A Hat Full Of Sky (19 page)

So
this
is witchcraft too, Tiffany thought. It’s like Granny Aching talking to animals. It’s in the voice! Sharp and soft by turns, and you use little words of command and encouragement and you
keep
talking, making the words fill the creature’s world, so that the sheepdogs obey you and the nervous sheep are calmed….

The biscuit tin floated away from the dresser. As it neared the old woman, the lid unscrewed and hovered in the air beside it. She reached in delicately.

“Ooh, store-bought Teatime Assortment,” she said, taking four biscuits and quickly putting three of them in her pocket. “Very posh.”

“It’s terribly difficult to do this!” Miss Level moaned. “It’s like trying not to think of a pink rhinoceros!”

“Well?” said Mistress Weatherwax. “What’s so special about not thinking of a pink rhinoceros?”

“It’s impossible to think of one if someone tells you mustn’t,” Tiffany explained.

“No it ain’t,” said Mistress Weatherwax firmly. “I ain’t thinking of one right now, and I gives you my word on that. You want to take control of that brain of yours, Miss Level. So you’ve lost
a spare body? What’s another body when all’s said and done? Just a lot of upkeep, another mouth to feed, wear and tear on the furniture…in a word,
fuss
. Get your mind right, Miss Level, and the world is your…” The old witch leaned down to Tiffany and whispered: “What’s that thing, lives in the sea, very small, folks eat it?”

“Shrimp?” Tiffany suggested, a bit puzzled.

“Shrimp? All right. The world is your shrimp, Miss Level. Not only will there be a great saving on clothes and food, which is not to be sneezed at in these difficult times, but when people see you moving things through the air, well, they’ll say, ‘There’s a witch and a half, and no mistake! and they will be right. You just hold on to that skill, Miss Level. You maintain. Think on what I’ve said. And now you stay and rest. We’ll see to what needs doing today. You just make a little list for me, and Tiffany’ll know the way.”

“Well, indeed, I do feel…somewhat shaken,” said Miss Level, absentmindedly brushing her hair out of her eyes with an invisible hand. “Let me see…you could just drop in on Mr. Umbril, and Mistress Turvy, and the young Raddle boy, and check on Mrs. Towney’s bruise, and take some Number 5 ointment to Mr. Drover, and pay a call on old Mrs. Hunter at Saucy Corner,
and…now, who have I forgotten?”

Tiffany realized she was holding her breath. It had been a horrible day, and a dreadful night, but what was looming and lining up for its place on Miss Level’s tongue was, somehow, going to be worse than either.

“…Ah, yes, have a word with Miss Quickly at Uttercliff, and then probably you’ll need to talk to Mrs. Quickly, too, and there’re a few packages to be dropped off on the way, they’re in my basket, all marked up. And I think that’s it…. Oh, no, silly me, I almost forgot…and you need to drop in on Mr. Weavall, too.”

Tiffany breathed out. She really didn’t want to. She’d rather not breathe ever again than face Mr. Weavall and open an empty box.

“Are you sure you’re…totally yourself, Tiffany?” said Miss Level, and Tiffany leaped at this lifesaving excuse not to go.

“Well, I do feel a bit—” she began, but Mistress Weatherwax interrupted with, “She’s fine, Miss Level, apart from the echoes. The hiver has gone away from this house, I can assure you.”

“Really?” said Miss Level. “I don’t mean to be rude, but how can you be so certain?”

Mistress Weatherwax pointed down.

Grain by grain, the spilled sugar was rolling
across the tabletop and leaping into the sugar bowl.

Miss Level clasped her hands together.

“Oh,
Oswald
,” she said, her face one huge smile, “you’ve come back!”

Miss Level, and possibly Oswald, watched them go from the gate.

“She’ll be fine with your little men keeping her company,” said Mistress Weatherwax as she and Tiffany turned away and took the lane through the woods. “It could be the making of her, you know, being half dead.”

Tiffany was shocked. “How can you be so cruel?”

