《I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT》vernon

8、THE KING’S NECK IFFAN

　　IFFANY WAS WOKEN by the squeak of the cell door opening. She sat up and looked around. Mrs Proust was still asleep, and snoring so hard that her nose wobbled. Correction: Mrs Proust appeared to be asleep. Tiffany liked her, in a wary kind of way, but could she trust her? Sometimes she seemed to almost … read her mind.
　　‘I don’t read minds,’ said Mrs Proust, turning over.
　　‘Mrs Proust!’
　　Mrs Proust sat up and started to pull bits of straw off her dress. ‘I don’t read minds,’ she said, flicking the straw onto the floor. ‘I really have keen, but not supernatural, skills which I have honed to the sharpest of edges, and don’t you forget it, please. I hope to goodness they’re going to give us a cooked breakfast.’
　　‘No problem there – what would ye like us to fetch for ye?’
　　They looked up to see the Feegles sitting on the beam overhead, and dangling their feet happily.
　　Tiffany sighed. ‘If I asked you what you were doing last night, would you lie to me?’
　　‘Absolutely not, on our honour as Feegles,’ said Rob Anybody, with his hand on where he thought his heart was.
　　‘Well, that seems conclusive,’ said Mrs Proust, standing up.
　　Tiffany shook her head and sighed again. ‘No, it’s not quite as simple as that.’ She looked up at the beam and said, ‘Rob Anybody, was the answer you gave me just then truthful?

　　I’m asking you as the hag o’ the hills.’
　　‘Oh aye.’
　　‘And that one?’
　　‘Oh aye.’
　　‘And that one?’
　　‘Oh aye.’
　　‘And that one?’
　　‘Oh … well, only a tiny wee lie,ye ken, hardly a lie, just something that it wouldnae be good for ye tae know.’
　　Tiffany turned to Mrs Proust, who was grinning. ‘The Nac Mac Feegles feel that the truth is so precious that it shouldn’t be waved about too much,’ she said apologetically.
　　‘Ah, people after my own heart,’ said Mrs Proust, and then, remembering herself, she added, ‘If I had one, that is.’
　　There was a sound of heavy boots, which got nearer and no less heavy very quickly, and turned out to belong to a tall and skinny watchman, who touched his helmet politely to Mrs Proust and gave Tiffany a nod.
　　‘Good morning, ladies! My name is Constable Haddock and I have been told to tell you that you’ve been let go with a warning,’ he said. ‘Although I have to tell you that no one quite knows what to warn you about, as far as I can tell, so if I was you, I’d consider myself generally in the situation of being warned, as it were, in a general and generically non-specific way, and hopefully slightly chastened by the experience, no offence meant, I’m sure.’ He coughed, and went on, after giving Mrs Proust a nervous look, ‘And Commander Vimes has asked me to make it clear that the individuals known jointly as the Nac Mac Feegle are to be out of this city by sunset.’
　　There was a chorus of complaints from the Feegles on the beam, who in Tiffany’s opinion were as good at astonished indignation as they were at drunkenness and thievery:
　　‘Och,ye wouldnae pick on us if we was big!’
　　‘It wasnae us! A big boy did it and ran awee!’
　　‘I wasnae there! Ye can ask them! They wasnae there either!’ And otherrr excuses o’ that ilk,ye ken.
　　Tiffany banged her tin plate on the bars until they subsided into silence. Then she said,
　　‘Excuse me, please, Constable Haddock. I’m sure they’re all very sorry about the pub—’ she began, and he waved a hand at her.
　　‘If you’ll take my advice, miss,you would just leave quietly and not talk to anybody about pubs.’
　　‘But look … we all know that they smashed up the King’s Head, and—’
　　The constable stopped her again. ‘I went past the King’s Head this morning,’ he said,
　　‘and it was very definitely not smashed up. In fact, there were crowds of people there. Everyone in the city is going to have a look at it. The King’s Head is just like it’s always been, as far as I can see, with just the one tiny little detail which is, to wit, that it is now back to front.’
　　‘What do you mean, “back to front”?’ said Mrs Proust.
　　‘I mean that it is the wrong way round,’ said the policeman patiently, ‘and when I was over there just now,you can bet they weren’t calling it the King’s Head any more.’
　　Tiffany’s forehead wrinkled. ‘So … they’re calling it the King’s Neck?’
　　Constable Haddock smiled. ‘Well,yes, I can see you are a well-brought-up young lady, miss, because most of the people out there are calling it the King’s—’

