Windows编程

开发平台：

HTML/CSS

Pratchett, Terry - Discworld 12 - Witches Abroad.txt：源码内容

'This is foreign parts, Granny,' said Magrat. 'Anyway, you said the men on the boat didn't recognize the hat, either.'
'But then I dint want 'em to,' said Granny. 'That's different.'
'It's just an ... an incident, Granny,' said Magrat. 'They were just stupid soldiers. They don't even know a proper free-form hairstyle when they see it.'
Nanny looked around. Crowds milled past them, almost in silence.
'And you must admit it's a nice clean city,' she said.
They took stock of their surroundings.
It was certainly the cleanest place they'd ever seen. Even the cobblestones had a polished look.
'You could eat your tea off the street,' said Nanny, as they strolled along.
'Yes, but you'd eat your tea off the street anyway,' said Granny.
'I wouldn't eat all of it. Even the gutters are scrubbed. Not a Ronald* in sight, look.'
'Gytha!'
* Ronald the Third of Lancre, believed to be an extremely unpleasant monarch, was remembered by posterity only in this obscure bit of rhyming slang.
'Well, you said that in Ankh-Morpork - '
'This is somewhere else!'
'It's so spotless,' said Magrat. 'Makes you wish you'd cleaned your sandals.'
'Yeah.' Nanny Ogg squinted along the street. 'Makes you wish you were a better person, really.'
'Why are you two whispering?' said Granny.
She followed their gaze. There was a guard standing on the street corner. When he saw them looking at him he touched his helmet and gave them a brief smile.
'Even the guards are polite,' said Magrat.
'And there's so many of them, too,' said Granny.
'Amazing, really, needing all these guards in a city where people are so clean and quiet,' said Magrat.
'Perhaps there's so much niceness to be spread around they need a lot of people to do it,' said Nanny Ogg.
The witches wandered through the packed streets.
'Nice houses, though,' said Magrat. 'Very decorative and olde-worlde.'
Granny Weatherwax, who lived in a cottage that was as olde-worlde as it was possible to be without being a lump of metamorphic rock, made no comment.
Nanny Ogg's feet started to complain.
'We ought to find somewhere to stop the night,' she said. 'We can look for this girl in the morning. We'll all do a lot better for a good night's sleep.'
'And a bath,' said Magrat. 'With soothing herbs.'
'Good idea. I could just go a bath too,' said Nanny.
'My word, doesn't autumn roll around quickly,' said Granny sourly.
'Yeah? When did you last have a bath, Esme?'
'What do you mean, last?
'See? Then there's no call to make comments about my ablutions.'
'Baths is unhygienic,' Granny declared. 'You know I've never agreed with baths. Sittin" around in your own dirt like that.'
i54
'What do you do, then?' said Magrat. 'I just washes,' said Granny. 'All the bits. You know. As and when they becomes available.'
However available they were, and no further information was vouchsafed on this point, they were certainly more available than accommodation in Genua in Fat Lunchtime.
All the taverns and inns were more than full. Gradually the press of crowds pushed them out of the main streets and into the less fashionable quarters of the city, but still there was no room for the three of them.
Granny Weatherwax had had enough.
'The very next place we see,' she said, setting her jaw firmly, 'we're goin' in. What's that inn over there?'
Nanny Ogg peered at the sign.
'Hotel . . . No ... Va ... cancies,' she muttered, and then brightened up. 'Hotel Nova Cancies,' she repeated. 'That means "new, er, Cancies" in foreign,' she added helpfully.
'It'll do,' said Granny.
She pushed open the door. A round, red-faced man looked up from the desk. He was new to the job and very nervous; the last incumbent had disappeared for not being round and red-faced enough.
Granny didn't waste time.
'You see this hat?' she demanded. 'You see this broom?'
The man looked from her to the broom, and back again.
'Yes?' he said. 'What's that mean?'
'Means we want three rooms for the night,' said Granny, looking smugly at the other two.
'With sausage,' said Nanny.
'And one vegetarian meal,' said Magrat.
The man looked at all three of them. Then he went over to the door.
'You see this door? You see this sign?' he said.
'We don't bother about signs,' said Granny.
'Well, then,' said the man, 'I give up. What's a pointy hat and a broom really mean?'
'That means I'm a witch,' said Granny.
The man put his head on one side.
'Yeah?' he said. 'Is that another word for daft old woman?'
Dear Jason and everyone, wrote Nanny Ogg, Dyou know, they dont know about witches here, thats how bakcward they are in foreign pans. -A man gave Esme some Cheek and she would of lost her Temper so me and Magrat and I got hold of her and rushed her out because if you make someone think they've been turned into something there's always trouble, you remember what happened larst time when afterwards you had to go and dig a pond for Mr Wilkins to live in . . .
They had managed to find a table to themselves in a tavern. It was packed with people of all species. The noise was at shouting level and smoke wreathed the air.
'Will you stop that scribbling, Gytha Ogg. It gets on my nerves,' snapped Granny.
'They must have witches here,' said Magrat. 'Everywhere has witches. You've got to have witches abroad. You find witches everywhere.'
'Like cockroaches,' said Nanny Ogg cheerfully.
'You should've let me make him believe he was a frog,' muttered Granny.
'You can't do that, Esme. You can't go around making people believe they're things just because they've been cheeky and don't know who you are,' said Gytha. 'Otherwise we'd be up to here in people hopping about.'
Despite many threats, Granny Weatherwax had never turned anyone into a frog. The way she saw it, there was a technically less cruel but cheaper and much more satisfying thing you could do. You could leave them human and make them think they were a frog, which also provided much innocent entertainment for passers-by.
'I always felt sorry for Mr Wilkins,' said Magrat, staring moodily at the table top. 'It was so sad watching him try to catch flies on his tongue.'
'He shouldn't have said what he said,' said Granny.
'What, that you were a domineering old busybody?' said Nanny innocently.
'I don't mind criticism,' said Granny. 'You know me. I've never been one to take offence at criticism. No-one could say I'm the sort to take offence at criticism - '
'Not twice, anyway,' said Nanny. 'Not without blowing bubbles.'
'It's just that I can't stand unfairness,' said Granny. 'And you stop that grinning! Anyway, I don't see why you're making a fuss about it. It wore off after a couple of days.'
'Mrs Wilkins says he still goes out swimming a lot,' said Magrat. 'It's given him a whole new interest, she said.'
'Perhaps they have a different kind of witch in the city,' said Magrat hopelessly. 'Perhaps they wear different sort of clothes.'
'There's only one kind of witch,' said Granny. 'And we're it.'
She looked around the room. Of course, she thought, if someone was keeping witches out, people wouldn't know about them. Someone who didn't want anyone else meddling here. But she let us in ...
'Oh, well, at least we're in the dry,' said Nanny. A drinker standing in a crowd behind her threw back his head to laugh and spilled beer down her back.
She muttered something under her breath.
Magrat saw the man look down to take another swig and stare, wide-eyed, into the mug. Then he dropped it and fought his way out of the room, clutching at his throat.
'What did you do to his drink?' she said.
'You ain't old enough to be tole,' said Nanny.
At home, if a witch wanted a table to herself it ... just happened. The sight of the pointy hat was enough. People kept a polite distance, occasionally sending free drinks to her. Even Magrat got respect, not particularly because anyone was in awe of her, but because a slight to one witch was a slight to all witches and no-one wanted Granny Weatherwax coming around to explain this to them. Here they were being jostled, as if they were ordinary. Only Nanny Ogg's warning hand on Granny Weatherwax's arm was keeping a dozen jovial drinkers from unnatural amphibianhood, and even Nanny's usually very elastic temper was beginning to twang. She always prided herself on being as ordinary as muck, but there was ordinary and there was ordinary. It was like being that Prince Whatsisname, in the nursery story, who liked to wander around his kingdom dressed up as a commoner; she'd always had a shrewd suspicion that the little pervert made sure people knew who he was beforehand, just in case anyone tried to get too common. It was like getting muddy. Getting muddy when you had a nice hot tub to look forward to was fun; getting muddy when all you had to look forward to was more mud was no fun at all. She reached a conclusion.
'Hey, why don't we have a drink?' said Nanny Ogg brightly. 'We'd all feel better for a drink.'
'Oh no,' said Granny. 'You caught me with that herbal drink last time. I'm sure there was alcohol in that. I def'nitely felt a bit woozy after the sixth glass. I ain't drinking any more foreign muck.'
'You've got to drink something,' said Magrat soothingly. 'I'm thirsty, anyway.' She looked vaguely at the crowded bar. 'Perhaps they do some kind of fruit cup, or something.'
'Bound to,' said Nanny Ogg. She stood up, glanced at the bar, and surreptitiously removed a hatpin from her hat. 'Shan't be a moment.'
The two of them were left in their own private gloom. Granny sat staring fixedly in front of her.
'You really shouldn't take it so bad, just because people aren't showing you any respect,' said Magrat, pouring soothing oil on the internal fires. 'They've hardly ever shown me any respect at all. It's not a problem.'
'If you ain't got respect, you ain't got a thing,' said Granny distantly.
'Oh, I don't know. I've always managed to get along,' said Magrat.
'That's 'cos you're a wet hen, Magrat Garlick,' said Granny.
There was a short, hot silence, ringing with the words that shouldn't have escaped and a few grunts of pained surprise from the direction of the bar.
I know she's always thought that, Magrat told herself within the glowing walls of her embarrassment. I just never thought she'd ever say it. And she'll never say sorry, because that's not the kind of thing she does. She just expects people to forget things like that. I was just trying to be friends again. If she ever really has any friends.
'Here we are then,' said Nanny Ogg, emerging from the crush with a tray. 'Fruit drinks.'
She sat down and looked from one to the other.
'Made from bananas,' she said, in the hope of striking a spark of interest from either woman. 'I remember our Shane brought a banana home once. My, we had a good laugh about that. I said to the man, "What kind of fruit drinks do people drink around here?" and this is what he gave me. Made from bananas. A banana drink. You'll like it. It's what everyone drinks here. It's got bananas in it.'
'It's certainly very. . . strongly flavoured,' said Magrat, sipping hers cautiously. 'Has it got sugar in it too?'
'Very likely,' said Nanny. She looked at Granny's middle-distance frown for a moment, and then picked up her pencil and licked the end professionally.
Anywey one good thing is the drink here is v. cheap theres this one called a Bananana dakry which is basicly Rum with a banananana* in it. I can feel it doin me good. It is v. damp here. I hope we find somewhere to stay tonigt I expect we shal becaus Esme alweys falls on her feet or at any rate on someones feet. I have drawern a picture of a banananana dakry you can see it is empty right down to the bottom. Love, MUM XXXX
In the end they found a stable. It was, as Nanny Ogg cheerfully commented, probably warmer and more hygienic than any of the inns and there were millions of people in foreign parts who'd give their right arms for such a comfy, dry place to sleep.
This cut about as much ice as a soap hacksaw.
It doesn't take much to make witches fall out.
Magrat lay awake, using her sack of clothes as a pillow and listening to the warm soft rain on the roof.
It's all gone wrong before we've even started, she thought. I don't know why I let them come with me. I'm perfectly capable of doing something by myself for once, but they always treat me as if I was a ... a wet hen. I don't see why I should have to put up with her sulking and snapping at me the whole time. What's so special about her, anyway? She hardly ever does anything really magical, whatever Nanny says. She really does just shout a lot and bully people. And as for Nanny, she means well but she has no sense of responsibility, I thought I'd die when she started singing the Hedgehog Song in the inn, I just hope to goodness the people didn't know what the words meant.
I'm the fairy godmother around here. We're not at home now. There's got to be different ways of doing things, in foreign parts.
She got up at first light. The other two were asleep,
* Nanny Ogg knew how to start spelling 'banana', but didn't know how you stopped.
although 'asleep' was too moderate a word for the sounds Granny Weatherwax was making.
Magrat put on her best dress, the green silk one that was unfortunately now a mass of creases. She took out a bundle of tissue paper and slowly unwrapped her occult jewellery; Magrat bought occult jewellery as a sort of distraction from being Magrat. She had three large boxes of the stuff and was still exactly the same person.
She did her best to remove the straw from her hair. Then she unpacked the magic wand.
She wished she had a mirror to inspect herself in.
'I've got the wand,' she said quietly. 'I don't see why I need any help. Desiderata said I was to tell them not to help.'
