Carpe Jugulum

The voices echoed around the mountains.

'See you, otter!'

'Taggit, jins ma greely!'

'Wee free men!'

'Nac mac Feegle!'

The eagle passed overhead, dropping fast and steep now. It drifted silently over the shadowy woods, curved over the trees, and landed suddenly on a branch beside a cottage in a clearing.

Granny Weatherwax awoke.

Her body did not move, but her gaze darted this way and that, sharply, and in the gloom her nose looked more hooked than normal. Then she settled back, and her shoulders lost the hunched, perching look.

After a while she stood up, stretched, and went to the doorway.'

The night felt warmer. She could feel greenness in the ground, uncoiling. The year was past the edge, heading away from the dark... Of course, dark would come again, but that was in the nature of the world. Many things were beginning.

When at last she'd shut the door she lit the fire, took the box of candles out of the dresser and lit every single one and put them around the room, in saucers.

On the table the pool of water that had accumulated in the last two days rippled and rose gently in the middle. Then a drip soared upwards

and plopped into the damp patch in the ceiling.

Granny wound up the clock, and started the pendulum. She left the room for a moment and came back with a square of cardboard attached to a loop of elderly string. She sat down in the rocking chair and reached down into the hearth for a stick of half-burned wood.

The clock ticked as she wrote. Another drop left the table and plunged towards the ceiling.

Then Granny Weatherwax hung the sign around her neck and lay back with a smile. The chair rocked for a while, a counterpoint to the dripping of the table and the ticking of the clock, and then slowed.

The sign read:

stilL

I ATE'NT DEAD

^

The light faded from can to can't.

After a few minutes an owl woke up in a nearby tree and sailed out over the forests.

THE END

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[1] Which presumably means that some are virulent and deadly, and others just make you walk in a funny way and avoid fruit.

[2] Sometimes, of course, to say, 'Please stop doing it.'

[3] It struck people as odd that, while Lancre people refused point-blank to have any truck with democracy, on the basis that governing was what the King ought to do and they'd be sure to tell him if he went wrong, they didn't make very good servants. Oh, they could cook and dig and wash and footle and buttle and did it very well but could never quite get the hang of the serving mentality. King Verence was quite understanding about this, and put up with Shawn ushering guests into the dining room with a cry of 'Lovely grub, get it while it's hot !'

[4] Apart from the ones containing small postal orders attached to letters which, generally, said pretty much the same thing: Dear Mum and Dad, I am doing pretty well in Ankh-Morpork and this week I earned a whole seven dollars...

[5] When there was nothing much else to occupy her time Granny Weatherwax sent her mind Borrowing, letting it piggyback inside the heads of other creatures. She was widely accepted as the most skilled exponent of the art that the Ramtops had seen for centuries, being practically able to get inside the minds of things that didn't even have minds. The practice meant, among other things, that Lancre people were less inclined towards the casual cruelty to animals that is a general feature of the rural idyll, on the basis that the rat you throw a brick at today might turn out to be the witch you need some toothache medicine from tomorrow.

It also meant that people calling on her unexpectedly would find her stretched out apparently cold and lifeless, heart and pulse barely beating. The sign had saved a lot of embarrassment.

[6] It was obvious to King Verence that even if every adult were put under arms the kingdom of Lancre would still have a very small and insignificant army, and he'd therefore looked for other ways to put it on the military map. Shawn had come up with the idea of the Lancrastian Army Knife, containing a few essential tools and utensils for the soldier in the field, and research and development work had been going on for some months now. One reason for the slow progress was that the King himself was taking an active interest in the country's only defence project, and Shawn was receiving little notes up to three times every day with further suggestions for improvement. Generally they were on the lines of: 'A device, possibly quite small, for finding things that are lost', or 'A curiously shaped hook-like thing of many uses'. Shawn diplomatically added some of them but lost as many notes as he dared, lest he design the only pocket knife on wheels.

[7] The leitmotif of the Guild of Barber-Surgeons.