Wyrd Sisters

‘We’re leaving,’ said Granny.

‘Friday afternoon, remember,’ hissed the Fool.

‘Well, if I can,’ said Magrat.

Nanny Ogg leered.

And so Granny Weatherwax swept down the steps and through the crowds, with the other two running behind her. Several of the grinning guards caught her eye and wished they hadn’t, but here and there, among the watching crowd, was a barely suppressed snigger. She hurtled through the gateway, across the drawbridge and through the town. Granny walking fast could beat most other people at a run.

Behind them the duke, who had crested the latest maniac peak on the switchback of his madness and was coasting speedily towards the watersplash of despair, laughed.

‘Ha ha.’

Granny didn’t stop until she was outside the town and under the welcoming eaves of the forest. She turned off the road and flumped down on a log, her face in her hands.

The other two approached her carefully. Magrat patted her on the back.

‘Don’t despair,’ she said. ‘You handled it very well, we thought.’

‘I ain’t despairing, I’m thinking,’ said Granny. ‘Go away.’

Nanny Ogg raised her eyebrows at Magrat in a warning fashion. They backed off to a suitable distance although, with Granny in her present mood, the next universe might not be far enough, and sat down on a moss-grown stone.

‘Are you all right?’ said Magrat. ‘They didn’t do anything, did they?’

‘Never laid a finger on me,’ said Nanny. She sniffed. ‘They’re not your real royalty,’ she added. ‘Old King Gruneweld, for one, he wouldn’t have wasted time waving things around and menacing people. It’d been bang, needles right under the fingernails from the word go, and no messing. None of this evil laughter stuff. He was a real king. Very gracious.’

‘He was threatening to burn you.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t of stood for it. I see you’ve got a follower,’ said Nanny.

‘Sorry?’ said Magrat.

‘The young fellow with the bells,’ said Nanny. ‘And the face like a spaniel what’s just been kicked.’

‘Oh, him.’ Magrat blushed hotly under her pale makeup. ‘Really, he’s just this man. He just follows me around.’

‘Can be difficult, can that,’ said Nanny sagely.

‘Besides, he’s so small. And he capers all over the place,’ said Magrat.

‘Looked at him carefully, have you?’ said the old witch.

‘Pardon?’

‘You haven’t, have you? I thought not. He’s a very clever man, that Fool. He ought to have been one of them actor men.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Next time you have a look at him like a witch, not like a woman,’ said Nanny, and gave Magrat a conspiratorial nudge. ‘Good bit of work with the door back there,’ she added. ‘Coming on well, you are. I hope you told him about Greebo.’

‘He said he’d let him out directly, Nanny.’

There was a snort from Granny Weatherwax.

‘Did you hear the sniggering in the crowd?’ she said. ‘Someone sniggered!’

Nanny Ogg sat down beside her.

‘And a couple of them pointed,’ she said. ‘I know.’

‘It’s not to be borne!’

Magrat sat down on the other end of the log.

‘There’s other witches,’ she said. ‘There’s lots of witches further up the Ramtops. Maybe they can help.’

The other two looked at her in pained surprise.

‘I don’t think we need go that far,’ sniffed Granny. ‘Asking for help.’

‘Very bad practice,’ nodded Nanny Ogg.

‘But you asked a demon to help you,’ said Magrat.

‘No, we didn’t,’ said Granny.

‘Right. We didn’t.’

‘We ordered it to assist.’

‘S’right.’

Granny Weatherwax stretched out her legs and looked at her boots. They were good strong boots, with hobnails and crescent-shaped scads; you couldn’t believe a cobbler had made them, someone had laid down a sole and built up from there.

‘I mean, there’s that witch over Skund way,’ she said. ‘Sister Whosis, wossname, her son went off to be a sailor—you know, Gytha, her who sniffs and puts them antimassacres on the backs of chairs soon as you sits down—’

‘Grodley,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Sticks her little finger out when she drinks her tea and drops her Haitches all the time.’

‘Yes. Hwell. I haven’t hlowered myself to talk to her hever since that business with the gibbet, you recall. I daresay she’d just love to come snooping haround here, running her fingers over heverything and sniffling, telling us how to do things. Oh, yes. Help. We’d all be in a fine to-do if we went around helping all the time.’

‘Yes, and over Skund way the trees talk to you and walk around of night,’ said Nanny. ‘Without even asking permission. Very poor organization.’

‘Not really good organization, like we’ve got here?’ said Magrat.

Granny stood up purposefully.

‘I’m going home,’ she said.

There are thousands of good reasons why magic doesn’t rule the world. They’re called witches and wizards, Magrat reflected, as she followed the other two back to the road.