Wintersmith (3 page)

All witches were a bit odd. Tiffany had got used to odd, so that odd seemed quite normal. There was Miss Level, for example, who had two bodies, although one of them was imaginary. Mistress
Pullunder, who bred pedigreed earthworms and gave them all names…well, she was hardly odd at all, just a bit peculiar, and anyway earthworms were quite interesting in a basically uninteresting kind of way. And there had been Old Mother Dismass, who suffered from bouts of temporal confusion, which can be quite strange when it happens to a witch; her mouth never moved in time with her words, and sometimes her footsteps came down the stairs ten minutes before she did.

But when it came to odd, Miss Treason didn’t just take the cake, but a packet of biscuits too, with sprinkles on the top, and also a candle.

Where to start, when things were wall-to-wall odd….

Miss Eumenides Treason had gone blind when she was sixty years old. To most people that would have been a misfortune, but Miss Treason was skilled at Borrowing, a particular witch talent.

She could use the eyes of animals, reading what they saw right out of their minds.

She’d gone deaf when she was seventy-five, but she’d got the hang of it by now and used any ears she could find running around.

When Tiffany had first gone to stay with her, Miss Treason had used a mouse for seeing and hearing, because her old jackdaw had died. It was a bit worrying to see an old woman striding around the cottage with a mouse in her outstretched hand, and very worrying if you said something and the mouse was swung around to face you. It was amazing how creepy a little pink wriggly nose could be.

The new ravens were a lot better. Somebody in one of the local villages had made the old woman a perch that fitted across her shoulders, one bird on either side, and with her long white hair the
effect was very, well, witchy, although a bit messy down the back of her cloak by the end of the day.

Then there was her clock. It was heavy and made of rusty iron by someone who was more blacksmith than watchmaker, which was why it went
clonk-clank
instead of
tick-tock
. She wore it on her belt and could tell the time by feeling the stubby little hands.

There was a story in the villages that the clock was Miss Treason’s heart, which she’d used ever since her first heart died. But there were lots of stories about Miss Treason.

You had to have a high threshold for odd to put up with her. It was traditional that young witches traveled around and stayed with older witches to learn from a lot of experts in exchange for what Miss Tick the witch finder called “some help with the chores,” which meant “doing all the chores.” Mostly, they left Miss Treason’s after one night. Tiffany had stuck it out for three months so far.

Oh, and sometimes, when she was looking for a pair of eyes to look through, Miss Treason would creep into yours. It was a strange prickly sensation, like having someone invisible looking over your shoulder.

Yes…perhaps Miss Treason didn’t just take the cake, a packet of biscuits with sprinkles on the top, and a candle, but also the trifle, the sandwiches, and a man who made amusing balloon animals afterward.

She was weaving at her loom when Tiffany came in. Two beaks turned to face her.

“Ah, child,” said Miss Treason in a thin, cracked voice. “You have had a good day.”

“Yes, Miss Treason,” said Tiffany obediently.

“You have seen the girl Weatherwax and she is well.”
Click-clack
went the loom.
Clonk-clank
went the clock.

“Quite well,” said Tiffany. Miss Treason didn’t ask questions. She just told you the answers. “The girl Weatherwax,” Tiffany thought, as she started to get their supper. But Miss Treason was very old.

And very scary. It was a fact. You couldn’t deny it. She didn’t have a hooked nose and she did have all her teeth, even if they were yellow, but after that she was a picture-book wicked witch. And her knees clicked when she walked. And she walked very fast, with the help of two sticks, scuttling around like a big spider. That was another strange thing: The cottage was full of cobwebs, which Miss Treason ordered Tiffany never to touch, but you never saw a spider.

There was the thing about black, too. Most witches liked black, but Miss Treason even had black goats and black chickens. The walls were black. The floor was black. If you dropped a stick of licorice, you’d never find it again. And, to Tiffany’s dismay, she had to make her cheeses black, which meant painting the cheeses with shiny black wax. Tiffany was an excellent cheesemaker and it did keep them moist, but Tiffany distrusted black cheeses. They always looked as though they were plotting something.