“She’ll get some respect when people see her moving stuff through the air. Respect is meat and drink to a witch. Without respect, you ain’t got a thing. She doesn’t get much respect, our Miss Level.”

That was true. People didn’t respect Miss Level. They liked her, in an unthinking sort of way, and that was it. Mistress Weatherwax was right, and Tiffany wished she wasn’t.

“Why did you and Miss Tick send me to her, then?” she said.

“Because she likes people,” said the witch,
striding ahead. “She cares about ’em. Even the stupid, mean, drooling ones, the mothers with the runny babies and no sense, the feckless and the silly and the fools who treat her like some kind of a servant. Now
that’s
what
I
call magic—seein’ all that, dealin’ with all that, and still goin’ on. It’s sittin’ up all night with some poor old man who’s leavin’ the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin’ their terror, seein’ ’em safely on their way…and then cleanin’ ’em up, layin’ ’em out, making ’em neat for the funeral, and helpin’ the weeping widow strip the bed and wash the sheets—which is, let me tell you, no errand for the fainthearted—and stayin’ up the
next
night to watch over the coffin before the funeral, and then going home and sitting down for five minutes before some shouting
angry
man comes bangin’on your door ’cuz his wife’s havin’ difficulty givin’ birth to their first child and the midwife’s at her wits’ end and then getting up and fetching your bag and going out again…. We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better’n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart.
That
is the root and heart and soul and center of witchcraft, that is. The soul and center!” Mistress Weatherwax smacked her fist into her hand, hammering out her words. “The…soul…and…
center
!”

Echoes came back from the trees in the sudden silence. Even the grasshoppers by the side of the track had stopped sizzling.

“And Mrs. Earwig,” said Mistress Weatherwax, her voice sinking to a growl, “
Mrs. Earwig
tells her girls it’s about cosmic balances and stars and circles and colors and wands and…and toys, nothing but
toys
!” She sniffed. “Oh, I daresay they’re all very well as
decoration
, somethin’ nice to look at while you’re workin’, somethin’ for show, but the start and finish,
the start and finish
, is helpin’ people when life is on the edge. Even people you don’t like. Stars is easy, people is hard.”

She stopped talking. It was several seconds before birds began to sing again.

“Anyway, that’s what I think,” she added in the tones of someone who suspects that she might have gone just a bit further than she meant to.

She turned around when Tiffany said nothing, and saw that she had stopped and was standing in the lane looking like a drowned hen.

“Are you all right, girl?” she said.

“It was me!” wailed Tiffany. “The hiver
was
me! It wasn’t thinking with my brain, it was using my thoughts! It was using what it found in my head! All those insults, all that…” She
gulped. “That…nastiness. All it was was me with—”

“—
without
the bit of you that was locked away,” said Mistress Weatherwax sharply. “Remember that.”

“Yes, but supposing—” Tiffany began, struggling to get all the woe out.

“The locked-up bit was the important bit,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning
how
to do them. Harder, maybe. There’d be a sight more frogs in this world if I didn’t know how
not
to turn people into them. And big pink balloons, too.”

“Don’t,” said Tiffany, shuddering.

“That’s why we do all the tramping around and doctorin’ and stuff,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Well, and because it makes people a bit better, of course. But doing it moves you into your center, so’s you don’t wobble. It anchors you. Keeps you human, stops you cackling. Just like your granny with her sheep, which are to my mind as stupid and wayward and ungrateful as humans. You think you’ve had a sight of yourself and found out you’re bad? Hah! I’ve seen bad, and you don’t get near it. Now, are you going to stop grizzling?”

“What?” snapped Tiffany.

Mistress Weatherwax laughed, to Tiffany’s sudden fury.

“Yes, you’re a witch to your boots,” she said. “You’re sad, and behind that you’re watching yourself being sad and thinking, Oh, poor me, and behind
that
you’re angry with
me
for not going ‘There, there, poor dear.’ Let me talk to those Third Thoughts then, because I want to hear from the girl who went to fight a fairy queen armed with nothin’ but a fryin’ pan, not some child feelin’ sorry for herself and wallowing in misery!”

