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I Shall Wear Midnight
I Shall Wear Midnight
I Shall Wear Midnight
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I Shall Wear Midnight

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Winner of the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

By the beloved and bestselling grandmaster of fantasy, Sir Terry Pratchett, this is the fourth in a series of Discworld novels starring the young witch Tiffany Aching.

As the witch of the Chalk, Tiffany Aching performs the distinctly unglamorous work of caring for the needy. But someone—or something—is inciting fear, generating dark thoughts and angry murmurs against witches. Tiffany must find the source of unrest and defeat the evil at its root. Aided by the tiny-but-tough Wee Free Men, Tiffany faces a dire challenge, for if she falls, the whole Chalk falls with her. . . .

The five funny and fabulous Tiffany Aching adventures are:

  • The Wee Free Men
  • A Hat Full of Sky
  • Wintersmith
  • I Shall Wear Midnight
  • The Shepherd’s Crown

Tiffany’s mentors, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, star in the novels Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade, and Carpe Jugulum.

And don’t miss Terry Pratchett’s hilarious and wise Discworld novel The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateSep 28, 2010
ISBN9780062012715
Author

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was the acclaimed creator of the globally revered Discworld series. In all, he authored more than fifty bestselling books, which have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any.

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Reviews for I Shall Wear Midnight