It crossed her mind to reflect that Desiderata had been very lax on that point. The one thing you could be sure of, if you told Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg not to help, was that they would rush to help if only out of spite. It was quite surprising to Magrat that anyone as clever as Desiderata should have slipped up on that minor point. She'd probably got a psycholology too - whatever that was.
Moving quietly, so as not to wake the other two, she opened the door and stepped lightly into the damp air. Wand at the ready, she was prepared to give the world whatever it wished for.
It would help if this included pumpkins.
Nanny Ogg opened one eye as the door creaked shut.
She sat up and yawned and scratched herself. She fumbled in her hat and retrieved her pipe. She nudged Granny Weatherwax in the ribs.
'I ain't asleep,' said Granny.
'Magrat's gone off somewhere.'
'Hah!'
'And I'm going out to get something to eat,' muttered Nanny. There was no talking to Esme when she was in that kind of mood.
As she stepped out Greebo dropped lightly off a beam and landed on her shoulder.
Nanny Ogg, one of life's great optimists, stepped out to take whatever the future had to offer.
Preferably with rum and bananas in it.
The house wasn't hard to find. Desiderata had made very exact notes.
Magrat's gaze took in the high white walls and ornate metal balconies. She tried to straighten a few wrinkles in her dress, tugged some recalcitrant bits of hay from her hair, and then marched up the driveway and knocked on the door.
The knocker broke off in her hand.
Looking around anxiously lest someone should have noted this vandalism, Magrat tried to wedge it back. It fell off, knocking a lump out of the marble step.
Finally she knocked gently with her knuckle. A fine cloud of paint dust lifted off the door and floated down to the ground. That was the only effect.
Magrat considered her next move. She was pretty sure that fairy godmothers weren't supposed to leave a little card pushed under the door saying something like 'Called today but you were out, please contact the depot for a further appointment.' Anyway, this wasn't the kind of house that got left empty; there would be a score of servants infesting a place like this.
She crunched over the gravel and peered around the side of the house. Maybe the back door . . . witches were generally more at home around back doors . . .
Nanny Ogg always was. She was heading for the one belonging to the palace. It was easy enough to get into; this wasn't a castle like the ones back home, which expressed very clear ideas about inside and outside and were built to keep the two separate. This was, well, a fairytale castle, all icing-sugar battlements and tiny, towering turrets.
Anyway, no-one took much notice of little old ladies. Little old ladies were by definition harmless, although in a string of villages across several thousand miles of continent this definition was currently being updated.
Castles, in Nanny Ogg's experience, were like swans. They looked as if they were drifting regally through the waters of Time, but in fact there was a hell of a lot of activity going on underneath. There'd be a maze of pantries and kitchens and laundries and stables and breweries - she liked the idea of breweries - and people never noticed another old biddy around the place, eating any spare grub that was lying around.
Besides, you got gossip. Nanny Ogg liked gossip, too.
Granny Weatherwax wandered disconsolately along the clean streets. She wasn't looking for the other two. She was quite certain of that. Of course, she might just happen to bump into them, sort of accidentally, and give them a meaningful look. But she certainly wasn't looking for them.
There was a crowd at the end of the street. Working on the reasonable assumption that Nanny Ogg might be in the middle of it, Granny Weatherwax drifted over.
Nanny wasn't there. But there was a raised platform. And a small man in chains. And some bright-uniformed guards. One of them was holding an axe.
You did not have to be a great world traveller to understand that the purpose of this tableau was not to give the chained man a signed testimonial and a collection from everyone at the office.
Granny nudged a bystander.
'What's happening?'
The man looked sideways at her.
'The guards caught him thieving,' he said.
'Ah. Well, he looks guilty enough,' said Granny. People in chains had a tendency to look guilty. 'So what're they going to do to him?'
'Teach him a lesson.'
'How d'they do that, then?'
'See the axe?'
Granny's eyes hadn't left it the whole time. But now she let her attention rove over the crowd, picking up scraps of thought.
An ant has an easy mind to read. There's just one stream of big simple thoughts: Carry, Carry, Bite, Get Into The Sandwiches, Carry, Eat. Something like a dog is more complicated - a dog can be thinking several thoughts at the same time. But a human mind is a great sullen lightning-filled cloud of thoughts, all of them occupying a finite amount of brain processing time. Finding whatever the owner thinks they're thinking in the middle of the smog of prejudices, memories, worries, hopes and fears is almost impossible.
But enough people thinking much the same thing can be heard, and Granny Weatherwax was aware of the fear.
'Looks like it'll be a lesson he won't forget in a hurry,' she murmured.
'I reckon he'll forget it quite quickly,' said the watcher, and then shuffled away from Granny, in the same way that people move away from lightning rods during a thunderstorm.
And at this point Granny picked up the discordant note in the orchestra of thought. In the middle of it were two minds that were not human.
Their shape was as simple, clean and purposeful as a naked blade. She'd felt minds like that before, and had never cherished the experience.
She scanned the crowd and found the minds' owners. They were staring unblinkingly at the figures on the platform.
The watchers were women, or at least currently the same shape as women; taller than she was, slender as sticks, and wearing broad hats with veils that covered their faces. Their dresses shimmered in the sunlight - possibly blue, possibly yellow, possibly green. Possibly patterned. It was impossible to tell. The merest movement changed the colours.
She couldn't make out their faces.
There were witches in Genua all right. One witch, anyway.
A sound from the platform made her turn.
And she knew why people in Genua were quiet and nice.
There were countries in foreign parts, Granny had heard, where they chopped off the hands of thieves so that they wouldn't steal again. And she'd never been happy with that idea.
They didn't do that in Genua. They cut their heads off so they wouldn't think of stealing again.
Granny knew exactly where the witches were in Genua now.
They were in charge.
Magrat reached the house's back door. It was ajar.
She pulled herself together again.
She knocked, in a polite, diffident sort of way.
'Er - ' she said.
A bowlful of dirty water hit her full in the face. Through the tidal roaring of a pair of ears full of suds, she heard a voice say, 'Gosh, I'm sorry. I didn't know anyone was standing there.'
Magrat wiped the water out of her eyes, and tried to focus on the dim figure in front of her. A kind of narrative certainty rose in her mind.
'Is your name Ella?' she said.
'That's right. Who're you?'
Magrat looked her new-found god-daughter up and down. She was the most attractive young woman Magrat had ever seen - skin as brown as a nut, hair so blonde as to be almost white, a combination not totally unusual in such an easygoing city as Genua had once been.
What were you supposed to say at a time like this?
She removed a piece of potato peel from her nose.
'I'm your fairy godmother,' she said. 'Funny thing, it sounds silly now I come to tell someone - '
Ella peered at her.
'You?'
'Um. Yes. I've got the wand, and everything.' Magrat waggled the wand, in case this helped. It didn't.
Ella put her head on one side.
'I thought you people were supposed to appear in a shower of glittering little lights and a twinkly noise,' she said suspiciously.
'Look, you just get the wand,' said Magrat desperately. 'You don't get a whole book of instructions.'
Ella gave her another searching look. Then she said, 'I suppose you'd better come in, then. You're just in time. I was making a cup of tea, anyway.'
The iridescent women got into an open-topped carriage. Beautiful as they were, Granny noted, they walked awkwardly.
Well, they would. They wouldn't be used to legs.
She also noticed the way people didn't look at the carriage. It wasn't that they didn't see it. It was simply that they wouldn't let their gaze dwell on it, as if merely recognizing it would lead them into trouble.
And she noticed the coach horses. They had better senses than the humans did. They knew what was behind them, and they didn't like it at all.
She followed them as they trotted, flat-eared and wild-eyed, through the streets. Eventually they were driven into the driveway of a big and dilapidated house near the palace.
Granny lurked by the wall and noted the details. Plaster was dropping off the house walls, and even the knocker had fallen off the door.
Granny Weatherwax did not believe in atmospheres.
She did not believe in psychic auras. Being a witch, she'd always thought, depended more on what you didn't believe. But she was prepared to believe that there was something very unpleasant in that house. Not evil. The two not-exactly-women weren't evil, in the same way that a dagger or a sheer cliff isn't evil. Being evil means being able to make choices. But the hand wielding a dagger or pushing a body over a cliff could be evil, and something like that was going on.
She really wished that she didn't know who was behind it.
People like Nanny Ogg turn up everywhere. It's as if there's some special morphic generator dedicated to the production of old women who like a laugh and aren't averse to the odd pint, especially of some drink normally sold in very small glasses. You find them all over the place, often in pairs.*
They tend to attract one another. Possibly they broadcast inaudible signals indicating that here is someone who could be persuaded to go 'Ooo' at pictures of other people's grandchildren.
Nanny Ogg had found a friend. Her name was Mrs Pleasant, she was a cook, and she was the first black person Nanny had ever spoken to.* She was also a cook of that very superior type who spends most of the time holding court in a chair in the centre of the kitchen, apparently taking very little heed of the activity going on around her.
Occasionally she'd give an order. And they'd only need to be occasionally, because she'd seen to it over the years
* Always in front of you in any queue, for a start.
* Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because - what with trolls and dwarfs and so on - speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.
that people either did things her way or not at all. Once or twice, with some ceremony, she'd get up, taste something, and maybe add a pinch of salt.
Such people are always ready to chat to any wandering pedlars, herbalists, or little old women with cats on their shoulders. Greebo rode on Nanny's shoulder as though he'd just eaten the parrot.
'You be a-comin' here for Fat Lunchtime, then?' said Mrs Pleasant.
'Helping a friend with a bit of business,' said Nanny. 'My, these biscuits are tasty.'
'I means, I see by your eye,' said Mrs Pleasant, pushing the plate nearer to her, 'that you are of a magical persuasion.'
'Then you sees a lot further than most people in these parts,' said Nanny. 'Y'know, what'd improve these biscuits no end'd be something to dip 'em in, what d'you think?'
'How "bout something with bananas in it?'
'Bananas would be just the thing,' said Nanny happily. Mrs Pleasant waved imperiously at one of the maids, who set to work.
Nanny sat on her chair, swinging her stumpy legs and looking around the kitchen with interest. A score of cooks were working with the single-mindedness of an artillery platoon laying down a barrage. Huge cakes were being constructed. In the fireplaces whole carcasses of animals were being roasted; turnspit dogs galloped in their treadmills. A huge man with a bald head and a scar right across his face was patiently inserting little sticks into sausages.
Nanny hadn't had any breakfast. Greebo had had some breakfast, but this didn't make any difference. They were both undergoing a sort of exquisite culinary torture.
They both turned, as if hypnotized, to watch two maids stagger by under a tray of canapes.
'I can see you is a very observant woman, Mrs Ogg,' said Mrs Pleasant.
'Just a slice,' said Nanny, without thinking.
'I also determines,' Mrs Pleasant said, after a while, 'that you have a cat of no usual breed upon your shoulder there.'
'You're right there.'
'I knows I'm right.'
A brimming glass of yellow foam was slid in front of Nanny. She looked at it reflectively and tried to get back to the matter in hand.
'So,' she said, 'where would I go, do you think, to find out about how you do magic in - '
'Would you like somethin' to eat?' said Mrs Pleasant.
'What? My word!'
Mrs Pleasant rolled her eyes.
'Not this stuff. I wouldn't eat this stuff,' she said bitterly.
Nanny's face fell.
'But you cook it,' she pointed out.
'Only 'cos I'm told to. The old Baron knew what good food was. This stuff? It's nothing but pork and beef and lamb and rubbish for them that never tasted anything better. The only thing on four legs that's worth eating is alligator. I mean real food.'
Mrs Pleasant looked around at the kitchen.
'Sara!' she shouted.
One of the sub-cooks turned around.
'Yes, 'm?'
'Me and this lady is just going out. Just you see to everything, okay?'
'Yes, 'm.'
Mrs Pleasant stood up and nodded meaningfully at Nanny Ogg.
'Walls have ears,' she said.
'Coo! Do they?'
'We goin' to go for a little stroll.'
There were, it now seemed to Nanny Ogg, two cities in Genua. There was the white one, all new houses and blue-roofed palaces, and around it and even under it was the old one. The new one might not like the presence of the old one, but it couldn't quite ever do without it. Someone, somewhere, has to do the cooking.
