew you was good, but you don’t have to keep tryin’ to do it all on your own, my girl. Let some of them young girls around here—the apprentices—take some of the strain.” She paused as she chewed on a big mouthful of stew, then added, “That young lumberjack up in the mountains what Esme sewed up just the day afore she died? Well, young Harrieta Bilk’s been goin’ on up there to see to him, an’ doin’ a good job too. Tiff, you have to do it your own way, I know, but you ain’t the only witch in Lancre. Sometimes you needs to put your feet up and let the parade go by.”

Tiffany had barely had time to listen before she was back on her stick and heading down to the Chalk again. No rest for the busy witch with two steadings! But as the ear-numbing wind whistled by, she considered what Nanny had said. It was true that there were other witches in Lancre, but in the Chalk—unless Letitia decided to stop being just a baroness—Tiffany was the only witch. And if her forebodings were right, if Jeannie’s words came true, then one witch for the Chalk might not be anywhere near enough.

She shivered. She was looking forward to getting out of the icy wind and into the warmth of her mother’s kitchen. But there was one person she needed to see first. . . .

It took Tiffany a long time to find Miss Tick, but eventually she landed in a little wood just outside Ham-on-Rye where the traveling witch, the witchfinder, had stopped her caravan for tea. A small mule was tethered nearby, enjoying the contents of its feed bag. It looked at Tiffany as she approached and neighed.

“He’s called Joseph,” said Miss Tick. “A real witch’s mule.”

It had started to rain again, and Miss Tick quickly waved Tiffany up the wooden caravan steps. Tiffany was glad to see that there was a kettle bubbling on a little stove. She perched herself on the edge of a bench seat fitted just inside the door, facing the stove, and gratefully took the offered cup of tea.

Inside the caravan, it was just as Tiffany expected. Miss Tick had everything shipshape without needing a ship. On the walls were lots of little racks, neatly filled with many things, and all annotated in Miss Tick’s careful teacher-y hand. Tiffany looked closer and, yes, they were in alphabetical order. Elsewhere were little pots without labels, so you would never know what was inside them, and by the side of her bed there was a chart showing a variety of knots—escapology was a useful hobby for a witch.

“I’ll be grateful if you don’t touch my little jars,” said Miss Tick. “Some of those concoctions might not work properly and the results are often unpredictable. But, you know, one should keep on experimenting.”

That’s what’s in all the pots, thought Tiffany, taking a sip of her tea. Experiments.

“Glad to see you,” Miss Tick continued. “I am hearing about you all the time. You know, almost every girl I meet wants to be you. They see you whizzing about all over the place on your broomstick and they all want to be you, Mistress Aching. Suddenly it’s become a career choice to be a witch!”

“Oh yes,” said Tiffany. “That’s how it starts out, and then you tell them exactly what they would spend their life doing, and quite a few of them decide to go to the big city and be a hairdresser or something.”

“Well, I make no bones about it,” said Miss Tick firmly. “I tell them to think hard; it’s not all magic and waving wands and all that silly business. It’s dirt and grime.”

Tiffany sighed. “Being a witch is a man’s job: that’s why it needs women to do it.”

Miss Tick laughed and continued, “Well, I remember a little girl who was unsure of herself, and I told her that I would give her lessons that she would never forget in a hurry.”

Tiffany smiled. “I remember. And now I am in a hurry everywhere these days. But Miss Tick”—she paused and her voice went a bit quiet—“I have a feeling that some of the older witches are beginning to think I might not be able to cope. . . .” She swallowed. “Up in Lancre, mostly. But it means I do have to be there a lot.” She bit her lip—she hated asking for help. Was she saying that she wasn’t really up to the job? Letting Granny Weatherwax down, since Granny had been the one to put her name up for it. She couldn’t remember Granny ever asking for help. “Down here, on the Chalk,” she said, “I think I maybe need to . . . er . . . train an apprentice. Have some help.”

The heavens didn’t open. There was no gasp of horror from the other witch at this request. Miss Tick simply crossed her arms sternly. “It’s Letice Earwig, I suppose, who’s put those doubts into people’s heads. She thinks things always have to be done the same way, so that means she would take over, I suppose? She’s a senior witch who believes she knows every blessed thing, but it’s all just tinkly-winkly stuff. The stupid woman who wrote My Fairy Friends should be ashamed to call herself a witch, and certainly shouldn’t hope to walk in the footsteps of Granny Weatherwax. Hah, Letice Earwig certainly couldn’t manage two steadings at once. She can’t really even cope with one.” She snorted derisively. “Do not forget, Tiffany, that I am a teacher.* And we teachers can be really nasty when it comes to it. Ten Steps to Witchcraft and The Romance of the Broomstick are not what I would call proper books. Oh, I’ll certainly look out for a girl or two for you—it’s a very good idea. But you don’t need to worry about what Mrs. Earwig might say, oh no. . . .”

CHAPTER SEVEN

A Force of Nature

Letice Earwig was not someone who would take being balked lying down. Or standing up, come to that. In truth, she was a force of nature and she hated to back down on anything.

It hadn’t taken her long to hear that there had been a queue one day outside Nanny Ogg’s home. Tiffany Aching, Mrs. Earwig decided, was Not Coping. And it needed a witch of senior stature to Do Something about it. In Letice Earwig’s opinion—never a small thing—she was in fact the only witch who had the stature to act, especially as that old baggage Nanny Ogg wouldn’t do a thing.

Mrs. Earwig had married an elderly retired wizard many years before. “Wizards ain’t allowed to get married,” Nanny Ogg had told Tiffany scornfully. “But the silly man got what was comin’ to him. Talk about henpecked, he was earwig-pecked. She got through all his money, so they says!”

Tiffany wisely didn’t rise to that; it was quite probable that “they” were actually Nanny Ogg, who hated Mrs. Earwig with an unrelenting determination.

But that was why she was relieved when Nanny Ogg wasn’t there when Mrs. Earwig arrived at Granny’s cottage one morning a week or so later, for what she called “one of my little chats.” It would have been better, on reflection, if Mrs. Earwig hadn’t found Tiffany out in the garden up to her elbows in suds in the middle of doing some washing for old Mr. Price.

Tiffany’s heart sank when she saw the woman coming,* but she wiped her hands on a towel and welcomed her visitor into the cottage with as much politeness as she could muster. Mrs. Earwig had a tendency to treat Tiffany like a child, and also she had bad manners, such as sitting down without being asked. Mrs. Earwig did, indeed, sit down in Granny’s old rocking chair, and she gave Tiffany a smile of blatant insincerity, then made it worse by saying, “My dear girl!”

“Woman,” said Tiffany quietly as Mrs. Earwig looked her up and down. She was acutely conscious of the suds still clinging to her apron and her disheveled hair.

“Well, never mind,” said Mrs. Earwig, as if it didn’t matter. “Now, I thought I should come, as a friend and as one of the oldest witches in this area, to see how things were going and to offer some constructive advice.” She looked around the kitchen with a superior air, with a particularly sharp glare at the dust that was happily playing little games with itself over the flagstones, and Tiffany was suddenly very aware of the spiders which had remained in residence in the scullery, with lots of little ones adding to the colony—she hadn’t the heart to move them.

“Don’t you think you are overstretched trying to look after two steadings, my dear?” Mrs. Earwig added with a saccharine smile.

“Yes, my dear Mrs. Earwig,” Tiffany said back, rather sharply. “I am stretched because there is a lot to do in both places and not much time.” Which you are taking up, she thought. But two can play at your game. “If you have some advice,” she added with a smile to match Mrs. Earwig’s, “I’ll be glad to hear it.”

Mrs. Earwig was never one to ignore an invitation. Not that she had needed one, anyway, since she immediately launched into a prepared speech.

“I’m not saying you are a bad person, my dear. It’s just that you can’t cope, and people are talking about it.”

“Perhaps they do,” said Tiffany. “And often they thank me, but I am just one woman—that is woman, not girl—so I can’t do everything at once. It’s just a shame that there aren’t more elder witches around. . . .” Her voice trailed off, the memory of Granny Weatherwax lying in her willow casket still too fresh in her mind.

“I understand,” said Mrs. Earwig. “It isn’t your fault.” Now her voice was silky smooth, but just a shade beyond patronizing and moving toward out-and-out rudeness. “You have indeed been flung into areas you can’t manage, and you are in fact far too young, dear Tiffany. To take the right steps on the path of Magick, you surely need the counsel of an elder witch.” She sniffed. “A serious elder witch with the right . . . approach. No . . . family ties.” And it was clear that she did not consider Nanny Ogg to be a candidate for this task.

Tiffany bridled. If there was one thing she hated more than “my dear girl,” it was “dear Tiffany.” And she well remembered the “counsel” Mrs. Earwig had given to her protégée Annagramma Hawkin, who had taken over a witch’s cottage knowing everything possible about runes and tinkly spells but nothing at all useful. She had needed Tiffany’s help. As for implying that Nanny Ogg would not be a good mentor . . .

“Well, my dear,” Mrs. Earwig continued, “as one of the most senior witches in this area, I therefore feel I should take the place of Granny Weatherwax. It’s the way it has always been done, and for a good reason—people need a senior witch to be a person whom they can respect, someone they can look up to. After all, my dear girl, a witch of high standing would never be seen doing the washing.”

“Really?” said Tiffany, gritting her teeth. A second “my dear girl”? One more and she would want not only to thrust Mrs. Earwig into the suds but also to hold her head under for quite some time. “Granny Weatherwax always said, ‘You do the good that is in front of you,’ and I don’t care who sees me doing an old man’s washing. There’s lots to do and a lot of it is dirty, Mrs. Earwig.”

Mrs. Earwig flamed at that and said, “Ah-wij, my dear girl.”

“Not my dear girl,” Tiffany snapped. “Mrs. Earwig”—not a trace of Ah-wij—“your last book was called To Ride a Golden Broomstick. Can you tell me, Mrs. Earwig, how does it fly? Gold is rather heavy. You might say, in fact, that it is extremely heavy.”

Mrs. Earwig growled. Tiffany had never heard her growl before, but this one was a heavy-duty growl. “It’s a metaphor,” she said sharply.

“Really?” said Tiffany. Now she was angry. “What’s it a metaphor for, Mrs. Earwig? I’m on the sharp end of witchcraft, which means doing what should be done as best you can. It’s all about the people, Mrs. Earwig, not about the books. Have you ever gone round the houses, Mrs. Earwig? Helped a kid with his arse halfway out of his trousers? Do you even see the little children with no shoes? The cupboards with no food in them? The wives with a baby every year and a man down the pub? You have been kind enough to offer some advice. If I may offer you some advice in return, you will impress me if you too go round the houses—and not before. I am the acknowledged successor of Granny Weatherwax, who was brought up as a witch by Nanny Gripes, who learned it from witches going all the way back to Black Aliss, and that doesn’t change, whatever you might think.” She stood up and opened the front door. “Thank you for taking the time to come and see me. Now, as you have pointed out, I have lots to do. In my own way. And clearly you haven’t.”

One thing about Mrs. Earwig, Tiffany thought, was that she could flounce. She flounced so much that it almost hurt. Things jingled a merry farewell around her, and one charm even made a spirited attempt to stay by hooking itself around the doorknob as Mrs. Earwig turned at the threshold.

The last thing she said to Tiffany as she untangled the little pendant was, “I tried, I really tried. I invited you to take advantage of all I know about witchcraft. But no. You flung my goodwill right in my face. You know, we could really have been friends, if you weren’t so stubborn. Farewell, my dear girl.” Having got the last word in, Mrs. Earwig slammed the door behind her as she left.

Tiffany looked at it and said to herself, I do what is needful, Mrs. Earwig, not what I want to do.

But the banging of the door as punctuation caused Tiffany to think and she thought suddenly, I want to do it my way. Not how the other witches think it should be done. I can’t be Granny Weatherwax for them. I can only be me, Tiffany Aching. But she realized something else too. “Mrs. Earwig was right about at least one thing,” she said aloud. “I am trying to do too much. And if Jeannie is right and there is something awful coming”—she shuddered—“which I will have to deal with, well, I really hope Miss Tick can find me a girl who might be some use. I do need some help.”

“Aye, would seem so,” said the voice of Rob Anybody.

Tiffany almost exploded. “Are you always looking after me, Rob Anybody?”

“Och aye. Remember, there’s a geas upon us tae look after ye day and nicht and it’s a greet geas.”

A geas. Backed up by tradition and magic, Tiffany knew that a geas was an obligation no Feegle would ever fail to meet. Except Daft Wullie, of course, who often mixed up his “geas” with a flock of big burdies. She understood all this, but it still rankled. “You watch me all the time? Even when I’m bathing?” she said wearily. It was a familiar argument. Tiffany—for no reason Rob could understand—seemed to take exception to the Feegles being around her everywhere. They had already come to an agreement about the privy.*

“Och aye, that we do. Not lookin’, ye ken.”

“Well,” said Tiffany, “could you do me a favor?”

“Och aye,” said Rob. “Would you like yon Earwig wifie dropped in a pond or something?”

Tiffany sighed. “Alas, no. I’m not that kind of person.”

“Ah, but we is,” said Rob Anybody cheerfully. “And anyway, ’tis traditional, ye ken. And we are guid at tradition, bein’ as we are part of folklore. . . .” He smiled hopefully.

“A very nice thought,” said Tiffany. “But no, once again, no. Mrs. Earwig is not really a bad soul.” That is true, she thought. Stupid, sometimes overbearing, unfeeling, and not really, if you get down to it, a very good witch. But there is a steel there at the core.

Tiffany knew Nanny Ogg rarely did any washing—what were daughters-in-law for?—but she realized suddenly that she had never seen Granny Weatherwax doing any laundry for the old gentlemen either, and that thought stopped her for a moment. I need time to work this out, she thought, looking at the Big Man of the Nac Mac Feegles standing in front of her, ready for anything. This would be a tough task for them, she knew.

“I’ve a wee geas tae lay on ye,” she said.

“Och aye?”

“Rob, have you heard of washing clothes?”

“Och aye, we ken it happens,” said Rob Anybody. He scratched at his spog and a mixture of dead insects, half-gnawed chicken’s foot bones, and the like showered out.

“Well then,” said Tiffany, “I would deem it a favor if you could spend some time in my scullery while I am about my business. You would be helping an old man, indeed you would. He likes to be clean, and to have clean clothes.” She glared down at him. “A circumstance, Rob, which would be well considered by yourself.”

She approached the scullery door in trepidation when she got back from her visits. Everything was shining clean, and draped among the trees outside were old Mr. Price’s unmentionables, as white as white could be. Only then did Tiffany draw breath.

“Excellent,” she said to Rob Anybody.

He smiled and said, “Aye, we kenned this would be a tricky job.”

“Good job I wuz with ye this time,” came a voice. It was Wee Mad Arthur, a Feegle who didn’t mind washing, due to his having been raised by a bunch of cobblers, and then being a policeman in the big city. Wee Mad Arthur, Tiffany often thought, had a battle raging inside him between his Feegle half and the city half, but since every Feegle liked a good punch-up, well, a fight inside yourself was just an extra treat.

Big Yan pushed Wee Mad Arthur aside and said, “We dinnae mind helping old bigjobs and getting them squeaky clean, but we are the Feegles and we treasure our dirt. Washing makes a Feegle wither awa’. We cannae abide the soap, ye ken.”

“Nae me, Rob. Nae me,” came a happy voice, and Daft Wullie fell off the wall of the goat paddock. Bubbles floated away on the air as he rolled across the grass.

“I’ve told ye about that, Wullie,” Rob snapped. “It just makes bubbles come out of your ears.”

Tiffany laughed. “Well, you could make your own soap, Wullie. Make some for Jeannie. Take a wee present home to your kelda. It’s easy to make—you just need some fat and some lye.”

“Och aye, we’re good liars, we are,” Rob put in proudly. “Famed for it, ye ken.”

Well, I tried, thought Tiffany. And anyway, their spirits are pure, if not particularly clean.

Down on the Chalk, at the edge of a dark forest on the top of a hill overlooking Twoshirts, a small town with growing aspirations of being a bit more than one store, a coaching inn, and a blacksmith’s shop, the Queen of the Elves smiled in satisfaction.

It was a warm night and the air smelled as it always did, and the sky looked as it always did. There appeared to be a new road or stream into the town that glimmered in the moonlight, but otherwise things seemed just as they had been on her last visit.

She turned to look at her goblin prisoner, who was perched with his hands bound on the saddle behind one of her guards. She smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile. She would hand him over to Lord Lankin, she thought. The elf would enjoy tearing the wretched goblin limb from limb—after he had had his pleasure playing with his prey, of course.

But first, this goblin filth had led them here—to this hillside. The Queen and her raiding party looked down at the sleeping valley ahead. Her warriors wore scraps of fur and leather, feathers tucked into headbands and dangling around their necks—and they carried bows with the arrows already nocked.

The gate between the worlds had given them very little trouble in the end. It had not taken much effort for the stronger elves to push through—the barrier was, indeed, very weak just now. Before, the old witch would surely have kept it strong, kept them out. For she had been always on the watch for the fairy folk.

Animals noticed them too. At the very moment the Queen stepped onto the Chalk, the hares on the downs had turned and frozen, while the owls out hunting had soared higher, sensing the unwelcome presence of another predator.

Humans, however, were usually the last to notice anything. Which made them so much more fun . . .

Apart from a glow above a mound on the hillside and a distant noise of roistering that the Queen recognized as being the usual sounds of the Nac Mac Feegle, there had been nothing so far to trouble the first elf incursion into the Discworld for many years, and the elves had begun to enjoy themselves. They had caroused through a couple of villages, letting out cows, upturning carts, turning the milk in the churns sour, spoiling a cask of ale, and generally amusing themselves with such trifles. But the growing little town below promised all sorts of entertainment for elves who had been denied the pleasures of a raid for far too long.

Apart from the delicate tinkling of myriad bells attached to the harnesses of the raiding party’s black horses, there was silence as the elves waited for their Queen to give the signal.

She raised her arm.

But before she could do anything, suddenly, screaming through the air, there came a noise as though someone was killing a gigantic pig.

It was a sound that enveloped the whole of the Chalk. A screaming whistle that screeched around the hills, setting everyone’s teeth on edge. Down in the valley, the air now seemed to be full of fire as a huge iron monster tore along the silvery trail toward the town, clouds of steam marking its path.

The elves reeled, panic spreading rapidly from elf to elf as they shrank from the noise. From the sound. From the very scent of iron in the air.

Nonchalantly Of the Lathe the Swarf jumped down from the saddle, used his teeth to steal a stone knife from the guard, whose hands were now covering his pointy ears in an effort to block out the sound, and swiftly sliced through his bonds.

“Told you. Iron Horse, that is,” he said importantly. “Last train into Twoshirts is that. That’s where goblins work. With steel and iron.”

The Queen hadn’t flinched. She knew that. Some of the others had, but she could deal with them later—no elf should show fear in front of his queen. But in her mind, she thought, Train? It’s big. It’s iron, and we don’t know about it. And what we don’t know about it could get us killed. “How can we tame it?” she demanded. “More importantly, can we make it ours? What grief we could make with something like that!”

Peaseblossom—a calm Peaseblossom, seemingly impervious to the general sense of terror among the elves—was at her elbow and smiled a smile the Queen didn’t like. It cut through the dramatic style of the face he had chosen to wear, his eyes cold and merciless. He said, “We can torment the goblins until they tell us how to control it. Then they can do it for us.”

“They won’t,” said Of the Lathe the Swarf, giving Peaseblossom a dirty look. “Why should they?”

Peaseblossom reached down to grab the goblin, and Of the Lathe the Swarf reacted quickly, thrusting his small hands into his pockets and throwing a shower of silvery scraps over the elf. Peaseblossom screamed in pain as he fell from his horse.

The goblin laughed as the other elves hastily backed away. “Forgot what’s in my pockets, Mr. Pee-pee Flower? Told you about swarf, I did. Part of my name. Hurts, does it? Touch clever goblin these days, nasty things happens. Especially to elves.” He pointed down at Peaseblossom, whose glamour had completely deserted him under the onslaught of the shower of iron filings.

The elf lay writhing on the grass, a small, weak, pathetic creature, crying from the pain.

“Funny, no?” said the goblin. “In this new world, little things like swarf—and goblins—do matter.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Baron’s Arms

The Baron’s Arms was the kind of pub where John Parsley, hereditary landlord and bartender, was happy for the locals to mind the pumps when there was a rush or he needed to answer the call of nature. The kind of pub where men would arrive proudly carrying a huge cucumber or any other humorously shaped or suggestive vegetable from the garden just to show it off to all their friends.

Quite often there would be arguments, but arguments for the truth and not for a fight. Occasionally someone would try to wager money, but this was frowned on by John Parsley. Although smoking was allowed—lots and lots of smoking—spitting was not tolerated. And, of course, there was swearing, with language as ripe as the humorous vegetables. After all, there were no women there except for Mrs. Parsley, who turned a blind ear and would certainly put up with language such as “bugger,” it being considered nothing more than a colorful expression, used plentifully in this context as “How are you, you old bugger?” and, more carefully, “Bugger me!”

The Barons, knowing the value of a thriving pub and not being above dropping in from time to time, had over the generations added improvements for the entertainment of their tenants. Soon after his marriage, for instance, the new young Baron had given the pub everything needful for playing darts. This hadn’t been a total success—in one enthusiastic match Shake Gently, widely acknowledged as the best ploughman on the Chalk, but not known for his intellectual acumen, had almost lost an eye. The darts were therefore now looked upon as deadly by all the locals, and the shove ha’penny board had been carefully put back into favor.

After a long day’s slog in the fields or sheds, the pub was a welcome refuge to many. Joe Aching, tenant farmer of Home Farm, had been promising himself a quiet pint throughout a day that had been beset by obstreperous animals and broken equipment. A pint, he had told himself, would put him in a better frame of mind for the discussion that he knew awaited him over supper about his wedding anniversary, which to his dark dismay he had forgotten. From long experience, he knew that this meant at least a week of cold dinners and cold shoulders, even the risk of a cold bed.

It was Saturday, a warm late-summer evening, a clear night. The pub was full, though not so full as John Parsley would like. Joe took a seat at the long oak table outside the pub with his dog Jester curled around his ankles.

Coming from a long line of Achings who had farmed on the Chalk, Joe Aching knew every man who lived in the area and their families; he knew who worked and who didn’t work much, and he knew who was silly and who was smart. Joe himself wasn’t smart, but he was clever and a good farmer and, above all things, every Saturday night, wherever he actually sat, he held the chair in the pub. Here he was the fount of all knowledge.

At a smaller table just outside the door, he could hear two of the local men arguing about the difference between the paw prints of the cat and of the fox. One of them moved his hands in a slow pavane and said, “Look, I tell you this again, the cat, she walk like this, you old bugger, but Reynard, he do walk like this.” Once again fox and cat were demonstrated by the other man. I wonder, Joe thought, if we might be one of the last generations to think of a fox as Reynard.

It had been a long day for all the men, working as they were with horses, pigs, and sheep, not to mention the scores of chores that faced any countryman. They had a dialect that creaked, and they knew the names of all the songbirds throughout the valleys, and every snake and every fox and where it could be found, and all the places where the Baron’s men generally didn’t go. In short, they knew a large number of things unknown to scholars in universities. Usually, when one of them spoke, it was done after some cogitation and very slowly, and in this interlude they would put the world to rights until a boy was sent to tell the men their dinners were going cold if they didn’t hurry.

Then Dick Handly—a fat man with a wispy fluff of a beard that should be ashamed to call itself a beard in this company—quite abruptly said, “This ale is as weak as maiden’s water!”

“What are you calling my beer?” said John Parsley, clearing the empties from the table. “It’s as clean as anything. I opened the cask only this morning.”

Dick Handly said, “I’m not saying maiden’s water is all that bad.” That got a laugh, albeit a small one. For they all remembered the time when curmudgeonly old Mr. Tidder, putting his faith in a traditional cure, had asked his daughter to save some of her widdle to pour over his sore leg, and young Maisie—a sweet girl, but somewhat lacking in the brains department—had misunderstood the request and poured her father out a drink with a very unusual flavor. Amazingly, his leg had still got better.

But another pint was pulled, from a new cask, and Dick Handly pronounced it satisfactory. And John Parsley wondered. But not much. For what was a pint among friends?

The landlord sat down with his customers now, and said to Joe, “How do you think the young Baron is settling in?”

The relationship between the Baron and Mr. Aching, his tenant, was not that unusual in the countryside. The Baron owned the land. Everyone knew that. He also owned all the farms in the neighborhood, and the farmers, his tenants, farmed the land for him, paying rent every quarter day. He could, if he chose, take a farm back and throw a farmer and his family out. In the past, there had been barons who had occasionally indulged in displays of authority such as burning down cottages and throwing out whole families, sometimes just on a whim, but mostly as a daft way of showing who had the real power. They soon learned. Power means nothing without a decent harvest in the barn, and a flock of Sunday dinners grazing on the hills.

Roland, the young Baron, had made a bit of a rocky start—made worse, it has to be said, by his new mother-in-law, a duchess who made sure that everyone knew it too. But he soon learned. Knowing that he wasn’t yet experienced at farming the land, he had followed his father’s general practice of wisely leaving his farmers to run their farms and their workers as they saw fit. Now everyone was happy.

Also wisely, Roland would from time to time talk to Joe Aching, as had his father before him, and Joe, a kindly man, would offer to speak about the things the Baron’s land agent and rent collectors might not see, such as a widow who had fallen on bad times or a mother struggling to cope after her husband had been trampled by a bad-tempered young bull. Joe Aching would point out that a certain amount of charity would be a good thing and, to give the young Baron his due, he would do what he was told in a strange sort of way, and the widow would find that somehow she had managed to pay her rent in advance, so owed nothing for the time being, and a helpful young lad from the estate who needed to learn farming might turn up at the young mother’s little holding.

“I don’t like to judge too soon,” said Joe, leaning back on the bench and looking solemn in a way only a man who had the right to the chair on a Saturday had the right to look. “But to tell you the truth, he’s doing rather well. Picking it up as he goes along, you might say.”

“That’s good then,” said Thomas Greengrass. “Looks like he’s going to follow in the footsteps of his old man.”

“We’ll be lucky then. The old Baron was a good man—tough on the outside, but he knew what was what.”

Parsley smiled. “His young lady, the Baroness, has learned a lot of lessons without being taught them—have you noticed that? She’s always around the place talking to people, not putting on airs. The wife likes her,” he added with a sage nod. If the wife approved, well, that was good. It meant peace at home, and every countryman wanted that after a day’s hard work. “I heard tell she’d been round to say well done whenever a man’s wife was having kids.”

On that subject, Robert Thick said, “My Josephine will be having another one shortly.”

Somebody laughed and said, “That’s pints all round, you know.”

“Be sure to have a word with Joe’s Tiffany then,” said Thomas Greengrass. “When it comes to birthing a child, I’ve never seen better.”

Over his pint, Thomas added, “I saw her whizzing past yesterday. It made me right proud, it really did, a girl of the Chalk. I’m sure you must be just as proud, Joe.”

Everyone knew Tiffany Aching, of course; had done ever since she was very small and played with their own children. They didn’t much like witches up on the Chalk, but Tiffany was their witch. And a good witch to boot. Most importantly, she was a girl of the Chalk. She knew the worth of sheep, and they’d seen her running around in her pants when she was growing up. So that was all right then.

Tiffany’s father tried to smile as he reached down and gave his dog a pork scratching. “A present for you, Jester.” He looked up. “Of course, Tiffany’s mother would like to see her here more often, though she’s made up about our Tiff; can’t stop telling people about what she does, and neither can I.” He looked over at the landlord. “Another pint for me when you’ve time, please, John.”

“Of course, Joe,” said John Parsley, heading into the bar and returning with the foaming tankard in his hand.

As the pint was passed down to its destination, Joe said, “It’s strange, you know, when I think about how much time our Tiffany spends over in Lancre these days.”

“Be a shame if she moved up there,” Dick Handly commented. And the thought was there, floating in the air, though nobody said anything further. Not to Joe Aching, not on a Saturday.

“Well, she’s always very busy,” Joe said slowly, tucking Dick’s comment away in his head to think about later. “Lot of babies round here, lads!” This brought a smile.

“And it’s not just birthing. She came to my old mother when she was going,” said Jim Twister. “Was with her all night. And she took the pain away! She does that, you know?”

“Yes,” said Joe. “It’s not just for barons, but that’s how the old boy went, you know—he had a nurse, but it was Tiffany who sorted him out. Made sure he had no pain.”

There was a sudden silence at the table as the the drinkers reflected on the many times Tiffany Aching had crossed their paths. Then Noddy Saunters said, almost breathlessly, “Well, Joe, we are all hoping as your Tiffany stays round here, you know. You have got a good one there and no mistake. Mind you tell her that when you sees her.”

“I don’t need telling, Noddy,” said Joe. “Tiffany’s mother would like her to settle down, o’ course, on the Chalk with her young man—you know, young Preston, who’s gone off to learn to be a proper doctor in the big city. But I reckon she won’t, not for a while anyway. As I see it, there’s lots of Achings around here but our Tiff is following in the footsteps of her granny, only more modern thinking, if you get me? I reckon she’s out to change the world, and if not the world, then this little bit called the Chalk.”

“She’s a right good witch for us shepherds,” Thomas Greengrass added, and there was a murmur of agreement.

“Do you remember, lads, when shepherds would all turn up here and fight in the Challenge?” said Dick Handly after a pause to empty his glass. “We didn’t have witches then.”

“Aye,” said Joe Aching. “Those old shepherds didn’t fight with their sticks, mind you. They arm-wrestled. And the winner would be named head shepherd.”

They all laughed at that. And most of them thought of Granny Aching, for Granny Aching had really been the last head shepherd. A nod from Granny Aching and a shepherd would walk like a king for the day, Challenge or no Challenge.

“Well, we don’t have no head shepherd nowadays. We got a witch instead. Your Tiffany,” said Robert Thick after another long silence in which more beer was drunk and pipes were lit.

“So if we have a witch instead of a head shepherd . . . do you think any of you ought to arm-wrestle her?” asked John Parsley with a big grin—and a sideways look at Tiffany’s father.

Robert Thick said, “A witch? No fear. I would mend my manners.”

Joe chuckled as the others nodded in agreement.

Then they looked up as a shadow passed over them and the girl on her broomstick shouted down, “Evening, Dad! Evening, all. Can’t stop. This one’s having twins.”

Roland de Chumsfanleigh,* the young Baron on the Chalk, did want to be like his father in many ways. He knew the old man had been popular—what was known as an “old-school Baron,” which meant that everyone knew what to expect and the guards polished up their armor and saluted, and did what was expected of them, while the Baron did what was expected of him, and pretty much left them alone.

But his father had also been a bit of a bad-tempered bully at times. And that bit Roland wanted to forget about. He particularly wanted to sound the right note when he called round to see Tiffany Aching at Home Farm. For they had once been good friends, and, to Roland’s alarm, Tiffany was thought of as a good friend by his wife Letitia. Any man with sense was wise to be fearful of a wife’s best friends. For who knew what . . . little secrets might be shared. Roland, having been educated at home and with limited knowledge of the world outside the Chalk, feared that “little” might be exactly the kind of comment Letitia might share with Tiffany.

He chose his moment when he saw her broomstick descend early that Saturday evening, at a time when he knew Joe Aching would be at the pub.

“Hello, Roland,” Tiffany said, not even turning round as he rode into the farmyard and dismounted from his horse.

Roland quivered. He was the Baron. Her father’s farm was his. And as he thought this, he realized how stupid a thought it was. As Baron, he had the bits of paper that proved his ownership. But this farm was the Achings’. It always had been, and it always would be. And he knew that Tiffany knew exactly what he’d just thought, so he went a bit pink when she turned round.

“Er, Tiffany,” he began, “I just wanted to see you and . . . er . . . well, it’s like this . . .”

“Oh, come on, Roland,” she urged. “Just get on with what you’ve come to say; it’s been a busy day and I need to get back to Lancre tonight too.”

It was the opening he needed. “Well, that’s what I came about, Tiffany. There have been . . . complaints.” It wasn’t the right word, and he knew it.

Tiffany reeled at the word. “What?” she said sharply.

“Well, you’re never here, Tiffany. You’re supposed to be our witch, be here for us. But you’re off to the Ramtops almost every other day.” He straightened up, a metaphorical broomstick up his spine. He needed to sound official, not wheedle. “I am your baron,” he said, “and I ask that you look to your responsibilities, do your duty.”

“Do my duty?” Tiffany echoed weakly. What did he think she had been doing over the past few weeks, bandaging legs and treating sores, birthing babies and taking pain away from those nearing the end of their days, and visiting the old folk and keeping an eye on the babies, and . . . yes, cutting toenails! What had Roland been doing? Hosting dinner parties? Admiring Letitia’s attempts at watercolors? It would be far better if he could have offered Letitia’s help. For Roland knew, just as Tiffany did, that Letitia had the natural abilities of a witch. She could be useful on the Chalk.

