I Shall Wear Midnight

Letitia had taken a couple of other sticks from the hedge and stuck them in the ground in front of her. There was a blue glow on the tip of each one.

‘Well, for everybody else it’s a joke,’ Tiffany said, ‘but for you I expect it would produce fried chickens.’

‘Do you really think so?’ said Letitia eagerly.

‘I’m not sure I can think at all if I am upside down with my head in a bucket of sand,’ said Tiffany. ‘You know that sounds a bit like wizard magic. This trick … it was in Mistress Bugloss’s book, you say. Look, I’m sorry, but that really is boffo stuff. It’s not real. It’s just for people who think that witchcraft is all about flowers and love potions and dancing around without your drawers on – something I can’t imagine any real witch doing …’ Tiffany hesitated, because she was naturally honest, and went on, ‘Well, maybe Nanny Ogg, when the mood takes her. It’s witchcraft with all the crusts cut off, and real witchcraft is all crusts. But you took one of her silly spells for giggling housemaids and used it on me and it’s worked! Is there a real witch in your family?’

Letitia shook her head and her long blonde hair sparkled even in the moonlight. ‘I’ve never heard of one. My grandfather was an alchemist – not professionally, of course. He was the reason why the hall has no east wing any more. My mother … I can’t imagine her doing magic, can you?’

‘Her? Absolutely!’

‘Well, I’ve never seen her do any and she does mean well. She says that all she wants is the best for me. She lost all her family in a fire, don’t you know. Lost everything,’ said Letitia.

Tiffany couldn’t dislike the girl. It would be like disliking a rather baffled puppy, but she couldn’t help saying, ‘And did you mean well? You know, when you made a model of me and put it upside down in a bucket of sand?’

There must have been reservoirs in Letitia. She was never more than a teacup away from a tear.

‘Look,’ Tiffany said, ‘I don’t mind, honestly. Though frankly I wish I believed that it was just a spell! Just take it out again then, and we can forget all about it. Please don’t start crying again, it makes everything so soggy.’

Letitia sniffed. ‘Oh, it’s just that, well, I didn’t do it here. I left it at home. It’s in the library.’

The last word in that sentence tinkled in Tiffany’s head. ‘A library? With books?’ Witches were not supposed to be particularly bothered about books, but Tiffany had read every one she could. You never knew what you could get out of a book. ‘It’s a very warm night for the time of year,’ she said, ‘and your place is not too far, is it? You could be back in the tower and in bed in a couple of hours.’

For the first time since Tiffany had met her, Letitia smiled, genuinely smiled. ‘Can I go on the front this time then?’ she said.

Tiffany flew low over the downs.

The moon was well on the way to full, and it was a real harvest moon, the copper colour of blood. That was the smoke from the stubble-burning, hanging in the air. How the blue smoke from burning wheat stalks made the moon go red, she didn’t know, and she wasn’t going to fly all that way to find out.

And Letitia seemed to be in some kind of personal heaven. She chattered the whole time, which was admittedly better than the sobbing. The girl was only eight days younger than herself. Tiffany knew that, because she had taken great care to find out. But that was just numbers. It didn’t feel like that. In fact she felt old enough to be the girl’s mother. It was strange, but Petulia and Annagramma and the rest of them back in the mountains had all told her the same thing: witches grew old inside. You had to do things that needed doing but which turned your stomach like a spinning wheel. You saw things sometimes that no one should have to see. And, usually alone and often in darkness, you needed to do the things that had to be done. Out in distant villages, when a new mother was giving birth and things had run into serious trouble, you hoped that there was an old local midwife who might at least give you some moral support; but still, when it came down to it and the life-or-death decision had to be made, then it was made by you, because you were the witch. And sometimes it wasn’t a decision between a good thing and a bad thing, but a decision between two bad things: no right choices, just … choices.

And now she saw something speeding over the moonlit turf and easily keeping up with the stick. It kept pace for several minutes and then, with a spinning jump, headed back into the moon-light shadows.

The hare runs into the fire, Tiffany thought, and I have a feeling that I do too.