A Hat Full Of Sky

Chapter Three A Single-Minded Lady

There was a cottage, but Tiffany couldn’t see much in the gloom. Apple trees crowded in around it. Something hanging from a branch brushed against her as, walking unsteadily, she followed Miss Level. It swung away with a tinkling sound. There was the sound of rushing water, too, some way away.

Miss Level was opening a door. It led into a small, brightly lit and amazingly tidy kitchen. A fire was burning briskly in the iron stove.

‘Um… I’m supposed to be the apprentice,’ said Tiffany, still groggy from the flight. ‘I’ll make something to drink if you show me where things are—’

‘No!’ Miss Level burst out, raising her hands. The shout seemed to have shocked her, because she was shaking when she lowered them. ‘No—I—I wouldn’t dream of it,’ she said in a more normal voice, trying to smile. ‘You’ve had a long day. I’ll show you to your room and where things are, and I’ll bring you up some stew, and you can be an apprentice tomorrow. No rush.’

Tiffany looked at the bubbling pot on the iron stove, and the loaf on the table. It was fresh baked bread, she could smell that.

The trouble with Tiffany was her Third Thoughts.2 They thought: She lives by herself. Who lit the fire? A bubbling pot needs stirring from time to time. Who stirred it? And someone lit the candles. Who?

‘Is there anyone else staying here, Miss Level?’ she said.

Miss Level looked desperately at the pot and the loaf and back to Tiffany.

‘No, there’s only me,’ she said, and somehow Tiffany knew she was telling the truth. Or a truth, anyway.

‘In the morning?’ said Miss Level, almost pleading. She looked so forlorn that Tiffany actually felt sorry for her.

She smiled. ‘Of course, Miss Level,’ she said.

There was a brief tour by candlelight. There was a privy not far from the cottage; it was a two-holer, which Tiffany thought was a bit odd but, of course, maybe other people had lived here once. There was also a room just for a bath, a terrible waste of space by the standards of Home Farm. It had its own pump and a big boiler for heating the water. This was definitely posh.

Her bedroom was a… nice room. Nice was a very good word. Everything had frills. Anything that could have a cover on it was covered. Some attempt had been made to make the room… jolly, as if being a bedroom was a jolly wonderful thing to be. Tiffany’s room back on the farm had a rag rug on the floor, a water jug and basin on a stand, a big wooden box for clothes, an ancient dolls’ house and some old calico curtains and that was pretty much it. On the farm, bedrooms were for shutting your eyes in.

This room had a chest of drawers. The contents of Tiffany’s suitcase filled one drawer easily.

The bed made no sound when Tiffany sat on it. Her old bed had a mattress so old that it had a comfy hollow in it, and the springs all made different noises; if she couldn’t sleep she could move various parts of her body and play The Bells of St. Ungulants on the springs—cling twing glong, gling ping bloyinnng, drink plang dyonnng, ding ploink.

This room smelled different, too. It smelled of spare rooms, and other people’s soap.

At the bottom of her suitcase was a small box that Mr Block the farm’s carpenter had made for her. He did not go in for delicate work, and it was quite heavy. In it, she kept… keepsakes. There was a piece of chalk with a fossil in it, which was quite rare, and her personal butter stamp (which showed a witch on a broomstick) in case she got a chance to make butter here, and a dobby stone, which was supposed to be lucky because it had a hole in it. (She’d been told that when she was seven, and had picked it up. She couldn’t quite see how the hole made it lucky, but since it had spent a lot of time in her pocket, and then safe and sound in the box, it probably was more fortunate than most stones, which got kicked around and run over by carts and so on.)

There was also a blue-and-yellow wrapper from an old packet of Jolly Sailor tobacco, and a buzzard feather, and an ancient flint arrowhead wrapped up carefully in a piece of sheep’s wool. There were plenty of these on the Chalk. The Nac Mac Feegle used them for spear points.

She lined these up neatly on the top of the chest of drawers, alongside her diary, but they didn’t make the place look more homely. They just looked lonely.

Tiffany picked up the old wrapper and the sheep’s wool and sniffed them. They weren’t quite the smell of the shepherding hut, but they were close enough to it to bring tears to her eyes.

She had never spent a night away from the Chalk before. She knew the word ‘homesickness’ and wondered whether this cold, thin feeling growing inside her was what it felt like—

Someone knocked at the door.

‘It’s me,’ said a muffled voice.

Tiffany jumped off the bed and opened the door.

Miss Level came in with a tray that held a bowl of beef stew and some bread. She put it down on the little table by the bed.

‘If you put it outside the door when you’re finished, I’ll take it down later,’ she said.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Tiffany.

