The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett [8]
“How do you know I won’t run away right now and tell the Baron?” said Tiffany.
“Because you haven’t the slightest desire to do so,” said Miss Tick. “You’re absolutely fascinated. You want to be a witch, am I right? You probably want to fly on a broomstick, yes?”
“Oh, yes!” She’d often dreamed of flying. Miss Tick’s next words brought her down to earth.
“Really? You like having to wear really, really thick pants? Believe me, if I’ve got to fly, I wear two pairs of woolen ones and a canvas pair on the outside which, I may tell you, are not very feminine no matter how much lace you sew on. It can get cold up there. People forget that. And then there’s the bristles. Don’t ask me about the bristles. I will not talk about the bristles.”
“But can’t you use a keeping-warm spell?” said Tiffany.
“I could. But a witch doesn’t do that sort of thing. Once you use magic to keep yourself warm, then you’ll start using it for other things.”
“But isn’t that what a witch is supposed to—” Tiffany began.
“Once you learn about magic, I mean really learn about magic, learn everything you can learn about magic, then you’ve got the most important lesson still to learn,” said Miss Tick.
“What’s that?”
“Not to use it. Witches don’t use magic unless they really have to. It’s hard work and difficult to control. We do other things. A witch pays attention to everything that’s going on. A witch uses her head. A witch is sure of herself. A witch always has a piece of string—”
“I always do have a piece of string!” said Tiffany. “It’s always handy!”
“Good. Although there’s more to witchcraft than string. A witch delights in small details. A witch sees through things and around things. A witch sees farther than most. A witch sees things from the other side. A witch knows where she is, who she is, and when she is. A witch would see Jenny Green-Teeth,” she added. “What happened?”
“How did you know I saw Jenny Green-Teeth?”
“I’m a witch. Guess,” said Miss Tick.
Tiffany looked around the tent. There wasn’t much to see, even now that her eyes were getting accustomed to the gloom. The sounds of the outside world filtered through the heavy material.
“I think—”
“Yes?” said the witch.
“I think you heard me telling the teacher.”
“Correct. I just used my ears,” said Miss Tick, saying nothing at all about saucers of ink. “Tell me about this monster with eyes the size of the kind of soup plates that are eight inches across. Where do soup plates come into it?”
“The monster is mentioned in a book of stories I’ve got,” explained Tiffany. “It said Jenny Green-Teeth has eyes the size of soup plates. There’s a picture, but it’s not a good one. So I measured a soup plate, so I could be exact.”
Miss Tick put her chin on her hand and gave Tiffany an odd sort of smile.
“That was all right, wasn’t it?” said Tiffany.
“What? Oh, yes. Yes. Um…yes. Very…exact. Go on.”
Tiffany told her about the fight with Jenny, although she didn’t mention Wentworth in case Miss Tick got funny about it. Miss Tick listened carefully.
“Why the frying pan?” she said. “You could’ve found a stick.”
“A frying pan just seemed a better idea,” said Tiffany.
“Hah! It was. Jenny would’ve eaten you up if you’d used a stick. A frying pan is made of iron. Creatures of that kidney can’t stand iron.”
“But it’s a monster out of a storybook!” said Tiffany. “What’s it doing turning up in our little river?”
Miss Tick stared at Tiffany for a while and then said: “Why do you want to be a witch, Tiffany?”
It had started with The Goode Childe’s Booke of Faerie Tales. Actually, it had probably started with a lot of things, but the stories most of all.
Her mother had read them to her when she was little, and then she’d read them to herself. And all the stories had, somewhere, the witch. The wicked old witch.
And Tiffany had thought, Where’s the evidence?
The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you had no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch.
If