A Hat Full Of Sky

Weavall’s chair.
    It had turned out to be full of coins, mostly copper, but there were quite a few silver ones. It looked like a fortune, and for a moment Tiffany’d wished she had as much money.
    “There’s a lot of coins in here, Mr. Weavall,” she’d said.
    Mr. Weavall relaxed. “Ah, that’s right,” he’d said. “Then I won’t be a burden.”
    Today Mr. Weavall was asleep when they called on him, snoring with his mouth open and his yellow-brown teeth showing. But he awoke in an instant, stared at them, and then said, “My boy Toby’s coming to see I Sat’day.”
    “That’s nice, Mr. Weavall,” said Miss Level, plumping up his cushions. “We’ll get the place nice and tidy.”
    “He’s done very well for hisself, you know,” said Mr. Weavall proudly. “Got a job indoors with no heavy lifting. He said he’ll see I all right in my old age, but I told him, I told him I’d pay my way when I go, the whole thing, the salt and earth and tuppence for the ferryman, too!”
    Today Miss Level gave him a shave. His hands shook too much for him to do it himself. (Yesterday she’d cut his toenails, because he couldn’t reach them; it was not a safe spectator sport, especially when one smashed a windowpane.)
    “It’s all in a box under my chair,” he said as Tiffany nervously wiped the last bits of foam off him. “Just check for me, will you, Mary?”
    Oh, yes. That was the ceremony, every day.
    There was the box, and there was the money. He asked every time. There was always the same amount of money.
    “Tuppence for the ferryman?” said Tiffany, as they walked home.
    “Mr. Weavall remembers all the old funeral traditions,” said Miss Level. “Some people believe that when you die, you cross the River of Death and have to pay the ferryman. People don’t seem to worry about that these days. Perhaps there’s a bridge now.”
    “He’s always talking about…his funeral.”
    “Well, it’s important to him. Sometimes old people are like that. They’d hate people to think that they were too poor to pay for their own funeral. Mr. Weavall’d die of shame if he couldn’t pay for his own funeral.”
    “It’s very sad, him being all alone like that. Something should be done for him,” said Tiffany.
    “Yes. We’re doing it,” said Miss Level. “And Mrs. Tussy keeps a friendly eye on him.”
    “Yes, but it shouldn’t have to be us, should it?”
    “Who should it have to be?” said Miss Level.
    “Well, what about this son he’s always talking about?” said Tiffany.
    “Young Toby? He’s been dead for fifteen years. And Mary was the old man’s daughter, she died quite young. Mr. Weavall is very shortsighted, but he sees better in the past.”
    Tiffany didn’t know what to reply except: “It shouldn’t be like this.”
    “There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do.”
    “Well, couldn’t you help him by magic?”
    “I see to it that he’s in no pain, yes,” said Miss Level.
    “But that’s just herbs.”
    “It’s still magic. Knowing things is magical, if other people don’t know them.”
    “Yes, but you know what I mean,” said Tiffany, who felt she was losing this argument.
    “Oh, you mean make him young again?” said Miss Level. “Fill his house with gold? That’s not what witches do.”
    “We see to it that lonely old men get a cooked dinner and cut their toenails?” said Tiffany, just a little sarcastically.
    “Well, yes,” said Miss Level. “We do what can be done. Mistress Weatherwax said you’ve got to learn that witchcraft is mostly about doing quite ordinary things.”
    “And you have to do what she says?” said Tiffany.
    “I listen to her advice,” said Miss Level coldly.
    “Mistress Weatherwax is the head witch, then, is she?”
    “Oh no!” said Miss Level, looking shocked. “Witches are all equal. We don’t have things like head witches. That’s quite against the spirit of witchcraft.”
    “Oh, I see,” said Tiffany.
    “Besides,” Miss Level added, “Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing.”

    Suddenly, things were going missing from the households around the Chalk. This wasn’t the occasional egg or chicken. Clothes were vanishing off washing lines. A pair of boots mysteriously disappeared from under the bed of Nosey Hinds, the oldest man in the village—“And they was damn good boots, they could walk home from the pub all by themselves if I but pointed they in the right