A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld, #32; Tiffany Aching, #2)

by Terry Pratchett

We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better’n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart. That is the root and heart and soul and center of witchcraft, that is. The soul and center!” Mistress Weatherwax smacked her fist into her hand, hammering out her words. “The . . . soul . . . and . . . center!”

“That’s why we do all the tramping around and doctorin’ and stuff,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Well, and because it makes people a bit better, of course. But doing it moves you into your center, so’s you don’t wobble. It anchors you. Keeps you human, stops you cackling. Just like your granny with her sheep, which are to my mind as stupid and wayward and ungrateful as humans. You think you’ve had a sight of yourself and found out you’re bad? Hah! I’ve seen bad, and you don’t get near it. Now, are you going to stop grizzling?”

She felt Mistress Weatherwax wouldn’t approve of this attitude. But Tiffany didn’t much like hers either. She lied all the—She didn’t tell the truth all the time.

No dragon’s cave was ever approached as carefully as the cottage in the overgrown garden.

She opened the gate and walked up the path. You couldn’t say: It’s not my fault. You couldn’t say: It’s not my responsibility. You could say: I will deal with this. You didn’t have to want to. But you had to do it.

own. ’Cuz, y’see, this is far too much money to buy a man’s funeral, but I reckon it’ll do fine to marry him off, so I am proposin’ to propose to the Widow Tussy that she engages in matrimony with I!” The last sentence took a little working out, and then Tiffany said, “You are?” “That I am,” said Mr. Weavall, struggling to his feet. “She’s a fine woman who bakes a very reasonable steak-and-onion pie, and she has all her own teeth. I know that because she showed I.

“Still, can’t do nothin’ about that, can we? Not even for a box full of gold!” “No, Mr. Weavall,” said Tiffany hoarsely. “Oh, don’t cry, girl! The sun is shinin’, the birds is singin’, and what’s past can’t be mended, eh?” said Mr. Weavall jovially. “And the Widow Tussy is waitin’!”

“It’s an unfair world, child. Be glad you have friends.”

If Tiffany hadn’t been a witch, she would have whined about everyone being so unfair! In fact they were being fair. She knew they were being fair. They were not thinking just of her but of other people, and Tiffany hated herself—well, slightly—because she hadn’t. But it was sneaky of them to choose this moment to be fair. That was unfair.

It was dreadful when your own thoughts tried to gang up on you.

Would you like some pickles?” “Pickles gives me the wind something awful.” “In that case—” “Oh, I wasn’t saying no,” Mistress Weatherwax said, taking two large pickled cucumbers. Oh, good, Tiffany thought.

“And I do not snore!” she added. After half a minute she started to snore again.

Very slowly, like a twig growing, a stiff hand moved. It slid like a glacier into a pocket and came up holding a large piece of card on which was written: I ATE’NT DEAD

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.

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.

“I notice you’re limping a bit,” said Tiffany. “Do you, indeed? Then stop noticing!” The shout echoed off the cliffs, full of command. Mistress Weatherwax coughed when the echo had died away. Tiffany had gone pale. “It seems to me,” said the old witch, “that I might just’ve been a shade on the sharp side there. It was prob’ly the voles.”

She could tell this because it was followed by a long scream of rage mixed with a roar of complaint: “AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaaBLOON!” which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this.

Now, then . . . do you have it in you to be a witch by noonlight, far away from your hills?” “Yes!” There was no other answer, not to Granny Weatherwax. Granny Weatherwax bowed low and then took a few steps back. “In your own time, then, madam,” she said.

I’m far from home, thought Tiffany, in the same clear way, but I have it in my eye. Now I open my eyes. Now I open my eyes again— Ahh . . . Can I be a witch away from my hills? Of course I can. I never really leave you, Land Under Wave. . . .

Lucky humans, who can close your minds to the endless cold deeps of space! You have this thing you call . . . boredom? That is the rarest talent in the universe!

What power! What wondrous power! You can take a billion trillion tons of flaming matter, a furnace of unimaginable strength, and turn it into a little song for children! You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds, and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming!

Teach us the way to die, said the voices of the hiver. “I don’t know it!” All humans know the way, said the voices of the hiver. You walk it every day of your short, short lives. You know it. We envy you your knowledge. You know how to end. You are very talented.

No, you are not an ‘us.’ You are an ‘I.’” I, me, said the hiver. I. Who am I? “Do you want a name? That helps.” Yes. A name. . . . “I’ve always liked Arthur as a name.” Arthur, said the hiver. I like Arthur too.

You couldn’t stay in that state for long. You became so aware of the universe that you stopped being aware of you. How clever of humans to have learned how to close their minds. Was there anything so amazing in the universe as boredom?

Still feeling muzzy, Tiffany pushed herself back onto her feet, through gentle swirls of rising dust, and turned to the dark door. It wasn’t there. There were her footprints in the sand, but they went only a few feet and, anyway, were slowly disappearing. There was nothing around her but dead desert, forever. She turned back to look toward the distant mountains, but her view was blocked by a tall figure, all in black, holding a scythe. It hadn’t been there before. GOOD AFTERNOON, said Death.

I WAS NOT EXPECTING A NAC MAC FEEGLE TODAY, said Death. OTHERWISE I WOULD HAVE WORN PROTECTIVE CLOTHING, HA HA.

“But . . . I thought there were rules!” said Tiffany, getting up and hurrying forward, all tiredness sudden gone. Even a tired body wants to survive. “Oh? Really?” said Granny. “Did you sign anything? Did you take any kind of oath? No? Then they weren’t your rules! Quickly, now! And you, Mr. Anyone!”

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.”

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 boots were full, they say. . . .” Gossip spreads faster among witches than a bad cold.

When I’m old, I shall wear midnight, she’d decided.

“She made the sky her hat, then,” said Granny Weatherwax.

“Then she made the wind her coat, too,” said Granny Weatherwax.

Things aren’t important. People are.”

“Well done,” she said quietly. “If you don’t know when to be a human being, you don’t know when to be a witch. And if you’re too afraid of goin’ astray, you won’t go anywhere.

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. . . .

Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.

She hurled the starry hat up as high as she could. The wind there caught it neatly. It tumbled for a moment and then was lifted by a gust and, swooping and spinning, sailed away across the downs and vanished forever. Then Tiffany made a hat out of the sky and sat on the old potbellied stove, listening to the wind around the horizons while the sun went down.

I HAD TO WRITE this book. In fact, other projects had to go on hold to let it past.

*First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.