Terry Pratchett: I Shall Wear Midnight

‘Run!’ Tiffany commanded. ‘The fire will not burn you if you do what I say! Run fast! Run fast! Roland, run to save Letitia. Letitia, run to save Roland .’

The fire was almost on them. I need the strength, she thought. I need the power. And she remembered Nanny Ogg saying: ‘The world changes. The world flows. There’s power there, my girl.’

Weddings and funerals are a time of power … yes, weddings. Tiffany grasped their two hands even tighter. And here it came. A crackling, roaring wall of flame …

‘Leap!’

And as they leaped, she screamed: ‘ Leap, knave. jump, whore .’ She felt them lift as the fire reached them.

Time hesitated. A rabbit sped past beneath them, fleeing in terror from the flames. He will flee, she thought. He will run from the fire, but the fire will run to him. And the fire runs much faster than a dying body.

Tiffany floated in a ball of yellow flame. The hare drifted past her, a creature happy in her element. We are not as fast as you, she thought. We will get singed. She looked right and left at the bride and groom, who were staring ahead as if hypnotised, and pulled them towards her. She understood. I am going to marry you, Roland. I said I would.

She would make something beautiful out of this fire.

‘Back to the hells you came from, you Cunning Man,’ she yelled above the flames. ‘ Leap, knave! jump, whore! ’ she screamed again.

‘ Be married now for ever more! ‘ And this is a wedding, she said to herself. A fresh start. And for a few seconds in the world, this is a place of power. Oh yes, a place of power.

They landed, rolling, behind the wall of fire. Tiffany was ready, stamping out embers and kicking the small flames that remained.

Preston was suddenly there too, picking up Letitia and carrying her out of the ash. Tiffany put an arm round Roland, who had had a soft landing (possibly on his head, part of Tiffany thought), and followed him.

‘Looks like very minor burns and some frizzled hair,’ said Preston, ‘and as for your old boyfriend, I think his mud is now baked on. How did you manage it?’

Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘The hare jumps through the flames so fast that she barely feels them,’ she said, ‘and when she lands, she lands on hot ash mostly. A grass fire burns out quickly under a strong wind.’

There was a scream from behind them, and she imagined a lumbering figure trying to outrun the wind-driven flames bearing down on it, and failing. She felt the pain of a creature that had twisted through the world for hundreds of years.

‘The three of you, stay right here. Do not follow me! Preston, look after them!’

Tiffany walked across the cooling ash. I have to see, she thought. I have to witness. I have to know what it is that I have done!

The dead man’s clothes were smouldering. There was no pulse. He did terrible things to people, she thought: things that made even the prison warders sick. But what was done to him first? Was he just a much worse version of Mr Petty? Could he ever have been good? How do you change the past? Where does evil begin?

She felt the words slide into her mind like a worm: Murderer, filth, killer! And she felt she should apologize to her ears for what they had to hear. But the voice of the ghost was weak and thin and querulous, sliding backwards into history.

You can’t reach me, she thought. You are used up. You are too weak now. How hard was it, forcing a man to run himself to death? You can’t get in. I can feel you trying. She reached down into the ash and picked up a lump of flint, still warm from the fire;

the soil was full of it, the sharpest of stones. Born in the chalk, and so in a way was Tiffany. Its smoothness was the touch of a friend.

‘You never learn, do you?’ she said. ‘You don’t understand that other people think too. Of course you wouldn’t run into the fire; but in your arrogance you never realized that the fire would run to you.’

Your power is only rumour and lies, she thought. You bore your way into people when they are uncertain and weak and worried and frightened, and they think their enemy is other people when their enemy is, and always will be, you – the master of lies. Outside, you are fearsome; inside, you are nothing but weakness.

Inside, I am flint.

She felt the heat of the whole field, steadied herself and gripped the stone. How dare you come here, you worm! How dare you trespass on what is mine! She felt the flint get hotter in her hand and then melt and flow between her fingers and drip onto the soil as she concentrated. She had never tried this before and she took a deep breath of air that somehow the flames had cleansed.

And if you come back, Cunning Man, there will be another witch like me. There will always be another witch like me, because there are always going to be things like you, because we make space for them. But right now, on this bleeding piece of earth, I am the witch and you are nothing. By the blinking of my eyes, something wicked this way dies .

A hiss in her mind faded away and left her alone among her thoughts.

‘No mercy,’ she said aloud, ‘no redemption. You forced a man to kill his harmless songbird, and somehow I think that was the greatest crime of them all.’

By the time she had walked back up the field, she had managed to become, once again, the Tiffany Aching who knew how to make cheese and deal with everyday chores and didn’t squeeze molten rock between her fingers.

The happy but slightly singed couple were beginning to take some notice of things. Letitia sat up. ‘I feel cooked,’ she said. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘Sorry, it’s you,’ said Tiffany, ‘and I’m afraid that wonderful lace nightshirt might just about be usable to clean windows from now on. I’m afraid we didn’t leap as fast as the hare.’

Letitia looked around. ‘Is Roland … is he all right?’

‘Right as rain,’ said Preston cheerily. ‘The wet pig muck really helped.’ Letitia paused for a moment. ‘And that … thing?’

‘Gone,’ said Tiffany.

‘Are you sure Roland is all right?’ Letitia insisted.

Preston grinned. ‘Absolutely tickety boo, miss. Nothing important has been burned away, although it might be a little painful when we take the crusts off. He’s somewhat baked on, if you get my meaning.’ Letitia nodded and then turned, slowly, to Tiffany. ‘What was that you said when we were jumping?’

Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘I married you.’

‘You, that is to say you , married, which is to say, wedded … us ?’ said Letitia.

‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘That is to say, certainly. Jumping over the fire together is a very ancient form of marriage. Doesn’t need any priests either, which is a great saving on the catering.’

The possible bride weighed this one up. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Well, that’s what Mrs Ogg told me,’ said Tiffany, ‘and I’ve always wanted to try it.’

This seemed to meet with Letitia’s approval, because she said, ‘Mrs Ogg is a very knowledgeable lady, I must admit. She knows a surprising number of things.’

Tiffany, keeping her face as straight as possible, said, ‘A surprising number of surprising things.’

‘Oh, yes … Er.’ Letitia cleared her throat rather hesitantly and followed up ‘er’ with an ‘um’.

‘Is something wrong?’ said Tiffany.

‘That word you used about me while we were jumping. I think it was a bad word.’

Tiffany had been expecting this. ‘Well, apparently it’s traditional.’ Her voice almost as hesitant as Letitia’s, she added, ‘And I don’t think Roland is a knave, either. And, of course, words and their usage do change over the years.’