It is impossible to describe what happened in a typical Hatmaking lesson because every Hatmaking lesson was completely different.
Once, Uncle Tiberius made Cordelia run different twists of thread through her fingers and think of a word to describe how each thread felt.
“The thread holds the creation together,” he told her, “like the melody of a song holds the notes.”
Another time, Great-aunt Petronella stoked the fire in her Alchemy Parlor and threw different powders, leaves, and twigs into the flames to show Cordelia how they turned the fire from golden to emerald green to brick red to sky blue to royal purple.
Aunt Ariadne gave her chalky and confusing instructions in arithmetic, measuring the angles between sections of her head with a pair of compasses before drawing hypotenuses and spiky triangles on the blackboard.
Her father showed her how to bow respectfully before picking a flower, how to flatter a peacock into dropping a plumy tail feather, and took her hunting for bits of fallen moonbeam on the rooftops of Mayfair.
“When hat-hunting, Dilly, never take more than you need,” her father told her. “And always ask politely.”
All her Hatmaking lessons were fascinating. But Cordelia’s favorite was the one her father had given her last year when he was home from a long ingredient-hunting voyage.
He’d scooped her up and carried her on his shoulders through London down to the quayside. The Jolly Bonnet was moored at a bustling dock. Sailors swung through the rigging like monkeys, whistling in code to each other and singing. The ship was being loaded with fresh supplies for the next quest. Prospero set her down on the deck and said, “Now, my girl. The most important rule to follow when you hunt for hat ingredients is this: keep wildness in your wits and magic in your fingertips.”
Then he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out seven Sicilian Leaping Beans.
“Catch these beans, Cordelia, using your wits and your magic!” Prospero threw the wriggling beans into the air.
You might think that catching a handful of beans would be a doddle, but the Leaping Beans did not want to be caught. They sprang around the deck, hid behind barrels and vaulted into the sailors’ hammocks. Cordelia darted after them but they skittered away from her.
After twenty minutes of grabbing at the Leaping Beans and catching none, Cordelia lay panting on the poop deck. Prospero was watching from the crow’s nest at the top of the mast.
“Use your wild wits and your magic, Cordelia,” he called down.
A Leaping Bean was idling by the ship’s wheel just out of her reach. A few sailors were hanging in the rigging, placing bets on Cordelia versus the bean.
Cordelia thought about what it must be like to be a Leaping Bean: they were boastful and curious and a little bit naughty. She let her mouth fall open and closed her eyes, then pretended to snore very gently.
The bean bounced closer. Cordelia kept her eyes shut and gave an extra-enticing snore. The bean leaped into her open mouth and she clamped her lips shut.
The sailors cheered as she spat the wriggling bean out into her hand. Then she did a victory leap into the air, which sent the remaining beans into a frenzy of competition. The free Leaping Beans each tried to leap higher than Cordelia. She hopped across the deck and launched herself into an empty hammock. All the beans followed her, jumping as high as they could. They leaped into the hammock as she rolled out of it, swirling the canvas around them and catching them all at once. She could hear them pattering huffily against the cloth, trying to leap free.
Prospero shimmied down the mast, a huge grin lighting his face.
“That’s my girl!” he exclaimed. “When my father set loose the Leaping Beans for me, it took me twice as long as you to catch them!”
Cordelia shone with pride.
“You see, littlest Hatmaker,” Prospero said, scooping the Leaping Beans back into his hand and into a small glass jar. “You used your wild wits and your magic.”
“What is my magic?” Cordelia asked.
“Everybody has their own unique magic, littlest Hatmaker,” Prospero explained, handing her the jar of beans. “But it’s up to you to discover what it is. You’ve got to adventure into your own heart and head and belly to find out just what your own special magic is made of.”
Prospero led Cordelia into his captain’s cabin. It was bursting with life: there were massive plants growing in barrels, butterflies flitting among them. A parakeet screeched from his perch on the telescope and Singing Shells jingled in the window. Alongside the fine brass instruments needed to navigate the seas, there were books in unknown languages open on the desk and sprawling maps unrolled on the floor.
