A Hat Full Of Sky

you’re workin’, somethin’ for show, but the start and finish, the start and finish , is helpin’ people when life is on the edge. Even people you don’t like. Stars is easy, people is hard.”
    She stopped talking. It was several seconds before birds began to sing again.
    “Anyway, that’s what I think,” she added in the tones of someone who suspects that she might have gone just a bit further than she meant to.
    She turned around when Tiffany said nothing, and saw that she had stopped and was standing in the lane looking like a drowned hen.
    “Are you all right, girl?” she said.
    “It was me!” wailed Tiffany. “The hiver was me! It wasn’t thinking with my brain, it was using my thoughts! It was using what it found in my head! All those insults, all that…” She gulped. “That…nastiness. All it was was me with—”
    “— without the bit of you that was locked away,” said Mistress Weatherwax sharply. “Remember that.”
    “Yes, but supposing—” Tiffany began, struggling to get all the woe out.
    “The locked-up bit was the important bit,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them. Harder, maybe. There’d be a sight more frogs in this world if I didn’t know how not to turn people into them. And big pink balloons, too.”
    “Don’t,” said Tiffany, shuddering.
    “That’s why we do all the tramping around and doctorin’ and stuff,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Well, and because it makes people a bit better, of course. But doing it moves you into your center, so’s you don’t wobble. It anchors you. Keeps you human, stops you cackling. Just like your granny with her sheep, which are to my mind as stupid and wayward and ungrateful as humans. You think you’ve had a sight of yourself and found out you’re bad? Hah! I’ve seen bad, and you don’t get near it. Now, are you going to stop grizzling?”
    “What?” snapped Tiffany.
    Mistress Weatherwax laughed, to Tiffany’s sudden fury.
    “Yes, you’re a witch to your boots,” she said. “You’re sad, and behind that you’re watching yourself being sad and thinking, Oh, poor me, and behind that you’re angry with me for not going ‘There, there, poor dear.’ Let me talk to those Third Thoughts then, because I want to hear from the girl who went to fight a fairy queen armed with nothin’ but a fryin’ pan, not some child feelin’ sorry for herself and wallowing in misery!”
    “What? I am not wallowing in misery!” Tiffany shouted, striding up to her until they were inches apart. “And what was all that about being nice to people, eh?” Overhead, leaves fell off the trees.
    “That doesn’t count when it’s another witch, especially one like you!” Mistress Weatherwax snapped, prodding her in the chest with a finger as hard as wood.
    “Oh? Oh? And what’s that supposed to mean?” A deer galloped off through the woods. The wind got up.
    “One who’s not paying attention, child!”
    “Why, what have I missed that you’ve seen…old woman?”
    “Old woman I may be, but I’m tellin’ you the hiver is still around! You only threw it out!” Mistress Weatherwax shouted. Birds rose from the trees in panic.
    “I know!” screamed Tiffany.
    “Oh yes? Really? And how do you know that?”
    “Because there’s a bit of me still in it! A bit of me I’d rather not know about, thank you! I can feel it out there! Anyway, how do you know?”
    “Because I’m a bloody good witch, that’s why,” snarled Mistress Weatherwax, as rabbits burrowed deeper to get out of the way. “And what do you want me to do about the creature while you sit there snivelin’, eh?”
    “How dare you! How dare you! It’s my responsibility! I’ll deal with it, thank you so very much!”
    “You? A hiver? It’ll take more than a frying pan! They can’t be killed!”
    “I’ll find a way! A witch deals with things!”
    “Hah! I’d like to see you try!”
    “I will!” shouted Tiffany. It started to rain.
    “Oh? So you know how to attack it, do you?”
    “Don’t be silly! I can’t! It can always keep out of my way! It can even sink into the ground! But it’ll come looking for me, understand? Me , not anyone else! I know it! And this time I’ll be ready!”
    “Will you, indeed?” said Mistress Weatherwax, folding her arms.
    “Yes!”
    “When?”
    “Now!”
    “No!”
    The old witch held up a hand.
    “Peace be on this place,” she said quietly. The wind