Nanny Ogg quite liked cooking, provided there were other people around to do things like chop up the vegetables and wash the dishes afterwards. She'd always reckoned that she could do things to a bit of beef that the bullock had never thought of. But now she realized that wasn't cooking. Not compared to cooking in Genua. It was just staying alive as pleasantly as possible. Cooking anywhere outside Genua was just heating up things like bits of animals and birds and fish and vegetables until they went brown.
And yet the weird thing was that the cooks in Genua had nothing edible to cook; at least, not what Nanny would have thought of as food. To her mind, food went around on four legs, or possibly one pair of legs and one pair of wings. Or at least it had fins on. The idea of food with more than four legs was an entirely new kettle of fi-of miscellaneous swimming things.
They didn't have much to cook in Genua. So they cooked everything. Nanny had never heard of prawns or crawfish or lobsters; it just looked to her as though the citizens of Genua dredged the river bottom and boiled whatever came up.
The point was that a good Genuan cook could more or less take the squeezings of a handful of mud, a few dead leaves and a pinch or two of some unpronounceable herbs and produce a meal to make a gourmet burst into tears of gratitude and swear to be a better person for the rest of their entire life if they could just have one more plateful.
Nanny Ogg ambled along as Mrs Pleasant led her through the market. She peered at cages of snakes, and racks of mysteriously tendrilled herbs. She prodded trays of bivalves. She stopped for a chat to the Nanny Ogg-shaped ladies who ran the little stalls that, for a couple of pennies, dispensed strange chowders and shellfish in a bun. She sampled everything. She was enjoying herself immensely. Genua, city of cooks, had found the appetite it deserved.
She finished a plate of fish and exchanged a nod and a grin with the little old woman who ran the fish stall.
'Well, all this is - ' she began, turning to Mrs Pleasant.
Mrs Pleasant had gone.
Some people would have bustled off to look for her in the crowds, but Nanny Ogg just stood and thought.
I asked about magic, she thought, and she brought me here and left me. Because of them walls with ears in, I expect. So maybe I got to do the rest myself.
She looked around her. There was a very rough tent a little way from the stalls, right by the river. There was no sign outside it, but there was a pot bubbling gently over a fire. Rough clay bowls were stacked beside the pot. Occasionally someone would step out of the crowd, help themselves to a bowlful of whatever was in the pot, and then throw a handful of coins into the plate in front of the tent.
Nanny wandered over and looked into the pot. Things came to the surface and sank again. The general colour was brown. Bubbles formed, grew, and burst stickily with an organic 'blop'. Anything could be happening in that pot. Life could be spontaneously creating.
Nanny Ogg would try anything once. Some things she'd try several thousand times.
She unhooked the ladle, picked up a bowl, and helped herself.
A moment later she pushed aside the tent flap and looked into the blackness of the interior.
A figure was seated cross-legged in the gloom, smoking a pipe.
'Mind if I step inside?' said Nanny.
The figure nodded.
Nanny sat down. After a decent interval she pulled out her own pipe.
'Mrs Pleasant's a friend of yours, I expect.'
'She knows me.'
'Ah.'
From outside, there was the occasional clink as customers helped themselves.
Blue smoke coiled from Nanny Ogg's pipe.
'I don't reckon,' she said, 'that many people goes away without paying.'
'No.'
After another pause Nanny Ogg said: 'I 'spects some of 'em tries to pay with gold and jewels and scented ungulants and stuff like that?'
'No.'
'Amazin'.'
Nanny Ogg sat in silence for a while, listening to the distant noises of the market and summoning her powers.
'What's it called?'
'Gumbo.'
'It's good.'
'I know.'
'I reckon anyone who could cook like that could do anything' - Nanny Ogg concentrated - 'Mrs . . . Gogol.'
She waited.
'Pretty near, Mrs Ogg.'
The two women stared at one another's shadowy outline, like plotters who had given the sign and countersign and were waiting to see what would happen next.
'Where I come from, we call it witchcraft,' said Nanny, under her breath.
'Where I come from, we call it voodoo,' said Mrs Gogol.
Nanny's wrinkled forehead wrinkled still further.
'Ain't that all messin' with dolls and dead people and stuff?' she said.
'Ain't witchcraft all runnin' around with no clothes on and stickin' pins in people?' said Mrs Gogol levelly.
'Ah,' said Nanny. 'I sees what you mean.'
She shifted uneasily. She was a fundamentally honest woman.
'I got to admit, though . . .' she added, 'sometimes . . . maybe just one pin . . .'
Mrs Gogol nodded gravely. 'Okay. Sometimes . . . maybe just one zombie,' she said.
'But only when there ain't no alternative.'
'Sure. When there ain't no alternative.'
'When . . . you know . . . people ain't showing respect, like.'
'When the house needs paintin'.'
Nanny grinned, toothily. Airs Gogol grinned, outnumbering her in teeth by a factor of thirty.
'My full name's Gytha Ogg,' she said. 'People calls me Nanny.'
'My full name's Erzulie Gogol,' said Mrs Gogol. 'People call me Mrs Gogol.'
"The way I saw it,' said Nanny, 'this is foreign parts, so maybe there's a different kind of magic. Stands to reason. The trees is different, the people is different, the drinks is different and has got banana in 'em, so the magic'd be different too. Then I thought . . . Gytha, my girl, you're never too old to learn.'
'Sure thing.'
'There's something wrong with this city. Felt it as soon as we set foot here.'
Mrs Gogol nodded.
There was no sound for a while but the occasional puffing of a pipe.
Then there was a clink from outside, followed by a thoughtful pause.
A voice said, 'Gytha Ogg? I know you're in there.'
The outline of Mrs Gogol took its pipe out of its mouth.
'That's good,' she said. 'Good sense of taste there.'
The tent flap opened.
'Hallo, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg.
'Blessings be on this . . . tent,' said Granny Weather-wax, peering into the gloom.
'This here's Mrs Gogol,' said Nanny. 'She's by way of bein' a voodoo lady. That's what witches are in these parts.'
'They ain't the only witches in these parts,' said Granny.
'Mrs Gogol was very impressed at you detecting me in here,' said Nanny.
'It wasn't hard,' said Granny. 'Once I'd spotted that Greebo washing himself outside, the rest was all deduction.'
In the gloom of the tent Nanny had formed a mental picture of Mrs Gogol as being old. What she hadn't expected, when the voodoo lady stepped out into the open air, was a handsome middle-aged woman taller than Granny. Mrs Gogol wore heavy gold earrings, a white blouse and a full red skirt with flounces. Nanny could feel Granny Weatherwax's disapproval. What they said about women with red skirts was even worse than whatever they said about women with red shoes, whatever that was.
Mrs Gogol stopped and raised an arm. There was a flurry of wings.
Greebo, who had been rubbing obsequiously against Nanny's leg, looked up and hissed. The largest and blackest cockerel Nanny had ever seen had settled on Mrs Gogol's shoulder. It turned on her the most intelligent stare she had ever seen on a bird.
'My word,' she said, taken aback. 'That's the biggest cock I've ever seen, and I've seen a few in my time.'
Mrs Gogol raised one disapproving eyebrow.
'She never had no proper upbringing,' said Granny.
'What with living next to a chicken farm and all, is what I was going to say next,' said Nanny.
'This is Legba, a dark and dangerous spirit,' said Mrs Gogol. She leaned closer and spoke out of the corner of
her mouth. 'Between you and me, he just a big black cockerel. But you know how it is.'
'It pays to advertise,' Nanny agreed. 'This is Greebo. Between you and me, he's a fiend from hell.'
'Well, he's a cat,' said Mrs Gogol, generously. 'It's only to be expected.'
Dear Jason and everyone,
Isn't it amazing the things what happen when you dont expect it, for example we met Mrs Gogol who works as a coke by day but is a Voodoo witch, you mustnt bekive all the stuff about black magic, exetra, this is a Blind, shes just like us only different. Its true about the zombies though but its not what you think . . .
Genua was a strange city, Nanny decided. You got off the main streets, walked along a side road, went through a little gate and suddenly there were trees everywhere, with moss and them llamas hanging from them, and the ground began to wobble underfoot and become swamp. On either side of the track there were dark pools in which, here and there, among the lilies, were the kind of logs the witches had never seen before.
'Them's bloody big newts,' she said.
'They're alligators.'
'By gods. They must get good grub.'
'Yeah!'
Mrs Gogol's house itself looked a simple affair of driftwood from the river, roofed with moss and built out over the swamp itself on four stout poles. It was close enough to the centre of the city that Nanny could hear street cries and the clip-clop of hooves, but the shack in its little swamp was wreathed in silence.
'Don't people bother you here?' said Nanny.
'Not them as I don't want to meet.' The lily pads moved. A v-shaped ripple drifted across the nearest pool.
'Self-reliance,' said Granny approvingly. 'That's always very important.'
Nanny regarded the reptiles with a calculating stare. They tried to match it, and gave up when their eyes started watering.
'I reckon I could just do with a couple of them at home,' she said thoughtfully, as they slid away again. 'Our Jason could dig another pond, no problem. What was it you said they et?'
'Anything they want to.'
'I knows a joke about alligators,' said Granny, in the tones of one announcing a great and solemn truth.
'You never!' said Nanny Ogg. 'I never heard you tell a joke in your whole life!'
'Just because I don't tell 'em don't mean I don't know 'em,' said Granny haughtily. 'It's about this man - '
'What man?' said Nanny.
'This man went into an inn. Yes. It was an inn. And he saw a sign. The sign said "We serve every kind of sandwich." So he said "Get me an alligator sandwich -and make it quick!" '
They looked at her.
Nanny Ogg turned to Mrs Gogol.
'So . . . you live alone here, then?' she said brightly. 'Not a living soul around?'
'In a manner of speakin',' said Mrs Gogol.
'You see, the point is, alligators are - ' Granny began, in a loud voice, and then stopped.
The shack's door had opened.
This was another big kitchen.* Once upon a time it had provided employment for half a dozen cooks. Now it was a cave, its far corners shadowy, its hanging saucepans and tureens dulled by dust. The big tables had been pushed to one side and stacked almost ceiling high with ancient crockery; the stoves, which looked big enough to take
* As Desiderata said, fairy godmothers tend to get heavily involved with kitchens.
whole cows and cook for an army, stood cold.
In the middle of the grey desolation someone had set up a small table by the fireplace. It was on a square of bright carpet. A jam-jar contained flowers that had been arranged by the simple method of grabbing a handful of them and ramming them in. The effect was a little area of slightly soppy brightness in the general gloom.
Ella shuffled a few things around desperately and then stood looking at Magrat with a sort of defensively shy smile.
'Silly of me, really. I expect you're used to this sort of thing,' she said.
'Um. Yes. Oh, yes. All the time,' said Magrat.
'It was just that I expected you to be a bit ... older? Apparently you were at my christening?'
'Ah. Yes?' said Magrat. 'Well, you see, the thing is - '
'Still, I expect you can look like whatever you want,' said Ella helpfully.
'Ah. Yes. Er.'
Ella looked slightly puzzled for a moment, as if trying to work out why - if Magrat could look like whatever she wanted - she'd chosen to look like Magrat.
'Well, now,' she said. 'What do we do next?'
'You mentioned tea,' said Magrat, buying time.
'Oh, sure.' Ella turned to the fireplace, where a blackened kettle hung over what Granny Weatherwax always called an optimist's fire.*
'What's your name?' she said over her shoulder.
'Magrat,' said Magrat, sitting.
'That's a ... nice name,' said Ella, politely. 'Of course, you know mine. Mind you, I spend so much time cooking over this wretched thing now that Mrs Pleasant calls me Embers. Silly, isn't it.'
Emberella, thought Magrat. I'm fairy godmothering a girl who sounds like something you put up in the rain.
* Two logs and hope.
'It could use a little work,' she conceded.
'I haven't the heart to tell her off, she thinks it sounds jolly,' she said. 'I think it sounds like something you put up in the rain.'
'Oh, I wouldn't say that,' said Magrat. 'Uh. Who's Mrs Pleasant?'
'She's the cook at the palace. She comes around to cheer me up when they're out. . .'
Ella spun around, holding the blackened kettle like a weapon.
'I'm not going to that ball!' she snapped. 'I'm not going to marry the prince! Do you understand?'
The words came out like steel ingots.
'Right! Right!' said Magrat, taken aback by their force.
'He looks slimy. He makes my flesh crawl,' said Embers darkly. 'They say he's got funny eyes. And everyone knows what he does at night!'
Everyone bar one, Magrat thought. No-one ever tells me things like that.