And then she thought, that was mean. For she knew that Letitia visited every new baby. Talked to the women.

But she was angry with Roland.

“I shall think on what you say,” she said with an exaggerated politeness that made him blush even more.

With the imaginary broomstick still rigidly attached to his back, Roland strode to his horse, remounted, and rode off.

Well, I did try, he told himself. But he couldn’t help but feel that he had made a bit of a mess of it.

There had been pandemonium when the Queen and her followers got back through the stone circle.

The glittering Fairyland palace was gone and the council was taking place in a clearing in the depths of what might have been a magical wood if the Queen had bothered to put in the requisite details such as butterflies, daisies, and toadstools. Even now, trees were frantically scribbling in branches and twigs as she passed, and parts of the ground seemed to be having a little race to create blades of grass on either side of her.

She was furious. A goblin—a piece of filth—had dared to attack one of her lords. And he had fallen in front of that goblin, a goblin so fleet of mucky foot as he had run from her anger. But although it had been Peaseblossom who had fallen—and secretly the Queen was pleased that it had been him and not another of her lords—she knew that her elves blamed her for the shame. The failure. For she had led the raiding party, taken the goblin with them.

Despite her orders, Peaseblossom was still with them. He’d been pale and staggering at first, but his glamour was almost back to its normal strength now the terrible iron had been cleansed from his body. Behind him were ranked her guards and she could feel defiance flowing from them.

She glared at Peaseblossom with disdain, and said to one of the guards, “Take that weakling away. Get him out of my sight!”

But the guard did not move. Instead, he smiled insolently, and fingered the crossbow in his hands, casually nocking a feathered arrow and daring to point it in her direction.

“My lady,” Peaseblossom said with thinly veiled scorn, “we are getting lost. Our hold on the human world is weak. Even the goblins are laughing at us now. Why do we only learn from one of them that the humans have been encircling their world with iron? Why haven’t you done anything to stop this? Why haven’t we been out on the hunts? Why have you not allowed us to be true elves? It’s not like the old times.”

His glamour was nearly powerful enough again to match hers, but his will was even stronger. How did I not fully see this? the Queen thought, though her face showed nothing of what she was feeling. Is he daring to challenge me? I am the Queen. The King may be in another world, lolling in his barrow, luxuriating in his pleasures, but I am still his queen. There is always a queen to rule. Never a lord. She pulled herself up to her full height and glared at her treacherous lord, willing her glamour to its full power.

But there was a chorus of agreement with Peaseblossom from several elves. It was indeed a rare day when an elf agreed with another elf—disagreement was a far more normal state of being—but the mass of warriors seemed to be drawing closer together right now, their cold eyes examining their queen. Pitiless. Dangerous. Nasty.

The Queen looked at each one before turning back to Peaseblossom. “You little squib,” she hissed. “I could put out your eyes in a moment.”

“Oh yes, madam,” Peaseblossom continued as the pressure built. “And who lets the Feegles run amok? Now that the old crone is gone, the witches are weak. As is the gateway between our worlds. But you, despite all this, you seem still afraid of the Aching girl. She nearly killed you before by all accounts.”

“She did not,” said the Queen.

But the other elves were looking at her now, looking at her like a cat looks at its prey. . . . And he spoke true. Tiffany Aching had defeated her. The Queen felt her glamour flickering, fading.

“You are weak, madam,” said Peaseblossom.

The Queen felt weak. And small, and tired. The trees were closing in. The light seemed to fade. She looked at the faces around her, then rallied and summoned up what power she had left. She was still the Queen. Their queen. They must listen to her.

“The times are a-changing,” she said, pulling herself to her full height. “Iron or not, goblins or not, that world is no longer the same.”

“So we hide away, at your bidding,” said Peaseblossom, his voice full of contempt. “If the world is changing, it is we who must change it. We who must decide how it will be. That is how it has always been. And how it must be again.”

The elves around him sparkled their approval, their finery dazzling, their cold narrow faces surrounded by the glow of their glamour.

The Queen felt lost. “You don’t understand,” she tried. “We have that world there, for our pleasure. But if we try to act as it has always been, well, we will be rolled over by time. Just . . . fairies. This is what the iron in that world tells us. There is no future for us there.”

Peaseblossom sneered and said, “This is rubbish. This talk of no future? We make our own futures. We don’t care about humans or goblins. But you—you seem to be rather soft on them. Could the great Queen be afraid? You are not certain of yourself, lady. That makes us uncertain of you.”

The allegiance of elves is spiderweb thin and the currency of Fairyland is glamour. The Queen could feel her glamour draining away more and more as her adversary talked.

And then he struck.

“You have become too soft, madam,” he roared. “It began with that . . . girl. And it will end with . . . me!” And now his glamour was growing in intensity and his eyes were glowing and the power was building around him, making the other elves wary and obedient. Peaseblossom pointed at the Queen, watching myriad faces and visages flicker across her features—golden hair, dark hair, long hair, short hair, wispy hair . . . balding, baby’s hair. Tall, strong . . . weak, childlike. Upright, curled over . . . whimpering. “The goblins no longer come at your beck and call these days,” he hissed. “And Fairyland cannot survive without a strong leader. We elves need somebody to prevail—over goblins, over humans and everybody else. What we need now, what our king in the barrow needs, is a warrior.”

Peaseblossom was like a snake now, his gaze piercing his victim, even as she shriveled further and wept from the loss of her glamour.

“We can’t be governed by such as this,” he concluded contemptuously. He turned to the other elves and said, “What do you say?”

And in the blankness of their eyes, the Queen saw her future drop away.

“What should we do with her, Lord Peaseblossom?” It was Mustardseed, striding forward to support his new leader.

“She must quit the throne!” another elf called out.

Peaseblossom looked down at his former Queen with disdain. “Take her away, toy with her as you will—and then tear off her wings,” he commanded. “That will be the penalty for those who fail. Now,” he continued, “where are my musicians? Let us dance on the shame of her who was once our Queen. Kick her memory, if you will, out of Fairyland with her, and may she never come back.”

“Where should she go?” Mustardseed called, grabbing the Queen by one of her tiny, sticklike arms.

But Peaseblossom had gone, weaving among the throng of courtiers who now danced in his footsteps.

As the helpless little elf who had once been a queen was dragged from his sight, Mustardseed heard her whisper a few words in her desperation: “Thunder . . . and Lightning . . . may you feel the force of Thunder and Lightning, Peaseblossom, and then the wrath of Tiffany Aching. It stings to the bone. . . .”

And the rain started and became hail.

CHAPTER NINE

Good with Goats

The boy standing in the rain looking at Tiffany at the back door of the cottage that was now hers—no longer Granny’s—was not like her usual visitor. He was grubby, yes, but it was the grubbiness of the road rather than that of poverty, and he had a goat with him, which wasn’t usual. But he didn’t look in need. She looked closer. His clothing had once been expensive, high-class stuff. Needy, though, she thought. A few years younger than her too.

“Are you Mistress Aching, the witch?” he asked nervously as she opened the door.

“Yes,” said Tiffany, thinking to herself, Well, at least he has done some homework and he’s not come knocking asking for Granny Weatherwax, and he’s knocked at the back door just as he should; and I’ve just made myself some pottage and it will be going cold. “What can I do for you? I’m sure you need something?” she continued, because a witch turned nobody away.

“No, mistress, by your leave, but I heard people talking about you as I was walking along the road. They say you are the best witch.”

“Well, folks can say anything,” said Tiffany, “but it’s what the other witches think that matters. How can I help you?”

“I want to be a witch!” The last word resonated in the air as if it was alive, but the boy looked serious and unhappy, and he plowed on doggedly, saying, “Mr. Wiggall—my tutor—told me of one witch who became a wizard, so surely, mistress, the concept must go both ways? They say what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, don’t they?”

“Well, yes,” said Tiffany, uncertain of herself. “But many ladies do not like to deal with an unknown man, as it were, in private circumstances. A lot of our work involves being midwives, you know, with the accent on wives.”

The boy’s Adam’s apple was shaking, but he managed to say, “I know that in the big city the Lady Sybil Free Hospital helps women and men alike. There is no doubt about it, mistress, that when it comes to surgery, there are ladies who are sometimes glad to see the surgeon.” The boy seemed to brighten up for a moment and said, “I really feel I can be a witch. I know a lot about country things, and I have very little fingers, which were of great use some while ago on the road, when I had to deal with a goat in labor, and it was in trouble. I had to roll up my sleeves and fiddle about with care to get the kid lined up to leave his mother. It was messy, of course, but the kid was alive, and the old man who owned the goat was in tears of gratitude.”

“Really,” said Tiffany stonily, wondering when “good with goats” had become a qualification for being a witch. But the boy looked like a lost soul—so she relented and invited him in for a cup of tea. The goat was shown an overgrown patch of Creepalong Minnie under the apple tree, out of the rain, and seemed content to be left outside, although Tiffany could not help noticing—as any witch would notice—that it gave her an odd look of a kind not often seen in a goat’s slotted eyes. The type of look that makes you wary of turning your back, definitely, but something . . . more than that too.

As she beckoned the boy in, she saw You stroll past the apple tree and suddenly stop, her back arching and her tail fluffing out to a remarkable size as she spotted the goat. There was a pregnant pause as the two eyed each other up—and Tiffany could have sworn she saw a quick flash of fluorescent light, greenish-yellow-purple—and then all was suddenly calm, as if there had been an agreement signed and sealed. The goat returned to its nibbling, and You subsided to her normal size and strolled past, almost brushing against the goat’s legs. Tiffany was amazed. She had seen Nanny Ogg’s cat Greebo run from You! What kind of goat was this? Perhaps, she thought with interest, this boy is also more than he seems.

As they sat at the little kitchen table, she learned that the boy’s name was Geoffrey and that he was a long way from home. She noticed that he didn’t seem to want to talk about his family, so she tried another tack.

“I am intrigued, Geoffrey,” she said. “Why do you want to be a witch instead of a wizard, which is something traditionally thought of as a man’s job?”

“I’ve never thought of myself as a man, Mistress Tiffany. I don’t think I’m anything. I’m just me,” he said quietly.

Good answer! Tiffany said to herself. Then she wondered, not for the first time, about the differences between wizards and witches. The main difference, she thought, was that wizards used books and staffs to create spells, big spells about big stuff, and they were men. While witches—always women—dealt with everyday stuff. Big stuff too, she reminded herself firmly. What could be bigger than births and deaths? But why shouldn’t this boy want to be a witch? She had chosen to be a witch, so why couldn’t he make the same choice? With a start, she realized it was her choice that counted here too. If she was going to be a sort of head witch, she should be able to decide this. She didn’t have to ask any other witches. It could be her decision. Her responsibility. Perhaps a first step toward doing things differently?

She looked at Geoffrey. There’s something about this lad and I don’t know what it is, she decided. But he seems harmless and looks quite downtrodden, so I will decide, and I choose to give him a try. As for the goat . . .

“Well,” she said, “I can give you some bedding in the lean-to, and some food and drink for today. Your goat is your responsibility. But it’s getting late now, so we will talk again tomorrow.”

Next morning, whilst waiting for Nanny to drop by, Tiffany went to the lean-to with some food. The boy was asleep. She coughed carefully and the boy jumped at the sound.

“Very well, Geoffrey, now tell me the truth. Are you running away from somebody? Parents, perhaps?”

“No, I’m not,” said Geoffrey, taking a mouthful of the bread Tiffany had brought but pushing the slice of ham to one side.

You little fibber, thought Tiffany, like any witch good at spotting a lie.* She sighed. “Are you just running away from home then?”

“Well, you could say that, mistress, but I am sixteen and I just wanted to leave.”

“Don’t get on with your father, do you?” said Tiffany, and she saw the boy metaphorically jump, as if she’d hit a nerve.

“How could you see that, mistress!”

Tiffany sighed. “It does say witch on the door, doesn’t it? I might not be much older than you, but you aren’t the first runaway I’ve dealt with, and I’m absolutely certain there will be many more. Although,” she added, “never one as highborn as you are, Mr. Geoffrey. Good coat, you see. Well now, of what use can you be to me and my steading, Geoffrey?”

“Oh, quite a lot, mistress,” he said, trying to sound definite but just seeming hopeful.

And at that moment Nanny Ogg came round the corner of the cottage, not there one minute and then suddenly there, which was, Tiffany knew, Nanny’s way. She looked at Geoffrey, made an instant judgment, then winked at Tiffany and said, “Anythin’ going on, Tiff?” Tiffany saw a suggestive grin on Nanny’s wrinkled face, as if an apple was suddenly leering at her. Geoffrey looked as if he was going to flee.

“It’s all right, Nanny. Meet Geoffrey here,” Tiffany said sharply. “He wants to be a witch.”

“Really?” Nanny chortled. “You mean he wants to do magic. Send ’im to the wizards!”

Now Geoffrey looked like a little fawn about to dash away. Nanny Ogg could affect people like that.

“No, he wants to be a witch, Nanny. Do you understand?”

Tiffany saw a naughty little gleam in Nanny’s eyes as she said, “So, he wants to be a witch, does he? Perhaps he should learn what us witches has to put up with before he decides proper-like. I mean, he might still want to give them wizards a go if he’s got any magic in ’im. I know, make him a backhouse boy.” A backhouse boy was like a male scullery maid, doing all the odd, and usually dirty, jobs around the homestead. Things like killing chickens and stringing pheasants, cleaning shoes, peeling potatoes, and any other task that was messy, and occasionally dangerous. There was usually one on Home Farm, gradually learning what farming was all about. “I tells you what,” Nanny continued, looking at the trembling boy, “let’s try him out with Mr. Nimlet. You knows what his toenails is like.”

Yes, like all old men’s toenails, Tiffany thought. She looked at the boy who was so terribly anxious to be helpful and took pity on him and said, “There’s more to being a witch than you think, Geoffrey, but if you’d like to be my backhouse boy, we’ll see how you go. And first of all, I’d like you to do something about an old man’s horrible toenails.”

“You may need a shield,” said Nanny Ogg.

The boy looked at Tiffany questioningly.

“Oh dear,” said Tiffany. “Mr. Nimlet’s toenails tend to be thick and strong and very, very difficult to deal with. You need really sharp pruning shears, and even then the blessed things go pinging off around the room. You have to be careful about your eyes too.” She studied the boy’s face; he looked determined to meet any obstacle, even flyaway toenails. Nanny was grinning, so Tiffany said, “I’ve got a birth to see to. Nanny, would you be kind enough to take Geoffrey to Mr. Nimlet and see how he does? Oh, and tell him to remember to collect the clippings—Rob Anybody has a use for them, so he does.”

“Can I take Mephistopheles with me?” Geoffrey asked.

Nanny spun on her heels. “Mephiswhat?” she said slowly.

“My goat,” Geoffrey said, pointing toward the paddock, where Mephistopheles was investigating the remains of the dandelion patch. “Or rather, he is his own goat, but we travel together. He is a very clever companion.”

Nanny snorted.

“See,” Geoffrey added proudly as they watched Mephistopheles daintily cross the paddock and nose open the door of the little shed by the beech tree. “He has even learned to use the privy.”

And Nanny—for once in her life—was speechless.

CHAPTER TEN

Treasure

Deep in the heart of Fairyland, the triumphant Peaseblossom surveyed his court.

Lord Lankin—tall, elegant, a tunic of moss and gorse slung casually over his darkened skin—lounged by his side, toying with a bronze dagger.

“I am your king now,” Peaseblossom declared.

There was silence in the great hall as the elves considered this development and their chances. And one bold elf said, “What about the King himself? Down in the barrow? What do you think he will say?”

“Something like this,” said Peaseblossom, hurling a feathered arrow at the elf, striking him down. Injured, but not dead. Good, Peaseblossom thought. More fun for me later. He gestured to his warriors and the stricken elf was dragged away. “To hell with the King!” he said, and this time there was no argument.

Every elf knew that Peaseblossom wanted a showdown with the world of humans, of dwarfs and goblins and all the other peoples, wanted elves to run free and fierce through that world once again.

“We have been elves since the dawn of time,” Peaseblossom thundered. “Too long have humans had the upper hand. Upstart goblins will feel our wrath! The hootings of mechanical rubbish will be swept away! We will take back the world we have been denied!” He smiled, and added softly, “Those who are not with us will suffer.”

In the world of the train and the swarf, iron could kill elves. But no elf wanted to be the one to feel the dreadful temper of Peaseblossom by gainsaying him. And they were very aware that he knew exactly how to make a short word like “suffer” turn into a very long experience.

And as their new king’s glamour built and he stood tall and strong above them, they felt a sense of their world waking up once more.

“What fools these mortals be!” Peaseblossom roared. “They think they can stop us? They need us. They call to us. And we will come. We will make them want what they can’t have and we will give them nothing but our laughter. We will take everything!”

And the elves cheered.

Becky Pardon and Nancy Upright, dressed in their best, stood in trepidation in front of Miss Tick, who said, “It’s not all spells and broomsticks. It’s heavy work, sometimes. Sometimes quite nasty. Yes, Becky?”

“I was there as my granddad died,” said Becky, “and I watched all the things that had to be done. My dad said I shouldn’t, but my mother said, ‘Let the girl see. She’ll find out sooner or later how things are in the world.’”

“What I want to know, girls, is that you can deal with magic. Both of you ought to have some basic magic, like blowing out a candle just by thought. What do you think we do with magic?”

Becky said, “You can cure warts. I know that one. My granny could do that. Magic can make you beautiful.” Her tone was wistful, and Miss Tick looked a little more closely at her. Oh, a rather nasty birthmark on one cheek.

“You can magic someone to be your best friend,” Nancy added. “Or”—with a bit of a blush—“make a boy like you.”

Miss Tick laughed. “Girls, I can tell you this, magic won’t make you beautiful if you are not. And it certainly won’t make you popular. It is not a toy.”

Her face even redder, Nancy said, “But about boys . . .”

Miss Tick’s face did not move a muscle, and then she said, “What about them?” Nancy’s blush was now impressive—if she went any redder, Miss Tick thought, she would look like a lobster. Miss Tick continued, “You don’t have to use spells to get boys, Nancy, and if you wish to know more about that, I daresay Mistress Tiffany will point you toward Nanny Ogg, or possibly your grandmother.”

“Do you have a beau, mistress?” asked Nancy.

“No,” said Miss Tick. “They get in the way. Now, let’s see if you can make a shamble. If you can’t do that, you are very unlikely to be a witch. A shamble will give you focus.” She flung her hand into the air and something was there. The very air seemed to be boiling. Dancing, fluttering . . . alive. And Miss Tick said, “See how the air moves, how it waits—it’s the place where my shamble could be. Where it could advise me.” Suddenly, she had produced an egg in her hand, with some thread, twigs, a small nut. “These items I had about me could make that shamble,” she said. She looked at the serious little faces, sighed, and said, “But now it’s time for each of you to make your shamble, and it must have something living in it. Look, just shut your eyes and make a shamble out of anything you have with you.”

She watched them, their faces as solemn as a dirge as they pulled things out of their pockets. Miss Tick knew her witches, knew these girls had the innate magical talent, but to decide to train to be a witch was the kind of decision that took more than just a bit of talent. Hard work would have to come into it too. A lot of hard work. Even then it would not be easy, she knew. Apart from anything else, they had to have parents who would support their choice. A girl might be useful at home, helping with the younger children or working in a family business, for instance. That was before the question of grandchildren cropped up. And it always did, oh yes, always.

Miss Tick knew too that you can find out a lot about somebody from what’s in their pockets, and sometimes a lot about them from what they don’t have. She herself generally had a small cheese in one of her pockets—you couldn’t do good magic without a snack. Out loud, she said, “Even a worm is alive, so keeping one in a little box with some wet leaves will help.”

Nancy pulled off one of her boots, saying, “I’ve got a caterpillar in there.”

“Well done,” said Miss Tick. “You have been lucky, but being lucky is only part of being a witch.”

Becky looked rather glum. “I’ve got a hairpin—am I allowed to use that?”

Miss Tick sighed. “In your shamble? Of course, but you must still have something living. Butterflies or ants or things like that, but remember—you shouldn’t kill them. Let them fly free.”

“Oh, all right,” said Becky. She rummaged around in the bushes behind them for a moment, then held up a large green hairy caterpillar.

“Copycat!” said Nancy.

Miss Tick laughed. “Part of being a witch is being clever. Using your eyes and learning from what you see. Well done, Becky.” For Becky now had the caterpillar neatly trussed in a bit of old string, which also seemed to be knotted somehow around one of her fingers. Her other fingers were struggling to push the hairpin into the shamble.

Nancy pouted and held up her caterpillar, which appeared to be trying to burrow into a tuft of sheep’s wool.

There was a rumble of thunder and a strike of lightning and both girls said, “That was me, with my little shamble.”

Miss Tick smiled again. Why were people so keen to look at a sunrise, a rainbow, a flash of lightning or a dark cloud and feel responsible for it? She knew that if either girl really believed they could control a storm in the skies, they would be running home, screaming in terror—and their mothers would probably have to wash out the girls’ underclothing. Still, a bit of self-belief in a witch was a good start.

“Miss, miss!” said Becky, and pointed. There was a hairpin now floating in the air alongside her caterpillar.

“Well done,” said Miss Tick. “Very well done indeed.”

“Well, what about this, then?” said Nancy, as her own shamble collapsed and the sheep’s wool floated to the ground, the little caterpillar perched on top like a witch on a broomstick. She raised her finger, and fire appeared to come out of the tip.

“Excellent,” said Miss Tick. “Both of you have got the hang of it. After that, it’s just a matter of learning, learning every day,” she said sternly.

But what she thought was, Well, Mistress Tiffany will want to see you two and no mistake.

The music was playing in Fairyland—a harmonious melody, notes spiraling into the empty air, where a lazing elf perched on a slender branch near the top of a blossoming tree allowed himself the pleasure of turning each note into a color, so that they danced above their heads, delighting the court. It doesn’t take much to delight an elf. Hurting something is usually top of their list, but music comes a close second.

The musician was a human, lured into the woods by the glamour of an elf’s harp, then snatched through to play, play, play for the Lord Peaseblossom. Elves were skilled at keeping their playthings alive, sometimes for weeks, and the man with the flute was a delightful new toy. Peaseblossom wondered idly how long the man would last.

But he was pleased. His warriors were making little sorties into the human world, bringing him back presents such as this. And he knew that with each successful incursion their confidence was growing. Soon they would be ready to make their move. . . .

He frowned. He had to speak to Mustardseed. He needed to know that the elf had indeed thrown the wretched remains of the Queen out of Fairyland. He wanted no . . . complications.

Just as he loved to watch wildlife, so Geoffrey observed people. He found them fascinating, and he watched closely all the time, learning more and more from what he saw.

One thing he saw was that the old men seemed somehow in the way in their homes. It was so different from Geoffrey’s own home, where his father had decidedly ruled the roost. Here, where there were women in the old men’s lives, the women held all the power indoors—as they had for the years their men had been out working—and they had no intention of giving any of it away.

This thought was in his mind when he went to tidy up the nostril hairs of Sailor Makepeace, an errand that even Nanny Ogg disliked. Now Mrs. Sally Makepeace—too shortsighted to be trusted with a pair of scissors near her husband’s nose, as an earlier attempt had proved—appeared to be a good woman, but Geoffrey had noticed that she treated her husband almost as part of the furniture, and that made Geoffrey sad—sad that a seafaring man who had seen so many interesting things now spent much of his time in the pub because his wife was always washing, cleaning, polishing, and, when no alternative was around, dusting. She only just managed to avoid washing, cleaning, and dusting her husband if he sat still for long enough.

Gradually it dawned on Geoffrey that the pub was both an entertainment and a refuge for the old boys. He joined them there one day and bought them all a pint, which got their attention. Then he had Mephistopheles do his counting trick. By the second pint the old boys had become quite avuncular, and Geoffrey broached a subject that had been on his mind for a few days.

“So, may I ask what you do, gentlemen?”

As it happened, he got laughter, and Reservoir Slump—a man whose grin, unlike his name, never slipped—said, “Bless you, sir, you could call us gentlemen of leisure.”

“We are as kings,” said Laughing Boy Sideways.

“Though without the castles,” Reservoir Slump added. “’Less’n I had one once and lost it somewhere.”

“And do you like your leisure, gentlemen?” said Geoffrey.

“Not really,” said Smack Tremble. “In fact, I hate it. Ever since my Judy died. We never had kids, neither.” There was a tear in his eye and a break in his voice, which he covered up by taking another swig from his tankard.

“She had a tortoise, though, didn’t she?” Wrinkled Joe, who had been built to a size big enough to pick up cows, put in.

“Right enough,” Smack said. “She said she liked it because it walked no faster ’n her. Still got the tortoise, but it ain’t the same. Not much good at conversation. My Judy would rattle on all day about this ’n’ that. The tortoise listens well enough, mind you, which is more’n I could say for Judy sometimes.” This got a laugh.

“It’s a petticoat government, when you get old,” said Stinky Jim Jones.

Geoffrey, now pleased to have got the ball rolling, said, “What do you mean by that?”

And then there was a kind of grumble from every man.

“It’s like this, backhouse boy,” said Wrinkled Joe. “My Betsy tells me what I am to eat and when and where, and if we are together, she fusses around me like an old hen. It’s like being a kid.”

“Oh, I know,” said Captain Makepeace. “My Sally is wonderful and I knows I would be lost without her but, well, put it like this: I was a man once in charge of many other men, and when the weather was fearsomely bad, I would be up there making sure that we didn’t founder because it was my job and I was the captain.” He looked around, seeing nods from the others, and then said directly to Geoffrey, “And best of all, young man, I was a man. And now? My job is to lift my feet while she sweeps around me. It’s our home and I love her, but somehow I’m always in the way.”

“I know what you mean,” said Stinky Jim. “You know me, I’m still a good carpenter, well known in the Guild, but my Milly frets about me handling all the tools and so on; and I tell you, when she’s got her eyes on me, my hands shake.”

“Would you like them to stop shaking?” asked Geoffrey, though he had in fact seen Stinky Jim lift a tankard to his lips with a hand as steady as a rock. “Because you gentlemen have given me an idea.” He paused, hoping they would listen. “My maternal uncle came from Uberwald and his name was Heimlich Sheddenhausen—he was the first man known to have a ‘shed.’”

Stinky Jim said, “I’ve got a shed.”

“No offense, you may think you have,” said Geoffrey, “but what is in it? There are goat sheds and chicken sheds and cow sheds, but these sheds I’m proposing are for men. I reckon what we need around here is sheds for men. A man shed.”

And now he did have their attention. Especially when he hailed the landlord with a “Let’s drink to that, gentlemen! Another pint all round, please!”

The ladies in the villages had taken Geoffrey to their hearts, too. It was astonishing. There was something about his willingness to stop and talk, his gentle smile and pleasant manner, that made them immediately warm to him.

“Mr. Geoffrey is so calm, all the time. He never gets in a tizz, oh no, and he speaks wonderful! A real educated man,” old Betsy Hopper said to Tiffany one day.

“And that goat of his!” Mrs. Whistler added, folding her impressive arms under her even more impressive chest. “Looks a testy animal to me, but that Geoffrey has him trotting along all peaceful-like.”

“Wish he could do the same to my Joe!” Betsy cackled, and she and Mrs. Whistler chortled together as they headed off down the street.

Tiffany watched them go, and began thinking about her backhouse boy, wondering how he made things settle down so well, and she thought, I’ve seen those people before—the ones who seem to know everybody. They hold the ring, stop the fighting. I think I shall let him go round the houses with me now, and see what he does.

And so Geoffrey went out the next day with Tiffany, hanging on behind her on the broomstick, his face lighting up with sheer joy as Tiffany awkwardly steered the much heavier stick into the mountains; and the houses lit up as soon as he came in, so cheerfully alive. He could be funny, he could sing songs, and somehow he made everything . . . a bit better. Crying babies began to gurgle instead of howl, grown-ups stopped arguing, and the mothers became more peaceful and took his advice.

He was good with animals too. A young heifer would stand for him, rather than skitter off in fright at a stranger, while cats would stroll in and immediately decide that Geoffrey’s lap was the place to be. Tiffany once saw him leaning up against a woodland cottage wall with a family of rabbits resting at his feet—at the same time as the farm dog was by his side.

Nanny Ogg, after seeing Geoffrey with Tiffany one day, said, “His heart’s in the right place, I c’n smell it. I knows men, you know.” She laughed. “I’ve seen a great many in my time in all kinds of circumstances, believe you me. I won’t say as he’s rich material right now, and some of the other witches might not like a boy comin’ into the business, but Tiff, never let no one tell you as Granny Weatherwax wouldn’t like it. Remember, she chose you to be her successor, not none of them. An’ you got to do it your way too. Not hers. So if’n you wants to train up this lad, well, you go ’n’ do it.”

Tiffany herself was becoming fascinated by Geoffrey’s goat. Mephistopheles came and went, but unless she and Geoffrey were off on the broomstick he would usually be somewhere near Geoffrey, and it seemed to Tiffany that the goat watched over the boy. They had a code. It was as if the goat could talk just by tapping a hoof, and occasionally there would be a staccato of complicated hoof taps. If Mephistopheles had been a dog, he would have been a pointer, she thought. His master was his friend, and woe betide anyone who took advantage of Geoffrey’s good nature—the hooves of Mephistopheles were exceedingly sharp.

When Geoffrey was away, the goat often took himself off. He had soon got the goats at Granny’s cottage doing his bidding, and Nanny Ogg said once that she had seen what she called “that devil goat” sitting in the middle of a circle of feral goats up in the hills. She named him “the Mince of Darkness” because of his small and twinkling hooves, and added, “Not that I don’t like him, stinky as he is. I’ve always been one for the horns, as you might say. Goats is clever. Sheep ain’t. No offense, my dear.”

The triumph of Mephistopheles—proving Nanny right on both counts—happened at the edge of the woods surrounding the cottage, near the foothills of the nearest mountain, when Geoffrey had taken the cart over to look at a small boy who needed medicine.

On this homestead, on this particular day, the mother was watching Geoffrey. In the flurry of worry about her son she had left the gate to the sheep pen open. And the sheep, like all sheep, got hysterical and were getting out and running away before she looked out of the window and noticed.

“My husband isn’t going to like this. It takes ages to get them settled down,” the young mother wailed. “Look at them, running everywhere!”

Geoffrey put his head out of the window and made a clicking sound to Mephistopheles, whom he had unhitched from the cart and allowed to graze. The goat stopped eating the herbage—and then what happened next went all round Lancre. To hear it, the goat Mephistopheles rounded up those sheep like the best of shepherds. The sheep outnumbered him, of course, but carefully—one after the other—he herded them neatly back through the gate.

When the mother told her husband later that the goat had not only got the sheep into the pen but had also shut the gate after them, he thought that was a bit far-fetched, but it still made a good story down the pub, and the legend of Mephistopheles spread rapidly.

Geoffrey and Nanny Ogg told Tiffany the tale. Along with Geoffrey’s work for the little boy, that made it a day well done. But Tiffany couldn’t help looking at the slot-eyed Mephistopheles. She knew goats. But this goat had a purpose, she was sure. And it was watching her, she noticed, and watching You, who was watching the goat while, of course, pretending to look anywhere else. Everybody was watching everybody else, it seemed. She smiled.

And made a decision.

The following morning she took Geoffrey to one side and told him that she had something special to say to him.

“There’s something else,” she said. “Some . . . little friends I want to introduce you to.” She paused. “Rob,” she called. “I know ye is there, and I ask ye to come out now.” She paused. “There’s a wee drop o’ scumble here for ye.” She placed a cup with a few drops of the liquor in it on the floor.

There was a movement in the air, a flash of red hair, and Rob Anybody was there, a shiny claymore in his hand.

“Rob, I want you to meet . . . Geoffrey,” Tiffany said slowly, carefully, turning to see how Geoffrey was taking the sight of his first Feegle, but Rob took her by surprise.

“Ach, the wee laddie, we kens him already,” he announced.

Geoffrey colored up. “Well, I have been sleeping in the old lean-to,” he said. “These gentlemen were kind enough to allow me to share their sleeping space.”

Tiffany was astounded. Geoffrey had met the Feegles already! How had she not known! She was the witch. She should have known.

“But—” she began, as other Feegles began to appear, one swinging down on string from the ceiling beams, another sidling out from behind a handy bucket, a group edging over to form a semicircle around the scumble on the floor.

“Nae trouble,” said Rob, waving a hand in the air. “We has had the most interrresting discussions, ye ken, when ye are in your nightie and asleep.”

“But we still watch over ye—mmpfh, mmpfh.” Rob had his hand clamped over Daft Wullie’s mouth.

“In my nightie?” Tiffany began, but then gave up. Oh, what was the use? The Feegles would always be watching over her, and if she had to choose between having Feegles or no Feegles in her life, well, it was an easy decision.

