A Hat Full Of Sky

Chapter Two Twoshirts and Two Noses

Twoshirts was just a bend in the road, with a name. There was nothing there but an inn for the coaches, a blacksmith’s shop, and a small store with the word SOUVENIRS written optimistically on a scrap of cardboard in the window. And that was it. Around the place, separated by fields and scraps of woodland, were the houses of people for whom Twoshirts was, presumably, the big city. Every world is full of places like Twoshirts. They are places for people to come from, not go to.

It sat and baked silently in the hot afternoon sunlight. Right in the middle of the road an elderly spaniel, mottled brown and white, dozed in the dust.

Twoshirts was bigger than the village back home and Tiffany had never seen souvenirs before. She went into the store and spent half a penny on a small wood carving of two shirts on a washing line, and two postcards entitled ‘View of Twoshirts’ which showed the souvenir shop and what was quite probably the same dog sleeping in the road. The little old lady behind the counter called her ‘young lady’ and said that Twoshirts was very popular later in the year, when people came from up to a mile around for the Cabbage-Macerating Festival.

When Tiffany came out she found Miss Tick standing next to the sleeping dog, frowning back the way they’d come.

‘Is there something the matter?’ said Tiffany.

‘What?’ said Miss Tick, as if she’d forgotten that Tiffany existed. ‘Oh… no. I just… I thought I… look, shall we go and have something to eat?’

It took a while to find someone in the inn, but Miss Tick wandered into the kitchens and found a woman who promised them some scones and a cup of tea. She was actually quite surprised she’d promised that, since she hadn’t intended to, it strictly speaking being her afternoon free until the coach came, but Miss Tick had a way of asking questions that got the answers she wanted.

Miss Tick also asked for a fresh egg, not cooked, in its shell. Witches were also good at asking questions that weren’t followed by the other person saying ‘Why?’

They sat and ate in the sun, on the bench outside the inn. Then Tiffany took out her diary.

She had one in the dairy too, but that was for cheese and butter records. This one was personal. She’d bought it off a pedlar, cheap, because it was last year’s. But, as he said, it had the same number of days.

It also had a lock, a little brass thing on a leather flap. It had its own tiny key. It was the lock that had attracted Tiffany. At a certain age, you see the point of locks.

She wrote down ‘Twoshirts’, and spent some time thinking before adding ‘a bend in the road’.

Miss Tick kept staring at the road.

‘Is there something wrong, Miss Tick?’ Tiffany asked again, looking up.

‘I’m… not sure. Is anyone watching us?’

Tiffany looked around. Twoshirts slept in the heat. There was no one watching.

‘No, Miss Tick.’

The teacher removed her hat and took from inside it a couple of pieces of wood and a reel of black thread. She rolled up her sleeves, looking around quickly in case Twoshirts had sprouted a population, then broke off a length of the thread and picked up the egg.

Egg, thread and fingers blurred for a few seconds and there was the egg, hanging from Miss Tick’s fingers in a neat little black net.

Tiffany was impressed.

But Miss Tick hadn’t finished. She began to draw things from her pockets, and a witch generally has a lot of pockets. There were some beads, a couple of feathers, a glass lens and one or two strips of coloured paper. These all got threaded into the tangle of wood and cotton.

‘What is that?’ said Tiffany.

‘It’s a shamble,’ said Miss Tick, concentrating.

‘Is it magic?’

‘Not exactly. It’s trickery.’

Miss Tick lifted her left hand. Feathers and beads and egg and pocket junk spun in the web of threads.

‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Now let me see what I can see…’

She pushed the fingers of her right hand into the spiderwork of threads and pulled…

Egg and glass and beads and feathers danced through the tangle, and Tiffany was sure that at one point one thread had passed straight through another.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s like Cat’s Cradle!’

‘You’ve played that, have you?’ said Miss Tick vaguely, still concentrating.

‘I can do all the common shapes,’ said Tiffany. ‘The Jewels and The Cradle and The House and The Flock and The Three Old Ladies, One With A Squint, Carrying The Bucket Of Fish To Market When They Meet The Donkey… although you need two people for that one, and I only ever did it once, and Betsy Tupper scratched her nose at the wrong moment and I had to get some scissors to cut her loose…’

Miss Tick’s fingers worked like a loom.

