I Shall Wear Midnight

Tiffany held a finger to the flame and raised it as if the little flame was as harmless as a baby bird. It seemed to get colder but she blew on it anyway, and it plopped back into life.
    Tiffany got carefully out of the burning bed, and if this was a dream it was making a very good job of the tinkles and pings that the ancient bed traditionally made. Amber was lying peacefully on the other bed under a blanket of flame; as Tiffany watched, the girl turned over and the flames moved with her.
    Being a witch meant that you didn’t simply run around shouting just because your bed was on fire. After all, it was no ordinary fire, a fire that did not harm. So it’s in my head, she thought. Fire that does no harm. The hare runs into the fire … Somebody is trying to tell me something.
    Silently, the flames went out. There was an almost imperceptible blur of movement in the window and she sighed. The Feegles never gave up. Ever since she was nine years old, she had known that they watched over her at night. They still did, which was why she bathed in a hip-bath behind a sheet. In all probability she hadn’t got anything that the Nac Mac Feegles would be interested in looking at, but it made her feel better.
    The hare runs into the fire … It certainly sounded like a message that she had to work out, but who from? From the mysterious witch who had been watching her, maybe? Omens were all very well, but sometimes it would help if people just wrote things down! It never paid, though, to ignore those little thoughts and coincidences: those sudden memories, little whims. Quite often they were another part of your mind, trying hard to get a message through to you – one that you were too busy to notice. But it was bright daylight outside and puzzles could wait. Other things couldn’t. She’d start at the castle.
    ‘My dad beat me up, didn’t he?’ said Amber in a matter-of-fact voice as they walked towards the grey towers. ‘Did my baby die?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Amber in the same flat voice.
    ‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘I can sort of remember, but not exactly,’ said Amber. ‘It’s all a bit … fuzzy.’
    ‘That’s the soothings working. Jeannie has been helping you.’
    ‘I understand,’ said the girl.
    ‘You do?’ said Tiffany.
    ‘Yes,’ said Amber. ‘But my dad, is he going to get into trouble?’
    He would if I told how I found you, Tiffany thought. The wives would see to it. The village people had a robust attitude to the punishing of boys, who almost by definition were imps of mischief and needed to be tamed, but hitting a girl that hard? Not good. ‘Tell me about your young man,’ she said aloud instead. ‘He is a tailor, isn’t he?’
    Amber beamed, and Amber could light up the world with a smile.
    ‘Oh yes! His grandad learned him a lot before he died. He can make just about anything out of cloth, can my William. Everyone around here says he should be put to an apprenticeship and he’d be a master himself in a few years.’ Then she shrugged. ‘But masters want paying for the learning of the knowing, and his mum is never going to find the money to buy him an indenture. Oh, but my William has wonderful fine fingers, and he helps his mum with the sewing of her corsets and making beautiful wedding dresses. That means working with satins and suchlike,’ said the girl proudly. ‘And William’s mum is much complimented on the fineness of the stitching!’ Amber beamed with second-hand pride. Tiffany looked at the glowing face, where the bruises, despite the kelda’s soothing touch, were still quite plain.
    So the boyfriend is a tailor, she thought. To big beefy men like Mr Petty, a tailor was hardly a man at all, with his soft hands and indoor work. And if he stitched clothes for ladies too, well, that was even more shame that the daughter would be bringing to the unhappy little family.
    ‘What do you want to do now, Amber?’ she said.
    ‘I’d like to see my mum,’ said the girl promptly.
    ‘But supposing you meet your dad?’
    Amber turned to her. ‘Then I’ll understand … please don’t do anything nasty to him, like turn him into a pig or something?’
    A day as a pig might help him mend his ways, thought Tiffany. But there was something of the kelda in the way that Amber had said, ‘I’ll understand.’ A shining light in a dark world.
    Tiffany had never seen the gates of the castle closed shut except at night. By day it was a mixture of the village