Terry Pratchett - A Hat Full Of Sky

Mistress Weatherwax said nothing. Her face went blank.

‘Are you all right?’ said Tiffany.

‘I was just leavin’ you time to have that thought,’ said Mistress Weatherwax.

‘Sorry. It’s gone now. But… we’re thinking about the hiver in the wrong way.’

‘Oh, yes? And why’s that?’

‘Because…’ Tiffany struggled with the idea. ‘I think it’s because we don’t want to think about it the right way. It’s something to do with… the third wish. And I don’t know what that means.’

The witch said, ‘Keep picking at that thought,’ and then looked up and added, ‘We’ve got company.’

It took Tiffany several seconds to spot what Mistress Weatherwax had seen—a shape at the edge of the woods, small and dark. It was coming closer, but rather uncertainly.

It resolved itself into the figure of Petulia, flying slowly and nervously a few feet above the heather. Sometimes she jumped down and wrenched the stick in a slightly different direction.

She got off again when she reached Tiffany and Mistress Weatherwax, grabbed the broom hastily and aimed it at a big rock. It hit it gently and hung there, trying to fly through stone.

‘Um, sorry,’ she panted. ‘But I can’t always stop it, and this is better than having an anchor… Um.’

She started to bob a curtsy to Mistress Weatherwax, remembered she was a witch and tried to turn it into a bow halfway down, which was an event you’d pay money to see. She ended up bent double, and from somewhere in there came the little voice, ‘Um, can someone help, please? I think my Octogram of Trimontane has got caught up on my Pouch of Nine Herbs…’

There was a tricky minute while they untangled her, with Mistress Weatherwax muttering ‘Toys, just toys’ as they unhooked bangles and necklaces.

Petulia stood upright, red in the face. She saw Mistress Weatherwax’s expression, whipped off her pointy hat and held it in front on her. This was a mark of respect, but it did mean that a two-foot, sharp, pointy thing was being aimed at them.

‘Um… I went to see Miss Level and she said you’d come up here after some horrible thing,’ she said. ‘Um… so I thought I’d better see how you were.’

‘Um… that was very kind of you,’ said Tiffany, but her treacherous Second Thoughts thought: And what would you have done if it had attacked us? She had a momentary picture of Petulia standing in front of some horrible raging thing, but it wasn’t as funny as she’d first thought. Petulia would stand in front of it, shaking with terror, her useless amulets clattering, scared almost out of her mind… but not backing away. She’d thought there might be people facing something horrible here, and she’d come anyway .

‘What’s your name, my girl?’ said Mistress Weatherwax.

‘Um, Petulia Gristle, mistress. I’m learning with Gwinifer Blackcap.’

‘Old Mother Blackcap?’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Very sound. A good woman with pigs. You did well to come here.’

Petulia looked nervously at Tiffany. ‘Um, are you all right? Miss Level said you’d been… ill.’

‘I’m much better now, but thank you very much for asking, anyway,’ said Tiffany wretchedly. ‘Look, I’m sorry about—’

‘Well, you were ill,’ said Petulia.

And that was another thing about Petulia. She always wanted to think the best of everybody. This was sort of worrying if you knew that the person she was doing her best to think nice thoughts about was you.

‘Are you going to go back to the cottage before the Trials?’ Petulia went on.

‘Trials?’ said Tiffany, suddenly lost.

‘The Witch Trials,’ said Mistress Weatherwax.

‘Today,’ said Petulia.

‘I’d forgotten all about them!’ said Tiffany.

‘I hadn’t,’ said the old witch calmly. ‘I never miss a Trial. Never missed a Trial in sixty years. Would you do a poor old lady a favour, Miss Gristle, and ride that stick of yours back to Miss Level’s place and tell her that Mistress Weatherwax presents her compliments and intends to head directly to the Trials. Was she well?’

‘Um, she was juggling balls without using her hands! ’ said Petulia in wonderment. ‘And, d’you know what? I saw a fairy in her garden! A blue one!’

‘Really?’ said Tiffany, her heart sinking.

‘Yes! It was rather scruffy, though. And when I asked it if it really was a fairy, it said it was… um… “the big stinky horrible spiky iron stinging nettle fairy from the Land o’ Tinkle”, and called me a “scunner”. Do you know what that means?’

Tiffany looked into that round, hopeful face. She opened her mouth to say, ‘It means someone who likes fairies,’ but stopped in time. That just wouldn’t be fair. She sighed.

‘Petulia, you saw a Nac Mac Feegle,’ she said. ‘It is a kind of fairy, but they’re not the sweet kind. I’m sorry. They’re good… well, more or less… but they’re not entirely nice. And “scunner” is a kind of swearword. I don’t think it’s a particularly bad one though.’

Petulia’s expression didn’t change for a while. Then she said: ‘So it was a fairy, then?’

‘Well, yes. Technically.’

The round pink face smiled. ‘Good, I did wonder, because it was, um, you know… having a wee up against one of Miss Level’s garden gnomes?’

‘ Definitely a Feegle,’ said Tiffany.

‘Oh well, I suppose the big stinky horrible spiky iron stinging nettle needs a fairy, just like every other plant,’ said Petulia.

When Petulia had gone, Mistress Weatherwax stamped her feet and said, ‘Let’s go, young lady. It’s about eight miles to Sheercliff. They’ll have started before we get there.’

‘What about the hiver?’

‘Oh, it can come if it likes.’ Mistress Weatherwax smiled. ‘Oh, don’t frown like that. There’ll be more’n three hundred witches at the Trials, and they’re right out in the country. It’ll be as safe as anything. Or do you want to meet the hiver now? We could probably do that. It don’t seem to move fast.’

‘No!’ said Tiffany, louder than she’d intended. ‘No, because… things aren’t what they seem. We’d do things wrong. Er… I can’t explain it. It’s because of the third wish.’

‘Which you don’t know what it is?’

‘Yes. But I will soon, I hope.’

The witch stared at her. ‘Yes, I hope so, too,’ she said. ‘Well, no point in standing around. Let’s get moving.’ And with that the witch picked up her blanket and set off as though being pulled by a string.

‘We haven’t even had anything to eat!’ said Tiffany, running after her.

‘I had a lot of voles last night,’ said Mistress Weatherwax over her shoulder.

‘Yes, but you didn’t actually eat them, did you?’ said Tiffany. ‘It was the owl that actually ate them.’

Technic’ly, yes,’ Mistress Weatherwax admitted. ‘But if you think you’ve been eating voles all night you’d be amazed how much you don’t want to eat anything next morning. Or ever again.’

She nodded at the distant, departing figure of Petulia.

‘Friend of yours?’ she said, as they set out.

‘Er… if she is, I don’t deserve it,’ said Tiffany.

‘Hmm,’ said Mistress Weatherwax. ‘Well, sometimes we get what we don’t deserve.’

For an old woman Mistress Weatherwax could move quite fast. She strode over the moors as if distance was a personal insult. But she was good at something else too.

She knew about silence. There was the swish of her long skirt as it snagged the heathers, but somehow that became part of the background noise.

In the silence, as she walked, Tiffany could still hear the memories. There were hundreds of them left behind by the hiver. Most of them were so faint that they were nothing more than a slight uncomfortable feeling in her head, but the ancient tiger still burned brightly in the back of her brain, and behind that was the giant lizard. They’d been killing machines, the most powerful creatures in their world—once. The hiver had taken them both. And then they’d died fighting.