Rating: 4.288393736730361 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    3.5 starsTiffany Aching is now 15 years old. She is a good witch and helps people when they need help. Unfortunately, an older man, the Baron (also the father of Tiffany’s friend, Roland) passes away under her care. Also a girl, Amber, has been abused by her father and she is found with the Nac Mac Feegles (the tough Scottish fairies) and their “kelda” (female leader). Somehow an evil force has awakened and is coming after Tiffany. Hard to write a summary, as there were a few different things going on. Overall, I liked the book, though some parts were better than others. I found Amber’s storyline interesting, as well as when Roland’s fiancee, Letitia, appears – I liked her, too. There were parts that I didn’t find quite as interesting, but overall, it was enjoyable.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Discworld's more darling witch, Tiffany Aching, struts her stuff and reminds us of the role that witches played in Western tradition, long before Halloween and the Puritan bullshit.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Charming, quirky, clever, and laugh-out-loud funny. Terry Pratchett created an unforgettable world in this Tiffany Aching series. Tiffany, a young witch handles the day to day drudgery duties expected of the witches on the Chalk -- caring for the needy, burying the dead, not to mention, trimming toenails and footcare for the elderly. Yes, even witches have their bad days at work. But in this final installment of this series, Tiffany and her hilarious, little blue allies, the Nac Mac Feegles, Tiffany has to destroy a much bigger threat to the Chalk. Absolutely love this series in audio and I'm saddened by Sir Terry Pratchett's death this year, that there will be no more characters like Long Tall Short Fall Sally. What a fun ride!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Now nearly 16 year old, Tiffany has returned to her family's farm and has taken up responsibilities as the community's only witch.My favourite part about this book, aside from the title which I LOVE, is Tiffany herself. I didn't find the story as funny as the earlier books, perhaps because Tiffany is tired and somewhat overworked and more aware of unpleasantness in the community, but I suspect that also made me care about Tiffany more.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Let me preface this by saying that this is my first Tiffany Aching story and since it's the end of her story, it's a rather peculiar place to be in.This book is not what I expected it to be, not by a long shot. I said no spoilers so let's just sum this up by saying that Tiffany is a witch and as such her job is to take of people nobody takes care of. It's a really sad book because Pratchett confronts death and suffering in a way I've personally never encountered before in his books. Sure, Death as a character makes regular appearances in Discworld and even has his own books (Mort, Reaper Man, etc) but I Shall Wear Midnight really looks at death in the face, and it ain't pretty. There's a passage involving blue-eyed cats that I won't talk about but which I found deeply striking. I know a lot of people will link this to Pratchett's recent medical condition (he's suffering from Alzheimer) but I don't believe things are quite so neat so I won't venture there. It would be downplaying the great imagination this fabulous author has.This book is not humourless but it's not a funny book either. It wraps up Tiffany's story in a way that reminded me of traditional coming-of-age stories, which is both a good and a not-so-good thing. It even had moments of brilliance that reminded me, strangely enough, of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (the character of the Duchess in I Shall Wear Midnight reminded me of the Queen of Hearts in Alice). I didn't fall in love with Tiffany the way I did with Death, who remains my favourite Discworld character. She has so much to do and such responsibility it was very hard to see her go through all this on her own.So, despite all this, why did I choose to give I Shall Wear Midnight four stars? I think it's a very mature book by the issues tackled (domestic violence is brought in as soon as in the first chapter, for example, pain is everywhere and talked about beautifully) and it remains a Terry Pratchett book. Terry Pratchett is the warmest author I know and his characters and words are all deeply endearing. The plot itself may have been very flawed but I Shall Wear Midnight is still a really good book, and an important one at that. I personally found it extremely moving in a way I wasn't expecting it to be. I'm very glad I own a copy - it's not a cheerful book, but it's a very realistic one and I applaud Terry for that, it must have taken great courage to write I Shall Wear Midnight and it showed me a whole new aspect of Pratchett, which completes my already-superlative opinion of him.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Pratchett spent too many years as a writer of slapstick and farces. With his later works he has reached truly great depths of expression. In Midnight, the tremendous warmth and optimism carry the humour to really fine effect. Some of the tying up of loose ends from earlier instalments of the Discworld stories work well, some feel a bit unnecessary. The new material, as usual for Pratchett, takes the shape of an anthropomorphic personification, at the same time, however, reminding us that the feature finds its roots in every one of us, if we just let it. Not every work of the Discworld cycle is great. This one is.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It is not the kind of story I would first choose, so I needed a while to dive into the story. Nevertheless, it was an entertaining story and I can well imagine the eigious witches and fantasy fans coming to their bills. Tiffany had all hands to do, to defeat the evil and to unite the good. The story is funny, even if you can usually guess the next step in advance.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”Sir Terry Pratchett has been accused of frivolity and escapist tendencies often enough, though there is at least one book that accuses him of literature. In my opinion, he is a much better writer than he is often given credit for being, and, despite being a master of the comic form, he is also capable of serious writing. This is perfectly borne out by I Shall Wear Midnight, the fourth book in his series concerning the young witch, Tiffany Aching. Although Pratchett would deny it, or at least dodge the question, this series of books (billed as youth literature) is in some ways a reaction to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. There are certain obvious similarities (e.g. series following a young person realising they are magically gifted) yet Pratchett seems to comment on the state of children’s literature by making his series much more down-to-earth than the Potter books. “Down-to-earth” may be a strange way of describing a Discworld novel about witchcraft, but that is the prevailing sense that pervades this book.It begins with Tiffany, now sixteen, having to deal with a case of domestic abuse in which a village man beats his pregnant daughter into having a miscarriage. This is certainly a shocking start to a children’s book, but Pratchett handles it sensitively. There is an inherent seriousness to Pratchett’s themes in this book, something that may surprise readers who either (1) have not read Pratchett before, or (2) only skim the books for the jokes. The main plot concerns an anthropomorphic representation of superstition and hatred that comes to the “Chalk”, Tiffany’s rural home (based on Pratchett’s own Wiltshire). This entity causes all the hidden prejudices against witches to come to the fore, causing fear and hatred to boil over. Tiffany has to deal with this entity, as well as the natural feelings of a teenager who has too great a load on her young shoulders. Her love life (or lack thereof) is weighing heavily on her, as are her responsibilities to the community, which mostly involves helping old and disabled people who have fallen through the cracks of society.Pratchett paints a very realistic portrait of a rural community, where magic, despite its presence, mostly consists of acute psychological understanding on the part of the witches. These witches, including his most well-known witch, Granny Weatherwax, are perhaps Pratchett’s greatest creations. They are more wise-women than witches, implementing their “headology” to influence their communities for the better. When the hatred begins, we realise how bigotry operates, its indiscriminate and unappreciative nature. Tiffany has to learn how to be a witch, but also how to be a young woman in a world that can often be cruel towards women, especially those that are unusual. Her relationship with the young heir to the dukedom of the Chalk, whom she used to fancy, also complicates things. He is about to marry a young woman whom Tiffany disapproves of, but before the marriage can takes place, his father dies in mysterious circumstances, circumstances which seem to implicate Tiffany.I know I am either preaching to the converted, or to those who will never be convinced, but Pratchett really is good at what he does, and a much better fantasist than 90% of what is out there. Yes, his books can be formulaic, but it is at least a challenging formula that does not accept compromises in integrity or honesty. I love Pratchett, as does a large percentage of the book-buying populace. Nor is he frowned upon by all “serious” authors. I know A.S. Byatt is very fond of him, for example. I Shall Wear Midnight is a great book for anyone interested in Pratchett. It might not be the best place to start with him, but it does work as a stand-alone book. We could all do with prod to our biases from time to time, and Pratchett gives a stern-yet-funny poke to the sensibilities.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not sure why, but this one took me longer to get into than many of Terry Pratchett's other books. It wasn't until the second half that I felt reluctant to put it down. I think it's Tiffany Aching as a character that I have the problem with, really. Just don't find her very sympathetic. Maybe I'm too old for these books. But the second half was great.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I hated to start this book, knowing it's supposedly the last in the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett. The series has been wonderful, filled with a great mixture of humor and satire. This book leans more towards the satire side, with obvious lessons to be taken from events and people in the book. I would have liked more humor, but Pratchett's lessons are good ones for young adults and adults alike to take heed of. The fact that they are happening between witches, ghosts, kings, and farmers make it easier to read; Pratchett doesn't try to hit the reader over the head with preaching. Pratchett ends this series with a great set of sentiments society would do well to take note of. My only hope is that the characters end up in future Discworld books. PS - I had one laugh out loud moment with this book. Pratchett can usually get more out of me, but the one I had was a good one.