A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett

to remember that you haven’t eaten since lunch time.

Afterwards, and after Oswald had speedily taken the empty bowl away, Tiffany lay in

the dark, staring at nothing.

The novelty of this new country had taken all her attention in the past few days, but

now that had drained away in the storm of laughter, and homesickness rushed to fill in

the empty spaces.

She missed the sounds and the sheep and the silences of the Chalk. She missed

seeing the blackness of the hills from her bedroom window, outlined against the stars.

She missed . . . part of herself. . .

But they ‘d laughed at her. They ‘d said, ‘What hat?’ and they’d laughed even more when she’d

raised her hand to touch the invisible brim and hadn’t found it. . .

She’d touched it every day for eighteen months, and now it had gone. And she

couldn’t make a

shamble. And she just had a green dress, while all the other girls wore black ones.

Annagramma had a lot of jewellery, too, in black and silver. All the other girls had

shambles, too, beautiful ones. Who cared if they were just for show?

Perhaps she wasn’t a witch at all. Oh, she’d defeated the Queen, with the help of

the little men and the memory of Granny Aching, but she hadn’t used magic. She wasn’t

sure, now, what she had used. She’d felt something go down through the soles of the

boots, down through the hills and through the years, and come back loud and roaring in

a rage that shook the sky:

. . . how dare you invade my world, my land, my life . . .

But what had the virtual hat done for her? Perhaps the old woman had tricked

her, had just made her think there was a hat there. Perhaps she was a bit cracked, like

Annagramma had said, and had just got things wrong. Perhaps Tiffany should go home

and make Soft Nellies for the rest of her life.

Tiffany turned round and crawled down the bed and opened her suitcase. She

pulled out the rough box, opened it in the dark and closed a hand around the lucky

stone.

She’d hoped that there’d be some kind of spark, some kind of friendliness in it.

There was none. There was just the roughness of the outside of the stone, the

smoothness on the face where it had split, and the sharpness between the two. And the

piece of

sheep’s wool did nothing but make her fingers smell of sheep, and this made her long

for home and feel even more upset. The silver horse was cold.

Only someone quite close would have heard the sob. It was quite faint, but it was

carried on the dark red wings of misery. She wanted, longed for the hiss of wind in the turf and the feel of centuries under her feet. She wanted that sense, which had never left

her before, of being where Achings had lived for thousands of years. She needed blue

butterflies and the sounds of sheep and the big empty skies.

Back home, when she’d felt upset, she’d gone up to the remains of the old

shepherding hut and sat there for a while. That had always worked.

It was a long way away now. Too far. Now, she was full of a horrible, heavy dead

feeling, and there was nowhere to leave it. And it wasn’t how things were supposed to

go.

Where was the magic? Oh, she understood that you had learn about the basic,

everyday craft, but when did the ‘witch’ part turn up? She’d been trying to learn, she

really had, and she was turning into . . . well, a good worker, a handy girl with potions

and a reliable person. Dependable, like Miss Level.

She’d expected – well, what? Well. . . to be doing serious witch stuff, you know,

broomsticks, magic, guarding the world against evil forces in a noble yet modest way,

and then also doing good for poor people because she was a really nice person. And the people she’d seen in the picture had rather less

messy ailments and their children didn’t have such runny noses. Mr We avail’s flying

toenails weren’t in it anywhere. Some of them boomeranged.

She got sick on broomsticks. Every time. She couldn’t even make a shamble. She

was going to spend her days running around after people who, to be honest, could

sometimes be doing a bit more for themselves. No magic, no flying, no secrets . . . just

toenails and bogeys.

She belonged to the Chalk. Every day, she’d told the hills what they were. Every

day, they’d told her who she was. But now she couldn’t hear them.

Outside it began to rain, quite hard, and in the distance Tiffany heard the mutter of

thunder.

What would Granny Aching have done? But even folded in the wings of despair she

knew the answer to that.

Granny Aching never gave up. She’d search all night for a lost lamb . . .

She lay looking at nothing for a while, and then lit the candle by the bed and swivelled

her legs onto the floor. This couldn’t wait until morning.

Tiffany had a little trick for seeing the hat. If you moved your hand behind it

quickly, there was a slight, brief blurriness to what you saw, as though the light

coming through the invisible hat took a little more time.

It had to be there . . .

Well, the candle should give enough light to be sure. If the hat was there,

everything would be fine

and it wouldn’t matter what other people thought…

She stood in the middle of the carpet, while lightning danced across the mountains

outside, and closed her eyes.

Down in the garden the apple-tree branches flayed in the wind, the dreamcatchers and curse-

nets clashing and jangling . . .

‘See me,’ she said.

The world went quiet, totally silent. It hadn’t done that before. But Tiffany tiptoed

around until she knew she was opposite herself, and opened her eyes again . . .

And there she was, and so was the hat, as clear as it had ever been-

And the image of Tiffany below, a young girl in a green dress, opened its eyes and

smiled at her and said:

‘We see you. Now we are you.’

Tiffany tried to shout ‘See me not!’ But there was no mouth to shout. . .

Lightning struck somewhere nearby. The window blew in. The candle flame flew out in a

streamer of fire, and died.

And then there was only darkness, and the hiss of the rain.

Chapter 6 Hiver

Thunder rolled across the Chalk.

Jeannie carefully opened the package that her mother had given her on the day she

left the Long Lake mound. It was a traditional gift, one that every young kelda got

when she went away, never to return. Keldas could never go home. Keldas were

home.

The gift was this: memory.

Inside the bag was a triangle of tanned sheepskin, three wooden stakes, a length of

string twisted out of nettle fibres, a tiny leather bottle and a hammer.

She knew what to do, because she’d seen her mother do it many times. The

hammer was used to bang in the stakes around the smouldering fire. The string was

used to tie the three corners of the leather triangle to the stakes so that it sagged in the

centre, just enough to hold a small bucket of water which

Jeannie had drawn herself from the deep well.

She knelt down and waited until the water very slowly began to seep through the

leather, then built up the fire.

She was aware of all the eyes of the Feegles in the shadowy galleries around and

above her. None of them would come near her while she was boiling the cauldron.

They’d rather chop their own leg off. This was pure hiddlins.

And this was what a cauldron really was, back in the days before humans had

worked copper or poured iron. It looked like magic. It was supposed to. But if you knew

the trick, you could see how the cauldron would boil dry before the leather burned.

When the water in the skin was steaming, she damped down the fire and added to

the water the contents of the little leather bottle, which contained some of the water

from her mother’s cauldron. That’s how it had always gone, from mother to daughter,

since the very beginning.

Jeannie waited until the cauldron had cooled some more, then took up a cup,

filled it and drank. There was a sigh from the shadowy Feegles.

She lay back and closed her eyes, waiting. Nothing happened except that the thunder

rattled the land and the lightning turned the world black and white.

And then, so gently that it had already happened before she realized that it was

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