“I’m sure she won’t be. Have you asked any of the others?”
“No. I thought that if they knew you’d agreed, they probably would, too,” said Tiffany.
“Hah! Well, I suppose that at least we can say we tried. You know, I used to think Annagramma was really clever because she knew a lot of words and could do sparkly spells? But show her a sick pig and she’s useless!”
Tiffany told her about Mrs. Stumper’s pig and Petulia looked shocked.
“We can’t have that sort of thing,” she said. “In a tree? Perhaps I’ll try to drop in this afternoon then.” She hesitated. “You know Granny Weatherwax won’t be happy about this? Do we want to be caught between her and Mrs. Earwig?”
“Are we doing the right thing or not?” said Tiffany. “Anyway, what’s the worst she could do to us?”
Petulia gave a short laugh with no humor in it at all. “Well,” she said, “first, she could make our—”
“She won’t.”
“I wish I was as sure as you,” said Petulia. “All right, then. For Mrs. Stumper’s pig.”
Tiffany flew above the treetops, and the occasional high twig brushed against her boots. There was just enough winter sunshine to make the snow crisp and glittery, like a frosted cake.
It had been a busy morning. The coven hadn’t been very interested in helping Annagramma. The coven itself seemed a long time ago. It had been a busy winter.
“All we did was muck about while Annagramma bossed us around,” Dimity Hubbub had said, while grinding minerals and very carefully tipping them, a bit at a time, into a tiny pot being heated by a candle. “I’m too busy to mess around with magic. It never did anything useful. You know her trouble? She thinks you can be a witch by buying enough things.”
“She just needs to learn how to deal with people,” said Tiffany.
At this point, the pot exploded.
“Well, I think we can safely say that wasn’t your everyday toothache cure,” said Dimity, picking bits of pot out of her hair. “All right, I can spare the odd day, if Petulia’s doing it. But it won’t do much good.”
Lucy Warbeck was lying full length and fully clothed in a tin bath full of water when Tiffany came by. Her head was all the way under the surface, but when she saw Tiffany peering in, she held up a sign saying I’M NOT DROWNING! Miss Tick had said she would make a good witch finder, so she was training hard.
“I don’t see why we should help Annagramma,” she said as Tiffany helped her get dry. “She just likes putting people down with that sarcastic voice of hers. Anyway, what’s it to you? You know she doesn’t like you.”
“I thought we’ve always got on…more or less,” said Tiffany.
“Really? You can do stuff she can’t even attempt! Like that thing where you go invisible…you do it and you make it look easy! But you come along to the meetings and act like the rest of us and help clear up afterward, and that drives her mad!”
“Look, I don’t understand what you’re going on about.”
Lucy picked up another towel. “She can’t stand the idea that someone’s better than her but doesn’t crow about it.”
“Why should I do that?” said Tiffany, bewildered.
“Because that’s what she’d do, if she was you,” said Lucy, carefully pushing the knife and fork back into her piled-up hair.* “She thinks you’re laughing at her. And now, oh my word, she’s got to depend on you. You might as well have pushed pins up her nose.”
But Petulia had signed up, and so Lucy and the rest of them did, too. Petulia had become the big success story since she’d won the Witch Trials with her famous Pig Trick two years ago. She’d been laughed at—well, by Annagramma, and everyone else had sort of grinned awkwardly—but she’d stuck to what she was good at and people were saying that she’d got skills with animals that even Granny Weatherwax couldn’t match. She’d got solid respect, too. People didn’t understand a lot of what witches did, but anyone who could get a sick cow back on its feet…well, that person was someone you looked up to. So for the whole coven, after Hogswatch, it was going to be All About Annagramma time.
Tiffany flew back toward Tir Nani Ogg with her head spinning. She’d never thought anyone could be envious of her. Okay, she’d picked up one or two things, but anyone