Miss Level paused at the door. ‘It’s going to be so nice having someone to talk to, apart from myself,’ she said. ‘I do hope you won’t want to leave, Tiffany.’

Tiffany gave her a happy little smile, then waited until the door had shut and she’d heard Miss Level’s footsteps go downstairs before tiptoeing to the window and checking there were no bars in it.

There had been something scary about Miss Level’s expression. It was sort of hungry and hopeful and pleading and frightened, all at once.

Tiffany also checked that she could bolt the bedroom door on the inside.

The beef stew tasted, indeed, just like beef stew and not, just to take an example completely and totally at random, stew made out of the last poor girl who’d worked here.

To be a witch, you have to have a very good imagination. Just now, Tiffany was wishing that hers wasn’t quite so good. But Mistress Weatherwax and Miss Tick wouldn’t have let her come here if it was dangerous, would they? Well, would they?

They might. They just might. Witches didn’t believe in making things too easy. They assumed you used your brains. If you didn’t use your brains, you had no business being a witch. The world doesn’t make things easy, they’d say. Learn how to learn fast.

But… they’d give her a chance, wouldn’t they?

Of course they would.

Probably.

She’d nearly finished the not-made-of-people-at-all-honestly stew when something tried to take the bowl out of her hand. It was the gentlest of tugs, and when she automatically pulled it back, the tugging stopped immediately.

O-K, she thought. Another strange thing. Well, this is a witch’s cottage.

Something pulled at the spoon but, again, stopped as soon as she tugged back.

Tiffany put the empty bowl and spoon back on the tray.

‘All right,’ she said, hoping she sounded not scared at all. ‘I’ve finished.’

The tray rose into the air and drifted gently towards the door where it landed with a faint tinkle.

Up on the door, the bolt slid back.

The door opened.

The tray rose up and sailed through the doorway.

The door shut.

The bolt slid across.

Tiffany heard the rattle of the spoon as, somewhere on the dark landing, the tray moved on.

It seemed to Tiffany that it was vitally important that she thought before doing anything. And so she thought: It would be stupid to run around screaming because your tray had been taken away. After all, whatever had done it had even had the decency to bolt the door after itself, which meant that it respected her privacy, even while it ignored it.

She cleaned her teeth at the washstand, got into her nightgown and slid into the bed. She blew out the candle.

After a moment she got up, relit the candle, and with some effort dragged the chest of drawers in front of the door. She wasn’t quite certain why, but she felt better for doing it.

She lay back in the dark again.

Tiffany was used to sleeping while, outside on the downland, sheep baa’d and sheep bells occasionally went tonk.

Up here, there were no sheep to baa and no bells to tonk, and every time one didn’t, she woke up thinking, What was that?

But she did get to sleep eventually, because she remembered waking up in the middle of the night to hear the chest of drawers very slowly slide back to its original position.

Tiffany woke up, still alive and not chopped up, when the dawn was just turning grey. Unfamiliar birds were singing.

There were no sounds in the cottage, and she thought: I’m the apprentice, aren’t I? I’m the one who should be cleaning up and getting the fire lit. I know how this is supposed to go.

She sat up and looked around the room.

Her old clothes had been neatly folded on top of the chest of drawers. The fossil and the lucky stone and the other things had gone, and it was only after a frantic search that she found them back in the box in her suitcase.

‘Now, look,’ she said to the room in general. ‘I am a hag, you know. If there are any Nac Mac Feegle here, step out this minute!’

Nothing happened. She hadn’t expected anything to happen. The Nac Mac Feegle weren’t particularly interested in tidying things up, anyway.

As an experiment she took the candlestick off the bedside table, put it on the chest of drawers and stood back. More nothing happened.

She turned to look out of the window and, as she did so, there was a faint blint noise.

When she spun round, the candlestick was back on the table.

Well… today was going to be a day when she got answers. Tiffany enjoyed the slightly angry feeling. It stopped her thinking about how much she wanted to go home.

She went to put her dress on and realized that there was something soft yet crackly in a pocket.

Oh, how could she have forgotten? But it had been a busy day, a very busy day, and maybe she’d wanted to forget, anyway.

She pulled out Roland’s present and opened the white tissue paper carefully.

It was a necklace.

It was the Horse.

Tiffany stared at it.

Not what a horse looks like, but what a horse be… It had been carved in the turf back before history began, by people who had managed to convey in a few flowing lines everything a horse was: strength, grace, beauty and speed, straining to break free of the hill.

