A Hat Full Of Sky (4 page)

Actually, only half a dozen Feegles in the Long Lake clan could read and write very well. They
were considered odd, strange hobbies. After all, what—when you got out of bed in the morning—were they good for? You didn’t need to know them to wrestle a trout or mug a rabbit or get drunk. The wind couldn’t be read and you couldn’t write on water.

But things written down lasted. They were the voices of Feegles who’d died long ago, who’d seen strange things, who’d made strange discoveries. Whether you approved of that depended on how creepy you thought it was. The Long Lake clan approved. Jeannie wanted the best for her new clan, too.

It wasn’t easy, being a young kelda. You came to a new clan, with only a few of your brothers as bodyguards, where you married a husband and ended up with hundreds of brothers-in-law. It could be troubling if you let your mind dwell on it. At least back on the island in the Long Lake she had her mother to talk to, but a kelda never went home again.

A kelda was all alone.

Jeannie was homesick and lonely and frightened of the future, which is why she was about to get things wrong.

“Rob!”

Hamish and Big Yan came tumbling through
the fake rabbit hole that was the entrance to the mound.

Rob Anybody glared at them. “We wuz engaged in a lit’try enterprise,” he said.

“Yes, Rob, but we watched the big wee young hag safe awa’, like you said, but there’s a hiver after her!” Hamish blurted out.

“Are ye sure?” said Rob, dropping his pencil. “I never heard o’ one of them in this world!”

“Oh, aye,” said Big Yan. “Its buzzin’ fair made my teeths ache!”

“So did you no’ tell her, ye daftie?” said Rob.

“There’s that other hag wi’ her, Rob,” said Big Yan. “The educatin’ hag.”

“Miss Tick?” said the toad.

“Aye, the one wi’ a face like a yard o’ yogurt,” said Big Yan. “An’ you said we wuzna’ to show ourselves, Rob.”

“Aye, weel, this is different—” Rob Anybody began, but stopped.

He hadn’t been a husband for very long, but upon marriage men get a whole lot of extra senses bolted into their brain, and one is there to tell a man that he’s suddenly neck deep in real trouble.

Jeannie was tapping her foot. Her arms were still folded. She had the special smile women
learn about when they marry too which seems to say “Yes, you’re in big trouble but I’m going to let you dig yourself in even more deeply.”

“What’s this about the big wee hag?” she said, her voice as small and meek as a mouse trained at the Rodent College of Assassins.

“Oh, ah, ach, weel, aye…” Rob began, his face falling. “Do ye not bring her to mind, dear? She was at oor wedding, aye. She was oor kelda for a day or two, ye ken. The Old One made her swear to that just afore she went back to the Land o’ the Livin’,” he added, in case mentioning the wishes of the last kelda would deflect whatever storm was coming. “It’s as well tae keep an eye on her, ye ken, her being oor hag and all….”

Rob Anybody’s voice trailed away in the face of Jeannie’s look.

“A true kelda has tae marry the Big Man,” said Jeannie. “Just like I married ye, Rob Anybody Feegle, and am I no’ a good wife tae ye?”

“Oh, fine, fine,” Rob burbled. “But—”

“And ye canna be married to two wives, because that would be bigamy, would it not?” said Jeannie, her voice dangerously sweet.

“Ach, it wasna
that
big,” said Rob Anybody, desperately looking around for a way of escape.
“And it wuz only temp’ry, an’ she’s but a lass, an’ she wuz good at thinkin’—”

“
I’m
good at thinking, Rob Anybody, and I am the kelda o’ this clan, am I no’? There can only be one, is that not so? And I am thinking that there will be no more chasin’ after this big wee girl. Shame on ye, anyway. She’ll no’ want the like o’ Big Yan a-gawpin’ at her all the time, I’m sure.”

Rob Anybody hung his head.

“Aye…but,” he said.

“But what?”

“A hiver’s chasin’ the puir wee lass.”

There was a long pause before Jeannie said, “Are ye sure?”

“Aye, kelda,” said Big Yan. “Once you hear that buzzin’, ye never forget it.”

Jeannie bit her lip. Then, looking a little pale, she said, “Ye said she’s got the makin’s o’ a powerful hag, Rob?”

