I Shall Wear Midnight

‘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 twenty years 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