A Hat Full Of Sky

Chapter Nine Soul and Centre

Tiffany opened her eyes, remembered, and thought: Was that a dream, or was that real?

And the next thought was: How do I know I’m me? Suppose I’m not me but just think I’m me? How can I tell if I’m me or not? Who’s the ‘me’ that’s asking the question? Am I thinking these thoughts? How would I know if it wasn’t?

‘Dinnae ask me,’ said a voice by her head. ‘Is this one of them tricksie ones?’

It was Daft Wullie. He was sitting on her pillow.

Tiffany squinted down. She was in bed in Miss Level’s cottage. A green quilt stretched out in front of her. A quilt. Green. Not turf, not hills… but it looked like the downland, from here.

‘Did I say all that aloud?’ she asked.

‘Oh, aye.’

‘Er… it did all happen, didn’t it?’ said Tiffany.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Daft Wullie cheerfully. ‘The big hag wuz up here till just noo, but she said ye probably wasnae gonna wake up a monster.’

More bits of memory landed in Tiffany’s memory like red-hot rocks landing on a peaceful planet.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Daft Wullie.

‘And Miss Level?’

And this rock of memory was huge, a flaming mountain that’d make a million dinosaurs flee for their lives. Tiffany’s hands flew to her mouth.

‘I killed her!’ she said.

‘Noo, then, ye didnae—’

‘I did! I felt my mind thinking it. She made me angry! I just waved my hand like this’—a dozen Nac Mac Feegle dived for cover—‘and she just exploded into nothing! It was me! I remember!’

‘Aye, but the big hag o’ hags said it wuz usin’ your mind tae think with—’ Daft Wullie began.

‘I’ve got the memories! It was me, with this hand!’ The Feegles who had raised their heads ducked back down again. ‘And… the memories I’ve got… I remember dust, turning into stars… things… the heat… blood… the taste of blood… I remember… I remember the see-me trick! Oh, no! I practically invited it in! I killed Miss Level!’

Shadows were closing in around her vision, and there was a ringing in her ears. Tiffany heard the door swing open and hands picked her up as though she was as light as a bubble. She was slung over a shoulder and carried swiftly down the stairs and out into the bright morning, where she was swung down onto the ground.

‘…And all of us… we killed her… take one crucible of silver…’ she mumbled.

A hand slapped her sharply across the face. She stared through inner mists at the tall dark figure in front of her. A bucket handle was pressed firmly into her hand.

‘Milk the goats now, Tiffany! Now, Tiffany, d’you hear! The trusting creatures look to you! They wait for you! Tiffany milks the goats. Do it, Tiffany! The hands know how, the mind will remember and grow stronger, Tiffany!’

She was thrust down onto the milking stool and, through the mist in her head, made out the cowering shape of… of… Black Meg.

The hands remembered. They placed the pail, grasped a teat and then, as Meg raised a leg to play the foot-in-the-bucket game, grabbed it and forced it safely back down onto the milking platform.

She worked slowly, her head full of hot fog, letting her hands have their way. Buckets were filled and emptied, milked goats got a bucket of feed from the bin…

Sensibility Bustle was rather puzzled that his hands were milking a goat. He stopped.

‘What is your name?’ said a voice behind him.

‘Bustle. Sensibil–

‘No! That was the wizard, Tiffany! He was the strongest echo, but you’re not him! Get into the dairy, TIFFANY!’

She stumbled into the cool room under the command of that voice and the world focused. There was a foul cheese on the slab, sweating and stinking.

‘Who put this here?’ she asked.

‘The hiver did, Tiffany. Tried to make a cheese by magic, Tiffany. Hah!’ said the voice. ‘And you are not it, Tiffany! You know how to make cheese the right way, don’t you, Tiffany? Indeed you do! What is your name?’

…all was confusion and strange smells. In panic, she roared–

Her face was slapped again.

‘No, that was the sabre-toothed tiger, Tiffany! They’re all just old memories the hiver left behind, Tiffany! It’s worn a lot of creatures but they are not you! Come forward, Tiffany!’

