Witches Abroad

Jason hung his huge head. "Yes, mum," he said.

"You see to it that someone comes in to keep the house aired every day reg'lar," said Nanny. "I want a fire lit in that grate every morning."

"Yes, mum."

"And everyone's to go in through the back door, you hear? I've put a curse on the front porch. Where's those girls got to with my luggage?" She scurried off, a small grey bantam scolding a flock of hens.

Magrat listened to all this with interest. Her own preparations had consisted of a large sack containing several changes of clothes to accommodate whatever weather foreign parts might suffer from, and a rather smaller one containing a number of useful-looking books from Desiderata Hollow's cottage. Desiderata had been a great note-taker, and had filled dozens of little books with neat writing and chapter headings like ‘With Wand and Broomstick Across the Great Nef Desert".

What she had never bothered to do, it seemed, was write down any instructions for the wand. As far as Magrat knew, you waved it and wished.

Along the track to her cottage, several unanticipated pumpkins bore witness to this as an unreliable strategy. One of them still thought it was a stoat.

Now Magrat was left alone with Jason, who shuffled his feet.

He touched his forelock. He'd been brought up to be respectful to women, and Magrat fell broadly into this category.

"You will look after our mum, won't you, Mistress Garlick?" he said, a hint of worry in his voice. "She'm acting awful strange."

Magrat patted him gently on the shoulder.

"This sort of thing happens all the time," she said. "You know, after a woman's raised a family and so on, she wants to start living her own life."

"Whose life she bin living, then?"

Magrat gave him a puzzled look. She hadn't questioned the wisdom of the thought when it had first arrived in her head.

"You see, what it is," she said, making an explanation up as she went along, "there comes a time in a woman's life when she wants to find herself."

"Why dint she start looking here?" said Jason plaintively. "I mean, I ain't wanting to talk out of turn, Miss Garlick, but we was looking to you to persuade her and Mistress Weatherwax not to go."

"I tried," said Magrat. "I really did. I said, you don't want to go, I said. Anno domini, I said. Not as young as you used to be, I said. Silly to go hundreds of miles just for something like this, especially at your age."

Jason put his head on one side. Jason Ogg wouldn't end up in the finals of the All-Discworld uptake speed trials, but he knew his own mother.

"You said all that to our mum?" he said.

"Look, don't worry," said Magrat, "I'm sure no harm can- "

There was a crash somewhere over their heads. A few autumn leaves spiralled gently towards the ground.

"Bloody tree... who put that bloody tree there?" came a voice from on high.

"That'll be Granny," said Magrat.

It was one of the weak spots of Granny Weatherwax's otherwise well-developed character that she'd never bothered to get the hang of steering things. It was alien to her nature. She took the view that it was her job to move and the rest of the world to arrange itself so that she arrived at her destination. This meant that she occasionally had to climb down trees she'd never climbed up. This she did now, dropping the last few feet and daring anyone to comment.

"Well, now we're all here," said Magrat brightly.

It didn't work. Granny Weatherwax's eyes focused immediately somewhere around Magrat's knees.

"And what do you think you're wearing?" she said.

"Ah. Um. I thought... I mean, it gets cold up there... what with the wind and everything," Magrat began. She had been dreading this, and hating herself for being so weak. After all, they were practical. The idea had come to her one night. Apart from anything else, it was almost impossible to do Air Lobsang Dibbler's cosmic harmony death kicks when your legs kept getting tangled in a skirt.

"Trousers?"

"They're not exactly the same as ordinary - "

"And there's men ‘ere lookin'," said Granny. "I think it's shameful!"

"What is?" said Nanny Ogg, coming up behind her.

"Magrat Garlick, standin' there bifurcated," said Granny, sticking her nose in the air.

"Just so long as she got the young man's name and address," said Nanny Ogg amiably.

"Nanny!" said Magrat.

"I think they look quite comfy," Nanny went on. "A bit baggy, though."

"I don't ‘old with it," said Granny. "Everyone can see her legs."

"No they can't," said Nanny. "The reason being, the material is in the way."

"Yes, but they can see where her legs are," said Granny Weatherwax.

"That's silly. That's like saying everyone's naked under their clothes," said Magrat.

"Magrat Garlick, may you be forgiven," said Granny Weatherwax.

"Well, it's true!"

"I'm not," said Granny flatly, "I got three vests on."

She looked Nanny up and down; Gytha Ogg, too, had made sartorial preparations for foreign parts. Granny Weatherwax could find little to disapprove of, although she made an effort.