bedroom ‘cuz she’s blocked up a lot o’ the cracks, for some reason.’
‘I can’t imagine why,’ said Miss Level carefully.
‘No’ us, neither,’ said Ron. ‘We reckon it was ‘cuz o’ the draughts.’
‘Yes, I expect that’s why it was,’ said Miss Level.
‘So mostly we get in through a mousehole and hides out in her old dolly house
until she guz tae sleep,’ said Rob. ‘Dinnae look at me like that,
mistress, all the lads is perrrfect gentlemen an’ keeps their eyes tight shut when she’s
gettin’ intae her nightie. Then there’s one guarding her window and another at the
door.’
‘Guarding her from what?’
‘Everything.’
For a moment Miss Level had a picture in her mind of a silent, moonlit bedroom
with a sleeping child. She saw, by the window, lit by the moon, one small figure on
guard, and another in the shadows by the door. What were they guarding her from?
Everything . . .
But now something, this thing, has taken her over and she’s locked inside somewhere.
But she never used to do magic! I could understand it if it was one of the other girls,
messing around, but. . . Tiffany?
One of the Feegles was slowly raising a hand.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘It’s me, mistress, Big Yan. I dinnae know if it wuz proper hagglin’, mistress,’ he said
nervously, ‘but me an’ Nearly Big Angus saw her doin’ something odd a few times, eh,
Nearly Big Angus?’ The Feegle next to him nodded and the speaker went on. ‘It was
when she got her new dress and her new hat
‘And verra bonny she looked, too,’ said Nearly Big Angus.
‘Aye, she did that. But she’d put ’em on, and then standing in the middle o’ the floor
and said – whut wuz it she said, Nearly Big Angus?’
‘ “See me”,’ Nearly Big Angus volunteered.
Miss Tick looked blank. The speaker, now looking a bit sorry that he’d raised this,
went on: ‘Then after a wee while we’d hear her voice say “See me not” and then she’d
adjust the hat, ye know, mebbe to a more fetchin’ angle.’
‘Oh, you mean she was looking at herself in what we call a mirror,’ said Miss Level.
‘That’s a kind of-‘
‘We ken well what them things are, mistress,’ said Nearly Big Angus. ‘She’s got a tiny
one, all cracked and dirty. But it’s nae good for a body as wants tae see herself
properly.’
‘Verra good for the stealin’, mirrors,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘We got oor Jeannie a
silver one wi’ garnets in the frame.’
‘And she’d say “See me”?’ said Miss Level.
‘Aye, an’ then “See me not”,’ said Big Yan. ‘An’ betweentimes she’d stand verra still,
like a stachoo.’
‘Sounds like she was trying to invent some kind of invisibility spell,’ Miss Level
mused. ‘They don’t work like that, of course.’
‘We reckoned she was just tryin’ to throw her voice,’ said Nearly Big Angus. ‘So it
sounds like it’s comin’ fra’ somewhere else, ye ken? Wee Iain can do that a treat when
we’re huntin’.’
‘Throw her voice?’ said Miss Level, her brow wrinkling. ‘Why did you think that?’
‘ ‘Cuz when she said “See me not”, it sounded like it wuz no’ comin fra’ her and her
lips didnae move.’
Miss Level stared at the Feegles. When she spoke next, her voice was a little strange.
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘when she was just standing there, was she moving at all?’
‘Just breathin’ verra slow, mistress,’ said Big Yan.
‘Were her eyes shut?’
‘Aye!’
Miss Level started to breathe very fast.
‘She walked out of her own body! There’s not one -‘
‘- witch in a hundred who can do that!’ she said. ‘That’s Borrowing, that is! It’s better
than any circus trick! It’s putting -‘
‘- your mind somewhere else! You have to -‘
‘- learn how to protect yourself before you ever try it! And she just invented it because she didn’t have a mirror? The little fool, why didn’t she -‘
‘- say? She walked out of her own body and left it there for anything to take over! I
wonder what -‘
‘- she thought she was -‘
‘- doing?’
