Terry Pratchett - I Shall Wear Midnight

She had heard one of the villagers call him a creaking door which never slammed; he was getting worse now, and in her opinion it was not going to be very long before his life slammed shut.

But she could take away the pain, and even frighten it a little so it wouldn’t come back for a while.

Tiffany hurried to the castle. The nurse, Miss Spruce, was waiting when she arrived, and her face was pale.

‘It’s not one of his good days,’ she said, then added with a modest little smile, ‘I have been praying for him all morning.’

‘I’m sure that was very kind of you,’ said Tiffany. She had taken care to keep any sarcasm out of her voice, but she got a frown from the nurse anyway.

The room Tiffany was ushered into smelled like sickrooms everywhere: all too much of people, and not enough air. The nurse stood in the doorway as if she was on guard. Tiffany could feel her permanently suspicious gaze on the back of her neck. There was more and more of that sort of attitude about. Sometimes you got wandering preachers around who didn’t like witches, and people would listen to them. It seemed to Tiffany that people lived in a very strange world sometimes. Everybody knew, in some mysterious way, that witches ran away with babies and blighted crops, and all the other nonsense. And at the same time, they would come running to the witch when they needed help.

The Baron lay in a tangle of sheets, his face grey, his hair totally white now, with little pink patches where it had all gone. He looked neat, though. He had always been a neat man, and every morning one of the guards would come and give him a shave. It cheered him up, as far as anyone could tell, but right now he looked straight through Tiffany. She was used to this; the Baron was what they called ‘a man of the old school’. He was proud and did not have the best of tempers, but he would stand up for himself at all times. To him, the pain was a bully, and what do you do to bullies? You stood up to them, because they always ran away in the end. But the pain didn’t know about that rule. It just bullied even more. And the Baron lay with thin white lips; Tiffany could hear him not screaming.

Now, she sat down on a stool beside him, flexed her fingers, took a deep breath, and then received the pain, calling it out of the wasted body and putting it into the invisible ball just above her shoulder.

‘I don’t hold with magic, you know,’ said the nurse from the doorway.

Tiffany winced like a tightrope walker who has just felt someone hit the other end of the rope with a big stick. Carefully, she let the flow of pain settle down, a little bit at a time.

‘I mean,’ said the nurse, ‘I know it makes him feel better, but where does all this healing power come from, that’s what I’d like to know?’

‘Perhaps it comes from all your praying, Miss Spruce,’ said Tiffany sweetly, and was glad to see the moment of fury on the woman’s face.

But Miss Spruce had the hide of an elephant. ‘We must be sure that we don’t get involved with dark and demonic forces. Better a little pain in this world than an eternity of suffering in the next!’

Up in the mountains there were sawmills driven by water, and they had big circular saws that spun so fast they were nothing but a silver blur in the air … until an absent-minded man forgot to pay attention, when it became a red disc and the air was raining fingers.

Tiffany felt like that now. She needed to concentrate and the woman was determined to go on talking, while the pain was waiting for just one moment’s lack of attention. Oh well, nothing for it … she threw the pain at a candlestick beside the bed. It shattered instantly, and the candle flashed into flame; she stamped on it until it went out. Then she turned to the astonished nurse.

‘Miss Spruce, I am sure that what you have to say is very interesting, but on the whole, Miss Spruce, I don’t really care what you think about anything. I don’t mind you staying in here, Miss Spruce, but what I do mind, Miss Spruce, is that this is very difficult and can be dangerous for me if it goes wrong. Go away, Miss Spruce, or stay, Miss Spruce, but most of all, shut up , Miss Spruce, because I’ve only just started and there is still a lot of pain to shift.’

Miss Spruce gave her another look. It was fearsome.

Tiffany returned this with a look of her own, and if there is one thing that a witch learns how to do, it is how to look.

The door shut behind the enraged nurse.

‘Talk quietly – she listens at doors.’

The voice came from the Baron, but it was hardly a voice at all; you could just hear in it the tones of someone used to command, but now it was cracked and failing, every word pleading for enough time to say the next word.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but I must concentrate,’ said Tiffany. ‘I would hate for this to go wrong.’

‘Of course. I shall remain silent.’

Taking away pain was dangerous, difficult and very tiring, but there was, well, a wonderful compensation in seeing the grey face of the old man come back to life. There was already some pinkness to his skin, and it was fleshing out as more and more pain flowed out of him and through Tiffany and into the new little invisible ball floating above her right shoulder.

Balance. It was all about balance. That had been one of the first things that she had learned: the centre of the seesaw has neither up nor down, but upness and downness flow through it while it remains unmoved. You had to be the centre of the seesaw so that pain flowed through you, not into you. It was very hard. But she could do it! She prided herself on it; even Granny Weatherwax had grunted when Tiffany had showed her one day how she had mastered the trick. And a grunt from Granny Weatherwax was like a round of applause from anybody else.

But the Baron was smiling. ‘Thank you, Miss Tiffany Aching. And now, I would like to sit in my chair.’

This was unusual, and Tiffany had to think about it. ‘Are you sure, sir? You are still very weak.’

