A Hat Full Of Sky

Chapter Ten The Late Bloomer

It was an… interesting day. Everyone in the mountains had heard of Mistress Weatherwax. If you didn’t have respect, she said, you didn’t have anything. Today, she had it all. Some of it even rubbed off on Tiffany.

They were treated like royalty—not the sort who get dragged off to be beheaded or have something nasty done with a red-hot poker, but the other sort, when people walk away dazed, saying, ‘She actually said hello to me, very graciously! I will never wash my hand again!’

Not that many people they dealt with washed their hands at all, Tiffany thought, with the primness of a dairy worker. But people crowded around outside the cottage doors, watching and listening, and people sidled up to Tiffany to say things like, ‘Would she like a cup of tea? I’ve cleaned our cup!’ And in the garden of every cottage they passed, Tiffany noticed, the beehives were suddenly bustling with activity.

She worked away, trying to stay calm, trying to think about what she was doing. You did the doctoring work as neatly as you could, and if it was on something oozy then you just thought about how nice things would be when you’d stopped doing it. She felt Mistress Weatherwax wouldn’t approve of this attitude. But Tiffany didn’t much like hers either. She lied all the—she didn’t tell the truth all the time.

For example, there was the Raddles’ privy. Miss Level had explained carefully to Mr and Mrs Raddle several times that it was far too close to the well, and so the drinking water was full of tiny, tiny creatures that were making their children sick. They’d listened very carefully, every time they heard the lecture, and still they never moved the privy. But Mistress Weatherwax told them it was caused by goblins who were attracted to the smell, and by the time they left that cottage Mr Raddle and three of his friends were already digging a new well the other end of the garden.

‘It really is caused by tiny creatures, you know,’ said Tiffany, who’d once handed over an egg to a travelling teacher so she could line up and look through his ‘**Astounding Mikroscopical Device! A Zoo in Every Drop of Ditchwater!**’ She’d almost collapsed next day from not drinking. Some of those creatures were hairy.

‘Is that so?’ said Mistress Weatherwax sarcastically.

‘Yes. It is. And Miss Level believes in telling them the truth!’

‘Good. She’s a fine, honest woman,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘But what I say is, you have to tell people a story they can understand. Right now I reckon you’d have to change quite a lot of the world, and maybe bang Mr Raddle’s stupid fat head against the wall a few times, before he’d believe that you can be sickened by drinking tiny invisible beasts. And while you’re doing that, those kids of theirs will get sicker. But goblins, now, they makes sense today. A story gets things done. And when I see Miss Tick tomorrow I’ll tell her it’s about time them wandering teachers started coming up here.’

‘All right,’ said Tiffany reluctantly, ‘but you told Mr Umbril the shoemaker that his chest pains will clear up if he walks to the waterfall at Tumble Crag every day for a month and throws three shiny pebbles into the pool for the water sprites! That’s not doctoring!’

‘No, but he thinks it is. The man spends too much time sitting hunched up. A five-mile walk in the fresh air every day for a month will see him as right as rain,’ said Mistress Weatherwax.

‘Oh,’ said Tiffany. ‘Another story?’

‘If you like,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, her eyes twinkling. ‘And you never know, maybe the water sprites will be grateful for the pebbles.’

She glanced sidelong at Tiffany’s expression, and patted her on the shoulder.

‘Never mind, miss,’ she said. ‘Look at it this way. Tomorrow, your job is to change the world into a better place. Today, my job is to see that everyone gets there.’

‘Well, I think—’ Tiffany began, then stopped. She looked up at the line of woods between the small fields of the valleys and the steep meadows of the mountains.

‘It’s still there,’ she said.

‘I know,’ said Mistress Weatherwax.

‘It’s moving around but it’s keeping away from us.’

‘I know,’ said Mistress Weatherwax.

‘What does it think it’s doing?’

‘It’s got a bit of you in it. What do you think it’s doing?’

Tiffany tried to think. Why wouldn’t it attack? Oh, she’d be better prepared this time, but it was strong.

‘Maybe it’s waiting until I’m upset again,’ she said. ‘But I keep having a thought. It makes no sense. I keep thinking about… three wishes.’

