A Hat Full Of Sky (26 page)

“I didn’t just come to bring the hat back,” she managed to say. “I brought you a present, too.”

“I’m sure there’s no call for anyone to bring
me
a present,” said Granny Weatherwax, sniffing.

Tiffany ignored this, because her mind was still spinning. She fetched her sack again and handed over a small, soft parcel, which moved as it changed shape in her hands.

“I took most of the stuff back to Mr. Stronginthearm,” she said. “But I thought you might have a…a
use
for this.”

The old woman slowly unwrapped the white
paper. The Zephyr Billow cloak unrolled itself under her fingers and filled the air like smoke.

“It’s lovely, but I couldn’t wear it,” said Tiffany as the cloak shaped itself over the gentle currents of the clearing. “You need gravitas to carry off a cloak like that.”

“What’s gravitarse?” said Granny Weatherwax sharply.

“Oh…dignity. Seniority. Wisdom. Those sorts of things,” said Tiffany.

“Ah,” said Granny, relaxing a little. She stared at the gently rippling cloak and sniffed. It really was a wonderful creation. The wizards had got at least one thing right when they had made it. It was one of those things that fill a hole in your life that you didn’t know was there until you’d seen it.

“Well, I suppose there’s those as can wear a cloak like this, and those as can’t,” she conceded. She let it curl around her neck and fastened it there with a crescent-shaped brooch.

“It’s a bit too grand for the likes of me,” she said. “A bit too fancy. I could look like a flibbertigibbet wearing something like this.” It was spoken like a statement but it had a curl like a question.

“No, it suits you, it really does,” said Tiffany
cheerfully. “If you don’t know when to be a human being, you don’t know when to be a witch.”

Birds stopped singing. Up in the trees, squirrels ran and hid. Even the sky seemed to darken for a moment.

“Er…that’s what I heard,” said Tiffany, and added, “from someone who knows these things.”

The blue eyes stared into hers. There were no secrets from Granny Weatherwax. Whatever you said, she watched what you meant.

“Perhaps you’ll call again sometimes,” she said, turning slowly and watching the cloak curve in the air. “It’s always very quiet here.”

“I should like that,” said Tiffany. “Shall I tell the bees before I come, so you can get the tea ready?”

For a moment Granny Weatherwax glared, and then the lines faded into a wry grin.

“Clever,” she said.

What’s inside you? Tiffany thought. Who are you really, in there? Did you
want
me to take your hat? You pretend to be the big bad wicked witch, and you’re not. You test people all the time, test, test, test, but you really want them to be clever enough to beat you. Because it must be hard, being the best. You’re not allowed to stop. You can only be beaten, and you’re too proud
ever to lose. Pride! You’ve turned it into terrible strength, but it eats away at you. Are you afraid to laugh in case you hear an early cackle?

We’ll meet again, one day. We both know it. We’ll meet again, at the Witch Trials.

“I’m clever enough to know how you manage
not
to think of a pink rhinoceros if someone says ‘pink rhinoceros,’” she managed to say aloud.

“Ah, that’s deep magic, that is,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“No. It’s not. You don’t know what a rhinoceros looks like, do you?”

Sunlight filled the clearing as the old witch laughed, as clear as a downland stream.

“That’s right!” she said.

I
t was one of those strange days in late February when it’s a little warmer than it should be and, although there’s wind, it seems to be all around the horizons and never quite where you are.

Tiffany climbed up onto the downs where, in the sheltered valleys, the early lambs had already found their legs and were running around in a gang in that strange jerky run that lambs have, which makes them look like wooly rocking horses.

Perhaps there was something about that day, because the old ewes joined in, too, and skipped with their lambs. They jumped and spun, half happy, half embarrassed, big winter fleeces bouncing up and down like a clown’s trousers.

It had been an interesting winter. She’d learned a lot of things. One of them was that you
could be a bridesmaid to two people who between them were over 170 years old. This time Mr. Weavall, with his wig spinning on his head and his big spectacles gleaming, had
insisted
on giving one of the gold pieces to “our little helper,” which more than made up for the wages that she hadn’t asked for and Miss Level couldn’t afford. She’d used some of it to buy a really good brown cloak. It didn’t billow, it didn’t fly out behind her, but it was warm and thick and kept her dry.

She’d learned lots of other things too. As she walked past the sheep and their lambs, she gently touched their minds, so softly that they didn’t notice….

Tiffany had stayed up in the mountains for Hogswatch, which officially marked the changing of the year. There’d been a lot to do there, and anyway it wasn’t much celebrated on the Chalk. Miss Level had been happy to give her leave now, though, for the lambing festival, which the old people called Sheepbellies. It was when the shepherds’ year began. The hag of the hills couldn’t miss that. That was when, in warm nests of straw shielded from the wind by hurdles and barriers of cut furze, the future happened.
She’d helped it happen, working with the shepherds by lantern light, dealing with the difficult births. She’d worked with the pointy hat on her head and had felt the shepherds watching her as, with knife and needle and thread and hands and soothing words, she’d saved ewes from the black doorway and helped new lambs into the light. You had to give them a show. You had to give them a story. And she’d walked back home proudly in the morning, bloody to the elbows, but it had been the blood of life.