‘Funny it should be a children’s toy now,’ she said. ‘Aha…’ She stared into the complex web she had created.

‘Can you see anything?’ said Tiffany.

‘If I may be allowed to concentrate, child? Thank you…’

Out in the road the sleeping dog woke, yawned and pulled itself to its feet. It ambled over to the bench the two of them were sitting on, gave Tiffany a reproachful look and then curled up by her feet. It smelled of old damp carpets.

‘There’s… something…’ said Miss Tick, very quietly.

Panic gripped Tiffany.

Sunlight reflected off the white dust of the road and the stone wall opposite. Bees hummed between the little yellow flowers that grew on top of the wall. By Tiffany’s feet, the spaniel snorted and farted occasionally.

But it was all wrong. She could feel the pressure bearing down on her, pushing at her, pushing at the landscape, squeezing it under the bright light of day. Miss Tick and her cradle of threads were motionless beside her, frozen in the moment of bright horror.

Only the threads moved, by themselves. The egg danced, the glass glinted, the beads slid and jumped from string to string—

The egg burst.

The coach rolled in.

It arrived dragging the world behind it, in a cloud of dust and noise and hooves. It blotted out the sun. Doors opened. Harness jingled. Horses steamed. The spaniel sat up and wagged its tail hopefully.

The pressure went—no, it fled.

Beside Tiffany, Miss Tick pulled out a handkerchief and started to wipe egg off her dress. The rest of the shamble had disappeared into a pocket with remarkable speed.

She smiled at Tiffany, and kept the smile as she spoke, making herself look slightly mad.

‘Don’t get up, don’t do anything, just be as quiet as a little mouse,’ she said.

Tiffany felt in no state to do anything but sit still; she felt like you feel when you wake up after a nightmare.

The richer passengers got out of the coach, and the poorer ones climbed down from the roof. Grumbling and stamping their feet, trailing road dust behind them, they disappeared.

‘Now,’ said Miss Tick, when the inn door had swung shut, ‘we’re… we’re going to go for a—a stroll. See that little wood up there? That’s where we’re heading. And when Mr Crabber the carter sees your father tomorrow he’ll say he—he dropped you off here just before the coach arrived and—and—and everyone will be happy and no one will have lied. That’s important.’

‘Miss Tick?’ said Tiffany, picking up the suitcase.

‘Yes?’

‘What happened just now?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the witch. ‘Do you feel all right?’

‘Er… yes. You’ve got some yolk on your hat.’ And you’re very nervous, Tiffany thought. That was the most worrying part. ‘I’m sorry about your dress,’ she added.

‘It’s seen a lot worse,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Miss Tick?’ said Tiffany again as they trudged away.

‘Er, yes?’

‘You are very nervous,’ said Tiffany. ‘If you told me why, that means there’s two of us, which is only half the nervousness each.’

Miss Tick sighed. ‘It was probably nothing,’ she said.

‘Miss Tick, the egg exploded!’

‘Yes. Um. A shamble, you see, can be used as a simple magic detector and amplifier. It’s actually very crude, but it’s always useful to make one in times of distress and confusion. I think I… probably didn’t make it right. And sometimes you do get big discharges of random magic’

‘You made it because you were worried,’ said Tiffany.

‘Worried? Certainly not. I am never worried!’ snapped Miss Tick. ‘However, since you raise the subject, I was concerned. Something was making me uneasy. Something close, I think. It was probably nothing. In fact I feel a lot better now we’re leaving.’

But you don’t look it, Tiffany thought. And I was wrong. Two people means twice as much nervousness each.

But she was sure there was nothing magical about Twoshirts. It was just a bend in the road.

* * *

Twenty minutes later the passengers came out to get into the coach. The coachman did notice that the horses were sweating, and wondered why he could hear a swarm of flies when there were no flies to be seen.

The dog that had been lying in the road was found later cowering in one of the inn’s stables, whimpering.

