A Hat Full Of Sky

The boy made a noise like gneeee as he leaped back.
    “Here’s tuppence,” said Granny Weatherwax.
    Tiffany looked at Granny’s hand. The first finger and thumb were held together, but there did not appear to be any coins between them.
    Nevertheless, the young man, grinning horribly, took the total absence of coins very carefully between his thumb and finger. Granny twitched two tickets out of his other hand.
    “Thank you, young man,” she said, and walked into the field. Tiffany ran after her.
    “What did—?” she began, but Granny Weatherwax raised a finger to her lips, grasped Tiffany’s shoulder, and swiveled her around.
    The ticket seller was still staring at his fingers. He even rubbed them together. Then he shrugged, held them over his leather moneybag, and let go.
    Clink, clink…
    The crowd around the gate gave a gasp, and one or two of them started to applaud. The boy looked around with a sick kind of grin, as if of course he’d expected that to happen.
    “Ah, right,” said Granny Weatherwax happily. “And now I could just do with a cup of tea and maybe a sweet biscuit.”
    “Granny, there are children here! Not just witches!”
    People were looking at them. Granny Weatherwax jerked Tiffany’s chin up so that she could look into her eyes.
    “Look around, eh? Down here you can’t move for amulets and wands and whatnot! It’ll be bound to keep away, eh?”
    Tiffany turned to look. There were sideshows all around the field. A lot of them were fun fair stuff that she’d seen before at agricultural shows around the Chalk: Roll-a-Penny, Lucky Dip, Bobbing for Piranhas, that sort of thing. The Ducking Stool was very popular among young children on such a hot day. There wasn’t a fortune-telling tent, because no fortune teller would turn up at an event where so many visitors were qualified to argue and answer back, but there were a number of witch stalls. Zakzak’s had a huge tent, with a display dummy outside wearing a Sky Scraper hat and a Zephyr Billow cloak, which had drawn a crowd of admirers. The other stalls were smaller, but they were thick with things that glittered and tinkled, and they were doing a brisk trade among the younger witches. There were whole stores full of dream catchers and curse nets, including the new self-emptying ones. It was odd to think of witches buying them, though. It was like fish buying umbrellas.
    Surely a hiver wouldn’t come here, with all these witches?
    She turned to Granny Weatherwax.
    Granny Weatherwax wasn’t there.
    It is hard to find a witch at the Witch Trials. That is, it is too easy to find a witch at the Witch Trials, but very hard to find the one you’re looking for, especially if you suddenly feel lost and all alone and you can feel panic starting to open inside you like a fern.
    Most of the older witches were sitting at trestle tables in a huge roped-off area. They were drinking tea. Pointy hats bobbed as tongues wagged. Every woman seemed capable of talking while listening to all the others at the table at the same time, although this talent isn’t confined to witches. It was no place to search for an old woman in black with a pointy hat.
    The sun was quite high in the sky now. The field was filling up. Witches were circling to land at the far end, and more and more people were pouring in through the gateway. The noise was intense. Everywhere Tiffany turned, black hats were scurrying.
    Pushing her way through the throng, she looked desperately for a friendly face, like Miss Tick or Miss Level or Petulia. If it came to it, an unfriendly one would do—even Mrs. Earwig.
    And she tried not to think. She tried not to think that she was terrified and alone in this huge crowd, and that up on the hill, invisible, the hiver now knew this because just a tiny part of it was her.
    She felt the hiver stir. She felt it begin to move.
    Tiffany stumbled through a chattering group of witches, their voices sounding shrill and unpleasant. She felt ill, as though she’d been in the sun too long. The world was spinning.
    A remarkable thing about a hiver, a reedy voice began, somewhere in the back of her head, is that its hunting pattern mimics that of the common shark, among other creatures —
    “I do not want a lecture, Mr. Bustle,” Tiffany mumbled. “I do not want you in my head!”
    But the memory of Sensibility Bustle had never taken much notice of other people when he was alive and it wasn’t going to begin now. It went on in its self-satisfied