Later she had gone up to the Feegles’ mound and slid down the hole. She’d thought about this for some time and had gone prepared—with clean torn-up handkerchiefs and some soapwort shampoo made from a recipe Miss Level had given her. She had a feeling that Jeannie would have a use for these. Miss Level always visited new mothers. It was what you did.

Jeannie had been pleased to see her. Lying on her stomach so that she could get part of her body into the kelda’s chamber, Tiffany had been allowed to hold all eight of what she kept thinking of as the Roblets, born at the same time as the lambs. Seven of them were bawling and fighting one another. The eighth lay quietly, biding her time. The future happened.

It wasn’t only Jeannie who thought of her differently. News had got around. The people of the Chalk didn’t like witches. They had always come from outside. They had always come as strangers. But there was
our
Tiffany, birthing the lambs like her granny did, and they say she’s been learning witchery in the mountains! Ah, but that’s still our Tiffany, that is. Okay, I’ll grant you that she’s wearing a hat with big stars on it, but she makes good cheese and she knows about lambing and she’s Granny Aching’s granddaughter, right? And they’d tap their noses knowingly.
Granny Aching’s granddaughter.
Remember what the old woman could do? So if witch she be, then she’s
our
witch. She knows about sheep, she does. Hah, and I heard they had a big sort of trial for witches up in them mountains and our Tiffany showed ’em what a girl from the Chalk can do. It’s modern times, right? We got a witch now, and she’s better’n anyone else’s! No one’s throwing Granny Aching’s granddaughter in a pond!

Tomorrow she’d go back to the mountains again. It had been a busy three weeks, quite apart from the lambing. Roland had invited her to tea at the castle. It had been a bit awkward, as these things are, but it was funny how, in a couple of years, he’d gone from a lumbering oaf
to a nervous young man who forgot what he was talking about when she smiled at him. And they had
books
in the castle!

He’d shyly presented her with a
Dictionary of Amazingly Uncommon Words
, and she had been prepared enough to bring him a hunting knife made by Zakzak Stronginthearm, who was excellent at blades even if he was rubbish at magic. The hat wasn’t mentioned, very carefully. And when she’d got home, she’d found a bookmark in the P section and a faint pencil underline under the word
plongeon
: “a small curtsy, about one third as deep as the traditional one. No longer used.” Alone in her bedroom, she’d blushed. It’s always surprising to be reminded that while you’re watching and thinking about people, all knowing and superior, they’re watching and thinking about you, right back at you.

She’d written it down in her diary, which was a lot thicker now, what with all the pressed herbs and extra notes and bookmarks. It had been trodden on by cows, struck by lightning, and dropped in tea. And it didn’t have an eye on it. An eye would have got knocked off on day one. It was a
real
witch’s diary.

Tiffany had stopped wearing the hat, except in public, because it kept getting bent by low door
ways and completely crushed by her bedroom ceiling. She was wearing it today, though, clutching it occasionally whenever a gust tried to snatch it off her head.

She reached the place where four rusty iron wheels were half buried in the turf and a potbellied stove stood up from the grass. It made a useful seat.

Silence spread out around Tiffany, a living silence, while the sheep danced with their lambs and the world turned.

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

The words ran through Tiffany’s mind as she watched the sheep, and she found herself filling up with joy—at the new lambs, at life, at everything. Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.

“I’ve come back!” she announced to the hills. “Better than I went!”

She snatched off the hat with stars on it. It wasn’t a bad hat, for show, although the stars
made it look like a toy. But it was never
her
hat. It couldn’t be. The only hat worth wearing was the one you made for yourself, not one you bought, not one you were given. Your own hat, for your own head. Your own future, not someone else’s.

She hurled the starry hat up as high as she could. The wind there caught it neatly. It tumbled for a moment and then was lifted by a gust and, swooping and spinning, sailed away across the downs and vanished forever.

Then Tiffany made a hat out of the sky and sat on the old potbellied stove, listening to the wind around the horizons while the sun went down.

As the shadows lengthened, many small shapes crept out of the nearby mound and joined her in the sacred place, to watch.

The sun set, which is everyday magic, and warm night came.

The hat filled up with stars….

TERRY PRATCHETT’s
novels have sold more than thirty-five million copies and have inspired a devoted worldwide following. In addition to his best-selling books about Discworld, Mr. Pratchett has also written several books for young readers, including the Bromeliad trilogy:
TRUCKERS, DIGGERS,
and
WINGS
and the Johnny Maxwell trilogy:
ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND, JOHNNY AND THE DEAD
, and
JOHNNY AND THE BOMB
. Mr. Pratchett was awarded Britain’s highest honor for a children’s novel, the Carnegie Medal, for his first young adult novel set in Discworld,
THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS
.

Visit him online at
www.terrypratchettbooks.com

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