I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett

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.’

‘When your dad comes in, I’ll get him to go and have a word with Billy’s dad,’ said her mother. ‘Billy’s a foot taller than Wentworth but your dad … he’s two foot taller than Billy’s dad. There won’t be any fighting. You know your dad. He’s a calm man, your dad. Never seen him punch a man more than about twice, never has to. He’ll keep people calm. They’ll be calm or else. But something’s not quite right, Tiff. We’re all very proud of you, you know, what you’re doing and everything, but it’s getting to people somehow. They’re saying some ridiculous things. And we’re having difficulties selling the cheeses. And everybody knows you are the best at cheeses. And now, Amber Petty. You think it is right that she is running around there with … them?’

‘I hope so, Mum,’ said Tiffany. ‘But the girl has a very strong mind of her own and, Mum, when it comes right down to it, all I can do is the best that I can.’

Later that night, Tiffany, dozing in her ancient bed, could hear her parents talking very quietly in the room below. And although, of course, witches didn’t cry, she had an overwhelming urge to do so.

11The soil and the salt were an ancient tradition to keep ghosts away. Tiffany had never seen a ghost, so they probably worked, but in any case they worked on the minds of people, who felt better for knowing that they were there, and once you understood that, you understood quite a lot about magic.

12 The Toad had no other name but that of the Toad and had joined the Feegle clan some years previously, and found life in the mound much to be preferred over his former existence as a lawyer or, to be precise, as a lawyer who had got too smart in the presence of a fairy godmother. The kelda had offered several times to turn him back, but he always refused. The Feegles themselves considered him the brains of the outfit since he knew words that were longer than he was.

13 That was to say, from Tiffany’s point of view, that meant a couple of years younger than Tiffany.

14 see Glossary; page 344.

15 She kept to herself any thought about the fact that what they were most good at finding was things that belonged to other people. It was true, though, that the Feegles could hunt like dogs, as well as drink like fish.

16 Tiffany had earned the admiration of other witches by persuading the Feegles to do chores. The unfortunate fact was that Feegles would do any chore, provided it was loud, messy and flamboyant. And, if possible, included screams.

Chapter 6

THE COMING OF THE CUNNING MAN

TIFFANY WAS ANGRY at herself for oversleeping. Her mother actually had to bring her up a cup of tea. But the kelda had been right. She hadn’t been sleeping properly and the ancient but homely bed had just closed around her.

Still, it could have been worse, she told herself as they set off. For example, there could have been snakes on the broomstick. The Feegles had been only too glad, as Rob Anybody put it, to ‘feel the wind beneath their kilts’. Feegles were probably better than snakes, but that was only a guess. They would do things like run from one side of the stick to the other to look at interesting things they were flying over, and on one occasion she glanced over her shoulder to see about ten of them hanging onto the back of the stick or, to put it more precisely, one of them was hanging onto the back of the stick and then one was hanging onto his heels and one was hanging onto his heels, and so on, all the way to the last Feegle. They were having fun, screaming with laughter, their kilts indeed flapping in the wind. Presumably the thrill of it made up for the danger and the lack of a view, or at least, of a view that anyone else would want to look at.

One or two actually did lose their grip on the bristles, floating away and down while waving at their brothers and making Yahoo! noises and generally treating it as a big game. Feegles tended to bounce when they hit the ground, although sometimes they damaged it a little. Tiffany wasn’t worried about their journey home; undoubtedly there would be lots of dangerous creatures prepared to jump out on a little running man, but by the time he got home there would in fact be considerably fewer of them. Actually, the Feegles were – by Feegle standards – pretty well behaved on the flight, and didn’t actually set fire to the broomstick until they were about twenty miles from the city, an incident heralded by Daft Wullie saying ‘Whoops!’ very quietly, and then guiltily trying to conceal the fact that he’d set fire to the bristles by standing in front of the blaze to hide it.