She heard the words without really understanding them. They were just out there somewhere, between people who were just shadows. But it was unthinkable to disobey them.

‘Drat!’ said the hazy tall figure. ‘Where’s that little blue feller? Mister Anyone?’

‘Here, mistress. It’s Rob Anybody, mistress. I beg o’ ye not tae turn me intae somethin’ unnatural, mistress!’

‘You said she had a box of keepsakes. Fetch it down here this minute. I feared this might happen. I hates doin’ it this way!’

Tiffany was turned round and once again looked into the blurry face while strong hands gripped her arms. Two blue eyes stared into hers. They shone in the mist like sapphires.

‘What’s your name, Tiffany?’ said the voice.

‘Tiffany!’

The eyes bored into her. ‘Is it? Really? Sing me the first song you ever learned, Tiffany! Now!’

‘Hzan, hzana, m’taza—’

‘Stop! That was never learned on a chalk hill! You ain’t Tiffany! I reckon you’re that desert queen who killed twelve of her husbands with scorpion sandwiches! Tiffany is the one I’m after! Back into the dark with you!’

Things went blurry again. She could hear whispered discussions through the fog and the voice said: ‘Well, that might work. What’s your name, pictsie?’

‘Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle, mistress.’

‘You’re very small, aren’t you?’

‘Only for my height, mistress.’

The grip tightened on Tiffany’s arms again. The blue eyes glinted.

‘What does your name mean in the Old Speech of the Nac Mac Feegle, Tiffany? Think…’

It rose from the depths of her mind, trailing the fog behind it. It came up through the clamouring voices and lifted her beyond the reach of ghostly hands. Ahead, the clouds parted.

‘My name is Land Under Wave,’ said Tiffany and slumped forward.

‘No, no, none of that, we can’t have that,’ said the figure holding her. ‘You’ve slept enough. Good, you know who you are! Now you must be up and doing! You must be Tiffany as hard as you may, and the other voices will leave you alone, depend on it. Although it might be a good idea if you don’t make sandwiches for a while.’

She did feel better. She’d said her name. The clamouring in her head had calmed down, although it was still a chatter that made it hard to think straight. But now at least she could see clearly. The black-dressed figure holding her wasn’t tall, but she was so good at acting as if she was that it tended to fool most people.

‘Oh… you’re… Mistress Weatherwax?’

Mistress Weatherwax pushed her down gently into a chair. From every flat surface in the kitchen, the Nac Mac Feegles watched Tiffany.

‘I am. And a fine mess we have here. Rest for a moment and then we must be up and doing—’

‘Good morning, ladies. Er, how is she?’

Tiffany turned her head. Miss Level stood in the door. She looked pale and she was walking with a stick.

‘I was lying in bed and I thought, Well, there’s no reason to stay up here feeling sorry for myself,’ she said.

Tiffany stood up. ‘I’m so sor—’ she began, but Miss Level waved a hand vaguely.

‘Not your fault,’ she said, sitting down heavily at the table. ‘How are you? And, for that matter, who are you?’

Tiffany blushed. ‘Still me, I think,’ she mumbled.

‘I got here last night and saw to Miss Level,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Watched over you, too, girl. You talked in your sleep or, rather, Sensibility Bustle did, what’s left of him. That ol’ wizard was quite helpful, for something that’s nothing much more’n a bunch of memories and habits.’

‘I don’t understand about the wizard,’ said Tiffany. ‘Or the desert queen.’

‘Don’t you?’ said the witch. ‘Well, a hiver collects people. Tries to add them to itself, you might say, use them to think with. Dr Bustle was studying them hundreds of years ago, and set a trap to catch one. It got him instead, silly fool. It killed him in the end. It gets ‘em all killed in the end. They go mad, one way or the other, they stop remembering what they shouldn’t do. But it keeps a sort of… pale copy of them, a sort of living memory…’ She looked at Tiffany’s puzzled expression and shrugged. ‘Something like a ghost,’ she said.

‘And it’s left ghosts in my head?’

