Witches Abroad (8 page)

‘Oh,' said Nanny, beaming as light dawned, ‘
you
mean The Hedgehog Can Never Be Bugg—'

‘That's the one!'

‘But it's
traditional
,' said Nanny. ‘Anyway, in foreign parts people won't know what the words mean.'

‘They will the way you sings them,' said Granny. ‘The way you sings them, creatures what lives on the bottoms of
ponds
'd know what they mean.'

Magrat looked over the side of the boat. Here and there the ripples were edged with white. The current was running a bit faster, and there were lumps of ice in it.

‘It's only a folk song, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg.

‘Hah!' said Granny Weatherwax. ‘I should just say it
is
a folk song! I knows all about folk songs. Hah! You think you're listenin' to a nice song about . . . about cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about . . . about something else entirely,' she added darkly. ‘You can't trust folk songs. They always sneak up on you.'

Magrat fended them off a rock. An eddy spun them around slowly.

‘I know one about two little bluebirds,' said Nanny Ogg.

‘Um,' said Magrat.

‘They may start out by being bluebirds, but I bet they ends up some kind of mettyfor,' said Granny.

‘Er, Granny,' said Magrat.

‘It was bad enough Magrat telling me about maypoles and what's behind 'em,' said Granny. She added, wistfully, ‘I used to enjoy looking at a maypole of a spring morning.'

‘I think the river's getting a bit sort of rough,' said Magrat.

‘I don't see why people can't just let things be,' said Granny.

‘I mean really quite rough, really . . .' said Magrat, pushing them away from a jagged rock.

‘She's right, you know,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘It's a bit on the choppy side.'

Granny looked over Magrat's shoulder at the river ahead. It had a cut-off look, such as might be associated with, for example, an imminent waterfall. The boat was now surging along. There was a muted roar.

‘They never said anything about a waterfall,' she said.

‘I 'spect they thought we'd find out for ourselves,' said Nanny Ogg, gathering up her possessions and hauling Greebo out of the bottom of the boat by the scruff of his neck. ‘Very sparin' with information, your average dwarf. Thank goodness witches float. Anyway, they knew we'd got the brooms.'

‘You've
got brooms,' said Granny Weatherwax. ‘How'm I supposed to get mine started in a
boat
? Can't run up and down, can I? And stop movin' about like that, you'll have us all over—'

‘Get your foot out of the way, Esme—'

The boat rocked violently.

Magrat rose to the occasion. She pulled out the wand, just as a wavelet washed over the boat.

‘Don't worry,' she said, ‘I'll use the wand. I think I've got the hang of it now—'

‘No!' screamed Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg together.

There was a large, damp noise. The boat changed shape. It also changed colour. It became a cheery sort of orange.

‘Pumpkins!' screamed Nanny Ogg, as she was gently tipped into the water. ‘More bloody pumpkins!'

Lilith sat back. The ice around the river hadn't been that good as a mirror, but it had been good enough.

Well. A wishy-washy overgrown girl more suitable to the attentions of a fairy godmother than to being one, and a little old washerwoman-type who got drunk and sang songs. And a wand the stupid girl didn't know how to use.

It was annoying. More than that, it was demeaning. Surely Desiderata and Mrs Gogol could have achieved something better than this. You derived status by the strength of your enemies.

Of course, there was
her
. After all this time . . .

Of course. She approved of that. Because there would have to be three of them. Three was an important number for stories. Three wishes, three princes, three billy goats, three guesses . . . three witches. The maiden, the mother and the . . . other one.
That
was one of the oldest stories of all.

Esme Weatherwax had never understood stories. She'd never understood how
real
reflections were. If she had, she'd probably have been ruling the world by now.

‘You're always looking in mirrors!' said a petulant voice. ‘I hate it when you're always looking in mirrors!'

