《I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT》vernon

6、THE COMING OF THE CUNNING MAN TIFFA

　　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 twentyyears, 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 cauldron 17 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.
　　Tiffany concentrated, feeling the man’s back through his thin vest and – yes, there it was, a jumping bone.
　　She stepped across to the horses, whispering a word into each fly-flicking ear, just to be on the safe side. Then she went back to Mr Carpetlayer, who was waiting obediently, not daring to move. As she rolled up her sleeves, he said, ‘You’re not going to turn me into anything unnatural, are you, miss? I wouldn’t want to be a spider. Mortally afraid of spiders, and all my clothes are made for a man with two legs.’
　　‘Why in the world would you think I’d turn you into anything, Mr
　　Carpetlayer?’ said Tiffany, gently running her hand down his spine.
　　‘Well, saving your honour’s presence, miss, I thought that’s what witches do, miss –
　　nasty things, miss, earwigs and all that.’
　　‘Who told you that?’
　　‘Can’t rightly say,’ said the coachman. ‘It’s just sort of … you know, what everybody knows.’
　　Tiffany placed her fingers carefully, found the jumping bone, said, ‘This might smart a little,’ and pushed the bone back into place. The coachman screamed again.
　　His horses tried to bolt, but their legs were not doing business as usual, not with the word still ringing in their ears. Tiffany had felt ashamed at the time, a year ago, when she had acquired the knowing of the horseman’s word; but then again, the old blacksmith she had helped to his death, with kindness and without pain, well, he had felt ashamed that he had nothing with which

　　to pay her for her painstaking work, and you had to pay the witch, the same as you had to pay the ferryman, and so he had whispered into her ear the horseman’s word, which gave you the control of any horse that heard it. You couldn’t buy it,you couldn’t sell it, but you could give it away
　　and still keep it, and even if it’d been made of lead it would have been worth its weight in gold. The former owner had whispered in her ear, ‘I promised to tell no man the word, and I ain’t!’ And he was chuckling as he died, his sense of humour being somewhat akin to that of Mr Carpetlayer.
　　Mr Carpetlayer was also pretty heavy, and had slipped gently down the side of the coach

　　and—

　　‘Why are you torturing that old man,you evil witch? Can you not see that he’s in

　　dreadful pain?’
　　Where had he come from? A shouting man, his face white with fury, his clothes as dark
　　as an unopened cave or – and the word came to Tiffany suddenly– as a crypt. There had been no one around, she was sure of it, and no one on either side except the occasional farmer watching the stubbles burn as they cleared the land.
　　But his face was now a few inches from hers. And he was real, not some kind of monster, because monsters don’t usually have little blobs of spittle on their lapel. And then she noticed – he stank. She’d never smelled anything so bad. It was physical, like an iron bar, and it seemed to her that she wasn’t smelling it with her nose, but with her mind. A foulness that made the
　　average privy as fragrant as a rose.
　　‘I’m asking you politely to step back, please,’ said Tiffany. ‘I think you might have got hold of the wrong idea.’
　　‘I assure you, fiendish creature, that I have only the right idea! And that is to return you to the miserable and stinking hell from which you spawned!’
　　All right, a madman, thought Tiffany, but if he—
　　Too late. The man’s waggling finger got too close to her nose, and suddenly the empty road contained a lifetime’s supply of Nac Mac Feegles. The man in black flailed at them, but that sort of thing does not work very well with a Feegle. He did manage, despite the Feegle
　　onslaught, to shout, ‘ Be gone, nefarious imps!’
　　Every Feegle head turned hopefully when they heard this. ‘Oh aye,’ said Rob Anybody.
　　‘If there’s any imps aboot, we are the boys to deal with them! Your move, mister!’ They leaped at him and ended up in a heap on the road behind him, having passed straight through. They automatically punched one another as they staggered up, on the basis that if you’re having a good fight you don’t want to spoil the rhythm.
　　The man in black glanced at them and then paid them no attention whatsoever. Tiffany stared down at the man’s boots. They gleamed in the sunlight, and that was
　　wrong. She had been standing in the dust of the road for only a few minutes and her boots were grey. And there was the ground that the man was standing on, and that was wrong too. Very wrong, on a hot, cloudless day. She glanced at the horses. The word was holding them, but they were trembling with fear, like rabbits in the gaze of a fox. Then she closed her eyes and looked at him with First Sight, and saw. And said, ‘You cast no shadow. I knew something wasn’t right.’
　　And now she looked directly into the man’s eyes, almost hidden under the wide hat brim and … he … had … no eyes. The understanding dawned on her like ice melting … No eyes at all, not ordinary eyes, not blind eyes, no eye sockets … just two holes in his head: she could see right through to the smouldering fields beyond. She didn’t expect what happened next.
　　The man in black glared at her again and hissed, ‘You are the witch. You are the one.

