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

The man glared at him, then dropped the mask over his head and squinted out through an eyehole at a mirror.
Damn odd, the butler thought. I mean, it's not the kind of mask the men choose. They go for skulls and birds and bulls and stuff like that. Not cats.
The odd thing was that the mask had just been a pretty ginger cat head when it was on the table. On its wearer it was . . . still a cat head, only a lot more so, and somehow slightly more feline and a lot nastier than it should have been.
'Aaalwaaays waanted to bee ginger,' said the man.
'On you it looks good, sir,' trilled the butler.
The cat-headed man turned his head this way and that, clearly in love with what he was seeing.
Greebo yowled softly and happily to himself and ambled into the ball. He wanted something to eat, someone to fight, and then . . . well, he'd have to see.
For wolves and pigs and bears, thinking that they're human is a tragedy. For a cat, it's an experience.
Besides, this new shape was a lot more fun. No-one had thrown an old boot at him for over ten minutes.
The two witches looked around the room.
'Odd,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Not what I'd expect in, you know, a royal bedroom.'
'Is it a royal bedroom?'
'There's a crown on the door.'
'Oh.'
Granny looked around at the decor.
'What do you know about royal bedrooms?' she said, more or less for something to say. 'You've never been in a royal bedroom.'
'I might have been,' said Nanny.
'You never have!'
'Remember young Verence's coronation? We all got invited to the palace?' said Nanny. 'When I went to have a - to powder my nose I saw the door open, so I went in and had a bit of a bounce up and down.'
'That's treason. You can get put in prison for that,' said Granny severely, and added, 'What was it like?'
'Very comfy. Young Magrat doesn't know what she's missing. And it was a lot better than this, I don't mind saying,' said Nanny.
The basic colour was green. Green walls, green floor. There was a wardrobe and a bedside table. Even a bedside rug, which was green. The light filtered in through a window filled with greenish glass.
'Like being at the bottom of a pond,' said Granny. She swatted something. 'And there's flies everywhere!' She paused, as if thinking very hard, and said, 'Hmm ..."
'A Duc pond,' said Nanny.
There were flies everywhere. They buzzed on the window and zigzagged aimlessly back and forth across the ceiling.
'Duc pond,' Nanny repeated, because people who make that kind of joke never let well alone, 'like duck - '
'I heard,' said Granny. She flailed at a fat bluebottle.
'Anyway, you'd think there wouldn't be flies in a royal bedroom,' muttered Nanny.
'You'd think there'd be a bed, in fact,' said Granny.
Which there wasn't. What there was instead, and what was preying somewhat on their minds, was a big round wooden cover on the floor. It was about six feet across. There were convenient handles.
They walked around it. Flies rose up and hummed away.
'I'm thinking of a story,' said Granny.
'Me too,' said Nanny Ogg, her tone slightly shriller than usual. 'There was this girl who married this man and he said you can go anywhere you like in the palace but you mustn't open that door and she did and she found he'd murdered all his other ..."
Her voice trailed off.
Granny was staring hard at the cover, and scratching her chin.
'Put it like this,' said Nanny, trying to be reasonable against all odds. 'What could we possibly find under there dial's worse than we could imagine?'
They each took a handle.
Five minutes later Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg stepped outside the Duc's bedroom. Granny closed the door very quietly.
They stared at one another.
'Cor,' said Nanny, her face still pale.
'Yes,' said Granny. 'Stories!'
'I'd heard about . . . you know, people like him, but I never believed it. Yuk. I wonder what he looks like.'
'You can't tell just by lookin',' said Granny.
'It explains the flies, at any rate,' said Nanny Ogg.
She raised a hand to her mouth in horror.
'And our Magrat's down there with him!' she said. 'And you know what's going to happen. They're going to meet one another and - '
'But there's hundreds of other people,' said Granny. 'It's hardly what you'd call intimate.'
'Yes . . . but even the thought of him, you know, even touching her ... I mean, it'd be like holding a -*
'Does Ella count as a princess, d'you think?' said Granny.
'What? Oh. Yeah. Probably. For foreign parts. Why?'
'Then that means there's more than one story here. Lily's letting several happen all at the same time,' said Granny. 'Think about it. It's not touching that's the trick. It's kissing.'
'We've got to get down there!' said Nanny. 'We've got to stop it! I mean, you know me, I'm no prude, but . . . yuk . . .'
'I say! Old woman!'
They turned. A small fat woman in a red dress and a towering white wig was peering haughtily at them from behind a fox mask.
'Yes?' snapped Granny.
'Yes, my lady,' said the fat woman. 'Where are your manners? I demand that you direct me to the powder room this instant! And what do you think you're doing?'
This was to Nanny Ogg, who was walking around her and staring critically at her dress.
'You're a 20, maybe a 22?' said Nanny.
'What? What is this impertinence?'
Nanny Ogg rubbed her chin thoughtfully. 'Well, I dunno,' she said, 'red in a dress has never been me. You haven't got anything in blue, have you?'
The choleric woman turned to strike Nanny with her fan, but a skinny hand tapped her on the shoulder.
She looked up into Granny Weatherwax's face.
As she passed out dreamily she was aware of a voice, a long way off, saying, 'Well, that's me fitted. But she's never a size 20. And if I had a face like that I'd never wear red . . .'
Lady Volentia D'Arrangement relaxed in the inner sanctum of the ladies' rest room. She removed her mask and fished an errant beauty spot from the depths of her decolletage. Then she reached around and down to try and adjust her bustle, an exercise guaranteed to produce the most ridiculous female gymnastics on every world except those where the panty girdle had been invented.
Apart from being as well-adapted a parasite as the oak bracket fungus Lady Volentia D'Arrangement was, by and large, a blameless sort of person. She always attended events for the better class of charity, and made a point of knowing the first names of nearly all her servants - the cleaner ones, at least. And she was, on the whole, kind to animals and even to children if they had been washed and didn't make too much noise. All in all, she didn't deserve what was about to happen to her, which was the fate Mother Nature had in store for any woman in this room on this night who happened to have approximately the same measurements as Granny Weatherwax.
She was aware of someone coming up beside her.
'S'cuse me, missus.'
It turned out to be a small, repulsive lower-class woman with a big ingratiating smile.
'What do you want, old woman?' said Lady Volentia.
'S'cuse me,' said Nanny Ogg. 'My friend over there would like a word with you.'
Lady Volentia looked around haughtily into . . .
. . . icy, blue-eyed, hypnotic oblivion.
'What's this thing like an extra bu . . . hobo?'
'It's a bustle, Esme.'
'It's damn uncomfortable is what it is. I keep on feeling someone's following me around.'
'The white suits you, anyway.'
'No it don't. Black's the only colour for a proper witch. And this wig is too hot. Who wants a foot of hair on their heads?'
Granny donned her mask. It was an eagle's face in white feathers stuck with sequins.
Nanny adjusted some unmentionable underpinning somewhere beneath her crinoline and straightened up.
'Cor, look at us,' she said. 'Them feathers in your hair really look good.'
'I've never been vain,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'You know that, Gytha. No-one could ever call me vain.'
'No, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg.
Granny twirled a bit.
'Are you ready then, Dame Ogg?' she said.
'Yes. Let's do it, Lady Weatherwax.'
The dance floor was thronged. Decorations hung from every pillar, but they were black and silver, the colours of the festival of Samedi Nuit Mort. An orchestra was playing on a balcony. Dancers whirled. The din was immense.
A waiter with a tray of drinks suddenly found that he was a waiter without a tray of drinks. He looked around, and then down to a small fox under a huge white wig.
'Bugger off and get us some more,' said Nanny pleasantly. 'Can you see her, your ladyship?'
'There's too many people.'
'Well, can you see the Duc?'
'How do I know? Everyone's got masks on!'
'Hey, is that food over there?'
Many of the less energetic or more hungry of the Genua nobility were clustered around the long buffet. All they were aware of, apart from sharp digs with a pair of industrious elbows, was an amiable monotone at chest height, on the lines of'. . . mind your backs . . . stand aside there . . . comin' through.'
Nanny fought her way to the table and nudged a space for Granny Weatherwax.
'Cor, what a spread, eh?' she said. 'Mind you, they have tiny chickens in these parts.' She grabbed a plate.
"Them's quails.'
'I'll 'ave three. 'Ere, charlie chan!'
A flunkey stared at her.
'Got any pickles?'
'I'm afraid not, ma'am.'
Nanny Ogg looked along a table which included roast swans, a roasted peacock that probably wouldn't have felt any better about it even if it had known that its tail feathers were going to be stuck back in afterwards, and more fruits, boiled lobsters, nuts, cakes, creams and trifles than a hermit's dream.
'Well, got any relish?'
'No, ma'am.'
'Tomato ketchup?'
'No, ma'am.'
'And they call this a gormay paradise,' muttered Nanny, as the band struck up the next dance. She nudged a tall figure helping himself to the lobster. 'Some place, eh?'
VERY NICE.
'Good mask you've got there.'
THANK YOU.
Nanny was spun around by Granny Weatherwax's hand on her shoulder.
'There's Magrat!'
'Where? Where?' said Nanny.
'Over there . . . sitting by the potted plants.'
'Oh, yes. On the chassy longyew,' said Nanny. "That's "sofa" in foreign, you know,' she added.
'What's she doing?'
'Being attractive to men, I think.'
'What, Magratr
'Yeah. You're really getting good at that hypnotism, ain't you.'
* * *
Magrat fluttered her fan and looked up at the Compte de Yoyo.
'La, sir," she said. 'You may get me another plate of lark's eggs, if you really must.'
'Like a shot, dear lady!' The old man bustled off in the direction of the buffet.
Magrat surveyed her empire of admirers, and then extended a languorous hand towards Captain de Vere of the Palace Guard. He stood to attention.
'Dear captain,' she said, 'you may have the pleasure of the next dance.'
'Acting like a hussy,' said Granny disapprovingly.
Nanny gave her an odd look.
'Not really,' she said. 'Anyway, a bit of hussing never did anyone any harm. At least none of those men look like the Duc. 'Ere, what you doing?'
This was to a small bald-headed man who was trying surreptitiously to set up a small easel in front of them.
'Uh ... if you ladies could just hold still for a few minutes,' he said shyly. 'For the woodcut?'
'What woodcut?' said Granny Weatherwax.
'You know,' said the man, opening a small penknife. 'Everyone likes to see their woodcut in the broadsheets after a ball like this? "Lady Thing enjoying a joke with Lord Whatsit", that sort of thing?'
Granny Weatherwax opened her mouth to reply, but Nanny Ogg laid a gentle hand on her arm. She relaxed a little and sought for something more suitable to say.
'I knows a joke about alligator sandwiches,' she volunteered, and shook Nanny's hand away. "There was a man, and he went into an inn and he said "Do you sell alligator sandwiches?" and the other man said "Yes" and he said, "Then give me an alligator sandwich - and don't be a long time about it!'"
She gave him a triumphant look.
'Yes?' said the woodcutter, chipping away quickly, 'And then what happened?'
Nanny Ogg dragged Granny away quickly, searching for a distraction.
'Some people don't know a joke when they hear it,' said Granny.
As the band launched into another number Nanny Ogg rumbled in a pocket and found the dance card that belonged to an owner now slumbering peacefully in a distant room.
"This is,' she turned the card round, her lips moving wonderingly, 'Sir, Roger the Coverley?'
'Ma'am?'
Granny Weatherwax looked around. A plump military man with big whiskers was bowing to her. He looked as though he'd enjoyed quite a few jokes in his time.
'Yes?'
'You promised me the honour of this dance, m'lady?'
'No I didn't.'
The man looked puzzled. 'But I assure you, Lady D'Arrangement . . . your card . . . my name is Colonel Moutarde ..."
Granny gave him a look of deep suspicion, and then read the dance card attached to her fan.
'Oh.'
'Do you know how to dance?' hissed Nanny.
'Of course.'
'Never seen you dance,' said Nanny.