And Miss Treason didn’t seem to need sleep. She hadn’t got much use for night and day now. When the ravens went to bed, she’d summon up an owl and weave by owl sight. An owl was particularly good, she said, because it’d keep turning its head to watch the shuttle of the loom.
Click-clack
went the loom, and
clonk-clank
went the clock, right back at it.

Miss Treason, with her billowing black cloak and bandaged eyes and wild white hair…

Miss Treason with her two sticks, wandering the cottage and garden in the dark and frosty night, smelling the memory of flowers….

All witches had some particular skill, and Miss Treason delivered Justice.

People would come from miles around to bring her their problems:

I know it’s my cow but he says it’s his!

She says it’s her land but my father left it to me!
…and Miss Treason would sit at the
click-clack
ing loom with her back to the room full of anxious people. The loom worried them. They watched it as though they were afraid of it, and the ravens watched them.

They would stutter out their cases, um-ing and ah-ing, while the loom rattled away in the flickering candlelight. Oh, yes…the candlelight…

The candleholders were two skulls. One had the word E
NOCHI
carved on it; the other had the word A
THOOTITA
.

(The words meant “G
UILT
” and “I
NNOCENCE
.” Tiffany wished she didn’t know that. There was no way that a girl brought up on the Chalk should know that, because the words were in a foreign language, and an ancient one, too. She knew them because of Dr. Sensibility Bustle, D. M. Phil., B. El L., Patricius Professor of Magic at Unseen University, who was in her head.

(Well, a tiny part of him, at least.

(A couple of summers ago she had been taken over by a hiver, a…thing that had been collecting minds for millions of years. Tiffany managed to get it out of her head, but a few fragments had stayed tangled up in her brain. One of these was a tiny lump of ego and a mix of memories that were what remained of the late Dr. Bustle. He wasn’t much trouble, but if she looked at anything in a foreign language, she could read it—or, rather, hear Dr. Bustle’s reedy voice translating it for her. That seemed to be
about all that was left of him, but she tried to avoid getting undressed in front of a mirror.)

The candles had dripped wax all over the skulls, and people would keep glancing at them the whole time they were in the room.

And then, when all the words had been said, the loom would stop with a shock of sudden silence, and Miss Treason would turn around in her big heavy chair, which had wheels on it, and remove the black blindfold from her pearly gray eyes and say:

“I have heard. Now I shall see. I shall see what is true.”

Some people would actually run away at this point, when she stared at them in the light from the skulls. Those eyes that could not see your face could somehow see your mind. When Miss Treason was looking right through you, you could only be truthful or very, very stupid.

So no one ever argued with Miss Treason.

Witches were not allowed to be paid for using their talents, but everyone who came to have a dispute settled by Miss Treason brought her a present, usually food but sometimes clean used clothing, if it was black, or a pair of old boots if they were her size. If Miss Treason gave judgment against you, it was really not a good idea (everyone said) to ask for your present back, as being turned into something small and sticky often offends.

They said if you lied to Miss Treason, you would die horribly within a week. They said that kings and princes came to see Miss Treason at night, asking questions about great affairs of state. They said that in her cellar was a heap of gold, guarded by a demon with skin like fire and three heads that would attack anyone it saw and eat their noses.

Tiffany suspected that at least two of these beliefs were wrong.
She knew the third one wasn’t true, because one day she’d gone down into the cellar (with a bucket of water and a poker, just in case), and there was nothing there but piles of potatoes and carrots. And a mouse, watching her carefully.

Tiffany wasn’t scared, much. For one thing, unless the demon was good at disguising itself as a potato, it probably didn’t exist. And another thing was that although Miss Treason looked bad and sounded bad and smelled like old locked wardrobes, she didn’t
feel
bad.