　　‘I cannot abide smut!’ said Mrs Proust severely.
　　Really? Tiffany thought. With half a shop window full of pink inflatable wossnames and other mysterious items that I didn’t get a chance to see very clearly? But I suppose it would be a strange world if we were all the same, and especially if we were all the same as Mrs Proust.
　　And overhead she could hear the susurration of the Nac Mac Feegles, with Daft Wullie making more noise than usual. ‘I told ye, didn’t I tell ye, I said this lot is back to front, I said, but no,ye would nae pay heed! I may be daft, but I’m no’ stupid.’
　　The King’s Head, or at least whatever part of the king’s anatomy it now was, was not very far away, but the witches had to push their way through the crowds when they were at least a hundred yards away, and many of the people making up the crowd were holding pint mugs in their hands. Mrs Proust and Tiffany both wore hob-nailed boots, a boon to anyone who must get through a crowd in a hurry and there, in front of them was, for want of a better word – although the Feegles would have used a different word, and indeed the Feegles would not have hesitated to use a different word – was, in fact, the King’s Back, which came as a relief. Standing in front of the back door, which was now doing the duty formerly left to the front door, and handing out
　　mugs of beer with one hand while taking money with the other, was Mr Wilkin, the landlord. He looked like a cat on the day it rained mice.
　　Every now and again he managed to find time in this heroic endeavour to say a few
　　words to a skinny but purposeful-looking lady who was writing things down in a notebook.
　　Mrs Proust nudged Tiffany. ‘See her? That’s Miss Cripslock of The Times, and over there’ – she pointed at a tall man in the uniform of the Watch – ‘see there, the man she’s talking to is Commander Vimes of the City Watch. Decent man, always looks grumpy, won’t stand any nonsense. This is going to be interesting, because he doesn’t like kings of any sort; one of his ancestors chopped off the head of the last king we had.’
　　‘That’s dreadful! Did he deserve it?’
　　Mrs Proust hesitated for a moment, and then said, ‘Well, if it’s true about what they found in his private dungeon, then the answer is “yes” in great big letters. They put the commander’s ancestor on trial anyway, because chopping heads off kings always causes a certain amount of comment, apparently. When the man stood in the dock, all he said was, “Had the beast a hundred heads I would not have rested until I had slain every last one.” Which was taken as a guilty plea. He was hanged, and then much later they put up a statue to him, which
　　tells you more about people than you might wish to know. His nickname was Old Stoneface, and as you can see, it runs in the family.’
　　Tiffany could, and this was because the commander was moving purposefully towards her, his expression that of a man who had a lot of things to do, all of them more important than what he was having to do right now. He gave a respectful little nod to Mrs Proust, and tried unsuccessfully not to glare at Tiffany.
　　‘Did you do this?’
　　‘No, sir!’
　　‘Do you know who did?’
　　‘No, sir!’
　　The commander frowned. ‘Young lady, if a burglar breaks into a house and then comes back later and puts everything back where it was, a crime has still happened, do you understand? And if the building that has been badly damaged, along with its contents, is found next morning looking all shiny and new, albeit facing the wrong way, that too – and therefore those involved – are, nevertheless, still criminals. Except that I have no idea what to call it and quite frankly I