“Aye, but nae one in his’try has survived a hiver! Ye canna kill it, ye canna stop it, ye canna—”

“But wuz ye no’ tellin’ me how the big wee girl even fought the Quin and won?” said Jeannie. “Wanged her wi’ a skillet, ye said. That means she’s good, aye? If she is a true hag, she’ll
find a way hersel’. We all ha’ to dree our weird. Whatever’s out there, she’s got to face it. If she canna, she’s no true hag.”

“Aye, but a hiver’s worse than—” Rob began.

“She’s off to learn hagglin’ from other hags,” said Jeannie. “An’ I must learn keldarin’ all by myself. Ye must hope she learns as fast as me, Rob Anybody.”

T
woshirts was just a bend in the road with a name. There was nothing there but an inn for the coaches, a blacksmith’s shop, and a small store with the word
SOUVENIRS
written optimistically on a scrap of cardboard in the window. And that was it. Around the place, separated by fields and scraps of woodland, were the houses of people for whom Twoshirts was, presumably, the big city. Every world is full of places like Twoshirts. They are places for people to come from, not go to.

It sat and baked silently in the hot afternoon sunlight. Right in the middle of the road an elderly spaniel, mottled brown and white, dozed in the dust.

Twoshirts was bigger than the village back home, and Tiffany had never seen souvenirs before. She went into the store and spent half a
penny on a small wood carving of two shirts on a washing line, and two postcards entitled “View of Twoshirts,” which showed the souvenir shop and what was quite probably the same dog sleeping in the road. The little old lady behind the counter called her “young lady” and said that Twoshirts was very popular later in the year, when people came from up to a mile around for the Cabbage Macerating Festival.

When Tiffany came out, she found Miss Tick standing next to the sleeping dog, frowning back the way they’d come.

“Is there something the matter?” said Tiffany.

“What?” said Miss Tick, as if she’d forgotten that Tiffany existed. “Oh…no. I just…I thought I…look, shall we go and have something to eat?”

It took a while to find someone in the inn, but Miss Tick wandered into the kitchens and found a woman who promised them some scones and a cup of tea. She was actually quite surprised she’d promised that, since she hadn’t intended to, it strictly speaking being her afternoon free until the coach came, but Miss Tick had a way of asking questions that got the answers she wanted.

Miss Tick also asked for a fresh egg, not cooked, in its shell. Witches were also good at
asking questions that weren’t followed by the other person saying, “Why?”

They sat and ate in the sun, on the bench outside the inn. Then Tiffany took out her diary.

She had one in the dairy too, but that was for cheese and butter records. This one was personal. She’d bought it off a peddler, cheap, because it was last year’s. But, as he said, it had the same number of days.

It also had a lock, a little brass thing on a leather flap. It had its own tiny key. It was the lock that had attracted Tiffany. At a certain age you see the point of locks.

She wrote down “Twoshirts,” and spent some time thinking before adding “a bend in the road.”

Miss Tick kept staring at the road.

“Is there something wrong, Miss Tick?” Tiffany asked again, looking up.

“I’m…not sure. Is anyone watching us?”

Tiffany looked around. Twoshirts slept in the heat. There was no one watching.

“No, Miss Tick.”

The teacher removed her hat and took from inside it a couple pieces of wood and a spool of black thread. She rolled up her sleeves, looking around quickly in case Twoshirts had sprouted a
population, then broke off a length of the thread and picked up the egg.

Egg, thread, and fingers blurred for a few seconds and then there was the egg, hanging from Miss Tick’s fingers in a neat little black net.

Tiffany was impressed.

But Miss Tick hadn’t finished. She began to draw things from her pockets, and a witch generally has a lot of pockets. There were some beads, a couple of feathers, a glass lens, and one or two strips of colored paper. These all got threaded into the tangle of wood and cotton.

“What is that?” said Tiffany.

“It’s a shamble,” said Miss Tick, concentrating.

“Is it magic?”

“Not exactly. It’s
trickery
.”

Miss Tick lifted her left hand. Feathers and beads and egg and pocket junk spun in the web of threads.

“Hmm,” she said. “Now let me see what I can see….”

She pushed the fingers of her right hand into the spiderwork of threads and pulled.