The wood was about half an hour’s walk away, with Miss Tick and Tiffany taking turns to carry the suitcase. It was nothing special, as woods go, being mostly full-grown beech, although once you know that beech drips unpleasant poisons on the ground beneath it to keep it clear it’s not quite the timber you thought it was.

They sat on a log and waited for sunset. Miss Tick told Tiffany about shambles.

‘They’re not magical then?’ said Tiffany.

‘No. They’re something to be magical through.’

‘You mean like spectacles help you see but don’t see for you?’

‘That’s right, well done! Is a telescope magical? Certainly not. It’s just glass in a tube, but with one you could count the dragons on the moon. And… well, have you ever used a bow? No, probably not. But a shamble can act like a bow, too. A bow stores up muscle power as the archer draws it, and sends a heavy arrow much further than the archer could actually throw it. You can make one out of anything, so long as it… looks right.’

‘And then you can tell if magic is happening?’

‘Yes, if that’s what you’re looking for. When you’re good at it you can use it to help you do magic yourself, to really focus on what you have to do. You can use it for protection, like a curse-net, or to send a spell, or… well, it’s like those expensive penknives, you know? The ones with the tiny saw and the scissors and the toothpick? Except that I don’t think any witch has ever used a shamble as a toothpick, ha ha. All young witches should learn how to make a shamble. Miss Level will help you.’

Tiffany looked around the wood. The shadows were growing longer, but they didn’t worry her. Bits of Miss Tick’s teachings floated through her head: Always face what you fear. Have just enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it’s not your fault it’s your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don’t always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don’t wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again.

‘Miss Level has got long grey hair, has she?’ she said.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And she’s quite a tall lady, just a bit fat, and she wears quite a lot of necklaces,’ Tiffany went on. ‘And glasses on a chain. And surprisingly high-heeled boots.’

Miss Tick wasn’t a fool. She looked around the clearing.

‘Where is she?’ she said.

‘Standing by the tree over there,’ said Tiffany.

Even so. Miss Tick had to squint. What Tiffany had noticed was that witches filled space. In a way that was almost impossible to describe, they seemed to be more real than others around them. They just showed up more. But if they didn’t want to be seen, they became amazingly hard to notice. They didn’t hide, they didn’t magically fade away, although it might seem like that, but if you had to describe the room afterwards you’d swear there hadn’t been a witch in it. They just seemed to let themselves get lost.

‘Ah yes, well done,’ said Miss Tick. ‘I was wondering when you’d notice.’

Ha! thought Tiffany.

Miss Level got realer as she walked towards them. She was all in black, but clattered slightly as she walked because of all the black jewellery she wore, and she did have glasses, too, which struck Tiffany as odd for a witch. Miss Level reminded Tiffany of a happy hen. And she had two arms, the normal number.

‘Ah, Miss Tick,’ she said. ‘And you must be Tiffany Aching.’

Tiffany knew enough to bow; witches don’t curtsy (unless they want to embarrass Roland).

‘I’d just like to have a word with Miss Level, Tiffany, if you don’t mind,’ said Miss Tick, meaningfully. ‘Senior witch business.’

Ha! thought Tiffany again, because she liked the sound of it.

‘I’ll just go and have a look at a tree then, shall I?’ she said with what she hoped was withering sarcasm.

‘I should use the bushes if I was you, dear,’ Miss Level called after her. ‘I don’t like stopping once we’re airborne.’

There were some holly bushes that made a decent screen, but after being talked to as though she were ten years old Tiffany would rather have allowed her bladder to explode.

I beat the Queen of the Fairies! she thought as she wandered into the wood. All right, I’m not sure how, because it’s all like a dream now, but I did do it!

She was angry at being sent away like that. A little respect wouldn’t hurt, would it? That’s what the old witch Mistress Weatherwax had said, wasn’t it? ‘I show you respect, as you in turn will respect me.’ Mistress Weatherwax, the witch who all the other witches secretly wanted to be like, had showed her respect, so you’d think the others could make a bit of effort in that department.

She said: ‘See me.’