And now someone—someone clever and, therefore, probably also someone expensive—had made it out of silver. It was flat, just like it was on the hillside and, just like the Horse on the hillside, some parts of it were not joined to the rest of the body. The craftsman, though, had joined these carefully together with tiny silver chain, so that when Tiffany held it up in astonishment it was all there, moving-while-standing-still in the morning light.

She had to put it on. And… there was no mirror, not even a tiny hand one. Oh, well…

‘See me,’ said Tiffany.

And far away, down on the plains, something that had lost the trail awoke. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the mist on the fields parted as something invisible started to move, making a noise like a swarm of flies…

Tiffany shut her eyes, took a couple of small steps sideways, a few steps forward, turned round and carefully opened her eyes again. There she stood, in front of her, as still as a picture. The Horse looked very well on the new dress, silver against green.

She wondered how much it must have cost Roland. She wondered why.

‘See me not,’ she said. Slowly she took the necklace off, wrapped it up again in its tissue paper and put it in the box with the other things from home. Then she found one of the postcards from Twoshirts, and a pencil, and with care and attention, wrote Roland a short thank-you note. After a flash of guilt she carefully used the other postcard to tell her parents that she was completely still alive.

Then, thoughtfully, she went downstairs.

It had been dark last night, so she hadn’t noticed the posters stuck up all down the stairs. They were from circuses, and were covered with clowns and animals and that old-fashioned poster lettering where no two lines of type are the same.

They said things like:

And so it went on, right down to tiny print. They were strange, bright things to find in a little cottage in the woods.

She found her way into the kitchen. It was cold and quiet, except for the ticking of a clock on the wall. Both the hands had fallen off the clock face, and lay at the bottom of the glass cover, so while the clock was still measuring time it wasn’t inclined to tell anyone about it.

As kitchens went, it was very tidy. In the cupboard drawer beside the sink, forks, spoons and knives were all in neat sections, which was a bit worrying. Every kitchen drawer Tiffany had ever seen might have been meant to be neat but over the years had been crammed with things that didn’t quite fit, like big ladles and bent bottle-openers, which meant that they always stuck unless you knew the trick of opening them.

Experimentally she took a spoon out of the spoon section, dropped it amongst the forks and shut the drawer. Then she turned her back.

There was a sliding noise and a tinkle exactly like the tinkle a spoon makes when it’s put back amongst the other spoons, who have missed it and are anxious to hear its tales of life amongst the frighteningly pointy people.

This time she put a knife in with the forks, shut the drawer—and leaned on it.

Nothing happened for a while, and then she heard the cutlery rattling. The noise got louder. The drawer began to shake. The whole sink began to tremble—

‘All right,’ said Tiffany, jumping back. ‘Have it your way!’

The drawer burst open, the knife jumped from section to section like a fish and the drawer slammed back.

Silence.

‘Who are you?’ said Tiffany. No one replied. But she didn’t like the feeling in the air. Someone was upset with her now. It had been a silly trick, anyway.

She went out into the garden, quickly. The rushing noise she had heard last night had been made by a waterfall not far from the cottage. A little water-wheel pumped water into a big stone cistern, and there was a pipe that led into the house.

The garden was full of ornaments. They were rather sad, cheap ones—bunny rabbits with mad grins, pottery deer with big eyes, gnomes with pointy red hats and expressions that suggested they were on bad medication.

Things hung from the apple trees or were tied to posts all around the place. There were some dreamcatchers and curse-nets, which she sometimes saw hanging up outside cottages at home. Other things looked like big shambles, spinning and tinkling gently. Some… well, one looked like a bird made out of old brushes, but most looked like piles of junk. Odd junk, though. It seemed to Tiffany that some of it moved slightly as she went past.

When she went back into the cottage, Miss Level was sitting at the kitchen table.

So was Miss Level. There were, in fact, two of her.

‘Sorry,’ said the Miss Level on the right. ‘I thought it was best to get it over with right now.’

The two women were exactly alike. ‘Oh, I see,’ said Tiffany. ‘You’re twins.’

‘No,’ said the Miss Level on the left, ‘I’m not. This might be a little difficult—’

‘—for you to understand,’ said the other Miss Level. ‘Let me see, now. You know—’

‘—how twins are sometimes said to be able to share thoughts and feelings?’ said the first Miss Level.

Tiffany nodded.

‘Well,’ said the second Miss Level, ‘I’m a bit more complicated than that, I suppose, because—’

‘—I’m one person with two bodies,’ said the first Miss Level, and now they spoke like players in a tennis match, slamming the words back and forth.

‘I wanted to break this to you—’

‘—gently, because some people get upset by the—’

‘—idea and find it creepy or—’

‘—just plain—’

‘—weird.’

The two bodies stopped.

