Witches Abroad

Page 16

'We must be far enough from the river now,' said Magrat. 'Can't we land, Granny? No-one could have followed us!'
Granny Weatherwax looked down. The river in this countryside meandered in huge glistening curves, taking twenty miles to cover five. The land between the snaking water was a patchwork of hillsides and woodlands. A distant glow might have been Genua itself.
'Riding a broomstick all night is a right pain in the itinerant,' said Nanny.
'Oh, all right.'
'There's a town over there,' said Magrat. 'And a castle.'
'Oh, not another one . . .'
'It's a nice little castle,' said Magrat. 'Can't we just call in? I'm fed up with inns.'
Granny looked down. She had very good night vision.
'Are you sure that's a castle?' she said.
'I can see the turrets and everything,' said Magrat. 'Of course it's a castle.'
'Hmm. I can see more than turrets,' said Granny. 'I think we'd better have a look at this, Gytha.'
There was never any noise in the sleeping castle, except in the late summer when ripe berries fell off the bramble vines and burst softly on the floor. And sometimes birds would try to nest in the thorn thickets that now filled the throne room from floor to ceiling, but they never got very far before they, too, fell asleep. Apart from that, you'd need very keen hearing indeed to hear the growth of shoots and the opening of buds.
It had been like this for ten years. There was no sound in the -
'Open up there!'
'Bony fidy travellers seeking sucker!'
- no sound in the -
'Here, give us a leg up, Magrat. Right. Now . . .'
There was a tinkle of broken glass.
'You've broken their window!'
- not a sound in the -
'You'll have to offer to pay for it, you know.'
The castle gate swung open slowly. Nanny Ogg peered around it at the other two witches, while pulling thorns and burrs from her hair.
'It's bloody disgusting in here,' she said. 'There's people asleep all over the place with spiders' webs all over 'em. You were right, Esme. There's been magic going on.'
The witches pushed their way through the overgrown castle. Dust and leaves had covered the carpets. Young sycamores were making a spirited attempt to take over the courtyard. Vines festooned every wall.
Granny Weatherwax pulled a slumbering soldier to his feet. Dust billowed off his clothes.
'Wake up,' she demanded.
'Fzhtft,' said the soldier, and slumped back.
' It's like that everywhere,' said Magrat, fighting her way through a thicket of bracken that was growing up from the kitchen regions. 'There's the cooks all snoring and nothing but mould in the pots! There's even mice asleep in the pantry!'
'Hmm,' said Granny. 'There'll be a spinning wheel at the bottom of all this, you mark my words.'
'A Black Aliss job?' said Nanny Ogg.
'Looks like it,' said Granny. Then she added, quietly, 'Or someone like her.'
'Now there was a witch who knew how stories worked,' said Nanny. 'She used to be in as many as three of 'em at once.'
Even Magrat knew about Black Aliss. She was said to have been the greatest witch who ever lived - not exactly bad, but so powerful it was sometimes hard to tell the difference. When it came to sending palaces to sleep for a hundred years or getting princesses to spin straw into Glod,* no-one did it better than Black Aliss.
'I met her once,' said Nanny, as they climbed the castle's main staircase, which was a cascade of Old Man's Trousers. 'Old Deliria Skibbly took me to see her once, when I was a girl. Of course, she was getting pretty . . . eccentric by then. Gingerbread houses, that kind of thing.' She spoke sadly, as one might talk about an elderly relative who'd taken to wearing her underwear outside her clothes.
'That must have been before those two children shut her up in her own oven?' said Magrat, untangling her sleeve from a briar.
'Yeah. Sad, that. I mean, she didn't really ever eat anyone,' said Nanny. 'Well. Not often. I mean, there was talk, but. . .'
'That's what happens,' said Granny. 'You get too involved with stories, you get confused. You don't know what's really real and what isn't. And they get you in the end. They send you weird in the head. I don't like stories. They're not real. I don't like things that ain't real.'
She pushed open a door.
'Ah. A chamber,' she said sourly. 'Could even be a bower.'
'Doesn't the stuff grow quickly!' said Magrat.
'Part of the time spell,' said Granny. 'Ah. There she is. Knew there'd be someone somewhere.'
There was a figure lying on a bed, in a thicket of rose bushes.
'And there's the spinning wheel,' said Nanny, pointing
* Black Aliss wasn't very good with words either. They had to give her quite a lot of money to go away and not make a scene.
to a shape just visible in a clump of ivy.
'Don't touch it!' said Granny.
'Don't worry, I'll pick it up by the treadle and pitch it out of the window.'
'How do you know all this?' said Magrat.
' 'Cos it's a rural myth,' said Nanny. 'It's happened lots of times.'
Granny Weatherwax and Magrat looked down at the sleeping figure of a girl of about thirteen, almost silvery under the dust and pollen.
'Isn't she pretty,' sighed Magrat, the generous-hearted.
From behind them came the crash of a spinning wheel on some distant cobbles, and then Nanny Ogg appeared, brushing her hands.
'Seen it happen a dozen times,' she said.
'No you ain't,' said Granny.
'Once, anyway,' said Nanny, unabashed. 'And I heard about it dozens of times. Everyone has. Rural myth, like I said. Everyone's heard about it happening in their cousin's friend's neighbour's village - '
'That's because it does,' said Granny.
Granny picked up the girl's wrist.
'She's asleep because she'll have got a - ' Nanny said.
Granny turned.