…and stepped out of herself and walked away towards Miss Tick and Miss Level, in her invisible ghost body. She didn’t dare look down, in case she saw her feet weren’t there. When she turned and looked back at her solid body, she saw it standing demurely by the holly bushes, clearly too far away to be listening to anyone’s conversation.

As Tiffany stealthily drew nearer she heard Miss Tick say:

‘—but quite frighteningly precocious.’

‘Oh dear. I’ve never got on very well with clever people,’ said Miss Level.

‘Oh, she’s a good child at heart,’ said Miss Tick, which annoyed Tiffany rather more than ‘frighteningly precocious’ had.

‘Of course, you know my situation,’ said Miss Level as the invisible Tiffany inched closer.

‘Yes, Miss Level, but your work does you great credit. That’s why Mistress Weatherwax suggested you.’

‘But I am afraid I’m getting a bit absent-minded,’ Miss Level worried. ‘It was terrible flying down here, because like a big silly I left my long-distance spectacles on my other nose…’

Her other nose? thought Tiffany.

Both witches froze, at exactly the same time.

‘I’m without an egg!’ said Miss Tick.

‘I have a beetle in a matchbox against just such an emergency!’ squeaked Miss Level.

Their hands flew to their pockets and pulled out string and feathers and bits of coloured cloth—

They know I’m here! thought Tiffany, and whispered, ‘See me not!’

She blinked and rocked on her heels as she arrived back in the patient little figure by the holly bushes. In the distance, Miss Level was frantically making a shamble and Miss Tick was staring around the wood.

‘Tiffany, come here at once!’ she shouted.

‘Yes, Miss Tick,’ said Tiffany, trotting forward like a good girl.

They spotted me somehow, she thought. Well, they are witches, after all, even if in my opinion they’re not very good ones—

Then the pressure came. It seemed to squash the wood flat and filled it with the horrible feeling that something is standing right behind you. Tiffany sank to her knees with her hands over her ears and a pain like the worst earache squeezing her head.

‘Finished!’ shouted Miss Level. She held up a shamble. It was quite different from Miss Tick’s, and made up of string and crow feathers and glittery black beads and, in the middle, an ordinary matchbox.

Tiffany yelled. The pain was like red-hot needles and her ears filled with the buzz of flies.

The matchbox exploded.

And then there was silence, and birdsong, and nothing to show that anything had happened apart from a few pieces of matchbox spiralling down, along with an iridescent fragment of wing case.

‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Level. ‘He was quite a good beetle, as beetles go…’

‘Tiffany, are you all right?’ said Miss Tick.

Tiffany blinked. The pain had gone as fast as it had arrived, leaving only a burning memory. She scrambled to her feet. ‘I think so, Miss Tick!’

‘Then a word, if you please!’ said Miss Tick, marching over to a tree and standing there looking stern.

‘Yes, Miss Tick?’ said Tiffany.

‘Did you… do anything?’ said Miss Tick. ‘You haven’t been summoning things, have you?’

‘No! Anyway, I don’t know how to!’ said Tiffany.

‘It’s not your little men then, is it?’ said Miss Tick doubtfully.

‘They’re not mine, Miss Tick. And they don’t do that sort of thing. They just shout “Crivens!” and then start kicking people on the ankle. You definitely know it’s them.’

‘Well, whatever it was, it seems to have gone,’ said Miss Level. ‘And we should go, too, otherwise we’ll be flying all night.’ She reached behind another tree and picked up a bundle of firewood. At least, it looked exactly like that, because it was supposed to. ‘My own invention,’ she said, modestly. ‘One never knows down here on the plains, does one? And the handle shoots out by means of this button—Oh, I’m so sorry, it sometimes does that. Did anyone see where it went?’

The handle was located in a bush, and screwed back in.

Tiffany, a girl who listened to what people said, watched Miss Level closely. She definitely had only one nose on her face, and it was sort of uncomfortable to imagine where anyone might have another one and what they’d use it for.

Then Miss Level pulled some rope out of her pocket and passed it to someone who wasn’t there.

That’s what she did, Tiffany was sure. She didn’t drop it, she didn’t throw it, she just held it out and let go, as though she’d thought she was hanging it on an invisible hook.

