A Hat Full Of Sky (7 page)

SEE THE EGRESS!!!!!

CLOWNS! CLOWNS! CLOWNS!

T
HE
F
LYING
PASTRAMI BROTHERS
WILL DEFY
G
RAVITY
,
THE
G
REATEST
F
ORCE IN THE
U
NIVERSE
*
WITHOUT A NET
!*

S
EE
C
LARENCE THE
T
AP-
D
ANCING
M
ULE
!

W
ONDER AT
T
OPSY AND
T
IPSY

*T
HE
A
STOUNDING
M
IND-
R
EADING
A
CT
*

And so it went on, right down to tiny print. They were strange, bright things to find in a little cottage in the woods.

She found her way into the kitchen. It was cold and quiet, except for the ticking of a clock on the wall. Both the hands had fallen off the clock face and lay at the bottom of the glass cover, so while the clock was still measuring time, it wasn’t inclined to tell anyone about it.

As kitchens went, it was very tidy. In the cupboard drawer under the sink, forks, spoons, and knives were all in neat sections, which was a bit worrying. Every kitchen drawer Tiffany had ever seen might have been
meant
to be neat but over the years had been crammed with things that didn’t quite fit, like big ladles and bent bottle
openers, which meant that they always stuck unless you knew the trick of opening them.

Experimentally she took a spoon out of the spoon section, dropped it among the forks, and shut the drawer. Then she turned her back.

There was a sliding noise and a tinkle exactly like the tinkle a spoon makes when it’s put back among the other spoons, who have missed it and are anxious to hear its tales of life among the frighteningly pointy people.

This time she put a knife in with the forks, shut the drawer—and leaned on it.

Nothing happened for a while, and then she heard the cutlery rattling. The noise got louder. The drawer began to shake. The whole sink began to tremble—

“All right,” said Tiffany, jumping back. “Have it your way!”

The drawer burst open, the knife jumped from section to section like a fish, and the drawer slammed back.

Silence.

“Who
are
you?” said Tiffany. No one replied. But she didn’t like the feeling in the air. Someone was upset with her now. It had been a silly trick, anyway.

She went out into the garden quickly. The
rushing noise she had heard last night was made by a waterfall not far from the cottage. A little waterwheel pumped water into a big stone cistern, and there was a pipe that led into the house.

The garden was full of ornaments. They were rather sad, cheap ones—bunny rabbits with crazy grins, pottery deer with big eyes, gnomes with pointy red hats and expressions that suggested they were on bad medication.

Things
hung from the apple trees or were tied to posts all around the place. There were some dream catchers and curse nets, which she sometimes saw hanging up outside cottages at home. Other things looked like big shambles, spinning and tinkling gently. Some…well, one looked like a bird made out of old brushes, but most looked like piles of junk. Odd junk, though. It seemed to Tiffany that some of it moved slightly as she went past.

When she went back into the cottage, Miss Level was sitting at the kitchen table.

So was Miss Level. There were, in fact, two of her.

“Sorry,” said the Miss Level on the right. “I thought it was best to get it over with right now.”

The two women were exactly alike. “Oh, I see,” said Tiffany. “You’re twins.”

“No,” said the Miss Level on the left, “I’m not. This might be a little difficult—”

“—for you to understand,” said the other Miss Level. “Let me see, now. You know—”

“—how twins are sometimes said to be able to share thoughts and feelings?” said the first Miss Level.

Tiffany nodded.

“Well,” said the second Miss Level, “I’m a bit more complicated than that, I suppose, because—”

“—I’m one person with two bodies,” said the first Miss Level, and now they spoke like players in a tennis match, slamming the words back and forth.

“I wanted to break this to you—”

“—gently, because some people get upset by the—”

“—idea and find it creepy or—”

“—just plain—”

“—weird.”

The two bodies stopped.

“Sorry about that last sentence,” said the Miss Level on the left. “I only do that when I’m really nervous.”

