A Hat Full of Sky Read online

Page 7

 

  Miss Level came in with a tray that held a bowl of beef stew and some bread. She put it down on the little table by the bed. If you put it outside the door when youre finished, Ill take it down later, she said. Thank you very much, said Tiffany. Miss Level paused at the door. Its going to be so nice having someone to talk to, apart from myself, she said. I do hope you wont want to leave, Tiffany. Tiffany gave her a happy little smile, then waited until the door had shut and shed heard Miss Levels footsteps go downstairs before tiptoeing to the window and checking there were no bars in it. There had been something scary about Miss Levels expression. It was sort of hungry and hopeful and pleading and frightened, all at once. Tiffany also checked that she could bolt the bedroom door on the inside. The beef stew tasted, indeed, just like beef stew and not, just to take an example completely and totally at random, stew made out of the last poor girl whod worked here. To be a witch, you have to have a very good imagination. Just now, Tiffany was wishing that hers wasnt quite so good. But Mistress Weatherwax and Miss Tick wouldnt have let her come here if it was dangerous, would they? Well, would they? They might. They just might. Witches didnt believe in making things too easy. They assumed you used your brains. If you didnt use your brains, you had no business being a witch. The world doesnt make things easy, theyd say. Learn how to learn fast. But . . . theyd give her a chance, wouldnt they? Of course they would. Probably. Shed nearly finished the not-made-of-people-at-all-honestly stew when something tried to take the bowl out of her hand. It was the gentlest of tugs, and when she automatically pulled it back, the tugging stopped immediately. O-K, she thought. Another strange thing. Well, this is a witchs cottage. Something pulled at the spoon but, again, stopped as soon as she tugged back. Tiffany put the empty bowl and spoon back on the tray. All right, she said, hoping she sounded not scared at all. Ive finished. The tray rose into the air and drifted gently towards the door where it landed with a faint tinkle. Up on the door, the bolt slid back. The door opened. The tray rose up and sailed through the doorway. The door shut. The bolt slid across. Tiffany heard the rattle of the spoon as, somewhere on the dark landing, the tray moved on. It seemed to Tiffany that it was vitally important that she thought before doing anything. And so she thought: It would be stupid to run around screaming because your tray had been

  taken away. After all, whatever had done it had even had the decency to bolt the door after itself, which meant that it respected her privacy, even while it ignored it. She cleaned her teeth at the washstand, got into her night-gown and slid into the bed. She blew out the candle. After a moment she got up, re-lit the candle and with some effort dragged the chest of drawers in front of the door. She wasnt quite certain why, but she felt better for doing it. She lay back in the dark again. Tiffany was used to sleeping while, outside on the downland, sheep baad and sheep bells occasionally went tonk. Up here, there were no sheep to baa and no bells to tonk and, every time one didnt, she woke up thinking, What was that? But she did get to sleep eventually, because she remembered waking up in the middle of the night to hear the chest of drawers very slowly slide back to its original position. Tiffany woke up, still alive and not chopped up, when the dawn was just turning grey. Unfamiliar birds were singing. There were no sounds in the cottage, and she thought: Im the apprentice, arent I? Im the one who should be cleaning up and getting the fire lit. I know how this is supposed to go. She sat up and looked around the room. Her old clothes had been neatly folded on top of the chest of drawers. The fossil and the lucky stone and the other things had gone, and it was only after a frantic search that she found them back in the box in her suitcase. Now, look, she said to the room in general. I am a hag, you know. If there are any Nac Mac Feegle here, step out this minute! Nothing happened. She hadnt expected anything to happen. The Nac Mac Feegle werent particularly interested in tidying things up, anyway. As an experiment she took the candlestick off the bedside table, put it on the chest of drawers and stood back. More nothing happened. She turned to look out of the window and, as she did so, there was a faint tint noise. When she spun round, the candlestick was back on the table. Well. . . today was going to be a day when she got answers. Tiffany enjoyed the slightly angry feeling. It stopped her thinking about how much she wanted to go home. She went to put her dress on and realized that there was something soft yet crackly in a pocket. Oh, how could she have forgotten? But it had been a busy day, a very busy day, and maybe shed wanted to forget, anyway. She pulled out Rolands present and opened the white tissue paper carefully. It was a necklace. It was the Horse. Tiffany stared at it. Not what a horse looks like, but what a horse be . . . It had been carved in the

