A Hat Full Of Sky (8 page)

Tiffany half expected the whole hive to pipe up, in some horrible high-pitched buzz,
“Good morning, Tiffany!”
It didn’t.

“Why did you tell them that?” she asked.

“Oh, you have to talk to your bees,” said Miss Level. “It’s very bad luck not to. I generally have a little chat with them most evenings. News and
gossip, that sort of thing. Every beekeeper knows about ‘telling the bees.’”

“And who do the bees tell?” asked Tiffany.

Both of Miss Level smiled at her.

“Other bees, I suppose,” she said.

“So…if you knew how to
listen
to the bees, you’d know everything that was going on, yes?” Tiffany persisted.

“You know, it’s funny you should say that,” said Miss Level. “There have been a few rumors…But you’d have to learn to think like a swarm of bees. One mind with
thousands
of little bodies. Much too hard to do, even for me.” She exchanged a thoughtful glance with herself. “Maybe not
impossible
, though.”

Then there were the herbs. The cottage had a big herb garden, although it contained very little that you’d stuff a turkey with, and at this time of year there was still a lot of work to be done collecting and drying, especially the ones with important roots. Tiffany quite enjoyed that. Miss Level was big on herbs.

There is something called the Doctrine of Signatures. It works like this: When the Creator of the Universe made helpful plants for the use of people, he (or in some versions, she) put little clues on them to give people hints. A plant
useful for toothache would look like teeth, one to cure earache would look like an ear, one good for nose problems would drip green goo, and so on. Many people believed this.

You had to use a certain amount of imagination to be good at it (but not much in the case of Nose Dropwort), and in Tiffany’s world the Creator had got a little more…creative. Some plants had writing on them, if you knew where to look. It was often hard to find and usually difficult to read, because plants can’t spell. Most people didn’t even know about it and just used the traditional method of finding out whether plants were poisonous or useful by testing them on some elderly aunt they didn’t need, but Miss Level was pioneering new techniques that she hoped would mean life would be better for everyone (and, in the case of the aunts, often longer, too).

“This one is False Gentian,” she told Tiffany when they were in the long, cool workroom behind the cottage. She was holding up a weed triumphantly. “Everyone thinks it’s another toothache cure, but just look at the cut root by stored moonlight, using my blue magnifying glass….”

Tiffany tried it, and read: “GoOD F4r Colds
May cors drowsniss Do nOt oprate heavE mashinry.”

“Terrible spelling, but not bad for a daisy,” said Miss Level.

“You mean plants
really
tell you how to use them?” said Tiffany.

“Well, not all of them, and you have to know where to look,” said Miss Level. “Look at this, for example, on the common walnut. You have to use the green magnifying glass by the light of a taper made from red cotton, thus….”

Tiffany squinted. The letters were small and hard to read.

“‘May contain Nut’?” she ventured. “But it’s a nutshell. Of
course
it’ll contain a nut. Er…won’t it?”

“Not necessarily,” said Miss Level. “It may, for example, contain an exquisite miniature scene wrought from gold and many colored precious stones depicting a strange and interesting temple set in a far-off land. Well, it
might
,” she added, catching Tiffany’s expression. “There’s no actual law against it. As such. The world is full of surprises.”

That night Tiffany had a lot more to put in her diary. She kept it on top of her chest of drawers with a large stone on it. Oswald seemed to get
the message about this, but he had started to polish the stone.

And pull back, and rise above the cottage, and fly the eye across the nighttime….

Miles away, pass invisibly across something that is itself invisible, but which buzzes like a swarm on flies as it drags itself over the ground….

Continue, the roads and towns and trees rushing behind you with
zip-zip
noises, until you come to the big city, and near the center of the city the high old tower, and beneath the tower the ancient magical university, and in the university the library, and in the library the bookshelves, and…the journey has hardly begun.

Bookshelves stream past. The books are on chains. Some snap at you as you pass.

And here is the section of the more dangerous books, the ones that are kept chained in cages or in vats of iced water or simply clamped between lead plates.

But here is a book, faintly transparent and glowing with thaumic radiation, under a glass dome. Young wizards about to engage in research are
encouraged
to go and read it.