Aloud, she said: 'Well, it shouldn't be too much to arrange. I mean, normally it's marrying princes that's the hard bit.'
'Not for me it isn't,' said Embers. 'It's all been arranged. My other godmother says I've got to do it. She says it's my destiny.'
'Other godmother?' said Magrat.
'Everyone gets two,' said Ella. 'The good one and the bad one. You know that. Which one are you?'
Magrat's mind raced.
'Oh, the good one,' she said. 'Definitely.'
'Funny thing,' said Ella. 'That's just what the other one said, too.'
Granny Weatherwax sat in her special knees-clenched, elbows-in way that put as little as possible of herself in contact with the outside world.
'By gor', this is good stuff,' said Nanny Ogg, polishing her plate with what Granny could only hope was bread. 'You ought to try a drop, Esme.'
'Another helping, Mrs Ogg?' said Mrs Gogol.
'Don't mind if I do, Mrs Gogol.' Nanny nudged Granny in the ribs. 'It's really good, Esme. Just like stew.'
Mrs Gogol looked at Granny with her head on one side.
'I think perhaps Mistress Weatherwax isn't worried about the food,' she said. 'I think Mistress Weatherwax is worried about the service.'
A shadow loomed over Nanny Ogg. A grey hand took her plate away.
Granny Weatherwax gave a little cough.
'I've got nothing against dead people,' she said. 'Some of my best friends are dead. It just don't seem right, though, dead people walking about.'
Nanny Ogg looked up at the figure even now ladling a third helping of mysterious liquid on to her plate.
'What d'you think about it, Mr Zombie?'
'It's a great life, Mrs Ogg,' said the zombie.
'There. See, Esme? He don't mind. Better than being shut up in a stuffy coffin all day, I'll be bound.'
Granny looked up at the zombie. He was - or, technically, had been - a tall, handsome man. He still was, only now he looked like someone who had walked through a room full of cobwebs.
'What's your name, dead man?' she said.
'I am called Saturday.'
'Man Saturday, eh?' said Nanny Ogg.
'No. Just Saturday, Mrs Ogg. Just Saturday.'
Granny Weatherwax looked into his eyes. They were more sentient than most eyes she had seen that belonged to people who were, technically, alive.
She was vaguely aware that there were things you had to do to a dead person to turn them into a zombie, although it was a branch of magic she'd never wanted to investigate.
Yet you needed more than just a lot of weird fish innards and foreign roots - the person had to want to come back. They had to have some terrible dream or desire or purpose that would enable them to overcome the grave itself. . .
Saturday's eyes burned.
She reached a decision. She held out a hand.
'Very pleased to meet you, Mister Saturday,' she said. 'And I'm sure I'd enjoy your lovely stew.'
'It's called gumbo,' said Nanny. 'It's got lady's fingers in it.'
'I know well enough that lady's fingers is a kind of plant, thank you very much,' said Granny. 'I'm not entirely ignorant.'
'All right, but make sure you get a helping with snakes' heads in it as well,' said Nanny Ogg. 'They're the best part.'
'What kind of plant is snakes' heads?'
'Best if you just eat up, I reckon,' said Nanny.
They were sitting on the warped wood veranda round the back of Mrs Gogol's shack, overlooking the swamp. Mossy beards hung from every branch. Unseen creatures buzzed in the greenery. And everywhere there were v-shaped ripples cutting gently through the water.
'I expect it's really nice here when the sun's out,' said Nanny.
Saturday trudged into the shack and returned with a makeshift fishing pole, which he baited and cast over the rail. Then he sort of switched off; no-one has more patience than a zombie.
Mrs Gogol leaned back in her rocking-chair and lit her pipe.
'This used to be a great ole city,' she said.
'What happened to it?' said Nanny.
Greebo was having a lot of trouble with Legba the cockerel.
For one thing, the bird refused to be terrorized. Greebo could terrorize most things that moved upon the face of the Discworld, even creatures nominally much bigger and tougher than he was. Yet somehow none of his well-tried tactics - the yawn, the stare and above all the slow grin -seemed to work. Legba merely looked down his beak at him, and pretended to scratch at the ground in a way that brought his two-inch spurs into even greater prominence.
That only left the flying leap. This worked on nearly every creature. Very few animals remained calm in the face of an enraged ball of whirring claws in the face. In the case of this bird, Greebo suspected, it might well result in his becoming a furry kebab.
But this had to be resolved. Otherwise generations of cats would laugh at him.
Cat and bird circled through the swamp, each apparently paying the other no attention whatsoever.
Things gibbered in the trees. Small iridescent birds barrelled through the air. Greebo glared up at them. He would sort them out later.
And the cockerel had vanished.
Greebo's ears flattened against his head.
There was still the birdsong and the whine of insects, but they were elsewhere. Here there was silence - hot, dark and oppressive - and trees that were somehow much closer together than he remembered.
Greebo looked around.
He was in a clearing. Around its sides, hanging from bushes or tied to trees, were things. Bits of ribbon. White bones. Tin pots. Perfectly ordinary things, anywhere else.
And in die centre of the clearing, something like a scarecrow. An upright pole with a crosspiece, on which someone had put an old black coat. Above the coat, on the tip of the pole, was a top hat. On top of the hat, watching him thoughtfully, was Legba.
A breeze blew through the stifling air, causing the coat to flap gently.
Greebo remembered a day when he'd chased a rat into the village windmill and had suddenly found that what had seemed merely a room with odd furniture in it was a great big machine which would, if he put a paw wrong, crush him utterly.
The air sizzled gently. He could feel his fur standing on end.
Greebo turned and stalked away haughtily, until he judged himself out of sight, whereupon his legs spun so fast that his paws skidded.
Then he went and grinned at some alligators, but his heart wasn't in it.
In the clearing, the coat moved gently again and then was still. Somehow, that was worse.
Legba watched. The air grew heavier, just as it does before a storm.
"This used to be a great old city. A happy place. No-one tried to make it happy. It just happened, all by itself,' said Airs Gogol. 'That was when the old Baron was alive. But he was murdered.'
'Who done it?' said Nanny Ogg.
'Everyone knows it was the Duc,' said Airs Gogol.
The witches looked at one another. Royal intrigues were obviously a bit different in foreign parts.
'Pecked to death, was he?' said Nanny.
'A foul deed?' said Granny.
'The Duc is a title, not a bird,' said Mrs Gogol patiently. 'The Baron was poisoned. It was a terrible night. And, in the morning, the Duc was in the palace. Then there was the matter of the will.'
'Don't tell me,' said Granny. 'I bet there was a will leaving everything to this Duc. I bet the ink was still wet.'
'How did you know that?' said Airs Gogol.
'Stands to reason,' said Granny loftily.
'The Baron had a young daughter,' said Mrs Gogol.
'She'd be still alive, I reckon,' said Granny.
'You surely know a lot of things, lady,' said Airs Gogol. 'Why'd you think that, then?'
'Well . . .' said Granny. She was about to say: because I know how the stories work. But Nanny Ogg interrupted.
'If this Baron was as great as you say, he must have had a lot of friends in the city, right?' she said.
'That is so. The people liked him.'
'Well, if I was a Duc with no more claim on things than a smudgy will and a little bottle of ink with the cork still out, I'd be lookin' for any chance to make things a bit more official,' said Nanny. 'Marryin' the real heir'd be favourite. He could thumb his nose at everyone, then. I bet she don't know who she really is, eh?'
'That's right,' said Mrs Gogol. 'The Duc's got friends, too. Or keepers, maybe. Not people you'd want to cross. They've brought her up, and they don't let her out much.'
The witches sat in silence for a while.
Granny thought: no. That's not quite right. That's how it'd appear in a history book. But that's not the story.
Then Granny said,' 'Scuse me, Mrs Gogol, but where do you come in all this? No offence, but I reckon that out here in the swamp it'd be all the same whoever was doing the rulin'.'
For the first time since they'd met her, Mrs Gogol looked momentarily uneasy.
'The Baron was ... a friend of mine,' she said.
'Ah,' said Granny understandingly.
'He wasn't keen on zombies, mark you. He said he thought the dead should be allowed their rest. But he never insisted. Whereas this new one . . .'
'Not keen on the Interestin" Arts?' said Nanny.
'Oh, I reckon he is,' said Granny. 'He'd have to be. Not your magic, maybe, but I bet he's got a lot of magic around him.'
'Why d'you say that, lady?' said Mrs Gogol.
'Well,' said Nanny, 'I can see that you, being a lady o' spirit, wouldn't put up with this if you didn't have to. There's lots of ways to sort matters out, I 'spect. I 'spect, if you dint like someone, their legs might unexpectedly drop off, or they might find mysterious snakes in their boots ..."
'Alleygators under their bed,' suggested Granny.
'Yes. He's got protection,' said Mrs Gogol.
'Ah.'
'Powerful magic.'
'More powerful'n you?' said Granny.
There was a long and difficult pause.
'Yes.'
'Ah.'
'For now,' Mrs Gogol added.
There was another pause. No witch ever liked admitting to less than near-absolute power, or even hearing another witch doing so.
'You're biding your time, I expect,' said Granny kindly.
'Wifing your strength,' said Nanny.
'It's powerful protection,' said Mrs Gogol.
Granny sat back in her chair. When she spoke next, it was as a person who has certain ideas in their mind and wants to find out what someone else knows.
'What sort?' she said. 'Exactly?'
Mrs Gogol reached into the cushions of her rocking-chair and, after some rummaging, produced a leather bag and a pipe. She lit the pipe and puffed a cloud of bluish smoke into the morning air.
'You look in mirrors a lot these days, Mistress Weather-wax?' she said.
Granny's chair tipped backwards, almost throwing her off the veranda and into the inky waters. Her hat flew away into the lily pads.
She had time to see it settle gently on the water. It floated for a moment and then -
- was eaten. A very large alligator snapped its jaws shut and gazed smugly at Granny.
It was a relief to have something to shout about.
'My hat! It ate my hat! One of your alleygators ate my hatl It was my hat! Make it give it back!'
She snatched a length of creeper off the nearest tree and flailed at the water.
Nanny Ogg backed away.
'You shouldn't do that, Esme! You shouldn't do that!' she quavered. The alligator backed water.
'I can hit cheeky lizards if I want!'
'Yes, you can, you can,' said Nanny soothingly, 'but not. . . with a ... snake . . .'
Granny held up the creeper for inspection. A medium-sized Three-Banded Coit gave her a frightened look, considered biting her nose for a moment, thought better of it, and then shut its mouth very tightly in the hope she'd get the message. She opened her hand. The snake dropped to the boards and slithered away quickly.
Mrs Gogol hadn't stirred in her chair. Now she half turned. Saturday was still patiently watching his fishing line.
'Saturday, go and fetch the lady's hat,' she said.
'Yes, m'm.'
Even Granny hesitated at that.
'You can't make him do that!' she said.
'But he's dead,' said Mrs Gogol.
'Yes, but it's bad enough being dead without bein' in bits too,' said Granny. 'Don't you go in there, Mr Saturday!'
'But it was your hat, lady,' said Mrs Gogol.
'Yes, but..." said Granny,'. . . a . . . hat was all it was. I wouldn't send anyone into any alligators for any hat.'
Nanny Ogg looked horrified.
No-one knew better than Granny Weatherwax that hats were important. They weren't just clothing. Hats defined the head. They defined who you were. No-one had ever heard of a wizard without a pointy hat - at least, no wizard worth speaking of. And you certainly never heard of a witch without one. Even Magrat had one, although she hardly ever wore it on account of being a wet hen. That didn't matter too much; it wasn't the wearing of the hats that counted so much as having one to wear. Every trade, every craft had its hat. That's why kings had hats. Take the crown off a king and all you had was someone good at having a weak chin and waving to people. Hats had power. Hats were important. But so were people.
Mrs Gogol took another puff at her pipe.
'Saturday, go and get my best hat for holidays,' she said.
'Yes, Mrs Gogol.'
Saturday disappeared into the hut for a moment, and came out with a large and battered box securely wrapped with twine.
'I can't take that,' said Granny. 'I can't take your best hat.'
'Yes you can,' said Mrs Gogol. 'I've got another hat. Oh, yes. I've got another hat all right.'
Granny put the box down carefully.
'It occurs to me, Mrs Gogol,' she said, 'that you ain't everything you seem.'
'Oh yes I is, Mistress Weatherwax. I never bin nothing else, just like you.'
