I Shall Wear Midnight

Tiffany finally located Mrs Petty under the table, with her hands over her head. When she had finally 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.’

‘Dinnae 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 dinnae 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, beetles, promising bits 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 demeanour 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 it 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.’