“Ye don’t mind, mistress?” Rob added, shuffling his feet as he always did when he found himself having to do the Explainin’. “Jeannie sez as ye ha’ this yon laddie here, and he is a treasure. And ye knows how we Feegles are with treasure—we just ha’ to pick it up.”

As one, the Nac Mac Feegles sighed in happiness.

And Tiffany pushed the cup toward them, saying, “Well, you aren’t goin’ to steal this treasure. But I ken—I think—it may be time for me to take Geoffrey along to meet the kelda.”

It was raining hard, and they dried off sitting in front of the great fire in the mound. Geoffrey was elated after the trip, and seemed completely unfazed by having to squeeze through the bushes and wriggle down into the Feegle mound.

Involuntarily he squirmed a little,* for every Feegle eye was upon him. Especially that of Maggie, Jeannie’s eldest daughter, who had just bravely squeezed in to see the big wee hag and her friend. She ran her hands through her fiery hair now, and put on her best pout.

Jeannie sighed. It would soon be time for her daughter to leave. There could only be one kelda.

Just as she thought this, Rob held out his arms and Maggie scrambled across the chamber to sit by his side. “My daughter, Maggie,” Rob said proudly to Geoffrey. “Soon to be off to her ain clan, ye ken, now she is a big grown-up lassie.”

Maggie bridled. “But can’t I stay here?” she wheedled, putting on her best little-lassie voice for her father. “I like it here, ye ken, and I dinnae want to ha’ a husband”—she said the word like it was an abomination to her—“and babbies. I want to be a warrior.”

Rob laughed. “But ye is a lassie, Maggie,” he said, with a worried look at Jeannie. Had she not taught the hiddlins to Maggie? Taught her what she needed to know to be kelda herself in her own clan?

“But I kens how to fight,” Maggie said sulkily. “Ask Wee Duggie Bignose—I gave him such a kickin’ when we las’ had a wee brawl, ye ken.”

Wee Duggie Bignose—one of Rob’s scrawnier teenage sons—scuffled his feet awkwardly in the corner and hung his head so that only his nose was visible as the beads in his plaits smacked him on the chin.

“An’ I talked to the Toad,”* Maggie went on. “He said I dinna ha’ to follow tradition, ye ken. He says it’s my Yuman Rites.”

“Well, ye ain’t a human,” Jeannie snapped. “An’ we’ll ha’ nae more o’ that nonsense. Gae and fetch oor guest a nice bit of mutton now, with some of oor special relish.”

Tiffany knew of the Feegles’ relish. Snail was one of the key ingredients.

“Snails,” she murmured to Geoffrey under her breath as Maggie flounced off. To Tiffany’s amazement, the young Feegle lassie flounced in exactly the same way Mrs. Earwig flounced. Except, of course, for the obvious fact that Maggie was only five inches tall, whilst Mrs. Earwig was as tall as Tiffany’s father.

Jeannie had sharp ears for a little woman. “Aye, it’s amazin’ what my boys can do with snails, ye ken,” she said. “They can even make snail whiskey.”

Geoffrey smiled politely. “I thank you kindly, Kelda,” he said softly, “but I do not eat anything that has been running, swimming, or crawling around. And that includes snails. I prefer to let them live.”

“Actually the Feegles cultivate snails,” said Tiffany. “Everyone has to have a living, Geoffrey, there’s no getting away from that.”

“Indeed,” said Geoffrey. “But not at the expense of others.”

Jeannie leaned forward, her eyes bright, and laid a small nut-brown hand on his arm. The air stilled, and now Geoffrey and Jeannie were looking into each other’s eyes.

“There were many like you once,” Jeannie said quietly at last. “I was right. I sees ye in my cauldron and I sees that ye are one of those who can stop a fight, bring peace. . . .” She turned to Tiffany. “Treasure him, Tir-far-thóinn.”

As they left to head back to the farm for tea, Tiffany pondered on the kelda’s words. Stop a fight. Bring peace. She might have need of just those very skills. And as she thought this, a shiver ran down her spine, one of those nasty little shivers that are like a message that something dreadful might be about to happen, hard to ignore. On the other hand, she thought, perhaps it was just her body telling her that if it was all right by her, next time perhaps she should say no to the snail relish. . . . She did her best to shake the unsettling feeling off, focusing instead on Geoffrey. Treasure him. Jeannie is right about him, she decided. There might just be some things that a boy like this can do best.

And right there and then, she made a decision. She would go to Ankh-Morpork—and take Geoffrey with her. It was time anyway, as a sort of head witch, to make a trip to the city. What if all the city witches had heard of her and were talking about her like she was some little upstart? She ought to know. And, a little voice whispered in her head, I can maybe see Preston too. She tried to push the thought away. This trip was not about her. It was about being a witch, about doing what she ought to do, and that was what she would inform Nanny Ogg when she told her she’d be away for a few days. But the thought of seeing Preston again still crept back into her mind and made her feel a bit . . . tingly.

Geoffrey had got some way ahead down the path, but when Tiffany called him, he came back with a question in his eyes.

“Geoffrey,” she said, “tomorrow we will go to get you your first broomstick.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Big City

It was a long journey to Ankh-Morpork. Tiffany and Geoffrey had to stay over on the way, one night at a local witch’s cottage and the other in a barn where the farmer had been delighted at Geoffrey’s ability to help him with a troublesome goat. But now they were there—at the great city—and Tiffany watched Geoffrey’s mouth drop open as they flew carefully along the route of the river Ankh and into the heart of the capital. Well, she thought to herself, Geoffrey had said he wanted to see the world. Ankh-Morpork would be a very good start.

But she herself was amazed too when she went to the site of the old broomstick workshop, and they were directed to a new site. The railway was still in its infancy—and already there were these arches.

There’s a kind of magic in the cavernous spaces under railway arches and a mystery known only to those who work there. There are always puddles, even if it hasn’t rained for weeks, and the puddles are glossy and slimy, the air above filled with the taint of oil and working man’s armpit.

It is easy to recognize a habitué of the railway arch. He (it is rarely a woman) is the kind of man who keeps useful nails in old jam jars, and he might spend a considerable time talking about the merits of different kinds of grease or sprocket, and occasionally an onlooker might hear a proprietor saying quietly, “I can get them for you next week.” Sometimes accompanied with a knowing look and a finger tap to the side of his nose.

If anyone comes and asks for something, well, there will always be someone, often a dwarf, who knows where everything is, and almost always it’s right at the back of the arch in a darkness of stygian proportions. And when the right piece is found and brought out, well, some people would call it a piece of junk, but in the arch the junk has somehow metamorphosed into exactly the item that the buyer really, really wants—no one knows why. It is as if that piece had just been waiting for the right person to wander in.

The dwarfs Shrucker and Dave had relocated their established broomstick business to the second arch in the row, just after an arch where a passerby’s ears were assaulted by the weird noises of musical instruments, and before one where the tang of a harness-maker’s fresh leather made its own happy raid on the nose.

It was Dave who rushed toward Tiffany when she came in with Geoffrey in tow. He recognized her immediately—he had had a bad moment when she’d called in a year or two back and let slip she knew the Feegles.* Once a dwarf workshop gets the Feegles, well, they might as well just pack up and go back to the mountains. Taking a big ax with them.

Tiffany noticed how Dave’s eyes were everywhere. “Don’t worry, I haven’t got any Nac Mac Feegles with me,” she said, though she knew that this might not be quite accurate, for although she had told Rob Anybody that this was hag’s business and he and the Feegles had a geas to stay behind, there was no knowing if one hadn’t crept into the bristles of her stick somehow and would suddenly pop up waving a big stick and shouting “Crivens!” But when she said they weren’t with her, she heard a sigh, and the dwarf almost grinned. Tiffany dodged a drip that fell merrily from the top of the arch, and added, “This is Geoffrey, and we’ve come to get him a stick.” She looked along the row of arches. “Took a bit of finding you, actually. Your new workshop.”

Dave was eyeing Geoffrey up and down. “Good for us here,” he said. “We gets our supplies quicker. And it’s easier to go see my old mum. Long journey, though.” A belch of smoke from a train steaming over the arches almost enveloped both the dwarf and Geoffrey, and when Tiffany could see them again, Dave—who now had bits of smut sticking to his face—had decided exactly what the lad would need. “A number three, I think,” he said. “Reckon we’ve got just the one in stock. Top-of-the-range, you know. Wood all the way from the Ramtops. Special wizard wood.” He stroked his beard, flicked the cinders off his nose, and walked around Geoffrey. “Training to be a wizard then, lad?”

Geoffrey didn’t quite know what to say. He looked over at Tiffany. Should he tell these men that he wanted to be a witch?

“No,” said Tiffany, the witch in her making her answer for Geoffrey. “My friend here is a calm-weaver.”

The dwarf scratched his iron helmet, stared at Geoffrey, and said, “Oh, and what do they do, miss?”

Tiffany thought, then said, “At the moment, Geoffrey just helps me. And for that, gentlemen, he needs a broomstick.” She had been holding two broomsticks, her own and one other, and now she held out the spare. “But we don’t want a new stick,” she said. “You know how we witches hand our sticks down one to the other. Well, I’ve got this one, and I think it would do my friend very well with a bit of repair work on it.”

At the word “repair” Shrucker loomed out of the workshop. He looked almost affronted. “Repair?” he groaned, as though anyone choosing to reject the new sticks on offer was missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime. “You want the lad to begin his career on a used broomstick?” And then he saw the stick and reeled back on his heels, grimacing and clutching at his back. “That’s . . . Granny Weatherwax’s stick,” he said. “That’s famous, that is.”

“A challenge, then,” said Tiffany smartly. “Or aren’t you gentlemen up to the task? I expect I can find someone else. . . .”

“Oh, there’s no need to be hasty,” said Shrucker, taking off his helmet and wiping his forehead with a woolly cloth. He lit his pipe, giving himself time to think, and examined the stick in front of him.

“I would be much obliged,” said Tiffany.

Shrucker made the usual sucking noise through his teeth. “Well,” he said slowly at last, “I could take the shell off. Perhaps a new staff?”

“One of our gentlemen’s staffs,” Dave added. He tapped his nose. “You know, with the . . . special indentation for the . . . delicate parts. A much smoother ride for the lad.”

“Always wanted to get my hands on this stick,” Shrucker said. “Do some proper work on it. But the dwarfs up there in the mountains said as Mistress Weatherwax always wanted, well . . .”

“A bodge,” Dave put in, his forehead creasing as if the word caused him actual pain.

“Well,” said Tiffany, “I am not that witch, but it’s always useful to be friends with any witch.” She smiled sweetly and added, “I’m feeling friendly at the moment . . . but I might not later.”

This fell into a very handy pause as an almighty roar announced another train shooting overhead, smoke and smut billowing in the air.

“Mistress Weatherwax was a powerful lady indeed,” Shrucker said carefully once the noise had died down.

“And I heard that she never paid her bills,” Dave added grumpily.

“I’ve got the money,” said Geoffrey. He had been silent so far, allowing Tiffany to speak up for him, but after all, it was going to be his broomstick.

Tiffany saw the dwarfs look up with a smile, Shrucker only just managing to stop himself rubbing his hands together.

“Some money,” she said sharply, “but I don’t want my friend to have to use it—I promised him I would arrange this for him. Now, I will tell you what I will do. I will pay in obs.” Obs were the unspoken currency of the dwarfs. Why waste gold? Humans would call it favors, and the currency was negotiable. The obligation of a witch was particularly valuable, and Tiffany knew that. “Look,” she added, “the stick isn’t that bad.”

Shrucker sat down heavily on a chest brimming with bristles.* “It’s funny you should suggest obs,” he said slowly. “My lumbago is giving me gyp. Comes with the job, you know. Can you do something about that?”

“All right, then,” said Tiffany. “Just stay there.” And she walked behind him. He shifted around a bit, then sat up straight with a look of amazement on his face.

“Oh my, how did you do that?”

“I’ve taken away your pain,” Tiffany explained. “So now it’s my pain. And I have to congratulate you for dealing with it, for it is, I must say, very bad. And now I’ve got it hovering in the air, like a dog on a leash.” The dwarfs automatically looked over her head, just in case there was some kind of big bubble up there marked “pain,” but all that happened was that a big drop of some oily substance fell right into Dave’s beard.

“Is there a stonemason in these arches?” Tiffany asked, watching the dwarf whip off his helmet and rummage through the beard. “If he needs some rocks split, I can use this pain to break them up!” She looked appreciatively at the helmet. “But that would do,” she added, and as Dave put it down on the ground, she shot the pain into the iron, which to the dwarf’s horror actually buckled, steam shooting up to mingle with the steam from the railways above.

The obs were paid. So, his pain gone, Shrucker—a new, upright, lively Shrucker—was now whipping out his measures. He eyed up both Geoffrey and the old stick as he worked his own form of magic.

“How do you dress, sir?” he asked at one point.

Geoffrey was puzzled. “I usually dress looking out of the window,” he said.

There was a little hiatus as the dwarfs told Geoffrey what “dressing” meant in the circumstances.

“Ah yes,” he said. “I never thought about it before.”

Shrucker laughed and said, “Well, that’s about it. All down to me now, but I daresay that if you come back sometime tomorrow, I will have it working a treat.”

They left the dwarfs and Tiffany told Geoffrey they would now be visiting Mrs. Proust, a witch who loved living in the city. She headed for the elderly witch’s shop, Boffo’s Novelty and Joke Emporium on Tenth Egg Street. It would be an education for Geoffrey anyway, Tiffany thought. If he decided to follow the witching path, well, he might also need Boffo’s at some point—a lot of the younger witches liked Mrs. Proust’s artificial skulls, cauldrons, and warts to give them the right image for the job. To someone in need, someone punched so far down that it might seem there was no getting up again, well, a witch with the right look could make all the difference. It helped them to believe.

Mrs. Proust—a witch who had no need to add nasty witch accessories to her everyday look, given that she had been naturally blessed with the right kind of hooked nose, messy hair, and blackened teeth—heard the novelty graveyard groan of the door opening and came over to greet them.

Tiffany laughed. “That’s a new one,” she said.

“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Proust. “Can’t keep them on the shelves. Nice to see you, Mistress Aching, and who’s this young man, may I ask?”

“This is Geoffrey, Mrs. Proust, and we’re in the city to fit him up for a witch’s broomstick.”

“Are you indeed? A boy? A witch? On a broomstick?”

“Well,” said Tiffany, “the Archchancellor uses a broomstick sometimes.”

“I know,” said Mrs. Proust, “but there might be trouble.”

“Well, if there is,” said Tiffany, “the trouble will come to me. I am the chosen successor to Granny Weatherwax, and I think it could be time for a few little changes.”

“Well done,” said Mrs. Proust. “That’s the spirit!” She looked at Geoffrey, who was engrossed with the display of naughty doggy-dos. And then and there she loomed close to him, put a clawed hand on his shoulder, and said to him, “So you want to be a witch, do you?”

Geoffrey stood his ground well, and Tiffany was impressed. So was Mrs. Proust.

“Well, mistress,” he said, “I think I can help witches anyway.”

“Do you?” said Mrs. Proust with a glint in her eye. “We shall see, young man, won’t we?” She turned back to Tiffany. “I am sure there will be some witches who will hate the idea,” she said, “but it is your way, Tiffany, your time. And Esme Weatherwax was no fool. She could see the future coming.”

“We’re staying in Ankh-Morpork until the dwarfs have finished with Geoffrey’s stick,” Tiffany said. “Can we stop here? We might need to stay overnight.”

Mrs. Proust grinned. “Well, there is plenty of space in my spare room, and it would be good to have a chin-wag while you are here.” She looked at Geoffrey. “Have you been to the city before, young man?”

“No, Mrs. Proust,” he replied quietly. “We lived in the Shires, and my father was the only one to travel.”

“Well then, my son Derek will show you around,” Mrs. Proust said, sounding satisfied. She followed this up with a shout for the lad, and Derek—the sort of lad you wouldn’t notice in a crowd of two, meaning that he shared very little in common with his mother’s looks—came stumbling up the stairs from the workshop below.

Ankh-Morpork, Tiffany thought, would definitely be an education.

As the two lads left, Mrs. Proust said, “So how are things going with your young man then, Tiffany?”

Tiffany sighed. Why were elderly witches so nosy? But then she thought: Actually, all witches are nosy. It’s part of what being a witch is. And she relaxed. At least Mrs. Proust wasn’t trying to push Derek at her again.

“Well,” she said, “I do like Preston and he likes me—he’s my best friend—but I’m not sure either of us are ready for, well . . . anything more. You see, he does a lot of wonderful work at the hospital and we write to each other and even meet up sometimes.” She paused. “I think we are married to our jobs.” She swallowed, a lump suddenly appearing in her throat. “It’s not that we don’t want to be together . . . I mean, I . . . but . . .” The words trailed off and Tiffany just looked totally miserable now.

Mrs. Proust did her best to look sympathetic. “You’re not the first witch to have that problem, my dear,” she said. “Nor will you be the last.”

Tiffany could feel the tears beginning. She said, “But why do I feel like this? I know a part of me does want to be with Preston—and it would make my family so happy!—but I also want to be a witch. And I’m good at it—I know it’s a terrible thing to say, but I measure myself against the other witches and I know I’m better than most of them when it comes to witchcraft. I can’t not do it.” A tear threatened to trickle down her cheek. “Just like Preston can’t not be a doctor,” she finished sadly.

“Oh, I understand all that,” Mrs. Proust said. “But this is today. It’s soon going to be tomorrow and things can change. Things are changing, especially for you young people, when you both want to do different things. Just do the work you find in front of you and enjoy yourself. After all, you are both still young, so you still have options for the future. Just like my Derek.”

“But that’s the difficulty,” said Tiffany. “I don’t really want options. I know what I want to do. I enjoy my work, I really do.” This last word came out as a squeal. “I just wish Preston could be with me,” she added quietly. “Not here in the city.”

“But you tell me he is training to be a doctor,” said Mrs. Proust. “And he loves his work. You wouldn’t want him to give that up for you, now would you? So don’t worry so much. Think yourself lucky and don’t run ahead of the world. There is a saying, don’t push the river. Although, of course, in Ankh-Morpork you can push very hard,” she added with a cackle.* More encouragingly, she continued, “Maybe in a year or two your young man can be a doctor in the same place where you are a witch. I had my Mr. Proust. You can have your Preston. Just not yet.”

“When I go around the houses,” Tiffany said quietly, “I also see how some of the marriages, well, they’re not really . . .” That hung in the air.

“There are happy marriages,” Mrs. Proust said. “Think of your parents, maybe? Isn’t that a happy marriage? Now, let your Auntie Eunice give you some help. Go and see your boy and have a chat with him.” She paused and added shrewdly, “He’s not interested in anyone else, is he?”

“Oh no,” said Tiffany. “He’s working with the Igors* and he said that he didn’t fancy the Igor girls because he likes a girl who stays the same shape every day. The Igorinas like to experiment.”

Geoffrey came back late with Derek, singing a song worthy of Nanny Ogg, but Tiffany got a good night’s sleep—a rare treat!—and then a breakfast of ham and eggs courtesy of Mrs. Proust. While Geoffrey and Derek still slept, Tiffany decided to go and visit Preston. Mrs. Proust’s words had got her thinking.

She headed for the Lady Sybil Free Hospital over in Goose Gate, but paused at the door, strangely uncertain. She hadn’t told Preston she would be in the city. Would her visit be a good one, or . . . ?

It was a free hospital, so there was a queue of people waiting, all hoping for the happy result of seeing a doctor before old Boney turned up with his scythe. It looked like nobody would be moving for some time, so Tiffany did something she knew she shouldn’t.

She stepped outside her body, leaving it standing demurely by the gates. It was an easy trick for a witch, but still dangerous, and she had no real reason to take the risk. Except . . . the Igor girls? They were beautiful . . . once you looked past the discreet stitches, anyway.

She slid silently through the crowd, doing her best to ignore her First Thoughts, Second Thoughts, and even her Third Thoughts, and drifted into the hospital itself, floating along the corridors until she found Preston.

He was in his element, his gaze focused on a patient with a rather unsettling hole in the stomach—and when Preston looked at anything, it knew it was being looked at and was liable to stand up and salute. This was especially true of some of the spare parts the Igors used—a most unsettling experience—and Preston was indeed surrounded by Igors. And yes, that included girls. But, happy sight, he was paying them no attention.

Tiffany sighed with relief, and then—allowing herself to listen to her Second Thoughts, which were telling her off in a style uncomfortably like the voice of Granny Weatherwax—whisked herself back into her body, which wobbled slightly as she took control again.

The queue had moved a few inches. But the pointy hat took her to its head and the porter let her through immediately. She waved away his offer of directions and marched confidently off down the corridor, leaving the porter to mutter, “I didn’t even need to tell her where he was. That’s a proper witch, that is.” For at the hospital it was all too easy to set off confidently for one place but find yourself in the basement—which these days was home to goblins, who maintained the huge boilers and had set up a workshop manufacturing the very finest surgical instruments. Still, most people eventually made it out of the hospital and the record seemed to be improving.

Preston was very glad to see Tiffany, saying, “I heard about Granny Weatherwax. Well done for being the top witch, it couldn’t happen to a better person; are you allowed to tell all the other witches what to do now?”

“What!” Tiffany laughed. “It’s like herding goblins. No! Goblins are easier. Anyway, it works like this: I don’t tell them what to do, and they allow me to work hard—just as I like it.”

“Just like me and the Igors,” said Preston. “But I’ve got good news too. Doctor Lawn is getting on now and he has promoted me to be a surgeon; usually only Igors can be surgeons, so that’s a real feather in my hat.”

Tiffany kissed him, and said, “That is good news; I am so proud of you! But I do wish he would give you more time off—and you could come and see me. Letters can only say so much. . . .” Her voice faltered. “Though I do so love the way you write.”

“And I like your letters too,” Preston said, “and I wish I could visit home more. But I do enjoy the work here, Tiffany. And people need me. Every day. I’ve got a talent and it would be criminal not to use it.”

“Yes, I know,” said Tiffany. “That’s the story of my life as well. Our skills, you will find, could be our jailers.” And it struck her that just as Preston was looking into people in one way—he knew the names of all the bones now, and could even say hello to a few of them—she was learning to look into people another way; into their heads, their minds. “But I couldn’t do anything else,” she finished, a touch wistfully.

Preston said, “No. Me neither.”

Then the time for talking was over, and it was just Tiffany and Preston, together, snatching the moment and saying more with their eyes than any words could convey.

And it was magic; a different kind of magic.

Mrs. Proust went with them to pick up Geoffrey’s broomstick—Granny Weatherwax’s stick had been a legend, and she was curious to see if the dwarfs had managed to make it work.

Dave greeted them and said, “Well, here it is. It’s a good stick, it really is. I reckon Mistress Weatherwax never took any care of it at all, no matter what we dwarfs did to fix it up.”

“All she did was curse it,” Shrucker put in a bit sourly. It was clear that, to him, a broomstick was almost like a living creature.

The stick gleamed. It shone. It looked almost alive, and the bristles were sleek. It was almost Granny Weatherwax’s old stick, if you discounted the new shell for the staff and new bristles.* Tiffany and Geoffrey stared at it in amazement while the two dwarfs looked on, smiling.

“It’s the best we ever made—I mean, mended,” Shrucker added. “But please, use it gently and keep it oiled. Nothing but the best for Mistress Aching.” He straightened up proudly, a dwarf who could stand tall to his full four feet once again.

Mrs. Proust ran her fingers against the stick and nodded. “This is an excellent stick,” she said. “Look, it’s even got a little cup to hold your drink.”

Shrucker gave her a funny look. “And special today, for our good customers,” he said instead, “those who don’t bring . . . trouble”—with a sideways glance at Tiffany—“we have a bonus little gift.” He proudly presented Geoffrey with two furry white cubes covered in assorted spots. “You can tie them on the strap,” he said. “Very popular with the lads for their carriages, these. Some lads also keep birds in a little cage to sing as they go along. They call it in-carriage entertainment.”

Geoffrey shuddered at the thought. A bird, in a cage? His heart felt sorrow for them. But the broomstick, well, he could barely wait to have a go on it.

Dave sniffed and said, “There you go, young man. So, do you want to give it a test drive then?” He handed him the stick and said, “Go on. Go to the end of the arches and give it a whirl.”

Tiffany was about to speak, but already Geoffrey was sparkling with excitement. She looked at his glowing eyes and said, “Well, all right, Geoffrey. You’ve been on my stick with me, and watched the broomsticks going past overhead. Go up slowly, just a bit at a time.”

She might as well have talked to the wall. Geoffrey straddled his broomstick, ran past the neighboring arch, jumped—and went skyward very fast. A series of nightmares flashed through Tiffany’s mind. There was a distant boom! Then a little dot in the sky got bigger, and there was Geoffrey, coming back down, grinning from ear to ear.

Tiffany almost squealed. “Look, Mrs. Proust. He’s picked it up already. It took me ages to learn how to fly.”

“But of course,” said Mrs. Proust. “That’s this here technology.”

And Shrucker said, “Wow! He’s a natural. Not even the goblins can do that.” For Geoffrey had just looped the loop, then got off his stick, leaving it hovering a few feet above the cobbles.

“How did you do that?” asked Tiffany, genuinely impressed.

“I don’t know,” said Geoffrey. “Just a knack, I suppose.”

And Tiffany thought: When Geoffrey’s not anxious, he radiates calmness, which probably means he sees more things and finds more things than other people do. It makes him open to new things too. Yes, it’s a knack all right.

Waving a good-bye to the dwarfs and Mrs. Proust, Tiffany and Geoffrey took off together and floated back toward Lancre and the distant mountains, Geoffrey getting the feel of his stick immediately and disappearing into the sky ahead of Tiffany.

She caught him up just outside the outskirts of Ankh-Morpork—he was soaring and swooping at a ferocious speed. “You do know your trousers are smoldering, don’t you?” she said with a laugh.

Geoffrey patted the smoke away with a sudden anxiety that made the stick wobble, saying, “Please don’t tell Nanny about this when we get back! She’ll laugh at me!”

But after they had traveled back to Lancre—quite a bit faster than on the outward journey—and before she set off back to the Chalk, Tiffany did of course tell Nanny Ogg. And the older witch did indeed laugh.

“It was amazing, though,” Tiffany said. “Flying seemed so natural to him.”

“Ha!” said Nanny. “Every man has a broomstick in the house, but they just don’t often know how to use ’em!”

CHAPTER TWELVE

An Elf among the Feegles

There was thunder and there was lightning. It was raining and there was water everywhere, running down the chalk hills.

The Queen screamed as she was thrown out of Fairyland, her wings torn from her body, her blood staining her shoulders. A scream with a life of its own, which ended in a dew pond on the Chalk, surprising a stoat on the prowl.

And Tiffany Aching woke up.

Her heart was thumping, a sudden chill making her shiver in the dark of the night. She looked over at the window. What had made her wake? Where was she needed?

She sat up and reached wearily for her clothes. . . .

Up on the downs, the Feegle mound was still its usual hive of activity and song, a Feegle mound being very like a beehive but without the honey, and to be sure a Feegle could sting much worse than a bee. But when something was being celebrated—and they didn’t need much to pick a reason for a celebration—the Nac Mac Feegles always made sure that it went on happily for a long time.

A short time past midnight, however, the revels that night were interrupted by Big Yan, the Feegle night watchman, as he ran in from the storm raging outside.*

He kicked the helmet of his chief, the Big Man of the clan, and shouted, “There’s elves here! I can smell it, ye ken!”

And from every hole in turn, the clan of the Nac Mac Feegle poured out in their hundreds to deal with the ancient enemy, waving claymores and swords, yodeling their war cries:

“Ach, stickit yer trakkans!”

“Nac Mac Feegle wha hae!”

“Gae awa’ wi’ ye, yer bogle!”

“Gi’e you sich a guid kickin’!”

“Nae king! Nae quin! We will nae be fooled agin!”

There is a concept known as a hustle and bustle, and the Feegles were very good at it, cheerfully getting in one another’s way in the drive to be the first into battle, and it seemed as if each small warrior had a battle cry of his own—and he was very ready to fight anyone who tried to take it away from him.

“How many elves?” asked Rob Anybody, trying to adjust his spog.

There was a pause.

“One,” said Big Yan sheepishly.

“Are ye sure?” said Rob Anybody, as his sons and brothers flowed around him and hurried past to the mouth of the mound. Ach, the embarrassment. The whole Feegle colony bristling with weaponry, full of alcohol and bravado and apparently nothing to do with it. Of course, they were always itching for a fight, but most Feegles itched all the time, especially in the spog.

They rushed about on the sodden hilltop looking for the enemy, while Big Yan led Rob to the dew pond on the top of the hill. The storm had passed and the water gleamed under the stars. There, half in, half out of the pond, the battered body of an elf lay groaning.

And indeed it was, apparently, a solitary elf. You could almost hear the Feegles thinking: One elf? Feegles loved a spat with the elves, but . . . just one? How did that happen?

“Ach crivens, it’s a long time since we had a reely good fight.” Rob sighed, and for a moment he was, for a Feegle, quite somber.

“Aye, but where there’s the one, there’s sure to be a plague o’ them,” Big Yan muttered.

Rob sniffed at the air. The elf just lay there and it was doing nothing. “There are nae ither elves aboot. We’d smell them if they were,” he pronounced. He reached a decision. “Big Yan, ye and Wee Dangerous Spike grab ahold of that scunner. Ye know what to dae if it gets feisty. Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin”—he looked for the clan gonnagle, who was the least likely to mangle the facts—“hie ye awa’ tae the kelda and tell her what’s abroad. What we are bringin’ back to the mound.” Then he shouted so that the rest of the clan could hear him, “This elf is oor prisoner. A hostage, ye ken. That means ye are nae tae kill it until ye are told.” He ignored the grumbles from the clan. “As tae the rest o’ ye, tak guard around yon stones. And if they come in force, show them what the Feegles can dae!”

Daft Wullie said, “I can play the harmonica.”

Rob Anybody sighed. “Aye, weel, I suppose that puts the willies up me, so wud likely keep them awa’.”

Back at the mound—outside, mind, for no elf would find itself a place for long inside a Nac Mac Feegle mound—the kelda looked at the stricken elf and then back at Rob Anybody.

“Just one?” she asked. “Weel, one elf alone is nae challenge tae a young Feegle even. And this elf has been beaten, aye, its wings torn from its back. Did oor boys dae that?”

“No’ us, Jeannie,” said Rob. “Big Yan said it drappit oot o’ the sky intae the auld dew pond up by the stones, ye ken. It were battered like that afore it got there.” He looked anxiously at his wife, who had a frown on her face. “We be warriors, no’ butchers, Jeannie. The lads are raring tae gae, o’ course, and if yon elf was facin’ me in a fight, my claymore would ring aloud, but whin it looks like a wee slunkit mowpie there’s nae honor in killin’ it.”

“Brawly spoken, Rob,” said the kelda as she considered the unconscious creature. “But why just one? Are ye sure?”

There was a groan from the elf, and it stirred. Rob’s claymore leaped into his hand but the kelda gently held him back. The bedraggled elf groaned again and whispered something, its voice weak and faltering. The kelda pricked up her ears and listened carefully before turning to her husband with some surprise.

“It said, ‘Thunder and Lightning’!” she said.

The elf whispered again and this time Rob could hear the words too: “Thunder and Lightning.”

Everyone on the Chalk knew about Granny Aching’s famous dogs, Thunder and Lightning, long gone but, as all the local farmers believed, still roaming the hills in spirit. Several years before, young Tiffany Aching had summoned them to help rid the Chalk of the Queen of Fairyland. Now here was an elf, at the very entrance to a Feegle mound, invoking their names.

“There’s somethin’ I dinnae like aboot this,” said the kelda. “But I cannae decide what it means withoot oor hag. Can ye send for her, Rob?”

“Aye, Hamish can gae. I mun get back to the stones and the clan.” He looked at his wife anxiously. “Will ye be all richt here wi’ that scunner?”

“Aye, I’ll take it inside, ye ken, to dry by the fire. It’s too weak tae dae anything tae me. And the boys kin look after me.” Jeannie nodded over at a happy bundle of young Feegles, who were tumbling out of the mound, waving their crescent-shaped clubs in the air.

“Aye, it will be good practice for them,” Rob said, looking at them proudly. And then ducked as one of the Feegles let loose his club and it shot through the air and nearly smacked him on the ear.

To his amazement, the weapon swung round in the air and shot back to the young Feegle who had hurled it, giving him a bang on the head, saving Rob the trouble.

“Ach, boys,” Rob shouted. “It fights ye back! Now that’s a weapon fit for any Feegle. Double the fun, ye ken.”

Tiffany had just begun to dress when there was a whistling sound outside, followed by the thump of something falling past, merrily breaking branches, and then a tapping on the window.

She opened the window, and she could see a tangle of cotton and cloth down below, which after a good kickin’ fell away to reveal Hamish, the Feegle aviator.*

With the window open, it was suddenly very cold in the bedroom, and Tiffany sighed and said, “Yes, Hamish, now tell me what you need me for.”