Granny Weatherwax had been on the point of giving the colonel as polite a refusal as she could manage. Now she threw back her shoulders defiantly.
'A witch can do anything she puts her mind to, Gytha Ogg. Come, Mr Colonel.'
Nanny watched as the pair disappeared into the throng.
' 'Allo, foxy lady,' said a voice behind her. She looked around. There was no-one there.
'Down here.'
She looked down.
A very small body wearing the uniform of a captain in the palace guard, a powdered wig and an ingratiating smile beamed up at her.
'My name's Casanunda,' he said. 'I'm reputed to be the world's greatest lover. What do you think?'
Nanny Ogg looked him up and down or, at least, down and further down.
'You're a dwarf,' she said.
'Size isn't important.'
Nanny Ogg considered her position. One colleague known for her shy and retiring nature was currently acting like that whatshername, the heathen queen who was always playing up to men and bathing in asses' milk and stuff, and the other one was acting very odd and dancing with a man even though she didn't know one foot from the other. Nanny Ogg felt she was at least owed a bit of time in which to be her own woman.
'Can you dance as well?' she said wearily.
'Oh yes. How about a date?'
'How old do you think I am?' said Nanny.
Casanunda considered. 'All right, then. How about a prune?'
Nanny sighed, and reached down for his hand. 'Come on.'
Lady Volentia D'Arrangement staggered limply along a passageway, a forlorn thin shape in complicated corsetry and ankle-length underwear.
She wasn't at all sure what had happened. There had been that frightful woman, and then this feeling of absolute bliss and then . . . she'd been sitting on the carpet with her dress off. Lady Volentia had been to enough balls in her dull life to know that there were occasions when you woke up in strange rooms with your dress off, but that tended to be later in the evening and at least you had some idea of why you were there . . .
She eased her way along, holding on to the wall. Someone was definitely going to get told off about this.
A figure came around a bend in the corridor, idly tossing a turkey leg into the air with one hand and catching it with the other.
'I say,' said Lady Volentia, 'I wonder if you would be so good as to - oh . . .'
She looked up at a leather-clad figure with an eyepatch and a grin like a corsair raider.
'Wroowwwwl!'
'Oh. I say!'
Nothing to this dancing, Granny Weatherwax told herself. It's just moving around to music.
It helped to be able to read her partner's mind. Dancing is instinctive, after you've got past that stage of looking down to see what your feet are doing, and witches are good at reading resonating instincts. There was a slight struggle as the colonel tried to lead, but he soon gave in, partly in the face of Granny Weatherwax's sheer refusal to compromise but mainly because of her boots.
Lady D'Arrangement's shoes hadn't fitted. Besides, Granny was attached to her boots. They had complicated iron fixtures, and toecaps like battering rams. When it came to dancing, Granny's boots went exactly wherever they wanted to go.
She steered her helpless and slightly crippled partner towards Nanny Ogg, who had already cleared quite a space around her. What Granny could achieve with two pounds of hobnailed syncopation Nanny Ogg could achieve merely with her bosom.
It was a large and experienced bosom, and not one that was subject to restraint. As Nanny Ogg bounced down, it went up; when she gyrated right, it hadn't finished twirling left. In addition, Nanny's feet moved in a complicated jig step regardless of the actual tempo, so that while her body actually progressed at the speed of a waltz her feet were doing something a bit nearer to a hornpipe. The total effect obliged her partner to dance several feet away, and many surrounding couples to stop dancing just to watch in fascination, in case the build-up of harmonic vibrations dropped her into the chandeliers.
Granny and her helpless partner whirled past.
'Stop showin' off,' Granny hissed, and disappeared into the throng again.
'Who's your friend?' said Casanunda.
'She's - ' Nanny began.
There was a blast of trumpets.
"That was a bit off the beat,' she said.
'No, that means the Duc is arriving,' said Casanunda.
The band stopped playing. The couples, as one, turned and faced the main staircase.
There were two figures descending in stately fashion.
My word, he's a sleek and handsome devil, Nanny told herself. It just goes to show. Esme's right. You can never tell by lookin'.
And her . . .
. . . that's Lily Weatherwax?
The woman wasn't masked.
Give or take the odd laughter line and wrinkle, it was Granny Weatherwax to the life.
Almost. . .
Nanny found she was turning to find the white eagle head in the crowd. All heads were turned to die staircase, but there was one staring as if her gaze was a steel rod.
Lily Weatherwax wore white. Until that point it had never occurred to Nanny Ogg that there could be different colours of white. Now she knew better. The white of Lily Weatherwax's dress seemed to radiate; if all the lights went out, she felt, Lily's dress would glow. It had style. It gleamed, and had puffed sleeves and was edged with lace.
And Lily Weatherwax looked - Nanny Ogg had to admit it - younger. There was the same bone structure and fine Weatherwax complexion, but it looked . . . less worn.
If that's what bein' bad does to you, Nanny thought, I could of done with some of that years ago. The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.
The eyes were the same, though. Somewhere in the genetics of the Weatherwaxes was a piece of sapphire. Maybe generations of them.
The Duc was unbelievably handsome. But that was understandable. He was wearing black. Even his eyes wore black.
Nanny surfaced, and pushed her way through the throng to Granny Weatherwax.
'Esme?'
She grabbed Granny's arm.
'Esme?'
'Hmm?'
Nanny was aware that the crowd was moving, parting like a sea, between the staircase and the chaise-longue at the far end of the hall.
Granny Weatherwax's knuckles were as white as her dress.
'Esme? What's happening? What are you doing?' said Nanny.
'Trying ... to ... stop . . . the story,' said Granny.
'What's she doing, then?'
'Letting . . . things . . . happen!'
The crowd were pulling back past them. It didn't seem to be a conscious thing. It was just happening that a sort of corridor was forming.
The Prince walked slowly along it. Behind Lily, faint images hung in the air so that she appeared to be followed by a succession of fading ghosts.
Magrat stood up.
Nanny was aware of a rainbow hue in the air. Possibly there was the tweeting of bluebirds.
The Prince took Magrat by the hand.
Nanny glanced up at Lily Weatherwax, who had remained a few steps up from the foot of the stairs and was smiling beneficently.
Then she tried to put a focus on the future.
It was horribly easy.
Normally the future is branching off at every turn and it's only possible to have the haziest idea of what is likely to happen, even when you're as temporally sensitive as a witch. But here there were stories coiled around the tree of events, bending it into a new shape.
Granny Weatherwax wouldn't know what a pattern of quantum inevitability was if she found it eating her dinner. If you mentioned the words 'paradigms of space-time' to her she'd just say 'What?' But that didn't mean she was ignorant. It just meant that she didn't have any truck with words, especially gibberish. She just knew that there were certain things that happened continually in human history, like three-dimensional cliches. Stories.
'And now we're part of it! And I can't stop it,' said Granny. 'There's got to be a place where I can stop it, and I can't find it!'
The band struck up. It was playing a waltz.
Magrat and the Prince whirled around the dance floor once, never taking their eyes off each other. Then a few couples dared to join them. And then, as if the whole ball was a machine whose spring had been wound up again, the floor was full of dancing couples and the sounds of conversation flowed back into the void.
'Are you going to introduce me to your friend?' said Casanunda, from somewhere near Nanny's elbow. People swept past them.
'It's all got to happen,' said Granny, ignoring the low-level interruption. 'Everything. The kiss, the clock striking midnight, her running out and losing the glass slipper, everything.'
'Ur, yuk,' said Nanny, leaning on her partner's head. Td rather lick toads.'
'She looks just my type,' said Casanunda, his voice slightly muffled. 'I've always been very attracted to dominant women.'
The witches looked at the whirling couple, who were staring into one another's eyes.
'I could trip them up, no trouble,' said Nanny.
'You can't. That's not something that can happen.'
'Well, Magrat's sensible . . . more or less sensible,' said Nanny. 'Maybe she'll notice something's wrong.'
'I'm good at what I do, Gytha Ogg,' said Granny. 'She won't notice nothing until the clock strikes midnight.'
They both turned to look up. It was barely nine.
'Y'know,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Clocks don't strike midnight. Seems to me they just strike twelve. I mean, it's just a matter of bongs.'
They both looked up at the clock again.
In the swamp, Legba the black cockerel crowed. He always crowed at sunset.
Nanny Ogg pounded up another flight of stairs and leaned against the wall to catch her breath.
It had to be somewhere round here.
'Another time you'll learn to keep your mouth shut, Gytha Ogg,' she muttered.
'I expect we're leaving the hurly-burly of the ball for an intimate tete-a-tete somewhere?' said Casanunda hopefully, trotting along behind her.
Nanny tried to ignore him and ran along a dusty passage. There was a balcony rail on one side, looking down into the ballroom. And there . . .
... a small wooden door.
She rammed it open with her elbow. Within, mechanisms whirred in counterpoint to the dancing figures below as if the clock was propelling them, which, in a metaphorical sense, it was.
Clockwork, Nanny thought. Once you know about clockwork, you know about everything.
I wish I bloody well knew about clockwork.
'Very cosy,' said Casanunda.
She squeezed through the gap and into the clock space. Cog-wheels clicked past her nose.
She stared at them for a moment.
Lawks. All this just to chop Time up into little bits.
'It might be just the teensiest bit cramped,' said Casanunda, from somewhere near her armpit. 'But needs must, ma'am. I remember once in Quirm, there was this sedan chair and . . .'
Let's see, thought Nanny. This bit is connected to that bit, this one turns, that one turns faster, this spiky bit wobbles backwards and forwards . . .
Oh, well. Just twist the first thing you can grab, as the High Priest said to the vestal virgin.*
Nanny Ogg spat on her hands, gripped the largest cogwheel, and twisted.
It carried on turning, pulling her with it.
Blimey. Oh, well . . .
Then she did what neither Granny Weatherwax nor Magrat would have dreamed of doing in the circumstances. But Nanny Ogg's voyages on the sea of inter-sexual dalliance had gone rather further than twice around the lighthouse, and she saw nothing demeaning in getting a man to help her.
She simpered at Casanunda.
'Things would be a lot more comfortable in our little pie-de-terre if you could just push this little wheel around a bit,' she said. 'I'm sure you could manage it,' she added.
'Oh, no problejn, good lady,' said Casanunda. He reached up with one hand. Dwarfs are immensely strong for their size. The wheel seemed to offer him no resistance at all.
Somewhere in the mechanism something resisted for a
* This is the last line of a Discworld joke lost, alas, to posterity.
moment and then went clonk. Big wheels turned reluctantly. Little wheels screamed on their axles. A small important piece flew out and pinged off Casanunda's small bullet head.
And, much faster than nature had ever intended, the hands sped round the face.
A new noise right overhead made Nanny Ogg look up.
Her self-satisfied expression faded. The hammer that struck the hours was swinging slowly backwards. It struck Nanny that she was standing right under the bell at the same time as the bell, too, was struck.
Bong . . .
'Oh, bugger!'
. . . bong. . .
. . . bong. . .
. . . bong. . .
Mist rolled through the swamp. And shadows moved with it, their shapes indistinct on this night when the difference between the living and the dead was only a matter of time.
Mrs Gogol could feel them among the trees. The homeless. The hungry. The silent people. Those forsaken by men and gods. The people of the mists and the mud, whose only strength was somewhere on the other side of weakness, whose beliefs were as rickety and homemade as their homes. And the people from the city - not the ones who lived in the big white houses and went to balls in fine coaches, but the other ones. They were the ones that stories are never about. Stories are not, on the whole, interested in swineherds who remain swineherds and poor and humble shoe-makers whose destiny is to die slightly poorer and much humbler.
These people were the ones who made the magical kingdom work, who cooked its meals and swept its floors and carted its night soil and were its faces in the crowd and whose wishes and dreams, undemanding as they were, were of no consequence. The invisibles.
And me out here, she thought. Building traps for gods.
There are various forms of voodoo in the multiverse, because it's a religion that can be put together from any ingredients that happen to be lying around. And all of them try, in some way, to call down a god into the body of a human being.
