A Hat Full Of Sky (20 page)

“Well,” said Mistress Weatherwax as, with jacket flying, he rounded the corner. “That was nice, wasn’t it?”

Tiffany looked around quickly. Mistress Weatherwax was still nowhere to be seen, but she was somewhere to be unseen. Tiffany squinted at what was definitely an old wall with some ivy growing up it, and it was only when the old witch moved that she spotted her. She hadn’t done anything to her clothes, hadn’t done any magic as far as Tiffany knew, but she’d simply…faded in.

“Er, yes,” said Tiffany, taking out a handkerchief and blowing her nose.

“But it worries you,” said the witch. “You think it
shouldn’t
have ended like that, right?”

“No!” said Tiffany hotly.

“It would have been better if he’d been buried in some ol’ cheap coffin paid for by the village, you think?”

“No!”
Tiffany twisted up her fingers. Mistress
Weatherwax was sharper than a field of pins. “But…all right, it just doesn’t seem…fair. I mean, I wish the Feegles hadn’t done that. I’m sure I could have…sorted it out somehow, saved up…”

“It’s an unfair world, child. Be glad you have friends.”

Tiffany looked up at the treeline.

“Yes,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “But not up there.”

“I’m going away,” said Tiffany. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m going away.”

“Broomstick?” said Mistress Weatherwax. “It don’t move fast—”

“No! Where would I fly to? Home? I don’t want to take it there! Anyway, I can’t just fly off with it roaming around! When it…when I meet it, I don’t want to be near people, you understand? I know what I…what
it
can do if it’s angry! It half killed Miss Level!”

“And if it follows you?”

“Good! I’ll take it up there somewhere!” Tiffany waved at the mountains.

“All alone?”

“I don’t have a choice, do I?”

Mistress Weatherwax gave her a look that went on too long.

“No,” she said. “You don’t. But neither have I. That’s why I
will
come with you. Don’t argue, miss. How would you stop me, eh? Oh, that reminds me…them mysterious bruises Mrs. Towny gets is because Mr. Towny beats her, and the father of Miss Quickly’s baby is young Fred Turvey. You might mention that to Miss Level.”

As she spoke, a bee flew out of her ear.

Bait, thought Tiffany a few hours later, as they walked away from Miss Level’s cottage and up toward the high moors. I wonder if I’m bait, just like in the old days when the hunters would tether a lamb or a baby goat to bring the wolves nearer.

She’s got a plan to kill the hiver. I
know
it. She’s worked something out. It’ll come for me and she’ll just wave a hand.

She must think I’m stupid.

They had argued, of course. But Mistress Weatherwax had come up with a deeply unfair one. It was:
You’re eleven.
Just like that. You’re eleven, and what is Miss Tick going to tell your parents? Sorry about Tiffany, but we let her go off by herself to fight an ancient monster that can’t be killed and what’s left of her is in this jar?

Miss Level had joined in at that part, almost in tears.

If Tiffany hadn’t been a witch, she would have whined about everyone being so
unfair
!

In fact they were being fair. She knew they were being fair. They were not thinking just of her but of other people, and Tiffany hated herself—well, slightly—because she hadn’t. But it was sneaky of them to choose
this
moment to be fair.
That
was unfair.

No one had told her she was only nine when she went into Fairyland armed with just a frying pan. Admittedly, no one else had known she was going, except the Nac Mac Feegle, and she was much taller than they were. Would she have gone if she’d known what was in there, she wondered?

Yes. I would have.

And you’re going to face the hiver even though you don’t know how to beat it?

Yes. I am. There’s part of me still in it. I might be able to do something—

But aren’t you just ever so slightly glad that Mistress Weatherwax and Miss Level won the argument and now you’re going off very bravely but you happen to be accompanied,
completely
against your will, by the most powerful witch alive?

Tiffany sighed. It was dreadful when your own thoughts tried to gang up on you.