‘Wishes for what?’

‘I don’t know. It sounds silly.’

Mistress Weatherwax stopped. ‘No, it’s not,’ she said. ‘It’s a deep part of you trying to send yourself a message. Just remember it. Because now—’

Tiffany sighed. ‘Yes, I know. Mr Weavall.’

No dragon’s cave was ever approached as carefully as the cottage in the overgrown garden.

Tiffany paused at the gate and looked back, but Mistress Weatherwax had diplomatically vanished. Probably she’s found someone to give her a cup of tea and a sweet biscuit, she thought. She lives on them!

She opened the gate and walked up the path.

You couldn’t say: It’s not my fault. You couldn’t say: It’s not my responsibility.

You could say: I will deal with this.

You didn’t have to want to. But you had to do it.

Tiffany took a deep breath and stepped into the dark cottage.

Mr Weavall, in his chair, was just inside the door and fast asleep, showing the world an open mouth full of yellow teeth.

‘Um… hello, Mr Weavall,’ Tiffany quavered, but perhaps not quite loud enough. ‘Just, er, here to see that you, that everything is… is all right…’

There was a snort nonetheless, and he woke, smacking his lips to get the sleep out of his mouth.

‘Oh, ‘tis you,’ he said. ‘Good afternoon to ye.’ He eased himself more upright and started to stare out of the doorway, ignoring her.

Maybe he won’t ask, she thought as she washed up and dusted and plumped the cushions and, not to put too fine a point on it, emptied the commode. But she nearly yelped when the arm shot out and grabbed her wrist and the old man gave her his pleading look.

‘Just check the box, Mary, will you? Before you go? Only I heard clinking noises last night, see. Could be one o’ the sneaky thieves got in.’

‘Yes, Mr Weavall,’ said Tiffany, while she thought: Idon’twanttobehereIdon’twanttobehere!

She pulled out the box. There was no choice.

It felt heavy. She stood up and lifted the lid.

After the creak of the hinges, there was silence.

‘Are you all right, gel?’ said Mr Weavall.

‘Um…’ said Tiffany.

‘It’s all there, ain’t it?’ said the old man anxiously.

Tiffany’s mind was a puddle of goo.

‘Um… it’s all here,’ she managed. ‘Um… and now it’s all gold, Mr Weavall.’

‘Gold? Hah! Don’t you pull my leg, gel. No gold ever came my way!’

Tiffany put the box on the old man’s lap, as gently as she could, and he stared into it.

Tiffany recognized the worn coins. The pictsies ate off them in the mound. There had been pictures on them, but they were too worn to make out now.

But gold was gold, pictures or not.

She turned her head sharply and was certain she saw something small and red-headed vanish into the shadows.

‘Well now,’ said Mr Weavall. ‘Well now.’ And that seemed to exhaust his conversation for a while. Then he said, ‘Far too much money here to pay for a buryin’. I don’t recall savin’ all this. I reckon you could bury a king for this amount of money.’

Tiffany swallowed. She couldn’t leave things like this. She just couldn’t.

‘Mr Weavall, I’ve got something I must tell you,’ she said. And she told him. She told him all of it, not just the good bits. He sat and listened carefully.

‘Well, now, isn’t that interesting,’ he said when she’d finished.

‘Um… I’m sorry,’ said Tiffany. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

‘So what you’re saying, right, is ‘cos that creature made you take my burying money, right, you think these fairy friends o’ yourn filled my ol’ box with gold so’s you wouldn’t get into trouble, right?’

‘I think so,’ said Tiffany.

‘Well, it looks like I should thank you, then,’ said Mr Weavall.

‘What?’

‘Well, it seems to I, if you hadn’t ha’ took the silver and copper, there wouldn’t have been any room for all this gold, right?’ said Mr Weavall. ‘And I shouldn’t reckon that ol’ dead king up on yon hills needs it now.’

‘Yes, but—’

Mr Weavall fumbled in the box and held up a gold coin that would have bought his cottage.

‘A little something for you, then, girl,’ he said. ‘Buy yourself some ribbons or something…’

‘No! I can’t! That wouldn’t be fair!’ Tiffany protested, desperately. This was completely going wrong!

