Witches Abroad (11 page)

‘What are you doing, Gytha? We're ready to leave.'

Nanny Ogg looked up, her face still creased with the effort of composition.

‘I thought it would be nice to send something to our Jason. You know, to stop him worryin'. So I done a drawing of this place on a piece of card and Mine Hair here will give it to someone going our way. You never know, it might get there.'

Nanny Ogg sucked the end of her pencil. Not for the first time in the history of the universe, someone for whom communication normally came as effortlessly as a dream was stuck for inspiration when faced with a few lines on the back of a card.

Well that about wraps it up for now, will
tight
wright again soone MUM. P.S. the Cat is looking very Peeky I think he misses his Home.

‘Will you come
on
, Gytha? Magrat's getting my broom started for me.'

Nanny Ogg sat back, content in the knowledge of a job well done.
¹²

Magrat reached the end of the town square and stopped to rest.

Quite an audience had gathered to see a woman with legs. They were very polite about it. Somehow, that made it worse.

‘It doesn't fly unless you run really fast,' she explained, aware even as she spoke how stupid this sounded, especially if you were listening in a foreign language. ‘I think it's called hump starting.'

She took a deep breath, scowled in concentration, and ran forward again.

This time it started. It jolted in her hands. The bristles rustled. She managed to slip it into neutral before it could drag her along the ground. One thing about Granny Weatherwax's broomstick – it was one of the very old-fashioned ones, built in the days when broomsticks were built to last and not fall apart with woodworm after ten years – was that while it might take some starting, when it went it didn't hang about.

Magrat had once considered explaining the symbolism of the witches' broomstick to Granny Weatherwax, and decided not to. It would have been worse than the row about the significance of the maypole.

Departure took some time. The villagers insisted on giving them little gifts of food. Nanny Ogg made a speech which no-one understood but which was generally cheered. Greebo, hiccuping occasionally, oozed into his accustomed place among the bristles of Nanny's broomstick.

As they rose above the forest a thin plume of smoke also rose from the castle. And then there were flames.

‘I see people dancing in front of it,' said Magrat.

‘Always a dangerous business, rentin' property,' said Granny Weatherwax. ‘I expect he was a bit lax when it came to redecoratin' and repairin' the roof and suchlike. People take against that kind of thing. My landlord hasn't done a hand's turn on my cottage the whole time I've been there,' she added. ‘It's shameful. And me an old woman, too.'

‘I thought you owned your place,' said Magrat, as the broomsticks set off over the forest.

‘She just ain't paid no rent for sixty years,' said Nanny Ogg.

‘Is that my fault?' said Granny Weatherwax. ‘It's not
my
fault. I'd be quite willin' to pay.' She smiled a slow, self-confident smile. ‘All he has to do is
ask
,' she added.

This is the Discworld, seen from above, its cloud formations circling in long curved patterns.

Three dots emerged from the cloud layer.

‘I can see why travellin' doesn't catch on. I call this boring. Nothing but forest for hours and hours.'

‘Yes, but flying gets you to places quickly, Granny.'

‘How long've we been flying, anyway?'

‘About ten minutes since you last asked, Esme.'

‘You see?
Boring
.'

‘It's sitting on the sticks I don't like. I reckon there ought to be a special broomstick for going long distances, right? One you could stretch out on and have a snooze.'

They all considered this.

‘And have your meals on,' added Nanny. ‘Proper meals, I mean. With gravy. Not just sandwiches and stuff.' An experiment in aerial cookery on a small oil burner had been hastily curtailed after it threatened to set fire to Nanny's broomstick.

‘I suppose you could do it if you had a really
big
broomstick,' said Magrat. ‘About the size of a tree, perhaps. Then one of us could do the steering and another one could do the cooking.'

‘It'd never happen,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘The reason being, the dwarfs would make you pay a fortune for a stick that big.'

‘Yes, but what you could do,' said Magrat, warming to her subject, ‘is get people to pay you to give them rides. There must be lots of people fed up with highwaymen and . . . and being seasick and that sort of thing.'

‘How about it, Esme?' said Nanny Ogg. ‘I'll do the steering and Magrat'll do the cooking.'

‘What shall
I
do, then?' said Granny Weatherwax suspiciously.

‘Oh . . . well . . . there ought to be someone to, you know, welcome people onto the stick and give them their meals,' said Magrat. ‘And tell them what to do if the magic fails, for example.'

‘If the magic fails everyone'll crash into the ground and die,' Granny pointed out.

‘Yes, but someone will have to tell them how to do that,' said Nanny Ogg, winking at Magrat. ‘They won't know how to, not being experienced in flying.'

‘And we could call ourselves . . .' she paused. As always on the Discworld, which was right on the very edge of unreality, little bits of realness crept in whenever someone's mind was resonating properly. This happened now.

‘. . . Three Witches Airborne,' she said. ‘How about that?'

‘
Broomsticks
Airborne,' said Magrat. ‘Or Pan . . . air . . .'

‘There's no need to bring religion into it,' sniffed Granny.

Nanny Ogg looked slyly from Granny to Magrat.

‘We
could
call it Vir – ' she began.

A gust of wind caught all three sticks and whirled them up. There was a brief panic as the witches brought them under control.

‘Load of nonsense,' muttered Granny.

‘Well, it passes the time,' said Nanny Ogg.

Granny looked morosely at the greenery below.