“What? I am
not
wallowing in misery!” Tiffany shouted, striding up to her until they were inches apart. “And what was all that about being nice to people, eh?” Overhead, leaves fell off the trees.

“That doesn’t count when it’s another witch, especially one like you!” Mistress Weatherwax snapped, prodding her in the chest with a finger as hard as wood.

“Oh? Oh? And what’s that supposed to mean?” A deer galloped off through the woods. The wind got up.

“One who’s not paying attention, child!”

“Why, what have I missed that
you’ve
seen…old woman?”

“Old woman I may be, but I’m tellin’ you the hiver is still around! You only threw it out!” Mistress Weatherwax shouted. Birds rose from the trees in panic.

“I know!” screamed Tiffany.

“Oh yes? Really? And how do you know that?”

“Because there’s a bit of me still in it! A bit of me I’d rather not know about, thank you! I can
feel
it out there! Anyway, how do
you
know?”

“Because I’m a bloody good witch, that’s why,” snarled Mistress Weatherwax, as rabbits burrowed deeper to get out of the way. “And what do you want me to do about the creature while you sit there snivelin’, eh?”

“How dare you! How
dare
you! It’s my responsibility! I’ll deal with it, thank you so very much!”

“You? A hiver? It’ll take more than a frying pan! They can’t be killed!”

“I’ll find a way! A witch deals with things!”

“Hah! I’d like to see you try!”

“I will!” shouted Tiffany. It started to rain.

“Oh? So you know how to attack it, do you?”

“Don’t be silly! I can’t! It can always keep out of my way! It can even sink into the ground! But it’ll come looking for me, understand?
Me
, not
anyone else! I
know
it! And this time I’ll be ready!”

“Will you, indeed?” said Mistress Weatherwax, folding her arms.

“Yes!”

“When?”

“Now!”

“No!”

The old witch held up a hand.

“Peace be on this place,” she said quietly. The wind dropped. The rain stopped. “No, not yet,” she went on as peace once again descended. “It’s not attackin’ yet. Don’t you think that’s odd? It’d be licking its wounds, if it had a tongue. And you’re not ready yet, whatever you thinks. No, we’ve got somethin’ else to do, haven’t we?”

Tiffany was speechless. The tide of outrage inside her was so hot that it burned her ears. But Mistress Weatherwax was smiling. The two facts did not work well together.

Her First Thoughts were: I’ve just had a blazing row with Mistress Weatherwax! They say that if you cut her with a knife, she wouldn’t bleed until she wanted to! They say that when some vampires bit
her
, they all started to crave tea and sweet biscuits. She can do anything, be anywhere! And I called her an old woman!

Her Second Thoughts were: Well, she is.

Her Third Thoughts were: Yes, she
is
Mistress Weatherwax. And she’s keeping you angry. If you’re full of anger, there’s no room left for fear.

“You hold that anger,” Mistress Weatherwax said, as if reading all of her mind. “Cup it in your heart, remember where it came from, remember the shape of it, save it until you need it. But now the wolf is out there somewhere in the woods, and you need to see to the flock.”

It’s the voice, Tiffany thought. She really does talk to people like Granny Aching talked to sheep, except she hardly cusses at all. But I feel…better.

“Thank you,” she said.

“And that includes Mr. Weavall.”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “I know.”

I
t was an…interesting day.
Everyone
in the mountains had heard of Mistress Weatherwax. If you didn’t have respect, she said, you didn’t have anything. Today she had it all. Some of it even rubbed off on Tiffany.

They were treated like royalty—not the sort who get dragged off to be beheaded or have something nasty done with a red-hot poker, but the other sort, when people walk away dazed saying, “She actually said hello to me, very graciously! I will never wash my hand again!”

Not that many people they dealt with washed their hands at all, Tiffany thought with the primness of a dairy worker. But people crowded around outside the cottage doors, watching and listening, and they sidled up to Tiffany to say things like “Would she like a cup of tea? I’ve cleaned our cup!” And in the garden of every
cottage they passed, Tiffany noticed, the beehives were suddenly bustling with activity.

