A Hat Full Of Sky

partial to a biscuit with my tea. Thank you very much.’

‘But… but I can’t do that now—’

‘Get past “I can’t”, Miss Level,’ Mistress Weatherwax snapped. ‘Don’t think about it, just do it! My tea’s getting cold!’

So this is witchcraft too, Tiffany thought. It’s like Granny Aching talking to animals. It’s in the voice! Sharp and soft by turns, and you use little words of command and encouragement and you keep talking, making the words fill the creature’s world, so that the sheepdogs obey you and the nervous sheep are calmed…

The biscuit tin floated away from the dresser. As it neared the old woman the lid unscrewed and hovered in the air beside it. She reached in delicately.

‘Ooh, store-bought Teatime Assortment,’ she said, taking four biscuits and quickly putting three of them in her pocket. ‘Very posh.’

‘It’s terribly difficult to do this!’ Miss Level moaned. ‘It’s like trying not to think of a pink rhinoceros!’

‘Well?’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘What’s so special about not thinking of a pink rhinoceros?’

‘It’s impossible not to think of one if someone tells you you mustn’t,’ Tiffany explained.

‘No it ain’t,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, firmly. ‘I ain’t thinking of one right now, and I gives you my word on that. You want to take control of that brain of yours, Miss Level. So you’ve lost a spare body? What’s another body when all’s said and done? Just a lot of upkeep, another mouth to feed, wear and tear on the furniture… in a word, fuss. Get your mind right, Miss Level, and the world is your…’ The old witch leaned down to Tiffany and whispered: ‘What’s that thing, lives in the sea, very small, folks eat it?’

‘Shrimp?’ Tiffany suggested, a bit puzzled.

‘Shrimp? All right. The world is your shrimp, Miss Level. Not only will there be a great saving on clothes and food, which is not to be sneezed at in these difficult times, but when people see you moving things though the air, well, they’ll say, “There’s a witch and a half, and no mistake!” and they will be right. You just hold on to that skill, Miss Level. You maintain. Think on what I’ve said. And now you stay and rest. We’ll see to what needs doing today. You just make a little list for me, and Tiffany’ll know the way.’

‘Well, indeed, I do feel… somewhat shaken,’ said Miss Level, absent-mindedly brushing her hair out of her eyes with an invisible hand. ‘Let me see… you could just drop in on Mr Umbril, and Mistress Turvy, and the young Raddle boy, and check on Mrs Towney’s bruise, and take some Number Five ointment to Mr Drover, and pay a call on old Mrs Hunter at Saucy Corner and… now, who have I forgotten… ?’

Tiffany realized she was holding her breath. It had been a horrible day, and a dreadful night, but what was looming and queuing up for its place on Miss Level’s tongue was, somehow, going to be worse than either.

‘…Ah, yes, have a word with Miss Quickly at Uttercliff, and then probably you’ll need to talk to Mrs Quickly, too, and there’re a few packages to be dropped off on the way, they’re in my basket, all marked up. And I think that’s it… oh, no, silly me, I almost forgot… and you need to drop in on Mr Weavall, too.’

Tiffany breathed out. She really didn’t want to. She’d rather not breathe ever again than face Mr Weavall and open an empty box.

‘Are you sure you’re… totally yourself, Tiffany?’ said Miss Level, and Tiffany leaped for this lifesaving excuse not to go.

‘Well, I do feel a bit—’ she began, but Mistress Weatherwax interrupted with, ‘She’s fine, Miss Level, apart from the echoes. The hiver has gone away from this house, I can assure you.’

‘Really?’ said Miss Level. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but how can you be so certain?’

Mistress Weatherwax pointed down.

Grain by grain, the spilled sugar was rolling across the tabletop and leaping into the sugar bowl.

Miss Level clasped her hands together.

‘Oh, Oswald,’ she said, her face one huge smile, ‘you’ve come back!’

Miss Level, and possibly Oswald, watched them go from the gate.

‘She’ll be fine with your little men keeping her company,’ said Mistress Weatherwax as she and Tiffany turned away and took the lane through the woods. ‘It could be the making of her, you know, being half dead.’

Tiffany was shocked. ‘How can you be so cruel?’

‘She’ll get some respect when people see her moving stuff through the air. Respect is meat and drink to a witch. Without respect, you ain’t got a thing. She doesn’t get much respect, our Miss Level.’

That was true. People didn’t respect Miss Level. They liked her, in an unthinking sort of way, and that was it. Mistress Weatherwax was right, and Tiffany wished she wasn’t.

‘Why did you and Miss Tick send me to her, then?’ she said.

‘Because she likes people,’ said the witch, striding ahead. ‘She cares about ‘em. Even the stupid, mean, dribbling ones, the mothers with the runny babies and no sense, the feckless and the silly and the fools who treat her like some kind of a servant. Now that’s what I call magic—seein’ all that, dealin’ with all that, and still goin’ on. It’s sittin’ up all night with some poor old man who’s leavin’ the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin’ their terror, seein’ ‘em safely on their way… and then cleanin’ ‘em up, layin’ ‘em out, making ‘em neat for the funeral, and helpin’ the weeping widow strip the bed and wash the sheets—which is, let me tell you, no errand for the faint-hearted—and stayin’ up the next night to watch over the coffin before the funeral, and then going home and sitting down for five minutes before some shouting angry man comes bangin’ on your door ‘cos his wife’s havin’ difficulty givin’ birth to their first child and the midwife’s at her wits’ end and then getting up and fetching your bag and going out again… We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better’n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart. That is the root and heart and soul and centre of witchcraft, that is. The soul and centre!’ Mistress Weatherwax smacked her fist into her hand, hammering out her words. ‘The… soul… and… centre!’

Echoes came back from the trees in the sudden silence. Even the grasshoppers by the side of the track had stopped sizzling.

‘And Mrs Earwig,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, her voice sinking to a growl, ‘Mrs Earwig tells her girls it’s about cosmic balances and stars and circles and colours and wands and… and toys, nothing but toys!’ She sniffed. ‘Oh, I daresay they’re all very well as decoration, somethin’ nice to look at while you’re workin’, somethin’ for show, but the start and finish, the start and finish, is helpin’ people when life is on the edge. Even people you don’t like. Stars is easy, people is hard.’

She stopped talking. It was several seconds before birds began to sing again.

‘Anyway, that’s what I think,’ she added in the tone of someone who suspects that they might have gone just a bit further than they meant to.

She turned round when Tiffany said nothing, and saw that she had stopped and was standing in the lane looking like a drowned hen.

‘Are you all right, girl?’ she said.

‘It was me!’ wailed Tiffany. The hiver was me! It wasn’t thinking with my brain, it was using my thoughts! It was using what it found in my head! All those insults, all that…’ She gulped. ‘That… nastiness. All it was was me with—’

‘—without the bit of you that was locked away,’ said Mistress Weatherwax sharply. ‘Remember that.’

‘Yes, but supposing—’ Tiffany began, struggling to get all the woe out.

‘The locked-up bit was the important bit,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them. Harder, maybe. There’d be a sight more frogs in this world if I didn’t know how not to turn people into them. And big pink balloons, too.’

‘Don’t,’ said Tiffany, shuddering.

‘That’s why we do all the tramping around and doctorin’ and stuff,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Well, and because it makes people a bit better, of course. But doing it moves you into your centre, so’s you don’t wobble. It anchors you. Keeps you human, stops you cackling. Just like your granny with her sheep, which are to my mind as stupid and wayward and ungrateful as humans. You think you’ve had a sight of yourself and found out you’re bad? Hah! I’ve seen bad, and you don’t get near it. Now, are you going to stop grizzling?’