A Hat Full Of Sky

standin’ when he’s got his own name where no one can touch it,” said Rob Anybody. “That’s serious magic, that is—”
    “The R is the wrong way roond and you left the A and a Y out of Anybody,” said Jeannie, because it is a wife’s job to stop her husband actually exploding with pride.
    “Ach, wumman, I didna’ ken which way the fat man wuz walkin’,” said Rob, airily waving a hand. “Ye canna trust the fat man. That’s the kind of thing us nat’ral writin’ folk knows about. One day he might walk this way, next day he might walk that way.”
    He beamed at his name:

    “And I reckon you got it wrong wi’ them Y’s,” he went on. “I reckon it should be N E Bo D. That’s Enn…eee…bor…dee, see? That’s sense !”
    He stuck the pencil into his hair and gave her a defiant look.
    Jeannie sighed. She’d grown up with seven hundred brothers and knew how they thought, which was often quite fast while being totally in the wrong direction. And if they couldn’t bend their thinking around the world, they bent the world around their thinking. Usually, her mother had told her, it was best not to argue.
    Actually, only half a dozen Feegles in the Long Lake clan could read and write very well. They were considered odd, strange hobbies. After all, what—when you got out of bed in the morning—were they good for? You didn’t need to know them to wrestle a trout or mug a rabbit or get drunk. The wind couldn’t be read and you couldn’t write on water.
    But things written down lasted. They were the voices of Feegles who’d died long ago, who’d seen strange things, who’d made strange discoveries. Whether you approved of that depended on how creepy you thought it was. The Long Lake clan approved. Jeannie wanted the best for her new clan, too.
    It wasn’t easy, being a young kelda. You came to a new clan, with only a few of your brothers as bodyguards, where you married a husband and ended up with hundreds of brothers-in-law. It could be troubling if you let your mind dwell on it. At least back on the island in the Long Lake she had her mother to talk to, but a kelda never went home again.
    A kelda was all alone.
    Jeannie was homesick and lonely and frightened of the future, which is why she was about to get things wrong.
    “Rob!”
    Hamish and Big Yan came tumbling through the fake rabbit hole that was the entrance to the mound.
    Rob Anybody glared at them. “We wuz engaged in a lit’try enterprise,” he said.
    “Yes, Rob, but we watched the big wee young hag safe awa’, like you said, but there’s a hiver after her!” Hamish blurted out.
    “Are ye sure?” said Rob, dropping his pencil. “I never heard o’ one of them in this world!”
    “Oh, aye,” said Big Yan. “Its buzzin’ fair made my teeths ache!”
    “So did you no’ tell her, ye daftie?” said Rob.
    “There’s that other hag wi’ her, Rob,” said Big Yan. “The educatin’ hag.”
    “Miss Tick?” said the toad.
    “Aye, the one wi’ a face like a yard o’ yogurt,” said Big Yan. “An’ you said we wuzna’ to show ourselves, Rob.”
    “Aye, weel, this is different—” Rob Anybody began, but stopped.
    He hadn’t been a husband for very long, but upon marriage men get a whole lot of extra senses bolted into their brain, and one is there to tell a man that he’s suddenly neck deep in real trouble.
    Jeannie was tapping her foot. Her arms were still folded. She had the special smile women learn about when they marry too which seems to say “Yes, you’re in big trouble but I’m going to let you dig yourself in even more deeply.”
    “What’s this about the big wee hag?” she said, her voice as small and meek as a mouse trained at the Rodent College of Assassins.
    “Oh, ah, ach, weel, aye…” Rob began, his face falling. “Do ye not bring her to mind, dear? She was at oor wedding, aye. She was oor kelda for a day or two, ye ken. The Old One made her swear to that just afore she went back to the Land o’ the Livin’,” he added, in case mentioning the wishes of the last kelda would deflect whatever storm was coming. “It’s as well tae keep an eye on her, ye ken, her being oor hag and all….”
    Rob Anybody’s voice trailed away in the face of Jeannie’s look.
    “A true kelda has tae marry the Big Man,” said Jeannie. “Just like I married ye, Rob Anybody Feegle, and am I no’ a good wife tae ye?”
    “Oh, fine, fine,” Rob burbled. “But—”
    “And ye canna be married to two