Witches Abroad

She thumped on the door again. And this time it opened, very slowly. A pale face peered around it.

"Excuse me - " Magrat began.

Granny pushed the door open. The face's owner had been leaning on it; they could hear the scrape of his boots over the floor as he was shoved gently backwards.

"Blessings be on this house," Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people's minds on what other things might be on this house, and reminded them about any fresh cakes, newly-baked bread or bundles of useful old clothing that might have temporarily escaped their minds.

It looked like one of the other things had been on this house already.

It was an inn, of sorts. The three witches had never seen such a cheerless place in their lives. But it was quite crowded. A score or more pale-faced people watched them solemnly from benches around the walls.

Nanny Ogg sniffed.

"Cor," she said. "Talk about garlic!" And, indeed, bunches of it hung from every beam. "You can't have too much garlic, I always say. I can see I'm going to like it here."

She nodded to a white-faced man behind the bar.

"Gooden day, big-feller mine host! Trois beers pour favour avec us, silver plate."

"What's a silver plate got to do with it?" demanded Granny.

"It's foreign for please," said Nanny.

"I bet it isn't really," said Granny. "You're just making it up as you goes along."

The innkeeper, who worked on the fairly simple principle that anyone walking through the door wanted something to drink, drew three beers.

"See?" said Nanny, triumphantly.

"I don't like the way everyone's looking at us," said Magrat, as Nanny babbled on to the perplexed man in her very own esperanto. "A man over there grinned at me."

Granny Weatherwax sat down on a bench, endeavouring to position herself so that as small an amount of her body as possible was in contact with the wood, in case being foreign was something you could catch.

"There," said Nanny, bustling up with a tray, "nothing to it. I just cussed at him until he understood."

"It looks horrible," said Granny.

"Garlic sausage and garlic bread," said Nanny. "My favourite."

"You ought to have got some fresh vegetables," said Magrat the dietitian.

"I did. There's some garlic," said Nanny happily, cutting a generous slice of eye-watering sausage. "And I think I definitely saw something like pickled onions on one of the shelves."

"Yes? Then we're going to need at least two rooms for tonight," said Granny sternly.

"Three," said Magrat, very quickly.

She risked another look around the room. The silent villagers were staring at them intently, with a look she could only describe to herself as a sort of hopeful sadness. Of course, anyone who spent much time in the company of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg got used to being stared at; they were the kind of people that filled every space from edge to edge. And probably people in these parts didn't often see strangers, what with the thick forests and all. And the sight of Nanny Ogg eating a sausage with extreme gusto would even outrank her pickled onion number as major entertainment anywhere.

Even so... the way people were staring...

Outside, deep in the trees, a wolf howled.

The assembled villagers shivered in unison, as though they had been practising. The landlord muttered something to them. They got up, reluctantly, and filed out of the door, trying to keep together. An old lady laid her hand on Magrat's shoulder for a moment, shook her head sadly, sighed, and then scuttled away. But Magrat was used to this, too. People often felt sorry for her when they saw her in Granny's company.

Eventually the landlord lurched across to them with a lighted torch, and motioned them to follow him.

"How did you make him understand about the beds?" said Magrat.

"I said, "Hey mister, jigajig toot sweet all same No. 3"," said Nanny Ogg.

Granny Weatherwax tried this under her breath, and nodded.

"Your lad Shane certainly gets around a bit, doesn't he," she remarked.

"He says it works every time," said Nanny Ogg.

In fact there were only two rooms, up a long, winding and creaky stairway. And Magrat got one to herself. Even the landlord seemed to want it that way. He'd been very attentive.

She wished he hadn't been so keen to bar the shutters, though. Magrat liked to sleep with a window open. As it was, it was too dark and stuffy.

Anyway, she thought, I am the fairy godmother. The others are just accompanying me.

She peered hopelessly at herself in the room's tiny cracked mirror and then lay and listened to them on the far side of the paper-thin wall.

"What're you turning the mirror to the wall for, Esme?"

"I just don't like ‘em, staring like that."

"They only stares if you're staring at ‘em, Esme."

Silence, and then: "Eh, what's this round thing for, then?"

"I reckon it's supposed to be a pillow, Esme."

"Hah! I don't call it a pillow. And there's no proper blankets, even. What'd you say this thing's called?"

"I think it's called a duvit, Esme."

"We call them an eiderdown where I come from. Hah!"