A Hat Full Of Sky

Chapter Fourteen Queen Of The Bees

And, one afternoon about a week later. Tiffany went to see Granny Weatherwax.

It was only fifteen miles as the broomstick flies, and as Tiffany still didn’t like flying a broomstick, Miss Level took her.

It was the invisible part of Miss Level. Tiffany just lay flat on the stick, holding on with arms and legs and knees and ears if possible, and took along a paper bag to be sick into, because no one likes anonymous sick dropping out of the sky. She was also holding a large hessian sack, which she handled with care.

She didn’t open her eyes until the rushing noises had stopped and the sounds around her told her she was probably very close to the ground. In fact Miss Level had been very kind. When she fell off, because of the cramp in her legs, the broomstick was just above some quite thick moss.

‘Thank you,’ said Tiffany as she got up, because it always pays to mind your manners around invisible people.

She had a new dress. It was green, like the last one. The complex world of favours and obligations and gifts that Miss Level lived and moved in had thrown up four yards of nice material (for the trouble-free birth of Miss Quickly’s baby boy) and a few hours’ dressmaking (Mrs Hunter’s bad leg feeling a lot better, thank you). She’d given the black one away. When I’m old I shall wear midnight, she’d decided. But, for now, she’d had enough of darkness.

She looked around at this clearing on the side of a hill, surrounded by oak and sycamore on three sides but open on the downhill side with a wide view of the countryside below. The sycamores were shedding their spinning seeds, which whirled down lazily across a patch of garden. It was unfenced, even though some goats were grazing nearby. If you wondered why it was the goats weren’t eating the garden, it was because you’d forgotten who lived here. There was a well. And, of course, a cottage.

Mrs Earwig would definitely have objected to the cottage. It was out of a storybook. The walls leaned against one another for support, the thatched roof was slipping off like a bad wig, and the chimneys were corkscrewed. If you thought a gingerbread cottage would be too fattening, this was the next worst thing.

In a cottage deep in the forest lived the Wicked Old Witch…

It was a cottage out of the nastier kind of fairy tale.

Granny Weatherwax’s beehives were tucked away down one side of the cottage. Some were the old straw kind, most were patched-up wooden ones. They thundered with activity, even this late in the year.

Tiffany turned aside to look at them, and the bees poured out in a dark stream. They swarmed towards Tiffany, formed a column and—

She laughed. They’d made a witch of bees in front of her, thousands of them all holding station in the air. She raised her right hand. With a rise in the level of buzzing, the bee-witch raised its right hand. She turned around. It turned around, the bees carefully copying every swirl and flutter of her dress, the ones on the very edge buzzing desperately because they had furthest to fly.

She carefully put down the big sack and reached out towards the figure. With another roar of wings it went shapeless for a moment, and then re-formed a little way away, but with a hand outstretched towards her. The bee that was the tip of its forefinger hovered just in front of Tiffany’s fingernail.

‘Shall we dance?’ said Tiffany.

In the clearing full of spinning seeds, she circled the swarm. It kept up pretty well, moving fingertip to buzzing tip, turning when she turned, although there were always a few bees racing to catch up.

Then it raised both its arms and twirled in the opposite direction, the bees in the ‘skirt’ spreading out again as it spun. It was learning.

Tiffany laughed and did the same thing. Swarm and girl whirled across the clearing.

She felt happy and wondered if she’d ever felt this happy before. The gold light, the falling bracts, the dancing bees… it was all one thing. This was the opposite of the dark desert. Here, light was everywhere and filled her up inside. She could feel herself here but see herself from above, twirling with a buzzing shadow that sparkled golden as the light struck the bees. Moments like this paid for it all.

Then the witch made of bees leaned closer to Tiffany, as if staring at her with its thousands of little jewelled eyes. There was a faint piping noise from inside the figure and the bee-witch exploded into a spreading, buzzing cloud of insects which raced away across the clearing and disappeared. The only movement now was the whirring fall of the sycamore seeds.

Tiffany breathed out.

‘Now, some people would have found that scary,’ said a voice behind her.