It landed in a coil on the moss. Miss Level looked down, then saw Tiffany staring at her and laughed nervously.

‘Silly me,’ she said. ‘I thought I was over there! I’ll forget my own head next!’

‘Well… if it’s the one on top of your neck,’ said Tiffany cautiously, still thinking about the other nose, ‘you’ve still got it.’

The old suitcase was roped to the bristle end of the broomstick, which now floated calmly a few feet above the ground.

‘There, that’ll make a nice comfy seat,’ said Miss Level, now the bag of nerves that most people turned into when they felt Tiffany staring at them. ‘If you’d just hang on behind me. Er. That’s what I normally do.’

‘You normally hang on behind you?’ said Tiffany. ‘How can—?’

‘Tiffany, I’ve always encouraged your forthright way of asking questions,’ said Miss Tick loudly. ‘And now, please, I would love to congratulate you on your mastery of silence! Do climb on behind Miss Level, I’m sure she’ll want to leave while you’ve still got some daylight.’

The stick bobbed a little as Miss Level climbed onto it. She patted it, invitingly.

‘You’re not frightened of heights, are you, dear?’ she said as Tiffany climbed on.

‘No,’ said Tiffany.

‘I shall drop in when I come up for the Witch Trials,’ said Miss Tick as Tiffany felt the stick rise gently under her. ‘Take care!’

It turned out that when Miss Level had asked Tiffany if she was scared of heights, it had been the wrong question. Tiffany was not afraid of heights at all. She could walk past tall trees without batting an eyelid. Looking up at huge towering mountains didn’t bother her a bit.

What she was afraid of, although she hadn’t realized it up until this point, was depths. She was afraid of dropping such a long way out of the sky that she’d have time to run out of breath screaming before hitting the rocks so hard that she’d turn to a sort of jelly and all her bones would break into dust. She was, in fact, afraid of the ground. Miss Level should have thought before asking the question.

Tiffany clung to Miss Level’s belt and stared at the cloth of her dress.

‘Have you ever flown before, Tiffany?’ asked the witch as they rose.

‘Gnf!’ squeaked Tiffany.

‘If you like, I could take us round in a little circle,’ said Miss Level. ‘We should have a fine view of your country from up here.’

The air was rushing past Tiffany now. It was a lot colder. She kept her eyes fixed firmly on the cloth.

‘Would you like that?’ said Miss Level, raising her voice as the wind grew louder. ‘It won’t take a moment!’

Tiffany didn’t have time to say no, and in any case was sure she’d be sick if she opened her mouth. The stick lurched under her and the world went sideways.

She didn’t want to look, but remembered that a witch is always inquisitive to the point of nosiness. To stay a witch, she had to look.

She risked a glance and saw the world under her. The red-gold light of sunset was flowing across the land, and down there were the long shadows of Twoshirts and, further away, the woods and villages all the way back to the long curved hill of the Chalk—

–which glowed red, and the white carving of the chalk Horse burned gold like some giant’s pendant. Tiffany stared at it; in the fading light of the afternoon, with the shadows racing away from the sliding sun, it looked alive.

At that moment she wanted to jump off, fly back, get there by closing her eyes and clicking her heels together, do anything–

No! She’d bundled those thoughts away, hadn’t she? She had to learn, and there was no one on the hills to teach her!

But the Chalk was her world. She walked on it every day. She could feel its ancient life under her feet. The land was in her bones, just as Granny Aching had said. It was in her name, too; in the old language of the Nac Mac Feegle her name sounded like ‘Land Under Wave’, and in the eye of her mind she’d walked in those deep prehistoric seas when the Chalk had been formed, in a million-year rain made of the shells of tiny creatures. She trod a land made of life, and breathed it in, and listened to it, and thought its thoughts for it. To see it now, small, alone, in a landscape that stretched to the end of the world, was too much. She had to go back to it–

For a moment the stick wobbled in the air.

No! I know I must go!

It jerked back, and there was a sickening feeling in her stomach as the stick curved away towards the mountains.

‘A little bit of turbulence there, I think,’ said Miss Level over her shoulder. ‘By the way, did Miss Tick warn you about the thick woolly pants, dear?’