The Feegles hadn’t objected to her going to find the hiver. They
did
object to not being allowed to come with her. They’d been insulted, she knew. But, as Mistress Weatherwax had said, this was true haggling and there was no place in it for Feegles. If the hiver came, out there, not in a dream but for real, it’d have nothing about it that could be kicked or head butted.

Tiffany had tried to make a little speech, thanking them for their help, but Rob Anybody had folded his arms and turned his back. It had all gone wrong. But the old witch had been right. They could get hurt. The trouble was, explaining to Feegles how dangerous things were going to be only got them more enthusiastic.

She left them arguing with one another. It had not gone well.

But now that was all behind her, in more ways than one. The trees beside the track were less bushy and more pointy—or, if Tiffany had known more about trees, she would have said that the oaks were giving way to evergreens.

She could feel the hiver. It was following them, but a long way back.

If you had to imagine a head witch, you wouldn’t imagine Mistress Weatherwax. You might imagine Mrs. Earwig, who glided across the floor as though she was on wheels, and had a dress as black as the darkness in a deep cellar, but Mistress Weatherwax was just an old woman with a lined face and rough hands in a dress as black as night, which is never as black as people think. It was dusty and ragged around the hem, too.

On the other hand
, thought her Second Thoughts,
you once bought Granny Aching a china shepherdess, remember? All blue and white and sparkly?

Her First Thoughts thought: Well, yes, but I was a lot younger then.

Her Second Thoughts thought:
Yes, but which one was the real shepherdess? The shiny lady in the nice clean dress and buckled shoes, or the old lady who stumped around in the snow with boots filled with straw and a sack across her shoulders?

At which point Mistress Weatherwax stumbled. She caught her balance very quickly.

“Dangerously loose stones on this path,” she said. “Watch out for them.”

Tiffany looked down. There weren’t that many stones, and they didn’t seem very dangerous or particularly loose.

How old was Mistress Weatherwax? That was
another question she wished she hadn’t asked. She was skinny and wiry, just like Granny Aching, the kind of person who goes on and on—but one day Granny Aching had gone to bed and had never got up again, just like that….

The sun was setting. Tiffany could feel the hiver in the same way that you can sense that someone is looking at you. It was still in the woods that hugged the mountain like a scarf.

At last the witch stopped at a spot where rocks like pillars sprouted out of the turf. She sat down with her back to a big rock.

“This’ll have to do,” she said. “It’ll be dark soon, and you could turn an ankle on all this loose stone.”

There were huge boulders around them, house sized, that had rolled down from the mountains in the past. The rock of the peaks began not far away, a wall of stone that seemed to hang above Tiffany like a wave. It was a desolate place. Every sound echoed.

She sat down by Mistress Weatherwax and opened the bag that Miss Level had packed for the journey.

Tiffany wasn’t very experienced at things like this but, according to the book of fairy tales, the typical food for taking on an adventure was
bread and cheese. Hard cheese, too.

Miss Level had made them ham sandwiches, with pickles, and she’d included napkins. That was kind of a strange thought to keep in your head: We’re trying to find a way of killing a terrible creature, but at least we won’t be covered in crumbs.

There was a bottle of cold tea, too, and a bag of biscuits. Miss Level knew Mistress Weatherwax.

“Shouldn’t we light a fire?” Tiffany suggested.

“Why? It’s a long way down to the treeline to get the firewood, and there’ll be a fine half-moon up in twenty minutes. Your friend’s keeping its distance, and there’s nothing else that’ll attack us up here.”

“Are you sure?”

“I walk safely in
my
mountains,” said Mistress Weatherwax.

“But aren’t there trolls and wolves and things?”

“Oh, yes. Lots.”

“And they don’t try to attack you?”

“Not anymore,” said a self-satisfied voice in the dark. “Pass me the biscuits, will you?”

“Here you are. Would you like some pickles?”

“Pickles gives me the wind something awful.”

“In that case—”

“Oh, I wasn’t saying
no
,” Mistress Weatherwax said, taking two large pickled cucumbers.