Tiffany didn’t turn round immediately. First she said, ‘Good afternoon, Granny Weatherwax.’ Then she turned round.

‘Have you ever done this?’ she demanded, still half-drunk with delight.

‘It’s rude to start with questions. You’d better come in and have a cup of tea,’ said Granny Weatherwax.

You’d barely know that anyone lived in the cottage. There were two chairs by the fire, one of them a rocking chair, and by the table were two chairs that didn’t rock but did wobble because of the uneven stone floor. There was a dresser, and a rag-rug in front of the huge hearth. A broomstick leaned against the wall in one corner, next to something mysterious and pointy, under a cloth. There was a very narrow and dark flight of stairs. And that was it. There was nothing shiny, nothing new and nothing unnecessary.

‘To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’ said Granny Weatherwax, taking a sooty black kettle off the fire and filling an equally black teapot.

Tiffany opened the sack she had brought with her. ‘I’ve come to bring you your hat back,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘Have you? And why?’

‘Because it’s your hat,’ said Tiffany, putting it on the table. ‘Thank you for the loan of it, though.’

‘I dare say there’s plenty of young witches who’d give their high teeth for an ol’ hat of mine,’ said Granny, lifting up the battered hat.

‘There are,’ said Tiffany, and did not add ‘and it’s eye teeth, actually’. What she did add was: ‘But I think everyone has to find their own hat. The right hat for them, I mean.’

‘I see you’re now wearing a shop-bought one, then,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘One of them Sky Scrapers. With stars,’ she added, and there was so much acid in the word ‘stars’ that it would’ve melted copper and then dropped through the table and the floor and melted more copper in the cellar below. ‘Think that makes it more magical, do you? Stars?’

‘I… did when I bought it. And it’ll do for now.’

‘Until you find the right hat,’ said Granny Weatherwax.

‘Yes.’

‘Which ain’t mine?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

The old witch walked across the room and tugged the cloth off the thing in the corner. It turned out to be a big wooden spike, just about the size of a pointy hat on a tall stand. A hat was being… constructed on it, with thin strips of willow and pins and stiff black cloth.

‘I make my own,’ she said. ‘Every year. There’s no hat like the hat you make yourself. Take my advice. I stiffens the calico and makes it waterproof with special jollop. It’s amazing what you can put into a hat you make yourself. But you didn’t come to talk about hats.’

Tiffany let the question out at last.

‘Was it real?’

Granny Weatherwax poured the tea, picked up her cup and saucer, then carefully poured some of the tea out of the cup and into the saucer. She held this up and, with care, like someone dealing with an important and delicate task, blew gently on it. She did this slowly and calmly, while Tiffany tried hard to conceal her impatience.

‘The hiver’s not around any more?’ said Granny.

‘No. But—’

‘And how did it all feel? When it was happenin’? Did it feel real?’

‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘It felt more than real.’

‘Well, there you are, then,’ said Granny Weatherwax, taking a sip from the saucer. ‘And the answer is: If it wasn’t real, it wasn’t false.’

‘It was like a dream where you’ve nearly woken up and can control it, you know?’ said Tiffany. ‘If I was careful, it worked. It was like making myself rise up in the air by pulling hard on my bootlaces. It was like telling myself a story—’

Granny nodded. ‘There’s always a story,’ she said. ‘It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.’

‘And what was your plan to beat the hiver?’ said Tiffany. ‘Please? I’ve got to know!’

‘My plan?’ said Granny Weatherwax innocently. ‘My plan was to let you deal with it.’

‘Really? So what would you have done if I’d lost?’

‘The best I can,’ said Granny calmly. ‘I always do.’

‘Would you have killed me if I’d become the hiver again?’

The saucer was steady in the old witch’s hand. She looked reflectively at the tea.

‘I would have spared you if I could,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t have to, right? The Trials was the best place to be. Believe me, witches can act together if they must. It’s harder’n herding cats, but it can be done.’

‘It’s just that I think we… turned it all into a little show,’ said Tiffany.