‘More like ghosts of ghosts, really,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Something we don’t have a word for, maybe.’

Miss Level shuddered. ‘Well, thank goodness you’ve got rid of the thing, at least,’ she quavered. ‘Would anyone like a nice cup of tea?’

‘Ach, leave that tae us!’ shouted Rob Anybody, leaping up. ‘Daft Wullie, you an’ the boys mak’ some tea for the ladies!’

‘Thank you,’ said Miss Level weakly, as a clattering began behind her. ‘I feel so clum—what? I thought you broke all the teacups when you did the washing up!’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Rob cheerfully. ‘But Wullie found a whole load o’ old ones shut awa’ in a cupboard—’

‘That very valuable bone china was left to me by a very dear friend!’ shouted Miss Level. She sprang to her feet and turned towards the sink. With amazing speed for someone who was partly dead she snatched teapot, cup and saucer from the surprised pictsies and held them up as high as she could.

‘Crivens!’ said Rob Anybody, staring at the crockery. ‘Now that’s what I call hagglin’!’

‘I’m sorry to be rude, but they’re of great sentimental value!’ said Miss Level.

‘Mister Anybody, you and your men will kindly get away from Miss Level and shut up!’ said Mistress Weatherwax quickly. ‘Pray do not disturb Miss Level while she’s making tea!’

‘But she’s holding—’ Tiffany began, in amazement.

‘And let her get on with it without your chatter either, girl!’ the witch snapped.

‘Aye, but she picked up yon teapot wi’oot–’a voice began.

The old witch’s head spun round. Feegles backed away like trees bending to a gale.

‘Daft William,’ she said coldly, ‘there’s room in my well for one more frog, except that you don’t have the brains of one!’

‘Ahahaha, that’s wholly correct, mistress,’ said Daft Wullie, sticking out his chin with pride. ‘I fooled you there! I ha’ the brains o’ a beetle!’

Mistress Weatherwax glared at him, then turned back to Tiffany.

‘I turned someone into a frog!’ Tiffany said. ‘It was dreadful! He didn’t all fit in so there was this sort of huge pink—’

‘Never mind that right now,’ said Mistress Weatherwax in a voice that was suddenly so nice and ordinary that it tinkled like a bell. ‘I expect you finds things a bit different here than they were at home, eh?’

‘What? Well, yes, at home I never turned—’ Tiffany began in surprise, then saw that just above her lap the old woman was making frantic circular hand motions that somehow meant Keep going as if nothing has happened.

So they chatted madly about sheep and Mistress Weatherwax said they were very woolly, weren’t they, and Tiffany said that they were, extremely so, and Mistress Weatherwax said extremely woolly was what she’d heard… while every eye in the room watched Miss Level—

–making tea using four arms, two of which did not exist, and not realizing it.

The black kettle sailed across the room and apparently tipped itself into the pot. Cups and saucers and spoons and the sugar bowl floated with a purpose.

Mistress Weatherwax leaned across to Tiffany.

‘I hope you’re still feeling… alone?’ she whispered.

‘Yes, thank you. I mean, I can… sort of… feel them there, but they’re not getting in the way… er… sooner or later she’s going to realize… I mean, isn’t she?’

‘Very funny thing, the human mind,’ whispered the old woman. ‘I once had to see to a poor young man who had a tree fall on his legs. Lost both legs from the knee down. Had to have wooden legs made. Still, they were made out of that tree, which I suppose was some comfort, and he gets about pretty well. But I remember him saying, “Mistress Weatherwax, I can still feel my toes sometimes.” It’s like the head don’t accept what’s happened. And it’s not like she’s… your everyday kind of person to start with, I mean, she’s used to havin’ arms she can’t see—’

‘Here we are,’ said Miss Level, bustling over with three cups and saucers and the sugar bowl. ‘One for you, one for you, and one for—Oh…’

The sugar bowl dropped from an invisible hand and spilled its sugar onto the table. Miss Level stared at it in horror while, in the other hand that wasn’t there, a cup and saucer wobbled without visible means of support.