Egg and glass and beads and feathers danced through the tangle, and Tiffany was sure that at one point one thread had passed straight through another.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s like cat’s cradle!”

“You’ve played that, have you?” said Miss Tick vaguely, still concentrating.

“I can do all the common shapes,” said Tiffany. “The Jewels and the Cradle and the House and the Flock and the Three Old Ladies, One With a Squint, Carrying the Bucket of Fish to Market When They Meet the Donkey, although you need two people for that one, and I only ever did it once, and Betsy Tupper scratched her nose at the wrong moment and I had to get some scissors to cut her loose….”

Miss Tick’s fingers worked like a loom.

“Funny it should be a children’s toy now,” she said. “Aha…” She stared into the complex web she had created.

“Can you see anything?” said Tiffany.

“If I may be allowed to concentrate, child?
Thank
you….”

Out in the road the sleeping dog woke, yawned, and pulled itself to its feet. It ambled over to the bench the two of them were sitting on, gave Tiffany a reproachful look, and then curled up by her feet. It smelled of old damp carpets.

“There’s…
something
…” said Miss Tick very quietly.

Panic gripped Tiffany.

Sunlight reflected off the white dust of the road and the stone wall opposite. Bees hummed between the little yellow flowers that grew on top of the wall. By Tiffany’s feet the spaniel snorted and farted occasionally.

But it was all
wrong
. She could feel the pressure bearing down on her, pushing at her, pushing at the landscape,
squeezing
it under the bright light of day. Miss Tick and her cradle of threads were motionless beside her, frozen in the moment of bright horror.

Only the threads moved, by themselves. The egg danced, the glass glinted, the beads slid and jumped from string to string—

The egg burst.

The coach rolled in.

It arrived dragging the world behind it, in a cloud of dust and noise and hooves. It blotted out the sun. Doors opened. Harnesses jingled. Horses steamed. The spaniel sat up and wagged its tail hopefully.

The pressure went—no, it
fled
.

Beside Tiffany, Miss Tick pulled out a handkerchief and started to wipe egg off her dress. The rest of the shamble had disappeared into a pocket with remarkable speed.

She smiled at Tiffany but kept the smile as she spoke, making herself look slightly mad.

“Don’t get up, don’t do anything, just be as quiet as a little mouse,” she said. Tiffany felt in no state to do anything but sit still; she felt like you feel when you wake up after a nightmare.

The richer passengers got out of the coach, and the poorer ones climbed down from the roof. Grumbling and stamping their feet, trailing road dust behind them, they disappeared.

“Now,” said Miss Tick, when the inn door had swung shut, “we’re…we’re going to go for a, a stroll. See that little woods up there? That’s where we’re heading. And when Mr. Crabber, the carter, sees your father tomorrow, he’ll say he—he dropped you off here just before the coach arrived and—and, and everyone will be happy and no one will have lied. That’s important.”

“Miss Tick?” said Tiffany, picking up the suitcase.

“Yes?”

“What happened just now?”

“I don’t know,” said the witch. “Do you feel all right?”

“Er…yes. You’ve got some yolk on your hat.” And you’re very nervous, Tiffany thought. That
was the most worrying part. “I’m sorry about your dress,” she added.

“It’s seen a lot worse,” said Miss Tick. “Let’s go.”

“Miss Tick?” said Tiffany again as they trudged away.

“Er, yes?”

“You are
very
nervous,” said Tiffany. “If you told me why, that means there’s two of us, which is only half the nervousness each.”

Miss Tick sighed. “It was probably nothing,” she said.

“Miss Tick, the egg exploded!”

“Yes. Um. A shamble, you see, can be used as a simple magic detector and amplifier. It’s actually very crude, but it’s always useful to make one in times of distress and confusion. I think I…probably didn’t make it right. And sometimes you do get big discharges of random magic.”

“You made it because you were worried,” said Tiffany.

“Worried? Certainly not. I am
never
worried!” snapped Miss Tick. “However, since you raise the subject, I
was
concerned. Something was making me uneasy. Something close, I think. It was probably nothing. In fact, I feel a lot better now we’re leaving.”

But you don’t look it, Tiffany thought. And I
was wrong. Two people means
twice
as much nervousness each.

But she was sure there was nothing magical about Twoshirts. It was just a bend in the road.