‘Sorry about that last sentence,’ said the Miss Level on the left. ‘I only do that when I’m really nervous.’

‘Er, do you mean that you both—’ Tiffany began, but the Miss Level on the right said quickly, There is no both. There’s just me, do you understand? I know it’s hard. But I have a right right hand and a right left hand and a left right hand and a left left hand. It’s all me. I can go shopping and stay home at the same time, Tiffany. If it helps, think of me as one—’

‘—person with four arms and—’

‘—four legs and—’

‘—four eyes.’

All four of those eyes now watched Tiffany nervously.

‘And two noses,’ said Tiffany.

‘That’s right. You’ve got it. My right body is slightly clumsier than my left body, but I have better eyesight in my right pair of eyes. I’m human, just like you, except that there’s more of me.’

‘But one of you—that is, one half of you—came all the way to Twoshirts for me,’ said Tiffany.

‘Oh yes, I can split up like that,’ said Miss Level. ‘I’m quite good at it. But if there’s a gap of more than twenty miles or so, I get rather clumsy. And now a cup of tea would do us both good, I think.’

Before Tiffany could move both the Miss Levels stood up and crossed the kitchen.

Tiffany watched one person make a cup of tea using four arms.

There are quite a few things that need to be done to make a cup of tea and Miss Level did them all at once. The bodies stood side by side, passing things from hand to hand to hand, moving kettle and cups and spoon in a sort of ballet.

‘When I was child they thought I was twins,’ she said over one of her shoulders. ‘And then… they thought I was evil,’ she said over another shoulder.

‘Are you?’ said Tiffany.

Both of Miss Level turned round, looking shocked.

‘What kind of question is that to ask anyone?’ she said.

‘Um… the obvious one?’ said Tiffany. ‘I mean, if they said “Yes I am! Mwahahaha!”, that would save a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it?’

Four eyes narrowed.

‘Mistress Weatherwax was right,’ said Miss Level. ‘She said you were a witch to your boots.’

Inside, Tiffany beamed with pride.

‘Well, the thing about the obvious,’ said Miss Level, ‘is that it so often isn’t… Did Mistress Weatherwax really take off her hat to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘One day perhaps you’ll know how much honour she did you,’ said Miss Level. ‘Anyway… no, I’m not evil. But I nearly became evil, I think. Mother died not long after I was born, my father was at sea and never came back—’

‘Worse things happen at sea,’ said Tiffany. It was something Granny Aching had told her.

‘Yes, right, and probably they did, or possibly he never wanted to come back in any case,’ said Miss Level dryly. ‘And I was put in a charity home, bad food, horrible teachers, blah, blah, and I fell into the worst company possible, which was my own. It’s amazing the tricks you can get up to when you’ve got two bodies. Of course, everyone thought I was twins. In the end I ran away to join the circus. Me! Can you imagine that?’

‘Topsy and Tipsy, The Astounding Mind-Reading Act?’ said Tiffany.

Miss Level stood stock still, her mouth open.

‘It was on the posters over the stairs,’ Tiffany added.

Now Miss Level relaxed.

‘Oh, yes. Of course. Very… quick of you, Tiffany. Yes. You do notice things, don’t you…’

‘I know I wouldn’t pay money to see the egress,’ said Tiffany. ‘It just means “the way out”.’3

‘Clever!’ said Miss Level. ‘Monty put that on a sign to keep people moving though the Believe-It-or-Not tent. “This way to the Egress!” Of course, people thought it was a female eagle or something, so Monty had a big man with a dictionary outside to show them they got exactly what they paid for! Have you ever been to a circus?’

‘Once,’ Tiffany admitted. ‘It hadn’t been much fun. Things that try too hard to be funny often aren’t. There had been a moth-eaten lion with practically no teeth, a tight-rope walker who was never more than a few feet above the ground, and a knife-thrower who threw a lot of knives at an elderly woman in pink tights on a big spinning wooden disc and completely failed to hit her every time. The only real amusement was afterwards, when a cart ran over the clown.’

‘My circus was a lot bigger,’ said Miss Level when Tiffany mentioned this. ‘Although as I recall our knife-thrower was also very bad at aiming. We had elephants and camels and a lion so fierce it bit a man’s arm nearly off.’

Tiffany had to admit that this sounded a lot more entertaining.

‘And what did you do?’ she said.

‘Well, I just bandaged him up while I shoo’d the lion off him—’

‘Yes, Miss Level, but I meant in the circus. Just reading your own mind?’