She worked away, trying to stay calm, trying to think about what she was doing. You did the doctoring work as neatly as you could, and if it was on something oozy, then you just thought about how nice things would be when you’d stopped doing it. She felt Mistress Weatherwax wouldn’t approve of this attitude. But Tiffany didn’t much like hers either. She lied all the—She
didn’t tell the truth
all the time.

For example, there was the Raddles’ privy. Miss Level had explained carefully to Mr. and Mrs. Raddle several times that it was far too close to the well, and so the drinking water was full of tiny, tiny creatures that were making their children sick. They’d listened very carefully, every time they heard the lecture, and still they never moved the privy. But Mistress Weatherwax told them it was caused by goblins who were attracted to the smell, and by the time they left that cottage, Mr. Raddle and three of his friends were already digging a new well the other end of the garden.

“It really
is
caused by tiny creatures, you know,” said Tiffany, who’d once handed over an egg to a traveling teacher so she could line
up and look through his “
**A
STOUNDING
M
IKROSCOPICAL
D
EVICE
! A Z
OO IN
E
VERY
D
ROP OF
D
ITCHWATER
!**
” She’d almost collapsed the next day from not drinking. Some of those creatures were
hairy.

“Is that so?” said Mistress Weatherwax sarcastically.

“Yes. It is. And Miss Level believes in telling them the truth!”

“Good. She’s a fine, honest woman,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “But what
I
say is you have to tell people a story they can understand. Right now I reckon you’d have to change quite a lot of the world, and maybe bang Mr. Raddle’s stupid fat head against the wall a few times, before he’d believe that you can be sickened by drinking tiny invisible beasts. And while you’re doing that, those kids of theirs will get sicker. But goblins, now, they makes sense
today
. A story gets things done. And when I see Miss Tick tomorrow, I’ll tell her it’s about time them wandering teachers started coming up here.”

“All right,” said Tiffany reluctantly, “but you told Mr. Umbril the shoemaker that his chest pains will clear up if he walks to the waterfall at Tumble Crag every day for a month and throws three shiny pebbles into the pool for the water
sprites! That’s not doctoring!”

“No, but he thinks it is. The man spends too much time sitting hunched up. A five-mile walk in the fresh air every day for a month will see him as right as rain,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“Oh,” said Tiffany. “Another story?”

“If you like,” said Mistress Weatherwax, her eyes twinkling. “And you never know, maybe the water sprites will be grateful for the pebbles.”

She glanced sidelong at Tiffany’s expression and patted her on the shoulder.

“Never mind, miss,” she said. “Look at it this way. Tomorrow, your job is to change the world into a better place. Today, my job is to see that everyone gets there.”

“Well, I think—” Tiffany began, then stopped. She looked up at the line of woods between the small fields of the valleys and the steep meadows of the mountains.

“It’s still there,” she said.

“I know,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“It’s moving around, but it’s keeping away from us.”

“I know,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“What does it think it’s doing?”

“It’s got a bit of you in it. What do
you
think it’s doing?”

Tiffany tried to think. Why wouldn’t it attack? Oh, she’d be better prepared this time, but it was strong.

“Maybe it’s waiting until I’m upset again,” she said. “But I keep having a thought. It makes no sense. I keep thinking about…three wishes.”

“Wishes for what?”

“I don’t know. It sounds silly.”

Mistress Weatherwax stopped. “No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s a deep part of you trying to send yourself a message. Just remember it. Because now—”

Tiffany sighed. “Yes, I know. Mr. Weavall.”

No dragon’s cave was ever approached as carefully as the cottage in the overgrown garden.

Tiffany paused at the gate and looked back, but Mistress Weatherwax had diplomatically vanished. Probably she’s found someone to give her a cup of tea and a sweet biscuit, she thought. She lives on them!

She opened the gate and walked up the path.

You couldn’t say: It’s not my fault. You couldn’t say: It’s not my responsibility.