That was stupid, Mrs Gogol thought. That was dangerous.
Mrs Gogol's voodoo worked the other way about. What was a god? A focus of belief. If people believed, a god began to grow. Feebly at first, but if the swamp taught anything, it taught patience. Anything could be the focus of a god. A handful of feathers with a red ribbon around them, a hat and coat on a couple of sticks . . . anything. Because when all people had was practically nothing, then anything could be almost everything. And then you fed it, and lulled it, like a goose heading for pate, and let the power grow very slowly, and when the time was ripe you opened the path . . . backwards. A human could ride the god, rather than the other way around. There would be a price to pay later, but there always was. In Mrs Gogol's experience, everyone ended up dying.
She took a pull of rum and handed the jug to Saturday.
Saturday took a mouthful, and passed the jug up to something that might have been a hand.
'Let it begin,' said Mrs Gogol.
The dead man picked up three small drums and began to beat out a rhythm, heartbeat fast.
After a while something tapped Mrs Gogol on the shoulder and handed her the jug. It was empty.
Might as well begin . . .
'Lady Bon Anna smile on me. Mister Safe Way protect me. Stride Wide Man guide me. Hotaloga Andrews catch me.
'I stand between the light and the dark, but that no matter, because I am between.
'Here is rum for you. Tobacco for you. Food for you. A home for you.
'Now you listen to me good . . .'
. . . bong.
For Magrat it was like waking from a dream into a dream. She'd been idly dreaming that she was dancing with the most handsome man in the room, and . . . she was dancing with the most handsome man in the room.
Except that he wore two circles of smoked glass over his eyes.
Although Magrat was soft-hearted, a compulsive daydreamer and, as Granny Weatherwax put it, a wet hen, she wouldn't be a witch if she didn't have certain instincts and the sense to trust them. She reached up and, before his hands could move, tweaked the things away.
Magrat had seen eyes like that before, but never on something walking upright.
Her feet, which a moment before had been moving gracefully across the floor, tripped over themselves.
'Er . . .' she began.
And she was aware that his hands, pink and well-manicured, were also cold and damp.
Magrat turned and ran, knocking the couples aside in her madness to get away. Her legs tangled in the dress. The stupid shoes skittered on the floor.
A couple of footmen blocked the stairs to the hall.
Magrat's eyes narrowed. Getting out was what mattered.
'Hai!'
'Ouch!'
And then she ran on, slipping at the top of the stairs. A glass slipper slithered across the marble.
'How the hell's anyone supposed to move in these things?' she screamed at the world in general. Hopping frantically on one foot, she wrenched the other shoe off and ran into the night.
The Prince walked slowly to the top of the steps and picked up the discarded slipper.
He held it. The light glittered off its facets.
Granny Weatherwax leaned against the wall in the shadows. All stories had a turning point, and it had to be close.
She was good at getting into other people's minds, but now she had to get into hers. She concentrated. Down deeper . . . past everyday thoughts and minor concerns, faster, faster . . . through layers of deep cogitation . . . deeper . . . past things sealed off and crusted over, old guilts and congealed regrets, but there was no time for them now . . . down . . . and there . . . the silver thread of the story. She'd been part of it, was part of it, so it had to be a part of her.
It poured past. She reached out.
She hated everything that predestined people, that fooled them, that made them slightly less than human.
The story whipped along like a steel hawser. She gripped it.
Her eyes opened in shock. Then she stepped forward.
'Excuse me, Your Highness.'
She snatched the shoe from the Duc's hands, and raised it over her head.
Her expression of evil satisfaction was terrible to behold.
Then she dropped the shoe.
It smashed on the stairs.
A thousand glittering fragments scattered across the marble.
Coiled as it was around the length of turtle-shaped space-time known as the Discworld, the story shook. One broken end flapped loose and flailed through the night, trying to find any sequence to feed on ...
In the clearing the trees moved. So did the shadows. Shadows shouldn't be able to move unless the light moves. These did.
The drumming stopped.
In the silence there was the occasional sizzle as power crackled across the hanging coat.
Saturday stepped forward. Green sparks flew out to his hands as he gripped the jacket and put it on.
His body jerked.
Erzulie Gogol breathed out.
'You are here,' she said. 'You are still yourself. You are exactly yourself.'
Saturday raised his hands, with his fists clenched. Occasionally an arm or leg would jerk as the power inside him squirrel-caged around in its search for freedom, but she could see that he was riding it.
'It will become easier,' she said, more gently now.
Saturday nodded.
With the power flowing inside him he had, she thought, the fire he'd had when he was alive. He had not been a particularly good man, she knew. Genua had not been a model of civic virtue. But at least he'd never told people that they wanted him to oppress them, and that everything he did was for their own good.
Around the circle, the people of New Genua - the old New Genua - knelt or bowed.
He hadn't been a kind ruler. But he'd fitted. And when he'd been arbitrary or arrogant or just plain wrong, he'd never suggested that this was justified by anything other than the fact that he was bigger and stronger and occasionally nastier than other people. He'd never suggested that it was because he was better. And he'd never told people they ought to be happy, and imposed a kind of happiness on them. The invisible people knew that happiness is not the natural state of mankind, and is never achieved from the outside in.
Saturday nodded again, this time in satisfaction. When he opened his mouth, sparks flashed between his teeth. And when he waded through the swamp, the alligators fought to get out of his way.
It was quiet in the palace kitchens now. The huge trays of roast meat, the pigs' heads with apples in their mouths, the multi-layered trifles had long ago been carried upstairs. There was a clattering from the giant sinks at the far end, where some of the maids were making a start on the washing up.
Mrs Pleasant the cook had made herself a plate of red stripefish in crawfish sauce. She wasn't the finest cook in Genua - no-one got near Mrs Gogol's gumbo, people would almost come back from the dead for a taste of Mrs Gogol's gumbo - but the comparison was as narrow as that between, say, diamonds and sapphires. She'd done her best to cook up a good banquet, because she had her professional pride, but there wasn't much she felt she was able to do with lumps of meat.
Genuan cooking, like the best cooking everywhere in the multiverse, had been evolved by people who had to make desperate use of ingredients their masters didn't want. No-one would even try a bird's nest unless they had to. Only hunger would make a man taste his first alligator. No-one would eat a shark's fin if they were allowed to eat the rest of the shark.
She poured herself a rum and was just picking up the spoon when she felt herself being watched.
A large man in a black leather doublet was staring at her from the doorway, dangling a ginger cat mask from one hand.
It was a very direct stare. Mrs Pleasant found herself wishing she'd done something about her hair and was wearing a better dress.
'Yes?' she said. 'What d'you want?'
'Waaant foood, Miss-uss Pleassunt,' said Greebo.
She looked him up and down. There were some odd types in Genua these days. This one must have been a guest at the ball, but there was something very. . .familiar about him.
Greebo wasn't a happy cat. People had made a fuss just because he'd dragged a roast turkey off the table. Then the skinny female with the teeth had kept simpering at him and saying she'd see him later in the rose garden, which wasn't at all the cat way of doing things, and that'd got him confused, because this wasn't the right kind of body and nor was hers. And there were too many other males around.
Then he'd smelled the kitchen. Cats gravitate to kitchens like rocks gravitate to gravity.
'I seen you somewhere before?' said Mrs Pleasant.
Greebo said nothing. He'd followed his nose to a bowl on one of the big tables.
'Waaant,' he demanded.
'Fish heads?' said Mrs Pleasant. They were technically garbage, although what she was planning with some rice and a few special sauces would turn them into the sort of dish kings fight for.
'Waant,' Greebo repeated.
Mrs Pleasant shrugged.
'You want raw fish heads, man, you take 'em,' she said.
Greebo lifted the bowl uncertainly. He wasn't too good with fingers. Then he looked around conspiratorially and ducked under the table.
There were the sounds of keen gurgitation and the bowl being scraped around on the floor.
Greebo emerged.
'Millluk?' he suggested.
Fascinated, Mrs Pleasant reached for the milk jug and a cup-
'Saaaaucerrr,' Greebo said.
- and a saucer.
Greebo took the saucer, gave it a long hard look, and put it on the floor.
Mrs Pleasant stared.
Greebo finished the milk, licking the remnant off his beard. He felt a lot better now. And there was a big fire over there. He padded over to it, sat down, spat on his paw and made an attempt to clean his ears, which didn't work because inexplicably neither ears nor paw were the right shape, and then curled up as best he could. Which wasn't very well, given that he seemed to have the wrong sort of backbone, too.
After a while Mrs Pleasant heard a low, asthmatic rumble.
Greebo was trying to purr.
He had the wrong kind of throat.
In a minute he was going to wake up in a bad temper and want to fight something.
Mrs Pleasant got on with her own supper. Despite the fact that a hulking great man had just eaten a bowl offish heads and lapped a saucer of milk in front of her, and was now stretched out uncomfortably in front of the fire, she found she didn't feel the least bit afraid. In fact she was fighting down an impulse to scratch his tummy.
Magrat wrenched off the other slipper as she ran down the long red carpet towards the palace gateway and freedom. Just getting away, that was the important thing. From was more urgent than to.
And then two figures drifted out of the shadows and faced her. She raised the slipper pathetically as they approached in absolute silence, but even in the twilight she could feel their gaze.
The crowds parted. Lily Weatherwax glided through, in a rustle of silk.
She looked Granny up and down, without any expression of surprise.
'All in white, too,' she said, dryly. 'My word, aren't you the nice one.'
'But I've stopped you,' said Granny, still panting with the effort. 'I've broken it.'
Lily Weatherwax looked past her. The snake sisters were coming up the steps, holding a limp Magrat between them.
'Save us all from people who think literally,' said Lily. 'The damn things come in pairs, you know.'
She crossed to Magrat and snatched the second slipper out of her hand.
"The clock was interesting,' she said, turning back to Granny. 'I was impressed with the clock. But it's no good, you know. You can't stop this sort of thing. It has the momentum of inevitability. You can't spoil a good story. I should know.'
She handed the slipper to the Prince, but without taking her eyes off Granny.
'It'll fit her,' she said.
Two of the courtiers held Magrat's leg as the Prince wrestled the slipper past her protesting toes.
'There,' said Lily, still without looking down. 'And do stop trying that hedge-witch hypnotism on me, Esme.'
'It fits,' said the Prince, but in a doubtful tone of voice.
'Yes, anything would fit,' said a cheerful voice from somewhere towards the back of the crowd, 'if you were allowed to put two pairs of hairy socks on first.'
Lily looked down. Then she looked at Magrat's mask. She reached out and pulled it off.
'Ow!'
'Wrong girl,' said Lily. 'But it still doesn't matter, Esme, because it is the right slipper. So all we have to do is find the girl whose foot it fits - '
There was a commotion at the back of the crowd. Courtiers parted, revealing Nanny Ogg, oil-covered and hung with spider webs.
'If it's a five-and-a-half narrow fit, I'm your man,' she said. 'Just let me get these boots off. . .'
'I wasn't referring to you, old woman,' said Lily coldly.
'Oh, yes you was,' said Nanny. 'We know how this bit goes, see. The Prince goes all round the city with the slipper, trying to find the girl whose foot fits. That's what you was plannin'. So I can save you a bit of trouble, how about it?'
There was a flicker of uncertainty in Lily's expression.
'A girl,' she said, 'of marriageable age.'
'No problem there,' said Nanny cheerfully.
The dwarf Casanunda nudged a courtier proudly in the knees.
'She's a very close personal friend of mine,' he said proudly.
Lily looked at her sister.
'You're doing this. Don't think I don't know,' she said.
'I ain't doing a thing,' said Granny. 'It's real life happening all by itself.'
Nanny grabbed the slipper out of the Prince's hands and, before anyone else could move, slid it on to her foot.
Then she waggled the foot in the air.
It was a perfect fit.
'There!' she said. 'See? You could have wasted the whole day.'
