A Hat Full Of Sky

up.
    “I’m…not sure. Is anyone watching us?”
    Tiffany looked around. Twoshirts slept in the heat. There was no one watching.
    “No, Miss Tick.”
    The teacher removed her hat and took from inside it a couple pieces of wood and a spool of black thread. She rolled up her sleeves, looking around quickly in case Twoshirts had sprouted a population, then broke off a length of the thread and picked up the egg.
    Egg, thread, and fingers blurred for a few seconds and then there was the egg, hanging from Miss Tick’s fingers in a neat little black net.
    Tiffany was impressed.
    But Miss Tick hadn’t finished. She began to draw things from her pockets, and a witch generally has a lot of pockets. There were some beads, a couple of feathers, a glass lens, and one or two strips of colored paper. These all got threaded into the tangle of wood and cotton.
    “What is that?” said Tiffany.
    “It’s a shamble,” said Miss Tick, concentrating.
    “Is it magic?”
    “Not exactly. It’s trickery .”
    Miss Tick lifted her left hand. Feathers and beads and egg and pocket junk spun in the web of threads.
    “Hmm,” she said. “Now let me see what I can see….”
    She pushed the fingers of her right hand into the spiderwork of threads and pulled.
    Egg and glass and beads and feathers danced through the tangle, and Tiffany was sure that at one point one thread had passed straight through another.
    “Oh,” she said. “It’s like cat’s cradle!”
    “You’ve played that, have you?” said Miss Tick vaguely, still concentrating.
    “I can do all the common shapes,” said Tiffany. “The Jewels and the Cradle and the House and the Flock and the Three Old Ladies, One With a Squint, Carrying the Bucket of Fish to Market When They Meet the Donkey, although you need two people for that one, and I only ever did it once, and Betsy Tupper scratched her nose at the wrong moment and I had to get some scissors to cut her loose….”
    Miss Tick’s fingers worked like a loom.
    “Funny it should be a children’s toy now,” she said. “Aha…” She stared into the complex web she had created.
    “Can you see anything?” said Tiffany.
    “If I may be allowed to concentrate, child? Thank you….”
    Out in the road the sleeping dog woke, yawned, and pulled itself to its feet. It ambled over to the bench the two of them were sitting on, gave Tiffany a reproachful look, and then curled up by her feet. It smelled of old damp carpets.
    “There’s… something …” said Miss Tick very quietly.
    Panic gripped Tiffany.
    Sunlight reflected off the white dust of the road and the stone wall opposite. Bees hummed between the little yellow flowers that grew on top of the wall. By Tiffany’s feet the spaniel snorted and farted occasionally.
    But it was all wrong . She could feel the pressure bearing down on her, pushing at her, pushing at the landscape, squeezing it under the bright light of day. Miss Tick and her cradle of threads were motionless beside her, frozen in the moment of bright horror.
    Only the threads moved, by themselves. The egg danced, the glass glinted, the beads slid and jumped from string to string—
    The egg burst.
    The coach rolled in.
    It arrived dragging the world behind it, in a cloud of dust and noise and hooves. It blotted out the sun. Doors opened. Harnesses jingled. Horses steamed. The spaniel sat up and wagged its tail hopefully.
    The pressure went—no, it fled .
    Beside Tiffany, Miss Tick pulled out a handkerchief and started to wipe egg off her dress. The rest of the shamble had disappeared into a pocket with remarkable speed.
    She smiled at Tiffany but kept the smile as she spoke, making herself look slightly mad.
    “Don’t get up, don’t do anything, just be as quiet as a little mouse,” she said. Tiffany felt in no state to do anything but sit still; she felt like you feel when you wake up after a nightmare.
    The richer passengers got out of the coach, and the poorer ones climbed down from the roof. Grumbling and stamping their feet, trailing road dust behind them, they disappeared.
    “Now,” said Miss Tick, when the inn door had swung shut, “we’re…we’re going to go for a, a stroll. See that little woods up there? That’s where we’re heading. And when Mr. Crabber, the carter, sees your father tomorrow, he’ll say he—he dropped you off here just before the coach arrived and—and, and everyone will be happy and no one will have lied. That’s important.”
    “Miss Tick?” said