“Er, do you mean that you both—” Tiffany began, but the Miss Level on the right said quickly, “There is no both. There’s just me, do you understand? I know it’s hard. But I have a right right hand and a right left hand and a left right hand and a left left hand. It’s all me. I can go shopping and stay home at the same time, Tiffany. If it helps, think of me as one—”

“—person with four arms and—”

“—four legs and—”

“—four eyes.”

All four of those eyes now watched Tiffany nervously.

“And two noses,” said Tiffany.

“That’s right. You’ve got it. My right body is slightly clumsier than my left body, but I have better eyesight in my right pair of eyes. I’m human, just like you, except that there’s more of me.”

“But one of you—that is, one half of you—came all the way to Twoshirts for me,” said Tiffany.

“Oh yes, I can split up like that,” said Miss Level. “I’m quite good at it. But if there’s a gap of more than twenty miles or so, I get rather clumsy. And now a cup of tea would do us both good, I think.”

Before Tiffany could move, both the Miss Levels stood up and crossed the kitchen.

Tiffany watched one person make a cup of tea using four arms.

There are quite a few things that need to be done to make a cup of tea, and Miss Level did them all at once. The bodies stood side by side, passing things from hand to hand to hand, moving kettle and cups and spoon in a sort of ballet.

“When I was a child, they thought I was twins,” she said over one of her shoulders. “And then…they thought I was evil,” she said, over another shoulder.

“Are you?” said Tiffany.

Both of Miss Level turned around, looking shocked.

“What kind of question is that to ask anyone?” she said.

“Um…the obvious one?” said Tiffany. “I mean, if they said, ‘Yes I am! Mwahahaha!’ that would save a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it?”

Four eyes narrowed.

“Mistress Weatherwax was right,” said Miss Level. “She said you were a witch to your boots.”

Inside, Tiffany beamed with pride.

“Well, the thing about the obvious,” said Miss
Level, “is that it so often isn’t…. Did Mistress Weatherwax
really
take off her hat to you?”

“Yes.”

“One day perhaps you’ll know how much honor she did you,” said Miss Level. “Anyway…no, I’m not evil. But I nearly became evil, I think. Mother died not long after I was born, my father was at sea and never came back—”

“Worse things happen at sea,” said Tiffany. It was something Granny Aching had told her.

“Yes, right, and probably they did, or possibly he never wanted to come back in any case,” said Miss Level dryly. “And I was put in a charity home, bad food, horrible teachers, blah, blah, and I fell into the worst company possible, which was my own. It’s
amazing
the tricks you can get up to when you’ve got two bodies. Of course, everyone thought I was twins. In the end I ran away to join the circus. Me! Can you imagine that?”

“Topsy and Tipsy, The Astounding Mind-Reading Act?” said Tiffany.

Miss Level stood stock-still, her mouths open.

“It was on the posters over the stairs,” Tiffany added.

Now Miss Level relaxed.

“Oh, yes. Of course. Very…quick of you, Tiffany. Yes. You
do
notice things, don’t you….”

“I know I wouldn’t pay money to see the egress,” said Tiffany. “It just means ‘the way out.’”
*

“Clever!” said Miss Level. “Monty put that on a sign to keep people moving though the Believe-It-or-Not tent.
‘This way to the Egress!’
Of course, people thought it was a female eagle or something, so Monty had a big man with a dictionary outside to show them they got exactly what they paid for! Have you ever been to a circus?”

Once, Tiffany admitted. It hadn’t been much fun. Things that try too hard to be funny often aren’t. There had been a moth-eaten lion with practically no teeth, a tightrope walker who was never more than a few feet above the ground, and a knife thrower who threw a lot of knives at an elderly woman in pink tights on a big spinning wooden disc and completely failed to hit her every time. The only real amusement was afterward, when a cart ran over the clown.

“My circus was a lot bigger,” said Miss Level, when Tiffany mentioned this. “Although, as I recall, our knife thrower was also very bad at aiming. We had elephants and camels and a lion so fierce it bit a man’s arm nearly off.”

