A Hat Full Of Sky - Terry Pratchett [71]
“What’s your name, Tiffany?” said the voice.
“Tiffany!”
The eyes bored into her. “Is it? Really? Sing me the first song you ever learned, Tiffany! Now!”
“Hzan, hzana, m’taza—”
“Stop! That was never learned on a chalk hill! You ain’t Tiffany! I reckon you’re that desert queen who killed twelve of her husbands with scorpion sandwiches! Tiffany is the one I’m after! Back into the dark with you!”
Things went blurry again. She could hear whispered discussions through the fog, and the voice said: “Well, that might work. What’s your name, pictsie?”
“Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle, mistress.”
“You’re very small, aren’t you?”
“Only for my height, mistress.”
The grip tightened on Tiffany’s arms again. The blue eyes glinted.
“What does your name mean in the Old Speech of the Nac Mac Feegle, Tiffany? Think…”
It rose from the depths of her mind, trailing the fog behind it. It came up through the clamoring voices and lifted her beyond the reach of ghostly hands. Ahead, the clouds parted.
“My name is Land Under Wave,” said Tiffany, and slumped forward.
“No, no, none of that, we can’t have that,” said the figure holding her. “You’ve slept enough. Good, you know who you are! Now you must be up and doing! You must be Tiffany as hard as you may, and the other voices will leave you alone, depend on it. Although it might be a good idea if you don’t make sandwiches for a while.”
She did feel better. She’d said her name. The clamoring in her head had calmed down, although it was still a chatter that made it hard to think straight. But now at least she could see clearly. The black-dressed figure holding her wasn’t tall, but she was so good at acting as if she was that it tended to fool most people.
“Oh…you’re…Mistress Weatherwax?”
Mistress Weatherwax pushed her down gently into a chair. From every flat surface in the kitchen, the Nac Mac Feegles watched Tiffany.
“I am. And a fine mess we have here. Rest for a moment, and then we must be up and doing—”
“Good morning, ladies. Er, how is she?”
Tiffany turned her head. Miss Level stood in the door. She looked pale, and she was walking with a stick.
“I was lying in bed and I thought, well, there’s no reason to stay up here feeling sorry for myself,” she said.
Tiffany stood up. “I’m so sor—” she began, but Miss Level waved a hand vaguely.
“Not your fault,” she said, sitting down heavily at the table. “How are you? And, for that matter, who are you?”
Tiffany blushed. “Still me, I think,” she mumbled.
“I got here last night and saw to Miss Level,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Watched over you, too, girl. You talked in your sleep, or rather, Sensibility Bustle did, what’s left of him. That ol’ wizard was quite helpful, for something that’s nothing much more’n a bunch of memories and habits.”
“I don’t understand about the wizard,” said Tiffany. “Or the desert queen.”
“Don’t you?” said the witch. “Well, a hiver collects people. Tries to add them to itself, you might say, use them to think with. Dr. Bustle was studying them hundreds of years ago, and set a trap to catch one. It got him instead, silly fool. It killed him in the end. It gets ’em all killed in the end. They go mad, one way or the other—they stop remembering what they shouldn’t do. But it keeps a sort of…pale copy of them, a sort of living memory….” She looked at Tiffany’s puzzled expression and shrugged. “Something like a ghost,” she said.
“And it’s left ghosts in my head?”
“More like ghosts of ghosts, really,” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Something we don’t have a word for, maybe.”
Miss Level shuddered. “Well, thank goodness you’ve got rid of the thing, at least,” she quavered. “Would anyone like a nice cup of tea?”
“Ach, leave that tae us!” shouted Rob Anybody, leaping up. “Daft Wullie, you an’ the boys mak’ some tea for the ladies!”
“Thank you,” said Miss Level weakly, as a clattering began behind her. “I feel so clum—what? I thought you broke all the teacups when you did the dishes!”
“Oh,