‘Well, yes. Technically.’
The round pink face smiled. ‘Good, I did wonder, because it was, um, you know . . .
having a wee up against one of Miss Level’s garden gnomes?’
‘Definitely a Feegle,’ said Tiffany.
‘Oh well, I suppose the big stinky horrible spiky iron stinging nettle needs a fairy, just
like every other plant,’ said Petulia.
Chapter n ArctliUK.
When Petulia had gone, Mistress Weatherwax stamped her feet and said, ‘Let’s go,
young lady. It’s about eight miles to Sheercliff. They’ll have started before we get there.’
‘What about the hiver?’
‘Oh, it can come if it likes.’ Mistress Weatherwax smiled. ‘Oh, don’t frown like that.
There’ll be more’n three hundred witches at the Trials, and they’re right out in the
country. It’ll be as safe as anything. Or do you want to meet the hiver now? We could
probably do that. It don’t seem to move fast.’
‘No!’ said Tiffany, louder than she’d intended. ‘No, because . . . things aren’t what they
seem. We’d do things wrong. Er . . . I can’t explain it. It’s because of the third wish.’
‘Which you don’t know what it is?’
‘Yes. But I will soon, I hope.’
The witch stared at her. ‘Yes, I hope so, too,’ she said. ‘Well, no point in standing
around. Let’s get moving.’ And with that the witch picked up her blanket and set off
as though being pulled by a string.
‘We haven’t even had anything to eat!’ said Tiffany, running after her.
‘I had a lot of voles last night,’ said Mistress Weatherwax over her shoulder.
‘Yes, but you didn’t actually eat them, did you?’ said Tiffany. ‘It was the owl that
actually ate them.’
‘Technic’ly, yes,’ Mistress Weatherwax admitted. ‘But if you think you’ve been eating
voles all night you’d be amazed how much you don’t want to eat anything next
morning. Or ever again.’
She nodded at the distant, departing figure of Petulia.
‘Friend of yours?’ she said, as they set out.
‘Er . . . if she is, I don’t deserve it,’ said Tiffany.
‘Hmm,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Well, sometimes we get what we don’t deserve.’
For an old woman Mistress Weatherwax could move quite fast. She strode over the
moors as if distance was a personal insult. But she was good at something else too.
She knew about silence. There was the swish of her long skirt as it snagged the
heathers, but somehow that became part of the background noise.
In the silence, as she walked, Tiffany could still hear the memories. There were
hundreds of them left behind by the hiver. Most of them were so faint that they
were nothing more than a slight
uncomfortable feeling in her head, but the ancient tiger still burned brightly in the
back of her brain, and behind that was the giant lizard. They’d been killing machines,
the most powerful creatures in their world – once. The hiver had taken them both.
And then they’d died fighting.
Always taking fresh bodies, always driving the owners mad with the urge for power
which would always end with getting them killed . . . and just as Tiffany wondered why,
a memory said: Because it is frightened.
Frightened of what? Tiffany thought. It’s so powerful!
Who knows? But it’s mad with terror. Completely binkers!
‘You’re Simplicity Bustle, aren’t you,’ said Tiffany, and then her ears informed her that
she’d said this aloud.
‘Talkative, ain’t he,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘He talked in your sleep the other
night. Used to have a very high opinion of himself. I reckon that’s why his memories
held together for so long.’
‘He doesn’t know binkers from bonkers, though,’ said Tiffany.
‘Well, memory fades,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. She stopped and leaned against a
rock. She sounded out of breath.
‘Are you all right, mistress?’ said Tiffany.
‘Sound as a bell,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, wheezing slightly. ‘Just getting my
second wind.
Anyway, it’s only another six miles.’
‘I notice you’re limping a bit,’ said Tiffany.
‘Do you, indeed? Then stop noticing!’
The shout echoed off the cliffs, full of command.
Mistress Weatherwax coughed, when the echo had died away. Tiffany had gone
pale.