　　Wherever you go, I will find you.’
　　And then he vanished, leaving only a pile of fighting Feegles in the dust.
　　Tiffany felt something on her boot. She looked down, and a hare, which must have fled the burning stubbles, stared back at her. They held each other’s gaze for a second, and then the hare jumped into the air like a leaping salmon and headed off across the road. The world is full of omens and signs; and a witch did indeed have to pick the ones that were important. Where could she begin here?
　　Mr Carpetlayer was still slumped against the coach, totally ignorant of what had just happened. So was Tiffany in a way, but she would find out. She said, ‘You can get up again now, Mr Carpetlayer.’
　　He did so very gingerly, grimacing as he waited for the lightning strokes of agony all down his back. He shifted experimentally, and gave a little jump in the dust, as if he was squashing an ant. That seemed to work, and he tried a second jump and then, throwing his arms out wide, he shouted ‘Yippee!’ and spun like a ballerina. His hat fell off and his hobnailed boots smacked into the dust and Mr Carpetlayer was a very happy man as he twirled and hopped, very nearly turned a cartwheel, and when it turned out to be about half a cartwheel, he rolled back onto his feet, picked up the astonished Tiffany and danced her along the road, shouting, ‘One
　　two three, one two three, one two three,’ until she managed to shake herself loose, laughing. ‘Me
　　and the wife is going to go out tonight,young lady, and we are going to go waltzing!’
　　‘But I thought that led to depraved behaviour?’ said Tiffany. The coachman winked at her. ‘Well, we can but hope!’ he said.
　　‘You don’t want to overdo it, Mr Carpetlayer,’ she warned.
　　‘As a matter of fact, miss, I rather think I do, if it’s all the same to you. After all the creaking and groaning and not sleeping hardly at all, I think I would like to overdo it a little, or if possible a lot! Oh, what a good girl to think of the horses,’ he added. ‘That shows a kind nature.’
　　‘I am pleased to see you in such fine spirits, Mr Carpetlayer.’
　　The coachman did a little twirl in the middle of the road. ‘I feel twentyyears younger!’ He beamed at her, and then his face clouded just a little. ‘Er … how much do I owe you?’
　　‘How much will the damage to the paintwork cost me?’ said
　　Tiffany.
　　They looked at one another, and then Mr Carpetlayer said, ‘Well, I can’t ask you for anything, miss, given that it was me that busted the mirror ball.’
　　A little tinkling sound made Tiffany look behind them, where the mirror ball, apparently
　　unharmed, was spinning gently and, if you looked carefully, just above the dirt.
　　She knelt down on a road totally free of broken glass and said, apparently to nothing at all, ‘Did you stick it back together again?’
　　‘Oh aye,’ said Rob Anybody happily from behind the ball.
　　‘But it was smashed to smithereens!’
　　‘Oh aye, but a smithereen is easy,ye ken. See, the tinier bits are, the more they all fit together again. Ye just hae to give them a little push and the wee molly cules remembers where they should be and they sticks together again, nae problemo! Ye dinnae have to act surprised, we dinnae just smash things.’
　　Mr Carpetlayer stared at her. ‘Did you do that, miss?’
　　‘Well, sort of,’ said Tiffany.
　　‘Well I should say so!’ said Carpetlayer, all smiles. ‘So I says quid pro quo, give and take, knock for knock, tit for tat, one thing for another, an eye for an eye and me for you.’ He