Hamish, adjusting his goggles, jumped up onto the sill and into the room. “Oor kelda hae sent for ye, hag o’ the hills. I mun get ye tae the mound as soon as ye can.”

It had been a long day, but Tiffany knew that if the kelda wanted her, even after midnight, then that was where she needed to be. So she put on her heavy-duty traveling pants, left a saucer of milk on the hearth, and cranked up the broomstick.

And once again You was staring at her, the white cat who seemed now to be everywhere.

The fire inside the mound was like a furnace.

The young Feegles who had been left to guard their kelda were all scowling at the hated adversary. When Rob Anybody returned, each Feegle wanted to look like he had been the one to keep the scunner from causing any trouble. Especially now she was inside the mound.

But the elf appeared to have been crying.

The kelda shifted her bulk and said softly, “So now, elf, you come to me. For what purpose? Why do we nae kill ye right noo?”

This caused a susurration of expectation among the Feegles, each of whom was hoping to kill an elf before too long, and trepidation on the part of the elf.

The kelda turned away, then said softly, “I ha’ the secrets of the hiddlins, and what I see is that everything we do today was ordained afore the seas were made. There is nae turning back. But there is a mist in what is afore me. I cannae see for sure beyond this day, ye ken.”

There was a shiver from the elf.

“Haed yer tongue richt noo, elf,” Jeannie mused. “For I wonder what my position were tae be if things were otherwise. Yoor people are sae . . . inventive.”

That caused the young Feegles to brandish their weapons playfully, and the kelda turned back to the elf and went on, “Ye are sent tae me by the calling of Thunder and Lightning. I ken those twa spirit dogs, aye, and also their owner, will be with us soon enough. Right now, shivering elf, tell me what is the geas you are under? Why are ye here? Who are ye? What is your name? And dinnae lie tae me, elf. Because I ha’ a way of kenning.” The kelda looked at the elf—tiny, shriveled, rags and drying blood—something that could have been kicked about for days before being left to end its life in a dew pond.

“I can’t ask for anything, Kelda. I am empty to your pleasure or your wrath.” The Queen’s voice was very small. “But I was—until just now—the Queen of the Elves.”

The young Feegles stopped rattling their weapons and began to crowd nearer. Could this wee little mowpie be the fearsome Quin they had heard about from the Big Man? Wee Duggie Bignose leaned over and bravely poked the elf with his finger, the effect slightly spoiled by his rabbit-skull helmet falling over his eyes and making him reel forward as it stuck on his nose.

“Get awa’ wi’ ye, lads,” the kelda said sharply, rapping Duggie’s helmet with her fist and spinning him away from the elf. She turned back to the Queen. Drily she said, “Then it appears ye ha’ had a misfortune, your majesty. And I’ve a mind to mention that there appear to be many queens of the elves. I ask myself, which one do we have here? What I want is your name, madam. Be careful: if ye should gi’ me a name which is nae yours, your majesty will find me somewhat acerbic.”

The elf said, “My name, Kelda, is Nightshade.”

The kelda sent a sideways look to Rob Anybody that said, What have we here? The real Quin? For she knew that although there were many leaders among the elves of Fairyland, there had always been only the one King and Queen. The King, of course, had gone away some years ago, creating a separate world just for himself and his pleasures, leaving the Queen behind. And although it was rarely used, the Queen did have a name of her own. A name known to the Feegles from their time in Fairyland. A name now to be passed from each kelda to her successor. The name of Nightshade.

Quietly she said, “We are the Nac Mac Feegle, and we dinnae bow down to queens.”

Rob Anybody was silent, but the sound of him whetting his claymore against the stone was a song, an invitation to death. Then he looked up and his gaze was fearsome. “We are the Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna’ be fooled again!” he thundered. “Your life, elf, is on the edge o’ my blade.”

There was a scuffling noise behind them and Tiffany crawled in, followed by Hamish, with more Feegles pushing around after them.

“It’s happy I am tae see ye, hag o’ the hills,” Jeannie said. “We have ourselves . . . an elf. Tell us, what shall we dae with it?” And at that word “elf” every weapon sang.

Tiffany looked at the elf. It was in terrible shape and she said, “We aren’t the kind of people who kill those who are unarmed.”

Rob Anybody put up his hand. “Excuse me, mistress, but some of us do, or are.”

Nonplussed, Tiffany thought, Well, I’m their big wee hag, and the kelda has asked for my help. And then, despite its bedraggled state, she recognized the Feegles’ captive. After all, how could she have forgotten?

“I know you, elf, and I told you never to come here again,” she said. She frowned. “You remember? You were a great elvish queen and I was a little girl. I drove you away with Thunder and Lightning.”

She watched the elf’s face when she said that. It had gone white.

“Yes,” said the elf faintly. “We came raiding into your world, but this was before the time of . . . iron.”

Her face twisted with fear and Tiffany sensed a change in the world, a feeling that she stood between two courses of action, and what she did next would matter. This, she realized, was what she had suspected was coming her way, what Jeannie had warned her about. A witch is always on the edge, between the light and the dark, good and bad, making choices every day, judging all the time. It was what made her human. But what was it that made an elf? she wondered.

“I hear that the goblins believe that the railway engines have a soul, elf,” she said softly. “Tell me, what kind of soul have you? Do you run along your own elvish rails? With no time or place for turning?” She looked at the kelda and said, “Granny Aching told me to feed them that was starving and clothe them as is naked and help the pitiful. Well, this elf has come to my turf—starving, naked, pitiful—do you see?”

The kelda’s eyebrows rose. “Yon creature is an elf! It has nae care for ye! It has nae care for anyone—it disnae even care for other elves!”

“You think then there is no such animal as a good elf?”

“Ye think there is such a thing as a guid elf?”

“No, but I am suggesting that there is a possibility that there might be one.” Tiffany turned to the cowering elf. “You are no queen now. Do you have a name?”

“Nightshade, my lady.”

“Aye,” said the kelda. “A poison.”

“A word,” said Tiffany sharply.

“Well, yon word has been kicked out as if life was nae more than a game o’ chess; and now she turns to the lassie she tried to destroy years ago,” the kelda said. “She ha’ been beaten verra severely, but here she comes, to your steading, asking ye for sanctuary.” There was a gleam in her eye as she said, “What now, Tiffan? It’s up to ye. Only ye can decide. This elf nearly killed ye afore, and yet ye want to help her. . . .” The kelda’s face looked grave. “Fairies are nae to be trusted, we Nac Mac Feegle ken that! But ye are the girl who made the Wintersmith mind his manners. Don’t fret for the Quin, but through her footsteps there may be a war. . . .”

Tiffany bent down to the shrunken, quivering elf. Face-to-face with her she quietly said, “Last time we met, Nightshade, I was a small girl, hardly capable of any magic whatsoever.” She pushed her face closer. “How much better at magic am I now! I am the successor of Granny Weatherwax, aye, and you elves were right to fear her name. And now you might say that the life of elves is hanging on you. And if you let me down, I’ll send you back to the Feegles. They have no love for elves.” The kelda caught her eye and Tiffany said, “Does that sit well with you, Kelda?”

“Och, weel,” said the kelda, “somebody had to taste the first snail.”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “And goblins were treated as nobodies until somebody gave a thought to them. Give the Lady Nightshade no reason to hate you, but if she breaks the rules then I promise you—and, ye ken well, a promise from the hag o’ the hills is a serious business indeed—that will be the end of it.”

Feegle eyes were still watching Nightshade with unabashed loathing. It seemed to Tiffany that the air between them and the elf was humming with hatred, in both directions.

Rob Anybody said, “You, elf, ye know that your kind will nae trick us agin. And so it is for the sake o’ Mistress Aching that we are lettin’ ye live. But be told. The hag o’ the hills gets a bit restive when she sees us killin’ people, and if she wasnae here, ye would be bleeding again.”

There was a chorus of threats from the Feegles—it was clear that if they had their preference, Nightshade would be a damp little piece of flesh on the floor by now.

Rob Anybody smashed his claymore against the ground. “Listen to the big wee hag, ye scunners. Aye, ye, Wee Clonker and Wee Slogum, Wee Fungus and Wee Gimmie Jimmie. She’s made a truce with the auld Quin, believin’ yon schemie might have a wee passel o’ goodness in her.”

Big Yan coughed and said, “I dinnae want to gainsay the hag but the only guid elf is a deid elf.”

“I suggest ye dinnae tak that road, brother. As a gonnagle, I say to leave a space for goodness tae get in, as it was in the Lay of Barking Johnnie,” said the gonnagle, Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin, an educated Feegle.

“Is that the mannie who balanced a thimble on his neb for a week and afterward had a wonderful singing voice?” asked Daft Wullie.

“Nae, ye daftie.”

“Why are you getting all het up about this? Dinnae fash yersel’. The first time yon elf touches a body, it will be a deid elf, an’ that’s the way to find out,” said Wee Dangerous Spike.

“Weel now,” said Rob Anybody, “this is what the hag wants and I tell ye, that’s the end of it.”

“And I tell you one more thing, Rob Anybody,” Tiffany said. “I will take this elf away with me. I know that you will come with me, but I will need a Feegle or two to bide by her side and watch her for me. Wee Mad Arthur? You were in the Watch—I pick you for one.” She looked around. “And ye, Big Yan. Don’t let this little elf get the better of ye. I want to say to you both, this elf is a captive. And captives have to be looked after. As a constable, you—Wee Mad Arthur—know that people don’t fall down wells unless they’ve been pushed. I suggest you think about this. And generally speaking, they don’t often fall downstairs either unless they’ve been pushed. There are to be no little things like, ‘Ach, weel, we let her out for a walk and she ran away and was knocked over by a rampaging stoat,’ or, ‘She died resisting arrest by fifteen Feegles.’ No great swarm of bees to sting her a lot. No great big bird dropping her in a pond. No great big wind that comes out of nowhere and blows everything away. No ‘She fell down a rabbit hole and no one ever saw her again.’” She looked around sternly. “I am the hag o’ the hills and I will know how it happened. And then there would be a . . . reckoning. Do you understand me?”

“Oh, waily, waily, there’s to be a reckoning,” Daft Wullie moaned, and there was an embarrassed shuffling of feet as the Feegles reconsidered their plans. Big Yan absentmindedly poked his finger up his nose and closely examined what he found there before stuffing it into his spog for later inspection.

“Right, well, that’s settled then,” said Tiffany. “But I will not abide troublesome elves coming onto my turf, gentlemen.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mischief . . . and Worse

The elves liked being troublesome. When elves come, they hunt with stealth. There are little changes in the world, at first just mischief.

As in the cellar in the Baron’s Arms, where something had happened to the beer. No matter how often or how thoroughly John Parsley cleaned and changed spigots and barrels, the beer was suddenly full of floaties, barrel gushies, skunkies and the like, and the publican was tearing out his hair—of which he had little enough to start with.

And then, in the bar, someone said, “It’s the elves again. It’s their sort of joke.”

“Well, it doesn’t make me laugh,” said Thomas Greengrass, while John Parsley was almost crying. And as happens in a pub, everyone else joined in, and there was talk of elves, but no one believed it—though later, at home, more than one new horseshoe was suddenly nailed up on the doorframe.

People laughed and said, “Anyway, we’ve got our own witch here.”

“Well,” said Jack Tumble, “no offense, but she’s never here these days. It seems she’s spending more of her time over in Lancre.”

“Oh, come on,” said Joe. “My Tiffany is doing a man’s work every day.” He thought for a moment (especially since he knew that what he said might easily get back to his wife via Mrs. Parsley). “Better than that, she’s doing a woman’s work,” he added.

“Well, how do you explain the beer?”

“Bad management?” said Jack Tumble. “No offense meant, John. It’s difficult stuff, beer.”

“What? My pipes are as clean as the rain and I wash my hands when I change a barrel.”

“What is it, then?”

Someone had to say it again, voice their conclusion, and it was said: “Then it can only be the fairies.”

“Oh, come on,” said Joe. “My Tiffany would have dealt with them in a brace of shakes.”

But the beer was still sour. . . .

While over in Lancre, high up in the forests of the Ramtop Mountains, Martin Snack and Frank Sawyer were anxious. They had trudged for days from the last town, Hot Dang, to get this far and had left the main cart track hours before. Their empty stomachs and the late afternoon shadows were hurrying them up, but it was hard going along the faint tracks on the steep hillside. If they didn’t find the logging camp soon, this was likely to be their second night without shelter. They had heard wolves howling in the distance the night before. And now, as the temperature dropped, it began to snow.

“I reckon as we are lost, Frank,” said Martin anxiously.

But Frank was listening carefully, and now he heard a roaring sound in the distance. “This way,” he said confidently.

And indeed, within no more than another five minutes they were close enough to hear the sound of people talking, and soon after, the aroma of something cooking, which seemed a good sign. Then, in a break between trees, they could see the camp. There were a number of large hairy men moving about, while others sat on tree stumps and one was stirring something bubbling over on an almost red-hot portable stove.

As the boys emerged from the trees, the men looked up. One or two laid a hand on their large and serviceable axes, which were never far from their sides, and then relaxed when they saw how young the boys were. An elderly lumberjack in a big checked jacket with a fur-lined hood—the kind of man that you wouldn’t talk to unless you heard him talk first—walked over to meet them.

“What are you lads doing here? What do you want?” He eyed them up—Frank, small and wiry but strong-looking, and Martin, more muscular but shuffling his feet awkwardly behind his friend, as is often the way of a lad with muscles but not much else who might feel uncomfortable when asked something more demanding than his name.

Frank said, “We need a job, sir. I’m Frank, and this is Martin, and we want to work on the flumes.”

The old boy gave them an assessing look, then held out an enormous calloused hand. “My name’s Slack—Mr. Slack to you two. So, the flumes, is it? What do you know about flume-herding then?”

“Not a lot,” said Frank, “but my grandfather was on the flumes and he said it was a good life.” He paused. “We hear there’s good money to be had,” he added optimistically.

The problem for lumberjacks working this high up in the mountains was the distance from the remote camps to the main cart track. It was just not practical to have the huge, heavy logs dragged out of the forest by horse, and the solution was to send the logs down the mountain on a fast-running flume of water to the depot on the downs below. From there the logs could be transported to the towns and cities by mule cart.

It was a wonderful idea, and once the first flume got going, the idea spread. The men who became flume-herders lived in little sheds perched precariously on ledges dangerously close to turning points in the flumes, and they needed strength to be able to deal with blockages as several tons of wood came hurtling down the surging water toward them. There was no shortage of young men who would head to the mountains, determined to ride the flumes, if only to say they had done it! Some, of course, never got the chance to say anything to anyone ever again after an early mistake on the logs, but every camp had an Igor, so some parts of them might very well get a second chance. And occasionally you might meet a really old flume-herder who had been doing it for a long time, and might indeed be sporting a young man’s arms on his wiry old body.

“The flumes don’t like babies,” Mr. Slack said. “It’s a man’s job and no mistake. I see you’ve got muscles, both of you, but I don’t care about that. There are lots of boys like you with muscles. What we need is boys with muscles in their heads. You never know what the flumes will do to you on a renegade turn.” He frowned at them. “Do you know young Jack Abbott? Young lumberjack who lives down the mountain with his good mother and young sister? Near as anything chopped his own foot off just a week or so ago. Only just getting better, and that thanks to some lass with a squint who the witches sent on up to help. Think on that, lads, if you think you can take risks up here. Flume-herding is a lot more dangerous than lumberjacking.”

The boys looked downcast.

“And it’s magic wood, some of this up here,” Slack continued. “For the wizards. That’s why they need us, lads—can’t take it on trains, even once it’s down in the depot. You all right with that? Magic can do funny stuff to some of the men up here.” He pointed at the snowy trees surrounding them and said, “These aren’t your ordinary pines, these are Predictive Pines. They know the future. Although dang me if I know why or how. What good is knowing the future for a pine tree? It can predict when it is going to be cut down—but you still do cut them down. Not like it can get away now, ha! But if you touch one, and it likes you, you’ll see what is about to happen. So, lads, you still interested?”

Martin wasn’t the kind to talk too much, but he said very simply, “I just need the money, boss. And the grub, of course.”

“Oh, it’s good money. And you can buy all sorts and get it sent up here,” said Mr. Slack. He dug into a pocket of his checked jacket and pulled out a well-thumbed book. “Biggerwoods catalog. We all swear by it. You can get anything you want.”

Frank peered at the catalog, at its cover. “Says ’ere you can get a bride,” he said in wonder. “Comes by train.”

“Well, there ain’t no train gets up here—no iron near this wood. Nearest railhead’s down at Hot Dang. Near enough. And that there brides is a new offer. Just in time for you lads. It says that you can get a young lady—lots of fancy girls looking for men. Find yourself one, and on what you can make up here she can have a proper indoor privy and no messing and all the clothes she wants. That’s how good the money is.” He paused and stuffed the catalog back into his pocket, then added, “Women’s clothes are wonderful, don’t you think? Only the other day I met a man who said he traveled in ladies’ lingerie. . . .”

“Are you sure he was all right?” Martin asked Mr. Slack a bit dubiously. He had heard talk of one very remote camp where the tough, strong lumberjacks apparently chose to dress in women’s clothing as they sang songs about their big choppers, but he hadn’t believed it. Until now, anyway.

The lumberjack ignored his question. “Well, Martin, you are a fine boy, aren’t you?” he said, then turned to Frank. “You, lad, why do you want to take your chances up here?”

“Well, Mr. Slack, I was going out with this girl, but there was this other lad, you know. . . .” He hesitated.

Mr. Slack held a hand in front of his face. “Don’t tell me anything more, kid. These hills are full of people who really wanted to be somewhere else, and it sounds like you might fancy taking a look at Biggerwoods then, once you’ve got some money in your pocket. Well, you two seem strong enough. Just sign up and we’ll say no more. You can start in the morning, and then we’ll see. If you ain’t stupid, you’ll come away with good wages. And if you go messing about around the flumes, I’ll give your dear old mother your wages, so she’ll have enough to bury you with.”

He spat on his thumb, and man and boys made the thumb bargain so common among men of the world.

“And I’ll tell you what’s going to happen to you in the next thirty minutes,” Mr. Slack said with a wide grin. “You’ll be over where the logs go into the flumes, watching and learning. And I don’t need no Predictive Pine to tell me that!” He laughed, and patted the nearest pine.

But as his fingers touched the bark, his jaw dropped open and his hood fell back from a face frozen with fear.

“Lads,” he stammered—and that in itself was terrifying, that a man so grizzled should have such a thing as a stammer in his voice—“get out of here. Now! Get down the mountain. We’ve got a fight coming our way—in about five minutes!—and I need only men who know what to do with an ax up here.” And he turned and ran into the camp, shouting to the lumberjacks.

Martin and Frank looked at each other, shocked, and then Frank reached out tentatively and poked a finger onto the tree. A sudden flash of images shot into his mind—gloriously colorful creatures in velvet and feathers, their bodies painted with woad, came tumbling down out of the trees. But there was nothing glorious about the pain and death they were bringing with them. Then he saw a fur-lined hood bobbing in the waters of a flume, a hood that framed the head of Mr. Slack. A Mr. Slack who seemed to have somehow been slack enough to lose his body . . .

The two boys stumbled through the lumberjacks, heading for the trees, for the snowy ground that offered a chance of escape.

Not quickly enough. For with a sudden whistle, a storm of elves came dancing from the trees—large, nasty elves, the feathers and velvets of their tunics making them seem like predatory birds swooping from the shadowy heights. The two boys shrank back, frozen to the spot.

And for a few minutes it was lumberjack versus elf, helped by the camp Igor, who said, “Keep touching the pineth, it troubleth them and they won’t know what day it is. And while they are finding out, you can give them a real rollocking.”

The lumberjacks were not men who would run away from a fight, and the terrible metal of their axes destroyed more than one elf. But more and more elves were pouring into the camp, tipping over the little sheds, kicking at the logs so that they tumbled into the flumes any which way, the elves swinging into the heights of the trees and laughing down at the camp. And there was something enchanting about them . . . something that crept behind the hard exteriors of the lumberjacks and made them fall to their knees, sobbing for their mothers, dropping their axes, easy prey for the victorious fairy folk. . . .

“I told you. Get yourselves away, get to the flumes, boys,” Mr. Slack shouted, chopping with his ax at an elf creeping up behind him. “Them flumes are faster than elves. I’ll be okay.”

Martin took him at his word—though Frank had seen the future and knew that “okay” wasn’t really going to happen for Mr. Slack—and leaped into the first bucket, Frank close on his heels, and Mr. Slack pushed a lever—and the bucket was off! Down the flume snaking its way down the steep mountainside, round corners so terrible that they had to lean from one side to the other to avoid falling. Soaked to the skin, a jumble of logs in front of them, behind them, alongside them, they tore along deep gorges, dodging arrows from arriving elves who were heading up the mountain like a deadly swarm of insects.

It was wild, it was exhilarating, it was almost getting killed—and the almost bit is what made it something they would feel able to talk about later, though clearly getting killed would shut up most people.

It was also terrifying—the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to either boy. Even over the roar of the water, they could hear the screams of the lumberjacks from behind them. And there were . . . things coming down with them in the water that no one would want to look at too closely.

The journey ended in a pile of logs. And the depot had many men, big strong men with metal in their hands, angry at the damage to the timber, and as they gathered to march up the mountain, there were laughs and shrieks from above—and then silence. The elves had gone.

The miller of Stank* was a pious man, and the mill itself was complicated, with wheels turning all the time in various directions; his nightmare, which he hoped never to see, would be a day when the mill broke down and all those complicated wheels spun off everywhere. But while they kept on turning, well, the miller was a happy man, for after all everybody needed bread.

Then one night the elves came, and oh, they started to interfere with his flour, making holes in the sacks and dropping an anthill into the grain, laughing at him.

But they had made a big mistake.

The miller prayed to Om, but as he got no answer—or, rather, he got the answer in his head that he wanted Om to give him—he let the elves have it, and as the complicated wheels roared into action, they were surrounded by metal—wonderful metal, cold metal, all turning like clockwork.

And the miller locked all the doors so they couldn’t get out. He could hear the screams all night, and when his friends then asked him how he could have done that, he just said, “Well, the mills of Stank grind slow, yet they grind ’em exceeding small.”

Down in the village of Slippery Hollow, Old Mother Griggs woke up with her hair in a terrible tangle—and a bed full of thistles, tearing into her aged skin . . . while an elf laughed in glee as its mount—a young heifer—collapsed to her knees, exhausted from the nighttime revels. . . .

And an old, crabbed trader in Slice pushed his cart—his only means of survival—into the market square, singing, “A cabbage a day keeps the goblins away. And an onion a day makes the elv— Aargh!”

And at the foot of the Ramtops, a young maiden by the name of Elsie was tickled under the chin by a flower, and suddenly loosed the hand of her little sister, letting the little girl wander into the river, while Elsie gazed lovingly into the eyes of her father’s donkey . . . as an unwary traveler skipped deeper and deeper into the woods, dancing to elven music that would never stop, the elves gamboling along beside him, laughing at his distress. . . .

And Herne the Hunted—god of the small and furry, those destined to be eaten—crawled under a bush and hid as three elves discovered the gory fun they could have with a family of young rabbits. . . .

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A Tale of Two Queens

Tiffany took Nightshade—a very small, pathetic creature right now—back to her father’s farm with her, tucking her under her cloak for the journey, and then settling her and the Feegles into one of the old-fashioned hay barns.

“It’s clean and warm here,” she said, “with no metal. And I will bring you some food.” She looked sternly at the Feegles. They had a hungry look to them. There was an elf, all by itself. What could they do with it? “Rob, Wee Mad Arthur, Big Yan,” she said, “I’m just going to get a lotion for Nightshade, to help heal her wounds, and I do not want you to touch her while I am gone. Is that clear?”

“Oh aye, mistress,” said Rob cheerfully. “Get yeself offski and leave yon scunner wi’ us.” He glared at Nightshade. “If yon elf gi’ us any trouble, ye ken, we have oor weapons.” He shook his claymore in a fashion that clearly showed that he was itching to take it out to play.

Tiffany turned back to Nightshade. “I am the hag o’ the hills,” she said, “and these Feegles will do my bidding. But they do not like you and your kind, so I suggest you mend your manners, madam, and play the game. Or there will be a reckoning.”

And then, indeed, she was offski. But it was a very rapid offski, as she trusted the elf very little and the Feegles even less.

When Tiffany got back, Nightshade took the healing ointment, and it seemed as if with each smooth stroke the little elf blossomed, becoming more and more beautiful. There was a sparkle about her and it was like a syrup that covered everything. It shouted, “Am I not beautiful? Am I not clever? I am the Queen of Queens!”

Then it seemed to Tiffany that her sense of self was being changed; but she had been waiting for it, and she thought, I’m not having that, my friend. She said, “You will not try your elvish wiles on me, madam!”

But still she felt the elf’s magic reaching out for her, like the creep of a sunrise. . . .

She screamed, “You will not put your glamour on me, elf!” And the words of the shepherd’s count that Granny Aching had used were in her mind. “Yan tan tethera,” she chanted, over and over, the singing of the words helping her mind become her own again.

It worked. Nightshade began to tone herself down, and now she looked like a farm girl, a dairymaid. She had conjured up a dairymaid’s dress for herself, though one that no real dairymaid would ever wear, given that it was adorned with little ribbons and bows, a dainty little slipper-clad foot peeking out from beneath the hem. As a pretty straw bonnet took shape, Tiffany recoiled—the elf had summoned up an echo of the costume she knew very well, one worn by a china shepherdess she had once given to her granny. And as she remembered Granny Aching she became incredibly angry. How dare this elf try this on her, here, on her very turf!

“I demand—” Nightshade tried, and then she saw Tiffany’s expression. “I would hope . . .”

A country girl! The elvish has begun to leave the building, Tiffany thought with delight. But she still folded her arms and glared at the elf. “I’ve helped you,” she said, “but I am also busy helping other people—people who would have a better life if you weren’t here.” She narrowed her eyes. “Especially if your people cause mischief, do things like spoiling our beer. Yes, I know about that, and I know you, elf, and I know what you want. You want your kingdom back, don’t you, Nightshade?”

There was a growl from the assembled Feegles, and Big Yan said hopefully, “Can we nae throw it back there, mistress?”

“Aye,” said Rob. “Be rid o’ yon pest.”

“Well, Rob,” said Tiffany, “I am sorry to tell ye, there are some folks who think Feegles are a pest.”

Big Yan went silent, then said slowly, “Weel, we may be pests, ye ken, but a puir bairn has nae reason tae dread Feegles.” He rose to his full height of seven inches—Big Yan was very tall for a Feegle, with the scars on his forehead typical of the taller-than-average, who can find doorways somewhat challenging—and loomed over the elf from the rafters.

Tiffany ignored him, turning back to Nightshade. “Am I right?” she demanded. “You want to return to Fairyland? What do you say?”

Cunning flickered across Nightshade’s sharp little face. “We are like bees,” she said at last. “The Queen has all the power . . . until she gets older, and then a new queen kills her to take the hive.” A wave of anger was suddenly visible. “Peaseblossom,” she hissed. “He does not believe that the world has changed. It was he who threw me from my people.” A contemptuous sneer crossed her lips. “He, who is so powerful he can spoil beer. When we could once destroy worlds . . .”

“I could give you some help with your little friend Peaseblossom,” Tiffany said slowly. “I would settle for you as Queen of the Elves again if you could make all the elves go back once more to their own land and stay there. But if you and your race should come here for the purpose of making humans your slaves, well, you may think you have seen me angry, but then you will know the real meaning of the word rage.”

As she said that everything about her flickered in fire. And she remembered facing the Queen before. Land under Wave. Knowing where she had come from, where she was going. And that she could no longer be fooled. Knowing that no matter how many people dreamed, invited the elves to come into the world, she would be there, awake, holding firm.

“If you break your vow, the last things you will see are Thunder and Lightning,” she threatened. “Thunder and Lightning in your head and you will die of the thunder. That is a promise, elf.”

From the look of terror that flickered across Nightshade’s face, Tiffany knew that the elf understood.

She brought Nightshade some porridge in the morning.

The elf looked up at Tiffany as she took the bowl, and said, “You could have killed me yesterday . . . I’d have killed me. Why didn’t you? You know I am an elf, and we are merciless.”

“Yes,” said Tiffany, “but we are human, and we do know mercy. I also know I’m a witch, and I’m doing my job.”

“You are clever, Tiffany Aching, the little girl I almost killed on the hill when the Thunder and Lightning became solid and hurtful, all teeth and bite.” Nightshade was puzzled. “What am I now but a ragged pauper? Friendless, but you, one girl, you took me in when you had no reason to.”

“I did have a reason,” said Tiffany. “I’m a witch, and I thought it possible.” She sat down on a milk churn and said, “You must understand that elves are seen as vindictive, callous, spiteful, untrustworthy, self-centered, undeserving, unwelcome nuisances—and that’s being nice. I’ve heard much worse language used about them, especially from people whose children have been taken away, I can tell you. But nothing stays the same—our world, our iron, your court, your glamour. Did you know, Nightshade, that in Ankh-Morpork goblins have jobs, and are considered to be useful members of the community?”

“What?” said the Queen. “Goblins? But you humans hate goblins—and their stink! I thought the one we captured was lying!”

“Well, maybe they do stink a bit, but so do their masters, because for some of them a stink is money,” said Tiffany, “and a goblin who can repair a locomotive can stink as much as he likes. What do you elves have to offer us? You are just . . . folklore now. You’ve missed the train, in fact, and you have only mischief left, and silly tricks.”

“I could kill you with a thought,” said Nightshade with a sly look.

“Oh dear,” said Tiffany, holding up a hand to halt the Feegles, each of whom wanted to be the one to get the first fist in. “I hope you don’t do so. It would be your last.” She looked at the elf, whose sharp little face was quivering with upset as she found herself surrounded by those she did not understand. “Oh, please don’t cry. An elf who has been a queen—an elf who wants to be a queen again—surely shouldn’t cry.”

“A queen shouldn’t, but I am a remnant of a queen, lost in the wilderness.”

“No, you are in a hay barn. Do you understand the meaning of manual labor, lady?”

Nightshade looked puzzled. “No. What does it mean?”

“It means earning a living by working. How are you with a shovel?”

“I don’t know. What is a shovel?”

“Oh dear,” said Tiffany again. “Look, you can stay here until you are better, but you must work hard at something. You could try.”

A boot bounced off the ground beside her, one of her father’s, a hole at the toe, and another trying out of sympathy to join in at the heel. “I cannae abide boots on my feet, ye ken,” said Wee Mad Arthur, “but if ye recall I wuz raised by shoemakers, and they tol’ me a tale o’ the elves. Yon scunner ye ha’ there might ha’ a talent for it, ye ken.”

Nightshade turned the boot gingerly over in her hands. “What is this?” she said.

“A boot,” said Tiffany.

“An’ ye’ll get one reet noo up yer backside if I ha’ anythin’ tae dae wi’ it,” Big Yan growled.

Tiffany took the boot from the elf and put it down. “We’ll talk later, Nightshade,” she said. “Thank you for your suggestion, Wee Mad Arthur, and yes, I do know the story* but I think it is just that, a story.”

“Weel, I tol’ ye, Wee Mad Arthur, you shouldnae have listened to that load o’ old cobblers,” said Rob.

It was a day of old sheets and old boots and “make do and mend.” And oh dear, Tiffany thought, she had to check on baby Tiffany, and drop in on Becky Pardon and Nancy Upright—Miss Tick felt that both girls might be of use if she wanted to take on a trainee in the Chalk. But she couldn’t ask the girls to move in while she had Nightshade at the farm, not unless she gave them each a horseshoe necklace so they would be protected by the iron. It would have to wait. . . .

She was back and forth to the farm all day, in between visits. Her last call of the afternoon was to Mr. Holland the miller. There were only a few purple blotches on his skin now, and she left Mistress Holland with a second pot of the Merryday Root lotion, biting her tongue at the good lady’s clear message of “If only you had been here, I wouldn’t have used the wrong herb.”

When she got back, she found Nightshade perched in the corner of the barn, her merciless eyes pinned on You, who had stalked in and was arching her back and hissing at the elf. The Feegles were egging You on, with cries of “Ach, see you, pussycat, gi’ the scunner a wee giftie for the Nac Mac Feegle,” interrupted by a sudden, “Crivens, lads, the big wee hag is back!”

Tiffany stood in the doorway tapping her foot, and Rob shrank back.

“Ach no,” he wailed. “Nae the Tappin’ of the Feets, mistress.”

Tiffany folded her arms.

“Ach, mistress, ’tis a heavy thing to be under a geas,” Rob moaned.

And Tiffany laughed.

But Nightshade had questions for her. She had seen people coming to the farm during the day, coming for medicines, for advice, for an ear to listen and, sadly, sometimes for an eye to see the bruises.

