A Blink of the Screen

Weatherwax had made the pumpkin explode. No one had ever worked out how she’d done it.
    Someone would walk away at the end of today and everyone would know that person was the winner, whatever the points said. You could win the Witch with the Pointiest Hat prize and the broomstick dressage, but that was just for the audience. What counted was the Trick you’d been working on all summer.
    Nanny had drawn last place, at number nineteen. A lot of witches had turned up this year. News of Granny Weatherwax’s withdrawal had got around, and nothing moves faster than news in the occult community, since it doesn’t just have to travel at ground level. Many pointy hats moved and nodded among the crowds.
    Witches are among themselves generally as sociable as cats but, as also with cats, there are locations and times and neutral grounds where they meet at something like peace. And what was going on was a sort of slow, complicated dance …
    The witches walked around saying hello to one another, and rushing to meet newcomers, and innocent bystanders might have believed that here was a meeting of old friends. Which, at one level, it probably was. But Nanny watched through a witch’s eyes, and saw the subtle positioning, the careful weighing-up, the little changes of stance, the eye contact finely tuned by intensity and length.
    And when a witch was in the arena, especially if she was comparatively unknown, all the others found some excuse to keep an eye on her, preferably without appearing to do so.
    It was like watching cats. Cats spend a lot of time carefully eyeing one another. When they have to fight, that’s merely to rubber-stamp something that’s already been decided in their heads.
    Nanny knew all this. And she also knew most of the witches to be kind (on the whole), gentle (to the meek), generous (to the deserving; the undeserving got more than they bargained for), and by and large quite dedicated to a life that really offered more kicks than kisses. Not one of them lived in a house made of confectionery, although some of the conscientious younger ones had experimented with various crispbreads. Even children who deserved it were not slammed into their ovens. Generally they did what they’d always done – smooth the passage of their neighbours into and out of the world, and help them over some of the nastier hurdles in between.
    You needed to be a special kind of person to do that. You needed a special kind of ear, because you saw people in circumstances where they were inclined to tell you things, like where the money is buried or who the father was or how come they’d got a black eye again. And you needed a special kind of mouth, the sort that stayed shut. Keeping secrets made you powerful. Being powerful earned you respect. Respect was hard currency.
    And within this sisterhood – except that it wasn’t a sisterhood, it was a loose assortment of chronic non-joiners; a group of witches wasn’t a coven, it was a small war – there was always this awareness of position. It had nothing to do with anything the other world thought of as status. Nothing was ever said. But if an elderly witch died the local witches would attend her funeral for a few last words, and then go solemnly home alone, with the little insistent thought at the back of their minds: I’ve moved up one.
    And newcomers were watched very, very carefully.
    ‘’Morning, Mrs Ogg,’ said a voice behind her. ‘I trust I find you well?’
    ‘Howd’yer do, Mistress Shimmy,’ said Nanny, turning. Her mental filing system threw up a card: Clarity Shimmy, lives over toward Cutshade with her old mum, takes snuff, good with animals. ‘How’s your mother keepin’?’
    ‘We buried her last month, Mrs Ogg.’
    Nanny Ogg quite liked Clarity, because she didn’t see her very often.
    ‘Oh dear …’ she said.
    ‘But I shall tell her you asked after her, anyway,’ said Clarity. She glanced briefly towards the ring.
    ‘Who’s the fat girl on now?’ she asked. ‘Got a backside on her like a bowling ball on a short seesaw.’
    ‘That’s Agnes Nitt.’
    ‘That’s a good cursin’ voice she’s got there. You know you’ve been cursed with a voice like that.’
    ‘Oh yes, she’s been blessed with a good voice for cursin’,’ said Nanny politely. ‘Esme Weatherwax an’ me gave her a few tips,’ she added.
    Clarity’s head turned.
    At the far edge of the field, a small pink shape sat alone behind the Lucky Dip. It did not seem to be