A Hat Full Of Sky

did, and had a good look at her. She was small and sweet and very pretty. She also had a glint in her eye and a certain proud lift to her chin. Nac Mac Feegle girls were very rare, and they grew up knowing they were going to be keldas one day, and Tiffany had a definite feeling that Rob Anybody was going to find married life trickier than he’d thought.
    She was going to be sorry to leave them behind, but not terribly sorry. They were nice in a way, but they could, after a while, get on your nerves. Anyway, she was eleven now, and had a feeling that after a certain age you shouldn’t slide down holes in the ground to talk to little men.
    Besides, the look that Jeannie had given her, just for a moment, had been pure poison. Tiffany had read its meaning without having to try. Tiffany had been the kelda of the clan, even if it was only for a short time. She had also been engaged to be married to Rob Anybody, even if that had only been a sort of political trick. Jeannie knew all that. And the look had said: He is mine. This place is mine. I do not want you here! Keep out!

    A pool of silence followed Tiffany and Miss Tick down the lane, since the usual things that rustle in hedges tended to keep very quiet when the Nac Mac Feegle were around.
    They reached the little village green and sat down to wait for the carrier’s cart that went just a bit faster than walking pace and would take five hours to get to the village of Twoshirts, where—Tiffany’s parents thought—they’d get the big coach that ran all the way to the distant mountains and beyond.
    Tiffany could actually see the cart coming up the road when she heard the hoofbeats coming across the green. She turned, and her heart seemed to leap and sink at the same time.
    It was Roland, the baron’s son, on a fine black horse. He leaped down before the horse had stopped, and then stood there looking embarrassed.
    “Ah, I see a very fine and interesting example of a…a…a big stone over there,” said Miss Tick in a sticky-sweet voice. “I’ll just go and have a look at it, shall I?”
    Tiffany could have pinched her for that.
    “Er, you’re going, then,” said Roland as Miss Tick hurried away.
    “Yes,” said Tiffany.
    Roland looked as though he was going to explode with nervousness.
    “I got this for you,” he said. “I had it made by a man, er, over in Yelp.” He held out a package wrapped in soft paper.
    Tiffany took it and put it carefully in her pocket.
    “Thank you,” she said, and dropped a small curtsy. Strictly speaking, that’s what you had to do when you met a nobleman, but it just made Roland blush and stutter.
    “O-open it later on,” said Roland. “Er, I hope you’ll like it.”
    “Thank you,” said Tiffany sweetly.
    “Here’s the cart. Er…you don’t want to miss it.”
    “Thank you,” said Tiffany, and curtsied again, because of the effect it had. It was a little bit cruel, but sometimes you had to be.
    Anyway, it would be very hard to miss the cart. If you ran fast, you could easily overtake it. It was so slow that “stop” never came as a surprise.
    There were no seats. The carrier went around the villages every other day, picking up packages and, sometimes, people. You just found a place where you could get comfortable among the boxes of fruit and rolls of cloth.
    Tiffany sat on the back of the cart, her old boots dangling over the edge, swaying backward and forward as the cart lurched away on the rough road.
    Miss Tick sat beside her, her black dress soon covered in chalk dust to the knees.
    Tiffany noticed that Roland didn’t get back on his horse until the cart was nearly out of sight.
    And she knew Miss Tick. By now she would be just bursting to ask a question, because witches hate not knowing things. And sure enough, when the village was left behind, Miss Tick said, after a lot of shifting and clearing her throat:
    “Aren’t you going to open it?”
    “Open what?” asked Tiffany, not looking at her.
    “He gave you a present,” said Miss Tick.
    “I thought you were examining an interesting stone, Miss Tick,” said Tiffany accusingly.
    “Well, it was only fairly interesting,” said Miss Tick, completely unembarrassed. “So…are you?”
    “I’ll wait until later,” said Tiffany. She didn’t want a discussion about Roland at this point or, really, at all.
    She didn’t actually dislike him. She’d found him in the land of the Queen of the Fairies and had sort of rescued him, although he had been