A Hat Full Of Sky (21 page)

Why?

She thought:
I’m not sure why I know. But I know. It’s keeping away. It knows Mistress Weatherwax is with me.

She thought: How can it know that? It’d not got a mind. It doesn’t know what a Mistress Weatherwax
is
!

Still thinking,
thought her Third Thoughts.

Tiffany slumped against the rock.

Sometimes her head was too…crowded….

And then it was morning, and sunlight, and dew on her hair, and mist coming off the ground like smoke…and an eagle sitting on the rock where the owl had been, eating something furry. She could see every feather on its wing.

It swallowed, glared at Tiffany with its crazy bird eyes, and flapped away, making the mist swirl.

Beside her, Mistress Weatherwax began to snore again, which Tiffany took to mean that she was in her body. She gave the old woman a nudge, and the sound that had been a regular
gnaaaargrgrgrgrg
suddenly became
blort
.

The old woman sat up coughing and waved a hand irritably at Tiffany to pass her the tea bottle. She didn’t speak until she’d gulped half of it.

“Ah, say what you like, but rabbit tastes a lot better cooked,” she gasped, shoving the cork back in. “And
without
the fur on!”

“You took—
borrowed
the eagle?” said Tiffany.

“O’ course. I couldn’t expect the poor ol’ owl to fly around after daybreak, just to see who’s about. It was hunting voles all night, and believe me, raw rabbit’s better’n voles. Don’t eat voles.”

“I won’t,” said Tiffany, and meant it. “Mistress Weatherwax, I
think
I know what the hiver’s doing. It’s thinking.”

“I thought it had no brains!”

Tiffany let her thoughts speak for themselves.

“But there’s an echo of me in it, isn’t there? There must be. It has an echo of everyone it’s…been. There
must
be a bit of me in it. I know it’s out there, and it knows I’m here with you. And it’s keeping away.”

“Oh? Why’s that, then?”

“Because it’s frightened of you, I think.”

“Huh! And why’s that?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany simply. “It’s because
I
am. A bit.”

“Oh dear. Are you?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany. “It’s like a dog that’s been beaten but won’t run away. It doesn’t understand what it’s done wrong. But…there’s something about it that…there’s a thought that I’m nearly having….”

Mistress Weatherwax said nothing. Her face went blank.

“Are you all right?” said Tiffany.

“I was just leavin’ you time to have that thought,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“Sorry. It’s gone now. But…we’re thinking about the hiver in the wrong way.”

“Oh, yes? And why’s that?”

“Because…” Tiffany struggled with the idea. “I think it’s because we don’t want to think about it the right way. It’s something to do with…the third wish. And I don’t know what that means.”

The witch said, “Keep picking at that thought,” and then looked up and added, “We’ve got company.”

It took Tiffany several seconds to spot what Mistress Weatherwax had seen—a shape at the edge of the woods, small and dark. It was coming
closer, but rather uncertainly.

It resolved itself into the figure of Petulia, flying slowly and nervously a few feet above the heather. Sometimes she jumped down and wrenched the stick in a slightly different direction.

She got off again when she reached Tiffany and Mistress Weatherwax, grabbed the broom hastily, and aimed it at a big rock. It hit it gently and hung there, trying to fly through stone.

“Um, sorry,” she panted. “But I can’t always stop it, and this is better than having an anchor…um.”

She started to bob a curtsy to Mistress Weatherwax, remembered she was a witch, and tried to turn it into a bow halfway down, which was an event you’d pay money to see. She ended up bent double, and from somewhere in there came the little voice, “Um, can someone help, please? I think my Octogram of Trimontane has got caught up on my Pouch of Nine Herbs….”

There was a tricky minute while they untangled her, with Mistress Weatherwax muttering, “Toys, just toys,” as they unhooked bangles and necklaces.

Petulia stood upright, red in the face. She saw
Mistress Weatherwax’s expression, whipped off her pointy hat, and held it in front on her. This was a mark of respect, but it did mean that a two-foot, sharp, pointy thing was being aimed at them.

“Um…I went to see Miss Level and she said you’d come up here after some horrible thing,” she said. “Um…so I thought I’d better see how you were.”

“Um…that was very kind of you,” said Tiffany, but her treacherous Second Thoughts thought: And what would you have done if it had attacked us? She had a momentary picture of Petulia standing in front of some horrible raging thing, but it wasn’t as funny as she’d first thought. Petulia
would
stand in front of it, shaking with terror, her useless amulets clattering, scared almost out of her mind…but not backing away. She’d thought there might be people facing something horrible here, and she’d come
anyway
.

“What’s your name, my girl?” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“Um, Petulia Gristle, mistress. I’m learning with Gwinifer Blackcap.”

“Old Mother Blackcap?” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Very sound. A good woman with pigs. You
did well to come here.”

