Terry Pratchett - A Hat Full Of Sky

He stuck the pencil into his hair, and gave her a defiant look.

Jeannie sighed. She’d grown up with seven hundred brothers and knew how they thought, which was often quite fast while being totally in the wrong direction. And if they couldn’t bend their thinking around the world, they bent the world around their thinking. Usually, her mother had told her, it was best not to argue.

Actually, only half a dozen Feegles in the Long Lake clan could read and write very well. They were considered odd, strange hobbies. After all, what—when you got out of bed in the morning—were they good for? You didn’t need to know them to wrestle a trout or mug a rabbit or get drunk. The wind couldn’t be read and you couldn’t write on water.

But things written down lasted. They were the voices of Feegles who’d died long ago, who’d seen strange things, who’d made strange discoveries. Whether you approved of that depended on how creepy you thought it was. The Long Lake clan approved. Jeannie wanted the best for her new clan, too.

It wasn’t easy, being a young kelda. You came to a new clan, with only a few of your brothers as a bodyguard, where you married a husband and ended up with hundreds of brothers-in-law. It could be troubling if you let your mind dwell on it. At least back on the island in the Long Lake she’d had her mother to talk to, but a kelda never went home again.

Except for her bodyguard brothers, a kelda was all alone.

Jeannie was homesick and lonely and frightened of the future, which is why she was about to get things wrong…

‘Rob!’

Hamish and Big Yan came tumbling through the fake rabbit hole that was the entrance to the mound.

Rob Anybody glared at them. ‘We wuz engaged in a lit’try enterprise,’ he said.

‘Yes, Rob, but we watched the big wee young hag safe awa’, like you said, but there’s a hiver after her!’ Hamish blurted out.

‘Are ye sure?’ said Rob, dropping his pencil. ‘I never heard o’ one of them in this world!’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Big Yan. ‘Its buzzin’ fair made my teeths ache!’

‘So did you no’ tell her, ye daftie?’ said Rob.

‘There’s that other hag wi’ her, Rob,’ said Big Yan. ‘The educatin’ hag.’

‘Miss Tick?’ said the toad.

‘Aye, the one wi’ a face like a yard o’ yoghurt,’ said Big Yan. ‘An’ you said we wuzna’ to show ourselves, Rob.’

‘Aye, weel, this is different—’ Rob Anybody began, but stopped.

He hadn’t been a husband for very long, but upon marriage men get a whole lot of extra senses bolted into their brain, and one is there to tell a man that he’s suddenly neck deep in real trouble.

Jeannie was tapping her foot. Her arms were still folded. She had the special smile women learn about when they marry, too, which seems to say ‘Yes, you’re in big trouble but I’m going to let you dig yourself in even more deeply.’

‘What’s this about the big wee hag?’ she said, her voice as small and meek as a mouse trained at the Rodent College of Assassins.

‘Oh, ah, ach, weel, aye…’ Rob began, his face falling. ‘Do ye not bring her to mind, dear? She was at oor wedding, aye. She was oor kelda for a day or two, ye ken. The Old One made her swear to that just afore she went back to the Land o’ the Livin’,’ he added, in case mentioning the wishes of the last kelda would deflect whatever storm was coming. ‘It’s as well tae keep an eye on her, ye ken, her being oor hag and a’…’

Rob Anybody’s voice trailed away in the face of Jeannie’s look.

‘A true kelda has tae marry the Big Man,’ said Jeannie. ‘Just like I married ye, Rob Anybody Feegle, and am I no’ a good wife tae ye?’

‘Oh, fine, fine,’ Rob burbled. ‘But—’

‘And ye cannae be married to two wives, because that would be bigamy, would it not?’ said Jeannie, her voice dangerously sweet.

‘Ach, it wasnae that big,’ said Rob Anybody, desperately looking around for a way of escape. ‘And it wuz only temp’ry, an’ she’s but a lass, an’ she wuz good at thinkin’—’

‘ I’m good at thinking, Rob Anybody, and I am the kelda o’ this clan, am I no’? There can only be one, is that not so? And I am thinking that there will be no more chasin’ after this big wee girl. Shame on ye, anyway. She’ll no’ want the like o’ Big Yan a-gawpin’ at her all the time, I’m sure.’

Rob Anybody hung his head. ‘Aye… but…,’ he said.

‘But what?’

‘A hiver’s chasin’ the puir wee lass.’

There was a long pause before Jeannie said, ‘Are ye sure?’

‘Aye, Kelda,’ said Big Yan. ‘Once you hear that buzzin’ ye never forget it.’

Jeannie bit her lip. Then, looking a little pale, she said, ‘Ye said she’s got the makin’s o’ a powerful hag, Rob?’

‘Aye, but nae one in his’try has survived a hiver! Ye cannae kill it, ye cannae stop it, ye cannae—’

‘But wuz ye no’ tellin’ me how the big wee girl even fought the Quin and won?’ said Jeannie. ‘Wanged her wi’ a skillet, ye said. That means she’s good, aye? If she is a true hag, she’ll find a way herself. We all ha’ to dree our weird. Whatever’s out there, she’s got to face it. If she cannae, she’s no true hag.’

‘Aye, but a hiver’s worse than—’ Rob began.

‘She’s off to learn hagglin’ from other hags,’ said Jeannie. ‘An’ I must learn keldarin’ all by myself. Ye must hope she learns as fast as me, Rob Anybody.’

Twoshirts was just a bend in the road, with a name. There was nothing there but an inn for the coaches, a blacksmith’s shop, and a small store with the word SOUVENIRS written optimistically on a scrap of cardboard in the window. And that was it. Around the place, separated by fields and scraps of woodland, were the houses of people for whom Twoshirts was, presumably, the big city. Every world is full of places like Twoshirts. They are places for people to come from, not go to.

It sat and baked silently in the hot afternoon sunlight. Right in the middle of the road an elderly spaniel, mottled brown and white, dozed in the dust.

Twoshirts was bigger than the village back home and Tiffany had never seen souvenirs before. She went into the store and spent half a penny on a small wood carving of two shirts on a washing line, and two postcards entitled ‘View of Twoshirts’ which showed the souvenir shop and what was quite probably the same dog sleeping in the road. The little old lady behind the counter called her ‘young lady’ and said that Twoshirts was very popular later in the year, when people came from up to a mile around for the Cabbage-Macerating Festival.

When Tiffany came out she found Miss Tick standing next to the sleeping dog, frowning back the way they’d come.

‘Is there something the matter?’ said Tiffany.

‘What?’ said Miss Tick, as if she’d forgotten that Tiffany existed. ‘Oh… no. I just… I thought I… look, shall we go and have something to eat?’

It took a while to find someone in the inn, but Miss Tick wandered into the kitchens and found a woman who promised them some scones and a cup of tea. She was actually quite surprised she’d promised that, since she hadn’t intended to, it strictly speaking being her afternoon free until the coach came, but Miss Tick had a way of asking questions that got the answers she wanted.

Miss Tick also asked for a fresh egg, not cooked, in its shell. Witches were also good at asking questions that weren’t followed by the other person saying ‘Why?’

They sat and ate in the sun, on the bench outside the inn. Then Tiffany took out her diary.

She had one in the dairy too, but that was for cheese and butter records. This one was personal. She’d bought it off a pedlar, cheap, because it was last year’s. But, as he said, it had the same number of days.