Witches Abroad

Page 19

He managed to move his head a fraction. Granny Weatherwax smiled.
'There!' she said, standing up and brushing a speck of leafmould off her dress. 'You see how sweet life can be, if we all helps one another?'
The witches left around lunchtime. By then the old woman's garden was full of people, and the air with the sound of sawing and hammering. News like Granny Weatherwax travels fast. Three woodcutters were digging over the vegetable plot, two more were fighting to clean the chimney, and four of them were halfway down a new well that was being dug with impressive speed.
The old grandmother, who was still the kind of person who hangs on to one idea until another one dislodges it by force, was running out of saucers to put the milk in.
The witches sneaked away in all the busyness.
'There,' said Magrat, as they strolled down the path, 'it just goes to show how people will pitch in and help, if only someone sets an example. You don't have to bully people all the time, you know.'
Nanny Ogg glanced at Granny.
'I saw you talking to the head woodcutter,' she said. 'What was you talking about?'
'Sawdust,' said Granny.
'Oh, yes?'
'One of the woodcutters told me,' said Magrat, 'that
there's been other odd things happening in this forest. Animals acting human, he said. There used to be a family of bears living not far away.'
'Nothing unusual about a family of bears living together,' said Nanny. 'They're very convivial animals.'
'In a cottage?'
'That's unusual.'
"That's what I mean,' said Magrat.
'You'd definitely feel a bit awkward about going round to borrow a cup of sugar,' said Nanny. 'I expect the neighbours had something to say about it.'
'Yes,' said Magrat. “They said ”oink".'
“What'd they say ”oink" for?'
'Because they couldn't say anything else. They were pigs.'
'We had people like that next door when we lived at - ' Nanny began.
'I mean pigs. You know. Four legs? Curly tail? What pork is before it's pork? Pigs.'
'Can't see anyone letting pigs live in a cottage,' said Granny.
'He said they didn't. The pigs built their own. There were three of them. Little pigs.'
'What happened to them?' said Nanny.
'The wolf ate them. They were the only animals stupid enough to let him get near them, apparently. Nothing was found of them except their spirit level.'
'That's a shame.'
'The woodcutter says they didn't build very good houses, mind you.'
'Well, it's only to be expected. What with the trotters and all,' said Nanny.
'He says the roof leaks something dreadful, right over his bed.'
The witches walked on in silence.
'I remember hearing once,' said Nanny, with the occasional glance at Granny Weatherwax, 'about some ole enchantress in history who lived on an island and turned shipwrecked sailors into pigs.'
'That's a terrible thing to do,' said Magrat, on cue.
'I suppose it's all according to what you really are, inside,' said Nanny. 'I mean, look at Greebo here.' Greebo, curled around her shoulders like a smelly fur, purred. 'He's practically a human.'
'You do talk a lot of tosh, Gytha,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'That's 'cos people won't tell me what they really think is going on,' said Nanny Ogg, grimly.
'I said I'm not sure," said Granny.
'You looked into the wolf's mind.'
'Yes. I did.'
'Well, then . . .'
Granny sighed. 'Someone's been here before us. Passing through. Someone who knows about the power of stories, and uses 'em. And the stories have . . . kind of hung around. They do that, when they get fed ..."
'What'd anyone want to do that for?' said Nanny.
'Practice,' said Granny.
'Practice? What for?' said Magrat.
'I expect we'll find out presently,' said Granny gnomically.
'You ought to tell me what you think,' said Magrat. 'I am the official godmother around here, you know. I ought to be told things. You've got to tell me things.'
Nanny Ogg went chilly. This was the kind of emotional countryside with which she was, as head Ogg, extremely familiar. That sort of comment at this sort of time was like the tiny sliding of snow off the top branch of a tall tree high in the mountains during the thaw season. It was one end of a process that, without a doubt, would end with a dozen villages being engulfed. Whole branches of the Ogg family had stopped talking to other branches of the Ogg family because of a 'Thank you very much' in the wrong tones and the wrong place, and this was far worse.
'Now,' she said hurriedly, 'why don't we - '
'I don't have to explain anything,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'But we're supposed to be three witches,' said Magrat. 'If you can call us witches,' she added.
'What do you mean by that, pray?' said Granny.
'Pray?' thought Nanny. Someone has ended a sentence with 'pray?' That's like that bit when someone hits someone else with a glove and then throws it on the floor. There's no going back when someone's ended a sentence with 'pray?' But she tried, anyway.
'How about a nice - '
Magrat plunged on with the brave desperation of someone dancing in the light of their burning bridges.
'Well,' she said, 'it seems to me - '
'Yes?' said Granny.
'It seems to me,' Magrat tried again, 'that the only magic we do is all, well, headology. Not what anyone else would call magic. It's just glaring at people and tricking them. Taking advantage of their gullibility. It wasn't what
I expected when I set out to become a witch -'
'And who says,' said Granny Weatherwax, slowly and deliberately, 'that you've become a witch now?'
'My word, the wind is getting up, perhaps we should - ' said Nanny Ogg.
' What did you say?' said Magrat.
Nanny Ogg put her hand over her eyes. Asking someone to repeat a phrase you'd not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon
II in the lexicon of squabble.
'I should have thought my voice was clear enough,' said Granny. 'I'm very amazed my voice wasn't clear enough. It sounded clear enough to me.'
