A Hat Full Of Sky

surface in the kitchen, the Nac Mac Feegles watched Tiffany.
    “I am. And a fine mess we have here. Rest for a moment, and then we must be up and doing—”
    “Good morning, ladies. Er, how is she?”
    Tiffany turned her head. Miss Level stood in the door. She looked pale, and she was walking with a stick.
    “I was lying in bed and I thought, well, there’s no reason to stay up here feeling sorry for myself,” she said.
    Tiffany stood up. “I’m so sor—” she began, but Miss Level waved a hand vaguely.
    “Not your fault,” she said, sitting down heavily at the table. “How are you? And, for that matter, who are you?”
    Tiffany blushed. “Still me, I think,” she mumbled.
    “I got here last night and saw to Miss Level,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Watched over you, too, girl. You talked in your sleep, or rather, Sensibility Bustle did, what’s left of him. That ol’ wizard was quite helpful, for something that’s nothing much more’n a bunch of memories and habits.”
    “I don’t understand about the wizard,” said Tiffany. “Or the desert queen.”
    “Don’t you?” said the witch. “Well, a hiver collects people. Tries to add them to itself, you might say, use them to think with. Dr. Bustle was studying them hundreds of years ago, and set a trap to catch one. It got him instead, silly fool. It killed him in the end. It gets ’em all killed in the end. They go mad, one way or the other—they stop remembering what they shouldn’t do. But it keeps a sort of…pale copy of them, a sort of living memory….” She looked at Tiffany’s puzzled expression and shrugged. “Something like a ghost,” she said.
    “And it’s left ghosts in my head?”
    “More like ghosts of ghosts, really,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Something we don’t have a word for, maybe.”
    Miss Level shuddered. “Well, thank goodness you’ve got rid of the thing, at least,” she quavered. “Would anyone like a nice cup of tea?”
    “Ach, leave that tae us!” shouted Rob Anybody, leaping up. “Daft Wullie, you an’ the boys mak’ some tea for the ladies!”
    “Thank you,” said Miss Level weakly, as a clattering began behind her. “I feel so clum— what? I thought you broke all the teacups when you did the dishes!”
    “Oh, aye,” said Rob cheerfully. “But Wullie found a whole load o’ old ones shut awa’ in a cupboard—”
    “That very valuable bone china was left to me by a very dear friend!” shouted Miss Level. She sprang to her feet and turned toward the sink. With amazing speed for someone who was partly dead, she snatched teapot, cup, and saucer from the surprised pictsies and held them up as high as she could.
    “Crivens!” said Rob Anybody, staring at the crockery. “Now that’s what I call hagglin’!”
    “I’m sorry to be rude, but they’re of great sentimental value!” said Miss Level.
    “Mr. Anybody, you and your men will kindly get away from Miss Level and shut up !” said Mistress Weatherwax quickly. “Pray do not disturb Miss Level while she’s making tea!”
    “But she’s holding—” Tiffany began in amazement.
    “And let her get on with it without your chatter either, girl!” the witch snapped.
    “Aye, but she picked up yon teapot wi’oot—” a voice began.
    The old witch’s head spun around. Feegles backed away like trees bending to a gale.
    “Daft William,” she said coldly, “there’s room in my well for one more frog, except that you don’t have the brains of one!”
    “Ahahaha, that’s wholly correct, mistress,” said Daft Wullie, sticking out his chin with pride. “I fooled you there! I ha’ the brains o’ a beetle!”
    Mistress Weatherwax glared at him, then turned back to Tiffany.
    “ I turned someone into a frog!” Tiffany said. “It was dreadful! He didn’t all fit in, so there was this sort of huge pink—”
    “Never mind that right now,” said Mistress Weatherwax in a voice that was suddenly so nice and ordinary that it tinkled like a bell. “I expect you finds things a bit different here than they were at home, eh?”
    “What? Well, yes, at home I never turned—” Tiffany began in surprise, then saw that just above her lap the old woman was making frantic circular hand motions that somehow meant keep going as if nothing has happened.
    So they chatted madly about sheep, and Mistress Weatherwax said they were very wooly, weren’t they, and Tiffany said that they were, extremely so, and Mistress Weatherwax said