Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett [7]
“Can I learn that?”
“I daresay. It’s not hard, if you get your mind right.”
“Can you teach me?”
“I just have. I showed you.”
“No, Granny, you just showed me how to do it, not…how to do it!”
“Can’t tell you that. I know how I do it. How you do it’ll be different. You’ve just got to get your mind right.”
“How do I do that?”
“How should I know? It’s your mind,” snapped Granny. “Put the kettle on again, will you? My tea’s gone cold.”
There was something almost spiteful about all this, but that was Granny. She took the view that if you were capable of learning, you’d work it out. There was no point in making it easy for people. Life wasn’t easy, she said.
“An’ I see you’re still wearing that trinket,” said Granny. She didn’t like trinkets, a word she used to mean anything metal a witch wore that wasn’t there to hold up, shut, or fasten. That was “shoppin’.”
Tiffany touched the little silver horse she wore around her neck. It was small and simple, and it meant a lot to her.
“Yes,” she said calmly. “I still am.”
“What have you got in that basket?” Granny said now, which was unusually rude. Tiffany’s basket was on the table. It had a present in it, of course. Everyone knew you took a small present along when you went visiting, but the person you were visiting was supposed to be surprised when you gave it to her, and say things like “Oooh, you shouldn’t have.”
“I brought you something,” said Tiffany, swinging the big black kettle onto the fire.
“You’ve got no call to be bringing me presents, I’m sure,” said Granny sternly.
“Yes, well,” said Tiffany, and left it at that.
She heard Granny lift the lid of the basket. There was a kitten in it.
“Her mother is Pinky, the Widow Cable’s cat,” said Tiffany, to fill the silence.
“You shouldn’t have,” growled the voice of Granny Weatherwax.
“It was no trouble.” Tiffany smiled at the fire.
“I can’t be havin’ with cats.”
“She’ll keep the mice down,” said Tiffany, still not turning around.
“Don’t have mice.”
Nothing for them to eat, thought Tiffany. Aloud, she said, “Mrs. Earwig’s got six big black cats.” In the basket, the white kitten would be staring up at Granny Weatherwax with the sad, shocked expression of all kittens. You test me, I test you, Tiffany thought.
“I don’t know what I shall do with it, I’m sure. It’ll have to sleep in the goat shed,” said Granny Weatherwax. Most witches had goats.
The kitten rubbed against Granny’s hand and went meep.
When Tiffany left, later on, Granny Weatherwax said good-bye at the door and very carefully shut the kitten outside.
Tiffany went across the clearing to where she’d tied up Miss Treason’s broomstick.
But she didn’t get on, not yet. She stepped back up against a holly bush, and went quiet until she wasn’t there anymore, until everything about her said: I’m not here.
Everyone could see pictures in the fire and in clouds. You just turned that the other way around. You turned off that bit of yourself that said you were there. You dissolved. Anyone looking at you would find you very hard to see. Your face became a bit of leaf and shadow, your body a piece of tree and bush. The other person’s mind would fill in the gaps.
Looking like just another piece of holly bush, she watched the door. The wind had got up, warm but worrisome, shaking the yellow and red leaves off the sycamore trees and whirring them around the clearing. The kitten tried to bat a few of them out of the air and then sat there, making sad little mewling noises. Any minute now, Granny Weatherwax would think Tiffany had gone and would open the door and—
“Forgot something?” said Granny by her ear.
She was the bush.
“Er…it’s very sweet. I just thought