Rob Anybody hung his head. ‘Aye… but…,’ he said.
‘But what?’
‘A hiver’s chasin’ the puir wee lass.’
There was a long pause before Jeannie said, ‘Are ye sure?’
‘Aye, Kelda,’ said Big Yan. ‘Once you hear that buzzin’ ye never forget it.’
Jeannie bit her lip. Then, looking a little pale, she said, ‘Ye said she’s got the makin’s o’ a powerful hag, Rob?’
‘Aye, but nae one in his’try has survived a hiver! Ye cannae kill it, ye cannae stop it, ye cannae—’
‘But wuz ye no’ tellin’ me how the big wee girl even fought the Quin and won?’ said Jeannie. ‘Wanged her wi’ a skillet, ye said. That means she’s good, aye? If she is a true hag, she’ll find a way herself. We all ha’ to dree our weird. Whatever’s out there, she’s got to face it. If she cannae, she’s no true hag.’
‘Aye, but a hiver’s worse than—’ Rob began.
‘She’s off to learn hagglin’ from other hags,’ said Jeannie. ‘An’ I must learn keldarin’ all by myself. Ye must hope she learns as fast as me, Rob Anybody.’
Chapter Two
Twoshirts and Two Noses
Twoshirts was just a bend in the road, with a name. There was nothing there but an inn for the coaches, a blacksmith’s shop, and a small store with the word SOUVENIRS written optimistically on a scrap of cardboard in the window. And that was it. Around the place, separated by fields and scraps of woodland, were the houses of people for whom Twoshirts was, presumably, the big city. Every world is full of places like Twoshirts. They are places for people to come from, not go to.
It sat and baked silently in the hot afternoon sunlight. Right in the middle of the road an elderly spaniel, mottled brown and white, dozed in the dust.
Twoshirts was bigger than the village back home and Tiffany had never seen souvenirs before. She went into the store and spent half a penny on a small wood carving of two shirts on a washing line, and two postcards entitled ‘View of Twoshirts’ which showed the souvenir shop and what was quite probably the same dog sleeping in the road. The little old lady behind the counter called her ‘young lady’ and said that Twoshirts was very popular later in the year, when people came from up to a mile around for the Cabbage-Macerating Festival.
When Tiffany came out she found Miss Tick standing next to the sleeping dog, frowning back the way they’d come.
‘Is there something the matter?’ said Tiffany.
‘What?’ said Miss Tick, as if she’d forgotten that Tiffany existed. ‘Oh… no. I just… I thought I… look, shall we go and have something to eat?’
It took a while to find someone in the inn, but Miss Tick wandered into the kitchens and found a woman who promised them some scones and a cup of tea. She was actually quite surprised she’d promised that, since she hadn’t intended to, it strictly speaking being her afternoon free until the coach came, but Miss Tick had a way of asking questions that got the answers she wanted.
Miss Tick also asked for a fresh egg, not cooked, in its shell. Witches were also good at asking questions that weren’t followed by the other person saying ‘Why?’
They sat and ate in the sun, on the bench outside the inn. Then Tiffany took out her diary.
She had one in the dairy too, but that was for cheese and butter records. This one was personal. She’d bought it off a pedlar, cheap, because it was last year’s. But, as he said, it had the same number of days.
It also had a lock, a little brass thing on a leather flap. It had its own tiny key. It was the lock that had attracted Tiffany. At a certain age, you see the point of locks.
She wrote down ‘Twoshirts’, and spent some time thinking before adding ‘a bend in the road’.
Miss Tick kept staring at the road.
‘Is there something wrong, Miss Tick?’ Tiffany asked again, looking up.
‘I’m… not sure. Is anyone watching us?’
Tiffany looked around. Twoshirts slept in the heat. There was no one watching.
‘No, Miss Tick.’
The teacher removed her hat and took from inside it a couple of pieces of wood and a reel of black thread. She rolled up her sleeves, looking around quickly in case Twoshirts had sprouted a population, then broke off a length of the thread and picked up the egg.
Egg, thread and fingers blurred for a few seconds and there was the egg, hanging from Miss Tick’s fingers in a neat little black net.
Tiffany was impressed.
But Miss Tick hadn’t finished. She began to draw things from her pockets, and a witch generally has a lot of pockets. There were some beads, a couple of feathers, a glass lens and one or two strips of coloured paper. These all got threaded into the tangle of wood and cotton.
‘What is that?’ said Tiffany.
‘It’s a shamble,’ said Miss Tick, concentrating.
‘Is it magic?’
‘Not exactly. It’s
Miss Tick lifted her left hand. Feathers and beads and egg and pocket junk spun in the web of threads.
‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Now let me see what I can see…’
She pushed the fingers of her right hand into the spiderwork of threads and
Egg and glass and beads and feathers danced through the tangle, and Tiffany was sure that at one point one thread had passed straight through another.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s like Cat’s Cradle!’
‘You’ve played that, have you?’ said Miss Tick vaguely, still concentrating.
‘I can do all the common shapes,’ said Tiffany. ‘The Jewels and The Cradle and The House and The Flock and The Three Old Ladies, One With A Squint, Carrying The Bucket Of Fish To Market When They Meet The Donkey… although you need two people for that one, and I only ever did it once, and Betsy Tupper scratched her nose at the wrong moment and I had to get some scissors to cut her loose…’
Miss Tick’s fingers worked like a loom.
‘Funny it should be a children’s toy now,’ she said. ‘Aha…’ She stared into the complex web she had created.
‘Can you see anything?’ said Tiffany.
‘If I may be allowed to concentrate, child? Thank you…’
Out in the road the sleeping dog woke, yawned and pulled itself to its feet. It ambled over to the bench the two of them were sitting on, gave Tiffany a reproachful look and then curled up by her feet. It smelled of old damp carpets.
‘There’s…
Panic gripped Tiffany.
Sunlight reflected off the white dust of the road and the stone wall opposite. Bees hummed between the little yellow flowers that grew on top of the wall. By Tiffany’s feet, the spaniel snorted and farted occasionally.
But it was all