Miss Level beamed at Tiffany. ‘That, yes, and nearly everything else, too,’ she said. ‘With different wigs on I was the Stupendous Bohunkus Sisters. I juggled plates, you know, and wore costumes covered in sequins. And I helped with the high wire act. Not walking the wire, of course, but generally smiling and glittering at the audience. Everyone assumed I was twins, and circus people don’t ask too many personal questions in any case. And then what with one thing and another, this and that… I came up here and became a witch.’

Both of Miss Level watched Tiffany carefully.

‘That was quite a long sentence, that last sentence,’ said Tiffany.

‘Yes, it was, wasn’t it,’ said Miss Level. ‘I can’t tell you everything. Do you still want to stay? The last three girls didn’t. Some people find me slightly… odd.’

‘Um… I’ll stay,’ said Tiffany, slowly. ‘The thing that moves things about is a bit strange, though.’

Miss Level looked surprised, and then said, ‘Oh, do you mean Oswald?’

‘There’s an invisible man called Oswald who can get into my bedroom?’ said Tiffany, horrified.

‘Oh, no. That’s just a name. Oswald isn’t a man, he’s an ondageist. Have you heard of poltergeists?’

‘Er… invisible spirits that throw things around?’

‘Good,’ said Miss Level. ‘Well, an ondageist is the opposite. They’re obsessive about tidiness. He’s quite handy around the house but he’s absolutely dreadful if he’s in the kitchen when I’m cooking. He keeps putting things away. I think it makes him happy. Sorry, I should have warned you, but he normally hides if anyone comes to the cottage. He’s shy.’

‘And he’s a man? I mean, a male spirit?’

‘How would you tell? He’s got no body and he doesn’t speak. I just called him Oswald because I always picture him as a worried little man with a dustpan and brush.’ The left Miss Level giggled when the right Miss Level said this. The effect was odd and, if you thought that way, also creepy.

‘Well, we are getting on well,’ said the right Miss Level nervously. ‘Is there anything more you want to know, Tiffany?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Tiffany. ‘What do you want me to do? What do you do?’

And mostly, it turned out, what Miss Level did was chores. Endless chores. You could look in vain for much broomstick tuition, spelling lessons or pointy-hat management. They were, mostly, the kind of chores that are just… chores.

There was a small flock of goats, technically led by Stinky Sam who had a shed of his own and was kept on a chain, but really led by Black Meg, the senior nanny, who patiently allowed Tiffany to milk her and then, carefully and deliberately, put a hoof in the milk bucket. That’s a goat’s idea of getting to know you. A goat is a worrying thing if you’re used to sheep, because a goat is a sheep with brains. But Tiffany had met goats before, because a few people in the village kept them for their milk, which was very nourishing. And she knew that with goats you had to use persykology.4 If you got excited, and shouted, and hit them (hurting your hand, because it’s like slapping a sack full of coat hangers) then they had Won and sniggered at you in goat language, which is almost all sniggering anyway.

By day two, Tiffany learned that the thing to do was reach out and grab Black Meg’s hind leg just as she lifted it up to kick the bucket, and lift it up further. That made her unbalanced and nervous and the other goats sniggered at her and Tiffany had Won.

Next there were the bees. Miss Level kept a dozen hives, for the wax as much as the honey, in a little clearing that was loud with buzzing. She made Tiffany wear a veil and gloves before she opened a hive. She wore some, too.

‘Of course,’ she observed, ‘if you are careful and sober and well centred in your life the bees won’t sting. Unfortunately, not all the bees have heard about this theory. Good morning, Hive Three, this is Tiffany, she will be staying with us for a while…’

Tiffany half expected the whole hive to pipe up, in some horrible high-pitched buzz, ‘Good morning, Tiffany!’ It didn’t.

‘Why did you tell them that?’ she asked.

‘Oh, you have to talk to your bees,’ said Miss Level. ‘It’s very bad luck not to. I generally have a little chat with them most evenings. News and gossip, that sort of thing. Every beekeeper knows about “Telling the Bees”.’

‘And who do the bees tell?’ asked Tiffany.

Both of Miss Level smiled at her.

‘Other bees, I suppose,’ she said.

‘So… if you knew how to listen to the bees, you’d know everything that was going on, yes?’ Tiffany persisted.

‘You know, it’s funny you should say that,’ said Miss Level. ‘There have been a few rumours… But you’d have to learn to think like a swarm of bees. One mind with thousands of little bodies. Much too hard to do, even for me.’ She exchanged a thoughtful glance with herself. ‘Maybe not impossible, though.’

Then there were the herbs. The cottage had a big herb garden, although it contained very little that you’d stuff a turkey with, and at this time of year there was still a lot of work to be done collecting and drying, especially the ones with important roots. Tiffany quite enjoyed that. Miss Level was big on herbs.