Tiffany had to admit that this sounded a lot more entertaining.

“And what did
you
do?” she said.

“Well, I just bandaged him up while I shooed the lion off him—”

“Yes, Miss Level, but I meant in the circus. Just reading your own mind?”

Miss Level beamed at Tiffany. “That, yes, and nearly everything else, too,” she said. “With different wigs on I was the Stupendous Bohunkus Sisters. I juggled plates, you know, and wore costumes covered in sequins. And I helped with the high-wire act. Not walking the wire, of course, but generally smiling and glittering at the audience. Everyone assumed I was twins, and circus people don’t ask too many personal questions in any case. And then what with one thing and another, this and that…I came up here and became a witch.”

Both of Miss Level watched Tiffany carefully.

“That was quite a long sentence, that last sentence,” said Tiffany.

“Yes, it was, wasn’t it,” said Miss Level. “I can’t tell you
everything
. Do you still want to stay? The last three girls didn’t. Some people find me slightly…odd.”

“Um…I’ll stay,” said Tiffany slowly. “The thing
that moves things about is a bit strange, though.”

Miss Level looked surprised and then said, “Oh, do you mean Oswald?”

“There’s an invisible man called Oswald who can get into my
bedroom
?” said Tiffany, horrified.

“Oh, no. That’s just a name. Oswald isn’t a man, he’s an
ondageist
. Have you heard of poltergeists?”

“Er…invisible spirits that throw things around?”

“Good,” said Miss Level. “Well, an ondageist is the opposite. They’re obsessive about tidiness. He’s quite handy around the house, but he’s absolutely dreadful if he’s in the kitchen when I’m cooking. He keeps putting things away. I think it makes him happy. Sorry, I should have warned you, but he normally hides if anyone comes to the cottage. He’s shy.”

“And he’s a man? I mean, a male spirit?”

“How would you tell? He’s got no body and he doesn’t speak. I just called him Oswald because I always picture him as a worried little man with a dustpan and brush.” The left Miss Level giggled when the right Miss Level said this. The effect was odd and, if you thought that way, also creepy.

“Well, we
are
getting on well,” said the right
Miss Level nervously. “Is there anything more you want to know, Tiffany?”

“Yes, please,” said Tiffany. “What do you want me to do? What do
you
do?”

And mostly, it turned out, what Miss Level did was chores. Endless chores. You could look in vain for much broomstick tuition, spelling lessons, or pointy-hat management. They were, mostly, the kind of chores that are just…chores.

There was a small flock of goats, technically led by Stinky Sam, who had a shed of his own and was kept on a chain, but really led by Black Meg, the senior nanny, who patiently allowed Tiffany to milk her and then, carefully and deliberately, put a hoof in the milk bucket. That’s a goat’s idea of getting to know you. A goat is a worrying thing if you’re used to sheep, because a goat is a sheep with
brains
. But Tiffany had met goats before, because a few people in the village kept them for their milk, which was very nourishing. And she knew that with goats you had to use persicology.
*
If you got excited, and shouted, and hit them (hurting your hand, because it’s like slapping a sack full of coat hang
ers), then they had Won and sniggered at you in goat language, which is almost all sniggering anyway.

By day two Tiffany learned that the thing to do was reach out and grab Black Meg’s hind leg just as she lifted it up to kick the bucket,
and lift it up farther
. That made her unbalanced and nervous and the other goats sniggered at
her
, and Tiffany had Won.

Next there were the bees. Miss Level kept a dozen hives, for the wax as much as the honey, in a little clearing that was loud with buzzing. She made Tiffany wear a veil and gloves before she opened a hive. She wore some too.

“Of course,” she observed, “if you are careful and sober and well centered in your life, the bees won’t sting. Unfortunately, not all the bees have heard about this theory. Good morning, Hive Three, this is Tiffany. She will be staying with us for a while….”