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feel dizzy. They were wrong; there was something wrong—
    And then she remembered the seventh dancer, the one they called the Fool. He was generally a small man, wearing a battered top hat and bright rags sewn all over his clothes. Mostly he wandered around holding out the hat and grinning at people until they gave him money for beer. But sometimes he’d put the hat down and whirl off into the dancers. You’d expect there to be a massive collision of arms and legs, but it never happened. Jumping and twirling among the sweating men, he always managed to be where the other dancers weren’t.
    The world was moving around her. She blinked. The drums in her head were like thunder now, and there was one beat as deep as oceans. Miss Treason was forgotten. So was the strange, mysterious crowd. Now there was only the dance itself.
    It twisted in the air like a living thing. But there was a space in it, moving around. It was where she should be, she knew it. Miss Treason had said no, but that had been a long time ago and how could Miss Treason understand? What could she know? When did she last dance? The dance was in Tiffany’s bones now, calling to her. Six dancers were not enough!
    She ran forward and jumped into the dance.
    The eyes of the dancing men glared at her as she skipped and danced between them, always being where they weren’t. The drums had her feet, and they went where the beat sent them.
    And then……there was someone else there.
    It was like the feeling of someone behind her—but it was also the feeling of someone in front of her, and beside her, and above her, and below her, all at once.
    The dancers froze, but the world spun. The men were just black shadows, darker outlines in the darkness. The drumbeats stopped, and there was one long moment as Tiffany turned gently and silently, arms out, feet not touching the ground, her face turned toward stars that were as cold as ice and sharp as needles. It felt…wonderful.
    A voice said: “Who Are You?” It had an echo, or perhaps two people had said it at almost the same time.
    The beat came back, suddenly, and six men crashed into her.

    A few hours later, in the small town of Dogbend, down on the plains, the citizens threw a witch into the river with her arms and legs tied together.
    This sort of thing never happened in the mountains, where witches had respect, but down on the wide plains there were still people dumb enough to believe the nastier stories. Besides, there wasn’t much to do in the evenings.
    However, it probably wasn’t often that the witch was given a cup of tea and some biscuits before her ducking.
    It had happened here because the people of Dogbend Did It By The Book.
    The book was called: Magavenatio Obtusis . *
    The townspeople didn’t know how the book had arrived. It had just turned up one day, on a shelf in one of the shops.
    They knew how to read, of course. You had to have a certain amount of reading and writing to get on in the world, even in Dogbend. But they didn’t trust books much, or the kind of people who read them.
    This one, though, was a book on how to deal with witches. It looked pretty authoritative, too, without too many long (and therefore untrustworthy) words, like “marmalade.” At last, they told one another, this is what we need. This is a sensible book. Okay, it isn’t what you’d expect, but remember that witch last year? We ducked her in the river and then tried to burn her alive? Only she was too soggy, and got away? Let’s not go through that again!
    They paid particular attention to this bit:
It is very important, having caught your witch, not to harm her in any way (yet!). On no account set fire to her! This is an error beginners often fall into. It just makes the witch mad and she comes back even stronger. As everyone knows, the other way to get rid of a witch is to throw her into a river or pond.
This is the best plan:
First, imprison her overnight in a moderately warm room and give her as much soup as