Witches Abroad (16 page)

They leapt off the broomsticks, leaving them to drift to a halt in the bushes, and hammered on the cottage door.

‘We could be too late,' said Nanny. ‘The wolf might –'

After a while there was the muffled sound of someone shuffling across the floor within, and then the door opened a crack. A suspicious eye was visible in the gloom.

‘Yes?' said a small and quavering voice from somewhere beneath the eye.

‘Are you grandmother?' Granny Weatherwax demanded.

‘Are you the taxgatherers, dear?'

‘No, ma'am, we're –'

‘– fairies,' said Fairy Hedgehog quickly.

‘I don't open the door to people I don't know, dear,' said the voice, and then it took on a slightly petulant tone. ‘'Specially people who never does the washing up even after I leaves out a bowl of nearly fresh milk for 'em.'

‘We'd like to talk to you for a few minutes,' said Fairy Daisy.

‘Yes? Have you got any identification, dear?'

‘I
know
we've got the right grandmother,' said Fairy Hedgehog. ‘There's a family likeness. She's got big ears.'

‘Look, it's not
her
that's got the big ears,' snapped Fairy Daisy. ‘It'll be the wolf that's got big ears. That's the whole point. Don't you ever pay attention?'

The grandmother watched them with interest. After a lifetime of believing in them she was seeing fairies for the first time, and it was an experience. Granny Weatherwax caught her perplexed expression.

‘Put it like this, ma'am,' she said, in a despotically reasonable tone of voice, ‘how would you like to be eaten alive by a wolf?'

‘I don't think I would like that, dear, no,' said the hidden grandmother.

‘The alternative's us,' said Granny.

‘Lawks. Are you sure?'

‘On our word as fairies,' said Fairy Hedgehog.

‘Well. Really? All right. You can come in. But none of your tricks. And mind you do the washing up. You haven't got a pot of gold about you, have you?'

‘That's pixies, isn't it?'

‘No, they're the ones in wells. It's goblins she means.'

‘Don't be daft. They're the ones you get under bridges.'

‘That's trolls. Everyone knows that's trolls.'

‘Not us, anyway.'

‘Oh,' said the grandmother. ‘I might have known.'

Magrat liked to think she was good with children, and worried that she wasn't. She didn't like them very much, and worried about this too. Nanny Ogg seemed to be effortlessly good with children by alternately and randomly giving them either a sweet or a thick ear, while Granny Weatherwax ignored them for most of the time and that seemed to work just as well. Whereas Magrat
cared
. It didn't seem fair.

‘Bet you a million trillion zillion dollars you can't turn
that
bush into a pumpkin,' said the child.

‘But, look, all the others got turned into pumpkins,' Magrat pointed out.

‘It's bound not to work sooner or later,' said the child placidly.

Magrat looked helplessly at the wand. She'd tried everything-wishing, sub-vocalizing and even, when she'd thought the other witches were out of earshot, banging it against things and shouting, ‘Anything but pumpkins!'

‘You don't know how to do it really, do you,' stated the child.

‘Tell me,' said Magrat, ‘you said your mummy knows about the big bad wolf in the woods, didn't you?'

‘That's right.'

‘But
nevertheless
she sent you out by yourself to take those goodies to your granny?'

‘That's right. Why?'

‘Nothing. Just thinking. And you owe me a million trillion zillion squillion dollars.'

There's a certain freemasonry about grandmothers, with the added benefit that no-one has to stand on one leg or recite any oaths in order to join. Once inside the cottage, and with a kettle on the boil, Nanny Ogg was quite at home. Greebo stretched out in front of the meagre fire and dozed off as the witches tried to explain.

‘I don't see how a wolf can get in here, dear,' said the grandmother kindly. ‘I mean, they're
wolves
. They can't open doors.'

Granny Weatherwax twitched aside a rag of curtain and glared out at the clearing.

‘We know,' she said.

Nanny Ogg nodded towards the little bed in an alcove by the fireplace.

