she was Granny Aching’s granddaughter, right? No tellin’ what she’d learned from the ol’ girl, up at the shepherding hut. And they do say she showed those witches up in the mountains what witchin’s all about, eh? Remember the lambing last year? She prit near brought dead lambs back to life just by lookin’ at ’em! And she’s an Aching, and they’ve got these hills in their bones. She’s all right. She’s ours, see?
And that was fine, except that she didn’t have any old friends anymore. Kids back home who’d been friendly were now…respectful, because of the hat. There was a kind of wall, as if she’d grown up and they hadn’t. What could they talk about? She’d been to places they couldn’t even imagine. Most of them hadn’t even been to Twoshirts, which was only half a day away. And this didn’t worry them at all. They were going to do the jobs their fathers did, or raise children like their mothers did. And that was fine, Tiffany added hurriedly to herself. But they hadn’t decided. It was just happening to them, and they didn’t notice.
It was the same up in the mountains. The only people of her own age she could actually talk to were other witches-in-training like Annagramma and the rest of the girls. It was useless trying to have a real conversation with people in the villages, especially the boys. They just looked down and mumbled and shuffled their feet, like people at home when they had to talk to the Baron.
Actually, Roland did that too, and he went red every time she looked at him. Whenever she visited the castle, or walked on the hills with him, the air was full of complicated silences…just like it had been with the Wintersmith.
She read the letter carefully, trying to ignore the grubby Feegle fingerprints all over it. He’d been kind enough to include several spare sheets of paper.
She smoothed one out, very carefully, stared at the wall for a while, and then began to write.
Down in the scullery,* Horace the cheese had come out from behind the slop bucket. Now he was in front of the back door. If a cheese ever looked thoughtful, Horace looked thoughtful now.
In the tiny village of Twoshirts, the driver of the mail coach was having a bit of a problem. A lot of mail from the countryside around Twoshirts ended up at the souvenir shop there, which also acted as the post office.
Usually the driver just picked up the mailbag, but today there was a difficulty. He frantically turned over the pages of the book of Post Office Regulations.
Miss Tick tapped her foot. This was getting on his nerves.
“Ah, ah, ah,” said the coachman triumphantly. “Says here no animals, birds, dragons, or fish!”
“And which one of them do you think I am?” asked Miss Tick icily.
“Ah, well, right, well, human is kind of like animal, right? I mean, look at monkeys, right?”
“I have no wish to look at monkeys,” said Miss Tick. “I have seen the sort of things they do.”
The coachman clearly spotted that this was a road not to go down, and turned the pages furiously. Then he beamed.
“Ah, ah, ah!” he said. “How much do you weigh, miss?”
“Two ounces,” said Miss Tick. “Which by chance is the maximum weight of a letter that can be sent to the Lancre and Near Hinterland area for ten pence.” She pointed to the two stamps gummed to her lapel. “I have already purchased my stamps.”
“You never weigh two ounces!” said the coachman. “You’re a hundred and twenty pounds at least!”
Miss Tick sighed. She’d wanted to avoid this, but Twoshirts wasn’t Dogbend, after all. It lived on the highway, it watched the world go past. She reached up and pressed the button that worked her hat.
“Would you like me to forget you just said that?” she asked.
“Why?” said the coachman.
There was a pause while Miss Tick stared blankly at him. Then she turned her eyes upward.
“Excuse me,” she said. “This is always happening, I’m afraid. It’s the duckings, you know. The spring rusts.”
She reached up and banged the side of the hat. The hidden pointy bit shot up, scattering paper flowers.
The coachman’s eyes followed it. “Oh,” he said.
And the thing about pointy hats was this: The person under one was definitely a witch or a wizard. Oh, someone who wasn’t could probably get a pointy hat and go out wearing it, and they’d be fine right up until the moment when they