“Why do you help these strangers?” she asked Tiffany now. “They are not of your clan. You owe them nothing.”

“Well,” said Tiffany, “although they are strangers, I simply think of them as people. All of them. And you help other people—that’s how we do it.”

“Does every person do it?” said Nightshade.

“No,” said Tiffany. “Sadly, that is true. But many people will help other people, just because, well, because they are other people. That’s how it goes. Do you elves not understand this?”

“Shall we say that I am trying to learn?” said Nightshade.

“And what do you find?” said Tiffany, smiling.

“You become a kind of servant.” Nightshade sniffed, her delicate nose wrinkling.

“Well, yes,” said Tiffany. “But it doesn’t matter, because one day I might need that person, and then they will very probably help me. It works for us; it always has.”

“But you have battles,” said Nightshade. “I know that.”

“Yes, but not always. And we are getting better at the not.”

“You are powerful, though. You could rule the world,” said Nightshade.

“Really?” said Tiffany. “Why should I want to do that? I am a witch, I like being a witch, and I like people too. For every nasty person, there’s a nice one, mostly. There is a saying, ‘What goes around comes around,’ and it means that sooner or later you will find yourself on top, at least for a while. And another time, the wheel turns and you will not be on top but you have to put up with it.”

She tried to look into Nightshade’s eyes, see what the elf was thinking, but she might as well have looked at a wall. The elf’s eyes were emotionless.

“And I remember the darkness and the rain and the thunder and lightning,” she added, “and what good has it done you? You, elf, found in a ditch?”

For once Nightshade seemed at a loss and looked carefully at Tiffany before saying, “Your way . . . would not work for elves. Every other elf is a challenge. We kill our queens—every other queen is a rival, and we fight over the hive.” She paused as a new thought struck her. “Yet you have your queens of wisdom—and thus there was Granny Aching, and Granny Weatherwax, and yes indeed, Tiffany Aching. You grow older, wisdom flourishes and is passed on.”

“And you never prosper, you live in a cycle of decay,” Tiffany said softly. “And you are not bees. They are productive but they die young and never, ever have a thought. . . .”

There was a strange look on the elf’s face. She was having to think. Really think. Tiffany could see it. Nightshade had the face of someone who had already begun to think about a world that had changed, a world with iron that was less welcoming for the fairy folk, a world that liked them well enough in stories but had no real belief in them, gave them no way in; now she was looking closer and she was finding a new world she had never thought about before, and she was trying to reconcile it with everything else she knew.

And Tiffany could see the battle in her face.

Over in Lancre, Queen Magrat had heard about the trouble up in the Ramtops—the attack on the lumberjacks, the deaths and the lost timber.

Elves, she thought. They’d seen them off last time, but it hadn’t been easy, and it had been a long time since she’d posted guards—well, Shawn Ogg, anyway—up by the circle of stones known as the Dancers, or made sure the castle had plenty of horseshoes to hand.

She knew how the memory plays tricks, and the old stories had power, and everyone forgot how “terrific” really meant “brings terror.” Her people would only remember that the elves sang beautifully. They would have forgotten what their song was about.

Magrat was not only a queen, but also a witch, of course. And although she was mostly a queen these days, the witch part of her knew that the balance was off, that Granny Weatherwax had left a void behind her, and no matter how hard Tiffany Aching—and that nice backhouse boy she now had—were working to fill it. Granny Weatherwax was a hard act to follow; she had held the barrier, held it firm.

And if the barrier was no longer strong . . . Magrat shivered. Anyone who had ever met elvenkind knew that “terror” was absolutely the right response—the only response. For the elves were a plague that could spread rapidly, destroying and harming and hurting and poisoning all they touched. She wanted no elves in Lancre.

That evening, Queen Magrat went to her garderobe and took out her beloved broomstick, sat on it and very carefully tried a lift, and, slightly against her expectations, it took off gently, rising slowly over the castle. She flew around happily for some minutes and told herself, It’s true—once a witch, always a witch.

Being a dutiful wife, when she wanted to be, she mentioned her intentions to her husband late that evening, and to her surprise King Verence said, “Back on the old broomstick, my love? Very glad to hear it. I’ve seen your face when a witch flies by, and no man can keep a bird in chains.”

Magrat smiled and said, “I don’t feel like a bird in a cage, my dear, but now we don’t have Granny, I feel I must help.”

“Well done,” said Verence. “We are all coming to terms with what’s happened, but I am sure Mistress Aching will follow in Granny’s footsteps.”

“It isn’t like that,” said Queen Magrat. “I think she is walking in her own footsteps.” She sighed. “But there are elves afoot,” she said. “And I believe Tiffany will be at Granny’s cottage—no, her cottage—later today, so I must go and see her, offer my support.” Her husband shivered at the mention of elves. “Of course,” Magrat continued firmly, “I also intend to be a good role model for our children. Young Esme is growing up fast, and I want her to see that there’s more to being a queen than waving hellos—we don’t want her to start kissing frogs, now, do we? We all know how that can turn out!”* She turned at the door and tossed her husband a baby sling. “I am quite sure,” she said sweetly, “that you can look after our children very well indeed on your own for a little while.”

Verence smiled weakly.

Magrat made a face that only a witch would see. He holds them upside down sometimes, she thought to herself. He is a very clever man, but give him a baby and he doesn’t really know what to do. She smiled. He could learn. And when she asked him to change a diaper, when Millie was off helping in the kitchen, he pulled a face but he did try anyway.

“I want to help,” Magrat said firmly to Tiffany, landing her broomstick outside what they both still thought of as Granny’s cottage, less than an hour after Tiffany had arrived herself, the news quickly flashing up to the castle since Magrat had made it known she wanted to be informed. “I am the Queen, but I am also a pretty good witch.”

Tiffany looked into Magrat’s eyes and saw her longing to be a witch once more, just for a little while, and then Magrat said, “We have had elves here, Tiffany. Elves!” And Tiffany remembered Granny Weatherwax telling her how Magrat had fought the elves before—shot one right through the eye with a crossbow indeed!

“I have experience, Tiffany,” Magrat continued. “And you are going to need everyone you can get if the elves start coming through.” She paused to think. “Even novices. Have you spoken to Miss Tick?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “She says she has found one or two likely girls, but not everyone can be a witch, even if they want to be. And at the moment it’s not . . . possible to take a girl on in my steading on the Chalk.”

“Why not? And what about your friend Petulia, her with the piggery?”

“Well, she has the skills,” said Tiffany, ignoring the first of Magrat’s questions. “But Petulia helps her husband to run the farm—says she spends all her time among creatures who go ‘grunt,’ and that sometimes includes the old pig farmers! And you have to admit that pig boring is good for everybody, even the pigs. It’s terrible to hear the squealing if she’s not there.”

“Well, we may still need her up here, pigs or not. And heavy waterproof boots can take an arrow,” said Magrat. “So, any sign of elves down on the Chalk?”

Tiffany colored, uncertain how Magrat would take her news about Nightshade, but thinking a little guiltily that at least it would save her having to tell Nanny Ogg herself. She told her about the beer first, then about Nightshade. How the elf was staying at her parents’ farm, watched over by Feegles. Making it impossible to take on any other help.

Magrat knew the Feegles would keep the elf from causing any trouble, but she was surprised by what Tiffany told her. “Are you telling me you think you can trust an elf?” she said. Her face had paled. “No elf is trustworthy,” she added. “They wouldn’t even know the meaning of the word. Yet you trust this elf? Why?”

“No,” said Tiffany. “I don’t trust her. But I think this elf wants to live. Nightshade has already seen for herself that our world is changing. The iron, you know. And now she has encountered ideas unknown to her. We might just be making some progress, and I think it’s worth a try. Perhaps she might then go back to Fairyland and . . . persuade other elves to think like her? To leave us alone.” She paused. “The kelda of the Feegles warned me, Magrat. She said that Granny’s going would leave a . . . hole. That we needed to take great care. It’s the elves! It has to be. So if this elf can help, well, I must try. . . .”

“Hmm, but if those others do start coming, you’re going to need help, Tiffany,” said Magrat. She thought for a moment. “I understand the Baron on the Chalk has a wife who is a witch . . . ?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “Letitia Keepsake. But she’s not trained and her husband is a bit—how should I say it?—snobby.”

Magrat said, “Well, my dear, if you want, I’ll fly down there and drop in for tea one day. And hint, in a subtle way, that the idea of being a witch for the people at large might be a good idea. My Verence, you know, likes to be thought of as a king of the people, and in fact, I feel sure he thinks I am being a good example to the population by working as a witch now. He talks like that, sometimes, but I love him nevertheless. The idea of this Letitia being friends with a queen might stop her husband interfering.”

Tiffany said, “I am amazed. Just like that?”

“Trust me,” said Queen Magrat. “Crowns are important, you know.”

Tiffany flew back to the Chalk feeling a bit happier. Magrat would be a useful ally, and perhaps Letitia would be able to help too. But we are still short of witches, so we must take pains to get more, she thought. Furious pains. That means pulling in every witch and likely witch to learn at least some of the craft and how to deal with the glamour of elves.

Elves! Nastiness for the sake of being nasty. As Granny Aching had told her, they would take away the stick of a man with no legs. Nasty, unpleasant, stupid, annoying—trouble and discord just for the pleasure of it. Worse. They brought actual horror, and terror, and pain. . . . And they laughed, which was bad enough because their laughter was actually musical, and you could wonder why such wonderful music could come from such unpleasant creatures. They cared for nobody except themselves and possibly not even that.

But Nightshade. . . . Perhaps there was one elf for whom the wheel was turning. Especially the iron wheels . . .

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The God in the Barrow

In the dark of the night, down in the Chalk, the wheel was definitely stuck in the old ways—just the way three elves dancing through the gloom of the woods liked it. This world was here for their pleasure, to entertain them, delight them. And the creatures within it were no more than toys; toys that sometimes squealed and ran and shrieked as the elves laughed and sang.

Now they spotted a small home, a poor-looking dwelling with a window slightly ajar. From within came the sound of babies, gurgling happily in their sleep, their bellies full of their mother’s milk, their limbs curled beneath the covers of their cots.

The elves grinned at each other and licked their lips in anticipation. Babies!

Faces now at the window. Predatory faces, with the eyes of hunters.

Then a hand reached in and tickled the nearest infant under the chin, the little girl waking and gazing in delight at the glorious creature leaning over her, his glamour shining radiantly in the dark room. Her little fingers stretched to touch a beautiful feather. . . .

Tiffany’s happiness lasted until just after she had gone to bed, when there was a sudden tickling in her head, and in her inner eye she saw young Tiffany Robinson—the baby she had not had time to see yet this week, the little girl on whom she had placed a tracking spell.

But this was not just neglect by baby Tiffany’s mum and dad.

The elves had taken her!

Tiffany’s broomstick could not go fast enough. In a piece of woodland she found a group of three elves toying with the little girl, and what was inside her was not anger. It was something more forensic than that, and as the stick went onward, Tiffany let her feelings flame up . . . and release.

The elves were laughing, but as Tiffany swooped down, she sent fire blazing from her fingertips and into them and watched them burn. She was shuddering with her fury, a fury so intense it was threatening to overcome her. If she met any more elves that night, they too would be dead.

And she had to stop herself there, suddenly appalled at what she had done. Only a witch gone to the dark would kill, she screamed at herself inside her head.

And another voice said, But they were just elves. And they were hurting the baby.

The first voice came sneakily back with, But Nightshade is also just an elf. . . .

And Tiffany knew that if a witch started thinking of anyone as “just” anything, that would be the first step on a well-worn path that could lead to, oh, to poisoned apples, spinning wheels, and a too-small stove . . . and to pain, and terror, and horror and the darkness.

But it was done. And a witch had to be practical, so Tiffany wrapped her shawl around the baby and slowly flew to the Robinsons’ house—“shack” being, in fact, a better word for the little dwelling. Young Mr. Robinson opened the door to her knocking. He looked surprised, especially when Tiffany showed him his baby daughter, swaddled in her witch’s shawl.

She walked past him and confronted his wife, thinking, They are young, yes, but that doesn’t mean you have to be stupid. Leaving the windows open at this time of year? Surely everybody knows about elves. . . .

My mother said I never should . . .

Play with the fairies in the wood . . .

“Well,” said Milly, “I checked the boys. They seemed to be all right.” She blushed as Tiffany handed her the baby, and Tiffany caught it.

“Let me tell you something, Milly. Your girl has a great future before her. I’m a witch, so I know it. Because you’ve let me name her, I will see to it that my namesake has what she needs—and mind, it is your girl I am talking about. In some way, she’s partly mine. Those great big boys of yours will look after themselves. Now don’t leave your windows open on nights like this! There are always watchers. You know it! Let no harm attend her.”

Tiffany almost shouted the last bit. This family needed a little prod every so often, and she would see to it. Oh yes, she would. And if they neglected their duty, well, there would be a reckoning. Maybe just a little reckoning, to make them understand.

But right now, as she headed home, she knew she needed to talk to another witch.

She grabbed a warm cloak from her bedroom, then saw the gleam of the shepherd’s crown on the shelf and, on a sudden impulse, tucked it into her pocket. Her fingers curled around the odd-shaped little stone, tracing its five ridges, and somehow she felt a strength flow into her, the hardness of the flint at its heart reminding her who she was. I need to keep a piece of the Chalk with me, she realized. My land gives me strength, supports me. It reminds me who I am. I am not a killer. I am Tiffany Aching, witch of the Chalk. And I need my land with me.

She sped through the night sky, back to Lancre, the cool of the air rushing past, the eyes of the owls watching her in the moonlight.

It was almost dawn when she arrived at Nanny Ogg’s home. Nanny was already up, or rather she hadn’t yet got down, since she had spent the night at a deathbed. She opened her door and blanched a little when she saw Tiffany’s face.

“Elves?” she asked grimly. “Magrat told me, you know. You got trouble over in the Chalk?”

Tiffany nodded, any calm deserting her as tears suddenly choked her voice. And over the requisite cup of tea in Nanny’s warm kitchen, she told her what had happened.

Then she came to the bit of the story that she struggled to get out. All she could say was, “The elves. With little Tiffany. They were going to . . .” She choked a little, then, “I killed all three of them,” she wailed. She looked despairingly at Nanny.

“Good,” said Nanny. “Well done. Don’t trouble yourself, Tiff. If they was hurtin’ that baby, well, what else could you do? You didn’t . . . enjoy it?” she asked carefully, eyes shrewd in her wrinkled face.

“Of course not!” Tiffany cried. “But, Nanny, I just . . . I did it almost without thinking.”

“Well, you might have to do it again soon if the elves keeps on comin’,” Nanny said briskly. “We’re witches, Tiffany. We has the power for a reason. We just ’as to make sure as it’s the right reason, and if there’s an elf comin’ through and hurtin’ a baby, take it from me, that is the right reason.” She paused. “If’n people do wrong things, well, why would they be surprised if bad things then happen to them? Most of ’em knows this, you know. I remember Esme tellin’ me once, she was in some hamlet or other—Spickle, Spackle, somewhere like that—and people was tryin’ to string up this man for killin’ two children and she said as he knew he deserved it; ’pparently ’e said, ‘I did it in liquor and it ended in ’emp.’” She sat wearily down, allowing Greebo to clamber onto her ample lap. “Reality, Tiff,” she added. “Life an’ death. You knows it.” She scratched the tomcat behind what might be described as an ear by someone with very poor eyesight. “Is the child all right?”

“Yes, I took her back to her parents but they . . . can’t . . . won’t . . . look after her properly.”

“Some folk just don’t want to see the truth, even when you points it out to ’em. That’s the trouble with elves, they will keep comin’ back.” Nanny sighed heavily. “People tell stories about ’em, Tiff,” she said. “They make ’em sound fun—it’s as if their glamour hangs around after they’ve gone and stays in people’s heads, tellin’ ’em that elves is no problem. Just a bit of mischief.” Nanny sank farther into her chair, knocking a small family knick-knack off the table beside her. “Feegles,” she said. “They’re mischief. But elves? Elves is different. You remember how the Cunning Man crept into people’s heads, Tiff? How he made people do things—awful things?”

Tiffany nodded, her mind replaying horrible images while her eyes still focused on the knickknack on the floor. A present from Quirm from one of her daughters-in-law, and Nanny hadn’t even noticed she had knocked it over. Nanny. Who treasured every small object her family gave her. Who would never ever fail to notice if something was damaged.

“Well, that’s nothin’ to what them elves might do, Tiff,” Nanny continued. “There is nothin’ they likes more than watchin’ pain and terror, nothin’ that makes ’em laugh more. And they loves stealin’ babbies. You did well to stop them this time. They will come again, though.”

“Well, then they will have to die again,” said Tiffany flatly.

“If you are there . . . ,” Nanny said carefully.

Tiffany slumped. “But what else can we do? We can’t be everywhere.”

“Well,” said Nanny, “we’ve seen ’em off before. It was hard, for sure, but we can do it again. Can’t that elf of yorn help?”

“Nightshade?” Tiffany said. “They won’t listen to her the way things are right now! They threw her out.”

Nanny pondered a bit, then appeared to come to a decision. “There is someone they might listen to . . . or at least they used to listen to ’im. If he can be persuaded to take an interest.” She looked at Tiffany appraisingly. “He don’t like to be disturbed. Though I have visited him before, once, with a friend”—her eyes grew misty at the memory*—“and I think Granny and he may have had words in the past. He likes ladies, though. A pretty young thing like you might be just his cup of tea.”

Tiffany bristled. “Nanny, you can’t be suggesting—”

“Lordy, no! Nothin’ like that. Just a bit of . . . persuadin’. You are good at persuadin’ folks, ain’t you, Tiff?”

“I can do persuading,” Tiffany said, relaxing a bit. “Who do you mean and where do I go?”

The Long Man. Tiffany had heard a lot about the Long Man, the barrow that led to the home of the King of the Elves, mostly from Nanny Ogg—who had gone into the barrow and met the King once before, when the elves had been getting unruly.

The professors would have said that the King lived in a long barrow from ancient times, when people didn’t wear clothing and there weren’t so many gods, and in a way the King himself was a kind of god—a god of life and death and, it seemed to Tiffany, of dirt and ragged clothing. And men still sometimes came to dance around by the barrow, horns on their heads and—usually—a strong drink in their hands. Unsurprisingly, they found it hard to persuade young women to go up there with them.

There were three mounds to the barrow, three very suggestive mounds that no country lass who had watched sheep and cows in action could fail to recognize—there was always a lot of giggling from the girls training to be witches when they first flew over it and saw it from the air.

Tiffany headed up the overgrown path, pushing her way through thorns and trees, untangling her witch’s hat from a particularly insistent bush at one point, and stopped by the cavelike entrance. She was strangely reluctant to duck under the lintel, past the scratched drawing of the man with horns and down the steps she knew she would find once she had pushed aside the stone at the entrance.

I cannot face him just by myself, she thought with terror. I need someone who can at least tell people how I died.

And a wee voice said, “Crivens!”

“Rob Anybody?”

“Oh aye. We follow ye all the time, ye ken. Ye are the hag o’ the hills and the Long Man is a big hill.”

But, “Wait by the gate please, Rob, I must do this by myself,” she said, suddenly filled with sureness that this was the right choice. She had killed the three elves; now she would face their king. “This is hag business, ye ken.”

“But we knows the King,” said Rob. “If’n we gae along wi’ ye, we can fight yon scunner in his ain world.”

“Oh aye,” added Wee Dangerous Spike. “A big laddie, ye ken, but I’ll gi’ the bogle a face full of Feegle he’ll nae forget.” He experimentally nutted one of the entrance stones, bouncing his head off the rock with a satisfying clunk.

Tiffany sighed. “That’s what I’m afeared—I mean, afraid of,” she said. “I want to ask the King for his help. Not anger him. And I know the Feegles have history with him. . . .”

“Aye, that’s us,” said Rob proudly. “We is history.”

“Nae king, nae quin, nae laird!” roared the assembled Feegles.

“Nae Feegles,” said Tiffany firmly. A sudden burst of inspiration hit her. “I need you just here, Rob Anybody,” she told him. “I have to do my hag business with the king without anyone disturbing me.” She paused. “And there are elves afoot. So if any should come seekin’ their King, I want you—Rob Anybody, Wee Dangerous Spike, all of ye—to stop them coming down after me. I need you to do this for me. It’s important. Is that understood?”

There was a bit of grumbling, but Rob had brightened up. “So we can gi’ them scunners a guid kickin’ if they shows up here?” he asked.

“Yes,” Tiffany said wearily.

This was met by a cheer. “Nac Mac Feegle, wha hae!”

She left them there, squabbling over who should guard which part of the Long Man, Wee Dangerous Spike bashing his head enthusiastically against the entrance stones again as a sort of warm-up for what he hoped was coming, and she walked into the stinky darkness, clutching the small crowbar she had brought with her, along with a horseshoe. She put one hand into her pocket and held tight on to the shepherd’s crown—her ground, her turf. Let’s see if I am truly the hag of the hills, she thought, and she gripped the big stone blocking the entrance.

It rose up gently, no crowbar necessary, the stone crackling as she raised it higher and higher, revealing the steps beyond. The path inside led her deeper and darker, spiraling round and round, taking her into the heart of the barrow.

Into a pathway between the worlds.

Into the world of the elven King, where he floated between time and space in his land of pleasure. It was stifling, though there was no fire—the heat seemed to be coming out of the earth.

And it stank. It reeked of masculinity and unwashed clothing, of feet and sweat. There were bottles everywhere, and at the end of the hall, naked men were wrestling, grunting and groaning as they twined and twisted with their opponents, their bodies greased as if from a bucket of lard. There were no women to be seen—this was a land where men indulged themselves with no thought for the other sex. But when they saw Tiffany, they stopped and put their hands over their essentials—as Nanny Ogg would have said—and Tiffany thought: Ha, you big strong men, your meat and two veg hanging out, you are frightened, aren’t you? I am the maiden—and I am also the hag.

She could see the King of the Elven Races. He was just as Nanny Ogg had described, still stinking of course, but somehow hugely attractive. She kept her eyes on the horns on his head, trying not to look at his meat and veg, which were huge.

The King sighed, stretching out his legs and tapping his hooves against the wall, an animal scent like that of a badger in heat rising from him and curling toward her. “You, young woman,” he said lazily, his voice an invitation to romance, to wickedness, to pleasures you had not known you wanted until that moment. “You come into my world. Into my entertainments. You are a witch, are you not?”

“Indeed I am,” said Tiffany, “and I am here to ask the King of the Elves to be a proper king.”

He moved closer and Tiffany tried not to blanch as the stench of him thickened. He smiled lasciviously, causing her to think, I know who you are and what you are, and I think Nanny Ogg must have liked you. . . .

“Who are you?” he queried. “By your garb, you seem indeed to be a witch, but witches are old and somewhat wrinkled. You, girl . . .”

Sometimes, Tiffany thought, I am so fed up with being young.* My youth has got his attention, but what I need is his respect.

“I may be young, my lord,” she said firmly, “but as you see, I am a ha—a witch. And I come to tell you that I have killed three of your people.”

That should do it, she thought, but the King merely laughed. “You interest me, my girl,” he said, stretching languorously. “I do no harm,” he added lazily. “I simply dream, but my people, oh dear, what can I do? I must allow them their delights, as I do myself.”

“But their delights are not to our taste,” said Tiffany. “Not in my world.”

“My world?” chuckled the King. “Oh, you have pride, little girl. Perhaps you would like to be one of my ladies. A queen needs pride. . . .”

“The Lady Nightshade is your queen,” said Tiffany firmly, her legs shaking at the invitation in the King’s words. To stay here? With him? her mind shrieked. She gripped the shepherd’s crown more firmly. I am Tiffany Aching, of the Chalk, she said to herself, and I have flint in my soul. “Nightshade is my . . . guest,” she added. “Perhaps you did not know, my lord, that your queen has been thrown from Fairyland by the Lord Peaseblossom?”

A lazy smile spread across the King’s face. “Nightshade . . . ,” he mused. “Well, I hope you enjoy her company.” He spread his legs, making Tiffany gulp, and leaned forward. “You begin to tire me now, girl. What do you want from me?”

“Get your elves to see sense,” said Tiffany. “Or there will be a reckoning.” Her voice almost wobbled on the last bit of this, but it had to be said, oh yes.

There was a huge sigh, and the King yawned as he lay back again. “You come to my abode and you threaten me?” his voice caressed. “Tell me, mistress, what care should I have for those elves who play in your lands? Even the Lady Nightshade? There are other worlds. There are always other worlds.”

“Well, mine never was a place for elves,” Tiffany said. “It was never yours. You just latched onto it—a parasite—and took what you could. But once again I have to tell you these are the days of iron—not just horseshoes, but iron and steel forged together in great lines across the land. It’s called a railway, my lord, and it is spreading across the Disc. People are interested in mechanical things, because mechanical things work, while old wives’ tales mostly just don’t kill them. And so people laugh at the fairies, and as they laugh, so you will dwindle. You see, nobody cares about you anymore. They have the clacks, the railways, and it’s a new world. You—and your kind—have no future here now other than in stories.” She said the last word contemptuously.

“Stories?” the King mused. “A way into the minds of your peoples, mistress. And I can wait . . . the stories will survive when this ‘railway’ you speak of is long gone.”

“But we will not stand by to see small children taken as playthings for elves anymore,” Tiffany said. “I and others will burn those who take them. This is a warning—I would like it to be friendly but, alas, it seems this is not possible. You are living in railway time and you should leave us be.”

The King sighed again. “Perhaps . . . perhaps,” he said. “New lands to discover could be entertaining. But I have told you, I have no desire to visit your land in this time of iron. After all, I have all the time I wish for. . . .”

“What about the elves who have already come through?”

“Oh, just kill them if you wish.” The King smiled again. “I may remain here until the end of time, and I don’t think that you would want to be there. But I have always liked the ladies, and so I will say that if elves are stupid, they deserve my censure and your wrath. My dear Mistress Aching—and yes, I do know who you are—you clasp good intentions to you like a mother clutches her young. Now, should I even let you leave? When I am looking for . . . entertainment?” He sighed. “I do so desire new amusements sometimes—perhaps to tinker with something, to discover new interests. And one new interest could be you. Do you think that I will let you leave my home?” His heavy-lidded eyes caressed her.

Tiffany swallowed. “Yes, your majesty. You will let me leave.”

“You are so sure?”

“Yes.” Tiffany wrapped her hand around the shepherd’s crown once again, and felt the flint at its center give her strength, draw her back to her own land, to her land above the wave. She stepped backward slowly.

And nearly tripped over something on the floor behind her.

The King was staring too. It was a white cat and she heard the King’s voice, surprised for the first time: “You!”

And then there was an end to it, and Tiffany and You spiraled back the way they had come, and the Feegles were outside, patrolling up and down and enjoying the happy opportunity of fighting a tree or two, since no elves had turned up, but these trees were still right scunners, stickin’ their barbs as they did into Feegle heads and beards. They deserved a guid kickin’.

“Well, I’m not sure that did any good,” Tiffany said to Rob as she emerged from the tunnel.

“Weel,” said Rob Anybody, “let them come. Ye will always have your Feegles. We Feegles are everlasting.”

“Everlasting if there is enough to drink!” Wee Dangerous Spike added.

“Rob,” said Tiffany firmly. “Right now, not one of you needs a drink. We need a plan.” She thought for a moment. “The King will not help—yet. But he is looking for new entertainments. Perhaps if we offer him something of that ilk, then he will think more kindly upon us and at least leave us alone?” Leave us to kill his elves, she thought to herself. He did say he wouldn’t mind. Would he change his mind?

“Ach, nae problem,” said Rob proudly, confident of his ability to find a PLN. “That King of the Elves, he needs somethin’ tae do, ye say.”

“Like the men of Lancre!” Tiffany said suddenly. “Rob, you know how Geoffrey has them all building sheds. . . . Well, you built a pub once. How difficult would a shed be?”

“Nae trouble at all, right, lads?” said Rob, happy now. For he had his PLN. “Let’s offski.” He looked down at You. “How come your pussycat follows you around, mistress?”

“I don’t know,” said Tiffany. “She’s a cat. They can go anywhere. And after all, she was Granny Weatherwax’s cat and that means quite a lot.”

But Rob wasn’t listening. Not now. He was thinking of his PLN. And the following day, at the mouth of the Long Man there was a shed replete with everything a gentleman could require, including fishing line and every tool you could think of, all made of wood or stone. Tiffany thought that might make the King of the Elves happy. But she did not feel it would get his help. . . .

Lord Peaseblossom lounged on a velvet-covered couch in Fairyland, idly fingering the ruff of feathers around his neck, swigging from a goblet of rich wine.

Lord Lankin had just entered the chamber. He bowed before his new king, a glorious red broom of a tail slung casually round his neck, a memento of a recent raid. “I believe, my lord,” he said lazily, silkily, “that our warriors will soon wish for . . . greater enjoyments in the human world. The barriers seem weak, and those of us who slip through to hunt are finding no real opposition.”

Peaseblossom smiled. He knew that his elves had been testing the gates, some skipping through the red stones of Lancre while others had gamboled near the villages of the Chalk, wary only of the little red-haired men who liked nothing more than a fight with an elf. The elves were like the Feegles in one respect—if there was nobody to fight, they would fight among themselves. And squabbling was de rigueur in Fairyland—not even cats were as bad.*

And elves could take umbrage. They loved umbrage, and as for sulking, that was a top entertainment. But everywhere they had been, they had stirred up little pockets of trouble, being nuisances, causing damage for damage’s sake. Stealing sheep, cows, even the occasional dog. Only yesterday Mustardseed had gleefully snatched a ram from its flock on the hills and then loosed it in a small china shop, laughing as it had lowered its horns and—yes—rammed the shelves.

But there was no rhyme nor reason to it. They needed to show what they could really do. Perhaps, Peaseblossom mused, the time was afoot to lead his elves on a raid that all elves would sing about for a long time to come.

A smile flickered across his thin, sharp face, and he waved a hand in the air, changing his tunic instantly to one of leather and fur, a crossbow tucked into his belt.

“We will put a girdle of glamour around their world,” he laughed. “Go, my elves, go make your mischief. But when this still-bent moon swells to her full glory, we will go together in force. That land will be ours once more!”

In her father’s barn, Tiffany was watching Nightshade wake up. She had mixed up a new tonic for her yesterday: a good strong dose of reciprocal greens,* which had made the elf sleep deeply for a whole day, giving her body a chance to regain its strength.

And, incidentally, giving Tiffany a chance to go round the houses without worrying about what the Feegles might do in her absence. I might even have time to fly to Lancre and check on Geoffrey if I do it once more, she thought. She knew the Feegles would never hurt a sleeping elf, but one awake? Well, their instincts might just take over if Nightshade should put a single dainty finger wrong. And, of course, she didn’t trust the elf either. . . .

“Time for a walk,” she said as Nightshade stretched her limbs and looked around her as she woke. “I think it is time you saw a few more humans.” For how else could she teach Nightshade about how this world worked if Nightshade mostly only saw the inside of the barn and a few ready-to-boil-over Feegles?

So she took Nightshade down into the village, past the pub where the men were sitting looking glumly at their beer, fishing the occasional barrel gushie out of it, past the small shops, picking her way carefully over the debris outside Mrs. Tumble’s Plates for All Seasons, down the road and back up into the downs. Tiffany had asked her dad to let people know she was trying out a girl to help mix her medicines, so nobody really looked directly at her, but Tiffany had no doubt that they would all have taken in every single detail as she passed. It was why she had insisted on Nightshade’s dairymaid’s dress being toned down, so there were now no bows, no ribbons, no buckles, and a decent pair of boots rather than dainty slippers.

“I have been watching humans,” said Nightshade as they were clumping back up the road. “And I can’t understand them. I saw a woman giving an old tramp a couple of pennies. He was nothing to do with her, so why would she do that? How does it help her? I don’t understand.”

“It’s what we do,” said Tiffany. “The wizards call it empathy. That means putting yourself in the place of the other person and seeing the world from their point of view. I suppose it’s because in the very olden days, when humans had to fight for themselves every day, they needed to find people who would fight with them too, and together we lived—yes, and prospered. Humans need other humans—it’s as simple as that.”

“Yes, but what good would the old lady get from giving away her money?”

“Well,” said Tiffany, “she will probably feel what we call a little glow, because she has helped someone who needed help. It will mean that she is glad that she is not in his circumstances. You could say that she can see what his world is like, and—what can I say?—she comes away feeling hopeful.”

“But the tramp looked as if he could do a job of some sort, to earn his own pennies, but nevertheless she gave him hers.” Nightshade was still struggling to understand the human concept of money—the elves, of course, could simply make it appear whenever they willed.*

“Well, yes,” said Tiffany, “that sort of thing does happen, but not always, and the old lady will still feel she has done the right thing. He may be a bit of a scamp, but she tells herself that she is a good person.”

“I saw a king in your land before—Verence—and I watched him and he didn’t tell people what they should do,” Nightshade continued.