Petulia looked nervously at Tiffany.

“Um, are you all right? Miss Level said you’d been…ill.”

“I’m much better now, but thank you very much for asking anyway,” said Tiffany wretchedly. “Look, I’m sorry about—”

“Well, you were ill,” said Petulia.

And that was another thing about Petulia. She always wanted to think the best of everybody. This was sort of worrying if you knew that the person she was doing her best to think nice thoughts about was you.

“Are you going to go back to the cottage before the Trials?” Petulia went on.

“Trials?” said Tiffany, suddenly lost.

“The Witch Trials,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“Today,” said Petulia.

“I’d forgotten all about them!” said Tiffany.

“I hadn’t,” said the old witch calmly. “I never miss a Trial. Never missed a Trial in sixty years. Would you do a poor old lady a favor, Miss Gristle, and ride that stick of yours back to Miss Level’s place and tell her that Mistress Weatherwax presents her compliments and intends to head directly to the Trials. Was she well?”

“Um, she was juggling balls
without using her
hands
!” said Petulia in wonderment. “And d’you know what? I saw a
fairy
in her garden! A blue one!”

“Really?” said Tiffany, her heart sinking.

“Yes! It was rather scruffy, though. And when I asked it if it really was a fairy, it said it was…um…‘the big stinky horrible spiky iron stinging nettle fairy from the Land o’ Tinkle,’ and called me a ‘scunner.’ Do you know what that means?”

Tiffany looked into that round, hopeful face. She opened her mouth to say, “It means someone who likes fairies,” but stopped in time. That just wouldn’t be fair. She sighed.

“Petulia, you saw a Nac Mac Feegle,” she said. “It
is
a kind of fairy, but they’re not the sweet kind. I’m sorry. They’re good…well, more or less…but they’re not entirely nice. And ‘scunner’ is a kind of swear word. I don’t think it’s a particularly bad one, though.”

Petulia’s expression didn’t change for a while. Then she said: “So it
was
a fairy, then?”

“Well, yes. Technically.”

The round pink face smiled.

“Good, I did wonder, because it was, um, you know…having a wee up against one of Miss Level’s garden gnomes?”

“
Definitely
a Feegle,” said Tiffany.

“Oh well, I suppose the big stinky horrible spiky iron stinging nettle needs a fairy, just like every other plant,” said Petulia.

W
hen Petulia had gone, Mistress Weatherwax stamped her feet and said, “Let’s go, young lady. It’s about eight miles to Sheercliff. They’ll have started before we get there.”

“What about the hiver?”

“Oh, it can come if it likes.” Mistress Weatherwax smiled. “Oh, don’t frown like that. There’ll be more’n three hundred witches at the Trials, and they’re way out in the country. It’ll be as safe as anything. Or do you want to meet the hiver
now
? We could probably do that. It don’t seem to move fast.”

“No!” said Tiffany, louder than she’d intended. “No, because…things aren’t what they seem. We’d do things wrong. Er…I can’t explain it. It’s because of the third wish.”

“Which you don’t know what it is?”

“Yes. But I will soon, I hope.”

The witch stared at her. “Yes, I hope so, too,” she said. “Well, no point in standing around. Let’s get moving.” And with that the witch picked up her blanket and set off as though being pulled by a string.

“We haven’t even had anything to eat!” said Tiffany, running after her.

“I had a lot of voles last night,” said Mistress Weatherwax over her shoulder.

“Yes, but
you
didn’t actually eat them, did you?” said Tiffany. “It was the owl that
actually
ate them.”

“Technic’ly, yes,” Mistress Weatherwax admitted. “But if you think you’ve been eating voles all night, you’d be amazed how much you don’t want to eat anything the next morning. Or ever again.”

She nodded at the distant, departing figure of Petulia.

“Friend of yours?” she said, as they set out.

“Er…if she is, I don’t deserve it,” said Tiffany.

“Hmm,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Well, sometimes we get what we don’t deserve.”

For an old woman Mistress Weatherwax could move quite fast. She strode over the moors as if distance was a personal insult. But she was good at something else too.

She knew about silence. There was the swish of her long skirt as it snagged the heathers, but somehow that became part of the background noise.

In the silence, as she walked, Tiffany could still hear the memories. There were hundreds of them left behind by the hiver. Most of them were so faint that they were nothing more than a slight uncomfortable feeling in her head, but the ancient tiger still burned brightly in the back of her brain, and behind that was the giant lizard. They’d been killing machines, the most powerful creatures in their world—once. The hiver had taken them both. And then they’d died fighting.

Always taking fresh bodies, always driving the owners mad with the urge for power, which would always end with getting them killed…and just as Tiffany wondered
why
, a memory said:
Because it is frightened
.