‘You’ve set fire to the broomstick again, haven’t you, Wullie,’ Tiffany stated firmly. ‘What was it that we learned last time? We don’t light fires on the broomstick for no good reason.’

The broomstick began to shake as Daft Wullie and his brothers tried to stamp out the flames. Tiffany searched the landscape below them for something soft and preferably wet to land on.

But it was no use getting angry with Wullie; he lived in a Wullie-shaped world of his own. You had to try thinking diagonally.

‘I just wonder, Daft Wullie,’ she said as the broomstick developed a nasty rattle, ‘if, working together, we might find out why my broomstick is on fire? Do you think it might be something to do with the fact that you are holding a match in your hand?’

The Feegle looked at the match as if he had never seen one before, and then put it behind his back and stared at his feet, which was quite brave of him in the circumstances. ‘Don’t really know, miss.’

‘You see,’ said Tiffany as the wind whipped around them, ‘without enough bristles I can’t steer very well, and we are losing height but still regrettably going quite fast. Perhaps you could help me with this conundrum, Wullie?’

Daft Wullie stuck his little finger in his ear and wiggled it about as if rummaging in his own brain. Then he brightened up. ‘Should we no’ land, miss?’

Tiffany sighed. ‘I would like to do that, Daft Wullie, but, you see, we are going quite fast and the ground is not. What we have in those circumstances is what they call a crash.’

‘I wasnae considering that ye should land in the dirt, miss,’ said Wullie. He pointed down, and added, ‘I was just considering that ye might like to land on that.’

Tiffany followed the line of his pointing finger. There was a long white road below them, and on it, not too far ahead, was something oblong, moving almost as fast as the broomstick itself. She stared, listening to her brain calculating, and then said, ‘We will still have to lose some speed …’

And that was how a smouldering broomstick carrying one terrified witch and about two dozen of the Nac Mac Feegles, holding their kilts out to slow themselves down, landed on the roof of the Lancre-to-Ankh-Morpork parcel express.

The coach had good springs and the driver got the horses back under control quite quickly. There was silence as he climbed down from his seat, while white dust began to settle back on the road. He was a heavy-looking man who winced at every step, and in one hand he held a half-eaten cheese sandwich and in the other an unmistakable length of lead pipe. He sniffed. ‘My supervisor will have to be told. Damage to paintwork, see? Got to do a report when it’s damage to paintwork. I hate reports, never been a man what words come to with ease. Got to do it, though, when it’s damage to paintwork.’ The sandwich and, more importantly, the lead pipe disappeared back into his very large overcoat, and Tiffany was amazed at how happy she felt about that.

‘I really am very sorry,’ she said as the man helped her down from the coach roof.

‘It’s not me, you understand, it’s the paintwork. I tell them, look, I tell them there’s trolls, there’s dwarfs, huh, and you know how they drive, eyes half closed most of the time ’cause of them not liking the sun.’

Tiffany sat still as he inspected the damage and then looked up at her and noticed the pointy hat.

‘Oh,’ he said flatly. ‘A witch. First time for everything, I suppose. Do you know what I’m carrying in here, miss?’

What could be the worst thing? Tiffany thought. She said, ‘Eggs?’

‘Hah,’ said the man. ‘That we should be so lucky. It’s mirrors, miss. One mirror, in point of fact. Not a flat one, either; it’s a ball, they tell me. It’s all packed up very snug and sound, or so they say, not knowing that somebody was going to drop out of the sky on it.’ He didn’t sound angry, just worn out, as if he permanently expected the world to hand him the dirty end of the stick. ‘It was made by the dwarfs,’ he added. ‘They say it cost more than a thousand Ankh-Morpork dollars, and you know what it’s for? To hang up in a dance hall in the city, where they intend to dance the waltz, which a well-brought-up young lady such as you should not know about, on account of the fact, it says in the paper, that it leads to depravity and goings-on.’

‘My word!’ said Tiffany, thinking that something like this was expected of her.

