Tiffany did not know how the soothings worked, but they were better than anything a witch could do; they seemed to settle people down and make them better from inside their head outwards. They made you well and, best of all, they made you forget. Sometimes, it seemed to Tiffany, the kelda talked about them as if they were alive – living thoughts perhaps, or kindly living creatures that somehow took away the bad things.

‘She’s doing well,’ said the kelda, appearing out of nowhere. ‘She will bide fine. There will be nightmares as the darkness comes out. The soothings can’t do everything. She’s coming back into herself now, right from the start, and that’s the best thing.’

It was still dark but dawn edged the horizon. Tiffany had a dirty job to do before daylight.

‘Can I leave her here with you for a little while?’ she said. ‘There’s a small task that needs doing.’

I shouldn’t have gone to sleep, she thought as she climbed out of the pit. I should have gone right back! I shouldn’t have left the poor little thing there!

She tugged the broomstick out of the thorn bushes around the mound, and stopped dead. Someone was watching her; she could feel it on the back of her neck. She turned sharply, and saw an old woman all in black, quite tall, but leaning on a walkingstick. Even as Tiffany looked, the woman vanished, slowly, as if evaporating into the scenery.

‘Mistress Weatherwax?’ Tiffany said to the empty air, but that was silly. Granny Weatherwax would not be seen dead with a walkingstick, and certainly wouldn’t be seen alive with one. And there was movement in the corner of her eye. When she spun round again there was a hare, right up on her⁹ hind legs, watching her with interest and no sign of fear.

It was what they did, of course. The Feegles didn’t hunt them, and the average sheepdog would run out of legs before a hare ran out of breath. The hare had no stuffy burrow to be trapped in; speed was where a hare lived, shooting across the landscape like a dream of the wind – she could afford to sit and watch the slow world go by.