Tiffany, still shocked, mumbled something which managed to sound like ‘no’. Miss Tick had mentioned the pants, and how a sensible witch wore at least three pairs to stop ice forming, but she had forgotten about them.

‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Level. ‘Then we’d better hedge-hop.’

The stick dropped like a stone.

Tiffany never forgot that ride, though she often tried to. They flew just above the ground, which was the blur just below her feet. Every time they came to a fence or a hedge Miss Level would jump it with a cry of ‘Here we go!’ or ‘Upsadaisy!’ which was probably meant to make Tiffany feel better. It didn’t. She threw up twice.

Miss Level flew with her head bent so far down as to be almost level with the stick, thus getting the maximum aerodynamic advantage from the pointy hat. It was quite a stubby one, only about nine inches high, rather like a clown hat without the bobbles; Tiffany found out later that this was so that she didn’t have to take it off when entering low-ceilinged cottages.

After a while—an eternity from Tiffany’s point of view—they left the farmlands behind and started to fly through foothills. Before long they’d left trees behind, too, and the stick was flying above the fast white waters of a wide river, studded with boulders. Spray splashed over their boots.

She heard Miss Level yell above the roar of the river and the rush of the wind: ‘Would you mind leaning back? This bit’s a little tricky!’

Tiffany risked peeking over the witch’s shoulder, and gasped.

There was not much water on the Chalk, except for the little streams that people called bournes, which flowed down the valleys in late winter and dried up completely in the summer. Big rivers flowed around it, of course, but they were slow and tame.

The water ahead wasn’t slow and tame. It was vertical.

The river ran up into the dark blue sky, soared up to the early stars. The broom followed it.

Tiffany leaned back and screamed, and went on screaming as the broomstick tilted in the air and climbed up the waterfall. She’d known the word, certainly, but the word hadn’t been so big, so wet, and above all it hadn’t been so loud.

The mist of it drenched her. The noise pounded on her ears. She held onto Miss Level’s belt as they climbed through spray and thunder and felt that she’d slip at any minute—

–and then she was thrown forward, and the noise of the fall died away behind her as the stick, now once again going ‘along’ rather than ‘up’, sped across the surface of a river that, while still leaping and foaming, at least had the decency to do it on the ground.

There was a bridge high above, and walls of cold rock hemmed in the river on either side, but the walls got lower and the river got slower and the air got warmer again until the broomstick skimmed across calm flat water that probably didn’t know what was going to happen to it. Silver fish zigzagged away as they passed over the surface.

After a while Miss Tick sent them curving up across new fields, smaller and greener than the ones at home. There were trees again, and little woods in deep valleys. But the last of the sunlight was draining away and, soon, all there was below was darkness.

Tiffany must have dozed off, clinging onto Miss Level, because she felt herself jerk awake as the broomstick stopped in mid-air. The ground was some way below, but someone had set out a ring of what turned out to be candle ends, burning in old jars.

Delicately, turning slowly, the stick settled down until it stopped just above the grass.

At this point Tiffany’s legs decided to untwist, and she fell off.

‘Up we get!’ said Miss Level cheerfully, picking her up. ‘You did very well!’

‘Sorry about screaming and being sick…’ Tiffany mumbled, tripping over one of the jars and knocking the candle out. She tried to make out anything in the dark, but her head was spinning. ‘Who lit candles, Miss Level?’

‘I did. Let’s get inside, it’s getting chilly—’ Miss Level began.

‘Oh, by magic,’ said Tiffany, still dizzy.

‘Well, it can be done by magic, yes,’ said Miss Level. ‘But I prefer matches, which are of course a lot less effort and quite magical in themselves, when you come to think about it.’ She untied the suitcase from the stick and said: ‘Here we are, then! I do hope you’ll like it here!’

There was that cheerfulness again. Even when she felt sick and dizzy, and quite interested in knowing where the privy was as soon as possible, Tiffany still had ears that worked and a mind that, however much she tried, wouldn’t stop thinking. And it thought: That cheerfulness has got cracks around the edges. Something isn’t right here…