'Looks a bit gusty, why don't we - ?'
'Well, I should just think I can be smug and bad-tempered and ill-considerate enough to be a witch,' said Magrat. 'That's all that's required, isn't it?'
'Ill-considerate? Me?'
'You like people who need help, because when they need help they're weak, and helping them makes you feel strongl What harm would a bit of magic do?'
'Because it'd never stop at just a bit, you stupid girl!'
Magrat backed off, her face flushed. She reached into her bag and pulled out a slim volume, which she flourished like a weapon.
'Stupid I may be,' she panted, 'but at least I'm trying to learn things! Do you know the kind of things people can use magic for? Not just illusion and bullying! There's people in this book that can . . . can . . . walk on hot coals, and stick their hands in a fire and not get hurt!'
'Cheap trickery!' said Granny.
'They really can!'
'Impossible. No-one can do that!'
'It shows they can control things! Magic's got to be more than just knowing things and manipulating people!'
'Oh? It's all wishing on stars and fairy dust, is it? Making people happier?'
'There's got to be some of that! Otherwise what's the good of anything? Anyway. . . when I went to Desiderata's cottage you were looking for the wand, weren't you?'
'I just didn't want it falling into the wrong hands!'
'Like any hands but yours, I expect!'
They glared at each other.
'Haven't you got any romance in your soul?' said Magrat plaintively.
'No,' said Granny. 'I ain't. And stars don't care what you wish, and magic don't make things better, and no-one doesn't get burned who sticks their hand in a fire. If you want to amount to anything as a witch, Magrat Garlick, you got to learn three things. What's real, what's not real, and what's the difference - '
'And always get the young man's name and address,' said Nanny. 'It worked for me every time. Only joking,' she said, as they both glared at her.
The wind was rising, here on the edge of the forest. Bits of grass and leaves whirled through the air.
'We're going the right way, anyway,' said Nanny madly, seeking anything that would be a distraction. 'Look. It says “Genua” on the signpost.'
It did indeed. It was an old, worm-eaten signpost right on the edge of the forest. The end of the arm had been carved into the likeness of a pointing finger.
'A proper road, too,' Nanny burbled on. The row cooled a bit, simply because both sides were not talking to each other. Not simply not exchanging vocal communication - that's just an absence of speaking. This went right through that and out the other side, into the horrible glowering worlds of Not Talking to One Another.
'Yellow bricks,' said Nanny. 'Whoever heard of anyone making a road out of yellow bricks?'
Magrat and Granny Weatherwax stood looking in opposite directions with their arms folded.
'Brightens the place up, I suppose,' said Nanny. On the horizon, Genua sparkled in the middle of some more greenery. In between, the road dipped into a wide valley dotted with little villages. A river snaked through them on the way to the city.
The wind whipped at their skirts.
'We'll never fly in this,' said Nanny, still womanfully trying to make enough conversation for three people.
'So we'll walk, then, eh?' she said, and added, because there's a spark of spitefulness even in innocent souls like Nanny Ogg's, 'Singing as we go, how about it?'
'I'm sure it's not my place to mind what anyone chooses to do,' said Granny. 'It's nothing to do with me. I expect some people with wands and big ideas might have something to say.'
'Huh!' said Magrat.
They set off along the brick road towards the distant city, in single file with Nanny Ogg as a kind of mobile buffer state in the middle.
'What some people need,' said Magrat, to the world in general, 'is a bit more heart.'
'What some people need,' said Granny Weatherwax, to the stormy sky, 'is a lot more brain.'
Then she clutched at her hat to stop the wind from blowing it off.
What I need, thought Nanny Ogg fervently, is a drink.
Three minutes later a farmhouse dropped on her head.
By this time the witches were well spaced out. Granny Weatherwax was striding along in front, Magrat was sulking along at the rear, and Nanny was in the middle.
As she said afterwards, it wasn't even as if she was singing. It was just that one moment there was a small, plump witch, and the next there was the collapsing remains of a wooden farmhouse.
Granny Weatherwax turned and found herself looking at a crumbling, unpainted front door. Magrat nearly walked into a back door of the same grey, bleached wood.
There was no sound but the crackle of settling timber.
'Gytha?' said Granny.
'Nanny?' said Magrat.
They both opened their doors.
It was a very simple design of house, with two downstairs rooms separated by a front-to-back passageway. In the middle of the passageway, surrounded by shattered and termite-ridden floor-boards, under the pointy hat that had been rammed down to her chin, was Nanny Ogg. There was no sign of Greebo.
'Wha' happened?' she said. 'Wha' happened?'
'A farmhouse dropped on your head,' said Magrat.
'Oh. One o' them things,' said Nanny vaguely.
Granny gripped her by the shoulders.
'Gytha? How many fingers am I holding up?' she said urgently.
'Wha' fingers? 'S'all gone dark.'
Magrat and Granny gripped the brim of Nanny's hat and half lifted, half unscrewed it from her head. She blinked at them.
'That's the willow reinforcement,' she said, as the pointy hat creaked back into shape like a resurrecting umbrella. She was swaying gently. 'Stop a hammer blow, a hat with willow reinforcement. All them struts, see. Distributes the force. I shall write to Mr Vernissage.'