A Hat Full Of Sky - Terry Pratchett [99]
Overhead, a buzzard screamed. She looked up.
The bird turned on the wind and, racing through the air as it began the long glide, headed back toward home.
They were always there.
Beside her cauldron, Jeannie opened her eyes.
“He’s comin’ hame!” she said, scrambling to her feet. She waved a hand urgently at the watching Feegles. “Don’t ye just stand there gawping!” she commanded. “Catch some rabbits to roast! Build up the fire! Boil up a load o’ water, ’cuz I’m takin’ a bath! Look at this place, ’tis like a midden! Get it cleaned up! I want it sparkling for the Big Man! Go an’ steal some Special Sheep Liniment! Cut some green boughs, holly or yew, mebbe! Shine up the golden plates! The place must sparkle! What’re ye all standin’ there for?”
“Er, what did ye want us to do first, Kelda?” asked a Feegle nervously.
“All of it!”
In her chamber they filled the kelda’s soup-bowl bath and she scrubbed, using one of Tiffany’s old toothbrushes, while outside there were the sounds of Feegles working hard at cross-purposes. The smell of roasting rabbit began to fill the mound.
Jeannie dressed herself in her best dress, did her hair, picked up her shawl, and climbed out of the hole. She stood there watching the mountains until, after about an hour, a dot in the sky got bigger and bigger.
As a kelda, she would welcome home a warrior. As a wife, she would kiss her husband and scold him for being so long away. As a woman, she thought she would melt with relief, thankfulness, and joy.
CHAPTER 14
Queen of the Bees
And one afternoon about a week later, Tiffany went to see Granny Weatherwax.
It was only fifteen miles as the broomstick flies, and as Tiffany still didn’t like flying a broomstick, Miss Level took her.
It was the invisible part of Miss Level. Tiffany just lay flat on the stick, holding on with arms and legs and knees and ears if possible, and took along a paper bag to be sick into, because no one likes anonymous sick dropping out of the sky. She was also holding a large burlap sack, which she handled with care.
She didn’t open her eyes until the rushing noises had stopped and the sounds around her told her she was probably very close to the ground. In fact Miss Level had been very kind. When she fell off, because of the cramp in her legs, the broomstick was just above some quite thick moss.
“Thank you,” said Tiffany as she got up, because it always pays to mind your manners around invisible people.
She had a new dress. It was green, like the last one. The complex world of favors and obligations and gifts that Miss Level lived and moved in had thrown up four yards of nice material (for the trouble-free birth of Miss Quickly’s baby boy) and a few hours’ dressmaking (Mrs. Hunter’s bad leg feeling a lot better, thank you). She’d given the black one away. When I’m old, I shall wear midnight, she’d decided. But for now she’d had enough of darkness.
She looked around at this clearing on the side of a hill, surrounded by oak and sycamore on three sides but open on the downhill side with a wide view of the countryside below. The sycamores were shedding their spinning seeds, which whirled down lazily across a patch of garden. It was unfenced, even though some goats were grazing nearby. If you wondered why the goats weren’t eating the garden, it was because you’d forgotten who lived here. There was a well. And, of course, a cottage.
Mrs. Earwig would definitely have objected to the cottage. It was out of a storybook. The walls leaned against one another for support, the thatched roof was slipping off like a bad wig, and the chimneys were corkscrewed. If you thought a gingerbread cottage would be too fattening, this was the next worst thing.
In a cottage deep in the forest lived the Wicked Old Witch….
It was a cottage out of the nastier kind of fairy tale.
Granny Weatherwax’s beehives were tucked away down one side of the cottage. Some were the old straw kind, most were patched-up wooden ones. They thundered with activity, even this late in the year.
Tiffany turned aside to look at