‘Hah, no. We made it into a big show!’ said Granny Weatherwax with great satisfaction. ‘Thunder and lightning and white horses and wonderful rescues! Good value, eh, for a penny? And you’ll learn, my girl, that a bit of a show every now and again does no harm to your reputation. I daresay Miss Level’s findin’ that out already, now she can juggle balls and raise her hat at the same time! Depend upon what I say!’

She delicately drank her tea out of the saucer, then nodded at the old hat on the table.

‘Your grandmother,’ she said, ‘did she wear a hat?’

‘What? Oh… not usually,’ said Tiffany, still thinking about the big show. ‘She used to wear an old sack as a kind of bonnet when the weather was really bad. She said hats only blow away up on the hill.’

‘She made the sky her hat, then,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘And did she wear a coat?’

‘Hah, all the shepherds used to say that if you saw Granny Aching in a coat it’d mean it was blowing rocks!’ said Tiffany proudly.

Then she made the wind her coat, too,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘It’s a skill. Rain don’t fall on a witch if she doesn’t want it to, although personally I prefer to get wet and be thankful.’

‘Thankful for what?’ said Tiffany.

‘That I’ll get dry later.’ Granny Weatherwax put down the cup and saucer. ‘Child, you’ve come here to learn what’s true and what’s not but there’s little I can teach you that you don’t already know. You just don’t know you know it, and you’ll spend the rest of your life learning what’s already in your bones. And that’s the truth.’

She stared at Tiffany’s hopeful face and sighed.

‘Come outside then,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you lesson one. It’s the only lesson there is. It don’t need writing down in no book with eyes on.’

She led the way to the well in her back garden, looked around on the ground and picked up a stick.

‘Magic wand,’ she said. ‘See?’ A green flame leaped out of it, making Tiffany jump. ‘Now you try.’

It didn’t work for Tiffany, no matter how much she shook it.

‘Of course not,’ said Granny. ‘It’s a stick. Now, maybe I made a flame come out of it, or maybe I made you think it did. That don’t matter. It was me is what I’m sayin’, not the stick. Get your mind right and you can make a stick your wand and the sky your hat and a puddle your magic… your magic… er, what’re them fancy cups called?’

‘Er… goblet,’ said Tiffany.

‘Right. Magic goblet. Things aren’t important. People are.’ Granny Weatherwax looked sidelong at Tiffany. ‘And I could teach you how to run across those hills of yours with the hare, I could teach you how to fly above them with the buzzard. I could tell you the secrets of the bees. I could teach you all this and much more besides if you’d do just one thing, right here and now. One simple thing, easy to do.’

Tiffany nodded, eyes wide.

‘You understand, then, that all the glittery stuff is just toys, and toys can lead you astray?’

‘Yes!’

‘Then take off that shiny horse you wear around your neck, girl, and drop it in the well.’

Obediently, half-hypnotized by the voice, Tiffany reached behind her neck and undid the clasp.

The pieces of the silver horse shone as she held it over the water.

She stared at it as if she was seeing it for the first time. And then…

She tests people, she thought. All the time.

‘Well?’ said the old witch.

‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘I can’t.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’ said Granny sharply.

‘Can’t,’ said Tiffany and stuck out her chin. ‘And won’t!’

She drew her hand back and fastened the necklace again, glaring defiantly at Granny Weatherwax…

The witch smiled. ‘Well done,’ she said quietly. ‘If you don’t know when to be a human being, you don’t know when to be a witch. And if you’re too afraid of goin’ astray, you won’t go anywhere. May I see it, please?’

Tiffany looked into those blue eyes. Then she undid the clasp and handed over the necklace. Granny held it up.

‘Funny, ain’t it, that it seems to gallop when the light hits it,’ said the witch, watching it twist this way and that. ‘Well-made thing. O’course, it’s not what a horse looks like, but it’s certainly what a horse is.’

Tiffany stared at her with her mouth open. For a moment Granny Aching stood there grinning, and then Granny Weatherwax was back. Did she do that, she wondered, or did I do it myself? And do I dare find out?

‘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 sort 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 items 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.