I Shall Wear Midnight

But Jeannie the kelda had been making changes. There was an old chalk pit quite close to the mound, reached by a passageway underground. The kelda had got the boys working on this with bits of corrugated iron and tarpaulin which they had ‘found’ in that very distinctive way they had of ‘finding’ things. It still looked like a typical upland chalk pit, because brambles and Climbing Henry and Twirling Betty vines had been trained over it so that barely a mouse would be able to find its way inside. Water could get in though, dripping down the iron and filling barrels down below; there was a much larger space now for cooking, and even enough room for Tiffany to climb down if she remembered to shout out her name first, when hidden hands pulled strings and opened the way through the impassable brambles as if by magic. The kelda had her own private bathroom down there; the Feegles themselves took a bath only when something reminded them, such as an eclipse of the moon.

Amber was whisked down the hole and Tiffany waited impatiently close to the right spot in the bramble forest until the thorns magically ‘moved aside’.

Jeannie, the kelda, almost as round as a football, was waiting for her, a baby under each arm.

‘I am very pleased to see you, Tiffany,’ she said, and for some reason that sounded odd and out of place. ‘I have told the boys tae go and let off steam outside,’ the kelda went on. ‘This is woman’s work, and not a pretty errand at that, I’m sure ye will agree. They have laid her down by the fire and I have started to put the soothings on her. I do think she will bide fine, but it was a good job that ye have done this night. Your famous Mistress Weatherwax her own self could not have done a better job.’

‘She taught me to take away pain,’ said Tiffany.

‘Ye dinnae say?’ said the kelda, giving Tiffany a strange look. ‘I hope ye never have occasion to regret the day she did ye that … kindness.’

At this point several Feegles appeared down the tunnel that led into the main mound. They looked uneasily from their kelda to their hag, and a very reluctant spokesfeegle said, ‘Not to be barging in or anything, ladies, but we was cooking up a wee late-night snack, and Rob said to ask if the big wee hag would like a wee tasty?’

Tiffany sniffed. There was a definite scent in the air, and it was the kind of scent you get when you have sheep meat in close conjunction with, for example, a roasting pan. All right, she thought, we know they do it, but they might have the good manners not to do it in front of me!

The spokesfeegle must have realized this because, while wringing the edge of his kilt madly with both hands, as a Feegle generally did when he was telling an enormous lie, he added, ‘Weel, I think I did hear that maybe a piece of sheep kind of accidentally fell intae the pan when it was cooking and we tried to drag it oot but — well, ye ken what sheep is like — it panicked and fought back.’ At this point the speaker’s obvious relief at being able to cobble some kind of excuse together led him to attempt greater heights of fiction, and he went on: ‘It is my thinking that it must have been suicidal owing to having nothing to do all day but eat grass.’

He looked hopefully at Tiffany to see if this had worked, just as the kelda cut in sharply and said, ‘Wee Honeymouth Jock, just you go in there and say that the big wee hag would like a mutton sandwich, OK?’ She looked up at Tiffany and said, ‘No arguing, girl. Ye look tae me to be all but swaying for want of a decent hot meal. I ken well that witches looks after everybody but theirselves. Run ye along, boys.’

Tiffany could still feel a tension in the air. The kelda’s solemn little gaze stayed fixed on her, and then Jeannie said, ‘Can you remember yesterday?’

It sounded like a silly question, but Jeannie was never silly. It was worth thinking about, although Tiffany yearned for some suicidal sheep and a decent night’s sleep.