into a trot.
‘Stagecoach, eh? What’s one o’ them things?’
‘That’s what you’ll need to catch to take you up into the mountains, sir. You can
catch one in Twoshirts, sir. I never go any further than Twoshirts, sir. But you won’t be
able to get the stage today, sir.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve got to make stops at the other villages, sir, and it’s a long way, and on Wednesdays
it runs early, sir, and this cart can only go so fast, sir, and-‘
‘If we – I dinnae catch yon coach today I’ll gi’e ye the hidin’ o’ yer life,’ growled the
passenger. ‘But if I do catch yon coach today, I’ll gie ye five o’ them gold coins.’
Mr Crabber took a deep breath, and yelled:
‘Hi! Hyah! Giddyup, Henry!’
All in all, it seemed to Tiffany, most of what witches did really was very similar to
work. Dull work. Miss Level didn’t even use her broomstick very much.
That was a bit depressing. It was all a bit. . . well, goody-goody. Obviously that was
better than being baddy-baddy, but a little more . . . excitement would be nice. Tiffany
wouldn’t like anyone to think she’d expected to be issued with a magic wand on Day One
but, well, the way Miss Level talked about magic, the whole point of witchcraft lay in not using any.
Mind you, Tiffany thought she would be depressingly good at not using any. It
was doing the simplest magic that was hard.
Miss Level patiently showed her how to make a shamble, which could more or less
be made of anything that seemed a good idea at the time provided it also contained
something alive, like a beetle or a fresh egg.
Tiffany couldn’t even get the hang of it. That was . . . annoying. Didn’t she have the
virtual hat? Didn’t she have First Sight and Second Thoughts? Miss Tick and Miss Level
could throw a shamble together in seconds, but Tiffany just got a tangle, dripping with
egg. Over and over again.
1 know I’m doing it right but it just twists up!’ Tiffany complained. ‘What can I do?’
‘We could make an omelette?’ said Miss Level cheerfully.
‘Oh, please, Miss Level!’ Tiffany wailed.
Miss Level patted her on the back. ‘It’ll happen. Perhaps you’re trying too hard. One
day it’ll come. The power does come, you know. You just have to put yourself in its
path-‘
‘Couldn’t you make one that I could use for a while, to get the hang of it?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ said Miss Level. ‘A shamble is a very tricky thing. You can’t even
carry one around, except as an ornament. You have to make it for
yourself, there and then, right where and when you want to use it.’
‘Why?’ said Tiffany.
‘To catch the moment,’ said the other part of Miss Level, coming in. The way you
tie the knots, the way the string runs -‘
‘- the freshness of the egg, perhaps, and the moisture in the air -‘ said the first Miss
Level.
‘- the tension of the twigs and the kind of things that you just happen to have in
your pocket at that moment -‘
‘- even the way the wind is blowing,’ the first Miss Level concluded. ‘All these things
make a kind of. . . of picture of the here-and-now when you move them right. And
I can’t even tell you how to move them, because I don’t know.’
‘But you do move them,’ said Tiffany, getting lost. ‘I saw you-‘
‘I do it but I don’t know how I do,’ said Miss Level, picking up a couple of twigs and
taking a length of thread. Miss Level sat down at the table opposite Miss Level, and
all four hands started to put a shamble together.
‘This reminds me of when I was in the circus,’ she said. 1 was -‘
‘- walking out for a while with Marco and Falco, the Flying Pastrami Brothers,’ the
other part of Miss Level went on. ‘They would do -‘
‘- triple somersaults fifty feet up with no safety net. What lads they were! As alike
as two -‘
‘- peas, and Marco could catch Falco blindfolded. Why, for a moment I wondered if
they were just like me -‘
She stopped, went a bit red on both faces and coughed. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘one
day I asked them how they managed to stay on the high wire and Falco said, “Never
ask the tight-rope walker how he keeps his balance. If he stops to think about it, he falls off.” Although actually -‘
‘- he said it like this, “Nev-ah aska tightaroper walkerer . . . ” because the lads
pretended they were from Brindisi, you see, because that sounds foreign and impressive
and they thought no one would want to watch acrobats called The Flying Sidney and
Frank Cartwright. Good advice, though, wherever it came from.’
The hands worked. This was not a lone Miss Level, a bit flustered, but the full Miss
Level, all twenty fingers working together.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘it can be helpful to have the right sort of things in your pocket. I
always carry a few sequins -‘
‘- for the happy memories they bring back,’ said Miss Level from the other side of the
table, blushing again.
She held up the shamble. There were sequins, and a fresh egg in a little bag made of
thread, and a chicken bone and many other things hanging or spinning in the threads.
Each part of Miss Level put both its hands into the threads and pulled …
The threads took up a pattern. Did the sequins jump from one thread to another? It
looked like it. Did the chicken bone pass through the egg? So it seemed.
Miss Level peered into it.
She said: ‘Something’s coming
The stagecoach left Twoshirts half full and was well out over the plains when one of
the passengers sitting on the rooftop tapped the driver on the shoulder.
‘Excuse me, did you know there’s something trying to catch us up?’ he said.
‘Bless you, sir,’ said the driver, because he hoped for a good tip at the end of the run,
‘there’s nothing that can catch us up.’
Then he heard the screaming in the distance, getting louder.
‘Er, I think he means to,’ said the passenger as the carter’s wagon overtook them.
‘Stop! Stop, for pity’s sake stopY yelled the carter as he sailed past.
But there was no stopping Henry. He’d spent years pulling the carrier’s cart around the
villages, very slowly, and he’d always had this idea in his big horse head that he was cut
out for faster things. He’d plodded along, being overtaken by coaches and carts and
three-legged dogs, and now he was having the time of his life.
Besides, the cart was a lot lighter than usual, and
the road was slightly downhill here. All he was really having to do was gallop fast enough
to stay in front. And, finally, he’d actually overtaken the stagecoach. Him, Henry!
He only stopped because the stagecoach driver stopped first. Besides, the blood
was pumping through Henry now, and there were a couple of mares in the team of
horses pulling the coach who he felt he’d really like to get to know – find out when was
their day off, what kind of hay they liked, that kind of thing.
The carter, white in the face, got down carefully and then lay on the ground and held
on tight to the dirt.
His one passenger, who looked to the coach driver like some sort of
scarecrow, climbed unsteadily down from the back and lurched towards the coach.
‘I’m sorry, we’re full up,’ the driver lied. They weren’t full, but there was certainly
no room for a thing that looked like that.
‘Ach, and there wuz me willin’ to pay wi’ gold,’ said the creature. ‘Gold such as this
here,’ it added, waving a ragged glove in the air.
Suddenly there was plenty of space for an eccentric millionaire. Within a few
seconds he was seated inside and, to the annoyance of Henry, the coach set off again.
Outside Miss Level’s cottage, a broomstick was
heading through the trees. A young witch – or, at least, someone dressed as a witch: it
never paid to jump to conclusions – was sitting on it side-saddle.
She wasn’t flying it very well. It jerked sometimes and it was clear the girl was no
good at making it turn corners because sometimes she stopped, jumped off and
pointed the stick in a new direction by hand. When she reached the garden gate she
got off again quickly and tethered the stick to it with string.
‘Nicely done, Petulia!’ said Miss Level, clapping with all four hands. ‘You’re getting
quite good!’
‘Um, thank you, Miss Level,’ said the girl, bowing. She stayed bowed, and said, ‘Um,