A Hat Full Of Sky

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