I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett [106]
She paused for breath, which came, and the torrent of tears, which didn’t. Letitia just stood there as if she was thinking deeply. Then she said, ‘I suppose that “sorry” isn’t enough, right?’
‘As a matter of fact, it would be rather a good start,’ said Tiffany, but she thought: This young woman, who has never realized it’s time to stop wearing girly dresses, gave a headless ghost a pumpkin to carry under its arm so that it would feel better and presented a screaming little skeleton with a teddy bear. Would I have thought to do that? It’s absolutely something that a witch would do.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘you have definitely got some magical talent, I really mean it. But you’ll get into a terrible amount of trouble if you start mucking about when you don’t know what you are doing. Although giving the teddy bear to the poor little skeleton was a stroke of genius. Build on that thought and get some training, and you might have quite a magical future. You will have to go and spend some time with an old witch, just like I did.’
‘Well, that’s wonderful, Tiffany,’ Letitia said. ‘But I have to go and spend some time getting married! Shall we get back now? And what do you suggest we do with the book? I don’t like the idea of him being in there. Supposing he gets out!’
‘He is out, already. But the book is … well, a kind of window that makes it easy for him to come through. To reach me. You get that sort of thing occasionally. It’s a sort of way into another world, or perhaps somewhere else in this world.’
Tiffany had felt rather lofty when she explained this, and so was somewhat chastened when Letitia said, ‘Oh yes, the bluebell wood with the cottage that sometimes has smoke coming out of the chimney and sometimes does not; and the girl feeding the ducks on the pond, where the pigeons on the house behind her are sometimes flying and sometimes perched. They are mentioned in H.J. Toadbinder’s book Floating Worlds. Would you like it? I know where it is.’ And before Tiffany could say a word, the girl hurried off among the bookshelves. She came back within a minute, much to Tiffany’s relief, and she was carrying a large, shiny leather volume which was suddenly dropped into Tiffany’s hands.
‘It’s a present. You’ve been kinder to me than I was to you.’
‘You can’t give me that! It’s part of the library! It’ll leave a gap!’
‘No, I insist,’ said Letitia. ‘I’m the only one who comes in here now, in any case. My mother keeps all the books of family history, genealogy and heraldry in her own room, and she’s the only one who is interested in them. Apart from me, the only other person who ever comes in here these days is Mr Tyler, and I think I hear him now, making his last round of the night. Well,’ she added, ‘he’s very old and very slow and it takes him about a week to go about his night watching, bearing in mind he sleeps through the day. Let’s go. He’ll have a heart attack if he actually finds anybody.’
There was indeed a creaking sound of a distant doorknob.
Letitia lowered her voice. ‘Do you mind if we sneak out the other way? He might have a nasty turn if he actually discovers anybody.’
A light was coming down the long corridor, although you needed to watch it for quite some time to see that it was moving. Letitia opened the door to the outer world and they hurried onto what would have been the lawn if anyone had mown it in the past ten years. Tiffany got the impression that lawn mowing here went at the same decrepit speed as Mr Tyler. There was dew on the grass, and a certain sense that daylight was a distinct possibility sometime in the future. As soon as they reached the broomstick, Letitia made yet another muttered apology and hurried back into the sleeping house via another door, coming out again five minutes later carrying a large bag. ‘My mourning clothes,’ she said as the broomstick rose into the soft air. ‘It will be the old Baron’s funeral tomorrow, the poor man. My mother always travels with her funeral