Cordelia spied a wooden box of wax-stoppered bottles. “What are those, Father?”
“Ah! They’re special inks!” He took a tiny bottle from the box to show her. “One is invisible, but becomes visible when exposed to the heat of a candle flame. One can only be seen by starlight. One only appears on a Tuesday. They’re all good for sending secret messages.”
Cordelia felt the glass jar of beans in her pocket humming. She pulled it out, studying the beans as they bounced around. “How do they work?” she asked.
“Magic, Dilly. Magic is in everything natural in the world. Magic lives in the wind, in the rivers, in the earth, in the sunlight. It’s in flowers and trees and rocks and it’s born in all creatures. But most people have forgotten about it or—even worse than forgetting—they think it’s old-fashioned.”
“But how could anyone forget?”
Prospero sat down on the floor and pulled Cordelia to him. “Some people are never taught,” he said. “And some people spend their lives trying very hard to be sensible.”
Cordelia shook her head. “I’ve never really seen the point in being sensible,” she admitted.
Prospero laughed and rumpled Cordelia’s hair. “What was once known as the Age of Magic is now called the Dark Ages by people who think they know best,” he continued. “And now, as more and more machines are being made, and more and more children are being put to work in dismal factories, they are calling this the Age of Enlightenment.”
“Why are they calling it that?”
“I think to convince themselves that things are better this way,” Prospero said.
Cordelia frowned. “But things aren’t better,” she said. “Not if people are forgetting about magic.”
“Our hats help,” he told her. “They connect people with the magic contained in the treasures I collect. They connect people with their own inner magic, even when they don’t know it.”
“Has the magic in some people gone?” Cordelia whispered.
“It’s never really gone,” Prospero assured her. “Forgotten magic is like a flower in winter. It disappears down into the depths of the person, and anyone looking could be forgiven for thinking it had gone away completely. But it hasn’t gone—it just has to be woken up again.”
“How do you know all this?” she breathed. “Have you always known it?”
Her father smiled and shook his head. “I studied alchemy out of books for years, until one fine morning, when the sunshine outside was thick and gold and I could see dust from the laboratory floating in the air, I realized I was looking in the wrong place for the answers I sought. You see, alchemists conduct experiments to turn earth into pure gold. But I realized that it cannot be done, at least not in the way the books say. The true alchemist must turn their soul to gold. To do this, the experiment we must participate in is the great experiment of life.
“So that fine morning I stepped out of my laboratory, into the golden sunlight, and instantly felt richer than a king. I knew that I belonged to nature and nature belonged to me. I saw a single daisy growing in the grass and in that moment I understood that one flower has more magic in it than all the man-made riches in a prince’s palace. That is how my great adventures began, of discovering the wild magic of the world, and discovering it in myself.”
Cordelia’s eyes shone.
&
nbsp; “And you made maps of everywhere you went?” she asked, gazing around at the vast and intricate maps spread across the cabin. “So I can go too, one day?”
Prospero grinned.
“Some are maps of places, some are maps to places. Some are maps of cities, or states, or states of mind. Some are just parts of maps.”
“Parts of maps?”
“Yes. Anything can be part of a map. These seven freckles on your nose, for example,” he said, touching each freckle gently with the tip of his finger. “They could be part of a map.”
Cordelia stared into the mirror, remembering. She traced the seven freckles sprinkled like a constellation of stars across her nose and cheeks, lightly touching each freckle with a fingertip, as her father had done that day on the ship.
“Cordelia!”
It was her aunt. Time for today’s Hatmaking lesson.
However, when she reached the Hatmaking Workshop, she found Aunt Ariadne putting on her Wise Bonnet. Uncle Tiberius had his Logic Top Hat perched on his head.
“There will be no Hatmaking lesson today, Cordelia,” said her aunt. “The princess has summoned us most urgently to the palace. We need you to look after the shop while we are gone!”
