‘I’m sure there’s no call for anyone to bring me a present,’ said Granny Weatherwax,
sniffing.
Tiffany ignored this, because her mind was still spinning. She fetched her sack
again and handed over a small, soft parcel, which moved as it changed shape in her
hands.
‘I took most of the stuff back to Mr Strong-inthearm,’ she said. ‘But I thought you
might have a . . . a use for this.’
The old woman slowly unwrapped the white paper. The Zephyr Billow cloak
unrolled itself under her fingers and filled the air like smoke.
‘It’s lovely, but I couldn’t wear it,’ said Tiffany as the cloak shaped itself over the gentle
currents of the clearing. ‘You need gravitas to carry off a cloak like that.’
‘What’s gravitarse?’ said Granny Weatherwax sharply.
‘Oh . . . dignity. Seniority. Wisdom. Those sort of things,’ said Tiffany.
‘Ah,’ said Granny, relaxing a little. She stared at the gently rippling cloak and
sniffed. It really was a wonderful creation. The wizards had got at least one thing right
when they had made it. It was one of those items that fill a hole in your life that you
didn’t know was there until you’d seen it.
‘Well, I suppose there’s those as can wear a cloak like this, and those as can’t,’ she
conceded. She let it curl around her neck and fastened it there with a crescent-shaped
brooch. ‘It’s a bit too grand for the likes of me,’ she said. ‘A bit too fancy. I could
look like a flibbertigibbet wearing something like this.’ It was spoken like a statement
but it had a curl like a question.
‘No, it suits you, it really does,’ said Tiffany cheerfully. ‘If you don’t know when to be a
human being, you don’t know when to be a witch.’
Birds stopped singing. Up in the trees, squirrels ran and hid. Even the sky seemed to
darken for a moment.
‘Er . . . that’s what I heard,’ said Tiffany, and added, ‘From someone who knows
these things.’
The blue eyes stared into hers. There were no secrets from Granny Weatherwax.
Whatever you said, she watched what you meant.
‘Perhaps you’ll call again sometimes,’ she said, turning slowly and watching the
cloak curve in the air. ‘It’s always very quiet here.’
‘I should like that,’ said Tiffany. ‘Shall I tell the bees before I come, so you can get
the tea ready?’
For a moment Granny Weatherwax glared, and then the lines faded into a wry grin.
‘Clever,’ she said.
What’s inside you? Tiffany thought. Who are you really, in there? Did you want me
to take your hat? You pretend to be the big bad wicked witch, and you’re not. You
test people all the time, test, test, test, but you really want them to be clever enough to
beat you. Because it must be hard, being the best. You’re not allowed to stop. You can
only be beaten, and you’re too proud ever to lose. Pride! You’ve turned it into terrible
strength, but it eats away at you. Are you afraid to laugh in case you hear an early
cackle?
We’ll meet again, one day. We both know it. We’ll meet again, at the Witch Trials.
‘I’m clever enough to know how you manage not to think of a pink rhinoceros if
someone says “pink rhinoceros”,’ she managed to say aloud.
‘Ah, that’s deep magic, that is,’ said Granny Weatherwax.
‘No. It’s not. You don’t know what a rhinoceros looks like, do you?’
Sunlight filled the clearing as the old witch laughed, as clear as a downland
stream.
‘That’s right!’ she said.
Chapter 15
A Hat Full of Sky
It was one of those strange days in late February when it’s a little warmer than it
should be and, although there’s wind, it seems to be all round the horizons and never
quite where you are.
Tiffany climbed up onto the downs where, in the sheltered valleys, the early lambs
had already found their legs and were running around in a gang in that strange jerky
run that lambs have, which makes them look like woolly rocking horses.
Perhaps there was something about that day, because the old ewes joined in, too,
and skipped with their lambs. They jumped and spun, half happy, half embarrassed, big
winter fleeces bouncing up and down like a clown’s trousers.
It had been an interesting winter. She’d learned a lot of things. One of them was
that you could be a bridesmaid to two people who between them were over 170 years
old. This time Mr Weavall, with his
wig spinning on his head and his big spectacles gleaming, had insisted on giving one
of the gold pieces to ‘our little helper’, which more than made up for the wages that
she hadn’t asked for and Miss Level couldn’t afford. She’d used some of it to buy a
really good brown cloak. It didn’t billow, it didn’t fly out behind her, but it was warm
and thick and kept her dry.
She’d learned lots of other things too. As she walked past the sheep and their
lambs, she gently touched their minds, so softly that they didn’t notice . . .
Tiffany had stayed up in the mountains for Hogswatch, which officially marked the
changing of the year. There’d been a lot to do there, and anyway it wasn’t much
celebrated on the Chalk. Miss Level had been happy to give her leave now, though, for
the lambing festival, which the old people called Sheepbellies. It was when the
shepherds’ year began. The hag of the hills couldn’t miss that. That was when, in
warm nests of straw shielded from the wind by hurdles and barriers of cut furze, the
future happened. She’d helped it happen, working with the shepherds by lantern light, dealing with the difficult births. She’d worked with the pointy hat on her head and had
felt the shepherds watching her as, with knife and needle and thread and hands and
soothing words, she’d saved ewes from the black doorway and helped new lambs into
the light. You had to give them a show. You had to give them a story. And
she’d walked back home proudly in the morning and bloody to the elbows, but it
had been the blood of life.
Later, she had gone up to the Feegles’ mound, and slid down the hole. She’d thought
about this for some time, and had gone prepared – with clean torn-up handkerchiefs and
some soapwort shampoo made to a recipe Miss Level had given her. She had a feeling
that Jeannie would have a use for these. Miss Level always visited new mothers. It
was what you did.
Jeannie had been pleased to see her. Lying on her stomach so that she could get part
of her body into the kelda’s chamber, Tiffany had been allowed to hold all eight of
what she kept thinking of as the Roblets, born at the same time as the lambs. Seven of
them were bawling and fighting one another. The eighth lay quietly, biding her time.
The future happened.
It wasn’t only Jeannie who thought of her differently. News had got around. The
people of the Chalk hadn’t liked witches. They had always come from outside. They had
always come as strangers. But now here was our Tiffany, birthing the lambs like her
granny did, and they say she’s been learning witchery in the mountains! Ah, but that’s
still our Tiffany, that is. OK, I’ll grant you that she’s wearing a hat with big stars on it,
but she makes good cheese and she knows about lambing and she’s Granny Aching’s
grand-daughter, right? And they’d tap their noses,
knowingly. Granny Aching’s grand-daughter. Remember what the old woman could
do? So if witch she be, then she’s our witch. She knows about sheep, she does. Hah, and
I heard they had a big sort of trial for witches up in them mountains and our Tiffany
showed ’em what a girl from the Chalk can do. It’s modern times, right? We got a
witch now, and she’s better’n anyone else’s! No one’s throwing Granny Aching’s grand-
daughter in a pond!
Tomorrow she’d go back to the mountains again. It had been a busy three weeks, quite
apart from the lambing. Roland had invited her to tea at the castle. It had been a bit
awkward, as these things are, but it was funny how, in a couple of years, he’d gone from
a lumbering oaf into a nervous young man who forgot what he was talking about when
she smiled at him. And they had books in the castle!
He’d shyly presented her with a Dictionary of Amazingly Uncommon Words, and she
had been prepared enough to bring him a hunting knife made by Zakzak, who was
excellent at blades even if he was rubbish at magic. The hat wasn’t mentioned, very
carefully. And when she’d got home she’d found a bookmark in the P section and a