A Hat Full of Sky (Page 6)
'Well ... if it's the one on top of your neck,' said Tiffany cautiously, still thinking about the other nose, 'you've still got it.' The old suitcase was roped to the bristle end of the broomstick, which now floated calmly a few feet above the ground. 'There, that'll make a nice comfy seat,' said Miss Level, now the bag of nerves that most people turned into when they felt Tiffany staring at them. 'If you'd just hang on behind me. Er. That's what I normally do.'
'You normally hang on behind you?' said Tiffany. 'How can-?' "Tiffany, I've always encouraged your forthright way of asking questions,' said Miss Tick loudly. 'And now, please, I would love to congratulate you on your mastery of silence! Do climb on behind Miss Level, I'm sure she'll want to leave while you've still got some daylight.' The stick bobbed a little as Miss Level climbed onto it. She patted it, invitingly. 'You're not frightened of heights, are you, dear?' she said as Tiffany climbed on. 'No,' said Tiffany. 'I shall drop in when I come up for the Witch Trials,' said Miss Tick as Tiffany felt the stick rise gently under her. 'Take care!' It turned out that when Miss Level had asked Tiffany if she was scared of heights, it had been the wrong question. Tiffany was not afraid of heights at all. She could walk past tall trees without batting an eyelid. Looking up at huge towering mountains didn't bother her a bit. What she was afraid of, although she hadn't realized it up until this point, was depths. She was afraid of dropping such a long way out of the sky that she'd have time to run out of breath screaming before hitting the rocks so hard that she'd turn to a sort of jelly and all her bones would break into dust. She was, in fact, afraid of the ground. Miss Level should have thought before asking the question. Tiffany clung to Miss Level's belt and stared at the cloth of her dress. 'Have you ever flown before, Tiffany?' asked the witch as they rose.
thus getting the maximum aerodynamic advantage from the pointy hat. It was quite a stubby one, only about nine inches high, rather like a clown hat without the bobbles; Tiffany found out later that this was so that she didn't have to take it off when entering low-ceilinged cottages. After a while - an eternity from Tiffany's point of view - they left the farmlands behind and started to fly through foothills. Before long they'd left trees behind, too, and the stick was flying above the fast white waters of a wide river, studded with boulders. Spray splashed over their boots. She heard Miss Level yell above the roar of the river and the rush of the wind: 'Would you mind leaning back? This bit's a little tricky!' Tiffany risked peeking over the witch's shoulder, and gasped. There was not much water on the Chalk, except for the little streams that people called bournes, which flowed down the valleys in late winter and dried up completely in the summer. Big rivers flowed around it, of course, but they were slow and tame. The water ahead wasn't slow and tame. It was vertical. The river ran up into the dark blue sky, soared up to the early stars. The broom followed it. Tiffany leaned back and screamed, and went on screaming as the broomstick tilted in the air and climbed up the waterfall. She'd known the word, certainly, but the word hadn't been so big, so wet, and above all it hadn't been so loud. The mist of it drenched her. The noise pounded on her ears. She held onto Miss Level's belt as they climbed through spray and thunder and felt that she'd slip at any minute - - and then she was thrown forward, and the noise of the fall died away behind her as the stick, now once again going 'along' rather than 'up', sped across the surface of a river that, while still leaping and foaming, at least had the decency to do it on the ground. There was a bridge high above, and walls of cold rock hemmed in the river on either side, but the walls got lower and the river got slower and the air got warmer again until the broomstick skimmed across calm flat water that probably didn't know what was going to happen to it. Silver fish zigzagged away as they passed over the surface. After a while Miss Tick sent them curving up across new fields, smaller and greener than the ones at home. There were trees again, and little woods in deep valleys. But the last of the sunlight was draining away and, soon, all there was below was darkness. Tiffany must have dozed off, clinging onto Miss Level, because she felt herself jerk awake as the broomstick stopped in mid-air. The ground was some way below, but someone had set out a ring of what turned out to be candle ends, burning in old jars. Delicately, turning slowly, the stick settled down until it stopped just above the grass. At this point Tiffany's legs decided to untwist, and she fell off. 'Up we get!' said Miss Level cheerfully, picking her up. 'You did very well!'
