Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett [8]
“Never you mind about me, my girl,” said the witch. “You run along back to Miss Treason and give her my best wishes, right now. But”—and her voice softened a little—“that was good hiding you did just then. There’s many as would not have seen you. Why, I hardly heard your hair growin’!”
When Tiffany’s stick had left the clearing, and Granny Weatherwax had satisfied herself in other little ways that she had really gone, she went back inside, carefully ignoring the kitten again.
After a few minutes, the door creaked open a little. It may have been just a draft. The kitten trotted inside….
All witches were a bit odd. Tiffany had got used to odd, so that odd seemed quite normal. There was Miss Level, for example, who had two bodies, although one of them was imaginary. Mistress Pullunder, who bred pedigreed earthworms and gave them all names…well, she was hardly odd at all, just a bit peculiar, and anyway earthworms were quite interesting in a basically uninteresting kind of way. And there had been Old Mother Dismass, who suffered from bouts of temporal confusion, which can be quite strange when it happens to a witch; her mouth never moved in time with her words, and sometimes her footsteps came down the stairs ten minutes before she did.
But when it came to odd, Miss Treason didn’t just take the cake, but a packet of biscuits too, with sprinkles on the top, and also a candle.
Where to start, when things were wall-to-wall odd….
Miss Eumenides Treason had gone blind when she was sixty years old. To most people that would have been a misfortune, but Miss Treason was skilled at Borrowing, a particular witch talent.
She could use the eyes of animals, reading what they saw right out of their minds.
She’d gone deaf when she was seventy-five, but she’d got the hang of it by now and used any ears she could find running around.
When Tiffany had first gone to stay with her, Miss Treason had used a mouse for seeing and hearing, because her old jackdaw had died. It was a bit worrying to see an old woman striding around the cottage with a mouse in her outstretched hand, and very worrying if you said something and the mouse was swung around to face you. It was amazing how creepy a little pink wriggly nose could be.
The new ravens were a lot better. Somebody in one of the local villages had made the old woman a perch that fitted across her shoulders, one bird on either side, and with her long white hair the effect was very, well, witchy, although a bit messy down the back of her cloak by the end of the day.
Then there was her clock. It was heavy and made of rusty iron by someone who was more blacksmith than watchmaker, which was why it went clonk-clank instead of tick-tock. She wore it on her belt and could tell the time by feeling the stubby little hands.
There was a story in the villages that the clock was Miss Treason’s heart, which she’d used ever since her first heart died. But there were lots of stories about Miss Treason.
You had to have a high threshold for odd to put up with her. It was traditional that young witches traveled around and stayed with older witches to learn from a lot of experts in exchange for what Miss Tick the witch finder called “some help with the chores,” which meant “doing all the chores.” Mostly, they left Miss Treason’s after one night. Tiffany had stuck it out for three months so far.
Oh, and sometimes, when she was looking for a pair of eyes to look through, Miss Treason would creep into yours. It was a strange prickly sensation, like having someone invisible looking over your shoulder.
Yes…perhaps Miss Treason didn’t just take the cake, a packet of biscuits with sprinkles on the top, and a candle, but also the trifle, the sandwiches, and a man who made amusing balloon animals afterward.
She was weaving at her loom when Tiffany came in. Two beaks turned to face her.
“Ah, child,” said Miss Treason in a thin, cracked