It was a horrible feeling to find things in your head and not know how they fitted. It….

“Come on, we’ll be all day.”

She shook her head and hurried after her brothers.

The witch’s cottage consisted of so many extensions and lean-tos that it was difficult to see what the original building had looked like, or even if there had ever been one. In the summer it was surrounded by dense beds of what Granny loosely called “the Herbs”—strange plants, hairy or squat or twining, with curious flowers or vivid fruits or unpleasantly bulging pods. Only Granny knew what they were all for, and any woodpigeon hungry enough to attack them generally emerged giggling to itself and bumping into things (or, sometimes, never emerged at all.

Now everything was deep under the snow. A forlorn windsock flapped against its pole. Granny didn’t hold with flying but some of her friends still used broomsticks.

“It looks deserted,” said Cem.

“No smoke,” said Gulta.

The windows look like eyes, thought Esk, but kept it to herself.

“It’s only Granny’s house,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong.”

The cottage radiated emptiness. They could feel it. The windows did look like eyes, black and menacing against the snow. And no one in the Ramtops let their fire go out in the winter, as a matter of pride.

Esk wanted to say “Let’s go home,” but she knew that if she did the boys would run for it. Instead she said, “Mother says there’s a key on a nail in the privy,” and that was nearly as bad. Even an ordinary unknown privy held minor terrors like wasps’ nests, large spiders, mysterious rustling things in the roof and, one very bad winter, a small hibernating bear that caused acute constipation in the family until it was persuaded to bed down in the haybam. A witch’s privy could contain anything.

“I’ll go and look, shall I?” she added.

“If you like,” said Gulta airily, almost successfully concealing his relief.