“Well, he has a wife to tell him what to do,” laughed Tiffany. “That’s what humans are. Right up to our kings and queens, our barons and lords. Our rulers rule by consent, which means that we like having them as rulers, if they do what we want them to do. There were a lot of battles long ago, but there again everyone finally realized that it was better to work peacefully with everyone else. For one person alone cannot survive. We humans definitely need other people to keep us human.”

“I notice that you don’t use magic very much either,” Nightshade added. “Yet you are a witch. You are powerful.”

“Well, what we witches have found is that power is best left at home. Magic is tricky anyway, and it can turn and twist and get things wrong. But if you surround yourself with other humans, you will have what we call friends—people who like you, and people you like.”

“Friends.” Nightshade rolled the word, and the idea, around in her head and then asked, “Am I your friend?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “You could be.” She looked at the people passing by and said to Nightshade, “Look, try this. There’s an old woman trying to carry a very heavy basket up the hill. Go and help her, will you, and see what happens.”

The elf looked horrified. “What do I say to her?”

“You say, ‘Can I help you, mistress?’”

Nightshade gulped, but she crossed the road and spoke to the old woman, and Tiffany listened and heard the old woman saying, “What a kind girl you are, thank you very much. Bless you for helping an old lady.”

To Tiffany’s surprise, Nightshade carried the basket not only over the hill but also along the next stretch of the road, and she heard her ask, “How do you live, lady?”

The old lady sighed. “Little by little. My husband died years ago, but I am good with the needle and so I make things. I don’t need charity. I get along and I have still got my home. As we say, worse things happen at sea. . . .”

As Nightshade watched the woman go away, she said to Tiffany, “Can you give me some money, please?”

“Well,” said Tiffany, “witches seldom have money about their person—we don’t live in that kind of world.”

Nightshade brightened up. “I can help then,” she said. “I’m an elf and I am sure I could get into a place where the money is.”

“Please do not try that,” said Tiffany. “There would be a lot of trouble.”

She ignored a grumble from the side of the road. “Nae if you don’t get caught.”

“We is guid at gettin’ intae places, ye ken,” another Feegle muttered.*

Nightshade paid the Feegles no heed. She was still puzzling. “That old woman had absolutely nothing, but she was still cheerful. What did she have to be cheerful about?”

“Being alive,” said Tiffany. “What you are seeing, Nightshade, is someone making the best of things, which is something else humans do. And sometimes the best of it is good.” She paused. “How did it make you feel?” she asked. “Carrying that basket.”

Nightshade looked puzzled. “I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “But I’m not sure I felt like an elf should . . . is that a good thing?”

“Look,” Tiffany said, “the wizards tell us that in the very, very olden days, humans were more like monkeys, and being a monkey was a very clever thing to be, as monkeys like to see into everything. And then the monkeys realized that if one monkey tried to kill a large wolf, he would soon be a dead monkey, but if two monkeys could get together, they would be very happy monkeys, and happy monkeys create more happy monkeys so they would have lots of monkeys, which chatter and gibber and talk all the time until, in the end, they became us. So too could an elf change.”

“When I get my kingdom back . . . ,” Nightshade began.

“Stop there,” said Tiffany. “Why do you want your kingdom back? What good has it done you? Think about it, for I am the human who has looked after you, the only person you might call a friend.” She looked seriously at the elf. “I have told you that I—we—would be happy if you were to be Queen of the Elves again, but only if you can truly learn from your time here. Be prepared to live in peace, teach your elves that the world has changed and that there is no space for them here.”

There was hope in her voice now, a hope that human and elf might be able to change the stories of humans and elves.

A princess doesn’t have to be blond and blue-eyed and have a shoe size smaller than her age, she thought.

People can trust witches, and not fear the old woman in the woods, the poor old woman whose only crime was to have no teeth and to talk to herself.

And perhaps an elf could learn to know mercy, to discover humanity. . . .

“If you learn things,” she finished softly, “you might find yourself building a different kind of kingdom.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mr. Sideways

The old boys in the villages around Granny Weatherwax’s cottage had swiftly taken a liking to Geoffrey. They respected Nanny Ogg and Tiffany, of course, but they really liked Geoffrey.

They would taunt him sometimes; after all, he was in a woman’s business, but when he got on his broomstick—sometimes even with his goat perched behind him rather than harnessed to its little cart—and whizzed away to the horizon, they were speechless.

Even when he was really busy, he always had time to stop and chat, and there was always a brew on in any shed when he came by, and a broken biscuit for Mephistopheles. The old boys were fascinated by the goat, but wary nonetheless after the day when someone gave it a drink of ale just to see what would happen and, to their astonishment, Mephistopheles danced like a ballerina and then kicked a young tree so hard that its trunk split in two.

“It’s like those folk who do mushi,” said Stinky Jim.

“I don’t think that’s the right word,” said Smack Tremble. “Ain’t mushi something you eat? Out in . . . foreign parts.”

“You mean One-man-he-go-up, he-go-down,” Captain Makepeace said. “A way of fighting.”

“That’s it!” said Stinky Jim. “There was a fellow at the market in Slice who could do that.”

“There’s a lot of people in Slice who can do that kind of thing,” Smack Tremble added with a shiver. “Odd place, Slice.”*

They sat and thought about Slice for a moment. You could find anything at Slice market if you looked hard enough. Famously a man once sold his wife there, where the phrase “bring and buy” was taken literally, and he went home with a secondhand wheelbarrow and felt he had the best of the bargain. Then they looked at the remains of the sapling and agreed that Mephistopheles was indeed a remarkable goat, but perhaps it would be best to leave his diet alone.

The remarkable goat himself stoically chewed his way through the long grass by the pub fence as though nothing untoward had happened and then trotted off to find Geoffrey.

On this particular fine morning, Geoffrey was at Laughing Boy Sideways’s house. Tiffany had been treating a particularly troublesome bunion of his, which had resisted her ministrations for weeks. She had been considering breaking her rule and using magic on the thing, just to be done with it, when Geoffrey decided to pop in to see Mr. Sideways on a day when Tiffany was away at the Chalk. He found the old man by the back door of his cottage, just about to hobble down the path to the old barn. Instead of heading back into the cottage as he would have done if Tiffany had called, Mr. Sideways beckoned to Geoffrey to follow him down the path toward the rickety barn. And it was as Geoffrey watched the old boy struggling painfully along in his old army boots that he noticed something very wrong.

“Well, dang me!” Mr. Sideways said when Geoffrey prized the offending hobnail from his left boot. “If I’d known that was what the trouble was, I’d have dealt with the bugger meself!” He looked at Geoffrey with bright eyes. “Thank ’ee, lad.”

Old Mr. Sideways lived on his own and had done so for as long as anyone could remember. He was meticulously dressed and in the city might have been described as “dapper.” Apart from his work overalls, which were washed regularly but were streaked with paint and oil, he was always spick-and-span. So was his little cottage. The living room, which he kept immaculately tidy, had paintings of people in old-fashioned dress on the wall—Geoffrey assumed these were portraits of Mr. Sideways’s parents, although he never spoke of them. Everything the man did he did carefully. Geoffrey liked him, and even though he was a very private man, he had taken to Geoffrey.

The shed Mr. Sideways had constructed adjacent to the old barn was also immaculate. Every shelf was neatly stacked with carefully labeled old tobacco tins and jars. His tools were hung against the walls, neatly ranked by size. They were clean and sharp too. Tiffany had never been allowed beyond Mr. Sideways’s living room, but Geoffrey had soon been welcomed to share a mug of tea and a biscuit in the shed by the barn.

Each one of the sheds Geoffrey visited on his rounds of the old boys was different, expressing the personality of the occupant, unfettered by female intervention. Some were chaotic, with piles of scrap and half-made objects scattered about; others were tidier—like Captain Makepeace’s shed, which was full of paints, brushes, and canvases, but still had a clear sense of order.

But no one was as tidy as Mr. Sideways. And then Geoffrey noticed something missing. All the other sheds had at least one work in progress visible, whether it was a half-made bird table, or a stripped-down wheelbarrow with a new shaft, but there was nothing like that to be seen in Mr. Sideways’s shed. And he evaded the question when Geoffrey asked what he was working on.

“What are you up to, Mr. Sideways?” Geoffrey asked. “You look like a man who has been thinking, and I know you are a canny man at that.”

Mr. Sideways cleared his throat. “Well, you see, lad, I am building a machine. I’ve no interest in bird tables or mug trees and the like. But machines now . . .” He paused, then looked carefully at Geoffrey. “I’ve been thinking that it might be useful, what with the troubles folks are having.”

Geoffrey sat calmly, waiting for the old boy to finish his tea and reach a conclusion. Eventually Mr. Sideways put down his mug and stood up, brushing the crumbs off his lap. He swept them up with a small pan and brush he clearly kept just for that purpose, washed out the mugs, dried and stacked them neatly on a shelf, then opened the door.

“Would you like to see, lad?”

While Geoffrey drank his mug of tea with Mr. Sideways in Lancre, over in the Chalk, Letitia, the Baroness, was sipping tea daintily with Magrat, the Queen of Lancre, who had arrived unexpectedly on her broomstick—a broomstick flying the pennant of Lancre, the two bears on black and gold, just to make sure that nobody could be in any doubt that this was a royal visit. She had arrived bearing a bunch of roses from the castle, throwing Letitia and her staff all in a tizzy and Letitia flapping about the cobwebs, some of which she had even managed to get tangled in her hair.

Magrat had smiled at the rather shaky-looking Letitia and said, “I’m not here as a queen, love. I am here as a witch. I always have been one and always will be. So don’t worry about all the pomp—you know how it is, it’s just expected. A bit of dust here and there is nothing. Some parts of my castle are full of dust, I am sorry to say. You know how that is too.”

Letitia had nodded. She did indeed know what it was like. And as for the plumbing . . . well, she did not want to even think about how old-fashioned the castle was. The ancient privies had a habit of gurgling at the wrong time, and Roland said that if he had the time, he could create an orchestra from the bangs, gurgles, and clankings that sometimes followed his morning visits.

She had rallied the troops, though, and now the two ladies sat side by side in the castle hall, breathing in the peaty fumes from the fireplace—it was always, always cold there, even in the summer, which was why the fireplaces were so big and ate several small trees at a time. The kitchen staff had brought out a hasty tray with tea and little snacks—and yes, the sandwiches did have the crusts cut off to make them appropriately dainty for the two noble ladies. Magrat sighed—she really hoped Letitia at least asked for the crusts to be given to the birds.

There was also a plate of rather wobbly cupcakes.* “I made those,” Letitia said proudly. “Yesterday. From a recipe in Nanny Ogg’s new cookbook—you know, A Lot of What You Fancy Makes You Fat.” She colored a little, and her hand crept self-consciously up to her bodice, where it was clear that when curves were being handed out, Letitia had been at the end of the line.

Magrat took a cake by its little case rather carefully. Some of Nanny Ogg’s recipes could include . . . unusual ingredients, and she already had three children. She nibbled at the little cake, and the two ladies exchanged the usual pleasantries, with Magrat admiring a watercolor Letitia had painted of the chalk giant up on the downlands. It was surprisingly detailed, especially in the No Trousers area. Nanny Ogg would definitely have approved, Magrat thought.

Then she got down to business. “Well,” she said, “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, Letitia, but up in Lancre we’ve had enough of the elves. Something must be done.”

“Oh dear, I’m sorry to say that Roland is about to write to Mistress Aching about the wave of elf raids and ask her what she’s proposing to do about them. There have been an awful lot of complaints, you know, and he’s out inspecting the damage.” Letitia sighed. She understood that her husband looking at the damage comprised more than just inspecting the aftermath and saying, “Tsk, tsk,” and “How long has this been going on?”—it needed to include other things to make his tenants feel that someone was doing something about it. And Roland’s wife had impressed on him that this was not just a matter of being seen, but that rolling up his sleeves and getting stuck in alongside his men was good for morale. Even better if he bought a round in the pub when the day’s work was done and became not just the boss but almost a friend. “We’ve got men enough here, no doubt about that,” she added, “but most of the time they are working on the farms. It would be appreciated if other witches could help.”

“And unfortunately, that means us,” Magrat said smartly, with the emphasis on the us part.

Letitia looked embarrassed. “I’m not a proper witch, you know.”

Magrat looked at the Baroness. There was something terribly soggy about Letitia, as if you could pick her up and wring her out. But witches came in all shapes and sizes. Both Nanny Ogg and Agnes Nitt, for instance, were decidedly plump,* while Long Tall Short Fat Sally went up and down according to the tides—and there was no doubt that water could be powerful. “My dear, you are selling yourself short,” she said. “And I know what it is. I believe, my dear, that you are frightened that you wouldn’t make the grade as a witch. We all went through that—girls normally do. Tiffany has told me all about you, you know. As for me, I don’t know what I would be like in a house with a screaming skeleton. Were you not the girl who gave a headless ghost a pumpkin to carry around? And handed a teddy bear to a screaming skeleton for comfort? You don’t think you are a witch, but every part of my soul says you are. I wish I’d had your opportunities when I was a girl.”

“But I am the Baroness. I am a lady. I can’t be a witch.”

Magrat made a sound like “hurrumpf” and said, “Well, I am a queen. That doesn’t stop me being a witch when needs must. This is the time, my dear, when we stop thinking about ourselves and who we are and get down and dirty. Tiffany cannot fight the elves on her own, and this is a war—and it will keep on going unless everyone pitches in.”

Her words flowed in and filled Letitia. “You are right, of course,” the young Baroness said. “Naturally Roland will agree with me, as he always does. Count me in.”

“Good,” said Magrat. “I have got some chain mail which I think is your size. And now, how soon can you leave for Lancre? I believe we are meeting to discuss the situation. Can you ride a broomstick or do you need a lift?”

Tiffany straddled her broomstick. She had heard in the village that old Mrs. Pigeon was near her time, and a wave of guilt had flooded through her. Yes, she had two steadings. Yes, she had to work out what to do with Nightshade. Yes, she had no time to rest. But she hadn’t seen the old lady for over a week, and in a week an old lady could fall through the cracks of life.

Nightshade was perched behind her, her sharp eyes noting everything. Noting how the Pigeon family had only the smallest plot of land, with soil so poor it was a wonder they got a crop out of it at all, their fortunes depending mostly on the little flock of sheep they had in their field by the stream.

Sid Pigeon, the youngest son, was there, looking much smaller somehow without his shiny railway uniform. To Tiffany’s surprise, he had brought a new work friend home with him.

Nightshade recoiled. “A goblin! In their house. Stinking . . . ,” she said with distaste.

Tiffany felt like kicking her. “A very respectable goblin,” she said smartly, though it was true that she could smell the goblin as soon as she went into the house, even over the layers of other smells happily living in that very dirty home. She nodded to the goblin, who was sitting with his feet up on the table, eating what looked like a chicken leg that others—possibly the cats—had had a go at before him. “Sid’s friend.”

“Of Piston the Steam, mistresss,” the goblin said cheerfully. “Works with the iron and steel, I doess—”

“Tiffany,” Sid said urgently, “have you come to see Granny? She’s in bed upstairs.”

Old Mrs. Pigeon was indeed in her bed, and it didn’t look to Tiffany as if she was likely to be getting out of it ever again. The old lady was little more than a wrinkled set of bones, her twiglike fingers clutching at the edges of a faded patchwork quilt. Tiffany reached out and held one of her hands and . . . did what she could for the old lady, calling the pain out of the shrunken body—

And all hell broke loose downstairs.

“Sid! Them pesky fairies or whatever—they’ve only gone and fouled the stream. It’s all yeller! And there’s dead fish floatin’ in it! We’ve got to move the sheep—now!” Mr. Pigeon sounded desperate as he called to his son.

As a thunder of boots left the house, Tiffany held her concentration, drew more pain from old Mrs. Pigeon. And then Nightshade was at her side.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “That . . . goblin went with the humans.”

“It’s called helping,” Tiffany said smartly, still trying to hold on to the pain she had taken from old Mrs. Pigeon. “Remember?”

“But goblins and humans don’t like each other,” Nightshade continued, puzzled.

“I told you, Of Piston the Steam is Sid’s friend. But this isn’t about liking,” Tiffany said. “It’s about helping each other out. If the goblin camp was on fire or something, the humans would help them.” She looked down at Mrs. Pigeon; the old lady was falling into a sleep now. “Look, I need to go outside for a minute,” she said. “Stay with Mrs. Pigeon, would you? Let me know if she wakes again.”

Nightshade was horrified. “But I can’t—I’m an elf! I’ve already carried that basket. I can’t . . . help another human.”

“Why not?” said Tiffany sharply. “Of Piston the Steam just did. Are elves less than goblins?” But she had no time to waste, so she headed downstairs and threw the pain out into a pile of stones laid ready for building into a wall.

It made a rather unfortunate loud bang—there had been quite a lot of pain—which was probably why, when she got back upstairs, Mrs. Pigeon had woken up. Woken up and asked for a cup of water.

The old granny was staring up at Nightshade, a smile on her gummy face as she reached out for the cup. “You’re a good girl, you are,” she was saying weakly. “A good girl . . .”

A good girl? A good elf?

Nightshade put her hands to her stomach. “I think it is beginning . . . ,” she said softly, looking up at Tiffany. “I feel a sort of warm spot. Here, in my stomach. A little glow.”

Tiffany smiled, laid a gentling hand on Mrs. Pigeon, and then took Nightshade by the arm. “I need your help,” she said. “Elves have put this glamour on the stream and it runs past several farms . . . can you put it right?” She paused. “As your friend, Nightshade, I am asking for your help. The Feegles can help with the sheep, but to remove the glamour? This is something only one of your kind can do.”

Nightshade stood up. “A glamour from Peaseblossom?” she said. “This will be no trouble to remove. That elf is weak. And yes, I will help you, Tiffany. You are my . . . friend.” The word sounded odd in her voice, but there was no doubt that she meant it.

So she went down into the fields with Tiffany, past the skittish sheep in the yard—some of whom, courtesy of the ever-present Feegles, had just broken the county record for stream-to-yard time, one young lamb actually doing so on one leg—and down to the boiling water.

Where she did indeed put it right.

And the tiny little glow inside began to smolder. . . .

The old barn behind Mr. Sideways’s shed was full of miscellaneous weaponry, souvenirs from many conflicts, lovingly oiled and meticulously labeled.

“I’ve been collecting them,” Mr. Sideways said proudly. “Every campaign I bin in and more besides. You should always keep your weapons handy. I mean, I don’t say anything bad about the trolls and the dwarfs, but we fought them more’n once and so I say, you always have to make sure. Somebody says something and before you know it, we’re knee-deep in dwarfs. They give you the up and under. You can’t trust ’em with the up and under.”

Geoffrey looked around the walls of the barn in astonishment. The machinery of death was everywhere, if you looked at it properly. And there he was, this smiling old man with whom he’d just been sharing a cup of tea, eyes sparkling, ready to face the foe, especially if it wasn’t human. And he was known as Laughing Boy? What would he have been like if he had been known as Scowling Boy?

“I can turn a lathe as good as anybody,” Mr. Sideways said.

“A lathe,” said Geoffrey. “You get swarf, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, terrible stuff if it gets in your eye.” He smiled. “And it could be useful for something.” There was a moment when he almost led Geoffrey back out again, but then he could not hold it in any longer—he had to show the boy what he had been working on. “Come, lad,” he said. “Have a look at this. It was going to be a secret until it was finished, but of course I can tell you.”

At the back of the barn there was a huge shape covered with a tarpaulin. Mr. Sideways led Geoffrey over to it, reached up and gave the tarpaulin a tug, and as it fell away Geoffrey gasped.

The machine looked like a great metal grasshopper, with a counterweight at one end, and an enormous leather sling at the other. As he gazed at the machine in astonishment, Geoffrey realized that he had seen something similar in the books Mr. Wiggall had shown him at home. He said, “This looks dangerous.”

“I hope so,” said Mr. Sideways. “I’ve always wanted one of these, ever since I saw them in action. The dwarfs had ones a bit like this which could throw a troll flat on his back. Those dwarfs know a thing or two, I must say, and I’m very big on gnome defense.” He coughed. “Got the idea to build one after I’d been watching the lads down the pub do the Stick and Bucket dance.”*

“So I see,” said Geoffrey.

“Captain Makepeace is very impressed,” Mr. Sideways added. “So me and the boys are going to try it out tomorrow, but nowhere anyone can see us.”

These old gentlemen have certain qualities, Geoffrey thought. Just because they are old doesn’t mean they can’t be powerful.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

An Argument of Witches

Through the unbarred door, Lord Lankin creeps into a crumbling old manor house. Up the creaky stairs, snuffing out the candles in the sconces as he passes, he opens an unbolted door and prowls into a nursery, where a young nursemaid rocking a cradle looks up, gazes into his eyes, and then pulls a sharp pin from her basket. . . .

Sitting in the Great Hall at Lancre Castle with their allies and friends, Tiffany and the witches of Lancre contemplated the construction of a battle plan.

It had taken some effort to get everyone there and settled down. Geoffrey had done a marvelous job rounding up reinforcements from all over, flying hours in every direction with Tiffany’s message, to every witch she could name.

Even blind Mrs. Happenstance and Long Tall Short Fat Sally had turned up, with Mrs. Proust from Ankh-Morpork. And there was a group of younger witches too: Annagramma Hawkin, Petulia Gristle, Dimity Hubbub, Harrieta Bilk, and others. Under Queen Magrat’s watchful eye, Letitia ticked them off Tiffany’s list as they arrived.

Having a queen backing you up was a good thing, Tiffany thought, as Mrs. Earwig came in and started bossing everyone around—Magrat swiftly put a stop to that, for even Mrs. Earwig found that she couldn’t argue with royalty. But dealing with witches all together was like carrying a tray full of marbles. Witches were very good at rubbing one another up the wrong way, and little feuds turned up and went away and disappeared and started again. It was silly and everybody knew it, but they couldn’t help themselves.

Geoffrey came into his own on occasions like this. Whenever bickering broke out, he was there with the perfect word or a sympathetic smile. Seeing his calm-weaving doing its subtle work was a joy, Tiffany thought. You could almost see the calm coming out of his ears.

“Ladies,” Tiffany said, calling the meeting to order. “Here’s the problem. The elves are back again, this time in force. And if we don’t stop them soon, things will get very bad indeed. I know some of you have encountered elves before”—she looked at Nanny Ogg and Magrat—“but many of you have not. They are a formidable foe.”

Nightshade was standing at the side of the hall, almost too demure in her dairymaid’s dress. She didn’t seem very formidable, but a few of the older witches were eyeing her as though they had just encountered a bad smell.

Mrs. Earwig tutted and looked as though she was about to say something, but Petulia got there first. “Tiff, are you sure that it’s wise to have an elf here listening to this?” she asked.

“Don’t you worry, my girl,” Nanny Ogg said. “If our little friend tries anything, there will be fireworks and no mistake. Certainly no more elf!”

“The last time this happened, didn’t the King of the Elves intervene?” Annagramma Hawkin asked, looking at Nanny Ogg.

“He did indeed, but he almost didn’t. Tiffany’s been to see him already, and it seems Old Horny ain’t interested,” Nanny answered. “Can’t rely on him in any case.”

“Time moves differently in his realm,” Tiffany explained. “Even if he did decide to do something, it might be now, or next month or next year.”

“What about the wizards?” asked another witch. “Why aren’t they here?”

Nanny snorted. “Ha! That lot. By the time they got a spell ready, the elves would be over the Ramtops and far away.” She adjusted her position and sniffed. “No, this is witches’ business. Them wizards have all got their bums on chairs and their noses stuck in books.” She said this last word with a sideways glance at Mrs. Earwig, who was, of course, known for her love of writing.*

Magrat cut in quickly. “We also have all the support of Lancre that Verence and I can muster.”

“Well, that’s my Shawn,” said Nanny with satisfaction. Shawn Ogg was the army of Lancre, as well as its bottle-washer, butler, gardener, trumpeter, and—a role Shawn would have liked to lose—the man who checked the garderobes and removed all the night waste. “And I reckons our Jason can provide us with a few horseshoes. Being as he’s the blacksmith,” Nanny added for those who might not know.

Geoffrey coughed. “I’ve been working on a few ideas with some of the older gentlemen,” he said softly. “We have . . . something I think might be useful.”

“And there’s Hodgesaargh,” said Magrat. Hodgesaargh—the royal falconer—was a surprising asset, since elven glamour didn’t seem to work on him, probably because he spent so much time with his beloved birds that a part of his brain was a falcon by now, and hence unprepared to share space with any other predator. It was generally believed that this was also what stopped the birds from pecking out his eyeballs.

Mrs. Earwig laughed confidently. “So what is the problem, may I ask? There are plenty of us here. Surely more than enough for a few elves.” She looked scornfully at Nightshade.

Nanny Ogg exploded. “No, there’s not enough of us! How many witches have we here?” She looked around the room. “Ten, twelve mebbe—more if you includes Geoffrey and Letitia, and the young girls still training—but only half of us bein’ senior witches what has much real experience. The elves are sneaky. They’ll have the glamour on you afore you knows it. They come quietly—like a silent but deadly fart—and they get you before you can pinch your nose. Even Esme Weatherwax could barely withstand the power. She fought hard, and you all remember what she was like. They didn’t get past her—but it was a close thing. Ladies, these ’ere elves are horrible. We’re right to be fearful. They do . . . things to you. Get at you.”

“It happened to me too,” said Magrat. “The glamour makes you feel small and worthless. Those of us who have faced it before can’t warn the rest of you enough.”

“I fear you are exaggerating. There’s nothing glamorous about that,” Mrs. Earwig said scornfully, pointing at Nightshade.

“Well, you’ve certainly never met no fairy. If’n you had, you would have scars,” Nanny spat. She had turned an interesting color, and Tiffany intervened quickly before sparks really began to fly.

“Ladies, ladies, I think it would be useful to have a little demonstration of the power of an elf. Nightshade, would you be prepared to give us a taste of your glamour?”

There was a collective intake of breath as the assembled witches realized what Tiffany was suggesting.

“Be careful, Nightshade. Very careful. Those of us who have met the glamour before will keep an eye on you. I sincerely hope that we won’t have a problem.”

And Nightshade smiled—not a particularly pleasant smile, Tiffany noticed.

“Ladies,” said Magrat to the others, trying to prepare them. “To be a witch is to be full of yourself—and in charge of yourself as well. It would be a good idea to watch one another when the glamour starts to take hold.”

“Tish and pish!” said Mrs. Earwig. “I am my own woman, and always will be. I am a witch, whatever you might think, and I don’t deal in fairy tales.”

In a syrupy voice, Nanny Ogg said, “You just write them, Mrs. Earwig.”

“But not as reality,” said Mrs. Earwig. “That’s allowed.”

Nanny Ogg looked at her face and thought, We will see.

“Ladies,” asked Tiffany, “are you all ready?” There were some nods and yeses, so she said, “Nightshade, please show us your glamour.” And she grasped the shepherd’s crown in her pocket—this was a moment when she knew she would need to keep a strong hold on her sense of her self. Yan tan tethera, she chanted softly to herself. Yan tan tethera.

Nightshade began slowly, her foxy little dairymaid’s face filling with a shining light, with beauty, with style, and then she was suddenly the most wonderful thing in the hall.

Fantastic.

Marvelous.

Enchanting.

Terrific.

The air was thick with glamour and Tiffany could almost hear the witches fighting it. The inexperienced ones—Annagramma, Petulia and Letitia, Dimity, and Harrieta—suddenly seemed flaccid, their faces like dolls.

Petulia—like many of the other witches—felt a beguiling feeling that the world was all hers, all of it, with everything that was in it. And then, her dream—as did theirs—unraveled. Who did she think she was? No one liked her, no one wanted her. She wasn’t worthy of anything. No one wanted her. Everyone knew she didn’t have any skills. It would be so much better if she was dead. Maybe it would be better if she simply let the pigs stamp her down into the mire, and even that wouldn’t be bad enough. She screamed.

Tiffany moved toward Nightshade, and almost like a bubble bursting, the elf let go, and her glamour was all gone. But everyone in the hall looked shaken. Except, Tiffany noticed, Mrs. Earwig.

“So, what happened?” the older witch snapped bossily. “What are you all doing?”

“Mrs. Earwig, did you not feel as though you were small, nasty, and a waste of space? Totally without redemption?”

Letice Earwig’s face held nothing but puzzlement.

Nightshade looked at her, and back to Tiffany. “It was like hitting a rock,” she said. “This one has something interesting . . . something missing.” She turned to stare again at Mrs. Earwig. “Are you sure you are not an elf?” she queried.

“How dare you! I am just Letice Earwig. No one can stop me being me!”

“Perish the thought,” said Tiffany. “But everyone else was affected. And that, ladies, was just one elf. Imagine what it will be like when we are facing a horde of them.”

“It was like seeing my father,” said Geoffrey. “I heard a voice telling me that I was no good and I never would be. A mouse, a maggot, no one worth crying for. He was never satisfied about anything.”

His words sang into the room, and the witches’ faces showed that each knew exactly what he was talking about.

With the demonstration finished and Nightshade back in her unassuming dairymaid guise, the bickering was almost over.

“Well, fellow witches, there we have it,” Tiffany said. “We know who we are after and what we have to do, which is to keep the elves away from this world. It’s very unlikely that we could kill them all.” She hesitated. “What we have to do is make them see that dealing with us will not be easy, and it might be a very good idea to go back to where they came from.”

“So,” Queen Magrat said, “how long do we have to get ready?”

Tiffany sighed. “We don’t know,” she said. “But they will come soon, I feel.” She looked at Nightshade, who moved now into the center of the room.

“The when,” said the elf, “will surely be at the full moon. A time of . . . endings.”

“Tonight, then . . . ,” Magrat whispered.

“And if I know Peaseblossom,” continued the elf, “the where will be on every front where the barriers may be weak.”

“What do you think, Tiff?” said Nanny Ogg. “They’ve been coming into the Chalk already, right? And they’ve been up here in Lancre—through the Dancers.”

Nightshade nodded. “They will come through both those gates,” she said. “And afterward fan out.” She shivered.

Tiffany was taking charge now. “Well, we’re going to need to face them on two fronts then. Here in Lancre, and over in the Chalk.” She looked around the room. “We’ll have to split our forces.”

“Well,” said Nanny Ogg, “you can count on me. I’ve always been a fighter. You has to be a fighter to be a witch. We don’t have to worry—they does. If you can get an elf down and kick it about a bit, it’s not goin’ to be so glamorous as it was. Take it from me, even elves has soft parts that don’t like no boot in ’em.”

Tiffany glanced at Nanny’s boots. They looked as though they had been built by a blacksmith, and in Nanny’s case they probably had been. A kick from one of those and it would be “So long, elf!” It might not kill them, but you could certainly say that all the glamour would have been kicked out.

“They know where the stone circles are,” she said, “but by Thunder and Lightning they had better keep away. After all, we know where the stones are as well, and we humans are clever, and we can sometimes be very nasty to boot. When we need to, I suspect.” She turned to Nightshade, who had been watching everyone carefully. “What do you make of it, Nightshade?”

The elf smiled and said, “You humans are a strange people. Sometimes soft and stupid, but also surprisingly dangerous. There are very few of you, and very many of the elves ranged against you. Yet I believe that traitor Peaseblossom has no idea what he will be facing. And I’m glad of that.”

Tiffany nodded. Magrat, Nanny Ogg, the surprisingly strong Mrs. Earwig—there was more to Letice Earwig, she realized, than the occult jewelry and fancy outfits suggested—the other witches of Lancre, Mrs. Proust, Geoffrey, and Mephistopheles. It would have to do.

“I think Lancre will be well served by you all,” she said, looking around. “But I must go back to the Chalk. It’s my land.”

“Who will you have to help you in the Chalk, may I ask?” said Mrs. Earwig.

“Well,” said Tiffany, “there’s Miss Tick—a formidable lady, as I am sure you will all agree, who sends her apologies for her absence today.” Or would, she thought to herself, if I could have found her again. “Also Letitia.” She looked at the young Baroness, who was trying to look brave. “And there’s the land itself, of course. But remember, I have some other admirable allies. We are not on our own.” She had been keeping an eye on the pile of broomsticks by the door, and even though they hadn’t been invited, she could see the face of Rob Anybody, and by the look of it a significant number of his clan. She laughed; they must have come up with Magrat and Letitia, she thought. “Ladies,” she announced, “please allow me to introduce . . . the Nac Mac Feegles!”

There was a susurration among the witches as the room started to fill with a sea of blue skin and tartan—not all the witches had met the Feegles before. Tiffany heard Nanny Ogg whisper not quite quietly enough to Queen Magrat, “Put anythin’ drinkable in the cellar.”

“Ach, ye are a cruel hag, so ye are, or my name isnae Rob Anybody,” Rob moaned.

Magrat laughed. “Rob Anybody, you are a war all by yourself, man! Welcome to the palace, but please don’t drink everything. At least, not until we have won the war.”