'You brought us here?'
'No. You brought yourselves here. Of your own free will. To help someone, ain't that right? You decided to do it, ain't that right? No-one forced you, ain't that right? 'Cept yourselves.'
'She's right about all that,' said Nanny. 'We'd have felt it, if it was magic.'
"That's right,' said Granny. 'No-one forced us, except ourselves. What's your game, Mrs Gogol?'
'I ain't playing no game, Mistress Weatherwax. I just want back what's mine. I want justice. And I wants her stopped.'
'Her who?' said Nanny Ogg.
Granny's face had frozen into a mask.
'Her who's behind all this,' said Mrs Gogol. 'The Duc hasn't got the brains of a prawn, Mrs Ogg. I mean her. Her with her mirror magic. Her who likes to control. Her who's in charge. Her who's tinkering with destiny. Her that Mistress Weatherwax knows all about.'
Nanny Ogg was lost.
'What's she talking about, Esme?' she said.
Granny muttered something.
'What? Didn't hear you,' Nanny said.
Granny Weatherwax looked up, her face red with anger.
'She means my sister, Gytha! Right? Got that? Do you understand? Did you hear? My sister! Want me to repeat it again? Want to know who she's talking about? You want me to write it down? My sister! That's who! My sisterV
'They're sisters?' said Magrat.
Her tea had gone cold.
'I don't know,' said Ella. 'They look . . . alike. They keep themselves to themselves most of the time. But I can feel them watching. They're very good at watching.'
'And they make you do all the work?' she said.
'Well, I only have to cook for myself and the outside staff,' said Ella. 'And I don't mind the cleaning and the laundry all that much.'
'Do they do their own cooking, then?'
'I don't think so. They walk around the house at night, after I've gone to bed. Godmother Lilith says I must be kind to them and pity them because they can't talk, and always see that we've got plenty of cheese in the larder.'
'They eat nothing but cheese?' said Magrat.
'I don't think so,' said Ella.
'I should think the rats and mice get it, then, in an old place like this.'
'You know, it's a funny thing,' said Ella, 'but I've never seen a mouse anywhere in this house.'
Magrat shivered. She felt watched.
'Why don't you just walk away? I would.'
'Where to? Anyway, they always find me. Or they send the coachmen and grooms after me.'
'That's horrible!'
'I'm sure they think that sooner or later I'll marry anyone to get away from laundry,' said Ella. 'Not mat the Prince's clothes get washed, I expect,' she added bitterly. 'I expect they get burned after he's worn them.'
' What you want to do is make a career of your own,' said Magrat encouragingly, to keep her spirits up. 'You want to be your own woman. You want to emancipate yourself.'
'I don't think I want to do that,' said Ella, speaking with caution in case it was a sin to offend a fairy godmother.
'You do really,' said Magrat.
'Do I?'
'Yes.'
'Oh.'
'You don't have to marry anyone you don't want to.'
Ella sat back.
'How good are you?' she said.
'Er . . . well ... I suppose I - '
'The dress arrived yesterday,' said Ella. 'It's up in the big front room, on a stand so it doesn't get creased. So that it stays perfect. And they've polished up the coach specially. They've hired extra footmen, too.'
'Yes, but perhaps - '
'I think I'm going to have to marry someone I don't want to,' said Ella.
Granny Weatherwax strode up and down the driftwood balcony. The whole shack trembled to her stamping. Ripples spread out as it bounced on the water.
'Of course you don't remember her!' she shouted. 'Our mam kicked her out when she was thirteen! We was both tiny then! But I remember the rows! I used to hear them when I was in bed! She was wanton?
'You always used to say I was wanton, when we was younger,' said Nanny.
Granny hesitated, caught momentarily off balance. Then she waved a hand irritably.
'You was, of course,' she said dismissively. 'But you never used magic for it, did you?'
'Din't have to,' said Nanny happily. 'An off-the* shoulder dress did the trick most of the time.'
'Right off the shoulder and on to the grass, as I recall,' said Granny. 'No, she used magic. Not just ordinary magic, neither. Oh, she was wilfulV
Nanny Ogg was about to say: What? You mean not compliant and self-effacing like what you is, Esme? But she stopped herself. You didn't juggle matches in a fireworks factory.
'Young men's fathers used to come round to complain,' said Granny darkly.
'They never came round to complain about me,' said Nanny happily.
'And always looking at herself in mirrors,' said Granny. 'Prideful as a cat, she was. Prefer to look in a mirror than out of a window, she would.'
'What's her name?'
'Lily.'
'That's a nice name,' said Nanny.
'It isn't what she calls herself now,' said Mrs Gogol.
'I bet it isn't!'
'And she's, like, in charge of the city?' said Nanny.
'She was bossy, too!'
'What'd she want to be in charge of a city for?' said Nanny.
'She's got plans,' said Mrs Gogol.
'And vain? Really vainl' said Granny, apparently to the world in general.
'Did you know she was here?' said Nanny.
'I had a feelin'! Mirrors!'
'Mirror magic isn't bad,' protested Nanny. 'I've done all kinds of stuff with mirrors. You can have a lot of fun with a mirror.'
'She doesn't just use one mirror,' said Mrs Gogol.
'Oh.'
'She uses two.'
'Oh. That's different.'
Granny stared at the surface of the water. Her own face stared back at her from the darkness.
She hoped it was her own face, anyway.
'I've felt her watchin' us, the whole way here,' she said. 'That's where she's happiest, inside mirrors. Inside mirrors, making people into stories.'
She prodded the image with a stick. 'She even got a look at me in Desiderata's house, just before Magrat came in. It ain't nice, seeing someone else in your reflection - '
She paused. 'Where is Magrat, anyway?'
'Out fairy godmothering, I think,' said Nanny. 'She said she didn't need any help.'
Magrat was annoyed. She was also frightened, which made her even more annoyed. It was hard for people when Magrat was annoyed. It was like being attacked by damp tissue.
'You have my personal word on it,' she said. 'You don't have to go to the ball if you don't want to.'
'You won't be able to stop them,' said Ella darkly. 'I know how things work in this city.'
'Look, I said you won't have to go!' said Magrat.
She looked thoughtful.
'There isn't someone else you'd rather marry, is there?' she said.
'No. I don't know many people. I don't get much chance.'
'Good,' said Magrat. 'That makes it easier. I suggest we get you out of here and - and take you somewhere else.'
'There isn't anywhere else. I told you. There's just swamp. I tried once or twice, and they sent the coachmen after me. They weren't unkind. The coachmen, I mean. They're just afraid. Everyone's afraid. Even the Sisters are afraid, I think.'
Magrat looked around at the shadows.
'What of?' she said.
'They say that people disappear. If they upset the Duc. Something happens to them. Everyone's very polite in Genua,' said Ella sourly. 'And no-one steals and no-one raises their voice and everyone stays indoors at night, except when it's Fat Tuesday.' She sighed. 'Now that's something I'd like to go to. To the carnival. They always make me stay in, though. But I hear it passing through the city and I think: that's what Genua ought to be. Not a few people dancing in palaces, but everyone dancing in the streets.'
Magrat shook herself. She felt a long way from home.
'I think perhaps I might need a bit of help with this one,' she said.
'You've got a wand,' said Ella.
'I think there's times when you need more than a wand,' said Magrat. She stood up.
'But I'll tell you this,' she said. 'I don't like this house. I don't like this city. Emberella?'
'Yes?'
'You won't go to the ball. I'll make sure of that - '
She turned around.
'I told you,' murmured Ella, looking down. 'You can't even hear them.'
One of the sisters was at the top of the steps leading into the kitchen. Her gaze was fixed immovably on Magrat.
They say that everyone has the attributes of some kind of animal. Magrat possibly had a direct mental link to some small furry creature. She felt the terror of all small rodents in the face of unblinking death. Modulated over the menace of the gaze were all sorts of messages: the uselessness of flight, the stupidity of resistance, the inevitability of oblivion.
She knew she could do nothing. Her legs weren't under her control. It was as if commands were coming straight down that stare and into her spinal cord. The sense of helplessness was almost peaceful . . .
'Blessings be upon this house.'
The sister spun around much faster than any human should be able to move.
Granny Weatherwax pushed open the door. 'Oh deary me,' she thundered, 'and lawks.'
'Yeah,' said Nanny Ogg, crowding through the doorway behind her. 'Lawks too.'
'We're just a couple of old beggar women,' said Granny, striding across the floor.
'Begging from house to house,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Not coming directly here by any manner o' means.'
They each caught one of Magrat's elbows and lifted her off her feet.
Granny turned her head.
'What about you, Miss?'
Ella shook her head without looking up.
'No,' she said, 'I mustn't come.'
Granny's eyes narrowed. 'I suppose not,' she said. 'We all have our path to walk, or so it is said, although not by me. Come, Gytha.'
'We're just off,' said Nanny Ogg, brightly.
They turned.
Another sister appeared in the doorway.
'Ye gods,' said Nanny Ogg. 'I never saw her move!'
'We was just going out,' said Granny Weatherwax loudly. 'If it's all the same with you, m'lady?'
She met the stare head-on.
The air tingled.
Then Granny Weatherwax said, between gritted teeth, 'When I say run, Gytha - '
'I hear you,' said Nanny.
Granny groped behind her and found the teapot Magrat had just used. She weighed it in her hands, keeping the movements slow and gentle.
'Ready, Gytha?'
'Waitin', Esme.'
'Run!'
Granny hurled the teapot high into the air. The heads of both sisters snapped around.
Nanny Ogg helped the stumbling Magrat out of the door. Granny slammed it shut as the nearer sister darted forward, mouth open, too late.
'We're leaving the girl in there!' shouted Nanny, as they ran down the drive.
'They're guarding her,' said Granny. 'They're not going to harm her!'
'I ain't seen teeth like those on anyone before!' said Nanny.
'That's 'cos they ain't anyone! They're snakes!'
They reached the comparative security of the roadway and leaned against the wall.
'Snakes?' Nanny wheezed. Magrat opened her eyes.
'It's Lily's doing,' said Granny. 'She was good at that kind of thing, I remember.'
'Really snakes?'
'Yeah,' said Granny darkly. 'She made friends easily.'
'Blimey! I couldn't do that.'
'She didn't used to be able to either, for more'n a few seconds. That's what using mirrors does for you.'
'I - I -' Magrat stuttered.
'You're all right,' said Nanny. She looked up at Esme Weatherwax.
'We shouldn't leave the girl, whatever you say. In a house with snakes walking around thinking they're human,' she said.
'It's worse than that. They're walking around thinking they're snakes,' said Granny.
'Well, whatever. You never do that sort of thing. The worst you ever did was make people a bit confused about what they was.'
'That's because I'm the good one,' said Granny bitterly.
Magrat shuddered.
'So are we going to get her out?' said Nanny.
'Not yet. There's going to be a proper time,' said Granny. 'Can you hear me, Magrat Garlick?'
'Yes, Granny,' said Magrat.
'We've got to go somewhere and talk,' said Granny. 'About stories.'
'What about stories?' said Magrat.
'Lily is using them,' said Granny. 'Don't you see that? You can feel it in this whole country. The stories collect round here because here's where they find a way out. She feeds 'em. Look, she don't want your Ella to marry that Duc man just because of politics or something. That's just an ... explanation. 'S not a reason. She wants the girl to marry the prince because that's what the story demands.'
'What's in it for her?' said Nanny.
'In the middle of 'em all, the fairy godmother or the wicked witch . . . you remember? That's where Lily is putting herself, like . . . like . . .' she paused, trying to find the right word. 'Remember that time last year when the circus thing came to Lancre?'
'I remember,' said Nanny. 'Them girls in the spangly tights and the fellows pourin' whitewash down their trousers. Never saw a elephant, though. They said there'd be elephants and there wasn't any. It had elephants on the posters. I spent a whole tuppence and there wasn't a single ele - '
'Yes, but what I'm sayin',' said Granny, as they hurried along the street, 'is there was that man in the middle, you remember. With the moustache and the big hat?'
'Him? But he didn't do anything much,' said Nanny. 'He just stood in the middle of the tent and sometimes he cracked his whip and all the acts just went on round him.'
"That's why he was the most important one there,' said Granny. 'It was the things going on around him that made him important.'
'What's Lily feeding the stories?' said Magrat.
'People,' said Granny. She frowned.