The title is
Hivers: A Dissertation Upon a Device of Amazing Cunning
by Sensibility Bustle, D.M.
Phil., B. El L., Patricius Professor of Magic. Most of the handwritten book is about how to construct a large and powerful magical apparatus to capture a hiver without harm to the user, but on the very last pages Dr. Bustle writes, or wrote:

According to the ancient and famous volume
Res Centum et Una Quas Magus Facere Potet,
*
hivers are a type of demon (indeed, Professor Poledread classifies them as such in I
Spy Demons,
and Cuvee gives them a section under “wandering spirits” in
Liber Immanis Monstrorum.
**
However, ancient texts discovered in the Cave of Jars by the ill-fated First Expedition to the Loko Region give quite a different story, which bears out my own not inconsiderable research.

Hivers were formed in the first seconds of Creation. They are not alive but they have, as it were, the
shape
of life. They have no body, brain, or thoughts of their own, and a naked hiver is a sluggish thing indeed, tumbling gently though the endless night between the worlds. According to Poledread, most end up at the bottoms of deep seas, or in the bellies of
volcanoes, or drifting through the hearts of stars. Poledread was a very inferior thinker compared to myself, but in this case he is right.

Yet a hiver does have the ability to fear and to crave. We cannot guess what frightens a hiver, but they seem to take refuge in bodies that have power of some sort—great strength, great intellect, great prowess with magic. In this sense they are like the common hermit elephant of Howondaland,
Elephas solitariu,
which will always seek the strongest mud hut as its shell.

There is no doubt in my mind that hivers have advanced the cause of life. Why did fish crawl out of the sea? Why did humanity grasp such a dangerous thing as fire? Hivers, I believe, have been behind this, firing
outstanding
creatures of various species with the flame of necessary ambition, which drove them onward and upward! What is it that a hiver seeks? What is it that drives them forward? What is it they want? This I shall find out!

Oh, lesser wizards warn us that a hiver distorts the mind of its host, curdling it and inevitably causing an early death through brain fever. I say poppycock! People have always been afraid of what they do not understand!

But I have
understanding!

This morning, at two o’clock, I captured a hiver with my device! And now it is locked inside my head. I can sense its memories, the memories of every creature it has inhabited. Yet because of my superior intellect,
I
control the hiver. It does not control me. I do not feel that it has changed me in any way. My mind is as extraordinarily powerful as it always has been!

At this point the writing is smudgy, apparently because Bustle was beginning to drool.

Oh, how they have held me back over the years, those worms and cravens that have through sheer luck been allowed to call themselves my superiors! They laughed at me! BUT THEY ARE NOT LAUGHING NOW!!! Even those who
called
themselves my friends, OH YES, they did nothing but hinder me. What about the warnings? they said. Why did the jar you found the plans in have the words “Do Not Open Under Any Circumstances!” engraved in fifteen ancient languages on the lid? they said. Cowards! So-called “chums”! Creatures inhabited by a hiver become paranoid and insane, they said! Hivers cannot be controlled, they squeaked!! DO ANY OF US BELIEVE
THIS FOR ONE MINUTE? Oh, what glories AWAIT! Now I have cleansed my life of such worthlessness! And as for those even now having the DISRESPECT YES DISRESPECT to hammer on my door because of what I did to the so-called Archchancellor and the College Council…HOW DARE THEY JUDGE ME! Like all insects they have NO CONCEPT OF GREATNESS!!!!! I WILL SHOW THEM!!! But…I in-soleps…blit!!!!! hammeringggg dfgujf blort…

…And there the writing ends. On a little card beside the book some wizard of former times has written:
All that could be found of Professor Bustle was buried in a jar in the old Rose Garden. We advise all research students to spend some time there, and reflect upon the manner of his death.

The moon was on the way to being full. A gibbous moon, it’s called. It’s one of the duller phases of the moon and seldom gets illustrated. The full moon and the crescent moon get all the publicity.

Rob Anybody sat alone on the mound just outside the fake rabbit hole, staring at the distant mountains where the snow on the peaks
gleamed in the moonlight.