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My boyfriend and I saw the advert on the tube and decided we would wait until we moved into the new flat, but then we saw it at the airport and we couldn't help buying it...One of the best impulse buys of my life.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Anti-witch feelings are on the rise and rumors of old women being burned are in the air, unfortunately for Tiffany Aching she’s finding the Chalk getting infected and it could be her fault. I Shall Wear Midnight is the 38th book of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and the fourth to feature the young witch Tiffany Aching, who is finding out that being a witch-in-training and being on her own are two different things entirely especially when the Cunning Man is after her.Now 16 years old, Tiffany is now the witch of the Chalk doing everything that needs to be done from tending the Baron to looking after newest of babes. Then things seem to start to go wrong from a father assaulting his daughter to the old Baron dying in front of Tiffany and the nurse accusing her of killing him. Events transpire that Tiffany attempts to persevere through but she senses something is up, especially on her way to Ankh-Morpork when she meets a “man” that the Feegles fall through. Thanks to the Feegles, Tiffany spends a night in jail but learns witches all around are feeling pressure. Upon her return to the Chalk, Roland attempts to take out the Feegle’s mound and later has Tiffany detained but the young witch realizes that Roland’s fiancé is hiding a secret—she’s using magic—and confronts her getting the spell broken. As things return to normal in the Chalk, Tiffany must gear up to face the Cunning Man, a ghost of a witch hunter who’s hatred is infectious, even while attending a funeral and preparing for the new Baron’s wedding as senior witches gather and watch.Building upon the previous three books to feature Tiffany, Pratchett continued the character’s growth by showing her face the everyday humdrum of the profession as the witch not a trainee, especially when something vicious shows up. Unlike previous books, the Feegles are more important minor characters than major secondary ones which focuses the book on Tiffany alone with her dealing with everything and everyone. Tiffany’s interactions with Carrot and Angua in Ankh-Morpork and the reappearance of Eskarina Smith, whose time traveling ability comes in handy in “assisting” Tiffany, just added to the quality of the book and connected various subseries together than just the same world.I Shall Wear Midnight is a delightful return to the Disc and a somewhat return to form for Pratchett with a solid story that does not meander like some of the previous books of the series. Although a first time reader might want to get one of the earlier Aching books to understand some of what’s going on, any long-time fan will love this book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Reliable. Entertaining, thoughtful, charming and full of human kindness and humour. Just what I wanted.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tiffany Aching grows up. A bittersweet/melancholy book, which I perhaps felt more because of my awareness of Pratchett’s own situation. There’s something in the air that is leading people to fear and even hate witches, and Tiffany’s the one to fight it. In the course of doing so, she deals with the impending marriage of her ex, a trip to Ankh-Morpork, and the possibility of a romance of her own. Also there are Feegles. There are wry grins here, but it’s not exactly funny.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Nac Mac Feegles are some of the most wonderful characters Pratchett has developed and steal the show away from Tiffany.There are some remarkable insights into human character as always with Discworld. As always, it's a genuinely enjoyable romp to read and thoroughly enjoy. Tiffany meeting our favourite witches is a joy to read. Unlike previous Nac Mac Feegles this is definitely part of the 'grown up' Discworld books, not that there is anything to stop younger readers reading this.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Excellent wiht trademark Pratchett word play and humour. For my tastes a little dark.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Volume umpty-zillion in the Discworld series, and the fourth to feature young witch Tiffany Aching, who this time out has to deal with a wedding, a funeral, and an all-too-literal witch hunt, on top of all the truly important everyday responsibilities that make a witch a witch.I thought Pratchett's last book, Unseen Academicals, was okay, but far from the series' best. So it's nice, with this one, to see proof positive that he's still got it. The plot is perhaps a bit thin, but it says a great deal about the book's other strengths that I barely realized this fact until very near the end. It's not trying to be laugh-out-loud funny, the way some of his books are, but in classic Pratchett style, it's witty, cleverly written, insightful, and populated with interesting and memorable characters. Tiffany Aching, in particular, is one of those characters whom Pratchett is so good at writing, and whom I find so wonderfully admirable: a woman who turns sheer, forceful practicality into something magic.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I admit to not being this books target audience, but I was disappointed in it. It felt a bit superficial, a little light on detail and lacked any analysis or introspection. It also, I felt, relied very heavily on having read other books in the series. I know a series book will always tend to refer to events that have happened in previous books, but I felt that in this, it was overly reliant on previous knowledge. It is the first of the young adult discworld books I've read, and I'm not entirely sure I'll be coming back for any more.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I can't help feeling that the Tiffany Aching series is arguably better than the other books Pterry has put out over the same period. YA? Sure, but other than the protagonist being underage, it's pure Pratchett throughout, including the darker themes which have been increasingly evident in Discworld novels over the last half a dozen yeas or so.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The writing was as good as usual the Feagles were as funny as usual. Unfortunately, the plot was, in a sense, the usual, too. Once again a powerful supernatural being is hunting down Tiffany, and she has to figure out how to outwit it. Otherwise it was a very nice read, but that feeling of "been there, done that" kept me from enjoying it to the max.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Summary: Tiffany Aching was once a sheep farmer's daughter with a knack for making cheese, and is now The Witch for all the people of The Chalk, and the Hag of the Hills for her ever-present companions, the six-inch-tall rowdy Nac Mac Feegles. Tiffany's gotten used to what being The Witch means in practical terms - she's young, but she's certainly adept at all of the things it falls upon The Witch to do - but she's still not quite accustomed to what being The Witch means in personal terms. People she's known her whole life - even her family! - are treating her differently now, and not always for the better. But their thoughts are not always their own, for it turns out that when Tiffany kissed the Winter, she accidentally woke up an old and twisted power... one with a special dislike of witches.Review: I don't know what more I can say in praise of the Tiffany Aching series that I haven't already said at least twice. They're brilliant! They're imaginative and entertaining! They're bust-a-gut funny in places and heart-wrenching in others! They have the most sensible attitude about life that I've ever encountered in fiction! These are the books that converted me into a full-fledged Pratchett-o-phile, and I'm terribly sad that there aren't going to be more of them.I Shall Wear Midnight is a worthy addition to the series, and is tied with A Hat Full of Sky for my favorite - although they're all really, really good. As the series has progressed, the focus has shifted from heavily magical to more about regular life - not coincidentally, at the same time that Tiffany is learning how much of what people call magic is made up of regular life. On the one hand, this is somewhat unfortunate, since it means the Nac Mac Feegles get less and less screen time as the series wears on, but Tiffany herself is such an appealing and relatable narrator that it's easy to forgive the shift. I loved watching her deal with growing up, and coming in to her own, and having to navigate not only magical problems but also interpersonal ones. Any quibbles? There were a few details that were added in to the story but not utilized to their full potential, and I did think that the ending felt a little too rushed, and somehow too easy - it would have been more compelling if Tiffany were actually a little less sure of herself and a little more in danger. But regardless, I enjoyed listening to every second of this book (Stephen Briggs did a wonderful job with the narration, as always), and am now really sorely tempted to go back to The Wee Free Men and start over. 4.5 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: Everyone. Certainly everyone who's read the first three books, although Pratchett does a pretty good job summing up what's come before. But I'd recommend the series as a whole to adults and young adults alike who like their heroines intelligent, down-to-earth, and competent; their fairy folk six inches tall, blue, and with a thick Scottish burr; and their stories entertaining, smart, hilarious, and heartfelt.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Beautiful! I just wish there was MORE!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This series made me love Terry Pratchett and want to read all of his books-you'll see what I mean when you read them yourself=D
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Compared to other Witch books, it struck me as a very patchy, with plot and cohesion not always stringently followed through. Many of the main characters were introduced, but I still couldn't really care about them by the end of the book. The love stories appeared to be rather stuck on, as though coming-of-age stories about women always mean two things - coming to terms with misogyny and finding love, and that doesn't convince me at all.