　　winked. ‘I’ll say it worked out even, and the company can put their paperwork where the monkey put his jumper – what you say to that, eh?’ He spat on his hand and held it out.
　　Oh dear, thought Tiffany, a handshake with spit seals an unbreakable accord; thank
　　goodness I have a reasonably clean handkerchief.
　　She nodded speechlessly. And there had been a broken ball, and now it appeared to have mended itself. The day was hot, a man with holes where his eyes should be had vanished into nothing … Where would you even begin? Some days you trimmed toenails, removed splinters and sewed up legs, and some days were days like this.
　　They shook hands, rather damply, the broomstick was shoved among the bundles behind the driver, Tiffany climbed up alongside him, and the journey continued, dust rising up from the road as it passed and forming strangely unpleasant shapes until it settled down again.
　　After a while Mr Carpetlayer said, in a careful kind of voice, ‘Er, that black hat you’ve got on, are you going to carry on wearing it?’
　　‘That’s right.’
　　‘Only, well,you are wearing a nice green dress and, if I may say so,your teeth are lovely and white.’ The man seemed to be wrestling with a problem.
　　‘I clean them with soot and salt every day. I can recommend it,’ said Tiffany.
　　It was turning into a difficult conversation. The man seemed to reach a conclusion. ‘So you are not really a witch then?’ he said hopefully.
　　‘Mr Carpetlayer, are you scared of me?’
　　‘That’s a scary question, miss.’
　　Actually it is, Tiffany thought. Aloud, she said, ‘Look, Mr Carpetlayer, what’s this all about?’
　　‘Well, miss, since you ask, there have been some stories lately. You know, about babies being stolen, that sort of thing. Kids running off and that.’ He brightened up a bit. ‘Still, I expect those were wicked old … you know, with, like, hooked noses, warts and evil black dresses – not nice girls like you. Yes, that’s just the sort of thing they would do!’ Having sorted out that conundrum to his satisfaction, the coachman said little for the rest of the journey, although he did whistle a lot.
　　Tiffany, on the other hand, sat quietly. For one thing, she was now very worried, and for another thing she could just about hear the voices of the Feegles back among the mail bags, reading other people’s letters to each other. 18 She had to hope that they were putting them back in the right envelopes.
　　The song went: ‘Ankh-Morpork! It’s a wonderful town! The trolls are up and the dwarfs are down! Slightly better than living in a hole in the ground! Ankh-Morpork! It’s a wonderfuuuuuulllll townnn!’
　　It wasn’t, really.
　　Tiffany had only been there once before and didn’t like the big city very much. It stank, and there were too many people, and far too many places. And the only green was on the surface of the river, which could only be called mud because a more accurate word would not have been printable.
　　The coachman pulled up outside one of the main gates, even though they were open.
　　‘If you take my advice, miss,you’ll take your hat off and walk in byyourself. That broomstick looks like firewood now, in any case.’ He gave her a nervous grin. ‘Best of luck, miss.’
　　‘Mr Carpetlayer,’ she said loudly, aware of people around her. ‘I do hope that when you