‘Is that where you always sleep?' she said.

‘When I'm feeling poorly, dear. Other times I sleeps in the attic.'

‘I should get along up there now, if I was you. And take my cat up with you, will you? We don't want him getting in the way.'

‘Is this the bit where you clean the house and do all the washing for a saucer of milk?' said the grandmother hopefully.

‘Could be. You never know.'

‘Funny, dear. I was expecting you to be shorter –'

‘We get out in the fresh air a lot,' said Nanny. ‘Off you go now.'

That left the two of them. Granny Weatherwax looked around the cave-like room. The rushes on the floor were well on the way to composthood. Soot encrusted the cobwebs on the ceiling.

The only way housework could be done in this place was with a shovel or, for preference, a match.

‘Funny, really,' said Nanny, when the old woman had climbed the rickety stairs. ‘She's younger'n me. Mind you, I take exercise.'

‘You never took exercise in your life,' said Granny Weatherwax, still watching the bushes. ‘You never did anything you didn't want to do.'

‘That's what I mean,' said Nanny happily. ‘Look, Esme, I still say this could all be just—'

‘It ain't! I can
feel
the story. Someone's been making stories happen in these parts, I know it.'

‘And you know who, too. Don't you, Esme?' said Nanny slyly.

She saw Granny look around wildly at the grubby walls.

‘I reckon she's too poor to afford a mirror,' said Nanny. ‘I ain't blind, Esme. And I know mirrors and fairy godmothers go together. So what's going on?'

‘I ain't saying. I don't want to look a fool if I'm wrong. I'm not going to – there's something coming!'

Nanny Ogg pressed her nose against the dirty window.

‘Can't see anything.'

‘The bushes moved. Get into the bed!'

‘Me? I thought it was you who was going into the bed!'

‘Can't imagine why you'd think that.'

‘No. Come to think of it, neither can I,' said Nanny wearily. She picked up the floppy mob-cap from the bedpost, put it on, and slid under the patchwork quilt.

‘'Ere, this mattress is stuffed with straw!'

‘You won't have to lie on it for long.'

‘It prickles! And I think there's
things
in it.'

Something bumped against the wall of the house. The witches fell silent.

There was a snuffling noise under the back door.

‘You know,' whispered Nanny, as they waited, ‘the scullery's terrible. There's no firewood. And there's hardly any food. And there's a jug of milk that's practically on the march—'

Granny sidled quickly across the room to the fireplace, and then back to her station by the front door.

After a moment there was a scrabbling at the latch, as if it was being operated by someone who was unfamiliar either with doors or with fingers.

The door creaked open slowly.

There was an overwhelming smell of musk and wet fur.

Uncertain footsteps tottered across the floor and towards the figure huddling under the bedclothes.

Nanny raised the mob-cap's floppy frill just enough to see out.

‘Wotcha,' she said, and then, ‘Oh, blimey, I never realized you had teeth
that
big—'

Granny Weatherwax pushed the door shut and stepped forward briskly. The wolf spun around, a paw raised protectively.

‘Nooaaaaaw!'

Granny hesitated for a second, and then hit it very hard on the head with a cast-iron frying pan.

The wolf crumpled.

Nanny Ogg swung her legs out of the bed.

‘When it happened over Skund way they said it was a werewolf or something, and I thought, no, werewolves aren't like that,' she said. ‘I never thought it was a
real
wolf. Gave me quite a turn, that.'

‘Real wolves don't walk on their hind legs and open doors,' said Granny Weatherwax. ‘Come on, help me get it outside.'

‘Took me right back, seeing a great big hairy slathering thing heading towards me,' said Nanny, picking up one end of the stunned creature. ‘Did you ever meet old Sumpkins?'

It was, indeed, a normal-looking wolf, except that it was a lot thinner than most. Ribs showed plainly under the skin and the fur was matted. Granny hauled a bucket of cloudy water from the well next to the privy and poured it over its head.