CHAPTER 9
THE HATMAKERS’ SHOP HAD SPARKLING WINDOWS that looked out onto Wimpole Street.
Hats of every description were displayed in them. Today there was a sky-blue bonnet with a feather from a Moonwing bird, a bright red beret studded with Love Beetle wings, a sleek purple top hat with its brim dipped in Silverglass, and a yellow silk turban with a Saturn Cactus flower sewn onto the ribbon.
The shop’s shelves were stacked with hats of every color and design. There was a wide wooden countertop and a glass case containing the hats with the most potent magical ingredients. Behind the counter, a hatch opened onto the hat hoist. The hoist was operated by a pulley system that brought hats from the Hat-weighing Room down to the shop floor.
Cordelia polished the mirror that gleamed on the wall so that customers could see the full effect of a hat they were trying on. An Impression Measurer was screwed to the wall: a brass ruler inscribed with words like Noble, Beautiful, Splendid, and Statuesque, with a little pointer that went up and down, to measure the effect of the hat.
She arranged herself behind the counter, standing on a stool so she looked taller and more in charge. She had never been responsible for the shop before.
She practiced greeting customers in a gracious voice: “Good afternoon, madam … Good afternoon, sir.”
The brass bell above the shop door dinged and a young man strode in.
“I need a hat, my good lady, to win a duel!”
Cordelia was surprised. Firstly, she had never been called a “lady” before; and, secondly, the man was carrying a set of dueling pistols. He banged the box onto the counter, making Cordelia flinch.
“Um … G-good afternoon, sir,” she stammered.
“My opponent is a good shot, but I must be a better one!” the young man declared.
He was really no more than a boy. Cordelia looked skeptically at his mustache, which seemed more like peach fuzz than the bushy mustache of a hardened duelist.
“Might I enquire what your quarrel is with your opponent?” Cordelia asked. “Simply so I can find you the most ferocious hat for the job.”
“He has insulted my lady love!” the boy cried, cheeks pink with anger. “I demand satisfaction of him!”
Cordelia nodded. Remember the Hatmaker motto, Cordelia, her aunt’s voice warned her. Noli nocere: Do no harm.
Very aware of his zealous gaze following her, Cordelia hopped off her stool, selected a hat for the boy and carried it to the counter.
“What does it do?” the boy asked sharply.
Cordelia held up the hat. It was the bright red beret. Pink Love Beetle wings glimmered all over it.
“This hat makes the wearer most ferocious. These little pink … scales … are Chinese dragon scales,” Cordelia lied, pointing at the Love Beetle wings. (In truth, Love Beetles were very agreeable little insects that lived among the petals of sweet Bulgarian roses.)
“Why are they pink?”
“Because they’re from a baby dragon. They’re red when they’re fully grown, the dragons, but they’re pink when they’re young,” Cordelia invented.
“A baby dragon?” the boy said acidly. “How is a baby dragon dangerous?”
“They haven’t got control of their flame-breathing yet,” Cordelia explained. “Makes them far more dangerous. One hiccup and you’re on fire.”
The boy seemed pleased with this. He emptied his little velvet pouch of silver and gold coins while Cordelia wrapped his hat in soft paper and placed it in a hatbox.
“Don’t put it on until right before your duel,” she warned. “Otherwise you might rampage around London fighting people and I don’t want that on my conscience.”
The boy nodded, seized the hatbox and his dueling pistols and raced out of the shop, the brass bell clanging behind him.
After the boy came an old lady who wanted a bonnet to make her look young. Then a young lady who wanted a thinking cap to make her seem wise. As Cordelia was helping a portly gentleman with a nut-brown bicorn, another young man barged into the shop.
“Shop girl!” he snapped at Cordelia. “I need a hat post-haste.”
Cordelia was not sure what “post-haste” meant, but the lad was pacing up and down in quite a state of agitation.
“Excuse me, sir,” Cordelia said to the portly gentleman, who was testing the bicorn against the Impression Measurer, which read, Cutting a Dashing Figure!