　　hear people talk about witches,you will mention that you met one and she made your back better
　　– and, may I suggest, saved your livelihood. Thank you for the ride.’
　　‘Oh well, I’ll definitely tell people I met one of the good ones,’ he said.
　　With her head held high, or at least as high as is appropriate when you are carrying your own damaged broomstick over your shoulder, Tiffany walked into the city. The pointy hat got one or two glances, and perhaps a couple of frowns, but mostly people didn’t look at her at all; in the country, everyone you meet is someone you know or a stranger worth investigating, but here it seemed there were so many people that it was a waste of time even to look at them at all, and possibly dangerous in any case.
　　Tiffany bent down. ‘Rob,you know Roland, the Baron’s son?’
　　‘Ach, the wee streak o’ nothing,’ said Rob Anybody.
　　‘Well, nevertheless,’ said Tiffany, ‘I know you can find people and I would like you to go and find him for me now please.’
　　‘Would you no’ mind if we had just the one wee drink while we are looking?’ said Rob Anybody. ‘A man could drown o’ thirst around here. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t bogging for a wee dram or ten.’
　　Tiffany knew that it would be foolish to say either yes or no and settled for, ‘Just the one then. When you’ve found him.’
　　There was the faintest of whooshing noises behind her, and no more Feegles. Still, they would be easy to find; you just had to listen for breaking glass. Oh yes, breaking glass that repaired itself. Another mystery: she had looked at the mirror ball very carefully as they put it back in its box, and there hadn’t been even a scratch on it.
　　She glanced up at the towers of Unseen University, crammed with wise men in pointy hats, or at least men in pointy hats, but there was another address, well known to witches, which was in its own way just as magical: Boffo’s Joke Emporium, number four, Tenth Egg Street. She had never been there, but she did get a catalogue occasionally.
　　People started to notice her more when she got off the main streets and made her way through the neighbourhoods, and she could feel eyeballs on her as she walked over the cobbles. People weren’t angry or unfriendly as such. They were just … watching, as if wondering what to make of her, and she had to hope that it was not, for example, stew.
　　There wasn’t a bell on the door of Boffo’s Joke Emporium. There was a whoopee cushion, and for most of the people who came to buy things in the emporium, a whoopee cushion, perhaps in conjunction with a generous dollop of fake sick, was the last word in entertainment, which indeed it is, unfortunately.
　　But real witches often needed boffo too. There were times when you had to look like a witch, and not every witch was good at it and was just too busy to get her hair in a mess. So Boffo’s was where you bought your fake warts and wigs, stupidly heavy cauldrons and artificial skulls. And, with any luck,you might get the address of a dwarf who could help you repair your broomstick.
　　Tiffany stepped inside and admired the deep-throated farting of the whoopee cushion, pushed her way round and more or less through a ludicrous fake skeleton with glowing red eyes, and reached the counter, at which point somebody blew a squeaker at her. It disappeared, to be replaced by the face of a small, worried-looking man, who said, ‘Did you by any chance find that even remotely amusing?’
　　His voice suggested that he expected the answer to be ‘no’ and Tiffany saw no reason to disappoint him. ‘Absolutely not,’ she said.

