I Shall Wear Midnight

‘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 the sound of the oven door slamming on the children. The sum of all night-time 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 backwards when it rained, and 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.’