I Shall Wear Midnight

‘Why are witches so unpopular at the moment?’ asked Tiffany.

‘It’s amazing the ideas people get into their heads sometimes,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Generally speaking, I find it best just to keep your head down and wait until the problem goes away. You just need to be careful.’

And Tiffany thought that she did indeed need to be careful. ‘Mrs Proust,’ she said. ‘I think I know the joke by now.’

‘Yes, dear?’

‘I thought you were a real witch disguising herself as a fake witch …’

‘Yes, dear?’ said Mrs Proust, her voice like treacle.

‘Which would be quite amusing, but I think there’s another joke, and it’s not really very funny.’

‘Oh, and what would that be, dear?’ said Mrs Proust in a voice which now had sugary gingerbread cottages in it.

Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘That really is your face, isn’t it? The masks you sell are masks of you.’

‘Well spotted! Well spotted, my dear! Only, you didn’t spot it exactly, did you? You felt it, when you shook hands with me. And— But come on now, we’ll get your broomstick over to those dwarfs.’

When they stepped outside, the first thing Tiffany saw was a couple of boys. One of them was poised to throw a stone at the shop window. He spotted Mrs Proust and a sort of dreadful silence descended. Then the witch said, ‘Throw it, my lad.’

The boy looked at her as if she was mad.

‘I said throw it, my lad, or the worst will happen.’

Clearly assuming now that she was mad, the boy threw the stone, which the window caught and threw back at him, knocking him to the ground. Tiffany saw it. She saw the glass hand come out of the glass and catch the stone. She saw it throw the stone back. Mrs Proust leaned over the boy, whose friend had taken to his heels, and said, ‘Hmm, it will heal. It won’t if I ever see you again.’ She turned to Tiffany. ‘Life can be very difficult for the small shopkeeper,’ she said. ‘Come on, it’s this way.’

Tiffany was a bit nervous about how to continue the conversation and so she opted for something innocent, like, ‘I didn’t know there were any real witches in the city.’

‘Oh, there’s a few of us,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Doing our bit, helping people when we can. Like that little lad back there, who will now have learned to mind his own business and it does my heart good to think that I may have dissuaded him from a lifetime of vandalism and disrespect for other people’s property that would, you mark my words, have resulted in him getting a new collar courtesy of the hangman.’

‘I didn’t know you could be a witch in the city,’ said Tiffany. ‘I was told once that you need good rock to grow witches, and everyone says the city is built on slime and mud.’

‘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.