“Now ye are talking, lassie—I mean, your queenship. Where there’s a war there’s a Nac Mac Feegle.”

There was a barrage of cries of “Crivens” from the clan and Rob Anybody shouted, “Aye, get ’em doon, and the kickin’ starts.” There was another cheer then and Big Yan jumped up and shouted, “Ye will need to tak’ note, ye weans. We dinnae say yes tae Mister Finesse, but we jes’ kick ’em.”

Hamish added, “Whan Morag swoops doon on top o’ ’em, her beak ’n’ talons’ll tak’ their breath awa’. And she’s a heavy girl.”

“Be happy that they are on our side,” Tiffany said. She looked reprovingly at Mrs. Earwig, who had a snooty look on her face. “It’s true that they are rough diamonds, but no better warriors can be found anywhere on the Disc.” And she hoped that Mrs. Earwig didn’t hear the mumbling:

Daft Wullie. “What’s this? Did we stole any diamonds?”

“It’s a manner of speaking, ye daftie.” Rob Anybody.

“But we got no manners. We treasure the fact, ye ken.” Wullie, again.

“It’s an idiom.”

“Who’re you calling an idiom?”

Tiffany laughed to herself. It appeared that the kelda had been seeing to the clan’s range of expressions.

Rob waved his claymore in the air, making one or two witches retreat a step or two, and then he leaped up onto a table and glared down the hall. “Weel, I see the Lady Nightshade is with us the noo,” he said. “Ach, the big wee hag and the kelda seem tae think that we shouldnae do anything aboot this elf—we are tae leave her alone. Although,” he continued, looking at Nightshade, “we’ll be watching her carefully, verra carefully indeed. Oor kelda is soft, oor kelda, as soft as stone, ye ken—she is nae one to let a body break their troth and get away wi’ it!”

“Dear sir, Mister Feegle,” said Mrs. Earwig. “This is a council of war, so we should be discussing strategies and tactics.”

“Ah weel, ye can if ye wish, but we are Feegles and we dinnae mess about wi’ things like that. It’s all aboot usin’ yon claymore to best offense. And if ye dinnae get that right, your last resort is to nut ’em.”

Tiffany took in Mrs. Earwig’s face and said cheerfully, “Could you do that, Mrs. Earwig?”

She was given a Look, and Mrs. Earwig said, “I will nut as I see fit.” And to Tiffany’s surprise, the other witches applauded, and for once Mrs. Earwig was wreathed in smiles.

“I tell ye, I would nae cross yon carlin,” said Rob Anybody.

“Nae me,” said Big Yan. “She’s as sharp as a she-wolf.”

“So wheer’s yon battle, then, hag o’ the hills?” Rob demanded.

There was another roar from the assembled Feegles, and a forest of little swords and clubs were thrust into the air.

“Nac Mac Feegle, wha hae!”

“A guid kickin’ for the wee scunners!”

“Nae king! Nae quin! We will nae be fooled again!”

Tiffany smiled. “If Nightshade is right, the elves will ride through this coming night—when the full moon shines in the skies. Ladies—and Geoffrey,” she addressed the assembled witches. “Go and get some rest. I must fly back to my steading now, but good night and good luck.”

“Let the runes of fortune guide and protect us all,” Mrs. Earwig added portentously, always determined to get the last word in.

Tiffany loved the little room she’d had since she was a child. Her parents hadn’t changed anything, and unless it was raining or blowing a gale, she slept with the window open.

Now, weary from the broomstick ride back, tense with the expectation of what the night might bring but hoping to get a few hours’ rest, she savored the atmosphere of the little room, finding strength from its familiarity.

A strength that came from feeling that she was exactly where she should be. An Aching.

“I get up Aching, and I go to bed Aching,” she whispered to herself, smiling. One of her father’s jokes, and she had rolled her eyes when hearing it again and again as a child, but now its warmth curled over her body.

And there was the china shepherdess on the shelf.

Granny Aching.

And next to it she had placed the shepherd’s crown.

Aching to Aching, down the generations.

Land under Wave, she mused. That was what the name Tiffany meant in the speech of the Feegles. Tir-far-thóinn, “Tiffan,” the kelda would call her. The sound of her name was magic, real magic from the beginning of time.

It was a soft night. She told herself that she really ought to get some sleep—she’d be no good without some rest—but she lay there, the cat You snuggled up against her warmth, listening to the owls. Hootings were coming from everywhere, as if they were warning her.

Outside her window, the moon was rising, a gloriously full silver orb to light the skies, to lead the elves in. . . .

Tiffany’s eyes closed.

And a part of her, the soul of her, was in a chalk pit, the shepherd’s crown in her hand, its five ridges catching the light of the full moon, and it was glowing, like an aquarium out of time.

Now she could hear the roar of the ancient sea beneath her, its voice trapped in the millions of tiny shells that made up the Chalk.

And she was swimming. . . .

Great strange fish were coming toward her, big and heavy-looking with teeth.

At that point, Dr. Bustle* floated into her mind and took his cue. “Dunkleosteus,” he said as a creature the size of a house floated by. “Megalodon” was huge and carnivorous—more teeth than Tiffany had ever seen in one go. Then there were sea scorpions—armor-plated, clawed horrors. But none of them paid any attention to her. It was as if she had a right to be there.

And then there was a smaller creature, an explosion of blue spines that did notice Tiffany.

“Echinoid,” whispered Sensibility Bustle.

“That is correct,” said the creature. “And I am the shepherd’s crown. Deep in my heart is the flint. And I have many uses. Some call me the sea urchin, others the thunderstone, but here, now, in this place, call me the shepherd’s crown. I seek a true shepherd. Where can a true shepherd be found?”

“We shall see,” Tiffany heard herself saying. “I am Tiffany Aching and my father is a king among shepherds.”

“We know him. He is a good shepherd, but not the best. You must find the king of shepherds.”

“Well,” said Tiffany, “I’m just a witch, but I will help you if I can. I work hard, mostly for other people.”

“Yes,” said the echinoid. “We know.”

I’m talking to a creature from under the sea, thought Tiffany. Is that right? First Thoughts, not Second Thoughts, her mind reminded her.

“It is strange,” said the voice of Dr. Bustle in her head. “But not so strange as falling down a rabbit hole with a pack of cards.”

Let me think about it, her Second and Third Thoughts said. If talking creatures from the sea turned up everywhere, we’d all know about it, so this must be something just for me.

The voice came from nowhere, as though it was part of that ocean from Time: “Tiffany Aching is the first among shepherds, for she puts others before herself. . . .”

And the shepherd’s crown was warm in her hand, a golden light glowing from within its depths. An heirloom handed down from generation to generation of Achings—down to Granny Aching, on to Joe Aching, and now to Tiffany herself. . . .

Then the sea had gone and she was back in the pit, but the magic was still there, for slowly, oh so slowly, she could see bones pulling themselves free of the chalk, rising to draw together . . . to make two figures. . . .

Thunder and Lightning! Granny Aching’s sheepdogs. The best dogs any shepherd could ever have. Dogs for the first among shepherds.

Now they were at her feet, their ears pricked, and Tiffany felt as if she could almost reach out to touch them. Almost. But not quite. For if she should touch them, be part of them, would she too be drawn into the chalk, to be bones like them . . . ?

“Come by, Thunder. Away to me, Lightning,” she whispered, the familiar commands filling her with courage.

Then she was suddenly awake, back in her room, You draped across her feet and an owl’s huge eyes hanging in the dark of the trees outside.

And someone was tapping on the window.

While the moon shone gloriously full over the stone circles, lighting a path for her wayward children, who rode through in their splendor. . . .

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Shepherd’s Crown

There was the face of Rob Anybody, and he said, “The scunners are breaking through, Mistress Tiffany. It’s stairted!”

“So cry ‘Crivens’ and let loose the clan Mac Feegle!” Tiffany commanded as a small group of Feegles scrambled out from under the bed, from where they had been watching over her. One of them appeared to have been hiding in her boots . . . he was now punching at the laces with a cry of “Tak’ tha’, yer nasty wrigglin’ little bogles!”

Boots, Tiffany thought. I wish I had brought Granny Weatherwax’s boots to wear for this fight. They would have given me strength. And then she stopped this thought. No. This is my land. My turf. My feet. My boots. My way . . .

But she still scolded herself as she struggled into her dress and thought that she should have slept with her day clothes on: What kind of leader are you?

As she stumbled to pull on her boots she felt a weight in the deep pocket of her fine black dress . . . and she pulled out the shepherd’s crown, which she thought she had put on the shelf. Had she put it there herself earlier that night? Ready for this moment?

And to the moon she said, “What is the shepherd’s crown? Whom does the shepherd’s crown serve?”

And the answer dropped into her head. “Tiffany Aching, Land under Wave.”

She twisted a thong of leather rapidly around the flint and hung it around her neck. She would go into battle with its power at her heart, she thought. The power of generations of Achings. Of Granny Aching. Of the shepherds of all time.

Then she ran down the darkened stairs and out of the door, hung it around her neck, and was not surprised to see You the cat perched on the front of her broomstick, purring and looking smug, while Nightshade was stumbling from the barn, Wee Mad Arthur at her side.

Then she was flying through the silvery night, the elf Nightshade clutching at her waist, Feegles hanging on to the bristles, and the owls following behind her, a squadron of feathered allies. . . .

Over in Lancre, Nanny Ogg was sleeping, and her snores could have cut timber. Suddenly there was a mild explosion, which might be called a grumph! and the cat, Greebo, woke up and sniffed the air.

Nanny had been sleeping in her day clothes. After all, she thought, who knew for sure when the elves would come?

She shouted, “Greebo, ring the castle bell.”

The cat was suddenly not there, but there was a blur of cat traveling at speed up to the castle, Greebo’s unmistakable smell lingering in the air behind him, and when the guard saw him coming toward him, he ran after him into the bell tower.

And as the great castle bell tolled, light blossomed throughout the castle as candles were lit in every window, followed very shortly by the rest of Lancre Town. The bell! What danger was this?

In the royal bedchamber, Queen Magrat nudged her husband, who was still rubbing his eyes, and said, “Verence, help me buckle my escutcheon, will you, my dear?”

The King sighed. “Look, why can’t I go with you? It’s going to be dangerous.”

Magrat smiled. The smile that you gave loving but occasionally annoying husbands. This was old ground. “Well, someone has to be left at home,” she said. “It’s like chess, you know. The Queen saves the King.”

“Yes, dear,” said the King, and opened the cupboard that contained the armor of Queen Ynci. Ynci had been the most fearsome warrior queen Lancre had ever seen. Well, so the stories said, as she hadn’t actually existed. But the people of Lancre hadn’t let a tiny thing like that stop them adding her to their history, and so a set of armor had been made to go along with a portrait. Magrat had worn the armor the last time she faced the elves, and it seemed only right to wear it again.

As the door opened, Magrat thought she heard a subtle little sound of a call to arms. Queen Ynci’s armor had a life of its own and it always shone, even in the dark. Verence helped her buckle on the mail armor—which she secretly thought of as fe-mail—then she slipped her feet into the heavy-soled spiked sandals, and topped it all off with the winged helmet. The last piece to go on was the leather baldric.

Verence wanted to embrace her, but he thought, I won’t. There were too many spikes, in any case. But he loved his wife to distraction, so he tried again to volunteer himself to be somewhere in the coming fray.

“Magrat, my love,” he murmured, “it seems so shaming if the King can’t fight.”

“You are a very good king, Verence,” his wife said firmly, “but this is witches’ work. And someone has to look after the people and our children.” The Queen—Magrat, as it was—staggered under the weight of the armor, and under her breath she whispered a little magic. “Queen Ynci, Queen of Queens, make your armor light.” And suddenly she felt strong, stronger than she had ever been before.

She picked up a crossbow in one hand, her broomstick in the other, and almost flew down the stairs to the Great Hall where the other witches, who were for the most part en déshabillé, stared at her with wild surmise. Wild surmises take on many shapes and every witch, some still in their underwear, stared at the Queen, and the surmise each gave her hung there in the rafters.

In the voice of Queen Ynci, Magrat shouted, “Up, girls, and at ’em. It’s started, ladies, so get your heavy-duty knickers on and your sticks ready!” She glared at the only witch to be fully dressed, spick-and-span in three minutes, to the surprise of all. “That means you too, Mrs. Earwig.”

There was a little commotion at the back of the hall, then a sudden crash and a group of witches ground to a halt.

“What’s happening?” Magrat cried, still in the voice of Queen Ynci.

“It’s only Long Tall Short Fat Sally, she’s got two feet down one knicker!” said Mrs. Proust. Surrounded by witches, Long Tall Short Fat Sally—small and squat right then, like a low-lying thunderstorm—was swiftly put back on her feet.

Mrs. Earwig looked rather smug and said, “I’ve been looking at my charts. The omens are good.”

“Well, omens are ten a penny,” said Mrs. Proust. “I’ve got lots of them. After all, we are all witches.”

And the ghost of Queen Ynci filled Magrat, who said, “Let us fly.”

In Mr. Sideways’s old barn, Mephistopheles laid a hoof gently on Geoffrey’s sleeping form. Geoffrey jumped out of the straw and discovered that the old boys who had readied themselves for the coming battle by bivouacking in the barn with him were already up and about, creaking a bit, and making their toilet in a bucket.

Geoffrey looked at the old men. They had spent most of the evening carousing and telling stories of the days when they were all young and handsome and healthy and didn’t have to pass water far too often.

They had managed to make their wives give them a ticket of leave, and said wives had been given to believe that their husbands were just in the barn for a few drinks and reminiscences. The wives, as wives do, had festooned their menfolk with big scarves, mittens on strings, and woolly hats with, alas, pompoms on the top.

Captain Makepeace—the old boys’ acknowledged military leader—said, “It’s time to go and get out Laughing Boy’s confounded contraption.”

Geoffrey looked at the captain’s warriors and sighed internally. Could they do it? They were old men. And then he thought, Yes, they are old men. They have been old men for a long time, which means they have learned many things. Like lying, and being crafty and, most importantly, dissembling.

“We shall fight them on the mountains. We shall fight them on the rocks. We shall fight them over the hills and down in the valleys.* We shall never surrender!” Captain Makepeace roared, and there was an answering cheer.

“They will not like it up and over ’em!” Smack Tremble called out, waving what looked like a rusty bayonet in the air and, worryingly, living up to his name. “They will not like it, oh no they won’t!”

Mephistopheles grunted as Geoffrey hitched him to his little cart, which the old boys had filled with mysterious bags before drinking the night away, and the two of them followed the old men out of the barn.

Captain Makepeace didn’t need to tell his men to be stealthy. They already were. It was running fast that would be a problem. And stealthily they made their way into the wood and farther on to where they had hidden Mr. Sideways’s contraption, camouflaging it with branches.

Geoffrey watched them pull Mr. Sideways’s project out into the clearing. It stood there looking ominous. Surrounded by the bushes. Waiting its moment. Like a huge insect.

One with a nasty sting . . .

Up by the circle of stones called the Dancers, Lord Lankin was exulting. His elves were dancing around the stones, flitting in and out and metaphorically tweaking the noses of the Piper, the Drummer, the Leaper—the best-known stones. The power of the gate was weak, and the glamour of the elves was . . . fearsome.

“They are not even here, waiting for us!” Lord Lankin gloated. “Stupid humans. If we go down through those woods, we could be out into the center of Lancre in one great charge. And the moon is full and on our side.”

And in the silver moonlight, the elves, some on horseback, bells jingling and harness tinkling, made their way down the hill toward the woods.

But as they neared the edge of the trees, Lankin saw a young human boy step out onto the path with an animal by his side. It was a goat.

“Who are you, boy?” he demanded. “Move aside. I am a prince of the elves and you are in my way. Move lest I show you my displeasure.”

“Well,” said Geoffrey, “I don’t see why I should. My advice to you is to turn round, sir, and go the other way or else it will be all the worse for you.”

Lord Lankin laughed out loud. “We will take you away, boy, and the things we will use on you when we get you back home will be incredibly nasty. Your torment, for naysaying a prince of the elves.”

“But why, sir? I mean no harm to you. I have no weapons. Can we be calm about this? It would appear that I have made you unhappy, and for this I am sorry.” Geoffrey paused—he was trying to weave a peace between them, but it was like trying to get a rock to agree with a hard place. “Surely both of us are civilized people,” he finished.

Lord Lankin screeched, “Now, young man, you have trodden on the tail of the snake.”

Geoffrey calmly said, “I believe this is not the case. I know you, mister. I know what kind of thing you are. You are a bully. I know about bullies, oh yes I do! I have known them all my life. And believe me, you aren’t the worst.”

“You are nothing, boy. We’ll kill you anyway. And why a goat, may I ask? They are stupid creatures.”

Geoffrey found his calmness floating away. He was worthless. A maggot. A ne’er-do-well. He felt powerless, a baby again. . . . And as the elf spoke, in Geoffrey’s mind an echo came. Even if I let you live, you will amount to nothing. This time it was the voice of his father, and he stood there, frozen.

The elf prince said silkily, “Are you crying, you little baby?”

“No,” said Geoffrey, “but you might be.” For now his eyes had caught the flash of red fox fur swinging on its leather thong across the lord’s chest, and he felt a rage beginning to build. “We are not here for your . . . sport,” he stated, throwing the glamour from his mind with a huge effort of will.

He clicked his teeth and Mephistopheles was on the elf.

It was a ballet with speed. The Mince of Darkness pirouetted to dangerous effect. He used his teeth first, then kicked hard with his legs, and ended by using his horns. Lord Lankin was spinning, kicked and tossed into the air from all directions, and the other elves drew back to keep out of the range of the maelstrom.

And Geoffrey said to the battered prince, “You are just a trickster. And I have found your trick.” He shouted, “He’s down, gentlemen. Time to put him out.”

The branches parted and there was a twang as Mr. Sideways yelled, “Keep your hats on, boys, cover your eyes,” and the contraption sang, swinging up into the air, filling it with a twinkle of swarf and terrible death that came from nowhere to shower over the elves.

Smack Tremble cheered. “They don’t like it up and over ’em! Oh no, they don’t!”

“Swarf,” said Nanny Ogg approvingly, from one side of the woods, where she and some of the other witches were waiting—prepared for what Captain Makepeace had called a pincer movement, with Mrs. Earwig and more witches on the other side. “Pieces of iron,” Nanny told the witches with her. “Very small. Very clever. Throw it down on elves, and they’re in a world of hurt. Tiny bits of iron ev’rywhere. And, I stress, ev’rywhere.”

The Lancre Stick and Bucket machine sang again. And again. And each twang was followed by the war cries of ancient battles, rivaling those of the Feegles. On this day of days, the old boys were younger than they thought.

And the elves were, indeed, down and out, screaming from the pain of the terrible metal that stripped their glamour away from them, leaving them writhing. Many dragged themselves away back up the hill toward the Dancers, while any who had escaped the rain of swarf now found themselves sandwiched by the witches.

From one side, Magrat piled in to make life unlivable for those remaining, her armor shielding her from their glamour while her crossbow shot deadly arrows at them, and fire flew from her fingertips, forcing those who had ridden into battle on yarrow stalks to fall from the sky as flame destroyed the stems.

From the other side, the elves were assaulted by Mrs. Earwig. And they really didn’t know how to deal with her. She was shouting at them like some horrible headmistress—and they couldn’t get through to her; she was impervious to their glamour. She also had an umbrella, which she had opened, and it was amazing how much of a problem it was for the elves, its metal spokes poking at them, hitting tender spots.

“This lady is not for turning,” Mrs. Earwig boomed. She rose among them like a whirlwind, and as they were floored, Long Tall Short Fat Sally became very fat and heavy and sat on them, bouncing up and down. While Mrs. Proust hurled her novelties—novelties that now worked as advertised—over the elves, trapping them in curls of spells that seized their glamour and took it for their own.

The younger witches were in and out of the melee, diving from the skies on their broomsticks, throwing spells at every elf they saw: fire burning them where they stood, wind blowing dust into the horses’ faces, madness into their minds, such that the horses reared, throwing their elvish riders to the ground. Then there was the crunching as Nanny Ogg came to the fore with her big, big boots. The ones with nails everywhere.

Petulia was face-to-face with an elf—and a different kind of battle was going on, as the elf threw its glamour toward her, sparkling shards of glamour shining in the air between them, and Petulia fought back with her soft voice and strong will, her words hypnotic, irresistible, boring the elf as she bored her beloved pigs, lulling it until it dropped dramatically at her feet.

“Hah! Easier than pigs!” was Petulia’s response. “Less intelligent.” And she turned to the next opponent. . . .

And in a lull, there was Hodgesaargh, with his favorite gyrfalcon on his wrist—the Lady Elizabeth, a descendant of the famous Lady Jane. He slipped the hood off, and the bird joyfully hurled herself into the fray, hitting the nearest elf between the eyes with her sharp talons. Then her beak got to work. . . .

When it came to it, the battle for Lancre was over quite swiftly. Queen Magrat had all the surviving elves brought before her. “Even the goblins are smarter than you—they work with us these days,” she told them, standing tall and strong in her spiked armor, the wings on her helmet silvered in the moonlight. “We have had enough of this. You could have had it all. Now, go away to your forlorn spaces. Come back as good neighbors—or not at all.”

The elves cringed. But Lord Lankin, his warrior garb now only rags and his body bloodied by the terrible swarf, hissed in defiance at them as he crawled away. “You may have won this battle,” he snarled, “but not the war. For our Lord Peaseblossom will yet make this world bow down to us.”

And then they were gone.

Nanny Ogg said seriously, “It seems to me, girls, that it goes like this. We fight the elves at every turn, and they is always comin’ back. Perhaps it might be a good thing? To keep us on our toes, to stop us from gettin’ lazy. To put us on the anvil, so that we remembers how to fight. And at the end of time, living is about fightin’ against everything.”

She laughed, however, when she heard the old gentlemen coming up the hill, singing, “There was a young lady from Quirm, whose thighs were exceedingly firm . . .” And the rest of the song helpfully disappeared as the captain remembered just in time how that verse ended.

Captain Makepeace leaned over to Nanny Ogg and said, “They came through the Dancers, right? Let’s put a ring of swarf all around the stones. That would be the end of their fun. They would be locked out forever.”

“Well, I reckons it would be a good start,” said Nanny.

But Lord Lankin had one thing right. The elves might have lost the battle in Lancre, but the war was not yet over. For, many miles rimward, Lord Peaseblossom had indeed ridden through the stone circle on the Chalk, with a band of elite warriors at his back.

The Feegle mound was one big scuttle as the Nac Mac Feegles turned out of every nook and cranny to fight. Everywhere was heat and noise. You could call it something like an overgrown termite mound—not in front of the Feegles, unless you liked picking your teeth up from the ground—but there was the same bustling. It could even be said that the vanguard was steaming along, but these being Feegles, there were squabbles in the ranks, which, as everyone knew, was just the way of the clan.

When Tiffany arrived at the mound with Nightshade, the throng spread out in the direction of the stones.

The gateway had fallen to the elves.

Who were now heading toward them, a glorious band of lords and ladies, resplendent in the moonlight. The air was thick with their glamour.

Miss Tick was waiting. A Miss Tick with a board propped up on a few sticks she had handily knotted together to create a trestle. And on the board was written PLN. With a teacher’s determination not to let anything interrupt her in the midst of any kind of lesson, her insistent voice was demanding the younger Feegles’ attention as she tied a strange net, a tangle of intricate, carefully woven knots and loops, to her broomstick.

“Remember, I want you to keep it in one piece,” she was saying sternly.

Then, within minutes, it was a melee. In fact, a melee of melees. There was a sting in the air and Tiffany recognized the surge of static electricity. How could the elves be so stupid, she thought, as to attack in the midst of a storm? Did they not remember how she had used thunder and lightning to defeat them before? The sky was crackling. The hairs on her head tingled. She could see signs of a coming downpour happening everywhere, could recognize the buildup to an enormous storm.

As Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin’s mousepipes screeched out a battle hymn, pitched perfectly to assault the elven ears, there was a distant scream from a train at Twoshirts. A roar of iron and steel, a bellow that shouted: This is no world for elves!

Feegles and elves were fighting now, with no quarter given on either side. Tiffany could see that the Feegles were dealing with things in their own special way—which included getting into the elves’ clothing and fighting them from within. If there was something that an elf really hated, it was to have their clothing torn, and a black eye didn’t do much for the image either. You can’t be suave with a black eye, Tiffany thought.

She suddenly burst out laughing. It had been a long time since she had set eyes on Horace the Cheese,* but now she saw him rolling heavily over every fallen elf, and when they were flattened, the younger Feegles got to work as well, mostly with their heavy boots, but also with their double-the-fun clubs that curled in the air, clonking elves on the head and then coming joyfully back for another go. And yes, there was Maggie in their midst—a Feegle daughter fighting alongside her brothers! And indeed fighting even more furiously than her brothers. Tiffany thought, She’s like a small Ynci. The Feegle maid had been waiting for something like this to prove herself, so woe betide any elf who got in her way. It was one small step for a Feegle lassie—but a giant step for all Feegle womenfolk!

Miss Tick was flying overhead now, the strange rope-net hanging beneath her broomstick filled with young Feegles. As she pulled at one knot after another, the Wee Free Men were tumbling out to fall smack on the heads of the elves below. Crash! Whack! Crump! Followed by Aargh! from the elves.

And the witch had small bottles with her too—concoctions mixed in her caravan that she was now gleefully emptying over the heads of the elves’ horses as she swooped above them. There was a moment’s pause as each horse absorbed the mixture, then its eyes crossed, followed rapidly by its hooves, and it toppled to the ground, losing its footing, hurling its rider onto the earth to be quickly covered by Feegles.

Letitia had arrived now, summoned by Hamish, and was tumbling from her horse, determination in her face, borrowed chainmail over her dress. She somehow flowed through the elves—there was a certain magic to it as if she were some goddess of water, streaming everywhere: no thought to it, but no stopping it either. Suddenly the elvish horses still standing were bogged down in a quagmire, and the Feegles were there on hand to keep them in the mire.

Nevertheless, it looked as if the Feegles, Miss Tick, and Letitia were really not getting the better of the elves. Despite the Wee Free Men’s pouring into elvish underwear and tearing it up, Tiffany realized that the Nac Mac Feegles were actually in danger of losing.

Nightshade pointed out Peaseblossom sitting on a black charger, and Tiffany flew down to confront the leader of the elves. His minions scattered as she arrived—they had seen the expression on Tiffany’s face.

Peaseblossom was laughing. “Ah, the little country girl. How pleased I am to see you!”

She felt the tug of his glamour but rage was a useful tool, and she hated that grinning face. It was so self-centered. It loved itself beyond any other thing.

“Peaseblossom is a very stupid name for an elf of your size,” she said rather childishly.

And then, suddenly, the elf had sprung from his horse to stand before her, a saber in his hands, and his laughter was gone, only evil in his eyes.

A voice said, “Don’t touch her, Peaseblossom.”

And Nightshade was stepping forward, her glamour fully restored and shining gloriously, her hair streaked silver with the moonlight, her new wings resplendent. She held herself like a queen again, her gaze slowly moving over the warriors behind her treacherous lord, and such was the power of her presence that even the Feegles paused in the frozen silence.

“Why do you follow this . . . perfidious elf?” the Queen demanded of the elves. “I am your rightful queen, and I say that you do not have to do this. There are . . . other ways.” She spun on the spot, her velvet robes spiraling around her slim body. “I have learned this. And this girl”—she pointed at Tiffany—“is my friend.”

Tiffany couldn’t stop what happened next.

“Friend?” Peaseblossom spat. “There are no friends for elves.”

He raised his arm and his saber tore through Nightshade with a terrible swishing sound. The elf Queen fell, crumpling to the ground at Tiffany’s feet, where she writhed for a moment that seemed to last a lifetime, myriad faces and shapes appearing and disappearing, flickering in and out of substance, before finally lying still, a forlorn heap. Tiffany reeled back in shock. Peaseblossom had killed the Queen of the Fairies!

Worse, he had killed her friend.

Peaseblossom, reveling, turned to Tiffany, his face sharp and merciless. “You have no friend now!”

Suddenly the air was full of ice. “You killed one of your own to get to me, you cursed elf,” Tiffany said, her voice cold, red-hot anger boiling inside her. “She wanted to explore a new way, an alliance of humans and elves, and now you have killed her.”

“You stupid little girl!” Peaseblossom taunted. “You think you can stand against me? What a fool you are! We elves knew well of the witch who once walked the edges of this world . . . but you, you are just a child, filled with pride because you were once lucky against a failing queen”—he glanced contemptuously down at the little heap that had once been the Queen of Fairyland—“and now I will see you dead, alongside your friend.” He spat out the last word, and his glamour snaked toward her, creeping into her head, into her thoughts.

Tiffany recoiled, a memory of Nanny Ogg’s voice suddenly saying to her, Granny Weatherwax said to me as you is the one who’s to deal with the future. An’ bein’ young means you’ve got a lot of future. Well, it looked like Granny Weatherwax might have been wrong. She didn’t have much future to come.

She had failed everyone.

She had tried to be the witch for two steadings. And let everyone down . . .

She had gone to see the King of the Elves. He had turned her away. . . .

She had made a friend of Nightshade. Now the elf Queen was dead. . . .

She was facing a powerful elf lord who would kill her. . . .

She deserved to die. . . .

She was alone. . . .

Then it came to her. She did not deserve to die. And she was not alone. She never would be. Not while her land was beneath her boots. Her land. The land of the Achings.

She was Tiffany Aching. Not Granny Weatherwax, but a witch in her own right. A witch who knew exactly who she was and how she wanted to do things. Her way. And she had not failed, because she had barely begun. . . .

She stood tall. Frosty. Furious. “You called me a country girl,” she said, “and I will see to it that the country will see you dead.”

The land was speaking to her now, filling her up, throwing the glamour of the elf lord aside as though it were nothing, and the air crackled like lightning. Yes, she thought. Thunder and Lightning. The two dogs were long gone, buried in the hills alongside Granny Aching, but their strength was with her.

And she was standing firm, her feet on the turf, the murmur of the ancient ocean below swelling through her soles. Earth. Water.

She raised her arms. “Thunder and Lightning, I command you.” Fire and Air. As she drew on the power of the two sheepdogs, there in the air was a flash of lightning, a rumble of thunder. The shepherd’s crown glowed golden on her breast—at the heart of it all, the soul and center of her being—the golden light rising from the apex to surround her, protect her, add its energy to her own.

And the sky broke in half.

Never had there been such a storm. It was full of vengeance and the elves were running, or rather trying to run because the Feegles were in their way and the Wee Free Men had no liking for the elves. In the carnage and the shouting, it seemed to Tiffany that she wasn’t in charge anymore. She was just a conduit for the wrath of the Chalk.

The land under her feet was trembling, shaking like a wounded animal on a leash, yearning to be free. And the shepherd’s crown was shining like a living thing in front of her.

A shepherd’s crown, not a royal one.

A crown for someone who knew where she had come from.

A crown for the lone light zigzagging through the night sky, hunting for a single lost lamb.

A crown for the shepherd who was there to herd away the predators.

A crown for the shepherd who could work with the best sheepdogs any shepherd could possibly have.

A shepherd’s crown.

And she heard again that voice: Tiffany Aching is the first among shepherds, for she puts others before herself. . . .

A king of shepherds.

No . . . a queen.

She felt she needed to apologize to the crown, apologize for letting these elves come through and threaten this land, and so she said in a whisper, “I am Tiffany Aching and my bones are in the Chalk. Let the Chalk be cleansed!”

And the world changed.

In the city of Ankh-Morpork, Hex spat out a calculation for Ponder Stibbons—and he saw that an answer was underlined. . . .

A prayer wheel spun in the monastery of Oi Dong, and the monks bowed down in gratitude. . . .

While a little boy took his mother’s hand in the traveling now, and said, “Mummy, big nasties all gone . . .” He had a wooden train in his other hand, and a little backpack of tools over one shoulder. Perhaps he will be an engineer in this new world when he grows up, his mother thought.

And in Fairyland, there was a sudden twang, as if a strand connecting the two worlds had suddenly snapped. . . .

There was fighting still going on—it was hard to stop the Feegles once they got going—and Tiffany walked through it as if in a dream. The elves were trying to get away now, but the ground seemed to hold them down and she whispered, “I ask the Chalk, deliver to me the King of the Elves!”

The heavy dance of the land now had a different tempo.

Dust flew out, and there came suddenly the King of the Elves—the stink and his long hair and antlers were unmistakable. Oh, that stink! It had a life of its own. But in a way, Tiffany thought, it was a male stink of life.

The huge body loomed over her. “How now, Mistress Tiffany. I can’t say ‘Well met again,’” said the King. “But I must confess to . . . surprise. You surprised me before,” he mused, “with the gift you left me. A . . . shed. What do you humans do with this place you call a shed?” He sounded intrigued.