'Especially because there must be hundreds of five-and-a-half-'
' - narrow fit - '
' - narrow fit wearers in a city this size,' Granny went on. 'Unless, of course, you happened to sort of go to the right house right at the start. If you had, you know, a lucky guess?'
'But that'd be cheatin',' said Nanny.
She nudged the Prince.
'I'd just like to add,' she said, 'that I don't mind doin' all the waving and opening things and other royal stuff, but I draw the line at sleepin' in the same bed as sunny jim here.'
'Because he doesn't sleep in a bed,' said Granny.
'No, he sleeps in a pond,' said Nanny. 'We had a look. Just a great big indoor pond.'
'Because he's a frog,' said Granny.
'With flies all over the place in case he wakes up in the night and fancies a snack,' said Nanny.
'I thought so!' said Magrat, pulling herself out of the grip of the guards. 'He had clammy hands!'
'Lots of men have clammy hands,' said Nanny. 'But this one's got 'em because he's a frog.'
'I'm a prince of blood royal!' said the Prince.
'And a frog,' said Granny.
'I don't mind,' said Casanunda, from somewhere down below. 'I enjoy open relationships. If you want to go out with a frog,that's fine by me . . .'
Lily looked around at the crowd. Then she snapped her fingers.
Granny Weatherwax was aware of a sudden silence.
Nanny Ogg looked up at the people on either side of her. She waved a hand in front of a guard's face.
'Coo,' she said.
'You can't do that for long,' said Granny. 'You can't stop a thousand people for long.'
Lily shrugged. 'They're not important. Whoever will remember who was at the ball? They'll just remember the flight and the slipper and the happy ending.'
'I've told you. You can't start it again. And he's a frog. Even you can't keep him in shape the whole day long. He turns back into his old shape at night. He's got a bedroom with a pond in it. He's a frog,' said Granny flatly.
'But only inside," said Lily.
'Inside's where it counts,' said Granny.
'Outside's quite important, mind,' said Nanny.
'Lots of people are animals inside. Lots of animals are people inside,' said Lily. 'Where's the harm?'
'He's a frog.'
'Especially at night,' said Nanny. It had occurred to her that a husband who was a man all night and a frog all day might be almost acceptable; you wouldn't get the wage packet, but there'd be less wear and tear on the furniture. She also couldn't put out of her mind certain private speculations about the length of his tongue.
'And you killed the Baron,' said Magrat.
'You think he was a particularly nice man?' said Uly. 'Besides, he didn't show me any respect. If you've got no respect, you've got nothing.'
Nanny and Magrat found themselves looking at Granny.
'He's a frog.'
'I found him in the swamp,' said Lily. 'I could tell he was pretty bright. I needed someone . . . amenable to persuasion. Shouldn't frogs have a chance? He'll be no worse a husband than many. Just one kiss from a princess seals the spell.'
'A lot of men are animals,' said Magrat, who'd picked up the idea from somewhere.
'Yes. But he's a frog,' said Granny.
'Look at it my way,' said Lily. 'You see this country? It's all swamps and fogs. There's no direction. But I can make this a great city. Not a sprawling place like Ankh-Morpork, but a place that works.'
'The girl doesn't want to marry a frog.'
'What will that matter in a hundred years' time?'
'It matters now.'
Lily threw up her hands. 'What do you want, then? It's your choice. There's me ... or there's that woman in the swamp. Light or dark. Fog or sunshine. Dark chaos or happy endings.'
'He's a frog, and you killed the old Baron,' said Granny.
'You'd have done the same,' said Lily.
'No,' said Granny. 'I'd have thought the same, but I wouldn't have done it.'
'What difference does that make, deep down?'
'You mean you don't know?' said Nanny Ogg.
Lily laughed.
'Look at the three of you,' she said. 'Bursting with inefficient good intentions. The maiden, the mother and the crone.'
'Who are you calling a maiden?' said Nanny Ogg.
'Who are you calling a mother?' said Magrat.
Granny Weatherwax glowered briefly like the person who has discovered that there is only one straw left and everyone else has drawn a long one.
'Now, what shall I do with you?' said Lily. 'I really am against killing people unless it's necessary, but I can't have you running around acting stupidly . . .'
She looked at her fingernails.
'So I think I shall have you put away somewhere until this has run its course. And then . . . can you guess what I'm going to do next?
'I'm going to expect you to escape. Because, after all, I am the good one.'
Ella walked cautiously through the moonlit swamp, following the strutting shape of Legba. She was aware of movement in the water, but nothing emerged - bad news like Legba gets around, even among alligators.
An orange light appeared irrthe distance. It turned out to be Mrs Gogol's shack, or boat, or whatever it was. In the swamp, the difference between the water and the land was practically a matter of choice.
'Hallo? Is there anyone there?'
'Come along in, child. Take a seat. Rest up a little.'
Ella stepped cautiously on to the rocking veranda. Mrs Gogol was sitting in her chair, a white-clad raggedy doll in her lap.
'Magrat said - '
'I know all about it. Come to Erzulie.'
'Who are you?'
'I am your - friend, girl.'
Ella moved so as to be ready to run.
'You're not a godmother of any kind, are you?'
'No. No gods. Just a friend. Did anyone follow you?'
'I... don't think so.'
'It's no matter if they did, girl. No matter if they did. Maybe we ought to move out into the river for a spell, even so. We'll be a lot safer with water all round.'
The shack lurched.
'You better sit down. The feets make it shaky until we get into deep water.'
Ella risked a look, nevertheless.
Airs Gogol's hut travelled on four large duck feet, which were now rising out of the swamp. They splashed their way through the shallows and, gently, sculled out into the river.
Greebo woke up and stretched.
And the wrong sort of arms and legs!
Mrs Pleasant, who had been sitting watching him, put down her glass.
'What do you want to do now, Mr Cat?' she said.
Greebo padded over to the door into the outside world and scratched at it.
'Waant to go owwwt, Miss-uss Pleas-unt,' he said.
'You just have to turn the handle there,' she said.
Greebo stared at the door handle like someone trying to come to terms with a piece of very advanced technology, and then gave her a pleading look.
She opened the door for him, stood aside as he slunk out, and then shut it, locked it and leaned against it.
'Ember's bound to be safe with Mrs Gogol,' said Magrat.
'Hah!' said Granny.
'I quite liked her,' said Nanny Ogg.
'I don't trust anyone who drinks rum and smokes a pipe,' said Granny.
'Nanny Ogg smokes a pipe and drinks anything,' Magrat pointed out.
'Yes, but that's because she's a disgustin' old baggage,' said Granny, without looking up.
Nanny Ogg took her pipe out of her mouth.
'That's right,' she said amiably. 'You ain't nothing if you don't maintain an image.'
Granny looked up from the lock.
'Can't shift it,' she said. 'It's octiron, too. Can't magic it open.'
'It's daft, locking us up,' said Nanny. 'I'd have had us killed.'
'That's because you're basically good,' said Magrat. 'The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.'
'No, I know why she's done this,' said Granny, darkly. 'It's so's we'll know we've lost.'
'But she said we'd escape,' said Magrat. 'I don't understand. She must know the good ones always win in the end!'
'Only in stories,' said Granny, examining the door hinges. 'And she thinks she's in charge of the stories. She bends them round herself. She thinks she's the good one.'
'Mind you,' said Magrat, 'I don't like swamps. If it wasn't for the frog and everything, I'd see Lily's point - '
'Then you're nothing but a daft godmother,' snapped Granny, still fiddling with the lock. 'You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage. Besides, you don't build a better world by choppin' heads off and giving decent girls away to frogs.'
'But progress - ' Magrat began.
'Don't you talk to me about progress. Progress just means bad things happen faster. Anyone got another hatpin? This one's useless.'
Nanny, who had Greebo's ability to make herself instantly at home wherever she happened to be, sat down in the corner of the cell.
'I heard this story once,' she said, 'where this bloke got locked up for years and years and he learned amazin' stuff about the universe and everythin' from another prisoner who was incredibly clever, and then he escaped and got his revenge.'
'What incredibly clever stuff do you know about the universe, Gytha Ogg?' said Granny.
'Bugger all,' said Nanny cheerfully.
'Then we'd better bloody well escape right now.'
Nanny pulled a scrap of pasteboard out of her hat, found a scrap of pencil up there too, licked the end and thought for a while. Then she wrote: Dear Jason unt so witer (as they say in foreign parts),
Well here's a thing yore ole Mum doin Time in prison again, Im a old lag, youll have to send me a cake with a phial in it and I shall have little arrows on my close just my joke. This is a Sketch of the dunjon. Im putting a X where we are, which is Inside. Magrat is shown wering a posh dress, she has been acting like a Courgette. Also inc. Esme getting fed up becaus she can't get the lock to work but I expect it will all be OK because the good ones win in the end and that's US. And all because some girl don't want to marry a Prince who is a Duck who is really a Frog and I cant say I blame her, you don't want descendants who have got Jenes and start off living in a jamjar and then hop about and get squashed. . .
She was interrupted by the sound of a mandolin being played quite well, right on the other side of the wall, and a small but determined voice raised in song.
' - si consuenti d'amoure, ventre dimo tondreturo-ooo - '
'How I hunger my love for the dining-room of your warm maceration,' said Nanny, without looking up.
' - della della t'ozentro, audri t'dren vontarieeeeee - '
'The shop, the shop, I have a lozenge, the sky is pink,' said Nanny.
Granny and Magrat looked at one another.
' - guarunto del tart, bella pore di larientos - '
'Rejoice, candlemaker, you have a great big - '
'I don't believe any of this,' said Granny. 'You're making it up.'
'Word for word translation,' said Nanny. 'I can speak foreign like a native, you know that.'
'Mrs Ogg? Is that you, my love?'
They all looked up towards the barred window. There was a small face peering in.
'Casanunda?' said Nanny.
'That's me, Mrs Ogg.'
'My love,' muttered Granny.
'How did you get up to the window?' said Nanny, ignoring this.
'I always know where I can get my hands on a step-ladder, Mrs Ogg.'
'I suppose you don't know where you can get your hands on a key?'
'Wouldn't do any good. There's too many guards outside your door, Mrs Ogg. Even for a famous swordsman like me. Her ladyship gave strict orders. No-one's to listen to you or look at you, even.'
'How come you're in the palace guard, Casanunda?'
'Soldier of fortune takes whatever jobs are going, Mrs Ogg,' said Casanunda earnestly.
'But all the rest of 'em are six foot tall and you're - of the shorter persuasion.'
'I lied about my height, Mrs Ogg. I'm a world-famous liar.'
'Is that true?'
'No.'
'What about you being the world's greatest lover?'
There was silence for a while.
'Well, maybe I'm only No. 2,' said Casanunda. 'But I try harder.'
'Can't you go and find us a file or something, Mr Casanunda?' said Magrat.
'I'll see what I can do, Miss.'
The face disappeared.
'Maybe we could get people to visit us and then we could escape in their clothes?' said Nanny Ogg.
'Now I've gone and stuck the pin in my finger,' muttered Granny Weatherwax.
'Or maybe we could get Magrat to seduce one of the guards,' said Nanny.
'Why don't you? said Magrat, as nastily as she could manage.
'All right. I'm game.'
'Shut up, the pair of you,' said Granny. 'I'm trying to think - '
There was another sound at the window.
It was Legba.
The black cockerel peered in between the bars for a moment, and then fluttered away.
'Gives me the creeps, that one,' said Nanny. 'Can't look at him without thinking wistfully of sage-and-onion and mashed potatoes.'
Her crinkled face crinkled further.
'Greebo!' she said. 'Where'd we leave him?'
'Oh, he's only a cat,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'Cats know how to look after themselves.'
'He's really just a big softie - ' Nanny began, before someone started pulling down the wall.
A hole appeared. A grey hand appeared and grasped another stone. There was a strong smell of river mud.
Rock crumbled under heavy fingers.
'Ladies?' said a resonant voice.
'Well, Mister Saturday,' said Nanny, 'as I live and breathe - saving your presence, o'course.'