'I know, I know. I know, right? I know as well as you. You think I don't know?' She bent over the limp hand. 'That's fairy godmothering, this is,' she added, half to herself. 'Always do it impressively. Always meddling, always trying to be in control! Hah! Someone got a bit of poison? Send everyone to sleep for a hundred years! Do it the easy way. All this for one prick. As if that was the end of the world.' She paused. Nanny Ogg was standing behind her. There was no possible way she could have detected her expression. 'Gytha?'
'Yes, Esme?' said Nanny Ogg innocently.
'I can feel you grinnin'. You can save the tu'penny-ha'penny psycholology for them as wants it.'
"5
Granny shut her eyes and muttered a few words.
'Shall I use my wand?' said Magrat hesitantly.
'Don't you dare,' said Granny, and went back to her muttering.
Nanny nodded. 'She's definitely getting a bit of colour back,' she said.
A few minutes later the girl opened her eyes and stared up blearily at Granny Weatherwax.
'Time to get up,' said Granny, in an unusually cheerful voice, 'you're missing the best part of the decade.'
The girl tried to focus on Nanny, then on Magrat, and then looked back at Granny Weatherwax.
'You?' she said.
Granny raised her eyebrows and looked at the other two.
'Me?'
'You are - still here?'
'Still?' said Granny. 'Never been here before in my life, Miss.'
'But - ' the girl looked bewildered. And frightened, Magrat noticed.
'I'm like that myself in the mornings, dear,' said Nanny Ogg, taking the girl's other hand and patting it. 'Never at my best till I've had a cup of tea. I expect everyone else'll be waking up any minute. Of course, it'll take 'em a while to clean the rats' nests out of the kettles - Esme?'
Granny was staring at a dust-covered shape on the wall.
'Meddling . . .' she whispered.
'What's up, Esme?'
Granny Weatherwax strode across the room and wiped the dust off a huge ornate mirror.
'Hah!' she said, and spun around. 'We'll be going now,' she said.
'But I thought we were going to have a rest. I mean, it's nearly dawn,' said Magrat.
'No sense in outstaying our welcome,' said Granny, as she left the room.
'But we haven't even had a . . .' Magrat began. She glanced at the mirror. It was a big oval one, in a gilt frame. It looked perfectly normal. It wasn't like Granny Weatherwax to be frightened of her own reflection.
'She's in one of her moods again,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Come on. No sense in staying here.' She patted the bewildered princess on the head. 'Cheerio, Miss. A couple of weeks with a broom and an axe and you'll soon have the old place looking like new.'
'She looked as if she recognized Granny,' said Magrat, as they followed the stiff hurrying figure of Esme Weather-wax down the stairs.
'Well, we know she doesn't, don't we,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Esme has never been in these parts in her life.'
'But I still don't see why we have to rush off,' Magrat persisted. 'I expect people will be jolly grateful that we've broken the spell and everything.'
The rest of the palace was waking up. They jogged past guards staring in amazement at their cobwebbed uniforms and the bushes that were growing everywhere. As they crossed the forested courtyard an older man in faded robes staggered out of a doorway and leaned against the wall, trying to get his bearings. Then he saw the accelerating figure of Granny Weatherwax.
'You?' he shouted, and, 'Guards!'
Nanny Ogg didn't hesitate. She snatched Magrat's elbow and broke into a run, catching up with Granny Weatherwax at the castle gates. A guard who was better at mornings than his colleague staggered forward and made an attempt to bar their way with his pike, but Granny just pushed at it and swivelled him around gently.
Then they were outside and running for the broomsticks leaning against a convenient tree. Granny snatched at hers without stopping and, for once, it fired up on almost the first attempt.
An arrow whiffled past her hat and stuck in a branch.
'I don't call that gratitude,' said Magrat, as the brooms glided up and over the trees.
'A lot of people are never at their best just after waking up,' said Nanny.
'Everyone seemed to think they knew you. Granny,' said Magrat.
Granny's broomstick jerked in the wind.
'They didn't!' she shouted. 'They never saw me before, all right?'
They flew on in troubled silence for a while.
Then Magrat, who in Nanny Ogg's opinion had an innocent talent for treading on dangerous ground, said: 'I wonder if we did the right thing? I'm sure it was a job for a handsome prince.'
'Hah!' said Granny, who was riding ahead. 'And what good would that be? Cutting your way through a bit of bramble is how you can tell he's going to be a good husband, is it? That's fairy godmotherly thinking, that is! Goin' around inflicting happy endings on people whether they wants them or not, eh?'
'There's nothing wrong with happy endings,' said Magrat hotly.
'Listen, happy endings is fine if they turn out happy,' said Granny, glaring at the sky. ' But you can't make 'em for other people. Like the only way you could make a happy marriage is by cuttin' their heads off as soon as they say “I do”, yes? You can't make happiness . . .'
Granny Weatherwax stared at the distant city.
'All you can do,' she said, 'is make an ending.'
They had breakfast in a forest clearing. It was grilled pumpkin. The dwarf bread was brought out for inspection. But it was miraculous, the dwarf bread. No-one ever went hungry when they had some dwarf bread to avoid. You only had to look at it for a moment, and instantly you could think of dozens of things you'd rather eat. Your boots, for example. Mountains. Raw sheep. Your own foot.
Then they tried to get some sleep. At least, Nanny and Magrat did. But all it meant was that they lay awake and listened to Granny Weatherwax muttering under her breath. They'd never seen her so upset.