Wintersmith

went clonk-clank instead of tick-tock . She wore it on her belt and could tell the time by feeling the stubby little hands.
    There was a story in the villages that the clock was Miss Treason’s heart, which she’d used ever since her first heart died. But there were lots of stories about Miss Treason.
    You had to have a high threshold for odd to put up with her. It was traditional that young witches traveled around and stayed with older witches to learn from a lot of experts in exchange for what Miss Tick the witch finder called “some help with the chores,” which meant “doing all the chores.” Mostly, they left Miss Treason’s after one night. Tiffany had stuck it out for three months so far.
    Oh, and sometimes, when she was looking for a pair of eyes to look through, Miss Treason would creep into yours. It was a strange prickly sensation, like having someone invisible looking over your shoulder.
    Yes…perhaps Miss Treason didn’t just take the cake, a packet of biscuits with sprinkles on the top, and a candle, but also the trifle, the sandwiches, and a man who made amusing balloon animals afterward.
    She was weaving at her loom when Tiffany came in. Two beaks turned to face her.
    “Ah, child,” said Miss Treason in a thin, cracked voice. “You have had a good day.”
    “Yes, Miss Treason,” said Tiffany obediently.
    “You have seen the girl Weatherwax and she is well.” Click-clack went the loom. Clonk-clank went the clock.
    “Quite well,” said Tiffany. Miss Treason didn’t ask questions. She just told you the answers. “The girl Weatherwax,” Tiffany thought, as she started to get their supper. But Miss Treason was very old.
    And very scary. It was a fact. You couldn’t deny it. She didn’t have a hooked nose and she did have all her teeth, even if they were yellow, but after that she was a picture-book wicked witch. And her knees clicked when she walked. And she walked very fast, with the help of two sticks, scuttling around like a big spider. That was another strange thing: The cottage was full of cobwebs, which Miss Treason ordered Tiffany never to touch, but you never saw a spider.
    There was the thing about black, too. Most witches liked black, but Miss Treason even had black goats and black chickens. The walls were black. The floor was black. If you dropped a stick of licorice, you’d never find it again. And, to Tiffany’s dismay, she had to make her cheeses black, which meant painting the cheeses with shiny black wax. Tiffany was an excellent cheesemaker and it did keep them moist, but Tiffany distrusted black cheeses. They always looked as though they were plotting something.
    And Miss Treason didn’t seem to need sleep. She hadn’t got much use for night and day now. When the ravens went to bed, she’d summon up an owl and weave by owl sight. An owl was particularly good, she said, because it’d keep turning its head to watch the shuttle of the loom. Click-clack went the loom, and clonk-clank went the clock, right back at it.
    Miss Treason, with her billowing black cloak and bandaged eyes and wild white hair…
    Miss Treason with her two sticks, wandering the cottage and garden in the dark and frosty night, smelling the memory of flowers….
    All witches had some particular skill, and Miss Treason delivered Justice.
    People would come from miles around to bring her their problems:
    I know it’s my cow but he says it’s his!
    She says it’s her land but my father left it to me! …and Miss Treason would sit at the click-clack ing loom with her back to the room full of anxious people. The loom worried them. They watched it as though they were afraid of it, and the ravens watched them.
    They would stutter out their cases, um-ing and ah-ing, while the loom rattled away in the flickering candlelight. Oh, yes…the candlelight…
    The candleholders were two skulls. One had the word E NOCHI carved on it; the other had the word A THOOTITA .
    (The words meant “G UILT ” and “I NNOCENCE .” Tiffany wished she didn’t know that. There was no way that a girl brought up on the Chalk should know that, because the words were in a foreign language, and an ancient one, too. She knew them because of Dr. Sensibility Bustle, D. M. Phil., B. El L., Patricius Professor of Magic at Unseen University, who was in her head.
    (Well, a tiny part of him, at least.
    (A couple of summers ago she had been taken over by a hiver, a…thing that had been collecting minds for millions of years.