Saturday grunted something and walked away.
There was a hammering on the door and someone started fumbling with keys.
'We don't want to hang around here,' said Granny. 'Come on.'
They helped one another out through the hole.
Saturday was on the other side of a small courtyard, striding towards the sound of the ball.
And there was something behind him, trailing out like the tail of a comet.
'What's that?'
'Mrs Gogol's doing,' said Granny Weatherwax grimly.
Behind Saturday, widening as it snaked through the palace grounds to the gate, was a stream of deeper darkness in the air. At first sight it seemed to contain shapes, but closer inspection indicated that they weren't shapes at all but a mere suggestion of shapes, forming and reforming. Eyes gleamed momentarily in the swirl. There was the cluttering of crickets and the whine of mosquitoes, the smell of moss and the stink of river mud.
'It's the swamp,' said Magrat.
'It's the idea of the swamp,' said Granny. 'It's what you have to have first, before you have the swamp.'
'Oh, dear,' said Nanny. She shrugged. 'Well, Ella's got away and so have we, so this is the part where we escape, yes? That's what we're supposed to do.'
None of them moved.
'They aren't very nice people in there,' said Magrat, after a while, 'but they don't deserve alligators."
'You witches stand right there,' said a voice behind them. Half a dozen guards were crowded around the hole in the wall.
'Life's certainly busier in the city,' said Nanny, pulling another hatpin from her hat.
'They've got crossbows,' warned Magrat. 'There's not much you can do against crossbows. Projectile weapons is Lesson Seven and I haven't had that yet.'
'They can't pull triggers if they think they've got flippers,' said Granny menacingly.
'Now,' said Nanny, 'let's not have any of that, eh? Everyone knows the good ones always win specially when they're outnumbered.'
The guards emerged.
As they did so a tall black shape dropped noiselessly from the wall behind them.
'There,' said Nanny, 'I said he wouldn't go far from his mummy, didn't I?'
One or two of the guards realized that she was staring proudly past them, and turned.
As far as they were concerned, they confronted a tall, broad-shouldered man with a mane of black hair, an eyepatch and a very wide grin.
He stood with his arms casually folded.
He waited until he had their full attention, and then Greebo let his lips part slowly.
Several of the men took a step backwards then.
One of them said, 'Why worry? It's not as if he's got a weap - '
Greebo raised one hand.
Claws make no noise as they slide out, but they ought to. They ought to make a noise like 'tzing'.
Greebo's grin widened.
Ah! These still worked . . .
One of the men was bright enough to raise his crossbow but stupid enough to do it with Nanny Ogg standing behind him with a hatpin. Her hand moved so swiftly that any wisdom-seeking saffron-clad youth would have started the Way of Mrs Ogg there and then. The man screamed and dropped the bow.
'Wrowwwl. . .'
Greebo leapt.
Cats are like witches. They don't fight to kill, but to win. There is a difference. There's no point in killing an opponent. That way, they won't know they've lost, and to be a real winner you have to have an opponent who is beaten and knows it. There's no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure.
Cats do not, of course, rationalize this far. They just like to send someone limping off minus a tail and a few square inches of fur.
Greebo's technique was unscientific and wouldn't have stood a chance against any decent swordsmanship, but on his side was the fact that it is almost impossible to develop decent swordsmanship when you seem to have run into a food mixer that is biting your ear off.
The witches watched with interest.
'I think we can leave him now,' said Nanny. 'I think he's having fun.'
They hurried towards the hall.
The orchestra was in the middle of a complicated number when the lead violinist happened to glance towards the door, and then dropped his bow. The cellist turned to see what had caused this, followed his colleague's fixed stare, and in a moment of confusion tried to play his instrument backwards.
In a succession of squeaks and flats, the orchestra stopped playing. The dancers continued for a while out of sheer momentum, and then stopped and milled about in confusion. And then, one by one, they too looked up.
Saturday stood at the top of the steps.
In the silence came the drumming, making the music that had gone before seem as insignificant as the cluttering of crickets. This was the real blood music; every other music that had ever been written was merely a pitiful attempt to sing along.
It poured into the room, and with it came the heat and the warm, vegetable smell of the swamp. There was a suggestion of alligator in the air - not the presence of them, but the promise.
The drumming grew louder. There were complex counter-rhythms, much more felt than heard.
Saturday brushed a speck of dust off the shoulder of his ancient coat, and reached out an arm.
The tall hat appeared in his hand.
He reached out his other hand.
The black cane with the silver top whirred out of the empty air and was snatched up triumphantly.
He put the hat on his head. He twirled the cane.
The drums rolled. Except that . . . maybe it wasn't drums now, maybe it was a beat in the floor itself, or in the walls, or in the air. It was fast and hot and people in the hall found their feet moving of their own accord, because the drumming seemed to reach the toes via the hindbrain without ever passing near the ears.
Saturday's feet moved too. They beat out their own staccato rhythms on the marble floor.
He danced down the steps.
He whirled. He leapt. The tails of his coat whipped through the air. And then he landed at the foot of the step, his feet striking the ground like the thud of doom.
And only now was there a stirring.
There was a croak from the Prince.
'It can't be him! He's deadl Guards! Kill him!'
He looked around madly at the guards by the stairs.
The guard captain went pale.
'I, uh, again? I mean, I don't think . . .' he began.
'Do it now!'
The captain raised his crossbow nervously. The point of the bolt wove figures-of-eight in front of his eyes.
'I said do it!'
The bow twanged.
There was a thud.
Saturday looked down at the feathers buried in his chest, and then grinned and raised his cane.
The captain looked up with the certain terror of death in his face. He dropped his bow and turned to run, and managed two steps before he toppled forward.
'No,' said a voice behind the Prince. 'This is how you kill a dead man.'
Lily Weatherwax stepped forward, her face white with fury.
'You don't belong here any more,' she hissed. 'You're not part of the story.'
She raised a hand.
Behind her, the ghost images suddenly focused on her, so that she became more iridescent. Silver fire leapt across the room.
Baron Saturday thrust out his cane. The magic struck, and coursed down him to earth, leaving little silver trails that crackled for a while and then winked out.
'No, ma'am,' he said, 'there ain't no way to kill a dead man.'
The three witches watched from the doorway.
'I felt that,' said Nanny. 'It should have blown him to bits!'
'Blown what to bits?' said Granny. 'The swamp? The river? The world? He's all of them! Ooh, she's a clever one, that Mrs Gogol!'
'What?' said Magrat. 'What do you mean, all of them?'
Lily backed away. She raised her hand again and sent another fireball towards the Baron. It hit his hat and burst off it like a firework.
'Stupid, stupid!' muttered Granny. 'She's seen it doesn't work and she's still trying it!'
'I thought you weren't on her side,' said Magrat.
'I ain't! But I don't like to see people being stupid. That kind of stuff's no use, Magrat Garlick, even you can . . . oh, no, surely not again . . .'
The Baron laughed as a third attempt earthed itself harmlessly. Then he raised his cane. Two courtiers tumbled forward.
Lily Weatherwax, still backing away, came up against the foot of the main staircase.
The Baron strolled forward.
'You want to try anything else, lady?' he said.
Lily raised both hands.
All three witches felt it - the terrible suction as she tried to concentrate all the power in the vicinity.
Outside, the one guard remaining upright found that he was no longer fighting a man but merely an enraged tomcat, although this was no consolation. It just meant that Greebo had an extra pair of claws.
The Prince screamed.
It was a long, descending scream, and ended in a croak, somewhere around ground level.
Baron Saturday took one heavy, deliberate step forward, and there was no more croak.
The drums stopped abruptly.
And then there was a real silence, broken only by the swish of Lily's dress as she fled up the stairs.
A voice behind the witches said, 'Thank you, ladies. Could you step aside, please?'
They looked around. Mrs Gogol was there, holding Embers by the hand. She had a fat, gaily-embroidered bag over her shoulder.
All three watched as the voodoo woman led the girl down into the hall and through the silent crowds.
"That's not right either,' said Granny under her breath.
'What?' said Magrat. 'What?'
Baron Saturday thumped his stick on the floor.
'You know me,' he said. 'You all know me. You know I was killed. And now here I am. I was murdered and what did you do -?'
'How much did you do, Mrs Gogol?' muttered Granny. 'No, we ain't having this.'
'Ssh, I can't hear what he's saying,' said Nanny.
'He's telling them they can have him ruling them again, or Embers,' said Magrat.
'They'll have Mrs Gogol,' muttered Granny. 'She'll be one o' them eminences greases.'
'Well, she's not too bad,' said Nanny.
'In the swamp she's not too bad,' said Granny. 'With someone to balance her up she's not too bad. But Mrs
Gogol tellin' a whole city what to do ... that's not right. Magic's far too important to be used for rulin' people. Anyway, Lily only had people killed - Mrs Gogol'd set 'em to choppin' wood and doin' chores afterwards. I reckon, after you've had a busy life, you ort to be able to relax a bit when you're dead.'
'Lie back and enjoy it, sort of thing,' said Nanny.
Granny looked down at the white dress.
'I wish I had my old clothes on,' she said. 'Black's the proper colour for a witch.'
She strode down the steps, and then cupped her hands around her mouth.
'Coo-ee! Mrs Gogol!'
Baron Saturday stopped speaking. Mrs Gogol nodded at Granny.
'Yes, Miss Weatherwax?'
'Mistress,' snapped Granny, and then softened her voice again.
'This ain't right, you know. She's the one who ought to rule, fair enough. And you used magic to help her this far, and that's all right. But it stops right here. It's up to her what happens next. You can't make things right by magic. You can only stop making them wrong.'
Mrs Gogol pulled herself up to her full, impressive height. 'Who's you to say what I can and can't do here?'
'We're her godmothers,' said Granny.
'That's right,' said Nanny Ogg.
'We've got a wand, too,' said Magrat.
'But you hate godmothers, Mistress Weatherwax,' said Mrs Gogol.
'We're the other kind,' said Granny. 'We're the kind that gives people what they know they really need, not what we think they ought to want.'
Among the fascinated crowd several pairs of lips moved as people worked this out.
'Then you've done your godmothering,' said Mrs Gogol, who thought faster than most. 'You did it very well."
'You didn't listen,' said Granny. 'There's all sorts of things to godmotherin'. She might be quite good at ruling. She might be bad at it. But she's got to find out for herself. With no interference from anyone.'
'What if I say no?'
'Then I expect we'll just have to go on godmotherin',' said Granny.
'Do you know how long I worked to win?' said Mrs Gogol, haughtily. 'Do you know what I lost?
'And now you've won, and there's the end of it,' said Granny.
'Are you looking to challenge me. Mistress Weatherwax?'
Granny hesitated, and then straightened her shoulders. Her arms moved away from her sides, almost imperceptibly. Nanny and Magrat moved away slightly.
'If that's what you want.'
'My voodoo against your . . . headology?'
'If you like.'
'And what's the stake?'
'No more magic in the affairs of Genua,' said Granny. 'No more stories. No more godmothers. Just people, deciding for themselves. For good or bad. Right or wrong.'
'Okay.'
'And you leave Lily Weatherwax to me.'
Mrs Gogol's intake of breath was heard around the hall.
'Never!'
'Hmm?' said Granny. 'You don't think you're going to lose, do you?'
'I don't want to hurt you, Mistress Weatherwax,' said Mrs Gogol.
'That's good,' said Granny. 'I don't want you to hurt me either.'
'I don't want there to be any fighting,' said Ella.
They all looked at her.
'She's the ruler now, ain't she?' said Granny. 'We've got to listen to what she says.'
'I'll keep out of the city,' said Mrs Gogol, ignoring her, 'but Lilith is mine.'
'No.'
Mrs Gogol reached into her bag, and flourished the raggedy doll. 'See this?'
'Yes. I do,' said Granny.
'It was going to be her. Don't let it be you.'
'Sorry, Mrs Gogol,' said Granny firmly, 'but I see my duty plain.'