“It is a place for . . . interests. Where the future can be founded,” Tiffany said. “And a place where those who have lived many years may remember.”

“I have many memories,” said the King. “But I did not know that you had the power to offer me new entertainments, to draw me to new pleasures. Very few in this world or others are able to do so.”

And now, Tiffany thought, the King of the Elves did see her as more than a young girl. At this meeting she had respect. But he deserved respect too, so she bowed her head toward him, just a little.

“May I apologize for the hotheads in my kingdom,” he continued lazily, his voice smooth and delicious. “I find them a large annoyance. Quite possibly as you do.” He glared at the quivering Peaseblossom, and then at the corpse of Nightshade. “You, elf, you killed my queen, my lady Nightshade, just for spite,” he growled. And the King of the Elves brought himself upright and smacked Peaseblossom with a hand that killed, leaving the carcass just lying there, his careless and casual use of violence shocking Tiffany, despite all she knew of elves. “I’m sorry I had to do that,” he said, “but they don’t understand anything else. The universe turns, alas it turns and we have to accommodate change or move on. This is a good world we had here, mistress,” the King said now. He shrugged. “It’s a shame about the iron. But perhaps as the universe turns, Mistress Tiffany, we might meet again, on a different turn and in more happy circumstances.”

“Yes,” said Tiffany, “we might. Now, begone from my land.” Her voice was hard. And in the air there was the piercing sound of a whistle, with an answering screech as the early-morning train left Twoshirts station. “Listen, your majesty. That is the song of the five twenty-five for Lancre, and that is your future, my lord. A lifetime of metal if you stay.”

“These mechanisms are interesting. There are tools in my shed, and I wonder if such ‘trains’ could perhaps be made . . . without iron,” said the King, adding wistfully, “I am a man of magic, so I should be able to have anything I want.”

“But you can’t,” said Tiffany. “The railways are not for you.”

And it seemed to her, as he left, that the King of the Elves was looking thoughtful.

As the final elves slipped away to limp back to their land, she turned to Rob Anybody. “Rob, let us bury the Lady Nightshade here, where she fell,” she said quietly. “I will mark the spot with a cairn of stones. We will remember this day. We will remember her.” Then she added softly, almost to herself, “We need to remember.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Peace

As the morning flowed into the day, the Feegles were settling down to a feast of drinking, eating, and more drinking and telling tales, some of which were bigger than the Feegles themselves.

Rob Anybody looked at Tiffany and said, “Weel noo, mistress, the field is oor ain! Come on doon intae the mound. Jeannie would love tae see your sonsie face.”

And Tiffany slid into the mound, which seemed bigger than when she had seen it last. The great hall was full of leaping figures and flying kilts as the Feegles danced their reels—Feegles loved a reel at any time; the slap of boot on earth was like a challenge to the universe. Then, of course, every Feegle wanted every other Feegle to know how well they had conducted themselves against the elves.

Every single one of the younger Feegles was wanting Tiffany—their hag o’ the hills—to know how brave he had been. As they gathered around, she said, “What are your names, boys?”

Wee Callum, a little bit tongue-tied, said, “I’m Callum, mistress.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Tiffany.

“Aye, mistress, and this is my brother, Callum.”

“Two of you?” she said. “Isn’t that difficult?”

“Och no, I know who I am and he knows who he is and so does our other brother Callum.”

“And how did you like the fighting?”

“Och aye, we smited them weel enough. The Big Man is a hard taskmaster, ye ken. He sees to it that we can handle the mace and the spear and the ax. And, of course, the feets. And when the three of us got one of they scunners doon on the ground, that’s what oor boots was for.”

The old boys were marching down the lane.

And they had a new song now, one that began: “Ar-sol, ar-sol, a soldier’s life for me!” And with each verse, and each step, they were standing straighter and stronger.

“Ar-sol, ar-sol, a soldier’s life for me!

For King, for King, for King and Constabulary,

We wee, we wee, we weaken the enemies,

For they don’t want it up ’em, don’t want it up ’em, don’t want it up and over!”

And those who had wives kissed them—the wives hadn’t seen their husbands so frisky for years—and then they set off down to the pub to tell their mates all about it.

With a pint resting happily in his hand, Captain Makepeace sat on a milestone outside the pub and declaimed, “People of Lancre. We happy few, we extremely elderly few, have scorned the horrible elves. They say that old men forget, but we won’t. Not by a long chalk. We thought we were old—but today we found we were still young.”

And then it was time for another round of drinks. And another, with everyone wanting to stand the old boys a round, until standing was no longer an option. And still the shout went up: Was there time for another flagon?

As the moon rose to herald the hours of darkness the following day, there was Geoffrey on his broomstick, which was once again hovering in the air. Tiffany shouted over at him, “I still don’t know how you can do that!”

“No idea, Tiffany—can’t everyone?” he replied. “Let’s ask, for here comes everyone.”

And indeed, now the other witches were arriving, led by Nanny Ogg and Magrat. It was time to look to the future once again—a future not now filled with elves. But the present, well, the present was filled with the chattering and gossiping of witches as the tales of the two battles were shared.

Rob Anybody had set fire to a beacon and Tiffany watched the last witches circling until there was space, then coming in to land one after the other. Not one left her stick hovering, though—it seemed as if Geoffrey was the only one who could make his broomstick do that.

“I wonder if they’re goin’ to sneak back,” said Nanny Ogg after a while. “You can’t trust Old Hairy. He was tryin’ to charm you, Tiff, by what you say.”

“I know, but I am not charmed,” said Tiffany. “Not since the one elf who tried to be a good elf is now dead. We marked the spot where we buried her, Nanny, you know. And if they do try to come back, we will be ready for them. We can put iron on the stones here on the Chalk, like you’ve laid swarf all around the Dancers in Lancre.” Her voice hardened. “There is iron in my soul now. And iron in dealing with them should they dare ever to return.”

“Well,” said Magrat the Queen, “we’ve knocked them down so often now that I think he means what he said. I think it’s unlikely they will come back.”

“I’ll drink to them not coming back then,” said Nanny Ogg.

“Ladies, while we are gathered,” said Tiffany, “I want to talk to you about Geoffrey. He has been a great strength to us—and I know you all saw how he made the old men of Lancre into a fighting force. He is clever and cunning and careful. He knows how to listen. And he has a kind of magic.”

“That’s true,” said Nanny. “Everybody likes Geoffrey. Somehow he seems to understand everybody. Believe me, even some of them old girls would be quite happy to have him deal with their aches and pains and worse. He calms people. You all know that. He is calm itself, and the calm stays even when he has left. He doesn’t just jolly people up. After he is gone, they are somehow much better—as if life was still worth havin’. People like that, like Geoffrey, well, they makes the world, well, better.”

“I totally agree with you,” said Mrs. Earwig.

“You agrees with me?” said Nanny Ogg, almost speechless.

“Yes, my dear, I do.”

And Tiffany thought, At last, we will have peace. “Thank you, Geoffrey,” she said under her breath. “Now we are all here,” she said aloud, “I must tell you that I can’t manage Granny’s steading. I’m not going to sleep in Granny’s bed anymore. Because I’m not her.”

Nanny grinned. “I wondered if’n you would do that, Tiff. You has to be your own woman after all.”

“My roots are in the Chalk and the Chalk is my strength,” Tiffany continued. “My bones will be part of these hills just like those of my Granny Aching.”

There was a murmur from the witches. They had all heard of Granny Aching by now.

“And I have some very good boots too. Just as I cannot sleep in Granny Weatherwax’s bed, I cannot wear her boots either.”

Nanny chuckled. “I’ll collect ’em when I’m next up at the cottage, Tiff. I knows Esme’s boots, knows a young witch they’ll do very nicely for.”

“Talking of young witches,” Tiffany added, “Miss Tick has found me some girls with potential. May I send them up to the mountains to begin their training? I will have need of help in the Chalk in the future.”

The witches were nodding. Of course. For it was the way it was done: the young girls—Nancy Upright and Becky Pardon—would spend time with the senior witches and learn the beginning of their trade.

Tiffany took a deep breath. “And what I suggest is that Geoffrey be allowed to look after Granny Weatherwax’s cottage and steading for me,” she said, looking at Nanny Ogg as she said that and getting a wink in return.

She glanced at Mrs. Earwig and was surprised to see her nod and say, “He’s a very nice decent young man, and we have seen him at work, and now we live in the time of the railways, so perhaps we should change our ways. Yes, I believe Mister Geoffrey should take care of Granny’s—Tiffany’s—steading in Lancre. He’s no witch, but he’s certainly much more than the usual sort of backhouse boy.” And Tiffany could see Mrs. Earwig’s mind working, and she felt certain that the next time she saw the witch, she would have a lad somewhere around her establishment.

Out loud, Nanny said, “What did you call him, Tiff? A calm-weaver? Shall we leave it at that for now?”

But Magrat wanted her say too. “Verence heard of what he did for the old men,” she said. “He believes he should have a reward. And I think I know exactly what would suit. . . .”

And thus, a few weeks later, Lord Swivel was most surprised to see his third son riding proudly up his long, long drive, a herald at his side* and a pennant with the royal insignia of Lancre fluttering in the breeze. The same insignia was also on a velvet coat over the flanks of Mephistopheles.

“May I announce His Royal Ambassadorship Geoffrey Swivel,” proclaimed the herald, breaking into a few notes on the trumpet he held.

Geoffrey’s mother sobbed with delight, while his father—a man on whom no calm-weaving would ever work—boiled inside with fury as he had to bow to the son he had treated as a nobody. But no one argued with the power of a crown.

There was a purpose to this visit, though. After the usual bowing, scraping, and general knee-bending any royal emissary took as his due, Geoffrey grinned around at the assembled company and said, “Father, I have exciting news! Those of us in the country may oft feel neglected by those in the big city but let me assure you, this is not the case. There have, in fact, been important developments just recently in the field of . . . chicken runs. Some young people in Ankh-Morpork . . . young people whose parents have the power to indulge their wishes”—and he tapped his nose with a finger to show that he expected his father to know these important parents—“feel that it may no longer be necessary to hunt sly old Mister Reynard to protect our chickens.” He beamed. “They have come up with a new chicken run that is totally impervious to foxes. And you, Father, are the lucky, lucky landowner who has been chosen to test this new design.”

As his father spluttered, and his brother Hugh shouted “Hurrah!” for no particular reason except that it felt like someone should, Geoffrey looked around. He could see his mother’s face. Normally she looked like someone the world had trodden on so many times that it was almost an invitation to tread on her yourself, but now she stood tall, her chin high.

“Harold. Our son has worked wonders, and here is a king honoring him and treating him as a friend,” she said proudly. “Don’t you look at me like that, Harold, for today I have spoken. And the Queen of Lancre has invited me to come and visit her,” she added with satisfaction.

There was a bleat from Mephistopheles, and as Geoffrey’s father turned to stamp away, the goat turned its back and aimed a square set of devilish hooves right onto Lord Swivel’s rump. Followed by a raucous fart that almost—but not quite—covered up the noise of the man falling flat on his face.

“A most usefully offensive goat,” Geoffrey murmured to McTavish, who had come to stand by his side.

The old stable-lad looked around. “And one your father cannot touch,” he said with a wink. “Not with that fancy coat on its back.” He sniffed. “My word, though, Mephistopheles isn’t easy on the nose—he whiffs even worse than I remember.”

“Yes,” said Geoffrey, “but he can climb trees. And use a privy. Even count. He’s a strange creature; he can turn a dark day into a clear one. Look into his eyes sometime.”

And McTavish looked, and then hastily looked away.

EPILOGUE

A Whisper on the Chalk

Two days after the battle, Tiffany led one of the farm horses up to the hills above the farm. It was a perfect early autumn’s day. There was a wonderful cerulean sky, buzzards screaming overhead, and a clear view toward the distant mountains of Lancre, their tops still covered in snow even at this time of year.

There were always a handful of sheep up in this part of the downs, whatever the weather. At this time of year there were half-grown lambs kicking their heels and chasing about while the ewes grazed nearby. Here was a well-known landmark for those who knew. A special place for sheep and farmers alike. The place where Granny Aching now lay beneath the turf.

Only the iron wheels of her hut and the old potbellied stove with its chimney were still visible, but the ground, the ground was holy: Tiffany came to look at it every time she felt the world grinding her down, and here, where the wind never stopped blowing, she felt that she could deal with anything.

With the help of the horse and a strong rope, Tiffany hauled the rusty wheels out of the turf where they had been embedded, and painstakingly greased and coaxed them back together. Rob Anybody had watched her for a while after she had rebuffed his offer to help, then departed with a puzzled look on his face, muttering about geases, and what he’d like to do to them.

The following day, Tiffany went to visit old Mr. Block, the local carpenter. He had once made her a doll’s house when she was a little girl; now she had a bigger home in mind.

He was pleased to see her but was startled when he discovered what she wanted from him.

“Mr. Block, I would like you to teach me to be a carpenter. I am going to build myself a hut—a shepherding hut.”

The carpenter was a kindly man and offered to help. “You are a witch,” he said. “I’m a carpenter. A little hut like that wouldn’t take me long. Your granny was very good to our family and you helped my sister Margaret. I’d be happy to do it for you.”

But Tiffany was very definite. “That’s nice of you,” she said, “but all the work on this hut must be done by me. It will be mine, from top to bottom, and I will pull it to where the larks rise. And I’ll still be a witch when anyone should call. But there I will live.” On my own, she thought to herself. For now, anyway, for who knew what the future might bring. . . . And her hand crept to her pocket, where she had Preston’s latest letter to savor.

And so Tiffany learned carpentry every evening after her day’s work was done. It took her some weeks to finish it, but eventually there was a new shepherd’s hut stationed close to Granny Aching’s grave.

There were three steps up to its wooden door, a horseshoe and a tuft of sheep’s wool—the sign of a shepherd—already nailed in place there, and the roof arched over a small living space into which she had built a bed, a little cupboard, a few shelves, and a space for a washbasin. From the bed, she could see out of a small window—see clear across the downs, right to the horizon. And she could see the sun rise, and set, and the moon dance through its guises—the magic of everyday that was no less magic for that.

She loaded up the old farm horse again with the bedding from her little room in the farmhouse and her few possessions, said good-bye to her parents, and headed up the hill in the late afternoon sun.

“Are you sure, jigget, that this is what you really want?” said her father.

“Yes, it is,” Tiffany replied.

Her mother cried and handed her a new quilt and a freshly baked loaf of bread to go with the cheese Tiffany had made that morning.

Halfway up the hill, Tiffany turned to look down at the farm and saw her parents still arm in arm. She waved and carried on climbing without looking back again. It had been a long day. They were always long days.

Later that evening, once she had made her little bed in the hut, she went out to collect some kindling. The white cat, You, followed close behind.

The little tracks of the Chalk were very familiar to Tiffany. She had walked along them with Granny Aching years ago. And as she reached the wood at the top of the rise, Tiffany thought she saw somebody walking through the dusky shadows under the trees.

Not just one person alone. There seemed to be two figures, both strangely familiar. Beside them, alert to every gesture, every nod, every whistle, trotted two sheepdogs.

Granny Weatherwax, Tiffany thought. Side by side with Granny Aching, Thunder and Lightning at their heels. And the little words in her head came unbidden: You are the shepherd’s crown, jigget. You are the shepherd’s crown.

One of the figures looked over and gave her a brief nod, while the other paused and bowed her head. Tiffany bowed back, solemnly, respectfully.

And then the figures were gone.

On the way back to the hut, Tiffany looked down at the cat and, on a sudden impulse, spoke to it.

“Where is Granny Weatherwax, You?”

There was a pause, and the cat made a long meow, which appeared to end, “Meow . . . vrywhere.” And then purred, just like any other cat, and rubbed her hard little head against Tiffany’s leg.

Tiffany thought of the little spot in the woods where Granny Weatherwax lay. Remembered.

And knew that You had been right. Granny Weatherwax was indeed here. And there. She was, in fact, and always would be, everywhere.

There was a long stream of visitors to the shepherding hut once it became known that Tiffany was back on the Chalk for good.

Joe Aching came up to deliver some messages—and a new letter, from Preston!—and bring Tiffany some things her mother had decided she needed. He looked around the neat little hut with approval. Tiffany had made the space very comfortable. He looked at the books on the shelf and smiled. Tiffany had left Granny Aching’s Diseases of the Sheep at the farm, but both Flowers of the Chalk and The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales had their place by the little shepherd’s crown he had given her. On the back of the door was a wooden peg on which hung her witch’s hat.

“I reckon ye’ll find some use for this too,” her father said as he took a bottle of Special Sheep’s Liniment (made according to Granny Aching’s recipe) out of his pocket and placed it on the shelf.

Tiffany laughed and hoped her father hadn’t heard the cry of “Crivens!” from the roof of the hut.

He looked up as some dust fell down from where Big Yan sat on Daft Wullie to silence him. “I hope ye haven’t got woodworm already, Tiff.”

She laughed again as she gave him a hug to say good-bye.

Mr. Block was an early visitor too. He puffed his way up the hill and found her settled in with You the cat sitting on her lap while she sorted rags.

Tiffany watched nervously as the old carpenter looked around and under the hut with a professional eye. When he had finished, she gave him a cup of tea and asked him what he thought.

“You’ve done well, lass. Very well. I have never seen a boy apprentice take to carpentry as quickly as this, and you are a girl.”

“Not a girl,” Tiffany said. “I’m a witch.” And she looked down to the little cat beside her and said, “That’s so, isn’t it, You?”

Mr. Block looked at her suspiciously for a moment. “So did you use magic to make the hut, miss?”

“I didn’t have to,” said Tiffany. “The magic was already here.”

The End.

Appendix

A Feegle Glossary,
adjusted for those of a delicate disposition
(A Work in Progress by Miss Perspicacia Tick)

Bigjobs: Human beings.

Big Man: Chief of the clan (usually the husband of the kelda).

Blethers: Rubbish, nonsense.

Bogle: See Schemie.

Boggin’: To be desperate, as in “I’m boggin’ for a cup of tea.”

Brose: Porridge with a drop of strong drink added—or more than a drop. Be warned: it will put hairs on your chest.

Bunty: A weak person.

Carlin: Old woman.

Cludgie: The privy.

Corbies: Big, black burdies known by most people as crows.

Crivens!: A general exclamation that can mean anything from “My goodness!” to “I’ve just lost my temper and there is going to be trouble.”

Dree your/my/his/her weird: Facing the fate that is in store for you/me/him/her.

Een: Eyes.

Eldritch: Weird, strange; sometimes means oblong too, for some reason.

Fash: Worry, upset.

Geas: A very important obligation, backed up by tradition and magic. Not a bird.

Gonnagle: The bard of the clan, skilled in musical instruments, poems, stories, and songs.

Hag: A witch, of any age.

Hag o’ hags: A very important witch.

Hagging/Haggling: Anything a witch does.

Hiddlins: Secrets.

Kelda: The female head of the clan, and eventually the mother of most of it. Feegle babies are very small, and a kelda will have hundreds in her lifetime.

Lang syne: Long ago.

Last World: The Feegles believe that they are dead. This world is so filled with all they like, they argue, that they must have been really good in a past life and then died and ended up here. Appearing to die here means merely going back to the Last World, which they believe is rather dull.

Mowpie: Furry animals with white tufts as tails, making them easy to spot. Sometimes called rabbits. Good to eat, especially with a dab of snail relish on the side.

Mudlin: Useless person.

Pished: I am assured that this means “tired.”

Schemie: An unpleasant person.

Scuggan: A really unpleasant person.

Scunner: A generally unpleasant person.

Ships: Woolly things that eat grass and go baa. Easily confused with the other kind.

Spavie: See Mudlin.

Special Sheep Liniment: Probably moonshine whiskey, I am very sorry to say. A favorite of the Feegles. Do not try to make this at home.

Spog: A small leather bag at the front of a Feegle’s kilt, which covers whatever he presumably thinks needs to be hidden and generally holds things like something he is halfway through eating, something he’d found that now therefore belongs to him, and quite often—because even a Feegle can catch a cold—it might hold whatever he was using as a handkerchief, which might not necessarily be dead.

Steamie: Only found in the big Feegle mounds in the mountains, where there’s enough water to allow regular bathing; it’s a kind of sauna. Feegles on the Chalk tend to rely on the fact that you can only get so much dirt on you before it starts to fall off of its own accord.

Waily: A general cry of despair.

Acknowledgments

Despite the effects of his Alzheimer’s disease, Terry wanted to keep writing as long as possible and was able to do so not least through the assistance of his fine editorial team. Lyn, Rhianna, and Rob would most especially like to thank Philippa Dickinson and Sue Cook for their tireless help and encouragement that kept the words flowing.

Afterword

The Shepherd’s Crown is Terry Pratchett’s final novel. It was written in his last year before he finally succumbed in early 2015 to the “embuggerance” of posterior cortical atrophy. Terry had been diagnosed back in 2007, the year that he wrote Nation. At that time, Terry thought he might have less than two years to live and that brought a new urgency to his writing. He had never been a slouch in this respect but now things were measured by the cost in writing time. If demands for his presence took him away from writing, it had to be really worthwhile, such as feeding the chickens or attending to his tortoises. He had so many more books he wanted to write.

It says a lot for Terry’s resilience and determination not to go down without a fight that he wrote five more full-length bestselling novels between Nation and The Shepherd’s Crown (as well as collaborating with Stephen Baxter on four Long Earth novels). And Terry was still developing new ideas for books right up to his final few months.*

Terry usually had more than one book on the go at a time and he discovered what each was about as he went along. He would start somewhere, telling himself the story as he wrote it and write the bits he could see clearly, assembling it all into a whole—like a giant literary jigsaw—when he was done. Once it was shaped, he would keep writing it too, adding to it, fixing bits, constantly polishing and adding linking sequences, tossing in just one more footnote or event. His publishers often had to prize the manuscript away from him, as there was always more he felt he could do, even though by then he would be well into the next story which was tugging at his elbow. Eventually the book was sent to the printer, and reluctantly Terry would let it go.

Terry had been thinking about the key elements in Tiffany Aching’s and Granny Weatherwax’s last story for a few years. He wrote the pivotal scenes while he was still writing Raising Steam and then rewrote them several times as he shaped the rest of The Shepherd’s Crown around them.

The Shepherd’s Crown has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and all the bits in between. Terry wrote all of those. But even so, it was, still, not quite as finished as he would have liked when he died.

If Terry had lived longer, he would almost certainly have written more of this book. There are things we all wish we knew more about. But what we have is a remarkable book, Terry’s final book, and anything you wish to know more about in here, you are welcome to imagine yourself.

Rob Wilkins

May 2015

Salisbury, UK

Credits

Cover art and design © 2015
by Jim Tierney

Copyright

THE SHEPHERD’S CROWN. Copyright © 2015 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015943558

ISBN 978-0-06-242997-1

EPub Edition © August 2015 ISBN 9780062429995

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About the Author

SIR TERRY PRATCHETT, OBE, was the author of more than seventy books, including the internationally bestselling Discworld series of novels. His books have been adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. In January 2009, Pratchett was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his services to literature. Sir Terry, who lived in England, died in March 2015 at the age of sixty-six.

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Books by Terry Pratchett

The Carpet People

The Dark Side of the Sun

Strata

THE BROMELIAD TRILOGY:

Truckers

Diggers

Wings

THE JOHNNY MAXWELL TRILOGY:

Only You Can Save Mankind

Johnny and the Dead

Johnny and the Bomb

Nation

Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman)

The Long Earth (with Stephen Baxter)

The Long War (with Stephen Baxter)

The Long Mars (with Stephen Baxter)

The Long Utopia (with Stephen Baxter)

Dodger

THE DISCWORLD SERIES

The Color of Magic

The Light Fantastic

Equal Rites

Mort

Sourcery

Wyrd Sisters

Pyramids

Guards! Guards!

Eric

Moving Pictures

Reaper Man

Witches Abroad

Small Gods

Lords and Ladies

Men at Arms

Soul Music

Feet of Clay

Interesting Times

Maskerade

Hogfather

Jingo

The Last Continent

Carpe Jugulum

The Fifth Elephant

The Truth

Thief of Time

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Night Watch

The Wee Free Men

Monstrous Regiment

A Hat Full of Sky

Going Postal

Thud!

Wintersmith

Making Money

Unseen Academicals

I Shall Wear Midnight

Snuff

Raising Steam

The Shepherd’s Crown

Where’s My Cow?
(illustrated by Melvyn Grant)

The Last Hero: A Discworld Fable
(illustrated by Paul Kidby)

The Art of Discworld
(illustrated by Paul Kidby)

The Illustrated Wee Free Men
(illustrated by Stephen Player)

The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld
(with Stephen Briggs)

THE DISCWORLD GRAPHIC NOVELS

The Color of Magic

The Light Fantastic

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* The Feegles believed to a man that they had to be dead, as the world they now lived in was grand, filled as it was with so many opportunities for stealin’ and fightin’ and boozin’. A land fit for dead heroes.

* Sometimes literally, since a kelda usually gave birth to about seven Feegle babies at a time. Jeannie herself had produced a daughter in among her first brood.

* Lord Swivel’s father reckoned it was no waste, and that he had thoroughly enjoyed drinking the family fortune. At least, he thought this until he drank so much he fell over and met a gentleman with a decided lack of flesh on his bones and the definitive addition of a scythe a good few years earlier than he should have done.

* He knew, too, that gods could sometimes make inconvenient requests. He had an associate who had chosen to follow the crocodile god Offler and then found he had to keep an aviary of tooth-cleaning birds handy to fulfill his god’s dental whims.

* Very true, but a lot of people came from Fourecks, as is often the case with a Place-That-Nobody-Has-Ever-Heard-Of. They just never bothered to go back again.

* Thus proving that books can teach you much, if only to give you a good name for a devilish, smart goat.

* The legend of Pilotus and his son Langas, who wanted to fly like the birds, was known by every well-educated boy. They did indeed build themselves wings by sewing together feathers and thistledown. The boy at least flew a little way, but his elderly and portly father crashed. The moral of the story is: understand what you are doing before you do it.

* Granny’s soap was like her advice: strong and sharp and it stung a bit at the time, but it worked.

* A popular idea among the young lads, since they felt that everyone—and “everyone” definitely included the young ladies—should swim without their clothes.

* Though Agnes does have the very handy excuse that if she behaves badly, it might not be Agnes doing the Devil-Among-the-Pictsies dance on the table, but her other personality, Perdita, who is much more outgoing and, incidentally, a lot thinner.

* She did not know it, but a keen young philosopher in Ephebe had pondered exactly that same conundrum, until he was found one morning—most of him, anyway—surrounded by a number of purring, and very well fed, cats. No one had seemed keen to continue his experiments after that.

* And its meals. It’s amazing how a night as an owl, snacking on voles, can really leave a nasty taste in your mouth.

* She hadn’t ever needed to. Granny Weatherwax was like the prow of a ship. Seas parted when she turned up.

* Pronounced Ah-wij.

* The only known instance of the Feegles rebuilding a pub they had drunk dry and demolished. The rebuilt version, however, turned out back to front. Complete with a big ripe boil on the neck in question.

* Thus proving that dreams that come true are not always the right dreams. Does wearing a glass slipper lead to a comfortable life? If everything you touch turns into marshmallows, won’t that make things a bit . . . sticky?

* Pig boring saved a lot of nasty squealing. A pig borer, like Petulia, would talk to the pigs until they simply died of boredom.

* Basically, if it had something herbal in it, Magrat and Verence thought it would do you good. With some of the herbs in Granny’s garden, this might be doubtful. At least in the short term. And it might not be wise to stray too far from the privy.

* And contrary to popular belief, no witch Tiffany knew had yet managed to control a broomstick whilst also using an umbrella.

* There was the usual man-who-puts-weasels-down-his-trousers in action too. Hence the need for a doctor.

* It gets awfully cold up there, and no sensible witch ever took to the skies without several layers of flannelette between her and the stick.

* Another tiny clue.

* “Enough” wasn’t really a long enough word to describe the numerous little tasks any young woman marrying into the Ogg family found were expected of her.

* Said in a way that made anyone listening know this instantly.

* And heard her. For Mrs. Earwig’s copious amount of jewelry announced the witch with such a cheerful jangle that it was as if it had ambitions to move from being a set of charms and amulets to being a full instrumental fanfare.

* Though a Feegle will cheerfully lie about almost anything, so Tiffany still went into any privy with her eyes peeled for flashes of Feegle; she had even once had a nightmare about a Feegle popping up out of the other hole of her parents’ two-holer.

* Pronounced “Chuffley’ under that strange rule that the more gentrified a family is, the more peculiar the pronunciation of their name becomes. Tiffany had once heard a highborn visitor named Ponsonby-Macklewright (Pwt) refer to Roland as Chf. She wondered how they managed at dinner when Pwt introduced Chf to Wm or Hmpfh. Surely it could lead to misunderstandings?

* Spotting the truth was much harder.

* It was a brave man indeed who could look upon a clan of Feegles and not want to tie the bottoms of his trousers tight round his ankles.

* The Toad was the Feegles’ lawyer, his toad body the result of a misunderstanding with a fairy godmother.

* The Feegles had, in fact, accidentally set fire to Tiffany’s broomstick, creating a need for new bristles.

* There are some advantages to wearing layers needing double figures to count. Dwarfs like lots of layers of chain mail, jackets, and—of course—the traditional woolly vest, which actually makes the chain mail unnecessary.

* “River” as a term doesn’t quite describe the sludge of the river Ankh in its course through the city, though it is of course a decent torrent up in Lancre.

* Uberwald servants, usually working as doctors, or assistants to mad scientists, who believe a stitch in time saves a lot of bother later. They like to swap body parts from an early age, often within the same family, such that an Igor saying, “He’s got his uncle’s nose” really means something.

* So a new stick, really. As new as the famous nine-hundred-year-old family mining ax owned by the King of the Dwarfs was anyway.

* The Baron had given the Feegles their own land and the promise that no sharp metal beyond a knife would go near them, but the Feegles lied all the time themselves, so liked to be ready with boot and heid and fist should any other liar come calling.

* Hamish’s trained buzzard Morag did the actual flying, of course. Mastering the art of flying wasn’t a problem for Hamish. Landings were another matter.

* You might think that a name like Stank would put people off. But in fact the mountain village of Stank had once been a very popular place for tourists. They liked to send messages home saying, “We’re stinking in Stank.” And go home with presents for their loved ones like tunics with “I’ve been to Stank and all I’ve brought home is this stinking tunic” written on them.

Alas for them, with the coming of the railways—or in the case of Stank, the not coming of the railways—tourists began to go elsewhere, and Stank was now gradually disappearing into the mud, surviving mostly by taking in washing.

* It had been in The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales and told how two little elves secretly helped a poor shoemaker, but sadly experience had taught Tiffany that a lot of what was in that book bore no relation whatsoever to the real Fairyland.

* Most princesses never tried to kiss toads, however, which had been a source of sadness to the Feegles’ toad lawyer for many years.

* Nanny’s friend on that occasion had been Count Casanunda the lowwayman—a highwayman who carried a stepladder on his horse, on account of his being a dwarf, and was most gallant toward the ladies he encountered.

* A thought that she would most certainly grow out of, assuming she survived long enough.

* It has in fact been said that elves are like cats; but cats will work together—for instance, when sharing a kill—while elves squabble and fight so that a third party may go home with the food.

* It looked a rather poisonous green before it was heated up, but in most cases the end certainly justified the greens.

* It disappeared pretty quickly too, as anyone given fairy gold soon discovered. Usually by the morning, which often meant a lively evening in the pub. And an even livelier evening the following night if visiting the same establishment.

* Very true, though getting out again was sometimes trickier, especially if there was strong drink about.

* Quite correct. As the common joke says, most inhabitants of Slice are more than one slice short of a loaf.

* It appears to be a fact of life that if two or more well-born ladies should gather together, cupcakes are essential. Otherwise the ceiling might fall on them.

* A very kind term for Agnes, used only by her friends.

* A dance that should only be performed when no women are nearby. If you saw it, you would know why.

* Most everyday working witches believed the best use for a book was on a nail in the privy.

* Part of him anyway, his memories being relocated to Tiffany’s mind following an episode early in her witching life. The rather pedantic wizard’s knowledge, especially of ancient languages, came in very handy sometimes, like when she wanted to read a peculiar menu in Ankh-Morpork.

* There were plenty of all these to pick from in Lancre, so he had a good choice of battlegrounds. As long as they were all up and down.

* Horace was a cannibal cheese, an adopted member of the Feegle clan.

* Shawn Ogg, in another of his royal duties.

* We will now not know how the old folk of Twilight Canyons solve the mystery of a missing treasure and defeat the rise of a Dark Lord despite their failing memories, nor the secret of the crystal cave and the carnivorous plants in The Dark Incontinent, nor how Constable Feeney solves a whodunit among the congenitally decent and honest goblins, nor how the second book about the redoubtable Maurice as a ship’s cat might have turned out. And these are just a few of the ideas his office and family know about.