Frightened of what? Tiffany thought. It’s so powerful!

Who knows? But it’s mad with terror. Completely binkers!

“You’re Sensibility Bustle, aren’t you?” said Tiffany, and then her ears informed her that she’d said this aloud.

“Talkative, ain’t he,” said Mistress Weatherwax.
“He talked in your sleep the other night. Used to have a very high opinion of himself. I reckon that’s why his memories held together for so long.”

“He doesn’t know binkers from bonkers, though,” said Tiffany.

“Well, memory fades,” said Mistress Weatherwax. She stopped and leaned against a rock. She sounded out of breath.

“Are you all right, mistress?” said Tiffany.

“Sound as a bell,” said Mistress Weatherwax, wheezing slightly. “Just getting my second wind. Anyway, it’s only another six miles.”

“I notice you’re limping a bit,” said Tiffany.

“Do you, indeed? Then stop noticing!”

The shout echoed off the cliffs, full of command.

Mistress Weatherwax coughed when the echo had died away. Tiffany had gone pale.

“It seems to me,” said the old witch, “that I might just’ve been a shade on the sharp side there. It was prob’ly the voles.” She coughed again. “Them as knows me, or has earned it one way or the other, calls me Granny Weatherwax. I shall not take it amiss if you did the same.”

“
Granny
Weatherwax?” said Tiffany, shocked out of her shock by this new shock.

“Not
technic’ly
,” said Mistress Weatherwax quickly. “It’s what they call a honorific, like Old Mother So-and-so, or Goodie Thingy, or Nanny Whatshername. To show that a witch has…is fully…has been—”

Tiffany didn’t know whether to laugh or burst into tears.

“I
know
,” she said.

“You do?”

“Like Granny Aching,” said Tiffany. “She
was
my granny, but everyone on the Chalk called her Granny Aching.” “Mrs. Aching” wouldn’t have worked, she knew. You needed a big, warm, billowing open kind of word. Granny Aching was there for everybody.

“It’s like being everyone’s grandmother,” she added. And didn’t add:
who tells them stories!

“Well, then. Perhaps so. Granny Weatherwax it is,” said Granny Weatherwax, and added quickly, “but not
technic’ly.
Now we’d best be moving.”

She straightened up and set off again.

Granny Weatherwax
. Tiffany tried it out in her head. She’d never known her other grandmother, who’d died before she was born. Calling someone else granny was strange, but oddly, it seemed right. And you
could
have two.

The hiver followed them. Tiffany could feel it.
But it was still keeping its distance. Well, there’s a trick to take to the Trials, she thought. Granny—her brain tingled as she thought the word—Granny has got a plan. She must have.

But…things weren’t right. There was another thought she wasn’t quite having; it ducked out of sight every time she thought she had it. The hiver wasn’t acting right.

She made sure she kept up with Granny Weatherwax.

As they got nearer to the Trials, there were clues. Tiffany saw at least three broomsticks in the air, heading the same way. They reached a proper track, too, and groups of people were traveling in the same direction; there were a few pointy hats among them, which was a definite clue. The track dropped on down through some woods, came up in a patchwork of little fields, and headed for a tall hedge from behind which came the sound of a brass band playing a medley of Songs from the Shows, although by the sound of it no two musicians could agree on what Song or which Show.

Tiffany jumped when she saw a balloon sail up above the trees, catch the wind, and swoop away, but it turned out to be just a balloon and not a lump of excess Brian. She could tell this because
it was followed by a long scream of rage mixed with a roar of complaint: “AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaaBLOON!” which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know
when not to let go of the string.
The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this.

However, on this occasion a broomstick with a pointy-hatted passenger rose above the trees, caught up with the balloon, and towed it back down to the Trials ground.

“Didn’t use to be like this,” Granny Weatherwax grumbled as they reached a gate. “When I was a girl, we just used to meet up in some meadow somewhere, all by ourselves. But now, oh no, it has to be a Grand Day Out for All the Family. Hah!”

There had been a crowd around the gate leading into the field, but there was something about that “Hah!” The crowd parted, as if by magic, and the women pulled their children a little closer to them as Granny walked right up to the gate.

There was a boy there selling tickets and wishing, now, that he’d never been born.

Granny Weatherwax stared at him. Tiffany saw his ears go red.

“Two tickets, young man,” said Granny. Little bits of ice tinkled off her words.

“That’ll, er, be, er…one child and one senior citizen?” the young man quavered.

Granny leaned forward and said: “
What
is a senior citizen, young man?”

“It’s like…you know…old folks,” the boy mumbled. Now his hands were shaking.

Granny leaned farther forward. The boy really, really wanted to step back, but his feet were rooted to the ground. All he could do was bend backward.

