I Shall Wear Midnight

The Baron lay in a tangle of sheets, his face grey, his hair totally white now, with little pink patches where it had 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 do 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 disc 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 another look. It was fearsome.

Tiffany returned this with a 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 grey 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 centre of the seesaw has neither up nor down, but upness and downness flow through it while it remains unmoved. You had to be the centre 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 showed 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.