Jeannie sighed as another y
oung Feegle smacked into the wall, shook his head and rushed back into the fight. It was almost impossible to hurt a Feegle. Any human who tried to stamp on a Feegle would find that the little man he thought was under his boot was now in fact climbing up his trouser leg, and after that the day could only get worse. Besides, if you saw one Feegle, there were probably many more around that you hadn’t spotted, and they had certainly spotted you.
Perhaps the bigjobs have bigger problems because they’re bigger than us, the kelda thought. She sighed inwardly. She would never let her husband know this, but sometimes she did wonder whether a young Feegle might profitably be taught something like, well, accountancy. Something that didnae mean ye had to bounce off the walls, and didnae mean you had to fight all the time. But then, would he still be a Feegle?
‘I’m feared for the big wee hag, Rob,’ she said. ‘Something is wrong.’
‘She wanted to be a hag, lassie,’ said Rob. ‘Now she has to dree her weird, same as us. She is a bonny fighter, ye ken. She kissed the Lord of the Winter to his death and banged the Queen o’ the Elves with a frying pan. And I mind the time that invisible beastie got into her heid, and she wrestled it and sent it away. She fights.’
‘Oh, I ken that well enough,’ said the kelda. ‘She kissed the face o’ winter and made springtime come again. It was a great thing that she did, sure enough, but she had the mantle of the summer about her. It was that power she dealt to him, not just her own. She did it well, mind, I can think of none who would have done it better, but she must beware.’
‘What enemy can she have that we cannae face with her?’ Rob asked.
‘I cannae tell,’ said the kelda, ‘but in my heid, it seems like this. When she kissed the winter, it shook me to my roots; it seemed like it shook the world and I cannae but wonder that there might be those who stirred in their slumber. You mak’ certain, Rob Anybody, to keep more than one eye on her.’
Chapter 4
THE REAL SHILLING
TIFFANY WOKE HUNGRY and to the sound of laughter. Amber was awake and, against all probability, happy.
Tiffany found out why when she managed to squeeze most of herself into the tunnel that led to the mound. The girl was still lying curled up on one side, but a group of young Feegles were entertaining her with somersaults and handsprings and occasionally tripping one another up in humorous ways.
The laughter was younger than Amber was; it sounded like the chuckle a baby makes when it sees shiny things in pretty colours. Tiffany did not know how the soothings worked, but they were better than anything a witch could do; they seemed to settle people down and make them better from inside their head outwards. They made you well and, best of all, they made you forget. Sometimes, it seemed to Tiffany, the kelda talked about them as if they were alive – living thoughts perhaps, or kindly living creatures that somehow took away the bad things.
‘She’s doing well,’ said the kelda, appearing out of nowhere. ‘She will bide fine. There will be nightmares as the darkness comes out. The soothings can’t do everything. She’s coming back into herself now, right from the start, and that’s the best thing.’
It was still dark but dawn edged the horizon. Tiffany had a dirty job to do before daylight.
‘Can I leave her here with you for a little while?’ she said. ‘There’s a small task that needs doing.’
I shouldn’t have gone to sleep, she thought as she climbed out of the pit. I should have gone right back! I shouldn’t have left the poor little thing there!
She tugged the broomstick out of the thorn bushes around the mound, and stopped dead. Someone was watching her; she could feel it on the back of her neck. She turned sharply, and saw an old woman all in black, quite tall, but leaning on a walkingstick. Even as Tiffany looked, the woman vanished, slowly, as if evaporating into the scenery.
‘Mistress Weatherwax?’ Tiffany said to the empty air, but that was silly. Granny Weatherwax would not be seen dead with a walkingstick, and certainly wouldn’t be seen alive with one. And there was movement in the corner of her eye. When she spun round again there was a hare, right up on her9 hind legs, watching her with interest and no sign of fear.
It was what they did, of course. The Feegles didn’t hunt them, and the average sheepdog would run out of legs before a hare ran out of breath. The hare had no stuffy burrow to be trapped in; speed was where a hare lived, shooting across the landscape like a dream of the wind – she could afford to sit and watch the slow world go by.
This one burst into flames. She blazed for a moment and then, entirely unharmed, sped away in a blur.
All right, thought Tiffany as the broomstick came free, let’s approach this from the point of view of common sense. The turf isn’t scorched and hares are not known for bursting into flames, so–She stopped as a tiny trapdoor flicked open in her memory.
The hare runs into the fire.
Had she seen that written down anywhere? Had she heard it as part of a song? A nursery rhyme? What had the hare got to do with anything? But she was a witch, after all, and there was a job to do. Mysterious omens could wait. Witches knew that mysterious omens were around all the time. The world was always very nearly drowning in mysterious omens. You just had to pick the one that was convenient.
Bats and owls steered effortlessly out of Tiffany’s way as she sped over the sleeping village. The Petty house was on the very edge. It had a garden. Every house in the village had a garden. Most of them had a garden full of vegetables or, if the wife had the upper hand, half vegetables and half flowers. The Petty house was fronted by a quarter of an acre of stinging nettles.
That had always annoyed Tiffany right down to her country boots. How hard would it have been to grub up the weeds and put in a decent crop of potatoes? All they needed was muck, and there was plenty of that in a farming village; the trick was to stop it getting into the house. Mr Petty could have made an effort.
He had been back to the barn, or at least somebody had. The baby was now on top of the heap of straw. Tiffany had come prepared with some old, but still serviceable linen, which was at least better than sacking and straw. But somebody had disturbed the little body, and put flowers around it, except that the flowers were, in fact, stinging nettles. They had also lit a candle in one of the tin-plate candlesticks that every house in the village owned. A candlestick. A light. On a pile of loose straw. In a barn full of tinder-dry hay and more straw. Tiffany stared in horror, and then heard the grunt overhead. A man was hanging from the barn’s rafters.
They creaked. A little dust and some shreds of hay floated down. Tiffany caught them quickly and picked up the candle before the next fall of wisps set the whole barn alight. She was about to blow it out when it struck her that this would leave her in the dark with the gently spinning figure that may or may not be a corpse. She put it down ever so carefully by the door and scrabbled around to find something sharp. But this was Petty’s barn, and everything was blunt, except a saw.
It had to be him up there! Who else could it be? ‘Mr Petty?’ she said, clambering into the dusty rafters.
There was something like a wheeze. Was this good?