  turf back before history began, by people who had managed to convey in a few flowing lines everything a horse was: strength, grace, beauty and speed, straining to break free of the hill. And now someone - someone clever and, therefore, probably also someone expensive - had made it out of silver. It was flat, just like it was on the hillside and, just like the Horse on the hillside, some parts of it were not joined to the rest of the body. The crafts- man, though, had joined these carefully together with tiny silver chain, so that when Tiffany held it up in astonishment it was all there, moving-while-standing-still in the morning light. She had to put it on. And . . . there was no mirror, not even a tiny hand one. Oh, well. . . See me, said Tiffany. And far away, down on the plains, something that had lost the trail awoke. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the mist on the fields parted as something invisible started to move, making a noise like a swarm of flies . . . Tiffany shut her eyes, took a couple of small steps sideways, a few steps forward, turned round and carefully opened her eyes again. There she stood, in front of her, as still as a picture. The Horse looked very well on the new dress, silver against green. She wondered how much it must have cost Roland. She wondered why. See me not, she said. Slowly she took the necklace off, wrapped it up again in its tissue paper and put it in the box with the other things from home. Then she found one of the postcards from Twoshirts, and a pencil, and with care and attention, wrote Roland a short thank-you note. After a flash of guilt she carefully used the other postcard to tell her parents that she was completely still alive. Then, thoughtfully, she went downstairs. It had been dark last night, so she hadnt noticed the posters stuck up all down the stairs. They were from circuses, and were covered with clowns and animals and that old-fashioned poster lettering where no two lines of type are the same. They said things like: Thrills Galore! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Professor Monty Bladders Three-Ring Circus Cabinet of Curiosities!! In His Actual Mouth!!! See the Horse With His Head Where His Tail Should Be! See the Egress!!!!! CLOWNS! CLOWNS! CLOWNS! The Flying Pastrami Brothers will defy Gravity, The

  Greatest Force in the Universe •without a net!* aS!S5S>S>S!5>5>S>S>S>S>®S>SJS>S53S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>S>aS! See Clarence The Tap-Dancing l&ule! Wonder at isy a * The Astounding Mind Reading Act * Wonder at Topsy and Tipsy And so it went on, right down to tiny print. They were strange, bright things to find in a little cottage in the woods. She found her way into the kitchen. It was cold and quiet, except for the ticking of a clock on the wall. Both the hands had fallen off the clock face, and lay at the bottom of the glass cover, so while the clock was still measuring time it wasnt inclined to tell anyone about it. As kitchens went, it was very tidy. In the cupboard drawer beside the sink, forks, spoons and knives were all in neat sections, which was a bit worrying. Every kitchen drawer Tiffany had ever seen might have been meant to be neat but over the years had been crammed with things that didnt quite fit, like big ladles and bent bottle-openers, which meant that they always stuck unless you knew the trick of opening them. Experimentally she took a spoon out of the spoon section, dropped it amongst the forks and shut the drawer. Then she turned her back. There was a sliding noise and a tinkle exactly like the tinkle a spoon makes when its put back amongst the other spoons, who have missed it and are anxious to hear its tales of life amongst the frighteningly pointy people. This time she put a knife
in with the forks, shut the drawer - and leaned on it. Nothing happened for a while, and then she heard the cutlery rattling. The noise got louder. The drawer began to shake. The whole sink began to tremble- All right, said Tiffany, jumping back. Have it your way! The drawer burst open, the knife jumped from section to section like a fish and the drawer slammed back. Silence. Who are you? said Tiffany. No one replied. But she didnt like the feeling in the air. Someone was upset with her now. It had been a silly trick, anyway. She went out into the garden, quickly. The rushing noise she had heard last night had been made by a waterfall not far from the cottage. A little water-wheel pumped water into a big stone cistern, and there was a pipe that led into the house. The garden was full of ornaments. They were rather sad, cheap ones - bunny rabbits with mad grins, pottery deer with big eyes, gnomes with pointy red hats and expressions that suggested they were on bad medication. Things hung from the apple trees or were tied to posts all around the place. There

  were some dreamcatchers and curse-nets, which she sometimes saw hanging up outside cottages at home. Other things looked like big shambles, spinning and tinkling gently. Some . . . well, one looked like a bird made out of old brushes, but most looked like piles of junk. Odd junk, though. It seemed to Tiffany that some of it moved slightly as she went past. When she went back into the cottage, Miss Level was sitting at the kitchen table. So was Miss Level. There were, in fact, two of her. Sorry, said the Miss Level on the right. 1 thought it was best to get it over with right now. The two women were exactly alike. Oh, I see, said Tiffany. Youre twins.

  No, said the Miss Level on the left, Im not. This might be a little difficult -

  - for you to understand, said the other Miss Level. Let me see, now. You know -

  - how twins are sometimes said to be able to share thoughts and feelings? said the first Miss Level. Tiffany nodded. Well, said the second Miss Level, Im a bit more complicated than that, I suppose, because -

  - Im one person with two bodies, said the first Miss Level, and now they spoke like players in a tennis match, slamming the words back and forth. I wanted to break this to you -

  - gently, because some people get upset by the -

  - idea and find it creepy or -

  - just plain -

  - weird. The two bodies stopped. Sorry about that last sentence, said the Miss Level on the left. 1 only do that when Im really nervous.

  Er, do you mean that you both- Tiffany began, but the Miss Level on the right said quickly, There is no both. Theres just me, do you understand? I know its hard. But I have a right right hand and a right left hand and a left right hand and a left left hand. Its all me. I can go shopping and stay home at the same time, Tiffany. If it helps, think of me as one -

  - person with four arms and -

  - four legs and -

  - four eyes. All four of those eyes now watched Tiffany nervously. And two noses, said Tiffany. Thats right. Youve got it. My right body is slightly clumsier than my left body, but I have better eyesight in my right pair of eyes. Im human, just like you, except that theres more of me.