‘Wouldn’t it, now?’ said Mr Weavall, and his bright eyes gave her a long, shrewd look. ‘Well, then, let’s call it payment for this little errand you’re gonna run for I, eh? You’re gonna run up they stairs, which I can’t quite manage any more, and bring down the black suit that’s hanging behind the door, and there’s a clean shirt in the chest at the end of the bed. And you’ll polish my boots and help I up, but I’m thinking I could prob’ly make it down the lane on my own. ‘Cos, y’see, this is far too much money to buy a man’s funeral, but I reckon it’ll do fine to marry him off, so I am proposin’ to propose to the Widow Tussy that she engages in matrimony with I!’

The last sentence took a little working out, and then Tiffany said, ‘You are?’

‘That I am,’ said Mr Weavall, struggling to his feet. ‘She’s a fine woman who bakes a very reasonable steak-and-onion pie and she has all her own teeth. I know that because she showed I. Her youngest son got her a set of fancy store-bought teeth all the way from the big city, and very handsome she looks in ‘em. She was kind enough to loan ‘em to I one day when I had a difficult piece of pork to tackle, and a man doesn’t forget a kindness like that.’

‘Er… you don’t think you ought to think about this, do you?’ said Tiffany.

Mr Weavall laughed. ‘Think? I got no business to be thinking about it, young lady! Who’re you to tell me an old ‘un like I that he ought to be thinking? I’m ninety-one, I am! Got to be up and doing! Besides, I have reason to believe by the twinkle in her eye that the Widow Tussy will not turn up her nose at my suggestion. I’ve seen a fair number of twinkles over the years, and that was a good’un. And I daresay that suddenly having a box of gold will fill in the corners, as my ol’ dad would say.’

It took ten minutes for Mr Weavall to get changed, with a lot of struggling and bad language and no help from Tiffany, who was told to turn her back and put her hands over her ears. Then she had to help him out into the garden, where he threw away one walking stick and waggled a finger at the weeds.

‘And I’ll be chopping down the lot of you tomorrow!’ he shouted triumphantly.

At the garden gate he grasped the post and pulled himself nearly vertical, panting.

‘All right,’ he said, just a little anxiously. ‘It’s now or never. I look OK, does I?’

‘You look fine, Mr Weavall.’

‘Everything clean? Everything done up?’

‘Er… yes,’ said Tiffany.

‘How’s my hair look?’

‘Er… you don’t have any, Mr Weavall,’ she reminded him.

‘Ah, right. Yes, ‘tis true. I’ll have to buy one o’ the whatdyoucallem’s, like a hat made of hair? Have I got enough money for that, d’you think?’

‘A wig? You could buy thousands, Mr Weavall!’

‘Hah! Right.’ His gleaming eyes looked around the garden. ‘Any flowers out? Can’t see too well… Ah… speckatickles, I saw ‘em once, made of glass, makes you see good as new. That’s what I need… have I got enough for speckatickles?’

‘Mr Weavall,’ said Tiffany, ‘you’ve got enough for anything.’

‘Why, bless you!’ said Mr Weavall. ‘But right now I need a bow-kwet of flowers, girl. Can’t go courtin’ without flowers and I can’t see none. Anythin’ left?’

A few roses were hanging on among the weeds and briars in the garden. Tiffany fetched a knife from the kitchen and made them up into a bouquet.

‘Ah, good,’ he said. ‘Late bloomers, just like I!’ He held them tightly in his free hand, then suddenly frowned, fell silent and stood like a statue…

‘I wish my Toby and my Mary was goin’ to be able to come to the weddin’,’ he said quietly. ‘But they’re dead, you know.’

‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘I know, Mr Weavall.’

‘And I could wish that my Nancy was alive, too, although bein’ as I hopes to be marryin’ another lady that ain’t a sensible wish, maybe. Hah! Nearly everyone I knows is dead.’ Mr Weavall stared at the bunch of flowers for a while, and then straightened up again. ‘Still, can’t do nothin’ about that, can we? Not even for a box full of gold!’

‘No, Mr Weavall,” said Tiffany hoarsely.