First Sight and Second Thoughts, that’s what a witch had to rely on: First Sight to see what’s really there, and Second Thoughts to watch the First Thoughts to check that they were thinking right. Then there were the Third Thoughts, which Tiffany had never heard discussed and therefore kept quiet about; they were odd, seemed to think for themselves, and didn’t turn up very often. And they were telling her that there was more to Miss Treason than met the eye.

And then one day, when she was dusting, Tiffany knocked over the skull called Enochi.

…and suddenly Tiffany knew a lot more about Miss Treason than Miss Treason probably wanted anyone to know.

Tonight, as they were eating their stew (with black beans), Miss Treason said, “The wind is rising. We must go soon. I would not trust the stick above the trees on a night like this. There may be strange creatures about.”

“Go? We’re going out?” Tiffany asked. They never went out in the evenings, which was why the evenings always felt a hundred years long.

“Indeed we are. They will be dancing tonight.”

“Who will?”

“The ravens will not be able to see and the owl will get confused,” Miss Treason went on. “I will need to use your eyes.”

“Who will be dancing, Miss Treason?” said Tiffany. She liked dancing, but no one seemed to dance up here.

“It is not far, but there will be a storm.”

So that was that; Miss Treason wasn’t going to tell. But it sounded interesting. Besides, it would probably be an education to see anyone Miss Treason thought was strange.

Of course, it did mean Miss Treason would put her pointy hat on. Tiffany hated this bit. She’d have to stand in front of Miss Treason and stare at her, and feel the little tingle in her eyes as the ancient witch used her as a kind of mirror.

The wind was roaring in the woods like a big dark animal by the time they’d finished supper. It barged the door out of Tiffany’s hands when she opened it and blew around the room, making the cords hum on the loom.

“Are you sure about this, Miss Treason?” she said, trying to push the door shut.

“Don’t you say that to me! You will not say that to me! The dance must be witnessed! I have never missed the dance!” Miss Treason looked nervous and edgy. “We must go! And you must wear black.”

“Miss Treason, you
know
I don’t wear black,” said Tiffany.

“Tonight is a night for black. You will wear my second-best cloak.”

She said it with a witch’s firmness, as if the idea of anyone disobeying had never crossed her mind. She was 113 years old. She’d had a lot of practice. Tiffany didn’t argue.

It isn’t that I have anything against black, Tiffany thought as she fetched the second-best cloak, but it’s just not me. When people
say witches wear black, they actually mean that old ladies wear black. Anyway, it’s not as if I’m wearing pink or something….

After that she had to wrap Miss Treason’s clock in pieces of blanket, so that the
clonk-clank
became
clonk-clank
. There was no question of leaving it behind. Miss Treason always kept the clock close to her.

While Tiffany got herself ready, the old woman wound the clock up with a horrible graunching noise. She was always winding it up; sometimes she stopped to do it in the middle of a judgment, with a room full of horrified people.

There was no rain yet, but when they set out the air was full of twigs and flying leaves. Miss Treason sat sidesaddle on the broom, hanging on for dear life, while Tiffany walked along towing it by means of a piece of clothesline.

The sunset sky was still red, and a gibbous moon was high, but the clouds were being whipped across it, filling the woods with moving shadows. Branches knocked together, and Tiffany heard the creak and crash as, somewhere in the dark, one fell to the ground.

“Are we going to the villages?” Tiffany yelled above the din.

“No! Take the path through the forest!” shouted Miss Treason.

Ah, thought Tiffany, is this the famous “dancing around without your drawers on” that I’ve heard so much about? Actually, not very much about, because as soon as anyone mentions it, someone else tells them to shut up, so I really haven’t heard much about it at all, but haven’t heard in a very meaningful way.

It was something people thought witches did, but witches didn’t think they did it. Tiffany had to admit she could see why. Even hot summer nights weren’t all that warm, and there were always hedgehogs and thistles to worry about. Besides, you just
couldn’t imagine someone like Granny Weatherwax dancing around without—Well, you just couldn’t imagine it, because if you did, it would make your head explode.