Witches Abroad (5 page)

Nanny and Granny looked at one another.

‘Well!' said Nanny.

‘She does
know
you, doesn't she?' demanded Granny, turning back to Magrat.

‘I used to come over here quite often to look at her books,' Magrat confessed. ‘And . . . and she liked to cook foreign food and no-one else round here would eat it, so I'd come up to keep her company.'

‘Ah-
ha
! Curryin' favour!' snapped Granny.

‘But I never thought she'd leave me the wand,' said Magrat. ‘Really I didn't!'

‘There's probably some mistake,' said Nanny Ogg kindly. ‘She probably wanted you to give it to one of us.'

‘That'll be it, right enough,' said Granny. ‘She knew you were good at running errands and so on. Let's have a look at it.'

She held out her hand.

Magrat's knuckles tightened on the wand.

‘. . . she gave it me . . .' she said, in a tiny voice.

‘Her mind was definitely wandering towards the end,' said Granny.

‘. . . she gave it me . . .'

‘Fairy godmotherin's a terrible responsibility,' said Nanny. ‘You got to be resourceful and flexible and tactful and able to deal with complicated affairs of the heart and stuff. Desiderata would have known that.'

‘. . . yes, but she gave it me . . .'

‘Magrat Garlick, as senior witch I
command
you to give me the wand,' said Granny. ‘They cause nothing but trouble!'

‘Hold on, hold on,' said Nanny. ‘That's going a bit far –'

‘. . . no . . .' said Magrat.

‘Anyway, you ain't senior witch,' said Nanny. ‘Old Mother Dismass is older'n you.'

‘Shut up. Anyway, she's non compost mental,' said Granny.

‘. . . you can't order me. Witches are non-hierarchical . . .' said Magrat.

‘That is wanton behaviour, Magrat Garlick!'

‘No it's not,' said Nanny Ogg, trying to keep the peace. ‘Wanton behaviour is where you go around without wearing any—'

She stopped. Both of the older witches watched a small piece of paper fall out of Magrat's sleeve and zigzag down to the floor. Granny darted forward and snatched it up.

‘Aha!' she said triumphantly. ‘Let's see what Desiderata
really
said . . .'

Her lips moved as she read the note. Magrat tried to wind herself up tighter.

A couple of muscles flickered on Granny's face. Then, calmly, she screwed up the note.

‘Just as I thought,' she said, ‘Desiderata says we are to give Magrat all the help we can, what with her being young and everything. Didn't she, Magrat?'

Magrat looked up into Granny's face.

You could call her out, she thought. The note was very clear . . . well, the bit about the older witches was, anyway . . . and you could make her read it aloud. It's as plain as day. Do you want to be third witch forever? And then the flame of rebellion, burning in a very unfamiliar hearth, died.

‘Yes,' she muttered hopelessly, ‘something like that.'

‘It says it's very important we go to some place somewhere to help someone marry a prince,' said Granny.

‘It's Genua,' said Magrat. ‘I looked it up in Desiderata's books. And we've got to make sure she
doesn't
marry a prince.'

‘A fairy godmother
stopping
a girl from marryin' a prince?' said Nanny. ‘Sounds a bit . . . contrary.'

‘Should be an easy enough wish to grant, anyway,' said Granny. ‘Millions of girls don't marry a prince.'

Magrat made an effort.

‘Genua really
is
a long way away,' she said.

‘I should 'ope so,' said Granny Weatherwax. ‘The last thing we want is foreign parts up close.'

‘I mean, there'll be a lot of travelling,' said Magrat wretchedly. ‘And you're . . . not as young as you were.'

There was a long, crowded silence.

‘We start tomorrow,' said Granny Weatherwax firmly.

‘Look,' said Magrat desperately, ‘why don't I go by myself?'

‘'Cos you ain't experienced at fairy godmothering,' said Granny Weatherwax.

This was too much even for Magrat's generous soul.

‘Well, nor are you,' she said.

‘That's true,' Granny conceded. ‘But the point is . . . the point is . . . the point is we've not been experienced for a lot longer than you.'