　　would rather be shot of the whole damn business.’
　　Tiffany blinked. She hadn’t heard that last sentence, not exactly heard it, but could remember it anyway. They must have been spill words! She glanced at Mrs Proust, who nodded happily, and in Tiffany’s head there was a little spill word that said ‘yes’.
　　Out loud, Mrs Proust said, ‘Commander, it seems to me that no real harm has been done, given that, if I’m any judge, Mr Wilkin here is doing a roaring trade in the King’s Back and would probably not welcome it becoming the King’s Head again.’
　　‘Too right!’ said the landlord, who was shovelling money into a bag.
　　Commander Vimes was frowning, and Tiffany caught the words that he was almost but not actually saying: ‘No king’s coming back while I’m here!’
　　Mrs Proust butted in again. ‘How about letting it be called the King’s Neck?’ she suggested. ‘Especially since he appears to have dandruff, greasy hair and a big ripe boil?’
　　To Tiffany’s delight, the commander’s face stayed as stony as ever, but she caught a tremble of a spill word that was a triumphant ‘Yes!’ And at that point Mrs Proust, who believed in securing victory by every means at her disposal, chimed in again with, ‘This is AnkhMorpork, Mr Vimes; in the summer the river catches fire and it has been known to rain fish and bedsteads, so, in the great scheme of things, when you think about it, what’s so wrong about a pub spinning on its axis? Most of its customers do the same! How is your little boy, by the way?’
　　This innocent enquiry appeared to floor the commander. ‘Oh! He … oh, I … he’s fine.
　　Oh yes, fine. You were right. All he needed was a fizzy drink and a really big burp. Could I have a word with you in private, Mrs Proust?’ The look he gave Tiffany made it quite clear that
　　‘private’ didn’t include her, so she carefully made her way through the crowds of jolly, and sometimes too jolly, people waiting to have their pictures taken in front of the King’s Neck, and let herself fade into the foreground and listen to Rob Anybody command the troops, who would listen to him when there was nothing better to do.
　　‘All right,’ he said, ‘which one of you scunners decided to paint a real neck on the sign? I’m sure it’s no’ normally done like that.’
　　‘That was Wullie,’ said Big Yan. ‘He reckoned people would think it had always been like that. He is daft,ye ken.’
　　‘Sometimes daft works,’ said Tiffany. She looked around … And there he was, the man with no eyes, walking through the crowd, walking through the crowd, as if they were ghosts, but she could see that they felt his presence in some way; one man brushed his hand across his face, as if feeling the footsteps of a fly; another one slapped at his own ear. But afterwards they were
　　… changed. When their eyes saw Tiffany they narrowed, and the ghostly man headed towards her and the whole of the crowd became one huge frown. And here came the stench, trailing behind him and turning the daylight grey. It was like the bottom of a pond, where things had died and rotted for centuries.
　　Tiffany looked around desperately. The turning of the King’s Head had filled the street with the curious and the thirsty. People were trying to go about their business, but were being hemmed in by the crowd in front and the crowd behind them and, of course, by the people with trays and little carts who swarmed through the city and would try to sell something to anyone who stood still for more than two seconds. She could feel the menace in the air, but in fact it was more than a menace – it was hatred, growing like a plant after rain, and still the man in black came nearer. It scared her. Of course, she had the Feegles with her, but generally speaking the Feegles got you out of trouble by getting you into a different kind of trouble.
　　The ground moved quite suddenly underneath her. There was a metallic scraping noise,

　　and the bottom dropped out of her world, but only by about six feet. As she staggered in the gloom under the pavement, someone pushed past her with a cheerful ‘Excuse me.’ There were more inexplicable metal noises and the round hole now above her head vanished in darkness.
　　‘Real piece of luck there,’ said the polite voice. ‘The only one we’re going to get today, I fancy. Please try not to panic until I have lit the safety lantern. If you want to panic thereafter, that is entirely up to you. Stay close to me and when I say, “Walk as fast as possible while holding your breath,” do so, for the sake of your sanity,your throat, and possiblyyour life. I don’t care if you understand or not – just do it, because we may not have much time.’
　　A match flared. There was a small popping noise and a green-blue glow in the air just in front of Tiffany. ‘Only a bit of marsh gas,’ said the invisible informant. ‘Not too bad, nothing to worry about yet, but stay close, mind you!’
　　The green-blue glow began to move very fast, and Tiffany had to walk quickly to keep up, which was no mean feat, because the ground beneath her boots was, by turns, like gravel, mud or occasionally a liquid of some sort but probably not a sort that you would want to know about. Here and there, in the distance, there were tiny little glows of other mysterious lights, like will-o’-the-wisps you sometimes got over marshy ground.
　　‘Do keep up!’ said the voice ahead of her.
　　Soon Tiffany lost all sense of direction and, for that matter, time.
　　Then there was a click and the figure was outlined against what looked like a perfectly ordinary doorway, except that it was in an arch, and so the door itself came to a point at the top.
　　‘Please be so good as to wipe your feet very thoroughly on the mat just inside; it pays to take precautions down here.’
　　Behind the still shadowy figure, candles were lighting themselves, and now they illuminated someone in heavy, stiff clothing, big boots and a steel helmet on her head – although, as Tiffany watched, the figure carefully lifted the helmet off. She shook out her ponytail, which suggested that she was young, but her hair was white, suggesting that she was old. She was, Tiffany thought, one of those people who picks for themselves a look that suits them and doesn’t get in the way, and never changes it until they die. There were wrinkles too, and Tiffany’s guide had the preoccupied air of somebody who is trying to think of several things at once; and by the look on her face she was trying to think of everything. There was a small table in the room, set with a teapot, cups and a pile of small cupcakes.
　　‘Do come on in,’ said the woman. ‘Welcome. But where are my manners? My name is
　　Miss … Smith, for the moment. I believe Mrs Proust may have mentioned me? And you are in
　　the Unreal Estate, quite possibly the most unstable place in the world. Would you like some tea?’ Things tend to look better when the world has stopped spinning and you have a warm
　　drink in front of you, even if it’s standing on an old packing case.
　　‘I’m sorry it’s not a palace,’ said Miss Smith. ‘I never stay here for more than a few days at a time, but I do need to be close to the University, and to have absolute privacy. This was a little cottage outside the University walls,you see, and the wizards just used to chuck all their waste over: after a while, all the different bits of magical rubbish started to react with one another in what I can only call unpredictable ways. Well, what with talking rats, and people’s eyebrows growing up to six feet long, and shoes walking around by themselves, the people that lived nearby ran away, and so did their shoes. And since there was no one complaining any more, the University simply chucked even more stuff over the wall. Wizards are like cats going to the toilet in that respect; once you’ve walked away from it, it isn’t there any more.
　　‘Of course, it then became a free-for-all, with just about anybody throwing over just