'You're a clever woman, Mistress Weatherwax. But you're a long way from home.'
Granny shrugged. Mrs Gogol held up the doll by its waist. It had sapphire blue eyes.
'You know about magic with mirrors? This is my kind of mirror, Mistress Weatherwax. I can make it be you. And then I can make it suffer. Don't make me do that. Please.'
'Please yourself, Mrs Gogol. But I'll deal with Lily.'
'I should box a bit clever if I was you, Esme,' muttered Nanny Ogg. 'She's good at this sort of thing.'
'I think she could be very ruthless,' said Magrat.
'I've got nothing but the greatest respect for Mrs Gogol,' said Granny. 'A fine woman. But talks a bit too much. If I was her, I'd have had a couple of big nails right through that thing by now.'
'You would, too,' said Nanny. 'It's a good thing you're good, ain't it.'
'Right,' said Granny, raising her voice again. 'I'm going to find my sister, Mrs Gogol. This is family.'
She walked steadfastly towards the stairs.
Magrat took out the wand.
'If she does anything bad to Granny, she's going to go through the rest of her life bright orange and round, with seeds in,' she said.
'I don't think Esme would like it if you did something like that,' said Nanny. 'Don't worry. She doesn't believe all that stuff about pins and dolls.'
'She doesn't believe anything. But that doesn't matter!' said Magrat. 'Mrs Gogol does! It's her power! It's what she thinks that matters.'
'Don't you reckon Esme knows that too?'
Granny Weatherwax reached the foot of the stairs.
'Mistress Weatherwax!'
Granny turned.
Mrs Gogol had a long sliver of wood in her hand. Shaking her head desperately, she jabbed it into the doll's foot.
Everyone saw Esme Weatherwax wince.
Another sliver was thrust into a raggedy arm.
Slowly, Granny raised her other hand and shuddered when she touched her sleeve. Then, limping slightly, she continued to climb the stairs.
'I can do the heart next. Mistress Weatherwax!' shouted Mrs Gogol.
'I'm sure you can. You're good at it. You know you're good at it,' said Granny, without looking around.
Mrs Gogol stuck another sliver into a leg. Granny sagged, and clutched at the banister. Beside her, one of the big torches flamed.
'Next time!' said Mrs Gogol. 'Right? Next time. I can do it!'
Granny turned around.
She looked at the hundreds of upturned faces.
When she spoke, her voice was so quiet that they had to strain to hear.
'I know you can too, Mrs Gogol. You really believe. Just remind me again- we're playin' for Lily, right? And for the city?'
'What does that matter now?' said Mrs Gogol. 'Ain't you going to give in?'
Granny Weatherwax thrust a little finger into her ear and wiggled it thoughtfully.
'No,' she said. 'No, I don't reckon that's what I do now. Are you watchin', Mrs Gogol? Are you watchin' real close?'
Her gaze travelled the room and rested for just a fraction of a second on Magrat.
Then she reached over, carefully, and thrust her arm up to the elbow into the burning torch.
And the doll in Erzulie Gogol's hands burst into flame.
It went on blazing even after the witch had screamed and dropped it on to the floor. It went on burning until Nanny Ogg ambled over with a jug of fruit juice from the buffet, whistling between her teeth, and put it out.
Granny withdrew her hand. It was unscathed.
'That's headology,' she said. 'It's the only thing that matters. Everything else is just messin' about. Hope I didn't hurt you, Mrs Gogol.'
She went on up the stairs.
Mrs Gogol kept on staring at the damp ashes. Nanny Ogg patted her companionably on the shoulder.
'How did she do that?' said Mrs Gogol.
'She didn't. She let you do it,' said Nanny. 'You got to watch yourself around Esme Weatherwax. I'd like to see one of them Zen buggers come up against her one day.'
'And she's the good one?' said Baron Saturday.
'Yeah,' said Nanny. 'Funny how things work out, really.'
She looked thoughtfully at the empty fruit juice jug in her hand.
'What this needs,' she said, in the manner of one reaching a conclusion after much careful consideration, 'is some bananas and rum and stuff in it - '
Magrat grabbed her dress as Nanny strode determinedly dak'rywards.
'Not now,' she said. 'We'd better get after Granny! She might need us!'
'Shouldn't think so for one minute,' said Nanny. 'I wouldn't like to be in Lily's shoes when Esme catches up with her.'
'But I've never seen Granny so agitated,' said Magrat. 'Anything could happen.'
'Good job if it does,' said Nanny. She nodded meaningfully at a flunkey who, being quick on the uptake, leapt to attention.
'But she might do something - dreadful.'
'Good. She's always wanted to,' said Nanny. 'Another banana dak'ry, mahatma coat, chopchop.'
'No. It wouldn't be a good idea,' Magrat persisted.
'Oh, all right,' said Nanny. She handed the empty jug to Baron Saturday, who took it in a kind of hypnotic daze.
'We're just going to sort things out,' she said. 'Sorry about this. On with the motley ... if anyone's got any left.'
When the witches had gone Mrs Gogol reached down and picked up the damp remains of the doll.
One or two people coughed.
'Is that it?' said the Baron. 'After twelve years?'
'The Prince is dead,' said Mrs Gogol. 'Such as he was.'
'But you promised that I would be revenged on her,' the Baron said.
'I think there will be revenge,' said Mrs Gogol. She tossed the doll on to the floor. 'Lilith has been fighting me for twelve years and she never got through. This one didn't even have to sweat. So I think there will be revenge.'
'You don't have to keep your word!'
'I do. I've got to keep something.' Mrs Gogol put her arm around Ella's shoulder.
'This is it, girl,' she said. 'Your palace. Your city. There isn't a person here who will deny it.'
She glared at the guests. One or two of them stepped backwards.
Ella looked up at Saturday.
'I feel I should know you,' she said. She turned to Mrs Gogol. 'And you,' she added. 'I've seen you both . . . before. A long time ago?'
Baron Saturday opened his mouth to speak. Mrs Gogol held up her hand.
'We promised,' she said. 'No interference.'
'Not from us?
'Not even from us.' She turned back to Ella. 'We're just people.'
'You mean . . .' said Ella, 'I've slaved in a kitchen for years . . . and now . . . I'm supposed to rule the city? Just like that?'
'That's how it goes.'
Ella looked down, deep in thought.
'And anything I say people have to do?' she said innocently.
There were a few nervous coughs from the crowd.
'Yes,' said Mrs Gogol.
Ella stood looking down at the floor, idly biting a thumbnail. Then she looked up.
'Then the first thing that's going to happen is the end of the ball. Right now! I'm going to find the carnival. I've always wanted to dance in the carnival.' She looked around at the worried faces. 'It's not compulsory for anyone else to come,' she added.
The nobles of Genua had enough experience to know what it means when a ruler says something is not compulsory.
Within minutes the hall was empty, except for three figures.
'But . . . but ... I wanted revenge,' said the Baron. 'I wanted death. I wanted our daughter in power.'
TWO OUT OF THREE ISN'T BAD.
Mrs Gogol and the Baron turned around. Death put down his drink and stepped forward. Baron Saturday straightened up. 'I am ready to go with you,' he said.
Death shrugged. Ready or not, he seemed to indicate, was all the same to him.
'But I held you off,' the Baron added. 'For twelve years!" He put his arm around Erzulie's shoulders. 'When they killed me and threw me in the river, we stole life from you!'
YOU STOPPED LIVING. YOU NEVER DIED. I DID NOT COME FOR YOU THEN.
'You didn't?'
I HAD AN APPOINTMENT WITH YOU TONIGHT.
The Baron handed his cane to Mrs Gogol. He removed the tall black hat. He shrugged off the coat.
Power crackled in its folds.
'No more Baron Saturday,' he said.
PERHAPS. IT'S A NICE HAT.
The Baron turned to Erzulie.
'I think I have to go.'
'Yes.'
'What will you do?'
The voodoo woman looked down at the hat in her hands.
'I will go back to the swamp,' she said.
'You could stay here. I don't trust that foreign witch.'
'I do. So I will go back to the swamp. Because some stories have to end. Whatever Ella becomes, she'll have to make it herself.'
It was a short walk to the brown, heavy waters of the river.
The Baron paused at the edge.
'Will she live happily ever after?' he said.
NOT FOREVER. BUT PERHAPS FOR LONG ENOUGH.
And so stories end.
The wicked witch is defeated, the ragged princess comes into her own, the kingdom is restored. Happy days are here again. Happy ever after. Which means that life stops here.
Stories want to end. They don't care what happens next. . .
Nanny Ogg panted along a corridor.
'Never seen Esme like that before,' she said. 'She's in a very funny mood. She could be a danger to herself.'
'She's a danger to everyone else,' said Magrat. 'She - '
The snake women stepped out into the passageway ahead of them.
'Look at it like this,' said Nanny, under her breath, 'what can they do to us?'
'I can't stand snakes,' said Magrat quietly.
'They've got those teeth, of course,' said Nanny, as if conducting a seminar. 'More like fangs, really. Come on, girl. Let's see if we can find another way.'
'I hate them.'
Nanny tugged at Magrat, who did not move.
'Come on!'
'I really hate them.'
'You'll be able to hate them even better from a long way off !'
The sisters were nearly on them. They didn't walk, they glided. Perhaps Lily wasn't concentrating now, because they were more snake-like than ever. Nanny thought she could see scale patterns under the skin. The jawline was all wrong.
'Magrat!'
One of the sisters reached out. Magrat shuddered.
The snake sister opened its mouth.
Then Magrat looked up and, almost dreamily, punched it so hard that it was carried several feet along the passage.
It wasn't a blow that featured in any Way or Path. No-one ever drew this one as a diagram or practised it in front of a mirror with a bandage tied round their head. It was straight out of the lexicon of inherited, terrified survival reflexes.
'Use the wand!' shouted Nanny, darting forward. 'Don't ninj at them! Use the wand! That's what it's for!'
The other snake instinctively turned to follow the movement, which is why instinct is not always the keynote to survival, because Magrat clubbed it on the back of the head. With the wand. It sagged, losing shape as it fell.
The trouble with witches is that they'll never run away from things they really hate.
And the trouble with small furry animals in a corner is that, just occasionally, one of them's a mongoose.
Granny Weatherwax had always wondered: what was supposed to be so special about a full moon? It was only a big circle of light. And the dark of the moon was only darkness.
But half-way between the two, when the moon was between the worlds of light and dark, when even the moon lived on the edge . . . maybe then a witch could believe in the moon.
Now a half-moon sailed above the mists of the swamp.
Lily's nest of mirrors reflected the cold light, as they reflected everything else. Leaning against the wall were the three broom-sticks.
Granny picked up hers. She wasn't wearing the right colour and she wasn't wearing a hat; she needed something she was at home with.
Nothing moved.
'Lily?' said Granny softly.
Her own image looked out at her from the mirrors.
'It can all stop now,' said Granny. 'You could take my stick and I'll take Magrat's. She can always share with Gytha. And Mrs Gogol won't come after you. I've fixed that. And we could do with more witches back home. And no more godmothering. No more getting people killed so their daughters are ready to be in a story. I know that's why you did it. Come on home. It's an offer you can't refuse.'
The mirror slid back noiselessly.
'You're trying to be kind to me?' said Lily.
'Don't think it don't take a lot of effort,' said Granny in a more normal voice.
Lily's dress rustled in the darkness as she stepped out.
'So,' she said, 'y皍 beat the swamp woman.'
'No.'
'But you're here instead of her.'
'Yes.'
Lily took the stick out of Granny's hands, and inspected it.
'Never used one of these things,' she said. 'You just sit on it and away you go?'
'With this one you have to be running quite fast before it takes off,' said Granny, 'but that's the general idea, yes.'
'Hmm. Do you know the symbology of the broomstick?' said Lily.
'Is it anything to do with maypoles and folksongs and suchlike?' said Granny.
'Oh, yes.'
'Then I don't want to hear about it.'