'Stories!' she said. 'Well, we'll have to see about that. . .'
Green twilight covered Genua. The mists curled up from the swamp.
Torches flared in the streets. In dozens of yards shadowy figures moved, pulling the covers off floats. In the darkness there was a flash of sequins and a jingle of bells.
All year the people of Genua were nice and quiet. But history has always allowed the downtrodden one night somewhere in any calendar to restore temporarily the balance of the world. It might be called the Feast of Fools, or the King of the Bean. Or even Samedi Nuit Mort, when even those with the most taxing and responsible of duties can kick back and have fun.
Most of them, anyway . . .
The coachmen and the footmen were sitting in their shed at one side of the stable yard, eating their dinner and complaining about having to work on Dead Night. They were also engaging in the time-honoured rituals that go therewith, which largely consist of finding out what their wives have packed for them today and envying the other men whose wives obviously cared more.
The head footman raised a crust cautiously.
'I've got chicken neck and pickle,' he said. 'Anyone got any cheese?'
The second coachman inspected his box. 'It's boiled bacon again,' he complained. 'She always gives me boiled bacon. She knows I don't like it. She don't even cut the fat off.'
'Is it thick white fat?' said the first coachman.
'Yeah. Horrible. Is this right for a holiday feast or what?'
'I'll swap you a lettuce and tomato.'
'Right. Whatnot/ got[?], Jimmy?'
The underfootman shyly opened his perfect package. There were four sandwiches, crusts cut off. There was a sprig of parsley. There was even a napkin.
'Smoked salmon and cream cheese,' he said.
'And still a bit of the wedding cake,' said the first coachman. 'Ain't you et that all up yet?'
'We have it every night,' said the underfootman.
The shed shook with the ensuing laughter. It is a universal fact that any innocent comment made by any recently-married young member of any workforce is an instant trigger for coarse merriment among his or her older and more cynical colleagues. This happens even if everyone concerned has nine legs and lives at the bottom of an ocean of ammonia on a huge cold planet. It's just one of those things.
'You make the most of it,' said the second coachman gloomily, when they'd settled down again. 'It starts off kisses and cake and them cutting the crusts off, and next thing you know it's down to tongue pie, cold bum and the copper stick.'
'The way I see it,' the first coachman began, 'it's all about the way you - '
There was a knocking at the door.
The underfootman, being the junior member, got up and opened it.
'It's an old crone,' he said. 'What do you want, old crone?'
'Fancy a drink?' said Nanny Ogg. She held up a jug over which hung a perceptible haze of evaporating alcohol, and blew a paper squeaker.
'What?' said the footman.
'Shame for you lads to be working. It's a holiday! Whoopee!'
'What's going on?' the senior coachman began, and then he entered the cloud of alcohol. 'Gods! What is that stuff?
'Smells like rum, Air Travis.'
The senior coachman hesitated. From the streets came music and laughter as the first of the processions got under way. Fireworks popped across the sky. It wasn't a night to be without just a sip of alcohol.
'What a nice old lady,' he said.
Nanny Ogg waved the jug again. 'Up your eye!' she said. 'Mud in your bottom!'
What might be called the classical witch comes in two basic varieties, the complicated and the simple, or, to put it another way, the ones that have a room full of regalia and the ones that don't. Magrat was by inclination one of the former sort. For example, take magical knives. She had a complete collection of magical knives, all with the appropriate coloured handles and complicated runes all over them.
It had taken many years under the tutelage of Granny Weatherwax for Magrat to learn that the common kitchen breadknife was better than the most ornate of magic knives. It could do all that the magical knife could do, plus you could also use it to cut bread.
Every established kitchen has one ancient knife, its handle worn thin, its blade curved like a banana, and so inexplicably sharp that reaching into the drawer at night is like bobbing for apples in a piranha tank.
Magrat had hers stuck in her belt. Currently she was thirty feet above the ground, one hand holding on to her broomstick, the other on to a drainpipe, both legs dangling. Housebreaking ought to be easy, when you had a broomstick. But this did not appear to be the case.
Finally she got both legs around the pipe and a firm grip on a timely gargoyle. She waggled the knife in between the two halves of the window and lifted the latch. After a certain amount of grunting, she was inside, leaning against the wall and panting. Blue lights flashed in front of her eyes, echoing the fireworks that laced the night outside.
Granny had kept on asking her if she was sure she wanted to do this. And she was amazed to find that she was sure. Even if the snake women were already wandering around the house. Being a witch meant going into places you didn't want to go.
She opened her eyes.
There was the dress, in the middle of the floor, on a dressmaker's dummy.
A Klatchian Candle burst over Genua. Green and red stars exploded in the velvet darkness, and lit up the gems and silks in front of Magrat.
It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
She crept forward, her mouth dry.
Warm mists rolled through the swamp.
Mrs Gogol stirred the cauldron.
'What are they doing?' said Saturday.
'Stopping the story,' she said. 'Or . . . maybe not. . .'
She stood up.
'One way or another, it's our time now. Let's go to the clearing.'
She looked at Saturday's face.
'Are you frightened?'
'I ... know what will happen afterwards,' said the zombie. 'Even if we win.'
'We both do. But we've had twelve years.'
'Yes. We've had twelve years.'
'And Ella will rule the city.'
'Yes.'
In the coachmen's shed Nanny Ogg and the coachmen were getting along, as she put it, like a maison en flambe.
The underfootman smiled vaguely at the wall, and slumped forward.
'That's youngpipple today,' said the head coachman, trying to fish his wig out of his mug. 'Can't hold their drin . . . their drine . . . stuff. . .'
'Have a hair of the dog, Mr Travis?' said Nanny, filling the mug. 'Or scale of the alligator or whatever you call it in these parts.'
'Reckon,' said the senior footman, 'we should be gettin' the coesshe ready, what say?'
'Reckon you've got time for one more yet,' said Nanny Ogg.
'Ver' generous,' said the coachman. 'Ver' generous. Here's lookin' at you, Mrsrsrs Goo . . .'
Magrat had dreamed of dresses like this. In the pit of her soul, in the small hours of the night, she'd danced with princes. Not shy, hardworking princes like Verence back home, but real ones, with crystal blue eyes and white teeth. And she'd worn dresses like this. And they had fitted.
She stared at the ruched sleeves, the embroidered bodice, the fine white lace. It was all a world away from her. . . well. . . Nanny Ogg kept calling them 'Magrats', but they were trousers, and very practical.
As if being practical mattered at all.
She stared for a long time.
Then, with tears streaking her face and changing colour as they caught the light of the fireworks, she took the knife and began to cut the dress into very small pieces.
The senior coachman's head bounced gently off his sandwiches.
Nanny Ogg stood up, a little unsteadily. She placed the junior footman's wig under his slumbering head, because she was not an unkind woman. Then she stepped out into the night.
A figure moved near the wall.
'Magrat?' hissed Nanny.
'Nanny?'
'Did you see to the dress?'
'Have you seen to the footmen?'
'Right, then,' said Granny Weatherwax, stepping out of the shadows. 'Then there's just the coach.'
She tiptoed theatrically to the coachhouse and opened the door. It grated loudly on the cobbles.
'Shsss!' said Nanny.
There was a stub of candle and some matches on a ledge. Magrat fumbled the candle alight.
The coach lit up like a glitter ball.
It was excessively ornate, as if someone had taken a perfectly ordinary coach and then gone insane with fretwork and gold paint.
Granny Weatherwax walked around it.
'A bit showy,' she said.
'Seems a real shame to smash it up,' said Nanny sadly. She rolled up her sleeves and then, as an afterthought, tucked the hem of her skirt into her drawers.
'Bound to be a hammer somewhere around here,' she said, turning to the benches along the walls.
'Don't! That'd make too much noise!' hissed Magrat. 'Hang on a moment. . .'
She pulled the despised wand out of her belt, gripped it tightly, and waved it towards the coach.
There was a brief inrush of air.
'Blow me down,' said Nanny Ogg. 'I never would have thought of that.'
On the floor was a large orange pumpkin.
'It was nothing,' said Magrat, risking a touch of pride.
'Hah! That's one coach that'll never roll again,' said Nanny.
'Hey . . . can you do that to the horses too?' said Granny.
Magrat shook her head. 'Urn, I think that would be very cruel.'
'You're right. You're right,' said Granny. 'No excuse for cruelty to dumb animals.'
The two stallions watched her with equine curiosity as she undid the loose-box gates.
'Off you go,' she said. 'Big green fields out there somewhere.' She glanced momentarily at Magrat. 'You have been em-horse-sipated.'
This didn't seem to have much effect.
Granny sighed. She climbed up onto the wooden wall that separated the boxes, reached up, grabbed a horse ear in either hand, and gently dragged their heads down level with her mouth.
She whispered something.
The stallions turned and looked one another in the eye.
Then they looked down at Granny.
She grinned at them, and nodded.
Then . . .
It is impossible for a horse to go instantly from a standing start to a gallop, but they almost managed it.
'What on earth did you say to them?' said Magrat.
'Mystic horseman's word,' said Granny. 'Passed down to Gytha's Jason, who passed it up to me. Works every time.'
'He told you it?' said Nanny.
'Yes.'
'What, all of it?'
'Yes,' said Granny, smugly.
Magrat tucked the wand back into her belt. As she did so, a square of white material fell on to the floor.
White gems and silk glimmered in the candlelight as she reached down hurriedly to pick it up, but there wasn't a lot that escaped Granny Weatherwax.
She sighed.
'Magrat Garlick . . .' she began.
'Yes,' said Magrat meekly. 'Yes. I know. I'm a wet hen.'
Nanny patted her gently on the shoulder.
'Never mind,' she said. 'We've done a good night's work here. That Ella has about as much chance of being sent to the ball tonight as I have of ... of becoming queen.'
'No dress, no footmen, no horses and no coach," said Granny. 'I'd like to see her get out of that one. Stories? Hah!'
'So what're we going to do now?' said Magrat, as they crept out of the yard.
'It's Fat Lunchtime!' said Nanny. 'Hot diggety pig!' Greebo wandered out of the darkness and rubbed against her legs.
'I thought Lily was trying to stamp it out,' said Magrat.
'May as well try to stamp out a flood,' said Nanny. 'Kick out a jam!'
'I don't agree with dancing in the streets,' said Granny. 'How much of that rum did you drink?'
'Oh, come on, Esme,' said Nanny. 'They say if you can't have a good time in Genua you're probably dead.' She thought about Saturday. 'You can probably have a bit of quiet fun even if you are dead, in Genua.'
' Hadn't we better stay here, though?' said Magrat. 'Just to make sure?'
Granny Weatherwax hesitated.
'What do you think, Esme?' said Nanny Ogg. 'You think she's going to be sent to the ball in a pumpkin, eh? Get a few mice to pull it, eh? Heheh!'
A vision of the snake women floated across Granny Weathenvax's mind, and she hesitated. But, after all, it had been a long day. And it was ridiculous, when you came to think about it...
'Well, all right,' she said. 'But I'm not going to kick any jam, you understand.'
'There's dancing and all sorts,' said Nanny.
'And banana drinks, I expect,' said Magrat.
'It's a million to one chance, yes,' said Nanny Ogg happily.
Lilith de Tempscire smiled at herself in the double mirror.
'Oh deary me,' she said. 'No coach, no dress, no horses. What is a poor old godmother to do? Deary me. And probably lawks.'
She opened a small leather case, such as a musician might use to carry his very best piccolo.
There was a wand in there, the twin of the one carried by Magrat. She took it out and gave it a couple of twists, moving the gold and silver rings into a new position.
The clicking sounded like the nastiest pump-action mechanism.
'And me with nothing but a pumpkin, too,' said Lilith.
And of course the difference between sapient and non-sapient things was that while it was hard to change the shape of the former it was not actually impossible. It was just a matter of changing a mental channel. Whereas a non-sapient thing like a pumpkin, and it was hard to imagine anything less sapient than a pumpkin, could not be changed by any magic short of sourcery.
Unless its molecules remembered a time when they weren't a pumpkin . . .
She laughed, and a billion reflected Liliths laughed with her, all around the curve of the mirror universe.
Fat Lunchtime was no longer celebrated in the centre of Genua. But in the shanty town around the high white buildings it strutted its dark and torchlit stuff. There were fireworks. There were dancers, and fire-eaters, and feathers, and sequins. The witches, whose idea of homely entertainment was a Morris dance, watched open-mouthed from the crowded sidewalk as the parades strutted by.