　　about anything and running away very quickly, often pursued by shoes, but not always successfully. Would you like a cupcake? And don’t worry, I bought them off quite a reliable baker tomorrow, so I know they’re fresh, and I pretty much tamed the magic around here a year ago. It wasn’t too hard; magic is largely a matter of balance, but of course you’d know that. Anyway, the upshot is that there is such a magical fog over this place that I doubt if even a god could see into it.’ Miss Smith delicately ate half a cup-cake, and balanced the other half on her saucer. She leaned closer to Tiffany. ‘How did it feel, Miss Tiffany Aching, when you kissed the winter?’
　　Tiffany stared at her for a moment. ‘Look, it was just a peck, OK? Certainly no tongues!’ Then she said, ‘You are the person that Mrs Proust said was going to find me, aren’t you?’
　　‘Yes,’ said Miss Smith. ‘I would hope that is obvious. I could give you a long, complicated lecture,’ she continued brusquely, ‘but I think it would be better if I told you a story. I know you have been taught by Granny Weatherwax, and she will tell you that the world is
　　made up of stories. I had better admit that this one is one of the nasty ones.’
　　‘I am a witch,you know,’ said Tiffany. ‘I have seen nasty things.’
　　‘So you may think,’ said Miss Smith. ‘But for now I want you to picture a scene, more than a thousand years ago, and imagine a man, still quite young, and he is a witchfinder and a book-burner and a torturer, because people older than him who are far more vile than him have told him that this is what the Great God Om wants him to be. And on this day he has found a woman who is a witch, and she is beautiful, astonishingly beautiful, which is rather unusual among witches, at least in those days—’
　　‘He falls in love with her, doesn’t he?’ Tiffany interrupted.
　　‘Of course,’ said Miss Smith. ‘Boy meets girl, one of the greatest engines of narrative causality in the multiverse, or as some people might put it, “It had to happen.” I would like to continue this discourse without interruptions, if you don’t mind?’
　　‘But he is going to have to kill her, isn’t he?’
　　Miss Smith sighed. ‘Since you ask, not necessarily. He thinks that if he rescues her and they can get to the river, then they might have a chance. He is bewildered and confused. He has never had feelings like this before. For the first time in his life, he is really having to think for himself. There are horses not far away. There are a few guards, and some other prisoners, and the air is full of smoke because there is a pile of burning books, which is making people’s eyes water.’
　　Tiffany leaned forward in her seat, listening to the clues, trying to work out the ending in
　　advance.
　　‘There are some apprentices that he is training, and also some very senior members of the Omnian church who have come to watch and bless the proceedings. And finally there are a number of people from the nearby village who are cheering very loudly because it is not them who are going to be killed and generally they don’t get much entertainment. In fact, it’s pretty much another day at the office, except that the girl being tied to the stake by the apprentices has caught his eye and is now watching him very carefully, not saying a word, not even screaming a word, not yet.’
　　‘Does he have a sword?’ asked Tiffany.
　　‘Yes, he does. May I continue? Good. Now, he walks towards her. She is staring at him, not shouting, just watching, and he is thinking … what is he thinking? He is thinking, “Could I take on both of the guards? Will the apprentices obey me?” And then, as he gets nearer, he wonders if they could make it to the horses in all this smoke. And this is a moment eternally

