Witches Abroad (15 page)

‘And there's the spinning wheel,' said Nanny, pointing to a shape just visible in a clump of ivy.

‘Don't touch it!' said Granny.

‘Don't worry, I'll pick it up by the treadle and pitch it out of the window.'

‘How do you know all this?' said Magrat.

‘'Cos it's a rural myth,' said Nanny. ‘It's happened lots of times.'

Granny Weatherwax and Magrat looked down at the sleeping figure of a girl of about thirteen, almost silvery under the dust and pollen.

‘Isn't she pretty,' sighed Magrat, the generous-hearted.

From behind them came the crash of a spinning wheel on some distant cobbles, and then Nanny Ogg appeared, brushing her hands.

‘Seen it happen a dozen times,' she said.

‘No you ain't,' said Granny.

‘Once, anyway,' said Nanny, unabashed. ‘And I
heard
about it dozens of times. Everyone has. Rural myth, like I said. Everyone's heard about it happening in their cousin's friend's neighbour's village—'

‘That's because it does,' said Granny.

Granny picked up the girl's wrist.

‘She's asleep because she'll have got a—' Nanny said.

Granny turned.

‘I know, I know. I know, right? I know as well as you. You think I don't know?' She bent over the limp hand. ‘That's fairy godmothering, this is,' she added, half to herself. ‘Always do it
impressively
. Always meddling, always trying to be in control! Hah! Someone got a bit of poison? Send everyone to sleep for a hundred years! Do it the
easy
way. All this for one prick. As if that was the end of the world.' She paused. Nanny Ogg was standing behind her. There was no possible way she could have detected her expression. ‘Gytha?'

‘Yes, Esme?' said Nanny Ogg innocently.

‘I can
feel
you grinnin'. You can save the tu'penny-ha'penny psycholology for them as wants it.'

Granny shut her eyes and muttered a few words.

‘Shall I use my wand?' said Magrat hesitantly.

‘Don't you dare,' said Granny, and went back to her muttering.

Nanny nodded. ‘She's definitely getting a bit of colour back,' she said.

A few minutes later the girl opened her eyes and stared up blearily at Granny Weatherwax.

‘Time to get up,' said Granny, in an unusually cheerful voice, ‘you're missing the best part of the decade.'

The girl tried to focus on Nanny, then on Magrat, and then looked back at Granny Weatherwax.

‘You?' she said.

Granny raised her eyebrows and looked at the other two.

‘Me?'

‘You are – still here?'

‘Still?' said Granny. ‘Never been here before in my life, Miss.'

‘But –' the girl looked bewildered. And frightened, Magrat noticed.

‘I'm like that myself in the mornings, dear,' said Nanny Ogg, taking the girl's other hand and patting it. ‘Never at my best till I've had a cup of tea. I expect everyone else'll be waking up any minute. Of course, it'll take 'em a while to clean the rats' nests out of the kettles – Esme?'

Granny was staring at a dust-covered shape on the wall.

‘Meddling . . .' she whispered.

‘What's up, Esme?'

Granny Weatherwax strode across the room and wiped the dust off a huge ornate mirror.

‘Hah!' she said, and spun around. ‘We'll be going now,' she said.

‘But I thought we were going to have a rest. I mean, it's nearly dawn,' said Magrat.

‘No sense in outstaying our welcome,' said Granny, as she left the room.

‘But we haven't even
had
a . . .' Magrat began. She glanced at the mirror. It was a big oval one, in a gilt frame. It looked perfectly normal. It wasn't like Granny Weatherwax to be frightened of her own reflection.

‘She's in one of her moods again,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘Come on. No sense in staying here.' She patted the bewildered princess on the head. ‘Cheerio, Miss. A couple of weeks with a broom and an axe and you'll soon have the old place looking like new.'

‘She looked as if she recognized Granny,' said Magrat, as they followed the stiff hurrying figure of Esme Weatherwax down the stairs.

‘Well, we know she doesn't, don't we,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘Esme has never been in these parts in her life.'

