A Hat Full Of Sky

thought, but she was too tired to have it. It had been important.
    “Thank you for coming, Rob,” she said. “But when…you can leave, you must go straight back to Jeannie, understand? And tell her I’m grateful she sent you. Say I wish we’d had a chance to get to know each other better.”
    “Oh, aye. I’ve sent the lads back anyway. Hamish is waitin’ for me.”
    At which point the door appeared, and opened.
    Granny Weatherwax stepped through and beckoned urgently.
    “Some people don’t have the sense they were born with! Come on, right now!” she commanded. Behind her the door started to swing shut, but she swung around savagely and rammed her boot against the jamb, shouting, “Oh, no you don’t, you sly devil!”
    “But…I thought there were rules!” said Tiffany, getting up and hurrying forward, all tiredness sudden gone. Even a tired body wants to survive.
    “Oh? Really?” said Granny. “Did you sign anything? Did you take any kind of oath? No? Then they weren’t your rules! Quickly, now! And you, Mr. Anyone!”
    Rob Anybody jumped onto her boot just before she pulled it away. The door shut with another click, disappeared, and left them in…dead light, it seemed, a space of gray air.
    “Won’t take long,” said Granny Weatherwax. “It doesn’t usually. It’s the world getting back into line. Oh, don’t look like that. You showed it the Way, right? Out of pity. Well, I know this path already. You’ll tread it again, no doubt, for some other poor soul, open the door for them as can’t find it. But we don’t talk about it, understand?”
    “Miss Level never—”
    “We don’t talk about it, I said,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Do you know what a part of being a witch is? It’s making the choices that have to be made. The hard choices. But you did…quite well. There’s no shame in pity.”
    She brushed some grass seed off her dress.
    “I hope Mrs. Ogg has arrived,” she said. “I need her recipe for apple chutney. Oh…when we arrive you might feel a bit dizzy. I’d better warn you.”
    “Granny?” said Tiffany, as the light began to grow brighter. It brought tiredness back with it, too.
    “Yes?”
    “What exactly happened just then?”
    “What do you think happened?”
    Light burst in upon them.

    Someone was wiping Tiffany’s forehead with a damp cloth.
    She lay, feeling the beautiful coolness. There were voices around her, and she recognized the chronic-complainer tones of Annagramma:
    “…And she was really making a fuss in Zakzak’s. Honestly, I don’t think she’s quite right in the head! I think she’s literally gone cuckoo! She was shouting things and using some kind of, oh, I don’t know, some peasant trick to make us think she’d turned that fool Brian into a frog. Well, of course, she didn’t fool me for one minute—”
    Tiffany opened her eyes and saw the round pink face of Petulia, screwed up with concern.
    “Um, she’s awake!” said the girl.
    The space between Tiffany and the ceiling filled up with pointy hats. They drew back, reluctantly, as she sat up. From above, it must have looked like a dark daisy, closing and opening.
    “Where is this?” she said.
    “Um, the First Aid and Lost Children’s Tent,” said Petulia. “Um…you fainted when Mistress Weatherwax brought you back from…from wherever you’d gone. Everyone’s been in to see you!”
    “She said you’d, like, dragged the monster into, like, the Next World!” said Lucy Warbeck, her eyes gleaming. “Mistress Weatherwax told everyone all about it!”
    “Well, it wasn’t quite—” Tiffany began. She felt something prod her in the back. She reached behind her, and her hand came out holding a pointy hat. It was almost gray with age and quite battered. Zakzak wouldn’t have dared try to sell something like this, but the other girls stared at it like starving dogs watching a butcher’s hand.
    “Um, Mistress Weatherwax gave you her hat ,” breathed Petulia. “Her actual hat .”
    “She said you were a born witch and no witch should be without a hat!” said Dimity Hubbub, watching.
    “That’s nice,” said Tiffany. She was used to secondhand clothes.
    “It’s only an old hat,” said Annagramma.
    Tiffany looked up at the tall girl and let herself smile slowly.
    “Annagramma?” she said, raising a hand with the fingers open.
    Annagramma backed away. “Oh no,” she said. “Don’t you do that! Don’t you do that! Someone stop her doing that!”
    “Do you