I Shall Wear Midnight

‘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.’