Then she sat down on a tree stump and watched it carefully. A few birds sang, high in the branches.

‘It spoke,' she said. ‘It tried to say “no”.'

‘I wondered about that,' said Nanny. ‘Then I thought maybe I was imagining things.'

‘No point in imagining anything,' said Granny. ‘Things are bad enough as they are.'

The wolf groaned. Granny handed the frying pan to Nanny Ogg.

After a while she said, ‘I think I'm going to have a look inside its head.'

Nanny Ogg shook her head. ‘I wouldn't do that, if I was you.'

‘I'm the one who's me, and I've got to know. Just you stand by with the frying pan.'

Nanny shrugged.

Granny concentrated.

It is very difficult to read a human mind. Most humans are thinking about so many things at any given moment that it is almost impossible to pick out one stream in the flood.

Animal minds are different. Far less cluttered. Carnivore minds are easiest of all, especially before meals. Colours don't exist in the mental world, but, if they did, a hungry carnivore mind would be hot and purple and sharp as an arrow. And herbivore minds are simple, too – coiled silver springs, poised for flight.

But this wasn't any kind of normal mind. It was two minds.

Granny had sometimes picked up the mind of hunters in the forest, when she was sitting quietly of an evening and letting her mind wander. Just occasionally they felt like this, or at least like a faint shadow of this. Just occasionally, when the hunter was about to make a kill, the random streams of thought came together. But this was different. This was the opposite – this was cracked and crippled attempts at cogitation peeling away from the sleek arrowhead of predatory intent. This was a predatory mind trying to
think
.

No wonder it was going mad.

She opened her eyes.

Nanny Ogg held the frying pan over her head. Her arm trembled.

‘Well,' she said, ‘who's there?'

‘I could do with a glass of water,' said Granny. Natural caution surfaced through the turmoil of her mind. ‘Only not out of that well, mind you.'

Nanny relaxed a little. When a witch started rummaging in someone else's mind, you could never be sure who was coming back. But Granny Weatherwax was the best. Magrat might always be trying to find herself, but Granny didn't even understand the idea of the search. If she couldn't find the way back to her own head, there wasn't a path.

‘There's that milk in the cottage,' Nanny volunteered.

‘What colour was it again?'

‘Well . . . still fairly white.'

‘Okay.'

When Nanny Ogg's back was safely turned Granny permitted herself a small shudder.

She stared at the wolf, wondering what she could do for it. A normal wolf wouldn't enter a cottage, even if it could open the door. Wolves didn't come near humans at all, except if there were a lot of them and it was the end of a very hard winter. And they didn't do that because they were big and bad and wicked, but because they were wolves.

This wolf was trying to be human.

There was probably no cure.

‘Here's your milk,' said Nanny Ogg.

Granny reached up and took it without looking.

‘Someone made this wolf think it was a person,' she said. ‘They made it think it was a person and then they didn't think any more about it. It happened a few years ago.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I've . . . got its memories,' said Granny. And instincts, too, she thought. She knew it'd be some days before she'd stop wanting to chase sledges over the snow.

‘Oh.'

‘It's stuck between species. In its head.'

‘Can we help it?' said Nanny.

Granny shook her head.

‘It's gone on for too long. It's habit now. And it's starving. It can't go one way, it can't go t'other. It can't act like a wolf, and it can't manage being a human. And it can't go on like it is.'

She turned to face Nanny for the first time. Nanny took a step back.

‘You can't imagine how it feels,' she said. ‘Wandering around for years. Not capable of acting human, and not able to be a wolf. You can't imagine how that feels.'

‘I reckon maybe I can,' said Nanny. ‘In your face. Maybe I can. Who'd do that to a creature?'

‘I've got my suspicions.'

They looked around.

Magrat was approaching, with the child. Beside them walked one of the woodcutters.

‘Hah,' said Granny. ‘Yes. Of course. There's always got to be' – she spat the words – ‘a
happy ending
.'