‘Oh, don’t cry, gel! The sun is shinin’, the birds is singin’ and what’s past can’t be mended, eh?’ said Mr Weavall jovially. ‘And the Widow Tussy is waitin’!’

For a moment he looked panicky, and then he cleared his throat.

‘Don’t smell too bad, do I?’ he said.

‘Er… only of mothballs, Mr Weavall.’

‘Mothballs? Mothballs is OK. Right, then! Time’s a wastin’!’

Using only the one stick, waving his other arm with the flowers in the air to keep his balance, Mr Weavall set off with surprising speed.

‘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 tree line.

‘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 towards 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 made a nasty personal remark. 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.

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 a Feegle 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 that 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 round 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 woman 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, which 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 tree line to get the firewood, and there’ll be a fine half-moon up in twenty minutes. Your friend’s keeping his distance and there 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 any more,’ 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,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, 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 like 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 swivelled 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 ATEN’T

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 find 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.

Why?

She thought, I’m not sure why I know. But I know. It’s keeping away. It knows Mistress Weatherwax is with me.

She thought: How can it know that? It’s not got a mind. It doesn’t know what a Mistress Weatherwax is!

Still thinking, thought her Third Thoughts.

Tiffany slumped against the rock.

Sometimes her head was too… crowded…

And then it was morning, and sunlight, and dew on her hair, and mist coming off the ground like smoke… and an eagle sitting on the rock where the owl had been, eating something furry. She could see every feather on its wing.

It swallowed, glared at Tiffany with its mad bird eyes and flapped away, making the mist swirl.

Beside her, Mistress Weatherwax began to snore again, which Tiffany took to mean that she was in her body. She gave the old woman a nudge, and the sound that had been a regular gnaaaargrgrgrgrg suddenly became blort.

The old woman sat up, coughing, and waved a hand irritably at Tiffany to pass her the tea bottle. She didn’t speak until she’d gulped half of it.

‘Ah, say what you like, but rabbit tastes a lot better cooked,’ she gasped, shoving the cork back in. ‘And without the fur on!’

‘You took—borrowed the eagle?’ said Tiffany.

‘O’course. I couldn’t expect the poor ol’ owl to fly around after daybreak, just to see who’s about. It was hunting voles all night and, believe me, raw rabbit’s better’n voles. Don’t eat voles.’

‘I won’t,’ said Tiffany, and meant it. ‘Mistress Weatherwax, I think I know what the hiver’s doing. It’s thinking.’

‘I thought it had no brains!’

Tiffany let her thoughts speak for themselves.

‘But there’s an echo of me in it, isn’t there? There must be. It has an echo of everyone it’s… been. There must be a bit of me in it. I know it’s out there, and it knows I’m here with you. And it’s keeping away.’

‘Oh? Why’s that, then?’

‘Because it’s frightened of you, I think.’

‘Huh! And why’s that?’

‘Yes,’ said Tiffany simply. ‘It’s because I am. A bit.’

‘Oh dear. Are you?’

‘Yes,’ said Tiffany again. ‘It’s like a dog that’s been beaten but won’t run away. It doesn’t understand what it’s done wrong. But… there’s something about it that… there’s a thought that I’m nearly having…’

Mistress Weatherwax said nothing. Her face went blank.

‘Are you all right?’ said Tiffany.

‘I was just leavin’ you time to have that thought,’ said Mistress Weatherwax.

‘Sorry. It’s gone now. But… we’re thinking about the hiver in the wrong way.’

‘Oh, yes? And why’s that?’

‘Because…’ Tiffany struggled with the idea. ‘I think it’s because we don’t want to think about it the right way. It’s something to do with… the third wish. And I don’t know what that means.’

The witch said, ‘Keep picking at that thought,’ and then looked up and added, ‘We’ve got company.’

It took Tiffany several seconds to spot what Mistress Weatherwax had seen—a shape at the edge of the woods, small and dark. It was coming closer, but rather uncertainly.

It resolved itself into the figure of Petulia, flying slowly and nervously a few feet above the heather. Sometimes she jumped down and wrenched the stick in a slightly different direction.