‘It seems to me,’ said the old witch, ‘that I might just’ve been a shade on the sharp
side there. It was prob’ly the voles.’ She coughed again. ‘Them as knows me, or has
earned it one way or the other, calls me Granny Weatherwax. I shall not take it
amiss if you did the same.’
‘Granny Weatherwax?’ said Tiffany, shocked out of her shock by this new shock.
‘Not technic’ly,’ said Mistress Weatherwax quickly. ‘It’s what they call a honorific, like
Old Mother So-and-so, or Goodie Thingy, or Nanny Whatshername. To show that a
witch has . . . is fully . . . has been-‘
Tiffany didn’t know whether to laugh or burst into tears. ‘I know,’ she said.
‘You do?’
‘Like Granny Aching,’ said Tiffany. ‘She was my granny, but everyone on the Chalk
called her Granny Aching.’
‘Mrs Aching’ wouldn’t have worked, she knew. You needed a big, warm, billowing, open kind
of word. Granny Aching was therefor everybody.
‘It’s like being everyone’s grandmother,’ she added. And didn’t add: who tells them
stories!
‘Well, then. Perhaps so. Granny Weatherwax it is,’
said Granny Weatherwax, and added quickly, ‘but not technic’ly. Now we’re best be
moving.’
She straightened up and set off again.
Granny Weatherwax. Tiffany tried it out in her head. She’d never known her other
grandmother, who’d died before she was born. Calling someone else Granny was
strange but, oddly, it seemed right. And you could have two.
The hiver followed them. Tiffany could feel it. But it was still keeping its distance.
Well, there’s a trick to take to the Trials, she thought. Granny – her brain tingled as she
thought the word – Granny has got a plan. She must have.
But . . . things weren’t right. There was another thought she wasn’t quite having; it
ducked out of sight every time she thought she had it. The hiver wasn’t acting right.
She made sure she kept up with Granny Weatherwax.
As they got nearer to the Trials, there were clues. Tiffany saw at least three
broomsticks in the air, heading the same way. They reached a proper track, too,
and groups of people were travelling in the same direction; there were a few pointy
hats amongst them, which was a definite clue. The track dropped on down through
some woods, came up in a patchwork of little fields and headed for a tall hedge,
from behind which came the sound of a brass band playing a medley of Songs from the
Shows, although by the sound of it no
two musicians could agree on what Song or which Show.
Tiffany jumped when she saw a balloon sail up above the trees, catch the wind and
swoop away, but it turned out to be just a balloon and not a lump of excess Brian. She could
tell this because it was followed by a long scream of rage mixed with a roar of complaint:
‘AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaa BLOON!’ which is the traditional
sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important
to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small
children this.
However, on this occasion a broomstick with a pointy-hatted passenger rose above
the trees, caught up with the balloon and towed it back down to the Trials ground.
‘Didn’t used to be like this,’ Granny Weatherwax grumbled as they reached a gate.
‘When I was a girl, we just used to meet up in some meadow somewhere, all by
ourselves. But now, oh no, it has to be a Grand Day Out For All The Family. Hah!’
There had been a crowd around the gate leading into the field, but there was
something about that ‘Hah!’ The crowd parted, as if by magic, and the women
pulled their children a little closer to them as Granny walked right up to the gate.
There was a boy there, selling tickets and wishing, now, that he’d never been born.
Granny Weatherwax stared at him. Tiffany saw his ears go red.
‘Two tickets, young man,’ said Granny. Little bits of ice tinkled off her words.
‘That’ll, er, be, er . . . one child and one senior citizen?’ the young man quavered.
Granny leaned forward and said: ‘What is a senior citizen, young man?’
‘It’s like . . . you know . . . old folks,’ the boy mumbled. Now his hands were
shaking.
Granny leaned further forward. The boy really, really wanted to step back but his feet
were rooted to the ground. All he could do was bend backwards.
‘Young man,’ said Granny, ‘I am not now, nor shall I ever be, an “old folk”. We’ll take
two tickets, which I see on that board there is a penny apiece.’ Her hand shot out, fast as