    I liked the way the text introduces three women with very different background who all three face the same difficulties in different ways and the way the three different stages of womanhood that are always present in the witch books are also present in this one, I like that we get to see how the negative effects of these three different stages or kinds of womanhood can be forced onto women through circumstances they can't control. Tiffany becomes a crone through having too much on her plate alone too soon, Amber becomes the teenaged mother of a dead child through both early love and abuse, Letitia retains her maidenhood through enforced ignorance. Neither of them has much choice in the matter, and each of them has to deal with her lot and to change what they can change and work around what they can't.

    I liked that Tiffany has to fight with what I Finished as misogyny personified. It was convincing, overpowering, affected men and women alike. I also liked that she'd have to fight that battle alone, because it's realistic in a depressing way - because it affects everybody there are no allies, really. I emphatically didn't like the way that this force was characterised as magical - it's not. It's people being people, and I am sad that the author who managed to write empathically about torturers in Small Gods ("There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do") can't manage to see batterers the same way.

    The entire Amber subplot left me open-mouthed. So she moves back in with her parents, and that's the end of that because her father, was under the influence of a magical force? It led him to punch her so hard she lost her baby and that's that, and she now understands? I loved the bit about the thistles, that is very realistic, but it is realistic without any mythical magical forces at work, and least said, soonest mended doesn't cut in in this case. Especially, witch or not, if the girl in question is all of thirteen years old. The text seemed to say, "Well, but these things happen, so you have to learn how to deal with them and be understanding about them". No, you don't. That's sort of what being a witch used to be about, about not understanding unspeakable cruelty. While that is true, depressingly enough, soothing someone out of their wits and then informing them that their abusive father was under the influence of magic is no fitting end, especially seeing as how he's been abusive before. While it's sad that he himself was abused, that is not an excuse. Even though I can imagine families staying together after abuse happened I doubt that an "I'll understand" spoken by the survivor of horrible abuse is in any way an appropriate ending, witch or not.

    Letitia I couldn't grow that fond of, because while I see that her position was difficult and, in a way, as restrictive as the lives the other two young women were facing, her life-story was introduced too hurriedly and too patchily for me to grow attached to her.

    The love plots I hated. I don't see why Tiffany'd need a boyfriend to conclude her coming-of-age, and he seemed to be rather shoe-horned into things. Of course it's helpful to have a partner if you can't ask your colleagues because it goes against a twisted sense of professional honour, but seeing as how Granny Weatherwax also always had plenty of help, it doesn't seem to make sense and just happens too quickly.

    Also, "bitch" and "whore"? Really? Really? I never felt as slapped in the face by the use of a profanity in a book before. Even though it emphasises the double-bind and the idiocy of calling someone who is a virgin and completely ignorant of all things sexual a "whore", as well a the strange circumstances under which women are kept ignorant, are then expected to suddenly be sexual beings from one second to the next and get labelled as "whore" once they express an interest in doing so, it just did not fit.

    It did not fit the first time, when the word "bitch" was used for the first and only time as something other than a rather unfortunate typo or a word used in reference to female dogs in the discworld novels, and Finisheding the word "whore" in a book which is still a book for children in a coming-of-age novel with a mostly female audience is all kinds of inappropriate, especially because Tiffany's etymological argument for the usage of the word doesn't check out, it seems that the meaning of this word has always been "promiscuous, immoral woman", at least according to my etymological dictionary - which, admittedly, is not very good.

    I don't mind bad language, but using misogynistic terms for the first time in the entire series in the book which is a coming-of-age story for girls is just wrong. Yes, these things happen, and young girls will know about that better than anybody, but for me it ruined the book rather than adding them out of respect to people's experience who hear these terms often enough.

    I loved seeing Esk again, but I didn't like the way her life was characterised as one spent as the shadow of Simon. Esk is powerful in her own right, thank you very much.

    All in all, what I didn't like most of all is the way the book breaks up homosocial groups in favour of heterosexual relationships and constellations, something which is beneficial for Tiffany, who can't ask her witch friends for help at this point, but dangerous for both ignorant Letitia and abused Amber. And while this is, again, realistic, it is not a positive thing, and something that I really didn't miss while Finisheding the other witch novels.

    So, I loved the way that coming of age in a misogynistic world as a powerful woman is dealt with, I really didn't agree with the way misogyny is portrayed. I have to think about this a bit more.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I heart Tiffany Aching... and Sir Terry Pratchett. A lovely and funny and poignant addition to the series.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is not a funny book. It is perhaps the most serious book pTerry has written about the Discworld. Tiffany Aching is growing up, despite taking her witchcraft very firmly when she was only eight, and is now sixteen, she still has a lot to learn, and among many other messages, one of the hardest is that there is evil in the world. No laughing matter, and hence nearly all of pTerry's trademark jokes and puns are absent. The Feegles are of course irrepressible, but other that this is the dark side of the story.The evil in question is an ancient witch hunter, denied his lawful prey and banished from the world. But not forever, and the shock of Tiffany's kiss with Winter in the last book, has drawn him, like a moth to the flame. He lives in the minds of everyone, in the rumours and distrust, sly asides and repeated gossip, casting aspersions without standing to defend them, destroying the respect a witch needs to survive. Parallels to the troubles any 16 yr old might get themselves into are clear. Given the difference in ages between the author and subject this is a superb achievement. I was also very impressed at the subtle way all the other discworld tales are neatly integrated into the story. We get brief cameos from Captain Carrot, and references to the very early Equal Rites which doesn't normally happen. This isn't a suitable book to start reading Pratchett, at least the previous Tiffany books should be read beforehand. Although nominally part of the younger Discworld series, with young Tiffany the heroine, and featuring the direct plot style and chapter breaks that hallmark this, it is in no way just a young persons book. The topics and interpersonal relationships are too intense. Influenced by pTerry's own spartan upbringing, is also exposes some of the truths of life in the countryside, rather than the bucolic impression that is often portrayed in fantasy books. Powerfully moving, this is a coming of age story highlighting the best fantasy can do to cast new light on the world around us.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is Tiffany Aching's fourth adventure and because of a bit of misfortune and luck (not on her part anyway), she is now faced with her worst enemy yet. An evil so foul that you could pass out just from smelling it. People are dying, and more will die, and she alone must face it and find a way to win, for her life, for her Chalk, and for witches everywhere
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I must admit to being a Pratchett fan. This does not mean that I love all of his books. This new book however was wonderful! I was drawn in and greatly entertained. I love the Nac Mac Feegles and they continued to be a great sideline throughout the story. I would highly recommend this book and feel that it would be good even if you have not read his other books about Tiffany Aching.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    At the heart of I Shall Wear Midnight is a simple idea that we all have something that we're meant to do. Tiffany Aching knows that she is meant to be the witch of the Chalk, but knowing and doing that are two different things. In this fourth book about Tiffany Aching, she matures and the people of Chalk adjust to what it means to have a witch. The plot is not terribly complex but rooted in the fear of the unknown and the powerful. As with all Pratchett books, there's humor to counterbalance the way he captures the darkness and hope within every person. Difficult themes are faced with some violence shown and so this book is best for a advanced middle grade reader and a reader of young adult books. Since it is the newest book in the Tiffany Aching books, it will make more sense with the background of the other three books.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I Shall Wear Midnight is the darkest of Discworld novels with a very adult theme about death (not Death). Old people die, babies die, good people die and evil people die - noone escapes death in this tale, which is not particularly morbid, thankfully. Pratchett is the ideal author to conjure up a story with so much violence in it and make it seem like a fairy-tale, however it doesn't seem to fall in to the younger audience's category previous Ms Aching books have.Darkness aside, Midnight is initially a challenging read. Each sentence has a humourous angle, a twist on language or a concept to be considered. It's hard work trying to follow a story and its characterisation when your brain has to work so hard just to make it through the paragraph. Once settled in (and many of Pratchett's books take a good third to do so), the story starts to flow and the darkness seems to settle for a distinct second place to the relationships between the characters, which are executed flawlessly. If you look between the protagonists there is a haunting story, full of menace, kept at bay with sheer humanity and Pratchett's unique view of events and ideology.This very solid novel, although under-paced at times, is definitely the best Tiffany Aching book do far and a welcome addition to the series. It doesn't set out to expand the Discworld concept and offers a story packed full of bittersweet charm instead.