‘Well, I suppose I’d better go and see what the damage is,’ said the driver, laboriously opening the back of the coach. A large box filled quite a lot of the space. ‘It’s mostly packed with straw,’ he said. ‘Give me a hand to get it down, will you? And if it tinkles, we’re both in trouble.’

It turned out not to be as heavy as Tiffany expected. Nevertheless, they lowered it gently onto the road and the coachman rummaged among the straw inside, bringing out the mirror ball, holding it aloft like a rare jewel which, indeed, it resembled. It filled the world with sparkling light, dazzling the eyes and sending beams of flashing rays across the landscape. And at this point the man screamed in pain and dropped the ball, which shattered into a million pieces, filling the sky just for a moment with a million images of Tiffany, while he, curling up, landed on the road, raising more white dust and making little whimpering noises as the glass dropped around him.

In slightly less than an instant, the moaning man was surrounded by a ring of Feegles, armed to whatever teeth they still possessed with claymores, more claymores, bludgeons, axes, clubs and at least one more claymore. Tiffany had no idea where they had been hiding; a Feegle could hide behind a hair.

‘Don’t hurt him,’ she shouted. ‘He wasn’t going to hurt me! He’s very ill! But make yourselves useful and tidy up all this broken glass!’ She crouched down in the road and held the man’s hand. ‘How long have you had jumping bones, sir?’

‘Oh, I’ve been a martyr to them these past twenty years, miss, a martyr,’ the coachman moaned. ‘It’s the jolting of the coach, you see. It’s the suspenders – they don’t work! I don’t think I get more than just one decent night’s sleep in five, miss, and that’s the truth; I have a little snooze, turn over, like you do, and there’s this little click and then it’s agony, believe me.’

Except for a few dots on the edge of sight, there was no one else around apart from, of course, for a bunch of Nac Mac Feegles who, against all common sense, had perfected the art of hiding behind one another.

‘Well, I think I may be able to help you,’ Tiffany said.

Some witches used a shambles to see into the present, and, with any luck, into the future as well. In the smoky gloom of the Feegle mound, the kelda was practising what she called the hiddlins – the things you did and passed on but, on the whole, passed them on as a secret. And she was acutely aware of Amber watching with clear interest. A strange child, she thought. She sees, she hears, she understands. What would we give for a world full of people like her? She had set up the cauldron17 and lit a small fire underneath the leather.

The kelda closed her eyes, concentrated and read the memories of all the keldas who had ever been and would ever be. Millions of voices floated through her brain in no particular order, sometimes soft, never very loud, often tantalizingly beyond her reach. It was a wonderful library of information, except that all the books were out of order and so were all the pages, and there wasn’t an index anywhere. She had to follow threads that faded as she listened. She strained as small sounds, tiny glimpses, stifled cries, currents of meaning pulled her attention this way and that … And there it was, in front of her as if it had always been there, coming into focus.

She opened her eyes, stared at the ceiling for a moment, and said, ‘I look for the big wee hag and what is it that I see?’

She peered forward into the mists of memories old and new, and jerked her head back, nearly knocking over Amber, who said, with interest, ‘A man with no eyes?’

‘Well, I think I may be able to help you, Mr, er …’

‘Carpetlayer, miss. William Glottal Carpetlayer.’

‘Carpetlayer?’ said Tiffany. ‘But you’re a coachman.’

‘Yes, well, there’s a funny story attached to that, miss. Carpetlayer, you see, is my family name. We don’t know how we got it because, you see, none of us have ever laid a carpet!’

Tiffany gave him a kind little smile. ‘And …?’

Mr Carpetlayer gave her a puzzled look. ‘And what? That was the funny story!’ He started to laugh, and screamed again as a bone jumped.

‘Oh yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘Sorry I’m a bit slow.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘And now, sir, I will sort out your bones.’

The coach horses watched with quiet interest as she helped the man up, lending a hand as he took off his huge overcoat (with many a grunt and minor scream) and stood him so that his hands rested on the coach.