I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett [116]
Those tunnels in the skull were hypnotic, and now he moved from side to side slowly, like a snake.
‘Please don’t.’
She wasn’t expecting that; the voice was urgent but quite friendly – and it belonged to Eskarina Smith.
The wind was silver and cold.
Tiffany, lying on her back, looked up into a white sky; at the edge of her vision, dried grasses shook and rattled in the wind but, curiously, behind this little bit of countryside there was the big fireplace and the battling knights.
‘It is really quite important that you don’t move,’ said the same voice behind her. ‘The place where you are now has been, as we say, cobbled together for this conversation and did not exist until you arrived here, and will cease to exist the moment you leave. Strictly speaking, by the standards of most philosophical disciplines, it cannot be said to have any existence at all.’
‘So it’s a magic place, yes? Like the Unreal Estate?’
‘Very sensible way of putting it,’ said the voice of Eskarina. ‘Those of us who know about it call it the travelling now. It’s an easy way to talk to you in private; when it closes, you will be exactly where you were and no time will have passed. Do you understand?’
‘No!’
Eskarina sat down on the grass next to her. ‘Thank goodness for that. It would be rather disturbing if you did. You are, you know, an extremely unusual witch. As far as I can tell, you have a natural talent for making cheese, and as talents go, it is a pretty good talent to have. The world needs cheese-makers. A good cheese-maker is worth her weight in, well, cheese. So you were not born with a talent for witchcraft.’
Tiffany opened her mouth to reply before she had any idea what she was going to say, but that is not unusual among human beings. The first thing to push through the throng of questions was: ‘Hang on, I was holding a burning brand. But now you have brought me here, wherever here is exactly. What happened?’ She looked at the fire. The flames were frozen. ‘People will notice me,’ she said, and then, given the nature of the situation, she added, ‘Won’t they?’
‘The answer is no; the reason is complicated. The travelling now is … tame time. It’s time that is on your side. Believe me, there are stranger things in the universe. Right now, Tiffany, we are truly living on borrowed time.’
The flames were still frozen. Tiffany felt that they should be cold, but she could feel the warmth. And she had time to think too. ‘And when I go back?’
‘Nothing will have changed,’ said Eskarina, ‘except the contents of your head, which are, at the moment, very important.’
‘And you’ve gone to all this trouble to tell me I have no talent for witchcraft?’ Tiffany said flatly. ‘That was very kind of you.’
Eskarina laughed. It was her young laugh, which seemed strange when you saw the wrinkles on her face. Tiffany had never seen an old person looking so young. ‘I said you weren’t born with a talent for witchcraft: it didn’t come easily; you worked hard at it because you wanted it. You forced the world to give it to you, no matter the price, and the price is and will always be, high. Have you heard the saying “the reward you get for digging holes is a bigger shovel”?’
‘Yes,’ said Tiffany, ‘I heard Granny Weatherwax say it once.’
‘She invented it. People say you don’t find witchcraft; witchcraft finds you. But you’ve found it, even if at the time you didn’t know what it was you were finding, and you grabbed it by its scrawny neck and made it work for you.’
‘This is all very … interesting,’ said Tiffany, ‘but I have got things I must be doing.’
‘Not in the travelling now,’ said Eskarina firmly. ‘Look, the Cunning Man has found you again.’
‘I think he hides in books and pictures,’ Tiffany volunteered. ‘And tapestries.’ She shuddered.
‘And mirrors,’ said Eskarina, ‘and puddles, and the glint of light on a piece of broken glass, or the gleam on a knife. How many ways can you think of? How frightened are you prepared to be?’
‘I’m going to have to fight him,