Book preview

I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett

CONTENTS

Chapter One              A Fine Big Wee Laddie

Chapter Two              Rough Music

Chapter Three            Those Who Stir in Their Sleep

Chapter Four             The Real Shilling

Chapter Five              The Mother of Tongues

Chapter Six                The Coming of the Cunning Man

Chapter Seven            Songs in the Night

Chapter Eight             The King’s Neck

Chapter Nine              The Duchess and the Cook

Chapter Ten                The Melting Girl

Chapter Eleven           The Bonfire of the Witches

Chapter Twelve           The Sin o’ Sins

Chapter Thirteen        The Shaking of the Sheets

Chapter Fourteen        Burning the King

Chapter Fifteen            A Shadow and a Whisper

Epilogue                        Midnight by Day

Author’s Note

Appendix                      A Feegle Glossary

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About the Author

Books by Terry Pratchett

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

A Fine Big Wee Laddie

Why was it, Tiffany Aching wondered, that people liked noise so much? Why was noise so important?

Something quite close sounded like a cow giving birth. It turned out to be an old hurdy-gurdy organ, hand cranked by a raggedy man in a battered top hat. She sidled away as politely as she could, but as noise went, it was sticky; you got the feeling that if you let it, it would try to follow you home.

But that was only one sound in the great cauldron of noise around her, all of it made by people and all of it made by people trying to make noise louder than the other people making noise: Arguing at the makeshift stalls, bobbing for apples or frogs,* cheering the prizefighters and a spangled lady on the high wire, selling cotton candy at the tops of their voices, and, not to put too fine a point on it, boozing quite considerably.

The air above the green downland was thick with noise. It was as if the populations of two or three towns had all come up to the top of the hills. And so here, where all you generally heard was the occasional scream of a buzzard, you heard the permanent scream of, well, everyone. It was called having fun. The only people not making any noise were the thieves and pickpockets, who went about their business with commendable silence, and they didn’t come near Tiffany; who would pick a witch’s pocket? You would be lucky to get all your fingers back. At least, that was what they feared, and a sensible witch would encourage them in this fear.

When you were a witch, you were all witches, thought Tiffany Aching as she walked through the crowds, pulling her broomstick after her on the end of a length of string. It floated a few feet above the ground. She was getting a bit bothered about that. It seemed to work quite well, but nevertheless, since all around the fair were small children dragging balloons, also on the ends of pieces of string, she couldn’t help thinking that it made her look more than a little bit silly, and something that made one witch look silly made all witches look silly.

On the other hand, if you tied it to a hedge somewhere, there was bound to be some kid who would untie the string and get on the stick for a dare, in which case most likely he would go straight up all the way to the top of the atmosphere where the air froze, and while she could in theory call the stick back, mothers got very touchy about having to thaw out their children on a bright late-summer day. That would not look good. People would talk. People always talked about witches.

She resigned herself to dragging it again. With luck, people would think she was joining in with the spirit of the thing in a humorous way.

There was a lot of etiquette involved, even at something so deceptively cheerful as a fair. She was the witch; who knows what would happen if she forgot someone’s name or, worse still, got it wrong? What would happen if she forgot all the little feuds and factions, the people who weren’t talking to their neighbors and so on and so on and a lot more so and even further on? Tiffany had no understanding at all of the word minefield, but if she had, it would have seemed kind of familiar.

She was the witch. For all the villages along the Chalk, she was the witch. Not just for her own village anymore, but for all the other ones as far away as Ham-on-Rye, which was a pretty good day’s walk from here. The area that a witch thought of as her own, and for whose people she did what was needful, was called a steading, and as steadings went, this one was pretty good. Not many witches got a whole geological outcrop to themselves, even if this one was mostly covered in grass, and the grass was mostly covered in sheep. And today the sheep on the downs were left by themselves to do whatever it was that they did when they were by themselves, which would presumably be pretty much the same as they did if you were watching them. And the sheep, usually fussed and herded and generally watched over, were now of no interest whatsoever, because right here the most wonderful attraction in the world was taking place.

Admittedly, the scouring fair was only one of the world’s most wonderful attractions if you didn’t usually ever travel more than about four miles from home. If you lived around the Chalk you were bound to meet everyone that you knew* at the fair. It was quite often where you met the person you were likely to marry. The girls certainly all wore their best dresses, while the boys wore expressions of hopefulness and their hair smoothed down with cheap hair pomade or, more usually, spit. Those who had opted for spit generally came off better, since the cheap pomade was very cheap indeed and would often melt and run in the hot weather, causing the young men not to be of interest to the young women, as they had fervently hoped, but to the flies, who would make their lunch off the boys’ scalps.

However, since the event could hardly be called the fair where you went in the hope of getting a kiss and, if your luck held, the promise of another one, the fair was called the scouring.

The scouring was held over three days at the end of summer. For most people on the Chalk, it was their holiday. This was the third day, and it was said that if you hadn’t had a kiss by now, you might as well go home. Tiffany hadn’t had a kiss, but after all, she was the witch. Who knew what they might get turned into?

