I Shall Wear Midnight recap

Tiffany Aching, sixteen and the only witch on the Chalk, is worn thin by the endless practical work nobody thanks her for. When she saves a beaten girl, Amber Petty, and then saves Amber's brutal father from the village mob that comes for him, she is left resented by everyone. The old Baron dies under her care, and his son Roland, prompted by his fiancee's formidable mother, accuses her of theft and worse. Behind the sudden turn in the countryside's mood is the Cunning Man, the eyeless, ash-smelling remnant of a long-dead witch-hunter, who moves from mind to mind turning ordinary suspicion into hatred and who has fixed on Tiffany. She goes to Ankh-Morpork, is jailed and freed, meets the city witch Mrs Proust and the long-vanished wizard Eskarina Smith, who tells her what the Cunning Man is and that he cannot be fought in the usual way. Back home, with Letitia revealed as a witch herself and the senior witches arriving, Tiffany draws him to a great fire, runs through it as a hare, and destroys him. Roland and Letitia marry, and Tiffany is finally acknowledged as the Chalk's own witch.

Previously, in earlier books: Tiffany Aching, granddaughter of a much-loved Chalk shepherd, found she had a witch's talent as a child and went into the Queen of the Fairies' country of dreams to bring her stolen brother home, helped by the Nac Mac Feegle, the tiny blue fighting men who call her their hag. Sent into the mountains to train, she learned that witchcraft is mostly hard unpaid work for other people, was possessed by an ancient mindless hiver and freed herself by giving it an awareness of its own death, and earned the grudging respect of the mountains' senior witch, Granny Weatherwax. At thirteen she stepped into an old midwinter dance, was mistaken for the Summer Lady by the elemental spirit of winter, and had to end his courtship and the endless winter it caused by melting him with the summer she was carrying. She has since come home for good. She is now sixteen, the only witch on the Chalk, working alone, and the childhood friendship between her and Roland, the Baron's son, has faded into awkwardness.

Tiffany's life is the unromantic core of witchcraft: sick rooms, deathbeds, births, feuds, and old people nobody else will look after, done on no sleep and for no pay. At the Chalk's annual fair she is called to the Petty farm, where thirteen-year-old Amber has been beaten badly by her father after losing a baby. Tiffany saves the girl's life and gets her to the Feegle mound, where the kelda Jeannie takes her in. That night the village turns out with pots and pans in the old ritual of rough music, meaning to hunt down and kill Mr Petty. Tiffany reaches him first and saves him too, because a witch does not hand people over to a mob, and the village does not thank her for either rescue. The mood of the countryside toward its witch shifts a little, and there is a faint smell of old ashes on the air that nobody else notices.

Tiffany spends her nights at the castle taking away the pain of the old Baron, who is dying and knows it, and who understands better than his son what he owes her. When he dies, Roland arrives back from the city with his fiancee Letitia Keepsake and her mother, a rigid and openly contemptuous Duchess. Encouraged by the Duchess, and by a suspicion he cannot account for in himself, Roland accuses Tiffany of stealing from his father and of hastening his death, and has her thrown out. Elsewhere on the Chalk small things go wrong in an unmistakable pattern: people who have always trusted Tiffany begin to remember rumours they never heard, children are pulled away from her, and the ash smell grows stronger. Amber, meanwhile, has picked up the entire Feegle language in an afternoon and is thriving underground.

Tiffany travels to Ankh-Morpork on the wedding business and to find out what is happening to her. There she meets Mrs Proust, a city witch who runs the joke shop that supplies witches with their frightening props, and learns how quickly a town can turn on someone. Tiffany is arrested and thrown in the Watch cells before the Commander sees sense and releases her. Between them, the witches put a name to the thing hunting her: the Cunning Man, the eyeless remnant of a witch-hunter dead for centuries, who has no body and does not need one. He works by moving through people, sharpening ordinary suspicion into hatred until a community will do the burning for him. He has woken up, he is drawn to power, and he is walking toward the Chalk.

In the city Tiffany is found by Eskarina Smith, an old woman who was once the only girl ever trained as a wizard and who now lives sideways to time, and who tells her the Cunning Man's history and how he ends: he cannot be argued with, bargained with, or beaten by ordinary magic, and every witch who has faced him before has had to find her own way. Back on the Chalk the situation is worse. The castle is closed to Tiffany, the villages are muttering, and the Cunning Man has begun stepping into people directly, using their eyes and their mouths. Preston, the bookish young guard at the castle gate, quietly takes Tiffany's side and proves useful out of all proportion to his rank. The Feegle, forbidden by their kelda from simply solving the problem with violence, are close to bursting.

The Duchess's grip on the castle is broken when her own past is quietly turned against her, and Letitia, who has been treated by everyone including Tiffany as a decorative nuisance, confesses the truth: she has been reading books of magic, she tried a working against Tiffany out of jealousy, and she is in fact a natural witch who has had no training at all. Instead of a rival Tiffany acquires an ally, and the two of them begin to piece together what has been going on under the Chalk. The Cunning Man is now close enough to be felt everywhere: fires smell of him, people repeat words that are not theirs, and the country that Tiffany has spent her life looking after is being turned, family by family, into a mob that wants a witch to burn.

The senior witches arrive, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg among them, and the situation is bad enough that they say so plainly. Feeling runs high enough for open threats of burning, and a witch is hurt. Tiffany and Letitia trace the Cunning Man back to the old chalk itself and to the grave of a king buried there long ago, and Tiffany accepts that she cannot beat him with argument, headology, or borrowed power, and that nobody else can finish this for her. What she can do is what the Chalk has always known how to do, and what the old song about the hare and the fire is about. She prepares for it with the Feegle at her back, Preston beside her, and the countryside she is defending largely convinced that she is the thing it needs defending from.

Tiffany draws the Cunning Man to a great fire and, taking the shape of the hare, runs straight through the flames. He follows her into them and is destroyed, and what remains of him is put back under the chalk where it belongs. The Chalk's mood swings back as thoughtlessly as it turned, and the burning that was very nearly done is quietly not spoken of again. Roland and Letitia are married with the witches in attendance, Letitia now openly training and no longer anyone's rival, and the Duchess much subdued. Tiffany is acknowledged as the Chalk's witch in her own right, with land and a place of her own rather than a girl's borrowed toleration; Amber has a future through the kelda; and Preston, paid for out of the legacy the old Baron left Tiffany, leaves to train as a doctor in the city, with an understanding between him and Tiffany that neither of them puts into so many words.

The Cunning Man, having spread suspicion across the Chalk until the countryside is ready to burn its own witch, comes for Tiffany in person. She does not try to out-argue or out-magic him; she draws him to a great fire, takes the shape of the hare, and runs through the flames, which he follows her into and does not come out of. What is left of him is put back where it belongs, under the old chalk, and the Chalk's mood settles as quickly and as thoughtlessly as it turned. Roland and Letitia are married, with Letitia now openly a witch in training and a friend rather than a rival, and the Duchess considerably reduced. Tiffany is confirmed as the witch of the Chalk in her own right, with land and a place of her own, no longer an unpaid girl who is tolerated. Amber, who learned Feegle in an afternoon, has a future through the kelda. Preston, funded out of the legacy the old Baron left, goes off to train as a doctor in the city, with an understanding between him and Tiffany that neither of them says out loud in so many words. Tiffany is left older, formally recognized, and clear that the black she will wear when she is old is a choice and not a costume.