'There's dancing skeletons!' said Nanny, as a score of bony figures whirred down the street.
'They're not,' said Magrat. 'They're just men in black tights with bones painted on.'
Someone nudged Granny Weatherwax. She looked up into the large, grinning face of a black man. He passed her a stone jug.
'There you go, honey.'
Granny took it, hesitated for a moment, and then took a swig. She nudged Magrat and passed on the bottle.
'Frgtht!! Gizeer!' she said.
'What?' shouted Magrat, above the noise of a marching band.
'The man wants us to pass it on,' said Granny.
Magrat looked at the bottle neck. She tried surreptitiously to wipe it on her dress, despite the self-evident fact that germs on it would have burned off long ago. She ventured a brief nip, and then nudged Nanny Ogg.
'Kwizathugner!' she said, and dabbed at her eyes.
Nanny up-ended the bottle. After a while Magrat nudged her again.
'I think we're meant to pass it on?' she ventured.
Nanny wiped her mouth and passed the now rather lighter jug randomly to a tall figure on her left.
'Here you go, mister,' she said.
THANK YOU.
'Nice costume you got there. Them bones are painted on really good.'
Nanny turned back to watch a procession of juggling fire-eaters. Then a connection appeared to be made somewhere in the back of her mind. She looked up. The stranger had wandered off.
She shrugged.
'What shall we do next?' she said.
Granny Weatherwax was staring fixedly at a group of ground-zero limbo dancers. A lot of the dances in the parades had this in common: they expressed explicitly what things like maypoles only hinted at. They covered it with sequins, too.
'You'll never feel safe in the privy again, eh?' said Nanny Ogg. At her feet Greebo sat primly watching some dancing women wearing nothing but feathers, trying to work out what to do about them.
'No. I was thinkin' of something else. I was thinkin' about . . . how stories work. And now ... I think I'd like something to eat,' said Granny weakly. She rallied a bit. 'And I mean some proper food, not somethin' scraped off the bottom of a pond. And I don't want any of this cuisine stuff, neither.'
'You ought to be more adventurous, Granny,' said Magrat.
'I ain't against adventure, in moderation,' said Granny, 'but not when I'm eatin'.'
'There's a place back there that does alligator sandwiches,' said Nanny, turning away from the parade. 'Can you believe that? Alligators in a sandwich?'
"That reminds me of a joke,' said Granny Weatherwax. Something was nagging at her consciousness.
Nanny Ogg started to cough, but it didn't work.
'This man went into an inn,' said Granny Weatherwax, trying to ignore the rising uneasiness. 'And he saw this sign. And it said "We serve all kinds of sandwiches." And he said, "Get me an alligator sandwich - and I want it right away!"'
'I don't think alligator sandwiches is very kind to alligators,' said Magrat, dropping the observation into the leaden pause.
'I always say a laugh does you good,' said Nanny.
Lilith smiled at the figure of Ella, standing forlornly between the snake women.
'And such a raggedy dress, too,' she said. 'And the door to the room was locked. Tut-tut. However can it have happened?'
Ella stared at her feet.
Lilith smiled at the sisters. 'Well,' she said, 'we'll just have to do the best we can with what we've got. Hmm? Fetch me . . . fetch me two rats and two mice. I know you can always find rats and mice. And bring in the big pumpkin.'
She laughed. Not the mad, shrill laughter of the bad fairy who's been defeated, but the rather pleasant laughter of someone who's just seen the joke.
She looked reflectively at the wand.
'But first,' she said, transferring her gaze to Ella's pale face, 'you'd better bring in those naughty men who let themselves get so drunk. That's not respectful. And if you haven't got respect, you haven't got anything.'
The clicking of the wand was the only sound in the kitchen.
Nanny Ogg poked at the tall drink in front of her.
'Beats me why they puts an umbrella in it,' she said, sucking the cocktail cherry off the stick. 'I mean, do they want to stop it getting wet or something?'
She grinned at Magrat and Granny, who were both staring gloomily at the passing celebrations.
'Cheer up,' she said. 'Never seen such a pair of long faces in all my puff.'
'That's neat rum you're drinking,' said Magrat.
'You're telling me,' said Nanny, taking a swig. 'Cheers!'
'It was too easy,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'It was only easy 'cos we done it,' said Nanny. 'You want something done, we're the girls to do it, eh? You show me anyone else who could have nipped in there and done all that in the nick of time, eh? Especially the coach bit.'
'It doesn't make a good story,' said Granny.
'Oh, bugger stories,' said Nanny loftily. 'You can always change a story.'
'Only at the right places,' said Granny. 'Anyway, maybe they could get her a new dress and horses and a coach and everything.'
'Where? When?' said Nanny. 'It's a holiday. And there's no time, anyway. They'll be starting the ball at any moment.'
Granny Weatherwax's fingers drummed on the edge of the cafe table.
Nanny sighed.
'Now what?' she said.
'It doesn't happen like this,' said Granny.
'Listen, Esme, the only kind of magic that'd work right now is wand magic. And Magrat's got the wand.' Nanny nodded at Magrat. 'Ain't that so, Magrat?'
'Um,' said Magrat.
'Not lost it, have you?'
'No, but - '
'There you are, then.'
'Only. . . um . . . Ella said she'd got two godmothers . . .'
Granny Weatherwax's hand thumped down on the table. Nanny's drink flew into the air and overturned.
'That's rightl' roared Granny.
'That was nearly full. That was a nearly full drink,' said Nanny reproachfully.
'Come on!'
'Best part of a whole glass of- '
'Gytha!'
'Did I say I wasn't coming? I was just pointing out - '
'Now!'
'Can I just ask the man to get me ano- '
'Gytha!'
The witches were halfway up the street when a coach rattled out of the driveway and trundled away.
'That can't be it!' said Magrat. 'We got rid of it!'
'We ort to have chopped it up,' said Nanny. 'There's good eating on a pumpk-'
'They've got us,' said Granny, slowing down to a stop.
'Can't you get into the minds of the horses?' said Magrat.
The witches concentrated.
'They ain't horses,' said Nanny. 'They feel like ..."
'Rats turned into horses,' said Granny, who was even better at getting into people's minds than she was at getting under their skins. 'They feel like that poor old wolf. Minds like a firework display.' She winced at the taste of them in her own head.
'I bet,' said Granny, thoughtfully, as the coach skidded around the corner, 'I bet I could make the wheels fall right off.'
'That's not the way,' said Magrat. 'Anyway, Ella's in there!'
'There may be another way,' said Nanny. 'I know someone who could get inside them minds right enough.'
'Who?' said Magrat.
'Well, we've still got our brooms,' said Nanny. 'It should be easy to overtake it, right?'
The witches landed in an alleyway a few minutes ahead of the coach.
'I don't hold with this,' said Granny. 'It's the sort of thing Lily does. You can't expect me to like this. Think of that wolf!'
Nanny lifted Greebo out of his nest among the bristles.
'But Greebo's nearly human anyway," she said.
'Hah!'
'And it'll only be temp'ry, even with the three of us doing it,' she said. 'Anyway, it'll be int'resting to see if it works.'
'Yes, but it's wrong,' said Granny.
'Not for these parts, it seems,' said Nanny.
'Besides,' said Magrat virtuously, 'it can't be bad if we're doing it. We're the good ones.'
'Oh yes, so we is,' said Granny, 'and there was me forgetting it for a minute there.'
Nanny stood back. Greebo, aware that something was expected of him, sat up.
'You must admit we can't think of anything better, Granny,' said Magrat.
Granny hesitated. But under all the revulsion was the little treacherous flame of fascination with the idea. Besides, she and Greebo had hated one another cordially for years. Almost human, eh? Give him a taste of it, then, and see how he likes it ... She felt a bit ashamed of the thought. But not much.
'Oh, all right.'
They concentrated.
As Lily knew, changing the shape of an object is one of the hardest magics there is. But it's easier if the object is alive. After all, a living thing already knows what shape it is. All you have to do is change its mind.
Greebo yawned and stretched. To his amazement he went on stretching.
Through the pathways of his feline brain surged a tide of belief. He suddenly believed he was human. He wasn't simply under the impression that he was human; he believed it implicitly. The sheer force of the unshakeable belief flowed out into his morphic field, overriding its objections, rewriting the very blueprint of his self.
Fresh instructions surged back.
If he was human, he didn't need all this fur. And he ought to be bigger . . .
The witches watched, fascinated.
'I never thought we'd do it,' said Granny.
... no points on the ears, the whiskers were too long . . .
... he needed more muscle, all these bones were the wrong shape, these legs ought to be longer . . .
And then it was finished.
Greebo unfolded himself and stood up, a little unsteadily.
Nanny stared, her mouth open.
Then her eyes moved downwards.
'Cor,' she said.
'I think,' said Granny Weatherwax, 'that we d better imagine some clothes on him right now.'
That was easy enough. When Greebo had been clothed to her satisfaction Granny nodded and stood back.
'Magrat, you can open your eyes,' she said.
'I hadn't got them closed.'
'Well, you should have had.'
Greebo turned slowly, a faint, lazy smile on his scarred fpce. As a human, his nose was broken and a black patch covered his bad eye. But the other one glittered like the sins of angels, and his smile was the downfall of saints. Female ones, anyway.
Perhaps it was pheromones, or the way his muscles rippled under his black leather shirt. Greebo broadcast a kind of greasy diabolic sexuality in the megawatt range. Just looking at him was enough to set dark wings fluttering in the crimson night.
'Uh, Greebo,' said Nanny.
He opened his mouth. Incisors glittered.
'Wrowwwwl,' he said.
'Can you understand me?'
'Yessss, Nannyyy.'
Nanny Ogg leaned against the wall for support.
There was the sound of hooves. The coach had turned into the street.
'Get out there and stop that coach!'
Greebo grinned again, and darted out of the alley.
Nanny fanned herself with her hat.
'Whoo-eee,' she said. 'And to think I used to tickle his tummy . . . No wonder all the lady cats scream at night.'
'Gytha!'
'Well, you've gone very red, Esme.'
'I'm just out of breath,' said Granny.
'Funny, that. It's not as if you've been running.'
The coach rattled down the street.
The coachmen and footmen were not at all sure what they were. Their minds oscillated wildly. One moment they were men thinking about cheese and bacon rinds. And the next they were mice wondering why they had trousers on.
As for the horses . . . horses are a little insane anyway, and being a rat as well wasn't any help.
So none of them were in a very stable frame of mind when Greebo stepped out of the shadows and grinned at them.
He said, 'Wrowwwl.'
The horses tried to stop, which is practically impossible with a coach still piling along behind you. The coachmen froze in terror.
'Wrowwwl?'
The coach skidded around and came up broadside against a wall, knocking the coachmen off. Greebo picked one of them up by his collar and bounced him up and down while the maddened horses fought to get out of the shafts.
'Run awayy, furry toy?' he suggested.
Behind the frightened eyes man and mouse fought for supremacy. But they needn't have bothered. They would lose either way. As consciousness flickered between the states it saw either a grinning cat or a six-foot, well-muscled, one-eyed grinning bully.
The coachmouse fainted. Greebo patted him a few times, in case he was going to move . . .
'Wake up, little mousey . . .'
. . . and then lost interest.
The coach door rattled, jammed, and then opened.
'What's happening?' said Ella.
'Wrowwwwl!'
Nanny Ogg's boot hit Greebo on the back of his head.
'Oh no you don't, my lad,' she said.
'Want to,' said Greebo sulkily.
'You always do, that's your trouble,' said Nanny, and smiled at Ella. 'Out you come, dear.'
Greebo shrugged, and then slunk off, dragging the stunned coachman after him.
'What's happening?' complained Ella. 'Oh. Magrat. Did you do this?'
Magrat allowed herself a moment's shy pride.
'I said you wouldn't have to go to the ball, didn't I?'
Ella looked around at the disabled coach, and then back to the witches.
'You ain't got any snake women in there with you, have you?' said Granny. Magrat gripped the wand.
'They went on ahead,' said Ella. Her face clouded as she recalled something.
'Lilith turned the real coachmen into beetles,' she whispered. 'I mean, they weren't that bad! She made them get some mice and she made them human and then she said, there's got to be balance, and the sisters dragged in the coachmen and she turned them into beetles and then . . . she trod on them . . .'
She stopped, horrified.