If the late-summer weather was clement, it wasn’t unusual for some people to sleep out under the stars, and under the bushes as well. And that was why, if you wanted to take a stroll at night, it paid to be careful, so as not to trip over someone’s feet. Not to put too fine a point on it, there was a certain amount of what Nanny Ogg—a witch who had been married to three husbands—called making your own entertainment. It was a shame that Nanny lived right up in the mountains, because she would have loved the scouring and Tiffany would have loved to see her face when she saw the giant.*

He—and he was quite definitely a he, there was no possible doubt about that—had been carved out of the turf thousands of years before. A white outline against the green, he belonged to the days when people had to think about survival and fertility in a dangerous world.

Oh, and he had also been carved, or so it would appear, before anyone had invented trousers. In fact, to say that he had no trousers on just didn’t do the job. His lack of trousers filled the world. You simply could not stroll down the little road that passed along the bottom of the hills without noticing that there was an enormous, as it were, lack of something—e.g., trousers—and what was there instead. It was definitely a figure of a man without trousers, and certainly not a woman.

Everyone who came to the scouring was expected to bring a small shovel, or even a knife, and work their way down the steep slope to grub up all the weeds that had grown there over the previous year, making the chalk underneath glow with freshness and the giant stand out boldly, as if he didn’t already.

There was always a lot of giggling when the girls worked on the giant.

And the reason for the giggling, and the circumstances of the giggling, couldn’t help but put Tiffany in mind of Nanny Ogg, who you normally saw somewhere behind Granny Weatherwax with a big grin on her face. She was generally thought of as a jolly old soul, but there was a lot more to the old woman. She had never been Tiffany’s teacher officially, but Tiffany couldn’t help learning things from Nanny Ogg. She smiled to herself when she thought that. Nanny knew all the old, dark stuff—old magic, magic that didn’t need witches, magic that was built into people and the landscape. It concerned things like death, and marriage, and betrothals. And promises that were promises even if there was no one to hear them. And all those things that make people touch wood and never, ever walk under a black cat.

You didn’t need to be a witch to understand it. The world around you became more—well, more real and fluid, at those special times. Nanny Ogg called it numinous—an uncharacteristically solemn word from a woman who was much more likely to be saying, I would like a brandy, thank you very much, and could you make it a double while you are about it. And she had told Tiffany about the old days, when it seemed that witches had a bit more fun. The things that you did around the changing of the seasons, for example; all the customs that were now dead except in folk memory, which, Nanny Ogg said, is deep and dark and breathing and never fades. Little rituals.

Tiffany especially liked the one about fire. Tiffany liked fire. It was her favorite element. It was considered so potent, and so scary to the powers of darkness, that people would even get married by jumping over a fire together.* Apparently it helped if you said a little chant, according to Nanny Ogg, who lost no time in telling Tiffany the words, which immediately stuck in Tiffany’s mind; a lot of what Nanny Ogg told you tended to be sticky.

But those were times gone by. Everybody was more respectable now, apart from Nanny Ogg and the giant.

There were other carvings on the chalk lands, too. One of them was a white horse that Tiffany thought had once broken its way out of the ground and galloped to her rescue. Now she wondered what would happen if the giant did the same thing, because it would be very hard to find a pair of pants sixty feet long in a hurry. And on the whole, you’d want to hurry.

She’d only ever giggled about the giant once, and that had been a very long time ago. There were really only four types of people in the world: men and women and wizards and witches. Wizards mostly lived in universities down in the big cities and weren’t allowed to get married, although the reason why not totally escaped Tiffany. Anyway, you hardly ever saw them around here.

Witches were definitely women, but most of the older ones Tiffany knew hadn’t gotten married either, largely because Nanny Ogg had already used up all the eligible husbands, but also probably because they didn’t have time. Of course, every now and then, a witch might marry a grand husband, like Magrat Garlick of Lancre had done, although by all accounts she only did herbs these days. But the only young witch Tiffany knew who had even had time for courting was her best friend up in the mountains: Petulia, a witch who was now specializing in pig magic and was soon going to marry a nice young man who was shortly going to inherit his father’s pig farm,* which meant he was practically an aristocrat.

But witches were not only very busy, they were also apart; Tiffany had learned that early on. You were among people, but not the same as them. There was always a kind of distance or separation. You didn’t have to work at it—it happened anyway. Girls she had known when they were all so young they used to run about and play with only their undershirts on would make a tiny little curtsy to her when she passed them in the lane, and even elderly men would touch their forelock, or probably what they thought was their forelock, as she passed.

This wasn’t just because of respect, but because of a kind of fear as well. Witches had secrets; they were there to help when babies were being born. When you got married, it was a good idea to have a witch standing by (even if you weren’t sure if it was for good luck or to prevent bad luck), and when you died there would be a witch there too, to show you the way. Witches had secrets they never told . . . well, not to people who weren’t witches. Among themselves, when they could get together on some hillside for a drink or two (or in the case of Mrs. Ogg, a drink or nine), they gossiped like geese.

But never about the real secrets, the ones you never told, about things done and heard and seen. So many secrets that you were afraid they might leak. Seeing a giant without his trousers was hardly worth commenting on compared to some of the things that a witch might see.

No, Tiffany did not envy Petulia her romance, which surely must have taken place in big boots, unflattering rubber aprons, and the rain, not to mention an awful lot of oink.

She did, however, envy her for being so sensible. Petulia had it all worked out. She knew what she wanted her future to be, and had rolled up her sleeves and made it happen, up to her knees in oink if necessary.

Every family, even up in the mountains, kept at least one pig to act as a garbage can in the summer and as pork, bacon, ham, and sausages during the rest of the year. The pig was important; you might dose Granny with turpentine when she was poorly, but when the pig was ill, you sent immediately for a pig witch, and paid her too, and paid her well, generally in sausages.

On top of everything else, Petulia was a specialist pig borer, and indeed she was this year’s champion in the noble art of boring. Tiffany thought you couldn’t put it better; her friend could sit down with a pig and talk to it gently and calmly about extremely boring things until some strange pig mechanism took over, whereupon it would give a happy little yawn and fall over, no longer a living pig and ready to become a very important contribution to the family’s diet for the following year. This might not appear the best of outcomes for the pig, but given the messy and above all noisy way pigs died before the invention of pig boring, it was definitely, in the great scheme of things, a much better deal all round.

