I Shall Wear Midnight

when you have to glue a page back in, for example. We hardly use it except at Hogswatch. Very good for the precision cracking of walnuts, you see? Just wind the handle until you hear them start to crack. They look like tiny little human brains.’
    Tiffany risked a look at the press, the top and bottom plates of which were now pressed tightly together, to see if any human brains were dripping down the outside. They weren’t, but it didn’t help very much at this point, as a small human skeleton walked out of the wall, through the library shelves as though they were smoke, and disappeared. It had been holding a teddy bear. It was one of those things that the brain files under ‘something I would rather not have seen’.
    ‘Was that some kind of ghost?’ said Letitia. ‘Not the skeleton – I told you about him, didn’t I? Poor little thing. I mean, the other one. The one in the book …’
    ‘He is, well, I suppose you could say that he is something like a disease, and also something like a nightmare that turns out to be standing in your bedroom when you wake up. And I think you may have called him. Summoned him, if you like.’
    ‘I don’t like either of those! All I did was a simple little spell out of a book that cost one dollar! All right, I know I must’ve been a silly girl, but I didn’t mean anything like … that!’ She pointed to the press, which was still creaking.
    ‘Stupid woman,’ said Tiffany.
    Letitia blinked. ‘ What did you say?’
    ‘Stupid woman! Or silly woman, if you prefer. You’re going to get married in a few days, remember? And you tried to do a spell on somebody out of jealousy. Did you see the title of that book? I did. It was right in front of me! It was The Bonfire of the Witches! It was dictated by an Omnian priest who was so mad that he wouldn’t have been able to see sanity with a telescope. And you know what? Books live. The pages remember! Have you heard about the library at the Unseen University? They have books in there that have to be chained down, or kept in darkness or even under water! And you, miss, played at magic a matter of inches away from a book that boils with evil, vindictive magic. No wonder you got a result! I woke him up and ever since then he’s been searching, hunting me. And you – with your little spell – have shown him where I was! You helped him! He’s come back, and he’s found me now! The witch-burner. And he is infectious, just as I told you, a kind of disease.’
    She paused for breath, which came, and the torrent of tears, which didn’t. Letitia just stood there as if she was thinking deeply. Then she said, ‘I suppose that “sorry” isn’t enough, right?’
    ‘As a matter of fact, it would be rather a good start,’ said Tiffany, but she thought: This young woman, who has never realized it’s time to stop wearing girly dresses, gave a headless ghost a pumpkin to carry under its arm so that it would feel better and presented a screaming little skeleton with a teddy bear. Would I have thought to do that? It’s absolutely something that a witch would do.
    ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you have definitely got some magical talent, I really mean it. But you’ll get into a terrible amount of trouble if you start mucking about when you don’t know what you are doing. Although giving the teddy bear to the poor little skeleton was a stroke of genius. Build on that thought and get some training, and you might have quite a magical future. You will have to go and spend some time with an old witch, just like I did.’
    ‘Well, that’s wonderful, Tiffany,’ Letitia said. ‘But I have to go and spend some time getting married! Shall we get back now? And what do you suggest we do with the book? I don’t like the idea of him being in there. Supposing he gets out!’
    ‘He is out, already. But the book is … well, a kind of window that makes it easy for him to come through. To reach me. You get that sort of thing occasionally. It’s a sort of way into another world, or perhaps somewhere else in this world.’
    Tiffany had felt rather lofty when she explained this, and so was somewhat chastened when Letitia said, ‘Oh yes, the bluebell wood with the cottage that sometimes has smoke coming out of the chimney and sometimes does not; and the girl feeding the ducks on the pond, where the pigeons on the house behind her are sometimes flying and sometimes perched. They are mentioned in H.J. Toadbinder’s book Floating Worlds . Would you like