A Hat Full Of Sky - Terry Pratchett [25]
There is something called the Doctrine of Signatures. It works like this: When the Creator of the Universe made helpful plants for the use of people, he (or in some versions, she) put little clues on them to give people hints. A plant useful for toothache would look like teeth, one to cure earache would look like an ear, one good for nose problems would drip green goo, and so on. Many people believed this.
You had to use a certain amount of imagination to be good at it (but not much in the case of Nose Dropwort), and in Tiffany’s world the Creator had got a little more…creative. Some plants had writing on them, if you knew where to look. It was often hard to find and usually difficult to read, because plants can’t spell. Most people didn’t even know about it and just used the traditional method of finding out whether plants were poisonous or useful by testing them on some elderly aunt they didn’t need, but Miss Level was pioneering new techniques that she hoped would mean life would be better for everyone (and, in the case of the aunts, often longer, too).
“This one is False Gentian,” she told Tiffany when they were in the long, cool workroom behind the cottage. She was holding up a weed triumphantly. “Everyone thinks it’s another toothache cure, but just look at the cut root by stored moonlight, using my blue magnifying glass….”
Tiffany tried it, and read: “GoOD F4r Colds May cors drowsniss Do nOt oprate heavE mashinry.”
“Terrible spelling, but not bad for a daisy,” said Miss Level.
“You mean plants really tell you how to use them?” said Tiffany.
“Well, not all of them, and you have to know where to look,” said Miss Level. “Look at this, for example, on the common walnut. You have to use the green magnifying glass by the light of a taper made from red cotton, thus….”
Tiffany squinted. The letters were small and hard to read.
“‘May contain Nut’?” she ventured. “But it’s a nutshell. Of course it’ll contain a nut. Er…won’t it?”
“Not necessarily,” said Miss Level. “It may, for example, contain an exquisite miniature scene wrought from gold and many colored precious stones depicting a strange and interesting temple set in a far-off land. Well, it might,” she added, catching Tiffany’s expression. “There’s no actual law against it. As such. The world is full of surprises.”
That night Tiffany had a lot more to put in her diary. She kept it on top of her chest of drawers with a large stone on it. Oswald seemed to get the message about this, but he had started to polish the stone.
And pull back, and rise above the cottage, and fly the eye across the nighttime….
Miles away, pass invisibly across something that is itself invisible, but which buzzes like a swarm on flies as it drags itself over the ground….
Continue, the roads and towns and trees rushing behind you with zip-zip noises, until you come to the big city, and near the center of the city the high old tower, and beneath the tower the ancient magical university, and in the university the library, and in the library the bookshelves, and…the journey has hardly begun.
Bookshelves stream past. The books are on chains. Some snap at you as you pass.
And here is the section of the more dangerous books, the ones that are kept chained in cages or in vats of iced water or simply clamped between lead plates.
But here is a book, faintly transparent and glowing with thaumic radiation, under a glass dome. Young wizards about to engage in research are encouraged to go and read it.
The title is Hivers: A Dissertation Upon a Device of Amazing Cunning by Sensibility Bustle, D.M. Phil., B. El L., Patricius Professor of Magic. Most of the handwritten book is about how to construct a large and powerful magical apparatus to capture a hiver without harm to the user, but on the very last pages Dr. Bustle writes,