‘Shut your eyes, Miss Level!’ And there was something in the voice, some edge or strange tone that made Tiffany shut her eyes too.

‘Right! Now, you know the cup’s there, you can feel your arm,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, standing up. ‘Trust it! Your eyes are not in possession of all the facts! Now put the cup down gently… thaaat’s right. You can open your eyes now, but what I wants you to do, right, as a favour to me, is put the hands that you can see flat down on the table. Right. Good. Now, without takin’ those hands away, just go over to the dresser and fetch me that blue biscuit tin, will you? I’m always partial to a biscuit with my tea. Thank you very much.’

‘But… but I can’t do that now—’

‘Get past “I can’t”, Miss Level,’ Mistress Weatherwax snapped. ‘Don’t think about it, just do it! My tea’s getting cold!’

So this is witchcraft too, Tiffany thought. It’s like Granny Aching talking to animals. It’s in the voice! Sharp and soft by turns, and you use little words of command and encouragement and you keep talking, making the words fill the creature’s world, so that the sheepdogs obey you and the nervous sheep are calmed…

The biscuit tin floated away from the dresser. As it neared the old woman the lid unscrewed and hovered in the air beside it. She reached in delicately.

‘Ooh, store-bought Teatime Assortment,’ she said, taking four biscuits and quickly putting three of them in her pocket. ‘Very posh.’

‘It’s terribly difficult to do this!’ Miss Level moaned. ‘It’s like trying not to think of a pink rhinoceros!’

‘Well?’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘What’s so special about not thinking of a pink rhinoceros?’

‘It’s impossible not to think of one if someone tells you you mustn’t,’ Tiffany explained.

‘No it ain’t,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, firmly. ‘I ain’t thinking of one right now, and I gives you my word on that. You want to take control of that brain of yours, Miss Level. So you’ve lost a spare body? What’s another body when all’s said and done? Just a lot of upkeep, another mouth to feed, wear and tear on the furniture… in a word, fuss. Get your mind right, Miss Level, and the world is your…’ The old witch leaned down to Tiffany and whispered: ‘What’s that thing, lives in the sea, very small, folks eat it?’

‘Shrimp?’ Tiffany suggested, a bit puzzled.

‘Shrimp? All right. The world is your shrimp, Miss Level. Not only will there be a great saving on clothes and food, which is not to be sneezed at in these difficult times, but when people see you moving things though the air, well, they’ll say, “There’s a witch and a half, and no mistake!” and they will be right. You just hold on to that skill, Miss Level. You maintain. Think on what I’ve said. And now you stay and rest. We’ll see to what needs doing today. You just make a little list for me, and Tiffany’ll know the way.’

‘Well, indeed, I do feel… somewhat shaken,’ said Miss Level, absent-mindedly brushing her hair out of her eyes with an invisible hand. ‘Let me see… you could just drop in on Mr Umbril, and Mistress Turvy, and the young Raddle boy, and check on Mrs Towney’s bruise, and take some Number Five ointment to Mr Drover, and pay a call on old Mrs Hunter at Saucy Corner and… now, who have I forgotten… ?’

Tiffany realized she was holding her breath. It had been a horrible day, and a dreadful night, but what was looming and queuing up for its place on Miss Level’s tongue was, somehow, going to be worse than either.

‘…Ah, yes, have a word with Miss Quickly at Uttercliff, and then probably you’ll need to talk to Mrs Quickly, too, and there’re a few packages to be dropped off on the way, they’re in my basket, all marked up. And I think that’s it… oh, no, silly me, I almost forgot… and you need to drop in on Mr Weavall, too.’

Tiffany breathed out. She really didn’t want to. She’d rather not breathe ever again than face Mr Weavall and open an empty box.

‘Are you sure you’re… totally yourself, Tiffany?’ said Miss Level, and Tiffany leaped for this lifesaving excuse not to go.

‘Well, I do feel a bit—’ she began, but Mistress Weatherwax interrupted with, ‘She’s fine, Miss Level, apart from the echoes. The hiver has gone away from this house, I can assure you.’

