A Hat Full Of Sky

Suddenly the owl blinked, looked at Tiffany as if amazed to see her, spread its wings and glided off into the night.

Mistress Weatherwax gripped her throat, coughed once or twice, and then said hoarsely, ‘Of course it was an owl, child! It took me ten minutes to lure it this close! Now just you be quiet while I starts again, otherwise I shall have to make do with a bat, and when I goes out on a bat for any time at all I ends up thinkin’ I can see with my ears, which is no way for a decent woman to behave!’

‘But you were snoring!’

‘I was not snoring! I was just resting gently while I tickled an owl closer! If you hadn’t shaken me and scared it away, I’d have been up there with this entire moor under my eye.’

‘You… take over its mind?’ said Tiffany nervously.

‘No! I’m not one of your hivers! I just… borrows a lift from it, I just… nudges it now and again, it don’t even know I’m there. Now try to rest!’

‘But what if the hiver—?’

‘If it comes anywhere near it’ll be me that tells you!’ Mistress Weatherwax hissed, and lay back. Then her head jerked up one more time. ‘And I do not snore!’ she added.

After half a minute, she started to snore again.

Minutes after that the owl came back, or perhaps it was a different owl. It glided onto the same rock, settled there for a while and then sped away. The witch stopped snoring. In fact, she stopped breathing.

Tiffany leaned closer and finally lowered an ear to the skinny chest to see if there was a heartbeat.

Her own heart felt as if it was clenched like a fist—

–because of the day she’d found Granny Aching in the hut. She was lying peacefully on the narrow iron bed, but Tiffany had known something was wrong as soon as she had stepped inside–

Boom.

Tiffany counted to three.

Boom.

Well, it was a heartbeat.

Very slowly, like a twig growing, a stiff hand moved. It slid like a glacier into a pocket, and came up holding a large piece of card on which was written:

I ATEN’T

DEAD

Tiffany decided she wasn’t going to argue. But she pulled the blanket over the old woman and wrapped her own around herself.

By moonlight, she tried again with her shamble.

Surely she should be able to make it do something. Maybe if—

By moonlight, she very, very carefully—

Poc!

The egg cracked. The egg always cracked, and now there was only one left. Tiffany didn’t dare try it with a beetle, even if she could find one. It would be too cruel.

She sat back and looked across the landscape of silver and black, and her Third Thoughts thought: It’s not going to come near.

Why?

She thought, I’m not sure why I know. But I know. It’s keeping away. It knows Mistress Weatherwax is with me.

She thought: How can it know that? It’s not got a mind. It doesn’t know what a Mistress Weatherwax is!

Still thinking, thought her Third Thoughts.

Tiffany slumped against the rock.

Sometimes her head was too… crowded…

And then it was morning, and sunlight, and dew on her hair, and mist coming off the ground like smoke… and an eagle sitting on the rock where the owl had been, eating something furry. She could see every feather on its wing.

It swallowed, glared at Tiffany with its mad bird eyes and flapped away, making the mist swirl.

Beside her, Mistress Weatherwax began to snore again, which Tiffany took to mean that she was in her body. She gave the old woman a nudge, and the sound that had been a regular gnaaaargrgrgrgrg suddenly became blort.

The old woman sat up, coughing, and waved a hand irritably at Tiffany to pass her the tea bottle. She didn’t speak until she’d gulped half of it.

‘Ah, say what you like, but rabbit tastes a lot better cooked,’ she gasped, shoving the cork back in. ‘And without the fur on!’

‘You took—borrowed the eagle?’ said Tiffany.

‘O’course. I couldn’t expect the poor ol’ owl to fly around after daybreak, just to see who’s about. It was hunting voles all night and, believe me, raw rabbit’s better’n voles. Don’t eat voles.’

‘I won’t,’ said Tiffany, and meant it. ‘Mistress Weatherwax, I think I know what the hiver’s doing. It’s thinking.’

‘I thought it had no brains!’

Tiffany let her thoughts speak for themselves.

‘But there’s an echo of me in it, isn’t there? There must be. It has an echo of everyone it’s… been. There must be a bit of me in it. I know it’s out there, and it knows I’m here with you. And it’s keeping away.’

‘Oh? Why’s that, then?’

‘Because it’s frightened of you, I think.’

‘Huh! And why’s that?’

‘Yes,’ said Tiffany simply. ‘It’s because I am. A bit.’

‘Oh dear. Are you?’

‘Yes,’ said Tiffany again. ‘It’s like a dog that’s been beaten but won’t run away. It doesn’t understand what it’s done wrong. But… there’s something about it that… there’s a thought that I’m nearly having…’

Mistress Weatherwax said nothing. Her face went blank.

‘Are you all right?’ said Tiffany.

‘I was just leavin’ you time to have that thought,’ said Mistress Weatherwax.

‘Sorry. It’s gone now. But… we’re thinking about the hiver in the wrong way.’

‘Oh, yes? And why’s that?’

‘Because…’ Tiffany struggled with the idea. ‘I think it’s because we don’t want to think about it the right way. It’s something to do with… the third wish. And I don’t know what that means.’

The witch said, ‘Keep picking at that thought,’ and then looked up and added, ‘We’ve got company.’

It took Tiffany several seconds to spot what Mistress Weatherwax had seen—a shape at the edge of the woods, small and dark. It was coming closer, but rather uncertainly.

It resolved itself into the figure of Petulia, flying slowly and nervously a few feet above the heather. Sometimes she jumped down and wrenched the stick in a slightly different direction.

She got off again when she reached Tiffany and Mistress Weatherwax, grabbed the broom hastily and aimed it at a big rock. It hit it gently and hung there, trying to fly through stone.