The Wee Free Men

Page 37

“Filled buckets?”
“And they filled up the log box, too,” said Tiffany.
Wave. Sound.
“I see. Special Sheep Liniment?”
“Yes, my father says it puts—”
Wave. Sound.
“Ah. Land of snow.” Wave. Sound. “A queen.” Wave. Sound. “Fighting.” Wave, sound. “On the sea?” Wave, sound, wave, sound…
Mistress Weatherwax stared at the flashing air, looking at pictures only she could see. Mrs. Ogg sat down beside Tiffany, her little legs going up in the air as she made herself comfortable.
“I’ve tried Jolly Sailor,” she said. “Smells like toenails, don’t it?”
“Yes, it does!” said Tiffany, gratefully.
“To be a kelda of the Nac Mac Feegle, you have to marry one of ’em, don’t you?” said Mrs. Ogg innocently.
“Ah, yes, but I found a way around that,” said Tiffany. She told her. Mrs. Ogg laughed. It was a sociable kind of laugh, the sort of laugh that makes you comfortable.
The noise and flashing stopped. Mistress Weatherwax stood staring at nothing for a moment and then said: “You beat the Queen, at the end. But you had help, I think.”
“Yes, I did,” said Tiffany.
“And that was—?”
“I don’t ask you your business,” said Tiffany, before she even realized she was going to say it. Miss Tick gasped. Mrs. Ogg’s eyes twinkled, and she looked from Tiffany to Mistress Weatherwax like someone watching a tennis match.
“Tiffany, Mistress Weatherwax is the most famous witch in all—” Miss Tick began severely, but the witch waved a hand at her again. I really must learn how to do that, Tiffany thought.
Then Mistress Weatherwax took off her pointed hat and bowed to Tiffany.
“Well said,” she said, straightening up and staring directly at Tiffany. “I didn’t have no right to ask you. This is your country—we’re here by your leave. I show you respect as you in turn will respect me.” The air seemed to freeze for a moment and the skies to darken. Then Mistress Weatherwax went on, as if the moment of thunder hadn’t happened: “But if one day you care to tell me more, I should be grateful to hear about it,” she said, in a conversational voice. “And them creatures that look like they’re made of dough, I should like to know more about them, too. Never run across them before. And your grandmother sounds the kind of person I would have liked to meet.” She straightened up. “In the meantime, we’d better see if there’s anything left you can still be taught.”
“Is this where I learn about the witches’ school?” said Tiffany.
There was a moment of silence.
“Witches’ school?” said Mistress Weatherwax.
“Um,” said Miss Tick.
“You were being metapahorrical, weren’t you?” said Tiffany.
“Metapahorrical?” said Mrs. Ogg, wrinkling her forehead.
“She means metaphorical,” mumbled Miss Tick.
“It’s like stories,” said Tiffany. “It’s all right. I worked it out. This is the school, isn’t it? The magic place? The world. Here. And you don’t realize it until you look. Do you know the pictsies think this world is heaven? We just don’t look. You can’t give lessons on witchcraft. Not properly. It’s all about how you are…you, I suppose.”
“Nicely said,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “You’re sharp. But there’s magic, too. You’ll pick that up. It don’t take much intelligence, otherwise wizards wouldn’t be able to do it.”
“You’ll need a job, too,” said Mrs. Ogg. “There’s no money in witchcraft. Can’t do magic for yourself, see? Cast-iron rule.”
“I make good cheese,” said Tiffany.
“Cheese, eh?” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Hmm. Yes. Cheese is good. But do you know anything about medicines? Midwifery? That’s a good portable skill.”
“Well, I’ve helped deliver difficult lambs,” said Tiffany. “And I saw my brother being born. They didn’t bother to turn me out. It didn’t look too difficult. But I think cheese is probably easier, and less noisy.”
“Cheese is good,” Mistress Weatherwax repeated, nodding. “Cheese is alive.”
“And what do you really do?” said Tiffany.
The thin witch hesitated for a moment, and then:
“We look to…the edges,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “There’s a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong…an’ they need watchin’. We watch ’em, we guard the sum of things. And we never ask for any reward. That’s important.”
“People give us stuff, mind you. People can be very gen’rous to witches,” said Mrs. Ogg happily. “On bakin’ days in our village, sometimes I can’t move for cake. There’s ways and ways of not askin’, if you get my meaning. People like to see a happy witch.”
“But down here people think witches are bad!” said Tiffany, but her Second Thoughs added: Remember how rarely Granny Aching ever had to buy her own tobacco?
“It’s amazin’ what people can get used to,” said Mrs. Ogg. “You just have to start slow.”
“And we have to hurry,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “There’s a man riding up here on a farm horse. Fair hair, red face—”
“It sounds like my father!”