Twenty minutes later the passengers came out to get into the coach. The coachman did notice that the horses were sweating, and wondered why he could hear a swarm of flies when there were no flies to be seen.

The dog that had been lying in the road was found later cowering in one of the inn’s stables, whimpering.

The woods was about half an hour’s walk away, with Miss Tick and Tiffany taking turns to carry the suitcase. It was nothing special, as woods go, being mostly full-grown beech, although once you know that beech drips unpleasant poisons on the ground beneath it to keep it clear, it’s not quite the timber you thought it was.

They sat on a log and waited for sunset. Miss Tick told Tiffany about shambles.

“They’re not magical then?” said Tiffany.

“No. They’re something to be magical through.”

“You mean like spectacles help you see but don’t see for you?”

“That’s right, well done! Is a telescope magical? Certainly not. It’s just glass in a tube, but with one you could count the dragons on the moon. And…well, have you ever used a bow? No, probably not. But a shamble can act like a bow, too. A bow stores up muscle power as the archer draws it, and sends a heavy arrow much farther than the archer could actually
throw
it. You can make one out of anything, so long as it…looks right.”

“And then you can tell if magic is happening?”

“Yes, if that’s what you’re looking for. When you’re good at it, you can use it to help you do magic yourself, to really focus on what you have to do. You can use it for protection, like a curse net, or to send a spell, or…well, it’s like those expensive penknives, you know? The ones with the tiny saw and the scissors and the toothpick? Except that I don’t think any witch has ever used a shamble as a toothpick, ha ha. All young witches should learn how to make a shamble. Miss Level will help you.”

Tiffany looked around the woods. The shadows were growing longer, but they didn’t worry her. Bits of Miss Tick’s teachings floated through her head:
Always face what you fear. Have just
enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it’s not your fault, it’s your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don’t always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don’t wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again.

“Miss Level has got long gray hair, has she?” she said.

“Oh, yes.”

“And she’s quite a tall lady, just a bit fat, and she wears quite a lot of necklaces,” Tiffany went on. “And glasses on a chain. And surprisingly high-heeled boots.”

Miss Tick wasn’t a fool. She looked around the clearing.

“Where is she?” she said.

“Standing by the tree over there,” said Tiffany.

Even so, Miss Tick had to squint. What Tiffany had noticed was that witches filled space. In a way that was almost impossible to describe, they seemed to be more real than others around them. They just showed more. But if they didn’t want to be seen, they became amazingly hard to notice. They didn’t hide, they didn’t magically fade away, although it might seem like that; but if you had to describe the room afterward, you’d
swear there hadn’t been a witch in it. They just seemed to let themselves get lost.

“Ah yes, well done,” said Miss Tick. “I was wondering when you’d notice.”

Ha! thought Tiffany.

Miss Level got realer as she walked toward them. She was all in black, but clattered slightly as she walked because of all the black jewelry she wore, and she did have glasses, too, which struck Tiffany as odd for a witch. Miss Level reminded Tiffany of a happy hen. And she had two arms, the normal number.

“Ah, Miss Tick,” she said. “And you must be Tiffany Aching.”

Tiffany knew enough to bow; witches don’t curtsy (unless they want to embarrass Roland).

“I’d just like to have a word with Miss Level, Tiffany, if you
don’t
mind,” said Miss Tick, meaningfully. “Senior witch business.”

Ha! thought Tiffany again, because she liked the sound of it.

“I’ll just go and have a look at a tree then, shall I?” she said with what she hoped was withering sarcasm.

“I should use the bushes if I was you, dear,” Miss Level called after her. “I don’t like stopping once we’re airborne.”

There
were
some holly bushes that made a decent screen, but after being talked to as though she was ten years old, Tiffany would rather have allowed her bladder to explode.

I beat the Queen of the Fairies! she thought as she wandered into the woods. All right, I’m not sure how, because it’s all like a dream now, but I did do it!

She was angry at being sent away like that. A
little
respect wouldn’t hurt, would it? That’s what the old witch Mistress Weatherwax had said, wasn’t it? “I show you respect,
as you in turn will respect me
.” Mistress Weatherwax, the witch who all the other witches secretly wanted to be like, had shown her
respect
, so you’d think the others could make a bit of effort in that department.