The Duc sprawled in a chair in one corner, all black silk and well-turned legs. Lilith would not normally allow anyone inside the nest of mirrors but it was, technically, his castle. Besides, he was too vain and stupid to know what was going on. She'd seen to that. At least, she'd thought she had. Lately, he seemed to be picking things up . . .

‘I don't know why you have to do that,' he whined. ‘I thought magic was just a matter of pointing and going whoosh.'

Lilith picked up her hat, and glanced at a mirror as she adjusted it.

‘This way's safer,' she said. ‘It's self-contained. When you use mirror magic, you don't have to rely on anyone except yourself. That's why no-one's ever conquered the world with magic . . . yet. They try to take it from . . . other places. And there's always a price. But with mirrors, you're beholden to no-one but your own soul.'

She lowered the veil from the hat brim. She preferred the privacy of a veil, outside the security of the mirrors.

‘I hate mirrors,' muttered the Duc.

‘That's because they tell you the truth, my lad.'

‘It's cruel magic, then.'

Lilith tweaked the veil into a fetching shape.

‘Oh, yes. With mirrors, all the power is your own. There's nowhere else it can come from,' she said.

‘The swamp woman gets it from the swamp,' said the Duc.

‘Ha! And it'll claim her one day. She doesn't understand what she's doing.'

‘And you do?'

She felt a pang of pride. He was actually resenting her! She really had done a good job there.

‘I understand stories,' she said. ‘That's all I need.'

‘But you haven't brought me the girl,' said the Duc. ‘You promised me the girl. And then it'll be all over and I can sleep in a real bed and I won't need any more reflecting magic—'

But even a good job can go too far.

‘You've had your fill of magic?' said Lilith sweetly. ‘You'd like me to stop? It would be the easiest thing in the world. I found you in the gutter. Would you like me to send you back?'

His face became a mask of panic.

‘I didn't mean that! I just meant . . . well, then everything will be real. Just one kiss, you said. I can't see why that's so hard to arrange.'

‘The right kiss at the right time,' said Lilith. ‘It has to be at the right time, otherwise it won't work.' She smiled. He was trembling, partly out of lust, mainly out of terror, and slightly out of heredity.

‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘It can't
not
happen.'

‘And these witches you showed me?'

‘They're just . . . part of the story. Don't worry about them. The story will just absorb them. And you'll get
her
because of stories. Won't that be nice? And now . . . shall we go? I expect you've got some ruling to do?'

He picked up the inflexion. It was an order. He stood up, extended an arm to take hers, and together they went down to the palace's audience chamber.

Lilith was proud of the Duc. Of course, there was his embarrassing little nocturnal problem, because his morphic field weakened when he slept, but that wasn't yet a major difficulty. And there was the trouble with mirrors, which showed him as he really was, but that was easily overcome by banning all mirrors save hers. And then there were his eyes. She couldn't do anything about the eyes. There was practically no magic that could do anything about someone's eyes. All she had been able to come up with there were the smoked glasses.

Even so, he was a triumph. And he was so grateful. She'd been good for him.

She'd made a man of him, for a start.

Some way downriver from the waterfall, which was the second highest anywhere on the Disc and had been discovered in the Year of the Revolving Crab by the noted explorer Guy de Yoyo,
¹¹
Granny Weatherwax sat in front of a small fire with a towel around her shoulders and steamed.

‘Still, look on the bright side,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘At least I was holding my broom and you at the same time. And Magrat had hers. Otherwise we'd all be looking at the waterfall from underneath.'

‘Oh, good. A silver lining,' said Granny, her eyes glinting evilly.

‘Bit of an adventure, really,' said Nanny, grinning encouragingly. ‘One day we'll look back on this and laugh.'

‘Oh, good,' said Granny.

Nanny dabbed at the claw marks on her arm. Greebo, with a cat's true instinct for self-preservation, had clawed his way up his mistress and taken a flying leap to safety from the top of her head. Now he was curled up by the fire, dreaming cat dreams.