After a while Rob Anybody gave a polite cough.
‘We’re better at questions about fightin’, drinkin’ and stealin’/ he mumbled. ‘We
dinna have the knowin’ o’ the hagglin’.’
Chapter 7 MattGR of BuiaN
Something that called itself Tiffany flew across the treetops.
It thought it was Tiffany. It could remember everything – nearly everything – about being
Tiffany. It looked like Tiffany. It even thought like Tiffany, more or less. It had everything it needed to be Tiffany…
… except Tiffany. Except the tiny part of her that was
. . . me.
It peered from her own eyes, tried to hear with her own ears, think with her own brain.
A hiver took over its victim not by force, exactly, but simply by moving into any space, like the hermit elephant* It just
*The hermit elephant of Howondaland has a very thin hide, except on its head, and young ones will often move into a small mud hut while the owners are out. It is far too shy to harm anyone, but most people quit their huts pretty soon after an elephant moves in. For one thing, it lifts the hut off the ground and carries it away on its back across the veldt, settling it down over any patch of nice grass that it finds. This makes housework very unpredictable. Nevertheless, an entire village of hermit elephants moving across the plains is one of the finest sights on the continent.
took you over because that was what it did, until it was in all the places and there was no room
left…
Except –
– it was having trouble. It had flowed through her like a dark tide but there was a place, tight
and sealed, that was still closed. If it had the brains of a tree, it would have been puzzled.
If it had the brains of a human, it would have been frightened. . .
Tiffany brought the broomstick in low over the trees, and landed it neatly in Mrs
Earwig’s garden. There really was nothing to it, she decided. You just had to want it to
fly.
Then she was sick again or, at least, tried to be, but since she’d thrown up twice in the
air there wasn’t much left to be sick with. It was ridiculous! She wasn’t frightened of
flying any more, but her stupid stomach was!
She wiped her mouth carefully and looked around.
She’d landed on a lawn. She’d heard of them, but had never seen a real one before.
There was grass all round Miss Level’s cottage, but that was just, well, the grass of the
clearing. Every other garden she’d seen was used for growing vegetables, with perhaps
just a little space for flowers if the wife had got tough about it. A lawn meant you were
posh enough to afford to give up valuable potato space.
This lawn had stripes.
Tiffany turned to the stick and said, ‘Stay!’ and then marched across the lawn to the
house. It was a lot grander than Miss Level’s cottage but, from what Tiffany had
heard, Mrs Earwig was a more senior witch. She’d also married a wizard, although
he didn’t do any wizarding these days. It was a funny thing, Miss Level said, but you
didn’t often meet a poor wizard.
She knocked at the door and waited. There was a curse-net hanging in the porch.
You’d have thought that a witch wouldn’t need such a thing, but Tiffany supposed
they used them as decoration. There was also a broomstick leaning against the wall,
and a five-pointed silver star on the door. Mrs Earwig advertised.
Tiffany knocked on the door again, much harder. It was instantly opened by a tall,
thin woman, all in black. But it was a very decorative rich, deep black, all lacy and
ruffled, and set off with more silver jewellery than Tiffany imagined could exist. She
didn’t just have rings on her fingers. Some fingers had sort of silver finger gloves,
designed to look like claws. She gleamed like the night sky.
And she was wearing her pointy hat, which Miss Level never did at home. It was
taller than any hat that Tiffany had ever seen. It had stars on it, and silver hatpins
glittered.
All of this should have added up to something pretty impressive. It didn’t. Partly
it was because there was just too much of everything, but mostly it
was because of Mrs Earwig. She had a long sharp face and looked very much as
though she was about to complain about the cat from next door widdling on her lawn.
And she looked like that all the time. Before she spoke, she very pointedly looked at
the door to see if the heavy knocking had made a mark.