Oh,
good
, Tiffany thought.

She’d brought three fresh eggs with her. Getting the hang of a shamble was taking too long. It was stupid. All the other girls were able to use them. She was sure she was doing everything right.

She’d filled her pocket with random things. Now she pulled them out without looking, wove the thread around the egg as she’d done a hundred times before, grasped the pieces of wood, and moved them so that…

Poc!

The egg cracked and oozed.

“I told you,” said Mistress Weatherwax, who’d opened one eye. “They’re toys. Sticks and stones.”

“Have you ever
used
one?” said Tiffany.

“No. Couldn’t get the hang of them. They got in the way.” Mistress Weatherwax yawned, wrapped the blanket around her, made a couple of
mnup, mnup
noises as she tried to get comfortable against the rock; and after a while, her breathing became deeper.

Tiffany waited in silence, her blanket around her, until the moon came up. She’d expected that to make things better, but it didn’t. Before,
there had just been darkness. Now there were shadows.

There was a snore beside her. It was one of those good solid ones, like ripping canvas.

Silence happened. It came across the night on silver wings, noiseless as the fall of a feather, silence made into a bird, which alighted on a rock close by. It swiveled its head to look at Tiffany.

There was more than just the curiosity of a bird in that look.

The old woman snored again. Tiffany reached out, still staring at the owl, and shook her gently. When that didn’t work, she shook her hardly.

There was a sound like three pigs colliding and Mistress Weatherwax opened one eye and said, “Whoo?”

“There’s an owl watching us! It’s right up close!”

Suddenly the owl blinked, looked at Tiffany as if amazed to see her, spread its wings, and glided off into the night.

Mistress Weatherwax gripped her throat, coughed once or twice, and then said hoarsely, “Of course it was an owl, child! It took me ten minutes to lure it this close! Now just you be quiet while I starts again—otherwise I shall have to make do with a bat, and when I goes out on
a bat for any time at all, I ends up thinkin’ I can see with my ears, which is no way for a decent woman to behave!”

“But you were snoring!”

“I was
not
snoring! I was just resting gently while I tickled an owl closer! If you hadn’t shaken me and scared it away, I’d have been up there with this entire moor under my eye.”

“You…take over its
mind
?” said Tiffany nervously.

“No! I’m not one of your hivers! I just…borrows a lift from it, I just…nudges it now and again, it don’t even know I’m there. Now try to rest!”

“But what if the hiver—?”

“If it comes anywhere near, it’ll be
me
that tells
you
!” Mistress Weatherwax hissed, and lay back. Then her head jerked up one more time. “And I do
not
snore!” she added.

After half a minute she started to snore again.

Minutes after that the owl came back, or perhaps it was a different owl. It glided onto the same rock, settled there for a while, and then sped away. The witch stopped snoring. In fact, she stopped breathing.

Tiffany leaned closer and finally lowered an ear to the skinny chest to see if there was a heartbeat.

Her own heart felt as if it was clenched like a fist—

—because of the day she’d found Granny Aching in the hut. She was lying peacefully on the narrow iron bed, but Tiffany had known something was wrong as soon as she had stepped inside—

Boom.

Tiffany counted to three.

Boom.

Well, it
was
a heartbeat.

Very slowly, like a twig growing, a stiff hand moved. It slid like a glacier into a pocket and came up holding a large piece of card on which was written:

I ATE’ NT DEAD

Tiffany decided she wasn’t going to argue. But she pulled the blanket over the old woman and wrapped her own around herself.

By moonlight she tried again with her shamble. Surely she should be able to make it do
something
. Maybe if—

By moonlight she very, very carefully—

Poc!

The egg cracked. The egg
always
cracked, and now there was only one left. Tiffany didn’t dare
try it with a beetle, even if she could have found one. It would be too cruel.

She sat back and looked across the landscape of silver and black, and her Third Thoughts thought:
It’s not going to come near.