'No,' said Lily. 'I imagine you don't.'
She handed the stick back.
'I'm staying here,' she said. 'Mrs Gogol may have come up with a new trick, but that doesn't mean she has won.'
'No. Things have come to an end, see,' said Granny. 'That's how it works when you turn the world into stories. You should never have done that. You shouldn't turn the world into stories. You shouldn't treat people like they was characters, like they was things. But if you do, then you've got to know when the story ends.'
'You've got to put on your red-hot shoes and dance the night away?' said Lily.
'Somethin' like that, yes.'
'While everyone else lives happily ever after?'
'I don't know about that,' said Granny. 'That's up to them. What I'm sayin' is, you're not allowed to go round one more time. You've lost.'
'You know a Weatherwax never loses,' said Lily.
'One of 'em learns tonight,' said Granny.
'But we're outside the stories,' said Lily. 'Me because I . . . am the medium through which they happen, and you because you fight them. We're the ones in the middle. The free ones -'
There was a sound behind them. The faces of Magrat and Nanny Ogg appeared over the top of the stairwell.
'You need any help, Esme?' said Nanny cautiously.
Lily laughed.
'Here's your little snakes, Esme.'
'You know,' she added, 'you're really just like me. Don't you know that? There isn't a thought that's gone through my head that you haven't thought, too. There isn't a deed I've done that you haven't contemplated. But you never found the courage. That's the difference between people like me and people like you. We have the courage to do what you only dream of.'
'Yes?' said Granny. 'Is that what you think? You think I dream?'
Lily moved a finger. Magrat floated up out of the stairwell, struggling. She waved her wand frantically.
'That's what I like to see,' said Lily. 'People wishing. I never wished for anything in my life. I always made things happen. So much more rewarding.'
Magrat gritted her teeth.
'I'm sure I wouldn't look good as a pumpkin, dear,' said Lily. She waved a hand airily. Magrat rose.
'You'd be surprised at the things I can do,' said Lily dreamily, as the younger witch drifted smoothly over the flagstones. 'You should have tried mirrors yourself, Esme. It does wonders for a soul. I only let the swamp woman survive because her hate was invigorating. I do like being hated, you know. And you do know. It's a kind of respect. It shows you're having an effect. It's like a cold bath on a hot day. When stupid people find themselves powerless, when they fume in their futility, when they're beaten and they've got nothing but that yawning in the acid pit of their stomachs - well, to be honest, it's like a prayer. And the stories ... to ride on stories ... to borrow the strength of them . . . the comfort of them ... to be in the hidden centre of them . . . Can you understand that? The sheer pleasure of seeing the patterns repeat themselves? I've always loved a pattern. Incidentally, if the Ogg woman continues to try to sneak up behind me I shall really let your young friend drift out over the courtyard and then, Esme, I might just lose interest.'
'I was just walkin' about,' said Nanny. 'No law against it.'
'You changed the story your way, and now I'm going to do it mine,' said Lily. 'And once again ... all you have to do is go. Just go away. What happens here doesn't matter. It's a city far away of which you know little. I'm not totally certain I could out-trick you,' she added, 'but these two . . . they haven't got the right stuff in them. I could make jam of them. I hope you know that. So tonight, I suggest, a Weatherwax learns to lose?'
Granny stood silent for a while, leaning on her useless broom.
'All right. Put her down,' she said. 'And then I'll say you've won.'
'I wish I could believe that,' said Lily. 'Oh . . . but you're the nice one, aren't you? You have to keep your word.'
'Watch me,' said Granny. She walked to the parapet and looked down. The two-faced moon was still bright enough to illuminate the billowing fogs that surrounded the palace like a sea.
'Magrat? Gytha?' she said. 'Sorry about this. You've won, Lily. There ain't nothing I can do.'
She jumped.
Nanny Ogg rushed forward and stared over the edge, just in time to see a dim figure vanish in the mists.
All three figures left on the tower took a deep breath.
'It's a trick,' said Lily, 'to get me off guard.'
'It isn't!' screamed Magrat, dropping to the stones.
'She had her broomstick,' said Lily.
'It don't work! It won't start!' shouted Nanny. 'Right,' she said, menacingly, striding towards the slim shape of Lily. 'We'll soon wipe that smug look off your face - '
She halted as silver pain shot through her body.
Lily laughed.
'It's true, then?' she said. 'Yes. I can see it in your faces. Esme was bright enough to know she couldn't win. Don't be stupid. And don't point that silly wand at me, Miss Garlick. Old Desiderata would have defeated me long ago if she could. People have no understanding.'
'We ought to go down there," said Magrat. 'She might be lying there - '
'That's it. Be good. It's what you're good at,' said Lily, as they ran to the stairwell.
'But we'll be back,' snarled Nanny Ogg. 'Even if we have to live in the swamp with Mrs Gogol and eat snakes' heads!'
'Of course,' said Lily, arching an eyebrow. 'That's what I said. One needs people like you around. Otherwise one is never quite sure one is still working. It's a way of keeping score.'
She watched them disappear down the steps.
A wind blew over the tower. Lily gathered up her skirts and walked to the end, where she could see the shreds of mist streaming over the rooftops far below. There were the faint strains of music from the distant carnival dance as it wound its way through the streets.
It would soon be midnight. Proper midnight, not some cut-price version caused by an old woman crawling around in a clock.
Lily tried to see through the murk to the bottom of the tower.
'Really, Esme,' she murmured, 'you did take losing hard.'
Nanny reached out and restrained Magrat as they ran down the spiral stairs.
'Slow down a bit, I should,' she said.
'But she could be hurt -!'
'So could you, if you trip. Anyway,' said Nanny, 'I don't reckon Esme is lyin' in a crumpled heap somewhere. That's not the way she'd go. I reckon she did it just to make sure Lily forgot about us and wouldn't try anything on us. I reckon she thought we were - what was that Tsortean bloke who could only be wounded if you hit 'im in the right place? No-one ever beat 'im until they found out about it. His knee, I think it was. We're her Tsortean knee, right?'
'But we know you have to run really fast to get her broomstick going!' shouted Magrat.
'Yeah, I know,' said Nanny. 'That's what I thought. And now I'm thinking. . . how fast do you go when you're dropping? I mean, straight down?'
'I... don't know,' said Magrat.
'I reckon Esme thought it was worth findin' out,' said Nanny. 'That's what I reckon.'
A figure appeared around the bend in the stairs, plodding upwards. They stood aside politely to let it pass.
'Wish I could remember what bit of him you had to hit,' Nanny said. 'That's going to be nagging at me all night, now.'
THE HEEL.
'Right? Oh, thanks.'
ANY TIME.
The figure continued onwards and upwards.
'He had a good mask on, didn't he,' said Magrat, eventually.
She and Nanny sought confirmation in each other's face.
Magrat went pale. She looked up the stairs.
'I think we should run back up and - ' she began.
Nanny Ogg was much older. 'I think we should walk,' she said.
Lady Volentia D'Arrangement sat in the rose garden under the big tower and blew her nose.
She'd been waiting for half an hour and she'd had enough.
She'd hoped for a romantic tete-a-tete: he'd seemed such a nice man, sort of eager and shy at the same time. Instead, she'd nearly been hit on the head when an old woman on a broom and wearing what looked, as far as she could see through the blur of speed, like Lady Volentia's own dress, had screamed down out of the mist. Her boots had ploughed through the roses before the curve of her flight took her up again.
And some filthy smelly tomcat kept brushing up against her legs.
And it had started off as such a nice evening . . .
' 'ullo, your Ladyship?'
She looked around at the bushes.
'My name's Casanunda," said a hopeful voice.
Lily Weatherwax turned when she heard the tinkle of glass from within the maze of mirrors.
Her brow wrinkled. She ran across the flagstones and opened the door into the mirror world.
There was no sound but the rustle of her dress and the soft hiss of her own breathing. She glided into the place between the mirrors.
Her myriad selves looked back at her approvingly. She relaxed.
Then her foot struck something. She looked down and saw on the flagstones, black in the moonlight, a broomstick lying in shards of broken glass.
Her horrified gaze rose to meet a reflection.
It glared back at her.
'Where's the pleasure in bein' the winner if the loser ain't alive to know they've lost?'
Lilith backed away, her mouth opening and shutting.
Granny Weatherwax stepped through the empty frame. Lily looked down, beyond her avenging sister.
'You broke my mirror!'
'Was this what it was all for, then?' said Granny.' Playin' little queens in some damp city? Serving stories? What sort of power is that?'
'You don't understand . . . you've broken the mirror . . .'
'They say you shouldn't do it,' said Granny. 'But I reckoned: what's another seven years' bad luck?'
Image after image shatters, all the way around the great curve of the mirror world, the crack flying out faster than light. . .
'You have to break both to be safe. . . you've upset the balance . . .'
'Hah! I did?' Granny stepped forward, her eyes two sapphires of bitterness. 'I'm goin' to give you the hidin' our Mam never gave you, Lily Weatherwax. Not with magic, not with headology, not with a stick like our Dad had, aye, and used a fair bit as I recall - but with skin. And not because you was the bad one. Not because you meddled with stories. Everyone has a path they got to tread. But because, and I wants you to understand this prop'ly, after you went I had to be the good one. You had all the fun. An' there's no way I can make you pay for that, Lily, but I'm surely goin' to give it a try . . .'
'But... I... I... I'm the good one,' Lily murmured, her face pale with shock. 'I'm the good one. I can't lose. I'm the godmother. You're the wicked witch . . . and you've broken the mirror . . .'
. . . moving like a comet, the crack in the mirrors reaches its furthest point and curves back, speeding down the countless worlds . . .
'You've got to help me put . . . the images must be balanced . . .' Lily murmured faintly, backing up against the remaining glass.
'Good? Good? Feeding people to stories? Twisting people's lives? That's good, is it?' said Granny. 'You mean you didn't even have fun? If I'd been as bad as you, I've have been a whole lot worse. Better at it than you've ever dreamed of.'
She drew back her hand.
. . . the crack returned towards its point of origin, carrying with it the fleeing reflections of all the mirrors . . .
Her eyes widened.
The glass smashed and crazed behind Lily Weatherwax.
And in the mirror, the image of Lily Weatherwax turned around, smiled beatifically, and reached out of the frame to take Lily Weatherwax into its arms.
'Lily!'
All the mirrors shattered, exploding outwards in a thousand pieces from the top of the tower so that, just for a moment, it was wreathed in twinkling fairy dust.
Nanny Ogg and Magrat came up onto the roof like avenging angels after a period of lax celestial quality control.
They stopped.
Where the maze of mirrors had been were empty frames. Glass shards covered the floor and, lying on them, was a figure in a white dress.
Nanny pushed Magrat behind her and crunched forward cautiously. She prodded the figure with the toe of her boot.
'Let's throw her off the tower,' said Magrat.
'All right,' said Nanny. 'Do it, then.'
Magrat hesitated. 'Well,' she said, 'when I said let's throw her off the tower, I didn't mean me personally throwing her off, I meant that if there was any justice she ought to be thrown off- '
'Then I shouldn't say any more on that score, if I was you,' said Nanny, kneeling carefully on the crunching shards. 'Besides, I was right. This is Esme. I'd know that face anywhere. Take off your petticoat.'
'Why?'
'Look at her arms, girl!'
Magrat stared. Then she raised her hands to her mouth.
'What has she been doing?'
'Trying to reach straight through glass, by the looks of it,' said Nanny. 'Now get it off and help me tear it into strips and then go and find Mrs Gogol and see if she's got any ointments and can help us, and tell her if she can't she'd better be a long way away by morning.' Nanny felt Granny Weatherwax's wrist. 'Maybe Lily Weatherwax could make jam of us but I'm damn sure I could knock Mrs Gogol's eye out with the fender if it came to it.'
Nanny removed her patent indestructible hat and fished around inside the point. She pulled out a velvet cloth and unwrapped it, revealing a little cache of needles and a spool of thread.
She licked a thread and held a needle against the moon, squinting.