‘You'd never get people to do it,' she said. ‘Load of nonsense.'

Several days passed.

In a quiet little inn in a tiny country Granny Weatherwax sat and regarded the food with deep suspicion. The owner hovered with the frantic expression of one who knows, even before he starts, that he's not going to come out of this ahead of the game.

‘Good simple home cooking,' said Granny. ‘That's all I require. You know me. I'm not the demanding sort. No-one could say I'm the demanding sort. I just want simple food. Not all grease and stuff. It comes to something when you complain about something in your lettuce and it turns out to be what you ordered.'

Nanny Ogg tucked her napkin into the top of her dress and said nothing.

‘Like that place last night,' said Granny. ‘You'd think you'd be all right with sandwiches, wouldn't you? I mean . . . sandwiches? Simplest food there is in the whole world. You'd think even foreigners couldn't get sandwiches wrong. Hah!'

‘They didn't call them sandwiches, Granny,' said Magrat, her eyes dwelling on the owner's frying pan. ‘They called them . . . I think they called them smorgy's board.'

‘They was nice,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘I'm very partial to a pickled herring.'

‘But they must think we're daft, not noticing they'd left off the top slice,' said Granny triumphantly. ‘Well, I told them a thing or two! Another time they'll think twice before trying to swindle people out of a slice of bread that's theirs by rights!'

‘I expect they will,' said Magrat darkly.

‘And I don't hold with all this giving things funny names so people don't know what they're eating,' said Granny, determined to explore the drawbacks of international cookery to the full. ‘I like stuff that tells you plain what it is, like . . . well . . . Bubble and Squeak, or . . . or . . .'

‘Spotted Dick,' said Nanny absently. She was watching the progress of the pancakes with some anticipation.

‘That's right. Decent honest food. I mean, take that stuff we had for lunch. I'm not saying it wasn't nice,' said Granny graciously. ‘In a foreign sort of way, of course. But they called it Cwuissses dee Grenolly, and who knows what that means?'

‘Frogs' legs,' translated Nanny, without thinking.

The silence was filled with Granny Weatherwax taking a deep breath and a pale green colour creeping across Magrat's face. Nanny Ogg now thought quicker than she had done for a very long time.

‘Not
actual
frogs' legs,' she said hurriedly. ‘It's like Toad-in-the-Hole is really only sausage and batter puddin'. It's just a joke name.'

‘It doesn't sound very funny to me,' said Granny. She turned to glare at the pancakes.

‘At least they can't muck up a decent pancake,' she said. ‘What'd they call them here?'

‘Crap suzette, I think,' said Nanny.

Granny forbore to comment. But she watched with grim satisfaction as the owner finished the dish and gave her a hopeful smile.

‘Oh, now he expects us to eat them,' she said. ‘He only goes and sets fire to them, and then he still expects us to eat them!'

It might later have been possible to chart the progress of the witches across the continent by some sort of demographic survey. Long afterwards, in some quiet, onion-hung kitchens, in sleepy villages nestling among hot hills, you might have found cooks who
wouldn't
twitch and try to hide behind the door when a stranger came into the kitchen.

The sun beat down on the cobbled street, and particularly on the courtyard of a little inn.

‘It's hard to imagine,' said Magrat, ‘that it's autumn back home.'

‘Garkon? Mucho vino aveck zei, grassy ass.'

The innkeeper, who did not understand one word and was a good-natured man who certainly did not deserve to be called a garkon, smiled at Nanny. He'd smile at anyone with such an unlimited capacity for drink.

‘I don't hold with putting all these tables out in the street, though,' said Granny Weatherwax, although without much severity. It was pleasantly warm. It wasn't that she didn't like autumn, it was a season she always looked forward to, but at her time of life it was nice to know that it was happening hundreds of miles away while she wasn't there.

Underneath the table Greebo dozed on his back with his legs in the air. Occasionally he twitched as he fought wolves in his sleep.

‘It says in Desiderata's notes,' said Magrat, turning the stiff pages carefully, ‘that in the late summer here they have this special traditional ceremony where they let a lot of bulls run through the street.'

‘That'd be something worth seeing,' said Granny Weatherwax. ‘Why do they do it?'

‘So all the young men can chase them to show how brave they are,' said Magrat. ‘Apparently they pull their rosettes off.'

A variety of expressions passed across Nanny Ogg's wrinkled face, like weather over a stretch of volcanic badlands.

‘Sounds a bit strange,' she said at last. ‘What do they do that for?'

‘She doesn't explain it very clearly,' said Magrat. She turned another page. Her lips moved as she read on. ‘What does cojones mean?'

They shrugged.

‘Here, you want to slow down on that drink,' said Granny, as a waiter put down another bottle in front of Nanny Ogg. ‘I wouldn't trust any drink that's green.'

‘It's not like proper drink,' said Nanny. ‘It says on the label it's made from herbs. You can't make a serious drink out of just herbs. Try a drop.'

Granny sniffed the opened bottle.

‘Smells like aniseed,' she said.

‘It says “Absinthe” on the bottle,' said Nanny.

‘Oh, that's just a name for wormwood,' said Magrat, who was good at herbs. ‘My herbal says it's good for stomach diforders and prevents sicknefs after meals.'

‘There you are, then,' said Nanny. ‘Herbs. It's practic'ly medicine.' She poured a generous measure for the other two. ‘Give it a go, Magrat. It'll put a cheft on your cheft.'