I Shall Wear Midnight

have stopped them, of course, but it would have been a bad business, with people taking sides. It’s like poison in a village.’
    ‘Yes.’
    They sat in silence for a while. Then her father looked down at the sleeping girl. ‘What have you done for her?’ he asked.
    ‘Everything I can,’ said Tiffany.
    ‘And you did that taking-away-pain thingy you do?’
    She sighed. ‘Yes, but that’s not all I shall have to take away. I need to borrow a shovel, Dad. I’ll bury the poor little thing down in the woods, where no one will know.’
    He looked away. ‘I wish it wasn’t you doing this, Tiff. You’re not sixteen yet and I see you running around nursing people and bandaging people and who knows what chores. You shouldn’t have to be doing all of that.’
    ‘Yes, I know,’ said Tiffany.
    ‘ Why? ’ he asked again.
    ‘Because other people don’t, or won’t, or can’t, that’s why.’
    ‘But it’s not your business, is it?’
    ‘I make it my business. I’m a witch. It’s what we do. When it’s nobody else’s business, it’s my business,’ Tiffany said quickly.
    ‘Yes, but we all thought it was going to be about whizzing around on brooms and suchlike, not cutting old ladies’ toenails for them.’
    ‘But people don’t understand what’s needed,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s not that they are bad; it’s just that they don’t think. Take old Mrs Stocking, who’s got nothing in the world except her cat and a whole lot of arthritis. People were getting her a bite to eat often enough, that is true, but no one was noticing that her toenails were so long they were tangling up inside her boots and so she’d not been able to take them off for a year! People around here are OK when it comes to food and the occasional bunch of flowers, but they are not around when things get a little on the messy side. Witches notice these things. Oh, there’s a certain amount of whizzing about, that’s true enough, but mostly it’s only to get quickly to somewhere there is a mess.’
    Her father shook his head. ‘And you like doing this?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘ Why? ’
    Tiffany had to think about this, her father’s eyes never leaving her face. ‘Well, Dad, you know how Granny Aching always used to say, “Feed them as is hungry, clothe them as is naked, and speak up for them as has no voices”? Well, I reckon there is room in there for “Grasp for them as can’t bend, reach for them as can’t stretch, wipe for them as can’t twist”, don’t you? And because sometimes you get a good day that makes up for all the bad days and, just for a moment, you hear the world turning,’ said Tiffany. ‘I can’t put it any other way.’
    Her father looked at her with a kind of proud puzzlement. ‘And you think that’s worth it, do you?’
    ‘Yes, Dad!’
    ‘Then I am proud of you, jiggit, you are doing a man’s job!’
    He’d used the pet name only the family knew, and so she kissed him politely and did not tell him that he was unlikely to see a man doing the job that she did.
    ‘What are you all going to do about the Pettys?’ she asked.
    ‘Your mum and me could take Mrs Petty and her daughter in and …’ Mr Aching paused and gave her a strange look, as if she frightened him. ‘It’s never simple, my girl. Seth Petty was a decent enough lad when we were young. Not the brightest piggy in the litter, I’ll grant you that, but decent enough in his way. It was his dad who was a madman; I mean, things were a bit rough and ready in those days and you could expect a clip around the head if you disobeyed, but Seth’s dad had a thick leather belt with two buckles on it, and he would lay into Seth just for looking at him in a funny way. No word of a lie. Always used to say that he would teach him a lesson.’
    ‘It seems that he succeeded,’ Tiffany said, but her father held up a hand.
    ‘And then there was Molly,’ he went on. ‘You couldn’t say that Molly and Seth were made for one another, because in truth neither of them were rightly made for anybody, but I suppose they were sort of happy together. In those days, Seth was a drover, driving the flocks all the way to the big city sometimes. It wasn’t the kind of job you needed much learning for, and it might be that some of the sheep were a bit brighter than he was, but it was a job that needed doing, and he picked up a wage and no one thought the worse of him for that. The trouble was, that meant he left Molly alone for weeks at a time, and …’