A Hat Full Of Sky

baby goat to bring the wolves nearer.
    She’s got a plan to kill the hiver. I know it. She’s worked something out. It’ll come for me and she’ll just wave a hand.
    She must think I’m stupid.
    They had argued, of course. But Mistress Weatherwax had come up with a deeply unfair one. It was: You’re eleven. Just like that. You’re eleven, and what is Miss Tick going to tell your parents? Sorry about Tiffany, but we let her go off by herself to fight an ancient monster that can’t be killed and what’s left of her is in this jar?
    Miss Level had joined in at that part, almost in tears.
    If Tiffany hadn’t been a witch, she would have whined about everyone being so unfair !
    In fact they were being fair. She knew they were being fair. They were not thinking just of her but of other people, and Tiffany hated herself—well, slightly—because she hadn’t. But it was sneaky of them to choose this moment to be fair. That was unfair.
    No one had told her she was only nine when she went into Fairyland armed with just a frying pan. Admittedly, no one else had known she was going, except the Nac Mac Feegle, and she was much taller than they were. Would she have gone if she’d known what was in there, she wondered?
    Yes. I would have.
    And you’re going to face the hiver even though you don’t know how to beat it?
    Yes. I am. There’s part of me still in it. I might be able to do something—
    But aren’t you just ever so slightly glad that Mistress Weatherwax and Miss Level won the argument and now you’re going off very bravely but you happen to be accompanied, completely against your will, by the most powerful witch alive?
    Tiffany sighed. It was dreadful when your own thoughts tried to gang up on you.
    The Feegles hadn’t objected to her going to find the hiver. They did object to not being allowed to come with her. They’d been insulted, she knew. But, as Mistress Weatherwax had said, this was true haggling and there was no place in it for Feegles. If the hiver came, out there, not in a dream but for real, it’d have nothing about it that could be kicked or head butted.
    Tiffany had tried to make a little speech, thanking them for their help, but Rob Anybody had folded his arms and turned his back. It had all gone wrong. But the old witch had been right. They could get hurt. The trouble was, explaining to Feegles how dangerous things were going to be only got them more enthusiastic.
    She left them arguing with one another. It had not gone well.
    But now that was all behind her, in more ways than one. The trees beside the track were less bushy and more pointy—or, if Tiffany had known more about trees, she would have said that the oaks were giving way to evergreens.
    She could feel the hiver. It was following them, but a long way back.
    If you had to imagine a head witch, you wouldn’t imagine Mistress Weatherwax. You might imagine Mrs. Earwig, who glided across the floor as though she was on wheels, and had a dress as black as the darkness in a deep cellar, but Mistress Weatherwax was just an old woman with a lined face and rough hands in a dress as black as night, which is never as black as people think. It was dusty and ragged around the hem, too.
    On the other hand , thought her Second Thoughts, you once bought Granny Aching a china shepherdess, remember? All blue and white and sparkly?
    Her First Thoughts thought: Well, yes, but I was a lot younger then.
    Her Second Thoughts thought: Yes, but which one was the real shepherdess? The shiny lady in the nice clean dress and buckled shoes, or the old lady who stumped around in the snow with boots filled with straw and a sack across her shoulders?
    At which point Mistress Weatherwax stumbled. She caught her balance very quickly.
    “Dangerously loose stones on this path,” she said. “Watch out for them.”
    Tiffany looked down. There weren’t that many stones, and they didn’t seem very dangerous or particularly loose.
    How old was Mistress Weatherwax? That was another question she wished she hadn’t asked. She was skinny and wiry, just like Granny Aching, the kind of person who goes on and on—but one day Granny Aching had gone to bed and had never got up again, just like that….
    The sun was setting. Tiffany could feel the hiver in the same way that you can sense that someone is looking at you. It was still in the woods that hugged the mountain like a scarf.
    At last the witch stopped at a spot where rocks like pillars sprouted out of the