I Shall Wear Midnight

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 who 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.’

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,