　　The man sighed and pushed the unfunny squeaker down the counter. ‘Alas, no one ever does,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I’m doing something wrong somewhere. Oh well, what can I do for you, miss—Oh – you are a real one, aren’t you? I can always tell,you know!’
　　‘Look,’ said Tiffany, ‘I’ve never ordered anything from you, but I used to work with
　　Miss Treason, who …’
　　But the man wasn’t listening to her. Instead he was shouting at a hole in the floor.
　　‘Mother? We’ve got a real one!’
　　A few seconds later, a voice by Tiffany’s ear said, ‘Derek is sometimes mistaken and you might have found the broomstick. You are a witch, aren’t you? Show me!’
　　Tiffany vanished. She did it without thinking – or, rather, thinking so fast that her thoughts had no time to wave to her as they flashed by. Only when the man, who was apparently Derek, was staring open-mouthed at nothing at all did she realize that she had faded into the foreground so quickly because disobeying that voice behind her would definitely be an unwise thing to do. A witch was standing behind her: most definitely a witch, and a skilled one too.
　　‘Very good,’ said the voice approvingly. ‘Very good indeed,young woman. I can still see you, of course, because I was watching very carefully. My word, a real one.’
　　‘I’m going to turn round,you know,’ Tiffany warned.
　　‘I don’t recall saying that you couldn’t, my dear.’
　　Tiffany turned round and was faced with the witch of nightmares: battered hat,
　　wart-encrusted nose, claw-like hands, blackened teeth and – Tiffany looked down – oh yes, big black boots. You did not have to be very familiar with Boffo’s catalogue to see that the speaker was wearing the full range of cosmetics in the ‘Hag in a Hurry’ range (‘Because you’re Worthless’ ).
　　‘I think we should continue this conversation in my workshop,’ said the horrible hag, disappearing into the floor. ‘Just stand on the trapdoor when it comes back up, will you? Make some coffee, Derek.’
　　When Tiffany arrived in the basement, the trapdoor working wonderfully smoothly, she found what you would expect in the workshop of the company that made everything needed by a witch who felt she needed some boffo in her life. Rows of rather scary hag masks were hanging on a line, benches were full of brightly coloured bottles, racks of warts had been laid out to dry, and various things that went bloop were doing so in a big cauldron by the fireplace. It was a proper cauldron too. 19
　　The horrible hag was working at a bench, and there was a terrible cackle. She turned
　　round, holding a small square wooden box with a piece of string sticking out of it. ‘First-class cackle, don’t you think? A simple thread and resin arrangement with a sounding board because, quite frankly, cackling is a bit of a pain in the neck, don’t you think? I believe I can make it work by clockwork too. Let me know when you’ve seen the joke.’
　　‘Who are you?’ Tiffany burst out.
　　The hag had put the box on her workbench. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘where are my manners?’
　　‘I don’t know,’ said Tiffany, who was getting a bit fed up. ‘Perhaps the clockwork has run down?’
　　The hag grinned a black-toothed grin. ‘Ah, sharpness. I like that in a witch, but not too
　　much.’ She held out a claw. ‘Mrs Proust.’
　　The claw was less clammy than Tiffany had expected. ‘Tiffany Aching,’ she said. ‘How do you do?’ Feeling that something further was expected of her, Tiffany added, ‘I used to work with Miss Treason.’