A firework burst in the sky, but in the street below a bubble of terrible silence hung in the air.
'Witches don't kill people,' said Magrat.
'This is foreign parts,' muttered Nanny, looking away.
'I think,' said Granny Weatherwax, 'that you ought to get right away from here, young lady.'
'They just went crack - '
'We've got the brooms,' said Magrat. 'We could all get away.'
'She'd send something after you,' said Ella darkly. 'I know her. Something from out of a mirror.'
'So we'd fight it,' said Magrat.
'No,' said Granny.' Whatever's going to happen's going to happen here. We'll send the young lady off somewhere safe and then ... we shall see.'
'But if I go away she'll know,' said Ella. 'She's expecting to see me at the ball right now! And she'll come looking!'
'That sounds right, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg. 'You want to face her somewhere you choose. I don't want her lookin' for us on a night like this. I want to see her coming.'
There was a fluttering in the darkness above them. A small dark shape glided down and landed on the cobbles. Even in the darkness its eyes gleamed. It stared expectantly at the witches with far too much intelligence for a mere fowl.
'That's Mrs Gogol's cockerel,' said Nanny, 'ain't it?'
'Exactly what it is I might never exactly decide,' said Granny. 'I wish I knew where she stood.'
'Good or bad, you mean?' said Magrat.
'She's a good cook,' said Nanny. 'I don't think anyone can cook like she do and be that bad.'
'Is she the woman who lives out in the swamp?' said Ella. 'I've heard all kinds of stories about her.'
'She's a bit too ready to turn dead people into zombies,' said Granny. 'And that's not right.'
'Well, we just turned a cat into a person - I mean, a human person' - Nanny, inveterate cat lover, corrected herself- 'and that's not strictly right either. It's probably a long way from strictly right.'
'Yes, but we did it for the right reasons,' said Granny.
'We don't know what Mrs Gogol's reasons are - '
There was a growl from the alley-way. Nanny scuttled towards it, and they heard her scolding voice.
'No! Put him down this minute!'
'Mine! Mine!'
Legba strutted a little way along the street, and then turned and looked expectantly at them.
Granny scratched her chin, and walked a little way away from Magrat and Ella, sizing them up. Then she turned and looked around.
'Hmm,' she said. 'Lily is expecting to see you, ain't she?'
'She can look out of reflections,' said Ella nervously.
'Hmm,' said Granny again. She stuck her finger in her ear and twiddled it for a moment. 'Well, Magrat, you're the godmother around here. What's the most important thing we have to do?'
Magrat had never played a card game in her life.
'Keep Ella safe,' she said promptly, amazed at Granny suddenly admitting that she was, after all, the one who had been given the wand. 'That's what fairy godmothering is all about.'
'Yes?'
Granny Weatherwax frowned.
'You know,' she said, 'you two are just about the same size . . .'
Magrat's expression of puzzlement lasted for half a second before it was replaced by one of sudden horror.
She backed away.
'Someone's got to do it,' said Granny.
'Oh, no! No! It wouldn't work! It really wouldn't work! No!'
'Magrat Garlick,' said Granny Weatherwax, tri-| umphantly, 'you shall go to the ball!'
The coach cornered on two wheels. Greebo stood on the coachman's box, swaying and grinning madly and cracking the whip. This was even better than his fluffy ball with a bell in it...
Inside the coach Magrat was wedged between the two older witches, her head in her hands.
'But Ella might get lost in the swamp!'
'Not with that cockerel leading the way. She'll be safer in Mrs Gogol's swamp than at the ball, I know that,' said Nanny.
' Thank youl'
'You're welcome,' said Granny.
'Everyone'll know I'm not her!'
'Not with the mask on they won't,' said Granny.
'But my hair's the wrong colour!''I can tint that up a treat, no problem,' said Nanny.
'I'm the wrong shapel'
'We can - ' Granny hesitated. 'Can you, you know, puff yourself out a bit more?'
'No!'
'Have you got a spare handkerchief, Gytha?'
'I reckon I could tear a bit off my petticoat, Esme.'
'Ouch!'
'There!'
'And these glass shoes don't fit!'
'They fit me fine,' said Nanny. 'I gave 'em a try.'
'Yes, but I've got smaller feet than you!'
'That's all right,' said Granny. 'You put on a couple of pairs of my socks and they'll fit real snug.'
Bereft of all further excuses, Magrat struck out in sheer desperation.
'But I don't know how to behave at balls!'
Granny Weatherwax had to admit that she didn't, either. She raised her eyebrows at Nanny.
'You used to go dancin' when you were young,' she "said.
'Well,' said Nanny Ogg, social tutor, 'what you do is, you tap men with your fan - got your fan? - and say things like "La, sir!" It helps to giggle, too. And flutter your eyelashes a bit. And pout.'
'How am I supposed to pout?'
Nanny Ogg demonstrated.
'Yuk!'
'Don't worry,' said Granny. 'We'll be there too.'
'And that's supposed to make me feel better, is it?'
Nanny reached behind Magrat and grabbed Granny's shoulder. Her lips formed the words: Won't work. She's all to pieces. No confidence.
Granny nodded.
'Perhaps I ought to do it,' said Nanny, in a loud voice. 'I'm experienced at balls. I bet if I wore my hair long and wore the mask and them shiny shoes and we hemmed up the dress a foot no one'd know the difference, what do you say?'
Magrat was so overawed by the sheer fascinating picture of this that she obeyed unthinkingly when Granny Weatherwax said, 'Look at me, Magrat Garlick.'
The pumpkin coach entered the palace drive at high speed, scattering horses and pedestrians, and braked by the steps in a shower of gravel.
'That was fun,' said Greebo. And then lost interest.
A couple of flunkies bustled forward to open the door, and were nearly thrown back by the sheer force of the arrogance that emanated from within.
'Hurry up, peasants!'
Magrat swept out, pushing the major-domo away. She gathered up her skirts and ran up the red carpet. At the top, a footman was unwise enough to ask her for her ticket.
'You impertinent lackeyl'
The footman, recognizing instantly the boundless bad manners of the well-bred, backed away quickly.
Down by the coach, Nanny Ogg said, 'You don't think you might have overdone it a little bit?'
'I had to,' said Granny. 'You know what she's like.'
'How are we going to get in? We ain't got tickets. And we ain't dressed properly, either.'
'Get the broomsticks down off the rack,' said Granny. 'We're going straight to the top.'
They touched down on the battlements of a tower overlooking the palace grounds. The strains of courtly music drifted up from below, and there was the occasional pop and flare of fireworks from the river.
Granny opened a likely-looking door in the tower and descended the circular stairs, which led to a landing.
'Posh carpet on the floor,' said Nanny. 'Why's it on the walls too ?'
'Them's tapestries,' said Granny.
'Cor,' said Nanny. 'You live and learn. Well, I do anyway.'
Granny stopped with her hand on a doorknob.
'What do you mean by that?' she said.
'Well, I never knew you had a sister.'
'We never talked about her.'
'It's a shame when families break up like that,' said Nanny.
'Huh! You said your sister Beryl was a greedy ingrate with the conscience of an oyster.'
'Well, yes, but she is my sister.'
Granny opened the door.
'Well, well,' she said.
'What's up? What's up? Don't just stand there.' Nanny peered around her and into the room.
'Coo,' she said.
Magrat paused in the big, red-velvet ante-room. Strange thoughts fireworked around her head; she hadn't felt like this since the herbal wine. But struggling among them like a tiny prosaic potato in a spray of psychedelic chrysanthemums was an inner voice screaming that she didn't even know how to dance. Apart from in circles.
But it couldn't be difficult if ordinary people managed it.
The tiny inner Magrat struggling to keep its balance on the surge of arrogant self-confidence wondered if this was how Granny Weatherwax felt all the time.
She raised the hem of her dress slightly and looked down at her shoes.
They couldn't be real glass, or else she'd be hobbling towards some emergency first aid by now. Nor were they transparent. The human foot is a useful organ but is not, except to some people with highly specialized interests, particularly attractive to look at.
The shoes were mirrors. Dozens of facets caught the light.
Two mirrors on her feet. Magrat vaguely recalled something about . . . about a witch never getting caught between two mirrors, wasn't it? Or was it never trust a man with orange eyebrows? Something she'd been taught, back when she'd been an ordinary person. Something. . . like ... a witch should never stand between two mirrors because, because, because the person that walked away might not be the same person. Or something. Like . . . you were spread out among the images, your whole soul was pulled out thin, and somewhere in the distant images a dark part of you would get out and come looking for you, if you weren't very careful. Or something.
She overruled the thought. It didn't matter.
She stepped forward, to where a little knot of other guests were waiting to make their entrance.
'Lord Henry Gleet and Lady Gleet!'
The ballroom wasn't a room at all, but a courtyard open to the soft night airs. Steps led down into it. At the far end, another much wider staircase, lined with nickering torches, led up into the palace itself. On the far wall, huge and easily visible, was a clock.
'The Honourable Douglas Incessant!'
The time was a quarter to eight. Magrat had a vague recollection of some old woman shouting something about the time, but. . . that didn't matter either . . .
'Lady Volentia D'Arrangement!'
She reached the top of the stairs. The butler who was announcing the arrivals looked her up and down and then, in the manner of one who had been coached carefully all afternoon for this very moment, bellowed:
'Er . . . Mysterious and beautiful stranger!'
Silence spread out from the bottom of the steps like spilled paint. Five hundred heads turned to look at Magrat.
A day before, even the mere thought of having five hundred people staring at her would have melted Magrat like butter in a furnace. But now she stared back, smiled, and raised her chin haughtily.
Her fan snapped open like a gunshot.
The mysterious and beautiful stranger, daughter of Simplicity Garlick, granddaughter of Araminta Garlick, her self-possession churning so strongly that it was crystallizing out on the sides of her personality . . .
. . . stepped out.
A moment later another guest stalked past the butler.
The butler hesitated. Something about the figure worried him. It kept going in and out of focus. He wasn't entirely certain if there was anyone else there at all.
Then his common sense, which had temporarily gone and hidden behind something, took over. After all, it was Samedi Nuit Mort - people were supposed to dress up and look weird. You were allowed to see people like that.
'Excuse me, er, sir,' he said. 'Who shall I say it is?'
I'M HERE INCOGNITO.
The butler was sure nothing had been said, but he was also certain that he had heard the words.
'Urn. . . fine ..." he mumbled. 'Go on in, then . . . urn.' He brightened. 'Damn good mask, sir.'
He watched the dark figure walk down the steps, and leaned against a pillar.
Well, that was about it. He pulled a handkerchief out from his pocket, removed his powdered wig, and wiped his brow. He felt as though he'd just had a narrow escape, and what was even worse was that he didn't know from what.
He looked cautiously around, and then sidled into the ante-room and took up a position behind a velvet curtain, where he could enjoy a quiet roll-up.
He nearly swallowed it when another figure loped silently up the red carpet. It was dressed like a pirate that had just raided a ship carrying black leather goods for the discerning customer. One eye had a patch over it. The other gleamed like a malevolent emerald. And no-one that big ought to be able to walk that quietly.
The butler stuck the dog-end behind his ear.
'Excuse me, milord,' he said, running after the man and touching him firmly yet respectfully on the arm. 'I shall need to see your tic ... your ... tic . . ,'
The man transferred his gaze to the hand on his arm. The butler let go hurriedly.
'Wrowwwl?'
'Your . . . ticket. . .'
The man opened his mouth and hissed.
'Of course,' said the butler, backing away with the efficient speed of someone who certainly isn't being paid enough to face a needle-toothed maniac in black leather, 'I expect you're one of the Duc's friends, yes?'
Wrowwl.'
'No problem ... no problem . . . but Sir has forgotten Sir's mask . . .'
'Wrowwl?'
The butler waved frantically to a side-table piled high with masks.
'The Duc requested that everyone here is masked,' said the butler. 'Er. I wonder if Sir would find something here to his liking?'
There's always a few of them, he thought to himself. It says 'Masque' in big curly letters on the invite, in gold yet, but there's always a few buggers who thinks it means it's from someone called Maskew. This one was quite likely looting towns when he should have been learning to read.
The greasy man stared at the masks. All the good ones had been taken by earlier arrivals, but that didn't seem to dismay him.
He pointed.
'Want that one,' he said.
'Er ... a ... very good choice, my lord. Allow me to help you on - '
'Wrowwl!'
The butler backed away, clutching at his own arm.