“Well, he’s making the poor thing gallop,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Quick, now. You want to learn the skills? When can you leave home?”
“Pardon?” said Tiffany.
“Don’t the girls here go off to work as maids and things?” said Mrs. Ogg.
“Oh, yes. When they’re a bit older than me.”
“Well, when you’re a bit older than you, Miss Tick here will come and find you,” said Mistress Weatherwax. Miss Tick nodded. “There’re elderly witches up in the mountains who’ll pass on what they know in exchange for a bit of help around the cottage. This place will be watched over while you’re gone, you may depend on it. In the meantime you’ll get three meals a day, your own bed, use of broomstick…that’s the way we do it. All right?”
“Yes,” said Tiffany, grinning happily. The wonderful moment was passing too quickly for all the questions she wanted to ask. “Yes! But, er…”
“Yes?” said Mrs. Ogg.
“I don’t have to dance around with no clothes on or anything like that, do I? Only I heard rumors—”
Mistress Weatherwax rolled her eyes.
Mrs. Ogg grinned cheerfully. “Well, that procedure does have something to recommend it—” she began.
“No, you don’t have to!” snapped Mistress Weatherwax. “No cottage made of sweets, no cackling, and no dancing!”
“Unless you want to,” said Mrs. Ogg, standing up. “There’s no harm in an occasional cackle, if the mood takes you that way. I’d teach you a good one right now, but we really ought to be going.”
“But…but how did you manage it?” said Miss Tick to Tiffany. “This is all chalk! You’ve become a witch on chalk? How?”
“That’s all you know, Perspicacia Tick,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “The bones of the hills is flint. It’s hard and sharp and useful. King of stones.” She picked up her broomstick and turned back to Tiffany. “Will you get into trouble, do you think?” she said.
“I might,” said Tiffany.
“Do you want any help?”
“If it’s my trouble, I’ll get out of it,” said Tiffany. She wanted to say: Yes, yes! I’m going to need help! I don’t know what’s going to happen when my father gets here! The Baron’s probably gotten really angry! But I don’t want them to think I can’t deal with my own problems. I ought to be able to cope.
“That’s right,” said Mistress Weatherwax.
Tiffany wondered if the witch could read minds.
“Minds? No,” said Mistress Weatherwax, climbing onto her broomstick. “Faces, yes. Come here, young lady.”
Tiffany obeyed.
“The thing about witchcraft,” said Mistress Weatherwax, “is that it’s not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterward you spend years findin’ out how you passed it. It’s a bit like life in that respect.” She reached out and gently raised Tiffany’s chin so that she could look into her face.
“I see you opened your eyes,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Good. Many people never do. Times ahead might be a little tricky, even so. You’ll need this.”
She stretched out a hand and made a circle in the air around Tiffany’s head, then brought her hand up over the head while making little movements with her forefinger.
Tiffany raised her hands to her head. For a moment she thought there was nothing there, and then they touched…something. It was more like a sensation in the air; if you weren’t expecting it to be there, your fingers passed straight through.
“Is it really there?” she said.
“Who knows?” said the witch. “It’s virtually a pointy hat. No one else will know it’s there. It might be a comfort.”
“You mean it just exists in my head?” said Tiffany.
“You’ve got lots of things in your head. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real. Best not to ask me too many questions.”
“What happened to the toad?” said Miss Tick, who did ask questions.
“He’s gone off with the Wee Free Men,” said Tiffany. “It turned out he used to be a lawyer.”
“You’ve given a clan of the Nac Mac Feegle their own lawyer?” said Mrs. Ogg. “That’ll make the world tremble. Still, I always say the occasional tremble does you good.”
“Come, sisters, we must away,” said Miss Tick, who had climbed on the other broomstick behind Mrs. Ogg.
“There’s no need for that sort of talk,” said Mrs. Ogg. “That’s theater talk, that is. Cheerio, Tiff. We’ll see you again.”
Her stick rose gently into the air. From the stick of Mistress Weatherwax, though, there was merely a sad little noise, like the thwop of Miss Tick’s hat point. The broomstick went kshugagugah.
Mistress Weatherwax sighed. “It’s them dwarfs,” she said. “They say they’ve repaired it, oh yes, and it starts first time in their workshop—”
They heard the sound of distant hooves. With surprising speed, Mistress Weatherwax swung herself off the stick, grabbed it firmly in both hands, and ran away across the turf, skirts billowing behind her.
She was a speck in the distance when Tiffany’s father came over the brow of the hill on one of the farm horses. He hadn’t even stopped to put the leather shoes on it; great slices of earth flew up as hooves the size of large soup plates,* each one shod with iron, bit into the turf.
Tiffany heard a faint kshugagugahvvvvvoooom behind her as he leaped off the horse.