There is something called the Doctrine of Signatures. It works like this: when the Creator of the Universe made helpful plants for the use of people, he (or in some versions, she) put little clues on them to give people hints. A plant useful for toothache would look like teeth, one to cure earache would look like an ear, one good for nose problems would drip green goo and so on. Many people believed this.

You had to use a certain amount of imagination to be good at it (but not much in the case of Nose Dropwort) and in Tiffany’s world the Creator had got a little more… creative. Some plants had writing on them, if you knew where to look. It was often hard to find and usually difficult to read, because plants can’t spell. Most people didn’t even know about it and just used the traditional method of finding out whether plants were poisonous or useful by testing them on some elderly aunt they didn’t need, but Miss Level was pioneering new techniques that she hoped would mean life would be better for everyone (and, in the case of the aunts, often longer, too).

‘This one is False Gentian,’ she told Tiffany when they were in the long, cool workroom behind the cottage. She was holding up a weed triumphantly. ‘Everyone thinks it’s another toothache cure, but just look at the cut root by stored moonlight, using my blue magnifying glass.’

Tiffany tried it, and read: ‘GoOD F4r Colds May cors drowsniss Do nOt oprate heavE mashinry?’

‘Terrible spelling, but not bad for a daisy,’ said Miss Level.

‘You mean plants really tell you how to use them?’ said Tiffany.

‘Well, not all of them, and you have to know where to look,’ said Miss Level. ‘Look at this, for example, on the common walnut. You have to use the green magnifying glass by the light of a taper made from red cotton, thus…’

Tiffany squinted. The letters were small and hard to read.

‘ “May contain Nut”?’ she ventured. ‘But it’s a nutshell. Of course it’ll contain a nut. Er… won’t it?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Miss Level. ‘It may, for example, contain an exquisite miniature scene wrought from gold and many coloured precious stones depicting a strange and interesting temple set in a far-off land. Well, it might,’ she added, catching Tiffany’s expression. ‘There’s no actual law against it. As such. The world is full of surprises.’

That night Tiffany had a lot more to put in her diary. She kept it on top of her chest of drawers with a large stone on it. Oswald seemed to get the message about this, but he had started to polish the stone.

And pull back, and rise above the cottage, and fly the eye across the night-time…

Miles away, pass invisibly across something that is itself invisible, but which buzzes like a swarm of flies as it drags itself over the ground…

Continue, the roads and towns and trees rushing behind you with zip-zip noises, until you come to the big city and, near the centre of the city, the high old tower, and beneath the tower the ancient magical university, and in the university the library, and in the library the bookshelves, and… the journey has hardly begun.

Bookshelves stream past. The books are on chains. Some snap at you as you pass.

And here is the section of the more dangerous books, the ones that are kept locked in cages or in vats of iced water or simply clamped between lead plates.

But here is a book, faintly transparent and glowing with thaumic radiation, under a glass dome. Young wizards about to engage in research are encouraged to go and read it.

The title is Hivers: A Dissertation Upon a Device of Amazing Cunning by Sensibility Bustle, D.M. Phil., B.El L., Patricius Professor of Magic. Most of the hand-written book is about how to construct a large and powerful magical apparatus to capture a hiver without harm to the user, but on the very last page Dr Bustle writes, or wrote:

According to the ancient and famous volume Res Centum et Una Quas Magus Facere Potest5 hivers are a type of demon (indeed, Professor Poledread classifies them as such in I Spy Demons, and Cuvee gives them a section under ‘wandering spirits’ in LIBER IMMAKIS MONSTRORUMS.6 However, ancient texts discovered in the Cave of Jars by the ill-fated First Expedition to the Loko Region give quite a different story, which bears out my own not inconsiderable research.

Hivers were formed in the first seconds of Creation. They are not alive but they have, as it were, the shape of life. They have no body, brain or thoughts of their own and a naked hiver is a sluggish thing indeed, tumbling gently through the endless night between the worlds. According to Poledread, most end up at the bottom of deep seas, or in the bellies of volcanoes, or drifting through the hearts of stars. Poledread was a very inferior thinker compared to myself, but in this case he is right.

Yet a hiver does have the ability to fear and to crave. We cannot guess what frightens a hiver, but they seem to take refuge in bodies that have power of some sort—great strength, great intellect, great prowess with magic. In this sense they are like the common hermit elephant of Howondaland, Elephantus Solitarius, that will always seek the strongest mud hut as its shell.

There is no doubt in my mind that hivers have advanced the cause of life. Why did fish crawl out of the sea? Why did humanity grasp such a dangerous thing as fire? Hivers, I believe, have been behind this, firing outstanding creatures of various species with the flame of necessary ambition which drove them onwards and upwards! What is it that a hiver seeks? What is it that drives them forward? What is it they want? This I shall find out!

