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Trouble began, and not for the first time, with an apple.
There was a bag of them on Gra
“Keep the lot, old Hopcroft said I could have as many as I wanted,” said Na
“He named an apple after you?” said Gra
“Cos of my rosy cheeks,” said Na
“It didn’t work, though,” said Gra
“But he was pleased I took an interest.”
Gra
“He sells his apple trees all over the place,” Na
“Thousands more,” said Gra
“Thank you, Esme.” Na
“Me? Jealous? Why should I be jealous? It’s only an apple. It’s not as if it’s anything important.”
“That’s what I thought. It’s just a little frippery to humour an old lady,” said Na
“Fine. Fine.”
“Got your winter wood in, have you?”
“Mostly.”
“Good,” said Na
They sat in silence. On the windowpane a butterfly, awoken by the unseasonable warmth, beat a little tattoo in an effort to reach the September sun.
“Your potatoes ... got them dug, then?” said Na
“Yes.”
“We got a good crop off ours this year.”
“Good.”
“Salted your beans, have you?”
“Yes.”
“I expect you’re looking forward to the Trials next week?”
“Yes.”
“I expect you’ve been practising?”
“No.”
It seemed to Na
“You coming over to di
“What’re you havin’?”
“Pork.”
“With apple sauce?”
“Ye —”
“No,” said Gra
There was a creaking behind Na
“Oh, well, can’t sit here chatting all day,” she said, standing up quickly. “Always busy at this time of year, ain’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So I’ll be off, then.”
“Goodbye.”
The wind blew the door shut again as Na
It occurred to her that, just possibly, she may have gone a bit too far. But only a bit.
The trouble with being a witch — at least, the trouble with being a witch as far as some people were concerned — was that you got stuck our here in the country. But that was fine by Na
Of course, she reflected as she crossed the lawn, she didn’t have this view out of her window. Na
A view like that, Na
They’d told her the world was round and flat, which was common sense, and went through space on the back of four elephants standing on the shell of a turtle, which didn’t have to make sense. It was all happening Out There somewhere, and it could continue to do so with Na
But Esme Weatherwax needed more than this little kingdom could contain. She was the other kind of witch.
And Na
People said things like “we had to make our own amusements in those days” as if this signalled some kind of moral worth, and perhaps it did, but the last thing you wanted a witch to do was get bored and start making her own amusements, because witches sometimes had famously erratic ideas about what was amusing. And Esme was undoubtedly the most powerful witch the mountains had seen for generations.
Still, the Trials were coming up, and they always set Esme Weatherwax all right for a few weeks. She rose to competition like a trout to a fly.
Na
And afterwards you could roast potatoes in the ashes.
The afternoon melted into the evening, and the shadows in corners and under stools and tables crept out and ran together.
Gra
The logs in the fireplace collapsed into the embers, which winked out one by one.
The night thickened.
The old clock ticked on the mantelpiece and, for some length of time, there was no other sound.
There came a faint rustling. The paper bag on the table moved and then began to crinkle like a deflating balloon. Slowly, the still air filled with a heavy smell of decay.
After a while the first maggot crawled out.
Na
“Oh, hello, ladies. What’re you doing in these parts? And on such a chilly evening, too?”
Na
Gammer Beavis’s hat, for example, had a very flat brim and a point you could clean your ear with. Na