“I need a hat to help me win a duel!” the flustered lad said, pretending to point a dueling pistol at his reflection.
Cordelia fought to keep her eyebrows down at their usual level.
“And may I enquire as to your quarrel—”
“He has taken umbrage at my pet name for his lady love!” he interrupted. “Just because I said she sounds like a mountain goat with a head-cold and decided to call her Sniffy Goat Gruff.”
Cordelia fought to keep her mouth at the usual level. She wanted to laugh. She nodded slowly, which gave her time to arrange her face into a dignified expression.
“So you shall need a hat to keep you cool-headed and icy-hearted,” she said with authority.
“That sounds just the ticket!”
She fetched a pale cap with a silver ribbon and a feather from a Common White Dove. It was finished with a single crystal from the Peace Mountain.
“This hat will give you frosty resolve and a steely soul,” Cordelia announced. “The ribbon is woven from Steelheart fibers and the feather is from a Tufted Maniac.”
“What’s a Tufted Maniac?” the lad asked with round eyes.
“The most merciless bird in the world,” Cordelia replied. “And this crystal was stolen from the Tomb of a Villainous Prince.”
She knew it wasn’t good to lie, but she thought on balance it was better to fib than to have the two young men firing pistols at each other.
“You must only put this hat on your head once your opponent is in sight,” she advised. “Otherwise it could make you so cold-hearted that you catch pneumonia.”
The lad nodded, threw a fistful of coins onto the counter, grabbed the hat and rushed out of the shop.
Cordelia sank onto the stool. Surely nothing could be more exciting than averting a duel?
She was wrong.
CHAPTER 10
IN A SWIRL OF CAPES, A FLURRY OF FLOPPY hair, and a cloud of musky perfume, a man whirled into the shop. Cordelia jumped up as he flung himself onto the carpet, moaning.
“To be … or not to be!”
“Are you all right, sir?” Cordelia asked, afraid that the man rolling on the floor was gripped with pain.
“Alas! Poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio,” he wept into the carpet.
“Can I get you anything, sir? Or would you like something for Horatio?”
The man turned to stare
at Cordelia.
“GET THEE TO A NUNNERY!” he roared at her, leaping to his feet.
“WHY SHOULD I?” she roared back, so shocked by him that she couldn’t help shouting her reply.
Then the man swept his hair out of his face, leaned wretchedly against the counter and muttered, “Miss Hatmaker, I need your help! I perform my Hamlet tonight at Drury Lane and I have an awful case of stage fright!”
Now Cordelia understood: this man was an actor. He could not help how ridiculous he seemed, rolling around on the floor and clutching himself. That was simply how actors behaved! She smiled encouragingly at the desolate expression on his face and his bottom lip wobbled.
“Help me, Miss Hatmaker!” he rasped, falling to his knees. “Princess Georgina will attend tonight’s performance and I fear I shall make an ignoble fool of myself!”
“Princess Georgina?” Cordelia repeated.
“Aye! That nymph of rare beauty and virtue!” the actor began. “She is an exquisite damsel of peerless distinction—”
He continued gushing lyrically about the princess, but Cordelia was not really listening.
If I could get to the theater and see the princess, she thought, I could persuade her to lend me a boat so I can go and rescue Father. She was about to say yes to me at the palace, but that lord stopped her. I’m sure if I was allowed to explain things properly, she would lend me a boat in an instant. I can set sail on the tide tonight!
“Not to mention, of course, that she is extremely rich,” the actor finished.
Cordelia smiled.
“If I find you the perfect hat, will you do me a very important favor?” Cordelia asked.
“Name it, O Maker of Hats!” he cried.
“Will you give me a ticket to your play tonight?”
“Indeed I shall, fair Hatmaker!” the actor declared, but then his expression crumbled. “Tonight! So soon! I fear the stage and all its dreadful boards!”
Cordelia patted him on the head. “Don’t you worry, sir. I’ll find you the best hat we have.”
The Hatmakers Page 5