She got off again when she reached Tiffany and Mistress Weatherwax, grabbed the broom hastily and aimed it at a big rock. It hit it gently and hung there, trying to fly through stone.

‘Um, sorry,’ she panted. ‘But I can’t always stop it, and this is better than having an anchor… Um.’

She started to bob a curtsy to Mistress Weatherwax, remembered she was a witch and tried to turn it into a bow halfway down, which was an event you’d pay money to see. She ended up bent double, and from somewhere in there came the little voice, ‘Um, can someone help, please? I think my Octogram of Trimontane has got caught up on my Pouch of Nine Herbs…’

There was a tricky minute while they untangled her, with Mistress Weatherwax muttering ‘Toys, just toys’ as they unhooked bangles and necklaces.

Petulia stood upright, red in the face. She saw Mistress Weatherwax’s expression, whipped off her pointy hat and held it in front on her. This was a mark of respect, but it did mean that a two-foot, sharp, pointy thing was being aimed at them.

‘Um… I went to see Miss Level and she said you’d come up here after some horrible thing,’ she said. ‘Um… so I thought I’d better see how you were.’

‘Um… that was very kind of you,’ said Tiffany, but her treacherous Second Thoughts thought: And what would you have done if it had attacked us? She had a momentary picture of Petulia standing in front of some horrible raging thing, but it wasn’t as funny as she’d first thought. Petulia would stand in front of it, shaking with terror, her useless amulets clattering, scared almost out of her mind… but not backing away. She’d thought there might be people facing something horrible here, and she’d come anyway.

‘What’s your name, my girl?’ said Mistress Weatherwax.

‘Um, Petulia Gristle, mistress. I’m learning with Gwinifer Blackcap.’

‘Old Mother Blackcap?’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Very sound. A good woman with pigs. You did well to come here.’

Petulia looked nervously at Tiffany. ‘Um, are you all right? Miss Level said you’d been… ill.’

‘I’m much better now, but thank you very much for asking, anyway,’ said Tiffany wretchedly. ‘Look, I’m sorry about—’

‘Well, you were ill,’ said Petulia.

And that was another thing about Petulia. She always wanted to think the best of everybody. This was sort of worrying if you knew that the person she was doing her best to think nice thoughts about was you.

‘Are you going to go back to the cottage before the Trials?’ Petulia went on.

‘Trials?’ said Tiffany, suddenly lost.

‘The Witch Trials,’ said Mistress Weatherwax.

‘Today,’ said Petulia.

‘I’d forgotten all about them!’ said Tiffany.

‘I hadn’t,’ said the old witch calmly. ‘I never miss a Trial. Never missed a Trial in sixty years. Would you do a poor old lady a favour, Miss Gristle, and ride that stick of yours back to Miss Level’s place and tell her that Mistress Weatherwax presents her compliments and intends to head directly to the Trials. Was she well?’

‘Um, she was juggling balls without using her hands!’ said Petulia in wonderment. ‘And, d’you know what? I saw a fairy in her garden! A blue one!’

‘Really?’ said Tiffany, her heart sinking.

‘Yes! It was rather scruffy, though. And when I asked it if it really was a fairy, it said it was… um… “the big stinky horrible spiky iron stinging nettle fairy from the Land o’ Tinkle”, and called me a “scunner”. Do you know what that means?’

Tiffany looked into that round, hopeful face. She opened her mouth to say, ‘It means someone who likes fairies,’ but stopped in time. That just wouldn’t be fair. She sighed.

‘Petulia, you saw a Nac Mac Feegle,’ she said. ‘It is a kind of fairy, but they’re not the sweet kind. I’m sorry. They’re good… well, more or less… but they’re not entirely nice. And “scunner” is a kind of swearword. I don’t think it’s a particularly bad one though.’

Petulia’s expression didn’t change for a while. Then she said: ‘So it was a fairy, then?’

‘Well, yes. Technically.’

The round pink face smiled. ‘Good, I did wonder, because it was, um, you know… having a wee up against one of Miss Level’s garden gnomes?’

‘Definitely a Feegle,’ said Tiffany.

‘Oh well, I suppose the big stinky horrible spiky iron stinging nettle needs a fairy, just like every other plant,’ said Petulia.