I Shall Wear Midnight

of years younger than Tiffany.

    14 see Glossary ; page 344.

    15 She kept to herself any thought about the fact that what they were most good at finding was things that belonged to other people. It was true, though, that the Feegles could hunt like dogs, as well as drink like fish.

    16 Tiffany had earned the admiration of other witches by persuading the Feegles to do chores. The unfortunate fact was that Feegles would do any chore, provided it was loud, messy and flamboyant. And, if possible, included screams.



Chapter 6
    THE COMING OF THE CUNNING MAN

    T IFFANY WAS ANGRY at herself for oversleeping. Her mother actually had to bring her up a cup of tea. But the kelda had been right. She hadn’t been sleeping properly and the ancient but homely bed had just closed around her.
    Still, it could have been worse, she told herself as they set off. For example, there could have been snakes on the broomstick. The Feegles had been only too glad, as Rob Anybody put it, to ‘feel the wind beneath their kilts’. Feegles were probably better than snakes, but that was only a guess. They would do things like run from one side of the stick to the other to look at interesting things they were flying over, and on one occasion she glanced over her shoulder to see about ten of them hanging onto the back of the stick or, to put it more precisely, one of them was hanging onto the back of the stick and then one was hanging onto his heels and one was hanging onto his heels, and so on, all the way to the last Feegle. They were having fun, screaming with laughter, their kilts indeed flapping in the wind. Presumably the thrill of it made up for the danger andthe lack of a view, or at least, of a view that anyone else would want to look at.
    One or two actually did lose their grip on the bristles, floating away and down while waving at their brothers and making Yahoo! noises and generally treating it as a big game. Feegles tended to bounce when they hit the ground, although sometimes they damaged it a little. Tiffany wasn’t worried about their journey home; undoubtedly there would be lots of dangerous creatures prepared to jump out on a little running man, but by the time he got home there would in fact be considerably fewer of them. Actually, the Feegles were – by Feegle standards – pretty well behaved on the flight, and didn’t actually set fire to the broomstick until they were about twenty miles from the city, an incident heralded by Daft Wullie saying ‘Whoops!’ very quietly, and then guiltily trying to conceal the fact that he’d set fire to the bristles by standing in front of the blaze to hide it.
    ‘You’ve set fire to the broomstick again, haven’t you, Wullie,’ Tiffany stated firmly. ‘What was it that we learned last time? We don’t light fires on the broomstick for no good reason.’
    The broomstick began to shake as Daft Wullie and his brothers tried to stamp out the flames. Tiffany searched the landscape below them for something soft and preferably wet to land on.
    But it was no use getting angry with Wullie; he lived in a Wullie-shaped world of his own. You had to try thinking diagonally.
    ‘I just wonder, Daft Wullie,’ she said as the broomstick developed a nasty rattle, ‘if, working together, we might find out why my broomstick is on fire? Do you think it might be something to do with the fact that you are holding a match in your hand?’
    The Feegle looked at the match as if he had never seen one before, and then put it behind his back and stared at his feet, which was quite brave of him in the circumstances. ‘Don’t really know, miss.’
    ‘You see,’ said Tiffany as the wind whipped around them, ‘withoutenough bristles I can’t steer very well, and we are losing height but still regrettably going quite fast. Perhaps you could help me with this conundrum, Wullie?’
    Daft Wullie stuck his little finger in his ear and wiggled it about as if rummaging in his own brain. Then he brightened up. ‘Should we no’ land, miss?’
    Tiffany sighed. ‘I would like to do that, Daft Wullie, but, you see, we are going quite fast and the ground is not. What we have in those circumstances is what they call a crash .’
    ‘I wasnae considering that ye should land in the dirt, miss,’ said Wullie. He pointed down, and added, ‘I was just considering that ye might like to land on that .’
    Tiffany followed the line of his pointing finger. There was a long white road below them, and on it, not too far