　　frozen in time. Huge events await his decision. One simple deed either way, and history will be different and you are thinking it depends on what he does next. But you see, what he is thinking doesn’t matter, because she knows who he is and what he has done, and the bad things that he has done and is famous for, and as he walks towards her, uncertain, she knows him for what he is, even if he wishes he wasn’t, and reaches with both hands smoothly through the wicker basket they’ve put around her to keep her upright, and grabs him, and holds him tight as the torch drops down onto the oily wood and the flames spring up. She never takes her eyes off him, and never loosens her grip … Would you like a fresh cup of tea?’
　　Tiffany blinked away smoke and flames and shock. ‘And how do you know so much about it, please?’ she said.
　　‘I was there.’
　　‘A thousand years ago?’
　　‘Yes.’
　　‘How did you get there?’
　　‘I walked,’ said Miss Smith. ‘But that is not the point. The point is that then was the death – and birth – of the thing we call the Cunning Man. And he was still a man, to begin with. He was terribly injured, of course. For quite some time. And witchfinding went on – oh my word, didn’t it just. You couldn’t tell who the other witchfinders feared most: the witches, or the wrath of the Cunning Man if they didn’t find him the witches he demanded and believe me, with the Cunning Man on your heels,you will find as many witches as he wants, oh yes.
　　‘And the Cunning Man himself could always find witches. It was quite amazing. You would have some quiet little village where everybody got on reasonably well and no one had noticed any witches at all. But when the Cunning Man arrived, suddenly there were witches everywhere, but unfortunately not for very long. He believed that witches were the reason for
　　just about everything bad that happened, and that they stole babies and caused wives to run away from their husbands, and milk to go sour. I think my favourite one was that witches went to sea
　　in eggshells in order to drown honest sailors.’ At this point Miss Smith held up a hand. ‘No, don’t say that it would be impossible for even a small witch to get inside an eggshell without crushing it, because that is what we in the craft would call a logical argument and therefore no one who wanted to believe that witches sank ships would pay any attention to it.
　　‘It couldn’t go on, of course. People can be very stupid, and people can be easily frightened, but sometimes you find people who aren’t that stupid and aren’t that fearful, and so the Cunning Man is thrust out of the world. Thrown out like the rubbish he is.
　　‘But that wasn’t the end of him. So great, so fearsome was his hatred for anything that he thought of as witchcraft that he somehow managed to live on despite finally having no body. Though there was no skin to him, no bone any more, his rage was such that he lived on. As a ghost, perhaps. And, every so often, finding someone who would let him in. There are plenty of people out there whose poisonous minds will open for him. And there are those who would
　　rather be behind evil than in front of it, and one of them wrote for him the book known as The
　　Bonfire of the Witches.
　　‘But when he takes over a body– and believe me, in the past, there are those unpleasant people who have thought that their terrible ambitions would be furthered by allowing him to do so – the owner of the body soon finds they have no control at all. They become a part of him too. And not until it is too late do they realize that there is no escape, no release. Except death …’
　　‘Poison goes where poison’s welcome,’ said Tiffany. ‘But it looks as though it can push its way in, welcome or not.’