You could say: I will deal with this.

You didn’t have to want to. But you had to do it.

Tiffany took a deep breath and stepped into the dark cottage.

Mr. Weavall, in his chair, was just inside the door and fast asleep, showing the world an open mouth full of yellow teeth.

“Um…hello, Mr. Weavall,” Tiffany quavered, but perhaps not quite loudly enough. “Just, er, here to see that you, that everything is…is all right….”

There was a snort nonetheless, and he woke, smacking his lips to get the sleep out of his mouth.

“Oh, ’tis you,” he said. “Good afternoon to ye.” He eased himself more upright and started to stare out of the doorway, ignoring her.

Maybe he won’t ask, she thought as she did the dishes and dusted and plumped the cushions and, not to put too fine a point on it, emptied the commode. But she nearly yelped when the arm shot out and grabbed her wrist and the old man gave her his pleading look.

“Just check the box, Mary, will you? Before you go? Only I heard clinking noises last night, see. Could be one o’ the sneaky thieves got in.”

“Yes, Mr. Weavall,” said Tiffany, all the while thinking:
Idon’twanttobehereIdon’twanttobehere!

She pulled out the box. There was no choice.

It felt heavy. She stood up and lifted the lid.

After the creak of the hinges, there was silence.

“Are you all right, girl?” said Mr. Weavall.

“Um…” said Tiffany.

“It’s all there, ain’t it?” said the old man anxiously.

Tiffany’s mind was a puddle of goo.

“Um…it’s all here,” she managed. “Um…and now it’s all
gold
, Mr. Weavall.”

“Gold? Hah! Don’t you pull my leg, girl. No gold ever came my way!”

Tiffany put the box on the old man’s lap, as gently as she could, and he stared into it.

Tiffany recognized the worn coins. The pictsies ate off them in the mound. There had been pictures on them, but they were too worn to make out now.

But gold was gold, pictures or not.

She turned her head sharply and was certain she saw something small and redheaded vanish into the shadows.

“Well now,” said Mr. Weavall. “Well now.” And that seemed to exhaust his conversation for a while. Then he said, “Far too much money here to pay for a buryin’. I don’t recall savin’ all this. I reckon you could bury a
king
for this amount of money.”

Tiffany swallowed. She couldn’t leave things like this. She just couldn’t.

“Mr. Weavall, I’ve got something I must tell you,” she said. And she told him. She told him all of it, not just the good bits. He sat and listened carefully.

“Well, now, isn’t that interesting,” he said when she’d finished.

“Um…I’m sorry,” said Tiffany. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“So what you’re
saying
, right, is ’cuz that creature made you take my burying money, right, you think these fairy friends o’ yourn filled my ol’ box with gold so’s you wouldn’t get into trouble, right?”

“I think so,” said Tiffany.

“Well, it looks like I should thank you, then,” said Mr. Weavall.

“What?”

“Well, it seems to I, if you hadn’t ha’ took the silver and copper, there wouldn’t have been any room for all this gold, right?” said Mr. Weavall. “And I shouldn’t reckon that ol’dead king up on yon hills needs it now.”

“Yes, but—”

Mr. Weavall fumbled in the box and held up a gold coin that would have bought his cottage.

“A little something for you, then, girl,” he said. “Buy yourself some ribbons or something….”

“No! I can’t! That wouldn’t be fair!” Tiffany protested desperately. This was
completely
going wrong!

“Wouldn’t it, now?” said Mr. Weavall, and his bright eyes gave her a long, shrewd look. “Well, then, let’s call it payment for this little errand you’re gonna run for I, eh? You’re gonna run up they stairs, which I can’t quite manage anymore, and bring down the black suit that’s hanging behind the door, and there’s a clean shirt in the chest at the end of the bed. And you’ll polish my boots and help I up, but I’m thinking I could prob’ly make it down the lane on my own.’Cuz, y’see, this is far too much money to buy a man’s funeral, but I reckon it’ll do fine to marry him off, so I am proposin’ to propose to the Widow Tussy that she engages in matrimony with I!”