‘We've got a lot of experience of not having any experience,' said Nanny Ogg happily.

‘That's what counts every time,' said Granny.

There was only one small, speckled mirror in Granny's house. When she got home, she buried it at the bottom of the garden.

‘There,' she said. ‘
Now
trying spyin' on me.'

It never seemed possible to people that Jason Ogg, master blacksmith and farrier, was Nanny Ogg's son. He didn't look as if he could possibly have been born, but as if he must have been constructed. In a shipyard. To his essentially slow and gentle nature genetics had seen fit to add muscles that should have gone to a couple of bullocks, arms like treetrunks, and legs like four beer barrels stacked in twos.

To his glowing forge were brought the stud stallions, the red-eyed and foam-flecked kings of the horse nation, the soup-plate-hoofed beasts that had kicked lesser men through walls. But Jason Ogg knew the secret of the mystic Horseman's Word, and he would go alone into the forge, politely shut the door, and lead the creature out again after half an hour, newly shod and strangely docile.
⁹

Behind his huge brooding shape clustered the rest of Nanny Ogg's endless family and a lot of other townsfolk who, seeing some interesting activity involving witches, couldn't resist the opportunity for what was known in the Ramtops as a good oggle.

‘We'm off then, our Jason,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘They do say the streets in foreign parts are paved with gold. I could prob'ly make my fortune, eh?'

Jason's hairy brow creased in intense thought.

‘Us could do with a new anvil down forge,' he volunteered.

‘If I come back rich, you won't never have to go down the forge ever again,' said Nanny.

Jason frowned.

‘But I
likes
t'forge,' he said, slowly.

Nanny looked momentarily taken aback. ‘Well, then – then you shall have an anvil made of solid silver.'

‘Wunt be no good, ma. It'd be too soft,' said Jason.

‘If I brings you back an anvil made of solid silver you shall have an anvil made of solid silver, my lad, whether you likes it or not!'

Jason hung his huge head. ‘Yes, mum,' he said.

‘You see to it that someone comes in to keep the house aired every day reg'lar,' said Nanny. ‘I want a fire lit in that grate every morning.'

‘Yes, mum.'

‘And everyone's to go in through the back door, you hear? I've put a curse on the front porch. Where's those girls got to with my luggage?' She scurried off, a small grey bantam scolding a flock of hens.

Magrat listened to all this with interest. Her own preparations had consisted of a large sack containing several changes of clothes to accommodate whatever weather foreign parts might suffer from, and a rather smaller one containing a number of useful-looking books from Desiderata Hollow's cottage. Desiderata had been a great note-taker, and had filled dozens of little books with neat writing and chapter headings like ‘With Wand and Broomstick Across the Great Nef Desert'.

What she had never bothered to do, it seemed, was write down any instructions for the wand. As far as Magrat knew, you waved it and wished.

Along the track to her cottage, several unanticipated pumpkins bore witness to this as an unreliable strategy. One of them still thought it was a stoat.

Now Magrat was left alone with Jason, who shuffled his feet.

He touched his forelock. He'd been brought up to be respectful to women, and Magrat fell broadly into this category.

‘You will look after our mum, won't you, Mistress Garlick?' he said, a hint of worry in his voice. ‘She'm acting awful strange.'

Magrat patted him gently on the shoulder.

‘This sort of thing happens all the time,' she said. ‘You know, after a woman's raised a family and so on, she wants to start living her own life.'

‘Whose life she
bin
living, then?'

Magrat gave him a puzzled look. She hadn't questioned the wisdom of the thought when it had first arrived in her head.

‘You see, what it is,' she said, making an explanation up as she went along, ‘there comes a time in a woman's life when she wants to find herself.'

‘Why dint she start looking here?' said Jason plaintively. ‘I mean, I ain't wanting to talk out of turn, Miss Garlick, but we was looking to you to persuade her and Mistress Weatherwax not to go.'

‘I tried,' said Magrat. ‘I really did. I said, you don't want to go, I said. Anno domini, I said. Not as young as you used to be, I said. Silly to go hundreds of miles just for something like this, especially at your age.'

