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“But I’m only sixteen years old!” Lydia complained. “And he’s coming after me?”
“Granny Aching was about your age when she defeated the Cunning Man,” Miss Vane said matter-of-factly. “As was Granny Weatherwax before her, as was Mistress Snapperly before her, and so on and so forth.”
“But why me?” the girl continued, regardless.
Miss Vane paused and looked at the young witch. Her face was still pudgy with baby fat, her eyes soft and watery. Yes, why you? she wondered. Because Lydia seemed a capable witch, but Miss Vane had met more capable ones down in Lancre and up on the Chalk, girls with confidence and pride and cleverness to boot. Because witches didn’t ask, Why me; they thought, Yes, good thing it is me, since I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do the job.
It was the girl’s steading, Miss Vane realized. The village of Barker was located at the base of the mountains, and its livelihood was coal mining. Of course, no one was supposed to build over old tunnels, but people had short memories and there had been a lot of tunnels. Miss Vane couldn’t imagine trying to grow up in a place like that. Lydia must have never been able to get a good solid foot on the ground.
“Do not ask me the motives of an evil, centuries-old, incorporeal entity,” Miss Vane snapped, and then regretted it. Perhaps the flowery prose had been too much. The girl was already scared, after all, but Miss Vane always did have a taste for the dramatic.
Lydia frowned and, to Miss Vane’s surprise, stood up straighter. Something changed in her face, but Miss Vane couldn’t tell exactly what. “Right,” Lydia said. “I will handle this.” Miss Vane found herself looking up at the girl. Had Lydia been taller than her, this whole time?
And then Miss Vane remembered the sweating sickness that had gone around last winter, and how it had somehow completely passed by Barker without infecting a single soul. What kind of magic had the girl done to accomplish that?
And then Miss Vane remembered what you got when you put pressure on coal.
Lydia’s eyes gleamed like diamonds.
Tiffany found time before the witching hour to go visit the shepherding hut. It was peaceful on that patch of Chalk, always was. In the light of the gibbous moon, Tiffany sat by the old wheels and thought.
The Cunning Man was coming for her. And soon. What would Granny Aching have done?
Tiffany struggled to find the answer to this question, whereupon she realized there was none. Granny Aching wouldn’t have done anything because the Cunning Man would never have come for her.
No longer a child, Tiffany could now look back and see that there was no magic in what Granny Aching did. That anyone could own sheepdogs that followed their owner’s every command and then some if they trained them well enough. That anyone could bring back a frozen lamb from the brink of death if they had an oven warm enough. Most of what Granny Aching did was just patience and knowing better—which, in itself, was a kind of magic, but not the same kind as what Tiffany had used when she’d kissed the winter.
Miss Smith had been right: there was not a single drop of magic in her family. Yet, here Tiffany was, performing the level of magic that attracted the Cunning Man.
She’d grabbed magic by the back of its neck and forced it to work for her. She’d rescued her brother from the fairies and lead a hiver to the land of death. She’d given the old Baron one last moment of happiness before his passing.
She could do all these things, and now, she knew, she would defeat the Cunning Man.
Esme Weatherwax had just about had enough.
She’d been in charge of her own steading for three years now and doing a fine job. She changed bandages, delivered babies, taken away pain. It was hard and grueling work, but day by day, person by person, she’d slowly gained the respect of the village.
And then, suddenly, it was all gone. She changed the poultice on Old Miss Mary’s leg, and Old Miss Mary thanked her, but there was more bitterness than gratitude in it. And when Old Miss Mary gave her payment, her hands held on longer to the old clothes than they should have. Then, people started glaring at her in the street, sometimes spitting at her boots. Someone knocked over her beehives.
It made her furious! The respect she’d worked so hard for: gone, in an instant. And if you didn’t have respect, you had nothing.
She went to learn about the old tale from a neighboring witch, and then she returned to her cottage and waited, tending to the fire. She didn’t sit down, couldn’t. She was far too angry.
The moon moved in the sky, the witching hour came, and Esme smelled the Cunning Man before she saw him. The stench of putrefaction attacking her nose, she watched as the Cunning Man came running out of the forest. He stopped outside of Esme’s cottage, stared at her through the window, and smiled eerily.
He thought he was scaring her. Esme could have laughed.
“You want it? You want it?” she screamed. Keeping her eyes on the Cunning Man, she thrust her left hand into the fireplace, and her right hand burst into flame.
The Cunning Man took a step back.
Esme bared her teeth.
“You come and get it!”
“Pickled onion?” the witch next to Ingrid asked, offering her a bag.
“Mm, thank you!” Ingrid said eagerly. She reached in and picked one, then tapped Lottie on the shoulder. “Free pickled onion, Lottie, do you want—”
“Oh, will you give it a rest,” Lottie snapped, throwing her hands in the air. “This isn’t some kind of show.”
Ingrid smirked. “Well, not with that attitude, it isn’t.”
Lottie was in an irritable mood because she was jealous, Ingrid knew. In fact, most of the young witches here were jealous. The Cunning Man was said to challenge the best witch of her generation. And no matter how good the other witches were, every witch, in the back of her mind, secretly believed that she was that witch. It was just how witches were.
A murmur ran through the crowd, when the tip of a pointed hat became visible over the hill. As they watched, Wilhelma’s head soon followed. There were holes where her eyes should have been.
A senior witch scowled and pulled a cosh out from under her dress. Another quickly wove a shamble that started glowing green.
Ingrid shivered. She wasn’t jealous.
She was vengeful. And spiteful. These weren’t good characteristics for a witch to have. Vengeance was for the future, spite was for the past, and a witch had to focus on the present if she wanted to get anything done right.
Nevertheless, many a witch was indeed vengeful and spiteful, and the witch tied to the stake might have been the queen of them all. She had bitterness in her bones.
So when the witchfinder showed the beginnings of doubt on his face, the witch had no patience for it. She pulled him into the fire, held him fast, and she made the Cunning Man.