　　‘Oh yes, a fine witch,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘And a good customer. Very keen on her warts and skulls, as I recall.’ She smiled. ‘And since I doubt that you want to get hagged up for a girls’ night out, I must assume you need my help? The fact that your broomstick has about half the bristles needed for aerodynamic stability confirms my initial surmise. Incidentally, have you seen the joke yet?’
　　What should she say? ‘I think so …’
　　‘Go on then.’
　　‘I’m not going to say until I’m sure,’ said Tiffany.
　　‘Very wise,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Well, let’s get your broomstick mended, shall we? It will mean a little stroll, and if I was you I would leave your black hat behind.’
　　Instinctively Tiffany grabbed at the brim of her hat. ‘Why?’
　　Mrs Proust frowned, causing her nose to very nearly catch her chin. ‘Because you might find … No, I know what we can do.’ She rummaged on the workbench and, without asking any permission, stuck something on Tiffany’s hat, right at the back. ‘There,’ she said. ‘No one will take any notice now. Sorry, but witches are a little bit unpopular at the moment. Let’s get that stick of yours repaired as soon as possible, just in case you need to leave in a hurry.’
　　Tiffany pulled off her hat and looked at what Mrs Proust had stuck in the hat band. It was a brightly coloured piece of cardboard on a string and it said: Apprentice witch hat with evil glitter. Size 7. Price: AM$2.50. Boffo! A name to conjure with!!!
　　‘What’s all this?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve even sprinkled evil glitter on it.’
　　‘It’s a disguise,’ said Mrs Proust.
　　‘What? Do you think any self-respecting witch would walk down the street wearing a hat like this?’ said Tiffany angrily.
　　‘Of course not,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘The best disguise for a witch is a rather cheap witch’s outfit! Would a real witch buy clothes from a shop that also does a pretty good trade in naughty Fido jokes, indoor fireworks, laughable pantomime wigs and – our best and most profitable line
　　– giant inflatable pink willies, suitable for hen nights? That would be unthinkable! It’s boffo, my dear, pure, unadulterated boffo! Disguise, subterfuge and misdirection are our watchwords. All watchwords. And, Amazing value for money, they’re our watchwords too. No refunds under any circumstances, they’re important watchwords. As is our policy of dealing terminally with shoplifters. Oh, and we also have a watchword about people smoking in the shop, although that’s not a very important word.’
　　‘What?’ said Tiffany who, out of shock, had not heard the list of watchwords because she
　　was staring at the pink ‘balloons’ hanging from the ceiling. ‘I thought they were piglets!’ Mrs Proust patted her hand. ‘Welcome to life in the big city, my dear. Shall we go?’
　　‘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.
　　Tiffany’s stick had been left to her by Miss Treason. It was uncomfortable and not very fast and had the occasional habit of going backwards when it rained, and when the dwarf who was in charge of the clanging, echoing workshop saw it, he shook his head and made a sucking noise through his teeth, as if the sight of the thing had really spoiled his day, and he might have to go away and have a little cry.
　　‘Well, it’s elm, isn’t it,’ he said to an uncaring world in general. ‘It’s a lowland wood,your elm, heavy and slow, and of course there’s your beetles to consider. Very prone to beetles,your elm. Struck by lightning, was it? Not a good wood for lightning,your elm. Attracts it, so they say. Tendency to owls as well.’
　　Tiffany nodded and tried to look knowledgeable; she had made up the lightning strike, because the truth, while a valuable thing, was just too stupid, embarrassing and unbelievable.
　　Another, and almost identical, dwarf materialized behind his colleague. ‘Should have gone for ash.’
　　‘Oh yes,’ said the first dwarf gloomily. ‘Can’t go wrong with ash.’ He prodded Tiffany’s broomstick and sighed again.
　　‘Looks like it’s got the start of bracket fungus in the base joint,’ the second dwarf suggested.
　　‘Wouldn’t be surprised at anything, with your elm,’ said the first dwarf.
　　‘Look, can you just patch it up enough to get me home?’ Tiffany asked.
　　‘Oh, we don’t “patch things up”,’ said the first dwarf loftily or, rather, metaphorically loftily. ‘We do a bespoke service.’
　　‘I just need a few bristles,’ said Tiffany desperately, and then, because she forgot she hadn’t been going to admit to the truth, ‘Please? It wasn’t my fault the Feegles set fire to the broomstick.’
　　Up until that point, there had been quite a lot of background noises in the dwarf workshop as dozens of dwarfs had been working away on their own benches and not taking much heed of the discussion, but now there was a silence, and in that silence a single hammer dropped to the floor.
　　The first dwarf said, ‘When you say Feegles,you don’t mean NacMac Feegles, do you,

　　miss?’

　　‘That’s right.’
　　‘The wild ones? Do they say … Crivens ?’ he asked very slowly.
　　‘Practically all the time,’ said Tiffany. She thought she ought to make things clear and

　　added, ‘They are my friends.’
　　‘Oh, are they?’ said the dwarf. ‘And are any of your little friends here at this moment?’
　　‘Well, I told them to go and find a young man of my acquaintance,’ said Tiffany, ‘but they are probably in a pub by now. Are there many pubs in the city?’
　　The two dwarfs looked at one another. ‘About three hundred, I should say,’ said the second dwarf.

