A Hat Full Of Sky

didn’t know was there until you’d seen it.
    “Well, I suppose there’s those as can wear a cloak like this, and those as can’t,” she conceded. She let it curl around her neck and fastened it there with a crescent-shaped brooch.
    “It’s a bit too grand for the likes of me,” she said. “A bit too fancy. I could look like a flibbertigibbet wearing something like this.” It was spoken like a statement but it had a curl like a question.
    “No, it suits you, it really does,” said Tiffany cheerfully. “If you don’t know when to be a human being, you don’t know when to be a witch.”
    Birds stopped singing. Up in the trees, squirrels ran and hid. Even the sky seemed to darken for a moment.
    “Er…that’s what I heard,” said Tiffany, and added, “from someone who knows these things.”
    The blue eyes stared into hers. There were no secrets from Granny Weatherwax. Whatever you said, she watched what you meant.
    “Perhaps you’ll call again sometimes,” she said, turning slowly and watching the cloak curve in the air. “It’s always very quiet here.”
    “I should like that,” said Tiffany. “Shall I tell the bees before I come, so you can get the tea ready?”
    For a moment Granny Weatherwax glared, and then the lines faded into a wry grin.
    “Clever,” she said.
    What’s inside you? Tiffany thought. Who are you really, in there? Did you want me to take your hat? You pretend to be the big bad wicked witch, and you’re not. You test people all the time, test, test, test, but you really want them to be clever enough to beat you. Because it must be hard, being the best. You’re not allowed to stop. You can only be beaten, and you’re too proud ever to lose. Pride! You’ve turned it into terrible strength, but it eats away at you. Are you afraid to laugh in case you hear an early cackle?
    We’ll meet again, one day. We both know it. We’ll meet again, at the Witch Trials.
    “I’m clever enough to know how you manage not to think of a pink rhinoceros if someone says ‘pink rhinoceros,’” she managed to say aloud.
    “Ah, that’s deep magic, that is,” said Granny Weatherwax.
    “No. It’s not. You don’t know what a rhinoceros looks like, do you?”
    Sunlight filled the clearing as the old witch laughed, as clear as a downland stream.
    “That’s right!” she said.

CHAPTER 15
    A Hat Full of Sky
    I t was one of those strange days in late February when it’s a little warmer than it should be and, although there’s wind, it seems to be all around the horizons and never quite where you are.
    Tiffany climbed up onto the downs where, in the sheltered valleys, the early lambs had already found their legs and were running around in a gang in that strange jerky run that lambs have, which makes them look like wooly rocking horses.
    Perhaps there was something about that day, because the old ewes joined in, too, and skipped with their lambs. They jumped and spun, half happy, half embarrassed, big winter fleeces bouncing up and down like a clown’s trousers.
    It had been an interesting winter. She’d learned a lot of things. One of them was that you could be a bridesmaid to two people who between them were over 170 years old. This time Mr. Weavall, with his wig spinning on his head and his big spectacles gleaming, had insisted on giving one of the gold pieces to “our little helper,” which more than made up for the wages that she hadn’t asked for and Miss Level couldn’t afford. She’d used some of it to buy a really good brown cloak. It didn’t billow, it didn’t fly out behind her, but it was warm and thick and kept her dry.
    She’d learned lots of other things too. As she walked past the sheep and their lambs, she gently touched their minds, so softly that they didn’t notice….

    Tiffany had stayed up in the mountains for Hogswatch, which officially marked the changing of the year. There’d been a lot to do there, and anyway it wasn’t much celebrated on the Chalk. Miss Level had been happy to give her leave now, though, for the lambing festival, which the old people called Sheepbellies. It was when the shepherds’ year began. The hag of the hills couldn’t miss that. That was when, in warm nests of straw shielded from the wind by hurdles and barriers of cut furze, the future happened. She’d helped it happen, working with the shepherds by lantern light, dealing with the difficult births. She’d worked with the pointy hat on her head and had felt the