A Hat Full Of Sky

dark doorway,” she said slowly, “and beyond it was a desert of black sand, and it was light although there were stars in the sky, and Death was there. I spoke to him….”
    “You spoke to him, did you?” said Annagramma. “And what did he say, pray?”
    “He didn’t say pray,” said Tiffany. “We didn’t talk about much. But he didn’t know what an egress was.”
    “It’s a small type of heron, isn’t it?” said Harrieta.
    There was silence, except for the noise of the Trials outside.
    “It’s not your fault,” said Annagramma in what was, for her, almost a friendly voice. “It’s like I said: Mistress Weatherwax messes with people’s heads.”
    “What about the glow?” said Lucy.
    “That was probably ball lightning,” said Annagramma. “That’s very strange stuff.”
    “But people were, like, hammering on it! It was as hard as ice!”
    “Ah, well, it probably felt like that,” said Annagramma, “but it was…probably affecting people’s muscles, maybe. I’m only trying to be helpful here,” she added. “You’ve got to be sensible. She just stood there. You saw her. There weren’t any doors or deserts. There was just her.”
    Tiffany sighed. She felt tired. She wanted to crawl off somewhere. She wanted to go home. She’d walk there now if her boots weren’t suddenly so uncomfortable.
    While the girls argued, she undid the laces and tugged one off.
    Silver-black dust poured out. When it hit the ground, it bounced slowly, curving up into the air again like mist.
    The girls turned, watching in silence. Then Petulia reached down and caught some of the dust. When she lifted her hand, the fine stuff flowed between her fingers. It fell as slowly as feathers.
    “Sometimes things go wrong,” she said, in a faraway voice. “Mistress Blackcap told me. Haven’t any of you been there when old folk are dying?” There were one or two nods, but everyone was watching the dust.
    “Sometimes things go wrong,” said Petulia again. “Sometimes they’re dying but they can’t leave because they don’t know the Way. She said that’s when they need you to be there, close to them, to help them find the door so they don’t get lost in the dark.”
    “Petulia, we’re not supposed to talk about this,” said Harrieta gently.
    “No!” said Petulia, her face red. “It is time to talk about it, just here, just us! Because she said it’s the last thing you can do for someone. She said there’s a dark desert they have to cross, where the sand—”
    “Hah! Mrs. Earwig says that sort of thing is black magic,” said Annagramma, her voice as sharp and sudden as a knife.
    “Does she?” said Petulia dreamily as the sand poured down. “Well, Mistress Blackcap said that sometimes the moon is light and sometimes it’s in shadow, but you should always remember it’s the same moon. And…Annagramma?”
    “Yes?”
    Petulia took a deep breath.
    “Don’t you ever dare interrupt me again as long as you live. Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare ! I mean it.”

CHAPTER 13
    The Witch Trials
    A nd then…there were the Trials themselves. That was the point of the day, wasn’t it? But Tiffany, stepping out with the girls around her, sensed the buzz in the air. It said: Was there any point now ? After what had happened?
    Still, people had put up the rope square again, and a lot of the older witches dragged their chairs to the edge of it, and it seemed that it was going to happen after all. Tiffany wandered up to the rope, found a space, and sat down on the grass with Granny Weatherwax’s hat in front of her.
    She was aware of the other girls behind her, and also of a buzz or susurration of whispering spreading out into the crowd.
    “…She really did do it, too…. No, really…all the way to the desert…. Saw the dust…her bootswere full, they say….”
    Gossip spreads faster among witches than a bad cold. Witches gossip like starlings.
    There were no judges and no prizes. The Trials weren’t like that, as Petulia had said. The point was to show what you could do, to show what you’d become, so that people would go away thinking things like “That Caramella Bottlethwaite, she’s coming along nicely.” It wasn’t a competition, honestly. No one won .
    And if you believed that , you’d believe that the moon is pushed around the sky by a goblin called Wilberforce.
    What was true was that one of the older witches generally opened the thing with some competent but not surprising trick that