The last sentence took a little working out, and then Tiffany said, “You
are
?”

“That I am,” said Mr. Weavall, struggling to his feet. “She’s a fine woman who bakes a very reasonable steak-and-onion pie, and she has all her own teeth. I know that because she showed I. Her youngest son got her a set of fancy store-bought teeth all the way from the big city, and
very handsome she looks in ’em. She was kind enough to loan ’em to I one day when I had a difficult piece of pork to tackle, and a man doesn’t forget a kindness like that.”

“Er…you don’t think you ought to think about this, do you?” said Tiffany.

Mr. Weavall laughed. “Think? I got no business to be
thinking
about it, young lady! Who’re you to tell an old ’un like I that he ought to be thinking? I’m ninety-one, I am! Got to be up and doing! Besides, I have reason to believe by the twinkle in her eye that the Widow Tussy will not turn up her nose at my suggestion. I’ve seen a fair number of twinkles over the years, and that was a good ’un. And I daresay that suddenly having a box of gold will fill in the corners, as my ol’ dad would say.”

It took ten minutes for Mr. Weavall to get changed, with a lot of struggling and bad language and no help from Tiffany, who was told to turn her back and put her hands over her ears. Then she had to help him out into the garden, where he threw away one walking stick and waggled a finger at the weeds.

“And I’ll be chopping down the lot of you tomorrow!” he shouted triumphantly.

At the garden gate he grasped the post and
pulled himself nearly vertical, panting.

“All right,” he said, just a little anxiously. “It’s now or never. I look okay, does I?”

“You look fine, Mr. Weavall.”

“Everything clean? Everything done up?”

“Er…yes,” said Tiffany.

“How’s my hair look?”

“Er…you don’t have any, Mr. Weavall,” she reminded him.

“Ah, right. Yes, ’tis true. I’ll have to buy one o’ they whatdyoucallem’s, like a hat made of hair? Have I got enough money for that, d’you think?”

“A wig? You could buy thousands, Mr. Weavall!”

“Hah! Right.” His gleaming eyes looked around the garden. “Any flowers out? Can’t see too well…. Ah…speckatickles, I saw ’em once, made of glass, makes you see good as new. That’s what I need…. Have I got enough for speckatickles?”

“Mr. Weavall,” said Tiffany, “you’ve got enough for
anything
.”

“Why, bless you!” said Mr. Weavall. “But right now I need a bow-kwet of flowers, girl. Can’t go courtin’ without flowers and I can’t see none. Anythin’ left?”

A few roses were hanging on among the weeds and briars in the garden. Tiffany fetched a knife from the kitchen and made them up into a bouquet.

“Ah, good,” he said. “Late bloomers, just like I!” He held them tightly in his free hand and suddenly frowned, and fell silent, and stood like a statue.

“I wish my Toby and my Mary was goin’ to be able to come to the weddin’,” he said quietly. “But they’re dead, you know.”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “I know, Mr. Weavall.”

“And I could wish that my Nancy was alive, too, although bein’ as I hopes to be marryin’ another lady, that ain’t a sensible wish, maybe. Hah! Nearly everyone one I knows is dead.” Mr. Weavall stared at the bunch of flowers for a while, and then straightened up again. “Still, can’t do nothin’ about that, can we? Not even for a box full of gold!”

“No, Mr. Weavall,” said Tiffany hoarsely.

“Oh, don’t cry, girl! The sun is shinin’, the birds is singin’, and what’s past can’t be mended, eh?” said Mr. Weavall jovially. “And the Widow Tussy is waitin’!”

For a moment he looked panicky, and then he cleared his throat.

“Don’t
smell
too bad, do I?” he said.

“Er…only of mothballs, Mr. Weavall.”

“Mothballs? Mothballs is okay. Right, then! Time’s a-wastin’!”

Using only the one stick, waving his other arm with the flowers in the air to keep his balance, Mr. Weavall set off with surprising speed.