'Oh, Esme, Esme,' she said, as she bent to her sewing, 'you do take winning hard.'
Lily Weatherwax looked out at the multi-layered, silvery world.
'Where am I?'
INSIDE THE MIRROR.
'Am I dead?'
THE ANSWER TO THAT, said Death, is SOMEWHERE
BETWEEN NO AND YES.
Lily turned, and a billion figures turned with her. 'When can I get out?' WHEN YOU FIND THE ONE THAT'S REAL. Lily Weatherwax ran on through the endless reflections.
A good cook is always the first one into the kitchen every morning and the last one to go home at night.
Mrs Pleasant damped down the fires. She did a quick inventory of the silverware and counted the tureens. She -
She was aware of being stared at.
There was a cat in the doorway. It was big and grey. One eye was an evil yellow-green, the other one pearly white. What remained of its ears looked like the edge of a stamp. Nevertheless, it had a certain swagger, and generated an I-can-beat-you-with-one-paw feel that was strangely familiar.
Airs Pleasant stared at it for a while. She was a close personal friend of Mrs Gogol and knew that shape is merely a matter of deeply-ingrained personal habit, and if you're a resident of Genua around Samedi Nuit Mort you learn to trust your judgement rather more than you trust your senses.
'Well now,' she said, with barely a trace of a tremor in her voice, 'I expect you'd like some more fish legs, I mean heads, how about that?'
Greebo stretched and arched his back.
'And there's some milk in the coolroom,' said Mrs Pleasant.
Greebo yawned happily.
Then he scratched his ear with his back leg. Humanity's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.
It was a day later.
'Mrs Gogol's healing ointment really seems to work,' said Magrat. She held up a jar that was half-full of something pale green and strangely gritty and had a subtle smell which, you could quite possibly believe, occupied the whole world.
'It's got snakes' heads in it,' said Nanny Ogg.
'Don't you try to upset me,' said Magrat. 'I know the Snake's Head is a kind of flower. A fritillary, I think. It's amazing what you can do with flowers, you know.'
Nanny Ogg, who had in fact spent an instructive if gruesome half-hour watching Mrs Gogol make the stuff, hadn't the heart to say so.
'That's right,' she said. 'Flowers. No getting anything past you, I can see that.'
Magrat yawned.
They had been given the run of the palace, although no-one felt like running anywhere. Granny had been installed in the next room.
'Go and get some sleep,' said Nanny. 'I'll go and take over from Mrs Gogol in a moment.'
'But Nanny . . . Gytha ..." said Magrat.
'Hmm?'
'All that . . . stuff . . . she was saying, when we were travelling. It was so ... so cold. Wasn't it? Not wishing for things, not using magic to help people, not being able to do that fire thing - and then she went and did all those things! What am I supposed to make of that?'
'Ah, well,' said Nanny. 'It's all according to the general and the specific, right?'
'What does that mean?' Magrat lay down on the bed.
'Means when Esme uses words like "Everyone" and "No-one" she doesn't include herself.'
'You know . . . when you think about it ... that's terrible.'
'That's witchcraft. Up at the sharp end. And now . . . get some sleep.'
Magrat was too tired to object. She stretched out and was soon snoring in a genteel sort of way.
Nanny sat and smoked her pipe for a while, staring at the wall.
Then she got up and pushed open the door.
Mrs Gogol looked up from her stool by the bed.
'You go and get some sleep too,' said Nanny. 'I'll take over for a spell.'
"There's something not right,' said Mrs Gogol. 'Her hands are fine. She just won't wake up.'
'It's all in the mind, with Esme,' said Nanny.
'I could make some new gods and get everyone to believe in 'em real good. How about that?' said Mrs Gogol. Nanny shook her head.
'I shouldn't think Esme'd want that. She's not keen on gods. She thinks they're a waste of space.'
'I could cook up some gumbo, then. People'll come a long way to taste that.'
'It might be worth a try,' Nanny conceded. 'Every little helps, I always say. Why not see to it? Leave the rum here.'
After the voodoo lady had gone Nanny smoked her pipe some more and drank a little rum in a thoughtful sort of way, looking at the figure on the bed.
Then she bent down close to Granny Weatherwax's ear, and whispered:
'You ain't going to lose, are you?'
Granny Weatherwax looked out at the multi-layered, silvery world.
'Where am I?'
INSIDE THE MIRROR.
'Am I dead?'
THE ANSWER TO THAT, said Death, is SOMEWHERE
BETWEEN NO AND YES.
Esme turned, and a billion figures turned with her.
'When can I get out?'
WHEN YOU FIND THE ONE THAT'S REAL.
'Is this a trick question?'
No.
Granny looked down at herself.
'This one,' she said.
And stories just want happy endings. They don't give a damn who they're for.
Dear Jason eksetra,
Well so much for Genua but I leanred about Mrs Gogol's zombie medicin and she gave me the Hityi Hidtfrt/[?] told me how to make banananana dakry and gave me a thing call a banjo youll be amazed and all in all is a decent soul I reckon if you keeps her where you can see her. It looks like we got
Esme back but I don't know shes actin funny and quiet not like herself normally so Im keepin an Eye on her just in case Lily puled a farst one in the mirror. But I think shes geting better because when she woke up she arsked Magratfor a look at the wand and then she kind of twidled and twisted them rings on it and turned the po into a bunch of flowers and Magrat said she could never make the wand do that and Esme said no because, she wasted time wishing for thinges instead of working out how to make them happen. What I say is, what a good job Esme never got a wand when she was young, Lily would have bin a Picnic by comparisen. Enclosed is a picture of the cemtry here you can see folks are buried in boxes above ground the soil being so wet because you dont want to be dead and drownded at the same time, they say travelin brordens the mind, I reckon I could pull mine out my ears now and knot it under my chin, all the best, MUM.
In the swamp Mrs Gogol the voodoo witch draped the tail coat over its crude stand, stuck the hat on the top of the pole and fastened the cane to one end of the crosspiece with a bit of twine.
She stood back.
There was a fluttering of wings. Legba dropped out of the sky and perched on the hat. Then he crowed. Usually he only crowed at nightfall, because he was a bird of power, but for once he was inclined to acknowledge the new day.
It was said afterwards that, every year on Samedi Nuit Moit, when the carnival was at its height and the drums were loudest and the rum was nearly all gone, a man in a tail coat and a top hat and with the energy of a demon would appear out of nowhere and lead the dance.
After all, even stories have to start somewhere.
There was a splash, and then the waters of the river closed again. Magrat walked away.
The wand settled into the rich mud, where it was touched only by the feet of the occasional passing crawfish, who don't have fairy godmothers and aren't allowed to wish for anything. It sank down over the months and passed, as most things do, out of history. Which was all anyone could wish for.
The three broomsticks rose over Genua, with the mists that curled towards the dawn.
The witches looked down at the green swamps around the city. Genua dozed. The days after Fat Lunchtirne were always quiet, as people slept it off. Currently they included Greebo, curled up in his place among the bristles. Leaving Mrs Pleasant had been a real wrench.
'Well, so much for la douche vita,' said Nanny philosophically.
'We never said goodbye to Mrs Gogol,' said Magrat.
'I reckon she knows we're going right enough,' said Nanny. 'Very knowin' woman, Mrs Gogol.'
'But can we trust her to keep her word?' said Magrat.
'Yes,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'She's very honest, in her way,' said Nanny Ogg.
'Well, there's that,' Granny conceded. 'Also, I said I might come back.'
Magrat looked across at Granny's broomstick. A large round box was among the baggage strapped to the bristles.
'You never tried on that hat she gave you,' she said.
'I had a look at it,' said Granny coldly. 'It don't fit.'
'I reckon Mrs Gogol wouldn't give anyone a hat that didn't fit,' said Nanny. 'Let's have a look, eh?'
Granny sniffed, and undid the lid of the box. Balls of tissue paper tumbled down towards the mists as she lifted the hat out.
Magrat and Nanny Ogg stared at it.
They were of course used to the concept of fruit on a hat - Nanny Ogg herself had a black straw hat with wax cherries on for special family feuding occasions. But this one had rather more than just cherries. About the only fruit not on it somewhere was a melon.
'It's definitely very . . .foreign,' said Magrat.
'Go on,' said Nanny. 'Try it on.'
Granny did so, a bit sheepishly, increasing her apparent height by two feet, most of which was pineapple.
'Very colourful. Very . . . stylish,' said Nanny. 'Not everyone could wear a hat like that.'
'The pomegranates suit you,' said Magrat.
'And the lemons,' said Nanny Ogg.
'Eh? You two ain't laughing at me, are you?' said Granny Weatherwax suspiciously.
'Would you like to have a look?' said Magrat. 'I have a mirror somewhere . . .'
The silence descended like an axe. Magrat went red. Nanny Ogg glared at her.
They watched Granny carefully.
'Ye-ess,' she said, after what seemed a long time, 'I think I should look in a mirror.'
Magrat unfroze, fumbled in her pockets and produced a small, wooden-framed hand-mirror. She passed it across.
Granny Weatherwax looked at her reflection. Nanny Ogg surreptitiously manoeuvred her broomstick a bit closer.
'Hmm,' said Granny, after a while.
'It's the way the grapes hang over your ear," said Nanny, encouragingly. 'You know, that's a hat of authority if ever I saw one.'
'Hmm.'
'Don't you think?' said Magrat.
'Well,' said Granny, grudgingly, 'maybe it's fine for foreign parts. Where I ain't going to be seen by anyone as knows me. No-one important, anyway.'
'And when we get home you can always eat it,' said Nanny Ogg.
They relaxed. There was a feeling of a hill climbed, a dangerous valley negotiated.
Magrat looked down at the brown river and the suspicious logs on its sandbanks.
'What I want to know is,' she said, 'was Mrs Gogol really good or bad? I mean, dead people and alligators and everything . . .'
Granny looked at the rising sun, poking though the mists.
'Good and bad is tricky,' she said. 'I ain't too certain about where people stand. P'raps what matters is which way you face.
'You know,' she added, 'I truly believe I can see the edge from here.'
'Funny thing,' said Nanny, 'they say that in some foreign parts you get elephants. You know, I've always wanted to see an elephant. And there's a place in Klatch or somewhere where people climb up ropes and disappear.'
'What for?' said Magrat.
'Search me. There's prob'ly some cunnin' foreign reason.'
'In one of Desiderata's books,' said Magrat, 'she says that there's a very interesting thing about seeing elephants. She says that on the Sto plains, when people say they're going to see the elephant, it means they're simply going on a journey because they're fed up with staying in the same place.'
'It's not staying in the same place that's the problem,' said Nanny, 'it's not letting your mind wander.'
'I'd like to go up towards the Hub,' said Magrat. 'To see the ancient temples such as are described in Chapter One of The Way of the Scorpion.'
'And they'd teach you anything you don't know already, would they?' said Nanny, with unusual sharpness.
Magrat glanced at Granny.
'Probably not,' she said meekly.
'Well,' said Nanny. 'What's it to be, Esme? Are we going home? Or are we off to see the elephant?'
Granny's broomstick turned gently in the breeze.
'You're a disgustin' old baggage, Gytha Ogg,' said Granny.
'That's me,' said Nanny cheerfully.
'And, Magrat Garlick - '
'I know,' said Magrat, overwhelmed with relief, 'I'm a wet hen.'
Granny looked back towards the Hub, and the high mountains. Somewhere back there was an old cottage with the key hanging in the privy. All sorts of things were probably going on. The whole kingdom was probably going to rack and ruin without her around to keep people on the right track. It was her job. There was no telling what stupidities people would get up to if she wasn't there . . .
Nanny kicked her red boots together idly.
'Well, I suppose there's no place like home,' she said.
'No,' said Granny Weatherwax, still looking thoughtful. 'No. There's a billion places like home. But only one of 'em's where you live.'
'So we're going back?' said Magrat.
'Yes.'
But they went the long way, and saw the elephant.
THE END