Alone in the crowd, Tiffany sighed. It was hard, when you wore the black, pointy hat. Because, like it or not, the witch was the pointy hat, and the pointy hat was the witch. It made people careful about you. They would be respectful, oh, yes, and often a little bit nervous, as if they expected you to look inside their heads, which as a matter of fact you could probably do, using the good old witch’s standbys of First Sight and Second Thoughts.* But these weren’t really magic. Anyone could learn them if they had a lick of sense, but sometimes even a lick is hard to find. People are often so busy living that they never stopped to wonder why. Witches did, and that meant them being needed: Oh, yes, needed—needed practically all the time, but not, in a very polite and definitely unspoken way, not exactly wanted.

This wasn’t the mountains, where people were very used to witches; people on the Chalk could be friendly, but they weren’t friends, not actual friends. The witch was different. The witch knew things that you did not. The witch was another kind of person. The witch was someone that perhaps you should not anger. The witch was not like other people.

Tiffany Aching was the witch, and she had made herself the witch because they needed one. Everybody needs a witch, but sometimes they just don’t know it.

And it was working. The storybook pictures of the drooling hag were being wiped away, every time Tiffany helped a young mother with her first baby, or smoothed an old man’s path to his grave. Nevertheless, old stories, old rumors, and old picture books still seemed to have their own hold on the memory of the world.

What made it more difficult was that there was no tradition of witches on the Chalk—none would ever have settled there when Granny Aching had been alive. Granny Aching, as everybody knew, was a wise woman, and wise enough not to be a witch. Nothing ever happened on the Chalk that Granny Aching disapproved of, at least not for more than about ten minutes.

So Tiffany was a witch alone.

And not only was there no longer any support from the mountain witches like Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax, and Miss Level, but the people of the Chalk weren’t very familiar with witches. Other witches would probably come and help if she asked, of course, but although they wouldn’t say so, this might mean that you couldn’t cope with responsibility, weren’t up to the task, weren’t sure, weren’t good enough.

Excuse me, miss? There was a nervous giggle. Tiffany looked round, and there were two little girls in their best new frocks and straw hats. They were watching her eagerly, with perhaps just a hint of mischief in their eyes. She thought quickly and smiled at them.

Oh, yes, Becky Pardon and Nancy Upright, yes? What can I do for the two of you?

Becky Pardon shyly produced a small bouquet from behind her back and held it out. Tiffany recognized it, of course. She had made them herself for the older girls when she was younger, simply because it was what you did, it was part of the scouring: a little bunch of wildflowers picked from the downland, tied in a bunch with—and this was the important bit, the magic bit—some of the grass pulled up as the fresh chalk was exposed.

If you put this under your pillow tonight, you will dream of your beau, said Becky, her face quite serious now.

Tiffany took the slightly wilting bunch of flowers with care. Let me see . . . she said. We have here sweet mumbles, ladies’ pillows, seven-leaf clover—very lucky—a sprig of old man’s trousers, jack-in-the-wall, oh—love-lies-bleeding, and . . . She stared at the little white-and-red flowers.

The girls said, Are you all right, miss?

Forget-me-lots!* said Tiffany, more sharply than she had intended. But the girls hadn’t noticed, so she continued to say, brightly, Quite unusual to see it here. It must be a garden escapee. And, as I’m sure you both know, you have bound them all together with strips of candle rush, which once upon a time people used to make into rush lights. What a lovely surprise. Thank you both very much. I hope you have a lovely time at the fair. . . .

Becky raised her hand. Excuse me, miss?

Was there something else, Becky?

Becky went pink, and had a hurried conversation with her friend. She turned back to Tiffany, looking slightly more pink but nevertheless determined to see things through.

You can’t get into trouble for asking a question, can you, miss? I mean, just asking a question?

It’s going to be How can I be a witch when I’m grown up? Tiffany thought, because it generally was. The young girls saw her on her broomstick and thought that was what being a witch was. Out loud she said, Not from me, at least. Do ask your question.

Becky Pardon looked down at her boots. Do you have any passionate parts, miss?

Another talent needful in a witch is the ability not to let your face show what you’re thinking, and especially not allowing it, no matter what, to go as stiff as a board. Tiffany managed to say, without a single wobble in her voice and no trace of an embarrassed smirk, That is a very interesting question, Becky. Can I ask you why you want to know?

The girl looked a lot happier now that the question was, as it were, out in the public domain.

Well, miss, I asked my granny if I could be a witch when I was older, and she said I shouldn’t want to, because witches have no passionate parts, miss.

Tiffany thought quickly in the face of the two solemn owlish stares. These are farm girls, she thought, so they had certainly seen a cat have kittens and a dog have puppies. They’d have seen the birth of lambs, and probably a cow have a calf, which is always a noisy affair that you can hardly miss. They know what they are asking me about.

At this point Nancy chimed in with Only, if that is so, miss, we would quite like to have the flowers back, now that we’ve shown them to you, because perhaps it might be a bit of a waste, meaning no offense. She stepped back quickly.

Tiffany was surprised at her own laughter. It had been a long time since she had laughed. Heads turned to see what the joke was, and she managed to grab both the girls before they fled, and spun them round.

Well done, the pair of you, she said. I like to see some sensible thinking every now and again. Never hesitate to ask a question. And the answer to your question is that witches are the same as everybody else when it comes to passionate parts, but often they are so busy rushing around that they never have time to think about them.

The girls looked relieved that their work had not been entirely in vain, and Tiffany was ready for the next question, which came from Becky again. So do you have a beau, miss?

Not right at the moment, Tiffany said briskly, clamping down on her expression lest it give anything away. She held up the little bouquet. But who knows—if you’ve made this properly, then I’ll get another one, and in that case you will be better witches than me, that is for certain. They both beamed at this dreadful piece of outright fluff, and it stopped the questions.

And now, said Tiffany, the cheese rolling will be starting at any minute. I’m sure you won’t want to miss that.

No, miss, they said in unison. Just before they left, full of relief and self-importance, Becky patted Tiffany on her hand. Beaus can be very difficult, miss, she said with the assurance of, to Tiffany’s certain knowledge, eight years in the world.

Thank you, said Tiffany. I shall definitely bear that in mind.

When it came to the entertainments offered at the fair, such as people making faces through a horse collar or fighting with pillows on the greasy pole or even the bobbing for frogs, well, Tiffany could take them or leave them alone, and in fact much preferred to leave them alone. But she always liked to see a good cheese roll—that is to say, a good cheese roll all the way down a slope of the hill, although not across the giant because no one would want to eat the cheese afterward.