A shadow passed over them. It was Magrat, who had been combing the riverbanks.

‘I think I've got nearly everything,' she said as she landed. ‘Here's Granny's broomstick. And . . . oh, yes . . . the wand.' She gave a brave little smile. ‘Little pumpkins were bobbing to the surface. That's how I found it.'

‘My word, that was lucky,' said Nanny Ogg encouragingly. ‘Hear that, Esme? We shan't be wanting for food, at any rate.'

‘And I've found the basket with the dwarf bread in it,' said Magrat, ‘although I'm afraid it might be spoilt.'

‘It won't be, take it from me,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘You can't spoil dwarf bread. Well, well,' she said, sitting down again. ‘We've got quite a little picnic, haven't we . . . and a nice bright fire and . . . and a nice place to sit and . . . I'm sure there's lots of poor people in places like Howondaland and suchlike who'd give anything to be here right now . . .'

‘If you don't stop being so cheerful, Gytha Ogg, I shall give you such a ding around the ear with the flat of my hand,' said Granny Weatherwax.

‘You sure you're not catching a chill?' said Nanny Ogg.

‘I'm dryin' out,' said Granny Weatherwax, ‘from the inside.'

‘Look, I'm really sorry,' said Magrat. ‘I
said
I was sorry.'

Not that she was quite certain what for, she told herself. The boat wasn't her idea. She hadn't put the waterfall there. She hadn't even been in a position to see it coming. She'd turned the boat into a pumpkin, but she hadn't meant to. It could have happened to anyone.

‘I managed to save Desiderata's notebooks, too,' she said.

‘Well, that's a blessing,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘Now we know where we're lost.'

She looked around. They were through the worst of the mountains, but there were still peaks around and high meadows stretching to the snowline. From somewhere in the distance came the clonking of goat bells.

Magrat unfolded a map. It was creased, damp, and the pencil had run. She pointed cautiously to a smudged area.

‘I think we're here,' she said.

‘My word,' said Nanny Ogg, whose grasp of the principles of cartography was even shakier than Granny's. ‘Amazing how we can all fit on that little bit of paper.'

‘I think perhaps it would be a good idea at the moment if we just followed the river,' said Magrat. ‘Without in any way going on it,' she added quickly.

‘I suppose you didn't find
my
bag?' said Granny Weatherwax. ‘It had pers'nal items in.'

‘Probably sank like a stone,' said Nanny Ogg.

Granny Weatherwax stood up like a general who's just had news that his army has come second.

‘Come on,' she said. ‘Where to next, then?'

What was next was forest – dark and ferociously coniferous. The witches flew over it in silence. There were occasional, isolated cottages half-hidden in the trees. Here and there a crag loomed over the sylvanian gloom, shrouded in mist even in mid-afternoon. Once or twice they flew past castles, if that's what you could call them; they didn't look built, more extruded from the landscape.

It was the kind of landscape that had a particular type of story attached to it, featuring wolves and garlic and frightened women. A dark and thirsty story, a story that flapped wings against the moon . . .

‘Der flabberghast,' muttered Nanny.

‘What's that?' said Magrat.

‘It's foreign for bat.'

‘I've always liked bats,' said Magrat. ‘In general.'

The witches found that, by unspoken agreement, they were flying closer together.

‘I'm getting hungry,' said Granny Weatherwax. ‘And don't no-one mention pumpkin.'

‘There's dwarf bread,' said Nanny.

‘There's always the dwarf bread,' said Granny. ‘I fancy something cooked
this
year, thank you all the same.'

They flew past another castle, occupying the entire summit of a crag.

‘What we need is a nice little town or something,' said Magrat.

‘But the one down there will have to do,' said Granny.

They looked down at it. It wasn't so much a town as a huddle of houses, clustering together against the trees. It looked as cheerless as an empty hearth, but the shadows of the mountains were already speeding across the forest and something about the landscape tacitly discouraged night-time flying.