A Hat Full Of Sky

Jeannie dressed herself in her best dress, did her hair, picked up her shawl and climbed out of the hole. She stood there watching the mountains until, after about an hour, a dot in the sky got bigger and bigger.

As a kelda, she would welcome home a warrior. As a wife, she would kiss her husband and scold him for being so long away. As a woman, she thought she would melt with relief, thankfulness and joy.

Chapter Fourteen Queen Of The Bees

And, one afternoon about a week later. Tiffany went to see Granny Weatherwax.

It was only fifteen miles as the broomstick flies, and as Tiffany still didn’t like flying a broomstick, Miss Level took her.

It was the invisible part of Miss Level. Tiffany just lay flat on the stick, holding on with arms and legs and knees and ears if possible, and took along a paper bag to be sick into, because no one likes anonymous sick dropping out of the sky. She was also holding a large hessian sack, which she handled with care.

She didn’t open her eyes until the rushing noises had stopped and the sounds around her told her she was probably very close to the ground. In fact Miss Level had been very kind. When she fell off, because of the cramp in her legs, the broomstick was just above some quite thick moss.

‘Thank you,’ said Tiffany as she got up, because it always pays to mind your manners around invisible people.

She had a new dress. It was green, like the last one. The complex world of favours and obligations and gifts that Miss Level lived and moved in had thrown up four yards of nice material (for the trouble-free birth of Miss Quickly’s baby boy) and a few hours’ dressmaking (Mrs Hunter’s bad leg feeling a lot better, thank you). She’d given the black one away. When I’m old I shall wear midnight, she’d decided. But, for now, she’d had enough of darkness.

She looked around at this clearing on the side of a hill, surrounded by oak and sycamore on three sides but open on the downhill side with a wide view of the countryside below. The sycamores were shedding their spinning seeds, which whirled down lazily across a patch of garden. It was unfenced, even though some goats were grazing nearby. If you wondered why it was the goats weren’t eating the garden, it was because you’d forgotten who lived here. There was a well. And, of course, a cottage.

Mrs Earwig would definitely have objected to the cottage. It was out of a storybook. The walls leaned against one another for support, the thatched roof was slipping off like a bad wig, and the chimneys were corkscrewed. If you thought a gingerbread cottage would be too fattening, this was the next worst thing.

In a cottage deep in the forest lived the Wicked Old Witch…

It was a cottage out of the nastier kind of fairy tale.

Granny Weatherwax’s beehives were tucked away down one side of the cottage. Some were the old straw kind, most were patched-up wooden ones. They thundered with activity, even this late in the year.

Tiffany turned aside to look at them, and the bees poured out in a dark stream. They swarmed towards Tiffany, formed a column and—

She laughed. They’d made a witch of bees in front of her, thousands of them all holding station in the air. She raised her right hand. With a rise in the level of buzzing, the bee-witch raised its right hand. She turned around. It turned around, the bees carefully copying every swirl and flutter of her dress, the ones on the very edge buzzing desperately because they had furthest to fly.

She carefully put down the big sack and reached out towards the figure. With another roar of wings it went shapeless for a moment, and then re-formed a little way away, but with a hand outstretched towards her. The bee that was the tip of its forefinger hovered just in front of Tiffany’s fingernail.

‘Shall we dance?’ said Tiffany.

In the clearing full of spinning seeds, she circled the swarm. It kept up pretty well, moving fingertip to buzzing tip, turning when she turned, although there were always a few bees racing to catch up.

Then it raised both its arms and twirled in the opposite direction, the bees in the ‘skirt’ spreading out again as it spun. It was learning.

Tiffany laughed and did the same thing. Swarm and girl whirled across the clearing.

She felt happy and wondered if she’d ever felt this happy before. The gold light, the falling bracts, the dancing bees… it was all one thing. This was the opposite of the dark desert. Here, light was everywhere and filled her up inside. She could feel herself here but see herself from above, twirling with a buzzing shadow that sparkled golden as the light struck the bees. Moments like this paid for it all.

Then the witch made of bees leaned closer to Tiffany, as if staring at her with its thousands of little jewelled eyes. There was a faint piping noise from inside the figure and the bee-witch exploded into a spreading, buzzing cloud of insects which raced away across the clearing and disappeared. The only movement now was the whirring fall of the sycamore seeds.

Tiffany breathed out.

‘Now, some people would have found that scary,’ said a voice behind her.

Tiffany didn’t turn round immediately. First she said, ‘Good afternoon, Granny Weatherwax.’ Then she turned round.

‘Have you ever done this?’ she demanded, still half-drunk with delight.

‘It’s rude to start with questions. You’d better come in and have a cup of tea,’ said Granny Weatherwax.

You’d barely know that anyone lived in the cottage. There were two chairs by the fire, one of them a rocking chair, and by the table were two chairs that didn’t rock but did wobble because of the uneven stone floor. There was a dresser, and a rag-rug in front of the huge hearth. A broomstick leaned against the wall in one corner, next to something mysterious and pointy, under a cloth. There was a very narrow and dark flight of stairs. And that was it. There was nothing shiny, nothing new and nothing unnecessary.

‘To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’ said Granny Weatherwax, taking a sooty black kettle off the fire and filling an equally black teapot.

Tiffany opened the sack she had brought with her. ‘I’ve come to bring you your hat back,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘Have you? And why?’

‘Because it’s your hat,’ said Tiffany, putting it on the table. ‘Thank you for the loan of it, though.’

‘I dare say there’s plenty of young witches who’d give their high teeth for an ol’ hat of mine,’ said Granny, lifting up the battered hat.

‘There are,’ said Tiffany, and did not add ‘and it’s eye teeth, actually’. What she did add was: ‘But I think everyone has to find their own hat. The right hat for them, I mean.’

‘I see you’re now wearing a shop-bought one, then,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘One of them Sky Scrapers. With stars,’ she added, and there was so much acid in the word ‘stars’ that it would’ve melted copper and then dropped through the table and the floor and melted more copper in the cellar below. ‘Think that makes it more magical, do you? Stars?’

‘I… did when I bought it. And it’ll do for now.’

‘Until you find the right hat,’ said Granny Weatherwax.

‘Yes.’

‘Which ain’t mine?’