‘But I still don't see why we have to rush off,' Magrat persisted. ‘I expect people will be jolly grateful that we've broken the spell and everything.'

The rest of the palace was waking up. They jogged past guards staring in amazement at their cobwebbed uniforms and the bushes that were growing everywhere. As they crossed the forested courtyard an older man in faded robes staggered out of a doorway and leaned against the wall, trying to get his bearings. Then he saw the accelerating figure of Granny Weatherwax.

‘You?' he shouted, and, ‘Guards!'

Nanny Ogg didn't hesitate. She snatched Magrat's elbow and broke into a run, catching up with Granny Weatherwax at the castle gates. A guard who was better at mornings than his colleague staggered forward and made an attempt to bar their way with his pike, but Granny just pushed at it and swivelled him around gently.

Then they were outside and running for the broomsticks leaning against a convenient tree. Granny snatched at hers without stopping and, for once, it fired up on almost the first attempt.

An arrow whiffled past her hat and stuck in a branch.

‘I don't call
that
gratitude,' said Magrat, as the brooms glided up and over the trees.

‘A lot of people are never at their best just after waking up,' said Nanny.

‘Everyone seemed to think they knew you, Granny,' said Magrat.

Granny's broomstick jerked in the wind.

‘They didn't!' she shouted. ‘They never saw me before, all right?'

They flew on in troubled silence for a while.

Then Magrat, who in Nanny Ogg's opinion had an innocent talent for treading on dangerous ground, said: ‘I wonder if we did the right thing? I'm sure it was a job for a handsome prince.'

‘Hah!' said Granny, who was riding ahead. ‘And what good would that be? Cutting your way through a bit of bramble is how you can tell he's going to be a good husband, is it? That's fairy godmotherly thinking, that is! Goin' around inflicting happy endings on people whether they wants them or not, eh?'

‘There's nothing wrong with happy endings,' said Magrat hotly.

‘Listen, happy endings is fine if they
turn out
happy,' said Granny, glaring at the sky. ‘But you can't make 'em for other people. Like the only way you could make a happy marriage is by cuttin' their heads off as soon as they say “I do”, yes? You can't make happiness . . .'

Granny Weatherwax stared at the distant city.

‘All you can do,' she said, ‘is make an ending.'

They had breakfast in a forest clearing. It was grilled pumpkin. The dwarf bread was brought out for inspection. But it was miraculous, the dwarf bread. No-one ever went hungry when they had some dwarf bread to avoid. You only had to look at it for a moment, and instantly you could think of dozens of things you'd rather eat. Your boots, for example. Mountains. Raw sheep. Your own foot.

Then they tried to get some sleep. At least, Nanny and Magrat did. But all it meant was that they lay awake and listened to Granny Weatherwax muttering under her breath. They'd never seen her so upset.

Afterwards, Nanny suggested that they walk for a while. It was a nice day, she said. This was an interesting kind of forest, she said, with lots of new herbs which could do with bein' looked at. Everyone'd feel better for a stroll in the sunshine, she said. It'd improve their tempers.

And it was, indeed, a nice forest. After half an hour or so, even Granny Weatherwax was prepared to admit that in certain respects it wasn't totally foreign and shoddy. Magrat wandered off the path occasionally, picking flowers. Nanny even sang a few verses of ‘A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End' with no more than a couple of token protests from the other two.

But there was still something wrong. Nanny Ogg and Magrat could feel something between them and Granny Weatherwax, some sort of mental wall, something important deliberately hidden and unsaid. Witches usually had few secrets from one another, if only because they were all so nosy that there was never any chance to
have
secrets. It was worrying.

And then they turned a corner by a stand of huge oak trees and met the little girl in the red cloak.

She was skipping along in the middle of the path, singing a song that was simpler and a good deal cleaner than any in Nanny Ogg's repertoire. She didn't see the witches until she was almost on top of them. She stopped, and then smiled innocently.

‘Hello, old women,' she said.

‘Ahem,' said Magrat.

Granny Weatherwax bent down.

‘What're you doing out in the forest all by yourself, young lady?'

‘I'm taking this basket of goodies to my granny,' said the girl.