‘Yes, everybody tells me that,’ said the Baron, waving a hand. ‘I can’t imagine why they think I don’t know. Help me up, Miss Tiffany Aching, for I must speak to you.’

It wasn’t very difficult. A girl who could heave Mr Petty out of his bed had little problem with the Baron, whom she handled like a piece of fine china, which he resembled.

‘I do not think that you and I, Miss Tiffany Aching, have had more than the simplest and most practical of conversations in all the time you have been seeing to me, yes?’ he said when she had him settled with his walking-stick in his hands so that he could lean on it. The Baron was not a man to lounge in a chair if he could sit on the edge of it.

‘Well, yes, sir, I think you are right,’ said Tiffany carefully.

‘I dreamed I had a visitor here last night,’ said the Baron, giving her a wicked little grin. ‘What do you think of that then, Miss Tiffany Aching?’

‘At the moment I have no idea, sir,’ said Tiffany, thinking, Not the Feegles! Let it not be the Feegles!

‘It was your grandmother, Miss Tiffany Aching. She was a fine woman, and extremely handsome. Oh yes. I was rather upset when she married your grandfather, but I suppose it was for the best. I miss her, you know.’

‘You do?’ said Tiffany.

The old man smiled. ‘After my dear wife passed on, she was the only person left who would dare to argue with me. A man of power and responsibility nevertheless needs somebody to tell him when he is being a bloody fool. Granny Aching fulfilled that task with commendable enthusiasm, I must say. And she needed to, because I was often a bloody fool who needed a kick up the arse, metaphorically speaking. It is my hope, Miss Tiffany Aching, that when I am in my grave you will perform the same service to my son Roland who, as you know, is inclined to be a bit too full of himself at times. He will need somebody to kick him up the arse, metaphorically speaking, or indeed in real life if he gets altogether all too snotty.’

Tiffany tried to hide a smile, then took a moment to adjust the spin of the ball of pain as it hovered companionably by her shoulder. ‘Thank you for your trust in me, sir. I shall do my best.’

The Baron gave a polite little cough and said, ‘Indeed, at one point I harboured hopes that you and the boy might make a more … intimate arrangement?’

‘We are good friends,’ said Tiffany carefully. ‘We were good friends and I trust that we will continue to be … good friends.’ She hurriedly had to stop the pain wobbling dangerously.

The Baron nodded. ‘Jolly good, Miss Tiffany Aching, but please don’t let the bond of friendship prevent you from giving him a righteous kick up the arse if he needs one.’

‘I will take some pleasure in doing so, sir,’ said Tiffany.

‘Well done, young lady,’ said the Baron, ‘and thank you for not chiding me for using the word “arse” or asking me the meaning of the word “metaphorical”.’

‘No, sir. I know what “metaphorical” means, and “arse” is a traditional usage – nothing to be ashamed of.’

The Baron nodded. ‘It has a commendable grown-up sharpness to it. “ Ass ”, on the other hand, is quite frankly for spinsters and little children.’

Tiffany turned the words on her tongue for a moment, and said, ‘Yes, sir. I think that is probably the long and the short of it.’

‘Very good. Incidentally, Miss Tiffany Aching, I cannot conceal my interest in the fact that you do not curtsy in my presence these days. Why not?’

‘I am a witch now, sir. We don’t do that sort of thing.’

‘But I am your baron, young lady.’

‘Yes. And I am your witch.’

‘But I have soldiers out there who will come running if I call. And I am sure you know, too, that people around here do not always respect witches.’

‘Yes, sir. I know that, sir. And I am your witch.’

Tiffany watched the Baron’s eyes. They were a pale blue, but right now there was a foxy glint of mischief in them.

The worst thing you could possibly do right now, she told herself, would be to show any kind of weakness at all. He’s like Granny Weatherwax: he tests people.

As if he was reading her mind exactly at that point, the Baron laughed. ‘Then you are your own person, Miss Tiffany Aching?’

‘I don’t know about that, sir. Just lately I feel as if I belong to everybody.’

‘Hah,’ said the Baron. ‘You work very hard and conscientiously, I’m told.’

‘I am a witch.’

‘Yes,’ said the Baron. ‘So you have said, clearly and consistently and with some considerable repetition.’ He leaned both skinny hands on his walking-stick and looked at her over the top of them. ‘It is true then, is it?’ he said. ‘That some seven years ago you took an iron skillet and went into some sort of fairyland, where you rescued my son from the Queen of the Elves – a most objectionable woman, I have been given to understand?’

Tiffany hesitated about this. ‘Do you want it to be so?’ she said.

The Baron chuckled and pointed a skinny finger at her. ‘Do I want it to be? Indeed! A good question, Miss Tiffany Aching, who is a witch. Let me think … let us say … I want to know the truth.’

‘Well, the bit about the frying pan is true, I must admit, and well, Roland had been pretty well knocked about so I, well, had to take charge. A bit.’

‘A … bit?’ said the old man, smiling.

‘Not an unreasonably large bit,’ said Tiffany quickly.

‘And why didn’t anybody tell me this at the time, pray?’ said the Baron.