‘Really?’ said Miss Level. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but how can you be so certain?’

Mistress Weatherwax pointed down.

Grain by grain, the spilled sugar was rolling across the tabletop and leaping into the sugar bowl.

Miss Level clasped her hands together.

‘Oh, Oswald,’ she said, her face one huge smile, ‘you’ve come back!’

Miss Level, and possibly Oswald, watched them go from the gate.

‘She’ll be fine with your little men keeping her company,’ said Mistress Weatherwax as she and Tiffany turned away and took the lane through the woods. ‘It could be the making of her, you know, being half dead.’

Tiffany was shocked. ‘How can you be so cruel?’

‘She’ll get some respect when people see her moving stuff through the air. Respect is meat and drink to a witch. Without respect, you ain’t got a thing. She doesn’t get much respect, our Miss Level.’

That was true. People didn’t respect Miss Level. They liked her, in an unthinking sort of way, and that was it. Mistress Weatherwax was right, and Tiffany wished she wasn’t.

‘Why did you and Miss Tick send me to her, then?’ she said.

‘Because she likes people,’ said the witch, striding ahead. ‘She cares about ‘em. Even the stupid, mean, dribbling ones, the mothers with the runny babies and no sense, the feckless and the silly and the fools who treat her like some kind of a servant. Now that’s what I call magic—seein’ all that, dealin’ with all that, and still goin’ on. It’s sittin’ up all night with some poor old man who’s leavin’ the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin’ their terror, seein’ ‘em safely on their way… and then cleanin’ ‘em up, layin’ ‘em out, making ‘em neat for the funeral, and helpin’ the weeping widow strip the bed and wash the sheets—which is, let me tell you, no errand for the faint-hearted—and stayin’ up the next night to watch over the coffin before the funeral, and then going home and sitting down for five minutes before some shouting angry man comes bangin’ on your door ‘cos his wife’s havin’ difficulty givin’ birth to their first child and the midwife’s at her wits’ end and then getting up and fetching your bag and going out again… We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better’n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart. That is the root and heart and soul and centre of witchcraft, that is. The soul and centre!’ Mistress Weatherwax smacked her fist into her hand, hammering out her words. ‘The… soul… and… centre!’

Echoes came back from the trees in the sudden silence. Even the grasshoppers by the side of the track had stopped sizzling.

‘And Mrs Earwig,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, her voice sinking to a growl, ‘Mrs Earwig tells her girls it’s about cosmic balances and stars and circles and colours and wands and… and toys, nothing but toys!’ She sniffed. ‘Oh, I daresay they’re all very well as decoration, somethin’ nice to look at while you’re workin’, somethin’ for show, but the start and finish, the start and finish, is helpin’ people when life is on the edge. Even people you don’t like. Stars is easy, people is hard.’

She stopped talking. It was several seconds before birds began to sing again.

‘Anyway, that’s what I think,’ she added in the tone of someone who suspects that they might have gone just a bit further than they meant to.

She turned round when Tiffany said nothing, and saw that she had stopped and was standing in the lane looking like a drowned hen.

‘Are you all right, girl?’ she said.

‘It was me!’ wailed Tiffany. The hiver was me! It wasn’t thinking with my brain, it was using my thoughts! It was using what it found in my head! All those insults, all that…’ She gulped. ‘That… nastiness. All it was was me with—’

‘—without the bit of you that was locked away,’ said Mistress Weatherwax sharply. ‘Remember that.’

‘Yes, but supposing—’ Tiffany began, struggling to get all the woe out.

‘The locked-up bit was the important bit,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them. Harder, maybe. There’d be a sight more frogs in this world if I didn’t know how not to turn people into them. And big pink balloons, too.’

‘Don’t,’ said Tiffany, shuddering.

‘That’s why we do all the tramping around and doctorin’ and stuff,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Well, and because it makes people a bit better, of course. But doing it moves you into your centre, so’s you don’t wobble. It anchors you. Keeps you human, stops you cackling. Just like your granny with her sheep, which are to my mind as stupid and wayward and ungrateful as humans. You think you’ve had a sight of yourself and found out you’re bad? Hah! I’ve seen bad, and you don’t get near it. Now, are you going to stop grizzling?’