They were hard cheeses, sometimes specially made for the cheese-rolling circuit, and the winning maker of the cheese that reached the bottom unscathed won a belt with a silver buckle and the admiration of all.

Tiffany was an expert cheesemaker, but she had never entered. Witches couldn’t enter that sort of competition because if you won—and she knew she had made a cheese or two that could win—everyone would say that was unfair because you were a witch; well, that’s what they would think, but very few would say it. And if you didn’t win, people would say, What kind of witch can’t make a cheese that could be beat by simple cheeses made by simple folk like we?

There was a gentle movement of the crowd to the start of the cheese rolling, although the frog-bobbing stall still had a big crowd, it being a very humorous and reliable source of entertainment, especially to those people who weren’t actually bobbing. Regrettably, the man who put weasels down his trousers, and apparently had a personal best of nine weasels, hadn’t been there this year, and people were wondering if he had lost his touch. But sooner or later everyone would drift over to the start line for the cheese rolling. It was a tradition.

The slope here was very steep indeed, and there was always a certain amount of boisterous rivalry between the cheese owners, which led to pushing and shoving and kicking and bruises; occasionally you got a broken arm or leg. All was going as normal as the waiting men lined up their cheeses, until Tiffany saw, and seemed to be the only one to see, a dangerous cheese roll up all by itself. It was black under the dust, and there was a piece of grubby blue-and-white cloth tied to it.

Oh, no, she said. Horace. And where you are, trouble can’t be far behind. She spun around, carefully searching for signs of what should not be there. Now you just listen to me, she said under her breath. I know at least one of you must be somewhere near. This isn’t for you; it’s just about people. Understand?

But it was too late. The Master of the Revels, in his big floppy hat with lace around the brim, blew his whistle and the cheese rolling, as he put it, commenced—which is a far grander word than started. And a man with lace around his hat was never going to use a short word where a long word would do.

Tiffany hardly dared to look. The runners didn’t so much run as roll and skid behind their cheeses. But she could hear the cries that went up when the black cheese not only shot into the lead but occasionally turned round and went back uphill again in order to bang into one of the ordinary innocent cheeses. She could just hear a faint grumbling noise coming from it as it almost shot to the top of the hill.

Cheese runners shouted at it, tried to grab at it, and flailed at it with sticks, but the piratical cheese scythed onward, reaching the bottom again just ahead of the terrible carnage of men and cheeses as they piled up. Then it rolled back up to the top and sat there demurely while still gently vibrating.

At the bottom of the slope, fights were breaking out among the cheese jockeys who were still capable of punching somebody, and since everyone was now watching that, Tiffany took the opportunity to snatch up Horace and shove him into her bag. After all, he was hers. Well, that was to say, she had made him, although something odd must’ve gotten into the mix since Horace was the only cheese that would eat mice and, if you didn’t nail him down, other cheeses as well. No wonder he got on so well with the Nac Mac Feegles,* who had made him an honorary member of the clan. He was their kind of cheese.

Surreptitiously, hoping that no one would notice, Tiffany held the bag up to her mouth and said, Is this any way to behave? Aren’t you ashamed? The bag wobbled a little bit, but she knew that the word shame was not in Horace’s vocabulary, and neither was anything else. She lowered the bag and moved a little way from the crowd and said, I know you are here, Rob Anybody.

There he was, sitting on her shoulder. She could smell him. Despite the fact that they generally had little to do with bathing, except when it rained, the Nac Mac Feegles always smelled something like slightly drunk potatoes. The kelda wanted me tae find out how ye were biding, said the Feegle chieftain. You havena bin tae the mound to see her these past two weeks, he went on, and I think she is afeared that a harm may come tae ye, ye are working sae hard an’ all.

Tiffany groaned, but only to herself. She said, That is very kind of her. There is always so much to do; surely the kelda knows this. It doesn’t matter what I do, there is always more to be done. There is no end to the wanting. But there is nothing to worry about. I am doing fine. And please don’t take Horace out again in public—you know he gets excited.

"Well, in point of fact, it says up on that banner over there that this is for the folk of these hills, and we is more than folk. We is folklore! Ye canna argue with the lore! Besides, I wanted tae come and pay my ain respects to the big yin without his breeks. He is a fine big wee laddie and nae mistake. Rob paused, and then said quietly, So I can tell her that ye are quite well in yourself, aye?" There was a certain nervousness to him, as if he would have liked to say more but knew it wouldn’t be welcome.

Rob Anybody, I would be very grateful if you would do just that, said Tiffany, because I have a lot of people to bandage, if I’m any judge.

Rob Anybody, suddenly looking like a man on a thankless errand, frantically said the words he had been told by his wife to say: The kelda says there’s plenty more fish in the sea, miss!

And Tiffany stood perfectly still for a moment and then, without looking at Rob, said quietly, "Do thank the kelda for her angling information. I have to get on, if you don’t mind, Rob. Do thank the kelda."

Most of the crowd was reaching the bottom of the slope by now, to gawk or rescue or possibly attempt some amateur first aid on the groaning cheese runners. For the onlookers, of course, it was just another show; you didn’t often see a satisfying pileup of men and cheeses, and—who knew?—there might be some really interesting casualties.

Tiffany, glad of something to do, did not have to push her way through; the pointy black hat could create a path through a crowd faster than a holy man through a shallow sea. She waved the happy crowd away, with one or two forceful shoves for those of slow uptake. As a matter of fact, as it turned out, the butcher’s bill wasn’t too high this year, with one broken arm, one broken wrist, one broken leg, and an enormous number of bruises, cuts, and rashes being caused by people sliding most of the way down—grass isn’t always your friend. There were several young men clearly in distress as a result, but they were absolutely definite that they were not going to discuss their injuries with a lady, thank you all the same. So she told them to put a cold compress on the afflicted area, wherever it was, when they got home, and watched them walk unsteadily away.

Well, she’d done all right, hadn’t she? She had used her skills in front of the rubbernecking crowd and, according to what she overheard from the old men and women, had performed well enough. Perhaps she imagined that one or two people were embarrassed when an old man with a beard to his waist said with a grin, A girl who can set bones would have no trouble finding a husband, but that

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