　　‘That many?’ said Tiffany. ‘Then I don’t expect they’ll come looking for me for at least half an hour.’
　　And suddenly the first dwarf was all frantic good humour. ‘Well, where are our
　　manners?’ he said. ‘Anything for a friend of Mrs Proust! Tell you what: it will be our pleasure to give you our express service gratis and for nothing, including free bristles and creosote at no charge whatsoever!’
　　‘Express service meaning you leave straight away afterwards,’ said the second dwarf flatly. He took off his iron helmet, wiped the sweat off the inside with his handkerchief and put it back on his head quickly.
　　‘Oh yes, indeed,’ said the first dwarf. ‘Right away; that’s what express means.’
　　‘Friends with the Feegles, are you?’ said Mrs Proust as the dwarfs hurried to deal with Tiffany’s broomstick. ‘They don’t have many, I understand. But talking of friends,’ she continued in a suddenly chatty tone, ‘you did meet Derek, didn’t you? He’s my son,you know. I met his father in a dance hall with very bad lighting. Mr Proust was a very kind man who was always gracious enough to say that kissing a lady without warts was like eating an egg without salt. He passed on twenty-five years ago, of the crisms. I am very sorry I couldn’t help him.’ Her face brightened. ‘But I’m glad to say that young Derek is the joy of my’ – she hesitated –
　　‘middle age. A wonderful lad, my dear. It’s going to be some lucky girl who takes her chance on
　　young Derek, I can tell you. He’s totally devoted to his work and pays such attention to detail. Do you know, he tunes all the whoopee cushions every morning and frets if any of them are wrong. And conscientious? When we were developing our forth-coming “Pearls of the Pavement” hilarious artificial dog poo collection, he must have spent weeks following just about every type of dog in the city with a notebook, a scoop and a colour chart, just to get everything exactly right. A very meticulous lad, clean in his ways, with all his own teeth. And very careful about his company …’ She gave Tiffany a hopeful but rather sheepish look. ‘This isn’t working, is it?’
　　‘Oh dear, did it show?’ said Tiffany.
　　‘I heard the spill words,’ said Mrs Proust.
　　‘What’s a spill word?’
　　‘You don’t know? A spill word is a word that somebody almost says, but doesn’t. For a moment they hover in the conversation but aren’t spoken – and may I say that in the case of my son Derek, it is as well that you didn’t say them aloud.’
　　‘I’m really very sorry,’ said Tiffany.
　　‘Yes, well, be told,’ said Mrs Proust.
　　Five minutes later, they walked out of the workshop with Tiffany towing a fully functional broomstick behind her.
　　‘Actually,’ said Mrs Proust as they walked, ‘now I come to think about it,your Feegles remind me a lot of Wee Mad Arthur. Tough as nails and about the same size. Haven’t heard him say “Crivens”, though. He’s a policeman in the Watch.’
　　‘Oh dear, the Feegles really don’t like policemen,’ said Tiffany, but she felt she ought to balance this somewhat, so she added, ‘But they are very loyal, mostly helpful, good-natured in the absence of alcohol, honourable for a given value of honour and, after all, they did introduce the deep-fried stoat to the world.’
　　‘What’s a stoat?’ said Mrs Proust.
　　‘Well, er … you know a weasel? It’s very much like a weasel.’
　　Mrs Proust raised her eyebrows. ‘My dear, I treasure my ignorance of stoats and weasels.

　　Sounds like countryside stuff to me. Can’t abide countryside. Too much green makes me feel bilious,’ she said, giving Tiffany’s dress a shuddering glance.
　　At which point, on some celestial cue, there was a distant cry of ‘Crivens!’ followed by
　　the ever-popular sound, at least to a Feegle, of breaking glass.
　　17 A message from the author: not all cauldrons are metal. You can boil water in a leather cauldron, if you know what you are doing. You can even make tea in a paper bag if you are careful and know how to do it. But please don’t, or if you do, don’t tell anyone I told you.

　　18 Jeannie, a modern kelda, had encouraged literacy among her sons and brothers. With Rob Anybody’s example to follow, they had found the experience very worthwhile, because now they could read the labels on bottles before they drank them, although this didn’t make too much of a difference, because unless there was a skull and crossbones on it, a Feegle would probably drink it anyway, and even then it would have to be a very scary skull and crossbones.

　　19 Most people who cook with cauldrons use them as a kind of double boiler, with small saucepans filled with water around the edge, picking up the heat of the big cauldron into which perhaps you might put a leg of pork weighted down, and possibly a few dumplings in a bag. This way, quite a large meal for several people can be cooked quite cheaply all in one go, including the pudding. Of course, it meant you had to stomach a lot of boiled food – but eat it up, it’s good for you!