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Tiffany especially liked the one about the fire Tiffany liked fire It was her favourite element It was considered so powerful, and so scary to the powers of darkness that people would even get ether4 Apparently it helped if you said a little chant, according to Nanny Ogg, who lost no ti Tiffany the words, which i told you tended to be sticky

But those were tione by Everybody was iant

There were other carvings on the Chalk lands too One of theht had once broken its way out of the ground and galloped to her rescue Now she wondered ould happen if the giant did the sa, 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 tio There were really only four types of people in the world: men and women and wizards and witches Wizardscities and weren’t allowed to get h the reason why not totally escaped Tiffany Anyway, you hardly ever saw them around here

Witches were definitely woothad already used up all the eligible husbands, but also probably because they didn’t have tirand husband, like Magrat Garlick, as was, of Lancre had done, although by all accounts she only did herbs these days But the only young witch Tiffany kneho had even had ti was her best friend up in thefarm,5 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 a 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 knohen they were all so young they used to run about and play with only their vests on would make a tiny little curtsy to her when she passed them in the lane, and even elderly ht 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 gotby (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, to people eren’t witches Aether on so, 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 iant without his trousers was hardly worth coht see

No, Tiffany did not envy Petulia her ro 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 got it all worked out She knehat 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 fa to act as a garbage can in the su the rest of the year The pig was iht dose Granny with turpentine when she was poorly, but when the pig was ill you sent i 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 chaht you couldn’t put it better; her friend could sit doith a pig and talk to it gently and cal ive a happy little yawn and fall over, no longer a living pig and ready to become a very i year This iven the s died before the invention of pig boring, it was definitely, in the great sches, 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 ood old witch’s standbys of First Sight and Second Thoughts6 But these weren’t really ic 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 thatneeded: 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 soer 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 orking The storybook pictures of the drooling hag were being wiped away, every ti mother with her first baby, or srave Nevertheless, old stories, old rumours 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 kneas a o 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 fro, Granny Weatherwax and Miss Level, but the people of the Chalk weren’t very familiar itches Other witches would probably coh they wouldn’t say so, this ht mean that you couldn’t cope with responsibility, weren’t up to the task, weren’t sure, weren’t good enough

‘Excuse le Tiffany looked round and there were two little girls in their best new frocks and straw hats They were looking at her eagerly, with perhaps just a hint of ht quickly and smiled at them

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