‘What?’ snapped Tiffany.

Mistress Weatherwax laughed, to Tiffany’s sudden fury.

‘Yes, you’re a witch to your boots,’ she said. ‘You’re sad, and behind that you’re watching yourself being sad and thinking, Oh, poor me, and behind that you’re angry with me for not going “There, there, poor dear.” Let me talk to those Third Thoughts then, because I want to hear from the girl who went to fight a fairy queen armed with nothin’ but a fryin’ pan, not some child feelin’ sorry for herself and wallowing in misery!’

‘What? I am not wallowing in misery!’ Tiffany shouted, striding up to her until they were inches apart. ‘And what was all that about being nice to people, eh?’ Overhead, leaves fell off the trees.

‘That doesn’t count when it’s another witch, especially one like you!’ Mistress Weatherwax snapped, prodding her in the chest with a finger as hard as wood.

‘Oh? Oh? And what’s that supposed to mean?’ A deer galloped off through the woods. The wind got up.

‘One who’s not paying attention, child!’

‘Why, what have I missed that you’ve seen… old woman?’

‘Old woman I may be, but I’m tellin’ you the hiver is still around! You only threw it out!’ Mistress Weatherwax shouted. Birds rose from the trees in panic.

‘I know!’ screamed Tiffany.

‘Oh yes? Really? And how do you know that?’

‘Because there’s a bit of me still in it! A bit of me I’d rather not know about, thank you! I can feel it out there! Anyway, how do you know!’

‘Because I’m a bloody good witch, that’s why,’ snarled Mistress Weatherwax, as rabbits burrowed deeper to get out of the way. ‘And what do you want me to do about the creature while you sit there snivellin’, eh?’

‘How dare you! How dare you! It’s my responsibility! I’ll deal with it, thank you so very much!’

‘You? A hiver? It’ll take more than a frying pan! They can’t be killed!’

‘I’ll find a way! A witch deals with things!’

‘Hah! I’d like to see you try!’

‘I will!’ shouted Tiffany. It started to rain.

‘Oh? So you know how to attack it, do you?’

‘Don’t be silly! I can’t! It can always keep out of my way! It can even sink into the ground! But it’ll come looking for me, understand? Me, not anyone else! I know it! And this time I’ll be ready!’

‘Will you, indeed?’ said Mistress Weatherwax, folding her arms.

‘Yes!’

‘When?’

‘Now!’

‘No!’

The old witch held up a hand.

‘Peace be on this place,’ she said, quietly. The wind dropped. The rain stopped. ‘No, not yet,’ she went on as peace once again descended. ‘It’s not attackin’ yet. Don’t you think that’s odd? It’d be licking its wounds, if it had a tongue. And you’re not ready yet, whatever you thinks. No, we’ve got somethin’ else to do, haven’t we?’

Tiffany was speechless. The tide of outrage inside her was so hot that it burned her ears. But Mistress Weatherwax was smiling. The two facts did not work well together.

Her first thoughts were: I’ve just had a blazing row with Mistress Weatherwax! They say that if you cut her with a knife she wouldn’t bleed until she wanted to! They say that when some vampires bit her they all started to crave tea and sweet biscuits. She can do anything, be anywhere! And I called her an old woman!

Her Second Thoughts were: Well, she is.

Her Third Thoughts were: Yes, she is Mistress Weatherwax. And she’s keeping you angry. If you’re full of anger, there’s no room left for fear.

‘You hold that anger,’ Mistress Weatherwax said, as if reading all of her mind. ‘Cup it in your heart, remember where it came from, remember the shape of it, save it until you need it. But now the wolf is out there somewhere in the woods, and you need to see to the flock.’

It’s the voice, Tiffany thought. She really does talk to people like Granny Aching talked to sheep, except she hardly cusses at all. But I feel… better.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘And that includes Mr Weavall.’

‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘I know.’