known what was in there? she wondered.
Yes. I would.
And you’re going to face the hiver even though you don’t know how to beat it?
Yes. I am. There’s part of me still in it. I might be able to do something-
But aren’t you just ever so slightly glad that Mistress Weatherwax and Miss Level
won the argument and now you’re going off very bravely but you happen to be
accompanied, completely against your will, by the most powerful witch alive?
Tiffany sighed. It was dreadful when your own thoughts tried to gang up on you.
The Feegles hadn’t objected to her going to find the hiver. They did object to not
being allowed to come with her. They’d been insulted, she knew. But, as Mistress
Weatherwax had said, this was true haggling and there was no place in it for Feegles.
If the hiver came, out there, not in a dream but for real, it’d have nothing about it
that could be kicked or head-butted.
Tiffany had tried to make a little speech, thanking them for their help, but Rob
Anybody had folded his arms and turned his back. It had all gone wrong. But the old
witch had been right. They could get hurt. The trouble was, explaining to a Feegle how
dangerous things were going to be only got them more enthusiastic.
She left them arguing with one another. It had not gone well.
But now that was all behind her, in more ways
that one. The trees beside the track were less bushy and more pointy or, if Tiffany
had known more about trees, she would have said that the oaks were giving way to
evergreens.
She could feel the hiver. It was following them, but a long way back.
If you had to imagine a head witch, you wouldn’t imagine Mistress Weatherwax. You
might imagine Mrs Earwig, who glided across the floor as though she was on wheels,
and had a dress as black as the darkness in a deep cellar, but Mistress Weatherwax was
just an old woman with a lined face and rough hands in a dress as black as night, which
is never as black as people think. It was dusty and ragged round the hem, too.
On the other hand, thought her Second Thoughts, you once bought Granny Aching a china
shepherdess, remember? All blue and white and sparkly?
Her First Thoughts thought: Well, yes, but I was a lot younger then.
Her Second Thoughts thought: Yes, but which one was the real shepherdess? The shiny
lady in the nice clean dress and buckled shoes, or the old woman who stumped around in the snow
with boots filled with straw and a sack across her shoulders?
At which point, Mistress Weatherwax stumbled. She caught her balance very
quickly.
‘Dangerously loose stones on this path,’ she said. ‘Watch out for them.’
Tiffany looked down. There weren’t that many
stones and they didn’t seem very dangerous or particularly loose.
How old was Mistress Weatherwax? That was another question she wished she
hadn’t asked. She was skinny and wiry, just like Granny Aching, the kind of person
who goes on and on – but one day Granny Aching had gone to bed and had never got
up again, just like that. . .
The sun was setting. Tiffany could feel the hiver in the same way that you can sense
that someone is looking at you. It was still in the woods that hugged the mountain like a
scarf.
At last the witch stopped at a spot where rocks like pillars sprouted out of the turf.
She sat down with her back to a big rock.
This’ll have to do,’ she said. It’ll be dark soon and you could turn an ankle on all
this loose stone.’
There were huge boulders around them, house-sized, which had rolled down from
the mountains in the past. The rock of the peaks began not far away, a wall of stone that
seemed to hang above Tiffany like a wave. It was a desolate place. Every sound echoed.
She sat down by Mistress Weatherwax and opened the bag that Miss Level had
packed for the journey.
Tiffany wasn’t very experienced at things like this but, according to the book of fairy
tales, the typical food for taking on an adventure was bread and cheese. Hard cheese,
too.
Miss Level had made them ham sandwiches, with pickles, and she’d included napkins.
That was kind of
a strange thought to keep in your head: We’re trying to find a way of killing a terrible
creature, but at least we won’t be covered in crumbs.
There was a bottle of cold tea, too, and a bag of biscuits. Miss Level knew Mistress
Weatherwax.
‘Shouldn’t we light a fire?’ Tiffany suggested.
‘Why? It’s a long way down to the tree line to get the firewood, and there’ll be a
fine half-moon up in twenty minutes. Your friend’s keeping his distance and there
nothing else that’ll attack us up here.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I walk safely in my mountains,’ said Mistress Weatherwax.
‘But aren’t there trolls and wolves and things?’
‘Oh, yes. Lots.’
‘And they don’t try to attack you?’
‘Not any more,’ said a self-satisfied voice in the dark. ‘Pass me the biscuits, will
you?’
‘Here you are. Would you like some pickles?’
Tickles gives me the wind something awful’
‘In that case-‘
‘Oh, I wasn’t saying no,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, taking two large pickled cucumbers.
Oh, good, Tiffany thought.
She’d brought three fresh eggs with her. Getting the hang of a shamble was taking
too long. It was stupid. All the other girls were able to use them. She was sure she was
doing everything right.
She’d filled her pocket with random things. Now
she pulled them out without looking, wove the thread around the egg like she’d
done a hundred times before, grasped the pieces of wood and moved them so that. . .
Pod
The egg cracked, and oozed.
‘I told you,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, who’d opened one eye. ‘They’re toys. Sticks
and stones.’
‘Have you ever used one?’ said Tiffany.
‘No. Couldn’t get the hang of them. They got in the way.’ Mistress Weatherwax
yawned, wrapped the blanket around her, made a couple of mnup, mnup noises as she
tried to get comfortable against the rock and, after a while, her breathing became deeper.
Tiffany waited in silence, her blanket around her, until the moon came up. She’d
expected that to make things better, but it didn’t. Before, there had just been
darkness. Now there were shadows.
There was a snore beside her. It was one of those good solid ones, like ripping canvas.
Silence happened. It came across the night on silver wings, noiseless as the fall of a
feather, silence made into a bird, which alighted on a rock close by. It swivelled its head
to look at Tiffany.
There was more than just the curiosity of a bird in that look.
The old woman snored again. Tiffany reached out, still staring at the owl, and shook
her gently. When that didn’t work, she shook her hardly.
There was a sound like three pigs colliding and
Mistress Weatherwax opened one eye and said, ‘Whoo?’
‘There’s an owl watching us! It’s right up close!’
Suddenly the owl blinked, looked at Tiffany as if amazed to see her, spread its wings
and glided off into the night.
Mistress Weatherwax gripped her throat, coughed once or twice, and then said
hoarsely, ‘Of course it was an owl, child! It took me ten minutes to lure it this close!
Now just you be quiet while I starts again, otherwise I shall have to make do with a
bat, and when I goes out on a bat for any time at all I ends up thinkin’ I can see with
my ears, which is no way for a decent woman to behave!’
‘But you were snoring!’
‘I was not snoring! I was just resting gently while I tickled an owl closer! If you hadn’t
shaken me and scared it away, I’d have been up there with this entire moor under
my eye.’
‘You … take over its mind?’ said Tiffany nervously.
‘No! I’m not one of your hivers! I just . . . borrows a lift from it, I just … nudges it
now and again, it don’t even know I’m there. Now try to rest!’
‘But what if the hiver-?’
‘If it comes anywhere near it’ll be me that tells youV Mistress Weatherwax hissed, and lay back. Then her head jerked up one more time. ‘And I do not snore!’ she added.
After half a minute, she started to snore again.
Minutes after that the owl came back, or perhaps
it was a different owl. It glided onto the same rock, settled there for a while and then
sped away. The witch stopped snoring. In fact, she stopped breathing.
Tiffany leaned closer and finally lowered an ear to the skinny chest to see if there was