“Young man,” said Granny, “I am not now, nor shall I ever be, an ‘old folk.’ We’ll take two tickets, which I see on that board there is a penny apiece.” Her hand shot out, fast as an adder. The boy made a noise like
gneeee
as he leaped back.

“Here’s tuppence,” said Granny Weatherwax.

Tiffany looked at Granny’s hand. The first finger and thumb were held together, but there did not appear to be any coins between them.

Nevertheless, the young man, grinning horribly, took the total absence of coins very carefully between
his
thumb and finger. Granny twitched two tickets out of his other hand.

“Thank you, young man,” she said, and walked into the field. Tiffany ran after her.

“What did—?” she began, but Granny Weatherwax raised a finger to her lips, grasped Tiffany’s shoulder, and swiveled her around.

The ticket seller was still staring at his fingers. He even rubbed them together. Then he shrugged, held them over his leather moneybag, and let go.

Clink, clink…

The crowd around the gate gave a gasp, and one or two of them started to applaud. The boy looked around with a sick kind of grin, as if
of course
he’d expected that to happen.

“Ah, right,” said Granny Weatherwax happily. “And now I could just do with a cup of tea and maybe a sweet biscuit.”

“Granny, there are children here! Not just witches!”

People were looking at them. Granny Weatherwax jerked Tiffany’s chin up so that she could look into her eyes.

“Look around, eh? Down here you can’t move for amulets and wands and whatnot! It’ll be
bound
to keep away, eh?”

Tiffany turned to look. There were sideshows all around the field. A lot of them were fun fair stuff that she’d seen before at agricultural shows around the Chalk: Roll-a-Penny, Lucky Dip,
Bobbing for Piranhas, that sort of thing. The Ducking Stool was very popular among young children on such a hot day. There wasn’t a fortune-telling tent, because no fortune teller would turn up at an event where so many visitors were qualified to argue and answer back, but there were a number of witch stalls. Zakzak’s had a huge tent, with a display dummy outside wearing a Sky Scraper hat and a Zephyr Billow cloak, which had drawn a crowd of admirers. The other stalls were smaller, but they were thick with things that glittered and tinkled, and they were doing a brisk trade among the younger witches. There were whole stores full of dream catchers and curse nets, including the new self-emptying ones. It was odd to think of witches buying them, though. It was like fish buying umbrellas.

Surely a hiver wouldn’t come here, with all these witches?

She turned to Granny Weatherwax.

Granny Weatherwax wasn’t there.

It is hard to find a witch at the Witch Trials. That is, it is too
easy
to find a witch at the Witch Trials, but very hard to find the one you’re looking for, especially if you suddenly feel lost and all alone and you can feel panic starting to open inside you like a fern.

Most of the older witches were sitting at trestle tables in a huge roped-off area. They were drinking tea. Pointy hats bobbed as tongues wagged. Every woman seemed capable of talking while listening to all the others at the table at the same time, although this talent isn’t confined to witches. It was no place to search for an old woman in black with a pointy hat.

The sun was quite high in the sky now. The field was filling up. Witches were circling to land at the far end, and more and more people were pouring in through the gateway. The noise was intense. Everywhere Tiffany turned, black hats were scurrying.

Pushing her way through the throng, she looked desperately for a friendly face, like Miss Tick or Miss Level or Petulia. If it came to it, an unfriendly one would do—even Mrs. Earwig.

And she tried not to think. She tried not to think that she was terrified and alone in this huge crowd, and that up on the hill, invisible, the hiver now knew this because just a tiny part of it was her.

She felt the hiver stir. She felt it begin to move.

Tiffany stumbled through a chattering group of witches, their voices sounding shrill and
unpleasant. She felt ill, as though she’d been in the sun too long. The world was spinning.

A remarkable thing about a hiver,
a reedy voice began, somewhere in the back of her head,
is that its hunting pattern mimics that of the common shark, among other creatures
—

“I do not want a lecture, Mr. Bustle,” Tiffany mumbled. “I do not want you in my head!”

But the memory of Sensibility Bustle had never taken much notice of other people when he was alive and it wasn’t going to begin now. It went on in its self-satisfied squeak:—
in that, once it has selected its prey, it will completely ignore other attractive targets
—

She could see all the way across the Trials field, and something
was
coming. It moved through the crowd like the wind through a field of grass. You could plot its progress by the people. Some fainted, some yelped and turned around, some ran. Witches stopped their gossip, chairs were overturned, and the shouting started. But it wasn’t attacking anything. It was only interested in Tiffany.

Like a shark, thought Tiffany. The killer of the sea, where worse things happen.

Tiffany backed away, the panic filling her up. She bumped into witches hurrying toward the
commotion and shouted at them:

“You can’t stop it! You don’t know what it is! You’ll flail at it and wave glittery sticks and it will keep coming! It will keep coming!”