I Shall Wear Midnight

downs were left by themselves to do whatever it was that they did when they were by themselves, which would presumably be pretty much the same as they did if you were watching them. And the sheep, usually fussed and herded and generally watched over, were now of no interest whatsoever, because right here the most wonderful attraction in the world was taking place.

Admittedly, the scouring fair was only one of the world’s most wonderful attractions if you didn’t usually ever travel more than about four miles from home. If you lived around the Chalk you were bound to meet everyone that you knew² at the fair. It was quite often where you met the person you were likely to marry. The girls certainly all wore their best dresses, while the boys wore expressions of hopefulness and their hair smoothed down with cheap hair pomade or, more usually, spit. Those who had opted for spit generally came off better since the cheap pomade was very cheap indeed and would often melt and run in the hot weather, causing the young men not to be of interest to the young women, as they had fervently hoped, but to the flies, who would make their lunch off their scalps.

However, since the event could hardly be called ‘the fair where you went in the hope of getting a kiss and, if your luck held, the promise of another one’, the fair was called the scouring.

The scouring was held over three days at the end of summer. For most people on the Chalk, it was their holiday. This was the third day, and most people said that if you hadn’t had a kiss by now you might as well go home. Tiffany hadn’t had a kiss, but after all, she was the witch. Who knew what they might get turned into?

If the late-summer weather was clement, it wasn’t unusual for some people to sleep out under the stars, and under the bushes as well. And that was why if you wanted to take a stroll at night it paid to be careful so as not to trip over someone’s feet. Not to put too fine a point to it, there was a certain amount of what Nanny Ogg — a witch who had been married to three husbands — called making your own entertainment. It was a shame that Nanny lived right up in the mountains, because she would have loved the scouring and Tiffany would have loved to see her face when she saw the giant.³

He — and he was quite definitely a he, there was no possible doubt about that — had been carved out of the turf thousands of years before. A white outline against the green, he belonged to the days when people had to think about survival and fertility in a dangerous world.

Oh, and he had also been carved, or so it would appear, before anyone had invented trousers. In fact, to say that he had no trousers on just didn’t do the job. His lack of trousers filled the world. You simply could not stroll down the little road that passed along the bottom of the hills without noticing that there was an enormous, as it were, lack of something — e.g. trousers — and what was there instead. It was definitely a figure of a man without trousers, and certainly not a woman.

Everyone who came to the scouring was expected to bring a small shovel, or even a knife, and work their way down the steep slope to grub up all the weeds that had grown there over the previous year, making the chalk underneath glow with freshness and the giant stand out boldly, as if he wasn’t already.

There was always a lot of giggling when the girls worked on the giant.

And the reason for the giggling, and the circumstances of the giggling, couldn’t help but put Tiffany in mind of Nanny Ogg, who you normally saw somewhere behind Granny Weatherwax with a big grin on her face. She was generally thought of as a jolly old soul, but there was a lot more to the old woman. She had never been Tiffany’s teacher officially, but Tiffany couldn’t help learning things from Nanny Ogg. She smiled to herself when she thought that. Nanny knew all the old, dark stuff — old magic, magic that didn’t need witches, magic that was built into people and the landscape. It concerned things like death, and marriage, and betrothals. And promises that were promises even if there was no one to hear them. And all those things that make people touch wood and never, ever walk under a black cat.

You didn’t need to be a witch to understand it. The world around you became more — well, more real and fluid, at those special times. Nanny Ogg called it numinous — an uncharacteristically solemn word from a woman who was much more likely to be saying, ‘I would like a brandy, thank you very much, and could you make it a double while you are about it.’ And she had told Tiffany about the old days, when it seemed that witches had a bit more fun. The things that you did around the changing of the seasons, for example; all the customs that were now dead except in folk memory which, Nanny Ogg said, is deep and dark and breathing and never fades. Little rituals.

Tiffany especially liked the one about the fire. Tiffany liked fire. It was her favourite element. It was considered so powerful, and so scary to the powers of darkness that people would even get married by jumping over a fire together⁴. Apparently it helped if you said a little chant, according to Nanny Ogg, who lost no time in telling Tiffany the words, which immediately stuck in Tiffany’s mind; a lot of what Nanny Ogg told you tended to be sticky.

But those were times gone by. Everybody was more respectable now, apart from Nanny Ogg and the giant.

There were other carvings on the Chalk lands too. One of them was a white horse that Tiffany thought had once broken its way out of the ground and galloped to her rescue. Now she wondered what would happen if the giant did the same thing, because it would be very hard to find a pair of pants sixty feet long in a hurry. And on the whole, you’d want to hurry.

She’d only ever giggled about the giant once, and that had been a very long time ago. There were really only four types of people in the world: men and women and wizards and witches. Wizards mostly lived in universities down in the big cities and weren’t allowed to get married, although the reason why not totally escaped Tiffany. Anyway, you hardly ever saw them around here.

Witches were definitely women, but most of the older ones Tiffany knew hadn’t got married either, mostly because Nanny Ogg had already used up all the eligible husbands, but also probably because they didn’t have time. Of course, every now and then, a witch might marry a grand husband, like Magrat Garlick, as was, of Lancre had done, although by all accounts she only did herbs these days. But the only young witch Tiffany knew who had even had time for courting was her best friend up in the mountains: Petulia — a witch who was now specializing in pig magic, and was soon going to marry a nice young man who was shortly going to inherit his father’s pig farm,⁵ which meant he was practically an aristocrat.

But witches were not only very busy, they were also apart, Tiffany had learned that early on. You were among people, but not the same as them. There was always a kind of distance or separation. You didn’t have to work at it, it happened anyway. Girls she had known when they were all so young they used to run about and play with only their vests on would make a tiny little curtsy to her when she passed them in the lane, and even elderly men would touch their forelock, or probably what they thought was their forelock, as she passed.

This wasn’t just because of respect, but because of a kind of fear as well. Witches had secrets; they were there to help when babies were being born. When you got married, it was a good idea to have a witch standing by (even if you weren’t sure if it was for good luck or to prevent bad luck), and when you died there would be a witch there too, to show you the way. Witches had secrets they never told … well, to people who weren’t witches. Among themselves, when they could get together on some hillside for a drink or two (or in the case of Mrs Ogg, a drink or nine), they gossiped like geese.

But never about the real secrets, the ones you never told, about things done and heard and seen. So many secrets that you were afraid they might leak. Seeing a giant without his trousers was hardly worth commenting on compared to some of the things that a witch might see.

No, Tiffany did not envy Petulia her romance, which surely must have taken place in big boots, unflattering rubber aprons and the rain, not to mention an awful lot of ‘oink’.

She did, however, envy her for being so sensible. Petulia had got it all worked out. She knew what she wanted her future to be, and had rolled up her sleeves and made it happen, up to her knees in ‘oink’ if necessary.

Every family, even up in the mountains, kept at least one pig to act as a garbage can in the summer and as pork, bacon, ham and sausages during the rest of the year. The pig was important; you might dose Granny with turpentine when she was poorly, but when the pig was ill you sent immediately for a pig witch, and paid her too, and paid her well, generally in sausages.

On top of everything else, Petulia was a specialist pig borer, and indeed she was this year’s champion in the noble art of boring. Tiffany thought you couldn’t put it better; her friend could sit down with a pig and talk to it