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She was back and forth to the farm all day, in between visits. Her last call of the afternoon was to Mr Holland the miller. There were only a few purple blotches on his skin now, and she left Mistress Holland with a second pot of the Merryday Root lotion, biting her tongue at the good lady’s clear message of ‘If only you had been here, I wouldn’t have used the wrong herb.’
When she got back, she found Nightshade perched in the corner of the barn, her merciless eyes pinned on You, who had stalked in and was arching her back and hissing at the elf. The Feegles were egging You on, with cries of ‘Ach, see you, pussycat, gi’ the scunner a wee giftie for the Nac Mac Feegle’, interrupted by a sudden, ‘Crivens, lads, the big wee hag is back!’
Tiffany stood in the doorway tapping her foot, and Rob shrank back.
‘Ach no,’ he wailed. ‘Nae the Tappin’ of the Feets, mistress.’
Tiffany folded her arms.
‘Ach, mistress, ’tis a heavy thing to be under a geas,’ Rob moaned.
And Tiffany laughed.
But Nightshade had questions for her. She had seen people coming to the farm during the day, coming for medicines, for advice, for an ear to listen and, sadly, sometimes for an eye to see the bruises.
‘Why do you help these strangers?’ she asked Tiffany now. ‘They are not of your clan. You owe them nothing.’
‘Well,’ said Tiffany, ‘although they are strangers, I simply think of them as people. All of them. And you help other people – that’s how we do it.’
‘Does every person do it?’ said Nightshade.
‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘Sadly, that is true. But many people will help other people, just because, well, because they are other people. That’s how it goes. Do you elves not understand this?’
‘Shall we say that I am trying to learn?’ said Nightshade.
‘And what do you find?’ said Tiffany, smiling.
‘You become a kind of servant.’ Nightshade sniffed, her delicate nose wrinkling.
‘Well, yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘But it doesn’t matter, because one day I might need that person, and then they will very probably help me. It works for us; it always has.’
‘But you have battles,’ said Nightshade. ‘I know that.’
‘Yes, but not always. And we are getting better at the not.’
‘You are powerful, though. You could rule the world,’ said Nightshade.
‘Really?’ said Tiffany. ‘Why should I want to do that? I am a witch, I like being a witch, and I like people too. For every nasty person, there’s a nice one, mostly. There is a saying, “What goes around comes around,” and it means that sooner or later you will find yourself on top, at least for a while. And another time, the wheel turns and you will not be on top but you have to put up with it.’
She tried to look into Nightshade’s eyes, see what the elf was thinking, but she might as well have looked at a wall. The elf’s eyes were emotionless.
‘And I remember the darkness and the rain and the thunder and lightning,’ she added, ‘and what good has it done you? You, elf, found in a ditch?’
For once Nightshade seemed at a loss and looked carefully at Tiffany before saying, ‘Your way . . . would not work for elves. Every other elf is a challenge. We kill our queens – every other queen is a rival, and we fight over the hive.’ She paused as a new thought struck her. ‘Yet you have your queens of wisdom – and thus there was Granny Aching, and Granny Weatherwax, and yes indeed, Tiffany Aching. You grow older, wisdom flourishes and is passed on.’
‘And you never prosper, you live in a cycle of decay,’ Tiffany said softly. ‘And you are not bees. They are productive but they die young and never, ever have a thought . . .’
There was a strange look on the elf’s face. She was having to think. Really think. Tiffany could see it. Nightshade had the face of someone who had already begun to think about a world that had changed, a world with iron that was less welcoming for the fairy folk, a world that liked them well enough in stories but had no real belief in them, gave them no way in; now she was looking closer and she was finding a new world she had never thought about before, and she was trying to reconcile it with everything else she knew.
And Tiffany could see the battle in her face.
Over in Lancre, Queen Magrat had heard about the trouble up in the Ramtops – the attack on the lumberjacks, the deaths and the lost timber.
Elves, she thought. They’d seen them off last time, but it hadn’t been easy, and it had been a long time since she’d posted guards – well, Shawn Ogg, anyway – up by the circle of stones known as the Dancers, or made sure the castle had plenty of horseshoes to hand.
She knew how the memory plays tricks, and the old stories had power, and everyone forgot how ‘terrific’ really meant ‘brings terror’. Her people would only remember that the elves sang beautifully. They would have forgotten what their song was about.
Magrat was not only a queen, but also a witch, of course. And although she was mostly a queen these days, the witch part of her knew that the balance was off, that Granny Weatherwax had left