Oh, lesser wizards warn us that a hiver distorts the mind of its host, curdling it and inevitably causing an early death through brain fever. I say, Poppycock! People have always been afraid of what they do not understand!

But I have understanding!!

This morning, at two o’clock, I captured a hiver with my device! And now it is locked inside my head. I can sense its memories, the memories of every creature it has inhabited. Yet, because of my superior intellect, I control the hiver. It does not control me. I do not feel that it has changed me in any way. My mind is as extraordinarily powerful as it always has been!!

At this point the writing is smudgy, apparently because Bustle was beginning to dribble.

Oh, how they have held me back over the years, those worms and cravens that have through sheer luck been allowed to call themselves my superiors! They laughed at me! BUT THEY ARE NOT LAUGHING NOW!!! Even those who called themselves my friends, OH YES, they did nothing but hinder me. What about the warnings? they said. Why did the jar you found the plans in have the words ‘Do Not Open in Any Circumstances!’ engraved in fifteen ancient languages on the lid? they said. Cowards! So-called ‘chums’! Creatures inhabited by a hiver become paranoid and insane, they said! Hivers cannot be controlled, they squeaked!! DO ANY OF US BELIEVE THIS FOR ONE MINUTE??? Oh, what glories AWAIT!!! Now I have cleansed my life of such worthlessness!!! And as for those even now having the DISRESPECT YES DISRESPECT to hammer on my door because of what I did to the so-called Archchancellor and the College Council… HOW DARE THEY JUDGE ME!!!!! Like all insects they have NO CONCEPT OF GREATNESS!!!!! I WILL SHOW THEM!!!!! But… I insoleps… blit!!!!! hammeringggg dfgujf blort…

…And there the writing ends. On a little card beside the book some wizard of former times has written: All that could be found of Professor Bustle was buried in a jar in the old Rose Garden. We advise all research students to spend some time there, and reflect upon the manner of his death.

The moon was on the way to being full. A gibbous moon, it’s called. It’s one of the duller phases of the moon and seldom gets illustrated. The full moon and the crescent moon get all the publicity.

Rob Anybody sat alone on the mound, just outside the fake rabbit hole, staring at the distant mountains where the snow on the peaks gleamed in the moonlight.

A hand touched him lightly on the shoulder.

‘ ‘Tis not like ye to let someone creep up on ye, Rob Anybody,’ said Jeannie, sitting down beside him.

Rob Anybody sighed.

‘Daft Wullie was telling me ye havenae been eatin’ your meals,’ said Jeannie, carefully.

Rob Anybody sighed.

‘And Big Yan said when ye wuz out huntin’ today ye let a fox go past wi’out gieing it a good kickin’?’

Rob sighed again.

There was a faint pop followed by a glugging noise. Jeannie held out a tiny wooden cup. In her other hand was a small leather bottle.

Fumes from the cup wavered in the air.

‘This is the last o’ the Special Sheep Liniment your big wee hag gave us at our wedding,’ said Jeannie. ‘I put it safely by for emergencies.’

‘She’s no’ my big wee hag, Jeannie,’ said Rob, without looking at the cup. ‘She’s oor big wee hag. An’ I’ll tell ye, Jeannie, she has it in her tae be the hag o’ hags. There’s power in her she doesnae dream of. But the hiver smells it.’

‘Aye, well, a drink’s a drink whomsoever ye call her,’ said Jeannie, soothingly. She waved the cup under Rob’s nose.

He sighed, and looked away.

Jeannie stood up quickly. ‘Wullie! Big Yan! Come quick!’ she yelled. ‘He willnae tak’ a drink! I think he’s deid!’

‘Ach, this is no’ the time for strong licker,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘My heart is heavy, wumman.’

‘Quickly now!’ Jeannie shouted down the hole… ‘He’s deid and still talkin’!’

‘She’s the hag o’ these hills,’ said Rob, ignoring her. ‘Just like her granny. She tells the hills what they are, every day. She has them in her bones. She holds ‘em in her heart. Wi’out her, I dinnae like tae think o’ the future.’

The other Feegles had come scurrying out of the hole and were looking uncertainly at Jeannie.

‘Is somethin’ wrong?’ said Daft Wullie.

‘Aye!’ snapped the kelda. ‘Rob willnae tak’ a drink o’ Special Sheep Liniment!’

Wullie’s little face screwed up in instant grief.

