Mr Weavall’s skin was paper-thin and yellowish. He was always in the same old armchair, in a tiny room in a small cottage that smelled of old potatoes and was surrounded by a more or less overgrown garden. He’d be sitting bolt upright, his hands on two walking sticks, wearing a suit that was shiny with age, staring at the door.

‘I make sure he has something hot every day, although he eats like a bird,’ Miss Level had said. ‘And old Widow Tussy down the lane does his laundry, such as it is. He’s ninety-one, you know.’

Mr Weavall had very bright eyes and chatted away to and at them as they tidied up the room. The first time Tiffany had met him he’d called her Mary. Sometimes he still did. And he’d grabbed her wrist with surprising force as she walked past… It had been a real shock, that claw of a hand suddenly gripping her. You could see blue veins under the skin.

‘I shan’t be a burden on anyone,’ he’d said urgently. ‘I got money put by for when I go. My boy Toby won’t have nothin’ to worry about. I can pay my way! I want the proper funeral show, right? With the black horses and the plumes and the mutes and a knife-and-fork tea for everyone afterwards. I’ve written it all down, fair and square. Check in my box to make sure, will you? That witch woman’s always hanging around here!’

Tiffany had given Miss Level a despairing look. She’d nodded, and pointed to an old wooden box tucked under Mr Weavall’s chair.

It had turned out to be full of coins, mostly copper, but there were quite a few silver ones. It looked like a fortune, and for a moment she’d wished she had as much money.

‘There’s a lot of coins in here, Mr Weavall,’ she’d said.

Mr Weavall relaxed. ‘Ah, that’s right,’ he’d said. ‘Then I won’t be a burden.’

Today Mr Weavall was asleep when they called on him, snoring with his mouth open and his yellow-brown teeth showing. But he awoke in an instant, stared at them and then said, ‘My boy Toby’s coming to see I Sat’day.’

‘That’s nice, Mr Weavall,’ said Miss Level, plumping up his cushions. ‘We’ll get the place nice and tidy.’

‘He’s done very well for hisself, you know,’ said Mr Weavall, proudly. ‘Got a job indoors with no heavy lifting. He said he’ll see I all right in my old age, but I told him, I told him I’d pay my way when I go—the whole thing, the salt and earth and tuppence for the ferryman, too!’

Today, Miss Level gave him a shave. His hands shook too much for him to do it himself. (Yesterday she’d cut his toenails, because he couldn’t reach them; it was not a safe spectator sport, especially when one smashed a windowpane.)

‘It’s all in a box under my chair,’ he said as Tiffany nervously wiped the last bits of foam off him. ‘Just check for me, will you, Mary?’

Oh, yes. That was the ceremony, every day.

There was the box, and there was the money. He asked every time. There was always the same amount of money.

‘Tuppence for the ferryman?’ said Tiffany, as they walked home.

‘Mr Weavall remembers all the old funeral traditions,’ said Miss Level. ‘Some people believe that when you die you cross the River of Death and have to pay the ferryman. People don’t seem to worry about that these days. Perhaps there’s a bridge now.’

‘He’s always talking about… his funeral.’

‘Well, it’s important to him. Sometimes old people are like that. They’d hate people to think that they were too poor to pay for their own funeral. Mr Weavall’d die of shame if he couldn’t pay for his own funeral.’

‘It’s very sad, him being all alone like that. Something should be done for him,’ said Tiffany.

‘Yes. We’re doing it,’ said Miss Level. ‘And Mrs Tussy keeps a friendly eye on him.’

‘Yes, but it shouldn’t have to be us, should it?’

‘Who should it have to be?’ said Miss Level.

‘Well, what about this son he’s always talking about?’ said Tiffany.

‘Young Toby? He’s been dead for fifteen years. And Mary was the old man’s daughter, she died quite young. Mr Weavall is very short-sighted, but he sees better in the past.’

Tiffany didn’t know what to reply except: ‘It shouldn’t be like this.’

‘There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do.’

‘Well, couldn’t you help him by magic?’

‘I see to it that he’s in no pain, yes,’ said Miss Level.

‘But that’s just herbs.’

‘It’s still magic. Knowing things is magical, if other people don’t know them.’

‘Yes, but you know what I mean,’ said Tiffany, who felt she was losing this argument.

‘Oh, you mean make him young again?’ said Miss Level. ‘Fill his house with gold? That’s not what witches do.’

‘We see to it that lonely old men get a cooked dinner and cut their toenails?’ said Tiffany, just a little sarcastically.

‘Well, yes,’ said Miss Level. ‘We do what can be done. Mistress Weatherwax said you’ve got to learn that witchcraft is mostly about doing quite ordinary things.’

‘And you have do what she says?’ said Tiffany.

‘I listen to her advice,’ said Miss Level, coldly.

‘Mistress Weatherwax is the head witch, then, is she?’

‘Oh no!’ said Miss Level, looking shocked. ‘Witches are all equal. We don’t have things like head witches. That’s quite against the spirit of witchcraft.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Tiffany.

‘Besides,’ Miss Level added, ‘Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing.’

Suddenly, things were going missing from the households around the Chalk. This wasn’t the occasional egg or chicken. Clothes were vanishing off washing lines. A pair of boots mysteriously disappeared from under the bed of Nosey Hinds, the oldest man in the village—‘And they was damn good boots, they could walk home from the pub all by themselves if I but pointed they in the right direction,’ he complained to anyone who would listen. ‘And they marched off wi’ my old hat, too. And I’d got he just as I wanted he, all soft and floppy!’

A pair of trousers and a long coat vanished from a hook belonging to Abiding Swindell, the ferret-keeper, and the coat still had ferrets living in the inside pockets. And who, who climbed through the bedroom window of Clem Doins and shaved off his beard, which had been so long that he could tuck it into his belt? Not a hair was left. He had to go around with a scarf over his face, in case the sight of his poor pink chin frightened the ladies…

It was probably witches, people agreed, and made a few more curse-nets to hang in their windows.

However…

On the far side of the Chalk, where the long green slopes came down to the flat fields of the plain, there were big thickets of bramble and hawthorn. Usually, these were alive with birdsong, but this particular one, the one just here, was alive with cussing.

‘Ach, crivens! Will ye no’ mind where ye’re puttin’ yer foot, ye spavie!’

‘I cannae help it! It’s nae easy, bein’ a knee!’

‘Ye think ye got troubles? Ye wannae be doon here in the boots! That old man Swindell couldnae ha’ washed his feet in years! It’s fair reekin’ doon here!’

‘Reekin’, izzit? Well, you try bein’ in this pocket! Them ferrets ne ‘er got oot to gae to the lavie, if you get my meanin’!’

‘Crivens! Will ye dafties no’ shut up?’

‘Oh, aye? Hark at him! Just ‘cuzye’re up in the heid, you think you know everythin’? Fra’ doon here ye’re nothing but dead weight, pal!’

‘Aye, right! I’m wi’ the elbows on this one! Where’d you be if it wuzn’t for us carryin’ ye aroound? Who’s ye think ye are?’

‘I’m Rob Anybody Feegle, as you ken well enough, an’ I’ve had enough o’ the lot o’ yez!’

‘OK, Rob, but it’s real stuffy in here!’

‘Ach, an’ I’m fed up wi’ the stomach complainin’, too!’

‘Gentlemen.’ This was the voice of the toad; no one else would dream of calling the Nac Mac Feegle gentlemen. ‘Gentlemen, time is of the essence. The cart will be here soon! You must not miss it!’