A Hat Full Of Sky

were not joined to the rest of the body. The craftsman, though, had joined these carefully together with tiny silver chain, so 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 and a few steps forward, turned around, and carefully opened her eyes again. There she stood, in front of her, as still as a picture. The Horse looked very good 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, she 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 hadn’t 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:

    T HRILLS G ALORE ! H URRY ! H URRY ! H URRY !

    P ROFESSOR M ONTY B LADDER’S T HREE- R ING C IRCUS AND C ABINET OF C URIOSITIES !!

    S EE THE H ORSE W ITH H IS H EAD W HERE H IS T AIL S HOULD B E !

    S EE THE A MAZING D ISLOCATING J ACK P UT A L ION’S H EAD IN H IS A CTUAL M OUTH !!!

    SEE THE EGRESS!!!!!

    CLOWNS! CLOWNS! CLOWNS!
    T HE F LYING PASTRAMI BROTHERS WILL DEFY G RAVITY , THE G REATEST F ORCE IN THE U NIVERSE * WITHOUT A NET !*

    S EE C LARENCE THE T AP- D ANCING M ULE !

    W ONDER AT T OPSY AND T IPSY
    *T HE A STOUNDING M IND- R EADING A CT *

    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 wasn’t inclined to tell anyone about it.
    As kitchens went, it was very tidy. In the cupboard drawer under 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 didn’t 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 among 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 it’s put back among the other spoons, who have missed it and are anxious to hear its tales of life among 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 didn’t 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 was made by a waterfall not far from the cottage. A little waterwheel 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 crazy 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