　　‘I’m sorry,’ said Miss Smith, ‘but I will say “Well done.” You are as good as they say. There really is nothing physical now to the Cunning Man. Nothing you can see. Nothing you can possess. And while he often kills those who have been so generous in their hospitality, he nevertheless still appears to thrive. Without a body to call his own, he drifts on the wind and, I suppose, sleeps in some way. And if he does, I know what he dreams of. He dreams of a
　　beautiful young witch, the most powerful of all the witches. And he thinks of her with such hatred that, according to elasticated string theory, it goes all the way round the universe and comes back from a different direction so that it seems to be a kind of love. And he wants to see her again. In which case, she will almost certainly die.
　　‘Some witches – real flesh and blood witches – have tried to fight him and have won. And sometimes they tried, and died. And then one day, a girl called Tiffany Aching, because of her disobedience, kissed the winter. Which, I have to say, no one has ever done before. And the Cunning Man woke up.’ Miss Smith put down her cup. ‘As a witch,you know you must have no fear?’
　　Tiffany nodded.
　　‘Well, Tiffany,you must make a place for fear, fear under control. We think that the head is important, that the brain sits like a monarch on the throne of the body. But the body is
　　powerful too, and the brain cannot survive without it. If the Cunning Man takes over your body, I
　　don’t think you would be able to fight him. He would be like nothing you have met before. To be caught will be, ultimately, to die. What is worse, to be his creature. In which case, death will be a longed-for release. And there you have it, Miss Tiffany Aching. He wakes up, he drifts, he looks for her. He looks for you.’
　　‘Well, at least we’ve found her,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘She’s somewhere in that festering midden.’
　　The Feegles stood with their mouths open in front of the bubbling, suppurating mess of the Unreal Estate. Mysterious things plopped, spun and exploded under the debris.
　　‘It will be certain death to go in there,’ said Wee Mad Arthur. ‘Certain death! You’ll be doomed.’
　　‘Oh aye, we’re all doomed sooner or later,’ said Rob Anybody jovially. He sniffed.
　　‘What the heel is that stink?’
　　‘Sorry, Rob, that was me,’ said Daft Wullie.
　　‘Ach no, I ken your smell,’ Rob said. ‘But I ken I smelled it before. It was that walking gawky that we smelled on the road. Ye ken? All in black. Very lacking in the eyeball department. Bad cess to him, and bad cess he smelled. And I recollect he used very bad words about oor big wee hag. My Jeannie said we must stay close to the big wee hag and I reckon this scunner needs a bath.’
　　Wee Mad Arthur precipitated matters. ‘Weel, Rob,ye going in there is against the law,ye ken?’ He pointed to an ancient and half-melted sign on which, just readable, were the words: ACCESS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. BY ORDER.
　　Rob Anybody stared at it. ‘Ach, now you give me nae choice at all,’ he said, ‘and you made me remember that we’re all dead already.20Charge!’
　　There were dozens of questions that Tiffany could ask but the one struggling to the top was: ‘What will happen if the Cunning Man catches up with me?’
　　Miss Smith stared at the ceiling for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose from his point of view, it will be rather like a wedding. From your point of view, it will be exactly like being dead. No, worse, because you will be inside, looking out at what he can do with all your powers and all

　　your skills to all the people that you know. Did we have the last cupcake?’ I’m not going to show any fear, said Tiffany to herself.
　　‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said Miss Smith out loud.
　　Tiffany leaped off the chair in a rage. ‘Don’t you dare do that, Miss Smith!’
　　‘I’m sure there was one more cupcake,’ said Miss Smith, and then added, ‘That’s the spirit, Miss Tiffany Aching.’
　　‘You know, I did defeat a hiver. I can look after myself.’
　　‘And your family? And everybodyyou know? From an attack that they won’t even know is happening? You don’t understand. The Cunning Man isn’t a man, although he was once, and now he’s not even a ghost. He is an idea. Unfortunately he is an idea whose time has come.’
　　‘Well, at least I know when he’s near me,’ Tiffany said thoughtfully. ‘There’s a dreadful stink. Even worse than the Feegles.’
　　Miss Smith nodded. ‘Yes, it’s coming from his mind. It’s the smell of corruption – corruption of thinking and of action. Your mind picks it up and doesn’t know what to do with it, so it files it under “stink”. All the magically inclined can smell it; but when people encounter it, it changes them, makes them a little bit like him. And so trouble follows wherever he goes.’
　　And Tiffany knew exactly what kind of trouble she meant, even though her memories shot her back in time to before the Cunning Man had woken again.
　　In her mind’s eye she could see the black-edged pieces blowing back and forth in the
　　late-autumn wind, which sighed with despair in her mind’s ear, and worst of all, oh yes, worst of all, her mind’s nose snuffed up the sharp acrid stink of ancient, half-burned paper. In her
　　memory some of the pieces fluttered in the pitiless wind like moths that had been swatted and broken, but were still hopelessly trying to fly.
　　And there were stars on them.
　　People had marched to the rough music and roughly dragged out the cracked old woman whose only crime, as far as Tiffany could see, was that she had no teeth left and smelled of wee. They had thrown stones, they had smashed windows, they had killed the cat, and all this had been done by good people, nice people, people that she knew and met every day, and they had done all these things which, even now, they never talked about. It was a day that somehow had
　　vanished from the calendar. And on that day, with a pocketful of charred stars, not knowing what it was she was doing, but determined to do it, she had become a witch.
　　‘You said that others have fought him?’ she said now to Miss Smith. ‘How did they manage it?’
　　‘That last cupcake was still in the bag with the baker’s name on it, I’m sure of it. You’re not sitting on it, are you?’ Miss Smith cleared her throat and said, ‘By being very powerful witches, by understanding what it means to be a powerful witch, and by taking every chance, using every trick and, I suspect, understanding the Cunning Man’s mind before he understands theirs. I have trudged through a long time to learn about the Cunning Man,’ she added, ‘and the one thing I can tell you for certain is that the way to kill the Cunning Man is with cunning. You will need to be more cunning than he is.’
　　‘He can’t be that cunning if he’s taken all this time to find me,’ said Tiffany.
　　‘Yes, that puzzles me,’ said Miss Smith. ‘And it should puzzle you. I would have expected it to have taken him a very long time. More than two years, anyway. He’s either been very clever – and frankly he has nothing to be clever with – or somehow something else has drawn you to his attention. Someone magical, I would guess. Do you know any witches who aren’t your friend?’