'I did. Let's get inside, it's getting chilly-' Miss Level began. 'Oh, by magic,' said Tiffany, still dizzy. 'Well, it can be done by magic, yes,' said Miss Level. 'But I prefer matches, which are of course a lot less effort and quite magical in themselves, when you come to think about it.' She untied the suitcase from the stick and said: 'Here we are, then! I do hope you'll like it here!' There was that cheerfulness again. Even when she felt sick and dizzy, and quite interested in knowing where the privy was as soon as possible, Tiffany still had ears that worked and a mind that, however much she tried, wouldn't stop thinking. And it thought: That cheerfulness has got cracks around the edges. Something isn't right here . . . Chapter 3 Latry There was a cottage, but Tiffany couldn't see much in the gloom. Apple trees crowded in around it. Something hanging from a branch brushed against her as, walking unsteadily, she followed Miss Level. It swung away with a tinkling sound. There was the sound of rushing water, too, some way away. Miss Level was opening a door. It led into a small, brightly lit and amazingly tidy kitchen. A fire was burning briskly in the iron stove. 'Urn . . . I'm supposed to be the apprentice,' said Tiffany, still groggy from the flight. 'I'll make something to drink if you show me where things are-'
was a two-holer, which Tiffany thought was a bit odd but, of course, maybe other people had lived here once. There was also a room just for a bath, a terrible waste of space by the standards of Home Farm. It had its own pump and a big boiler for heating the water. This was definitely posh. Her bedroom was a ... nice room. Nice was a very good word. Everything had frills. Anything that could have a cover on it was covered. Some attempt had been made to make the room. . . jolly, as if being a bedroom was a jolly wonderful thing to be. Tiffany's room back on the farm had a rag rug on the floor, a water jug and basin on a stand, a big wooden box for clothes, an ancient dolls' house and some old calico curtains and that was pretty much it. On the farm, bedrooms were for shutting your eyes in. This room had a chest of drawers. The contents of Tiffany's suitcase filled one drawer easily. The bed made no sound when Tiffany sat on it. Her old bed had a mattress so old that it had a comfy hollow in it, and the springs all made different noises; if she couldn't sleep she could move various parts of her body and play The Bells of St Ungulants on the springs - cling twing glong, gling ping bloyinnng, dlink plang dyonnng, ding ploink. This room smelled different, too. It smelled of spare rooms, and other people's soap. At the bottom of her suitcase was a small box that Mr Block the farm's carpenter had made for her. He did not go in for delicate work, and it was quite heavy. In it, she kept.. . keepsakes. There was a piece of chalk with a fossil in it, which was quite rare, and her personal butter stamp (which showed a witch on a broomstick) in case she got a chance to make butter here, and a dobby stone, which was supposed to be lucky because it had a hole in it. (She'd been told that when she was seven, and had picked it up. She couldn't quite see how the hole made it lucky, but since it had spent a lot of time in her pocket, and then safe and sound in the box, it probably was more fortunate than most stones, which got kicked around and run over by carts and so on.) There was also a blue-and-yellow wrapper from an old packet of Jolly Sailor tobacco, and a buzzard feather, and an ancient flint arrowhead wrapped up carefully in a piece of sheep's wool. There were plenty of these on the Chalk. The Nac Mac Feegle used them for spear points. She lined these up neatly on the top of the chest of drawers, alongside her diary, but they didn't make the place look more homely. They just looked lonely. Tiffany picked up the old wrapper and the sheep's wool and sniffed them. They weren't quite the smell of the shepherding hut, but they were close enough to it to bring tears to her eyes. She had never spent a night away from the Chalk before. She knew the word 'homesickness' and wondered whether this cold, thin feeling growing inside her was what it felt like- Someone knocked at the door. 'It's me,' said a muffled voice. Tiffany jumped off the bed and opened the door.