A Hat Full Of Sky

Miss Tick’s, made up of string and crow feathers and glittery black beads and, in the middle, an ordinary matchbox.
    Tiffany yelled. The pain was like red-hot needles and her ears filled with the buzz of flies.
    The matchbox exploded.
    And then there was silence, and birdsong, and nothing to show that anything had happened apart from a few pieces of matchbox spiraling down, along with iridescent fragments of wing case.
    “Oh dear,” said Miss Level. “He was quite a good beetle, as beetles go….”
    “Tiffany, are you all right?” said Miss Tick. Tiffany blinked. The pain had gone as fast as it has arrived, leaving only a burning memory. She scrambled to her feet.
    “I think so, Miss Tick!”
    “Then a word, if you please!” said Miss Tick. She marched over to a tree and stood there looking stern.
    “Yes, Miss Tick?” said Tiffany.
    “Did you… do anything?” said Miss Tick. “You haven’t been summoning things, have you?”
    “No! Anyway, I don’t know how to!” said Tiffany.
    “It’s not your little men then, is it?” said Miss Tick doubtfully.
    “They’re not mine, Miss Tick. And they don’t do that sort of thing. They just shout ‘Crivens!’ and then start kicking people on the ankle. You definitely know it’s them.”
    “Well, whatever it was, it seems to have gone,” said Miss Level. “And we should go too—otherwise we’ll be flying all night.” She reached behind another tree and picked up a bundle of firewood. At least, it looked exactly like that, because it was supposed to. “My own invention,” she said, modestly. “One never knows down here on the plains, does one? And the handle shoots out by means of this button—oh, I’m so sorry, it sometimes does that. Did anyone see where it went?”
    The handle was located in a bush and screwed back in.
    Tiffany, a girl who listened to what people said, watched Miss Level closely. She definitely had only one nose on her face, and it was sort of uncomfortable to imagine where anyone might have another one and what’d they use it for.
    Then Miss Level pulled some rope out of her pocket and passed it to someone who wasn’t there.
    That’s what she did, Tiffany was sure. She didn’t drop it, she didn’t throw it, she just held it out and let go, as though she’d thought she was hanging it on an invisible hook.
    It landed in a coil on the moss. Miss Level looked down, then saw Tiffany staring at her and laughed nervously.
    “Silly me,” she said. “I thought I was over there! I’ll forget my own head next!”
    “Well…if it’s the one on top of your neck,” said Tiffany cautiously, still thinking about the other nose, “you’ve still got it.”
    The old suitcase was roped to the bristle end of the broomstick, which now floated calmly a few feet above the ground.
    “There, that’ll make a nice comfy seat,” said Miss Level, now the bag of nerves that most people turned into when they felt Tiffany staring at them. “If you’d just hang on behind me. Er. That’s what I normally do.”
    “You normally hang on behind you?” said Tiffany. “How can—”
    “Tiffany, I’ve always encouraged your forthright way of asking questions,” said Miss Tick loudly. “And now, please, I would love to congratulate you on your mastery of silence! Do climb on behind Miss Level. I’m sure she’ll want to leave while you’ve still got some daylight.”
    The stick bobbed a little as Miss Level climbed onto it. She patted it invitingly.
    “You’re not frightened of heights, are you, dear?” she asked as Tiffany climbed on.
    “No,” said Tiffany.
    “I shall drop in when I come up for the Witch Trials,” said Miss Tick as Tiffany felt the stick rise gently under her. “Take care!”
    It turned out that when Miss Level had asked Tiffany if she was scared of heights, it had been the wrong question. Tiffany was not afraid of heights at all. She could walk past tall trees without batting an eyelid. Looking up at huge towering mountains didn’t bother her a bit.
    What she was afraid of, although she hadn’t realized it until this point, was depths. She was afraid of dropping such a long way out of the sky that she’d have time to run out of breath screaming before hitting the rocks so hard that she’d turn to a sort of jelly and all her bones would break into dust. She was, in fact, afraid of the ground. Miss Level should have thought before asking the question.
    Tiffany clung to Miss Level’s belt and stared at the