　　‘Certainly not,’ said Tiffany. ‘Are any of the witches who have defeated him still alive?’
　　‘Yes.’
　　‘I was wondering, if I found one – perhaps they could tell me how they did it?’
　　‘I’ve told you. He’s the Cunning Man. Why should he fall for the same trick twice? You have to find your own way. Those who have trained you would expect nothing less.’
　　‘This isn’t some kind of test, is it?’ said Tiffany, and then felt embarrassed at how lame that sounded.
　　‘Don’t you remember what Granny Weatherwax always says?’ said Miss Smith.
　　‘Everything is a test.’ They said it together with one voice, looked at one another and laughed.
　　At which point, there was a squawk. Miss Smith opened the door and a small white chicken walked in, looked around curiously and exploded. Where it had been was an onion, fully rigged with mast and sails.
　　‘I’m sorryyou had to see that,’ said Miss Smith. She sighed. ‘Happens all the time, I’m afraid. The Unreal Estate is never static,you see. All the magic, banging together, bits of spells winding themselves around other spells, whole new spells being created that nobody has ever thought of before … it’s a mess. It generates things quite randomly. Yesterday I found a book on growing chrysanthemums, printed in copper on water. You would think it would tend to slosh about a bit, but it all seemed to hang together until the magic ran out.’
　　‘That was bad luck for the chicken,’ said Tiffany nervously.
　　‘Well, I can guarantee that it wasn’t a chicken two minutes ago,’ said Miss Smith, ‘and now it’s probably enjoying being a seagoing vegetable. Now perhaps you can see why I don’t spend too much time down here. I had an incident with a toothbrush once that I will not forget in a hurry.’ She pushed open the door still further, and Tiffany saw the shambles.
　　There was no mistaking a shambles.21 Well, there was at first and she mistook it for a heap of rubbish.
　　‘It’s amazing what you can find in your pockets if you’re in a magical junk yard,’ said
　　Miss Smith calmly.
　　Tiffany stared at the giant shambles again. ‘Isn’t that a horse’s skull?22 And isn’t that a bucket of tadpoles?’
　　‘Yes. Something alive always helps, don’t you find?’
　　Tiffany’s eyes narrowed. ‘But that is a wizard’s staff, isn’t it? I thought they stopped working if a woman touched one!’
　　Miss Smith smiled. ‘Well, I’ve had mine ever since I was in my cradle. If you know where to look,you can see the marks I made when I was teething. It’s my staff and it works, although I have to say it started to work better when I took the knob off the end. It didn’t do anything practical and it upsets the balance. Now, will you stop standing there with your mouth open?’
　　Tiffany’s mouth clamped shut, and then sprang open again. A penny had dropped and it felt as if it had dropped from the moon.
　　‘You’re her, aren’t you? You must be,you’re her! Eskarina Smith, right? The only woman who ever became a wizard!’
　　‘Somewhere inside, I suppose so,yes, but it seems such a long time ago, and you know, I never really felt like a wizard, so I never really worried about what anyone said. And anyway, I had the staff, and no one could take that away from me.’ Eskarina hesitated for a moment, and then went on, ‘That’s what I learned at university: to be me, just what I am, and not worry about