Jason put his head on one side. Jason Ogg wouldn't end up in the finals of the All-Discworld uptake speed trials, but he knew his own mother.

‘You said all that to our mum?' he said.

‘Look, don't worry,' said Magrat, ‘I'm sure no harm can—'

There was a crash somewhere over their heads. A few autumn leaves spiralled gently towards the ground.

‘Bloody tree . . . who put that bloody tree there?' came a voice from on high.

‘That'll be Granny,' said Magrat.

It was one of the weak spots of Granny Weatherwax's otherwise well-developed character that she'd never bothered to get the hang of steering things. It was alien to her nature. She took the view that it was her job to move and the rest of the world to arrange itself so that she arrived at her destination. This meant that she occasionally had to climb down trees she'd never climbed up. This she did now, dropping the last few feet and daring anyone to comment.

‘Well, now we're all here,' said Magrat brightly.

It didn't work. Granny Weatherwax's eyes focused immediately somewhere around Magrat's knees.

‘And what do you think you're wearing?' she said.

‘Ah. Um. I thought . . . I mean, it gets cold up there . . . what with the wind and everything,' Magrat began. She had been dreading this, and hating herself for being so weak. After all, they
were
practical. The idea had come to her one night. Apart from anything else, it was almost impossible to do Mr Lobsang Dibbler's cosmic harmony death kicks when your legs kept getting tangled in a skirt.

‘They're not exactly the same as ordinary—'

‘And there's men 'ere lookin',' said Granny. ‘I think it's shameful!'

‘What is?' said Nanny Ogg, coming up behind her.

‘Magrat Garlick, standin' there bifurcated,' said Granny, sticking her nose in the air.

‘Just so long as she got the young man's name and address,' said Nanny Ogg amiably.

‘Nanny!' said Magrat.

‘I think they look quite comfy,' Nanny went on. ‘A bit baggy, though.'

‘I don't 'old with it,' said Granny. ‘Everyone can see her legs.'

‘No they can't,' said Nanny. ‘The reason being, the material is in the way.'

‘Yes, but they can see where her legs
are
,' said Granny Weatherwax.

‘That's silly. That's like saying everyone's naked under their clothes,' said Magrat.

‘Magrat Garlick, may you be forgiven,' said Granny Weatherwax.

‘Well, it's true!'

‘
I'm
not,' said Granny flatly, ‘I got three vests on.'

She looked Nanny up and down. Gytha Ogg, too, had made sartorial preparations for foreign parts. Granny Weatherwax could find little to disapprove of, although she made an effort.

‘And will you look at your hat,' she mumbled. Nanny, who had known Esme Weatherwax for seventy years, merely grinned.

‘All the go, ain't it?' she said. ‘Made by Mr Vernissage over in Slice. It's got willow reinforcing all the way up to the point and eighteen pockets inside. Can stop a blow with a hammer, this hat. And how about these?'

Nanny raised the hem of her skirt. She was wearing new boots. As boots, Granny Weatherwax could find nothing to complain of in them. They were of proper witch construction, which is to say that a loaded cart could have run over them without causing a dent in the dense leather. As boots, the only thing wrong with them was the colour.

‘
Red?
' said Granny. ‘That's no colour for a witch's boots!'

‘I likes 'em,' said Nanny.

Granny sniffed. ‘You can please yourself, I'm sure,' she said. ‘I'm sure in foreign parts they goes in for all sorts of outlandish things. But you know what they say about women who wear red boots.'

‘Just so long as they also say they've got dry feet,' said Nanny cheerfully. She put her door key into Jason's hand.

‘I'll write you letters if you promise to find someone to read them to you,' she said.

‘Yes, mum. What about the cat, mum?' said Jason.

‘Oh, Greebo's coming with us,' said Nanny Ogg.

‘What? But he's a cat!' snapped Granny Weatherwax. ‘You can't take cats with you! I'm not going travellin' with no cat! It's bad enough travellin' with trousers and provocative boots!'