I Shall Wear Midnight

‘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 favourite 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 any more, 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 are those unpleasant people who have thought that their terrible ambitions would be furthered by allowing him to do so – the owner of the body soon finds they have no control at all. They become a part of him too. 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.’