A hand touched him lightly on the shoulder.

“’Tis not like ye to let someone creep up on ye, Rob Anybody,” said Jeannie, sitting down beside him.

Rob Anybody sighed.

“Daft Wullie was telling me ye havena been eatin’ your meals,” said Jeannie carefully.

Rob Anybody sighed.

“And Big Yan said when ye wuz out huntin’ today, ye let a fox go past wi’out gieing it a good kickin’?”

Rob sighed again.

There was a faint
pop
followed by a glugging noise. Jeannie held out a tiny wooden cup. In her other hand was a small leather bottle.

Fumes from the cup wavered in the air.

“This is the last o’ the Special Sheep Liniment your big wee hag gave us at our wedding,” said Jeannie. “I put it safely by for emergencies.”

“She’s no’
my
big wee hag, Jeannie,” said Rob, without looking at the cup. “She’s
oor
big wee hag. An’ I’ll tell ye, Jeannie, she has it in her tae be the hag o’ hags. There’s power in her she doesna dream of. But the hiver smells it.”

“Aye, well, a drink’s a drink, whomsoever ye call her,” said Jeannie soothingly. She waved the
cup under Rob’s nose.

He sighed and looked away.

Jeannie stood up quickly. “Wullie! Big Yan! Come quick!” she yelled. “He willna tak’ a drink! I think he’s
deid
!”

“Ach, this is no’ the time for strong licker,” said Rob Anybody. “My heart is heavy, wumman.”

“Quickly now!” Jeannie shouted down the hole.
“He’s deid and still talkin’!”

“She’s the hag o’ these hills,” said Rob, ignoring her. “Just like her granny. She tells the hills what they are, every day. She has them in her bones. She holds ’em in her heart. Wi’out her, I dinna like tae think o’ the future.”

The other Feegles had come scurrying out of the hole and were looking uncertainly at Jeannie.

“Is somethin’ wrong?” said Daft Wullie.

“Aye!” snapped the kelda. “Rob willna tak’ a drink o’ Special Sheep Liniment!”

Wullie’s little face screwed up in instant grief. “Ach, the Big Man’s
deid
!” he sobbed. “Oh waily waily waily—”

“Will ye hush yer gob, ye big mudlin!” shouted Rob Anybody, standing up. “I am no’ deid! I’m trying to have a moment o’ existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it’s a puir lookout if a
man canna feel the chilly winds o’ fate lashing aroound his nethers wi’out folks telling him he’s deid, eh?”

“Ach, and I see ye’ve been talking to the toad again, Rob,” said Big Yan. “He’s the only one aroound here that used them lang words that tak’ all day to walk the length of….” He turned to Jeannie. “It’s a bad case o’ the thinkin’ he’s caught, missus. When a man starts messin’ wi’ the readin’ and the writin’, then he’ll come doon with a dose o’ the thinkin’ soon enough. I’ll fetch some o’ the lads and we’ll hold his heid under water until he stops doin’ it—’tis the only cure. It can kill a man, the thinkin’.”

“I’ll wallop ye and ten like ye!” yelled Rob Anybody in Big Yan’s face, raising his fists. “I’m the Big Man in this clan and—”

“And I am the kelda,” said their kelda, and one of the hiddlins of keldaring is to use your voice like that: hard, cold, sharp, cutting the air like a dagger of ice. “And I tell you men to go back doon the hole and dinna show your faces back up here until I say.
Not you, Rob Anybody Feegle!
You stay here until I tell ye!”

“Oh waily waily—” Daft Wullie began, but Big Yan clapped a hand over his mouth and dragged him away quickly.

When they were alone, and scraps of cloud were beginning to mass around the moon, Rob Anybody hung his head.

“I willna go, Jeannie, if you say,” he said.

“Ach, Rob,
Rob
,” said Jeannie, beginning to cry. “Ye dinna
understand
. I want no harm to come to the big wee girl, truly I don’t. But I canna face thinkin’ o’ you out there fightin’ this monster that canna be killed! It’s you I’m worried aboot, can ye no’
see
?”