　　it. That knowledge is an invisible magical staff, all by itself. Look, I don’t really want to talk about this. It brings back bad memories.’
　　‘Please forgive me,’ said Tiffany. ‘I just couldn’t stop myself. I’m very sorry if I have
　　dredged up any scary recollections.’
　　Eskarina smiled. ‘Oh, the scary ones are never a problem. It’s good ones that can be difficult to deal with.’ There was a click from the shambles. Eskarina stood up and walked over to it. ‘Oh dear, of course, only the witch that makes it can read her own shambles, but trust me when I say that the way the skull has turned and the position of the pincushion along the axis of the spinning wheel mean that he is very close. Almost right on top of us, in fact. Or the random magic in this place may be confusing him, and you seem to be everywhere and nowhere, so he’ll go away soon and try to pick up the trail somewhere else. And, as I mentioned, somewhere on the trail he will eat. He’ll get into some fool’s head, and some old lady or some girl who is wearing quite dangerous cult symbols without an inkling of what they really mean will suddenly find herself hounded. Let us hope she can run.’
　　Tiffany looked around, bewildered. ‘And what happens will be my fault?’
　　‘Is that the sarcastic whine of a little girl or the rhetorical question of a witch with her own steading?’
　　Tiffany began to reply, and then stopped. ‘You can travel in time, can’t you?’ she said.
　　‘Yes.’
　　‘Then you know what I’m going to answer?’
　　‘Well, it’s not quite as simple as that,’ said Eskarina, and looked slightly uncomfortable for a moment, much to Tiffany’s surprise and, it has be said, delight. ‘I know, let me see, there are fifteen different replies you might make, but I don’t know which one it will be until you make it, because of the elasticated string theory.’
　　‘Then all I will say,’ said Tiffany, ‘is thank you very much. I am sorry to have taken up your time. But I need to be getting on; I have so many things to do. Do you know what the time is?’
　　‘Yes,’ said Eskarina. ‘It is a way of describing one of the notional dimensions of four-dimensional space. But for your purposes, it’s about ten forty-five.’
　　That seemed to Tiffany to be a bafflingly complicated way of answering the question, but as she opened her mouth to say so, the shambles collapsed and the door opened to let in a stampede of chickens – which did not, however, explode.
　　Eskarina grabbed Tiffany’s hand, shouting, ‘He has found you! I don’t know how!’
　　A chicken half jumped, half flapped and half tumbled onto the wreck of the shambles and crowed! Cock-a-doodle-crivens!
　　Then the chickens exploded; they exploded into Feegles.
　　On the whole there wasn’t a great deal of difference between the chickens and the Feegles, since both run around in circles making a noise. An important distinction, however, is that chickens are seldom armed. The Feegles, on the other hand, are armed all the time, and once they had shaken off the last of their feathers they fell to fighting one another out of embarrassment – and for something to do.
　　Eskarina took one look at them and kicked at the wall behind her, revealing a hole which a person might just be able to crawl through, and snapped at Tiffany: ‘Go! Get him away from here! Get on the stick as soon as you can and go! Don’t worry about me! Don’t be afraid,you will be all right! You just have to help yourself.’
　　Heavy, nasty smoke was filling the room. ‘What do you mean?’ Tiffany managed,

　　struggling with the stick.
　　‘Go!’
　　Not even Granny Weatherwax could command Tiffany’s legs so thoroughly. She went.
　　20 In truth, the Nac Mac Feegle believe that the world is such a wonderful place that in order to have got into it they must have been very good in another existence and had arrived in,
　　as it were, heaven. Of course, they appeared to die sometimes, even here, but they like to think of it as going off to be born again. Numerous theologians had speculated that this was a stupid idea, but it was certainly more enjoyable than many other beliefs.

　　21 A witch made a shambles out of anything you happened to have in your pockets, but if you care about appearances,you paid attention to the things you ‘accidentally’ had in your pockets. It wouldn’t make any difference to how the shambles worked, but if there were going to be other people around, then a mysterious nut, or an interesting bit of wood, a piece of lace and a silver pin suggested ‘witch’ rather more flatteringly than did, say, a broken shoelace, a torn piece of paper bag, half a handful of miscellaneous and unspeakable fluff, and a handkerchief which had been used so many times that, dreadfully, it needed both hands to fold it. Tiffany generally kept one pocket just for shambles ingredients, but if Miss Smith had made this shambles the
　　same way, then she had pockets larger than a wardrobe; it nearly touched the ceiling.

　　22 A horse’s skull always looks scary, even if someone has put lipstick on it