Granny straightened up, a faraway look in her eyes.

‘Esme,' said Nanny Ogg urgently.

‘I know. I know,' said Granny.

Magrat leaned down and set her face in the idiot grimace generally used by adults who'd love to be good with children and don't stand a dog's chance of ever achieving it. ‘Er. Tell me, Miss . . . did your mother tell you to watch out for any bad wolves that might happen to be in the vicinity?'

‘That's right.'

‘And your granny . . .' said Nanny Ogg. ‘I guess she's a bit bed-bound at the moment, right?'

‘That's why I'm taking her this basket of goodies –' the child began.

‘Thought so.'

‘Do you know my granny?' said the child.

‘Ye-ess,' said Granny Weatherwax. ‘In a way.'

‘It happened over Skund way when I was a girl,' said Nanny Ogg quietly. ‘They never even found the gran –'

‘And where is your granny's cottage, little girl?' said Granny Weatherwax loudly, nudging Nanny sharply in the ribs.

The girl pointed up a side track.

‘You're not the wicked witch, are you?' she said.

Nanny Ogg coughed.

‘Me? No. We're – we're –' Granny began.

‘Fairies,' said Magrat.

Granny Weatherwax's mouth dropped open. Such an explanation would never have occurred to her.

‘Only my mummy warned me about the wicked witch too,' said the girl. She gave Magrat a sharp look. ‘What kind of fairies?'

‘Er. Flower fairies?' said Magrat. ‘Look, I've got a wand –'

‘Which ones?'

‘What?'

‘Which flowers?'

‘Er,' said Magrat. ‘Well. I'm . . . Fairy Tulip and that's . . .' she avoided looking directly at Granny, ‘. . . Fairy . . . Daisy . . . and this is . . .'

‘Fairy Hedgehog,' said Nanny Ogg.

This addition to the supernatural pantheon was given due consideration.

‘You can't be Fairy Hedgehog,' said the child, after some thought. ‘A hedgehog's not a flower.'

‘How do you know?'

‘'Cos it's got spikes.'

‘So's holly.
And
thistles.'

‘Oh.'

‘And I've got a wand,' said Magrat. Only now did she risk a look at Fairy Daisy.

‘We ought to be getting along,' said Granny Weatherwax. ‘You just stay here with Fairy Tulip, I think it was, and we'll just go and make sure your granny's all right. All right?'

‘I bet it's not a real wand,' said the child, ignoring her and facing Magrat with a child's unerring ability to find a weak link in any chain. ‘I bet it can't turn things into things.'

‘Well –' Magrat began.

‘I
bet
,' said the girl, ‘
I
bet you can't turn that tree stump over there into . . . into . . . into a
pumpkin
. Haha, bet you anything you can't. Bet you a trillion dollars you can't turn that stump into a pumpkin.'

‘I can see the two of you are going to get along fine,' said Fairy Hedgehog. ‘We won't be long.'

Two broomsticks skimmed low above the forest path.

‘Could just be coincidence,' said Nanny Ogg.

‘'T'aint,' said Granny. ‘The child even has a red cloak on!'

‘I had a red cloak when I was fifteen,' said Nanny.

‘Yes, but your granny lived next door. You didn't have to worry about wolves when you visited her,' said Granny.

‘Except old Sumpkins the lodger.'

‘Yes, but that was just coincidence.'

A trail of blue smoke drifted among the trees ahead of them. Somewhere away to one side there was the sound of a falling tree.

‘Woodcutters!' said Nanny. ‘It's all right if there's woodcutters! One of them rushes in –'

‘That's only what children get told,' said Granny, as they sped onwards. ‘Anyway, that's no good to the grandmother, is it? She's already
been
et!'

‘I always hated that story,' said Nanny. ‘No-one ever cares what happens to poor defenceless old women.'

The path vanished abruptly on the edge of a glade. Hemmed in by the trees was a straggly kitchen garden, in which a few pathetic stalks fought for what little sun there was. In the middle of the garden was what had to be a thatched cottage because no-one would build a haystack that badly.