‘Ach, the Big Man’s deid!’ he sobbed. ‘Oh waily waily waily—’

‘Will ye hush yer gob, ye big mudlin!’ shouted Rob Anybody, standing up. ‘I am no’ deid! I’m trying to have a moment o’ existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it’s a puir lookout if a man cannae feel the chilly winds o’ Fate lashing aroound his nethers wi’out folks telling him he’s deid, eh?’

‘Ach, and I see ye’ve been talking to the toad again, Rob,’ said Big Yan. ‘He’s the only one arroond here that used them lang words that tak’ all day to walk the length of…’ He turned to Jeannie. ‘It’s a bad case o’ the thinkin’ he’s caught, missus. When a man starts messin’ wi’ the readin’ and the writin’ then he’ll come doon with a dose o’ the thinkin’ soon enough. I’ll fetch some o’ the lads and we’ll hold his heid under water until he stops doin’ it, ‘tis the only cure. It can kill a man, the thinkin’.’

‘I’ll wallop ye and ten like ye!’ yelled Rob Anybody in Big Yan’s face, raising his fists. ‘I’m the Big Man in this clan and—’

‘And I am the Kelda,’ said their kelda, and one of the hiddlins of keldaring is to use your voice like that: hard, cold, sharp, cutting the air like a dagger of ice. ‘And I tell you men to go back doon the hole and dinnae show you faces back up here until I say. Not you, Rob Anybody Feegle! You stay here until I tell ye!’

‘Oh waily waily—’ Daft Wullie began, but Big Yan clapped a hand over his mouth and dragged him away quickly.

When they were alone, and scraps of cloud were beginning to mass around the moon, Rob Anybody hung his head.

‘I willnae go, Jeannie, if you say,’ he said.

‘Ach, Rob, Rob,’ said Jeannie, beginning to cry. ‘Ye dinnae understand. I want no harm to come to the big wee girl, truly I don’t. But I cannae face thinkin’ o’ you out there fightin’ this monster that cannae be killed! It’s you I’m worried aboot, can ye no’ see?’

Rob put his arm around her. ‘Aye, I see,’ he said.

‘I’m your wife, Rob, askin’ ye not to go!’

‘Aye, aye. I’ll stay,’ said Rob.

Jeannie looked up to him. Tears shone in the moonlight. ‘Ye mean it?’

‘I never braked my word yet,’ said Rob. ‘Except to polis’men and other o’ that kidney, ye ken, and they dinnae count.’

‘Ye’ll stay? Ye’ll abide by my word?’ said Jeannie, sniffing.

Rob sighed. ‘Aye. I will.’

Jeannie was quiet for a while, and then said, in the sharp cold voice of a kelda: ‘Rob Anybody Feegle, I’m tellin’ ye now to go and save the big wee hag.’

‘Whut?’ said Rob Anybody, amazed. ‘Jus’ noo ye said I was tae stay—’

‘That was as your wife, Rob. Now I’m telling you as your kelda.’ Jeannie stood up, chin out and looking determined. ‘If ye dinnae heed the word o’ yer kelda, Rob Anybody Feegle, ye can be banished fra’ the clan. Ye ken that. So you’ll listen t’ me guid. Tak’ what men you need afore it’s too late, and go to the mountains, and see that the big wee girl comes tae nae harm. And come back safe yoursel’. That is an order! Nay, ‘tis more’n an order. ‘Tis a geas I’m laying on ye! That cannae be brake!’

‘But I—’ Rob began, completely bewildered.

‘I’m the kelda, Rob,’ said Jeannie. ‘I cannae run a clan with the Big Man pinin’. And the hills of our children need their hag. Everyone knows the land needs someone tae tell it whut it is.’

There was something about the way Jeannie had said ‘children’. Rob Anybody was not the fastest of thinkers, but he always got there in the end.

‘Aye, Rob,’ said Jeannie, seeing his expression. ‘Soon I’ll be birthing seven sons.’

‘Oh,’ said Rob Anybody. He didn’t ask how she knew the number. Keldas just knew.

‘That’s great!’ he said.

‘And one daughter, Rob.’

Rob blinked. ‘A daughter? This soon?’

‘Aye,’ said Jeannie.

‘That’s wonderful good luck for a clan!’ said Rob.

‘Aye. So you’ve got something to come back safe to me for, Rob Anybody. An’ I beg ye to use your heid for somethin’ other than nuttin’ folk.’

‘I thank ye, Kelda,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘I’ll do as ye bid. I’ll tak’ some lads and find the big wee hag, for the good o’ the hills. It cannae be a good life for the puir wee big wee thing, all alone and far fra’ home, among strangers.’

‘Aye,’ said Jeannie, turning her face away. ‘I ken that, too.’