A Hat Full Of Sky - Terry Pratchett [88]
Tiffany brushed Miss Tick’s arm away, ducked under the rope, and ran up to her.
“Granny!”
The blue eyes turned to her.
“Yes?”
“In stories, where the genie or the magic frog or the fairy godmother gives you three wishes…what’s the third wish?”
“Ah, stories,” said Granny. “That’s easy. In any story worth the tellin’, that knows about the way of the world, the third wish is the one that undoes the harm the first two wishes caused.”
“Yes! That’s it! That’s it!” shouted Tiffany, and the words piling up behind the question poured out. “It’s not evil! It can’t be! It hasn’t got a mind of its own! This is all about wishes! Our wishes! It’s like in the stories, where they—”
“Calm down. Take a deep breath,” said Granny. She took Tiffany by the shoulders so that she faced the panicking crowd.
“You got frightened for a moment, and now it’s comin’ and it’s not going to turn back, not now, ’cuz it’s desperate. It don’t even see the crowd. They don’t mean a thing to it. It’s you it wants. It’s you it’s after. You should be the one who faces it. Are you ready?”
“But supposing I lose—”
“I never got where I am today by supposin’ I was goin’ to lose, young lady. You beat it once—you can do it again!”
“But I could turn into something terrible!”
“Then you’ll face me,” said Granny. “You’ll face me, on my ground. But that won’t happen, will it? You were fed up with grubby babies and silly women? Then this is…the other stuff. It’s noon now. They should’ve started the Trials proper, but, hah, it looks as though people have forgotten. 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.
Wishes, wishes, wishes, thought Tiffany, distracted, fumbling in her pockets for the bits to make a shamble. It’s not evil. It gives us what we think we want! And what do people ask for? More wishes!
You couldn’t say: A monster got into my head and made me do it. She’d wished the money was hers. The hiver just took her at her thought.
You couldn’t say: Yes, but I’d never have really taken it! The hiver used what it found—the little secret wishes, the desires, the moments of rage, all the things that real humans knew how to ignore! It didn’t let you ignore them!
Then, as she fumbled to tie the pieces together, the egg flipped out of her hands, trusted in gravity, and smashed on the toe of her boot.
She stared at it, the blackness of despair darkening the noonlight. Why did I try this? I’ve never made a shamble that worked, so why did I try? Because I believed it had to work this time, that’s why. Like in a story. Suddenly it would all be…all right.
But this isn’t a story, and there are no more eggs….
There was a scream, but it was high up and the sound of it took Tiffany home in the bounce of a heartbeat. It was a buzzard, in the eye of the sun, getting bigger in its plunge toward the field.
It soared up again as it passed over Tiffany’s head, fast as an arrow, and as it did so, something small let go its hold on the buzzard’s talons with a cry of “Crivens!”
Rob Anybody dropped like a stone, but there was a thwap! and suddenly a balloon of cloth snapped open above him. Two balloons, in fact, or to put it another way, Rob Anybody had “borrowed” Hamish’s parachute.
He let go of them as soon as they’d slowed him down, and dropped neatly into the shamble.
“Did ye think we’d leave ye?” he shouted, holding on to the strings. “I’m under a geas, me! Get on wi’ it, right noo!”
“What? I can’t!” said Tiffany, trying to shake him off. “Not with you! I’ll kill you! I always crack the eggs! What goose?”
“Dinna argue!” shouted Rob, bouncing up and down in the strings. “Do it! Or ye’re no’ the hag of the hills! An’ I know ye are!”
People were running past now. Tiffany glanced up. She thought she could see the hiver