A Hat Full Of Sky

shepherds watching her as, with knife and needle and thread and hands and soothing words, she’d saved ewes from the black doorway and helped new lambs into the light. You had to give them a show. You had to give them a story. And she’d walked back home proudly in the morning, bloody to the elbows, but it had been the blood of life.
    Later she had gone up to the Feegles’ mound and slid down the hole. She’d thought about this for some time and had gone prepared—with clean torn-up handkerchiefs and some soapwort shampoo made from a recipe Miss Level had given her. She had a feeling that Jeannie would have a use for these. Miss Level always visited new mothers. It was what you did.
    Jeannie had been pleased to see her. Lying on her stomach so that she could get part of her body into the kelda’s chamber, Tiffany had been allowed to hold all eight of what she kept thinking of as the Roblets, born at the same time as the lambs. Seven of them were bawling and fighting one another. The eighth lay quietly, biding her time. The future happened.
    It wasn’t only Jeannie who thought of her differently. News had got around. The people of the Chalk didn’t like witches. They had always come from outside. They had always come as strangers. But there was our Tiffany, birthing the lambs like her granny did, and they say she’s been learning witchery in the mountains! Ah, but that’s still our Tiffany, that is. Okay, I’ll grant you that she’s wearing a hat with big stars on it, but she makes good cheese and she knows about lambing and she’s Granny Aching’s granddaughter, right? And they’d tap their noses knowingly. Granny Aching’s granddaughter. Remember what the old woman could do? So if witch she be, then she’s our witch. She knows about sheep, she does. Hah, and I heard they had a big sort of trial for witches up in them mountains and our Tiffany showed ’em what a girl from the Chalk can do. It’s modern times, right? We got a witch now, and she’s better’n anyone else’s! No one’s throwing Granny Aching’s granddaughter in a pond!
    Tomorrow she’d go back to the mountains again. It had been a busy three weeks, quite apart from the lambing. Roland had invited her to tea at the castle. It had been a bit awkward, as these things are, but it was funny how, in a couple of years, he’d gone from a lumbering oaf to a nervous young man who forgot what he was talking about when she smiled at him. And they had books in the castle!
    He’d shyly presented her with a Dictionary of Amazingly Uncommon Words , and she had been prepared enough to bring him a hunting knife made by Zakzak Stronginthearm, who was excellent at blades even if he was rubbish at magic. The hat wasn’t mentioned, very carefully. And when she’d got home, she’d found a bookmark in the P section and a faint pencil underline under the word plongeon : “a small curtsy, about one third as deep as the traditional one. No longer used.” Alone in her bedroom, she’d blushed. It’s always surprising to be reminded that while you’re watching and thinking about people, all knowing and superior, they’re watching and thinking about you, right back at you.
    She’d written it down in her diary, which was a lot thicker now, what with all the pressed herbs and extra notes and bookmarks. It had been trodden on by cows, struck by lightning, and dropped in tea. And it didn’t have an eye on it. An eye would have got knocked off on day one. It was a real witch’s diary.
    Tiffany had stopped wearing the hat, except in public, because it kept getting bent by low doorways and completely crushed by her bedroom ceiling. She was wearing it today, though, clutching it occasionally whenever a gust tried to snatch it off her head.
    She reached the place where four rusty iron wheels were half buried in the turf and a potbellied stove stood up from the grass. It made a useful seat.
    Silence spread out around Tiffany, a living silence, while the sheep danced with their lambs and the world turned.
    Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
    The words ran through Tiffany’s mind as she watched the sheep, and she found herself filling up with joy—at the new lambs, at life, at everything. Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling