Wyrd Sisters (37 page)

‘That's where you've been getting it all wrong,' said Granny. ‘Destiny
is
important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around.'

‘Bugger destiny,' agreed Nanny.

Granny glared at her.

‘After all, you never thought being a witch was going to be easy, did you?'

‘I'm learning,' said Magrat. She looked across the moor, where a thin rind of dawn glowed on the horizon.

‘I think I'd better be off,' she said. ‘It's getting early.'

‘Me too,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘Our Shirl frets if I'm not home when she comes to get my breakfast.'

Granny carefully scuffed over the remains of the fire.

‘When shall we three meet again?' she said. ‘Hmm?'

The witches looked at one another sheepishly.

‘I'm a bit busy next month,' said Nanny. ‘Birthdays and such. Er. And the work has really been piling up with all this hurly-burly. You know. And there's all the ghosts to think about.'

‘I thought you sent them back to the castle,' said Granny.

‘Well, they didn't want to go,' said Nanny vaguely. ‘To be honest, I've got used to them around the place. They're company of an evening. They hardly scream at all, now.'

‘That's nice,' said Granny. ‘What about you, Magrat?'

‘There always seems to be such a lot to do at this time of year, don't you find?' said Magrat.

‘Quite,' said Granny Weatherwax, pleasantly. ‘It's no good getting yourself tied down to appointments all the time, is it? Let's just leave the whole question open, shall we?'

They nodded. And, as the new day wound across the landscape, each one busy with her own thoughts, each one a witch alone, they went home.
²⁶

THE END

 

¹
Quaffing is like drinking, but you spill more.

²
Whatever that was. He'd never found anyone prepared to explain it to him. But it was definitely something a feudal lord ought to have and, he was pretty sure, it needed regular exercise. He imagined it was some kind of large hairy dog. He was definitely going to get one, and damn well exercise it.

³
Written by wizards, who are celibate and get some pretty funny ideas around four o'clock in the morning.

⁴
She did nothing, although sometimes when she saw him in the village she'd smile in a faint, puzzled way. After three weeks of this the suspense was too much for him and he took his own life; in fact he took it all the way across the continent, where he became a reformed character and never went home again.

⁵
All of them, unfortunately, unprintable.

⁶
The vermine is a small black and white furry creature, much famed for its pelt. It is a more careful relative of the lemming; it only throws itself over small pebbles.

⁷
They worked. Witches' remedies generally did, regardless of the actual form of delivery.

⁸
A killing insult in Dwarfish, but here used as a term of endearment. It means ‘lawn ornament'.

⁹
In a manner of speaking.

¹⁰
Someone has to do it. It's all very well calling for eye of newt, but do you mean Common, Spotted or Great Crested? Which eye, anyway? Will tapioca do just as well? If we substitute egg white will the spell a) work b) fail or c) melt the bottom out of the cauldron? Goodie Whemper's curiosity about such things was huge and insatiable.
¹¹

¹¹
Nearly insatiable. It was probably satiated in her last flight to test whether a broomstick could survive having its bristles pulled out one by one in mid-air. According to the small black raven she had trained as a flight recorder, the answer was almost certainly no.

¹²
Witches never curtsy.

¹³
No-one knows why men say things like this. Any minute now he is probably going to say he likes a girl with spirit.

¹⁴
They always do, everywhere. No-one sees them arrive. The logical explanation is that the franchise includes the stall, the paper hat and a small gas-powered time machine.

¹⁵
Involving a red hot poker, a privy, ten pounds of live eels, a three mile stretch of frozen river, a butt of wine, a couple of tulip bulbs, a number of poisoned eardrops, an oyster and a large man with a mallet. King Murune didn't make friends easily.

¹⁶
Possibly the first attempt at the in-flight refuelling of a broomstick.

¹⁷
An explanation may be needed at this point. The Librarian of the magic library at Unseen University, the Disc's premier college of wizardry, had been turned into an orang-utan some years previously by a magical accident in that accident-prone academy, and since then had strenuously resisted all well-meaning efforts to turn him back. For one thing, longer arms and prehensile toes made getting around the higher shelves a whole lot easier, and being an ape meant you didn't have to bother with all this
angst
business. He had also been rather pleased to find that his new body, although looking deceptively like a rubber sack full of water, gave him three times the strength and twice the reach of his old one.

¹⁸
The Shades is an ancient part of Ankh-Morpork considered considerably more unpleasant and disreputable than the rest of the city. This always amazes visitors.

¹⁹
Ankh-Morpork's enviable system of licensed criminals owes much to the current Patrician, Lord Vetinari. He reasoned that the only way to police a city of a million inhabitants was to recognize the various gangs and robber guilds, give them professional status, invite the leaders to large dinners, allow an acceptable level of street crime
and then make the guild leaders responsible for enforcing it
, on pain of being stripped of their new civic honours along with large areas of their skins. It worked. Criminals, it turned out, made a very good police force; unauthorized robbers soon found, for example, that instead of a night in the cells they could now expect an eternity at the bottom of the river.

However, there was the problem of apportioning the crime statistics, and so there arose a complex system of annual budgeting, chits and allowances to see that a) the members could make a reasonable living and b) no citizen was robbed or assaulted more than an agreed number of times. Many foresighted citizens in fact arranged to get an acceptable minimum of theft, assault, etc, over at the beginning of the financial year, often in the privacy and comfort of their own homes, and thus be able to walk the streets quite safely for the rest of the year. It all ticked over extremely peacefully and efficiently, demonstrating once again that compared to the Patrician of Ankh, Machiavelli could not have run a whelk stall.

²⁰
Because of the way time was recorded among the various states, kingdoms and cities. After all, when over an area of a hundred square miles the same year is variously the Year of the Small Bat, and Anticipated Monkey, the Hunting Cloud, Fat Cows, Three Bright Stallions and at least nine numbers recording the time since
²¹
assorted kings, prophets, and strange events were either crowned, born or happened, and each year has a different number of months, and some of them don't have weeks, and one of them refuses to accept the day as a measure of time, the only thing it is possible to be sure of is that good sex doesn't last long enough.
²²

²¹
The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts
down
, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.

²²
Except for the Zabingo tribe of the Great Nef, of course.

²³
The observant will realize that this was because the king was already seated there. It was not because the man had used the phrase ‘commence to start' in cold blood. But it ought to have been.

²⁴
Like Bognor.

²⁵
At least, of supervising the loading. Actual physical assistance was a little difficult because he had, the day before, slipped on something and broken his leg.

²⁶
There is a school of thought that says that witches and wizards can never go home. They went, though, just the same.

Terry Pratchett
is the accliamed creator of the global bestselling Discworld
^®
series, the first title of which,
The Colour of Magic
, was published in 1983. In all, he is the author of over fifty bestselling books. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he is the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, as well as being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. Worldwide sales of his books now stand at 70 million, and they have been translated into thirty-seven languages.

For more information about Terry Pratchett and his books, please visit
www.terrypratchett.co.uk

Also by Terry Pratchett

The Discworld
^®
series

1. THE COLOUR OF MAGIC

2. THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

3. EQUAL RITES

4. MORT

5. SOURCERY

6. WYRD SISTERS

7. PYRAMIDS

8. GUARDS! GUARDS!

9. ERIC

(illustrated by Josh Kirby)

10. MOVING PICTURES

11. REAPER MAN

12. WITCHES ABROAD

13. SMALL GODS

14. LORDS AND LADIES

15. MEN AT ARMS

16. SOUL MUSIC

17. INTERESTING TIMES

18. MASKERADE

19. FEET OF CLAY

20. HOGFATHER

21. JINGO

22. THE LAST CONTINENT

23. CARPE JUGULUM

24. THE FIFTH ELEPHANT

25. THE TRUTH

26. THIEF OF TIME

27. THE LAST HERO

(illustrated by Paul Kidby)

28. THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS

(for young adults)

29. NIGHT WATCH

30. THE WEE FREE MEN

(for young adults)

31. MONSTROUS REGIMENT

32. A HAT FULL OF SKY

(for young adults)

33. GOING POSTAL

34. THUD

35. WINTERSMITH

(for young adults)

36. MAKING MONEY

37. UNSEEN ACADEMICALS

38. I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT

(for young adults)

39. SNUFF

Other books about Discworld

THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD

(with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)

THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE

(with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)

THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD III: DARWIN'S WATCH

(with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)

TURTLE RECALL: THE DISCWORLD COMPANION … SO FAR

(with Stephen Briggs)

NANNY OGG'S COOKBOOK

(with Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan and Paul Kidby)

THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO

(with Paul Kidby)

THE DISCWORLD ALMANAK

(with Bernard Pearson)

THE UNSEEN UNIVERSITY CUT-OUT BOOK

(with Alan Batley and Bernard Pearson)

WHERE'S MY COW?

(illustrated by Melvyn Grant)

THE ART OF DISCWORLD

(with Paul Kidby)

THE WIT AND WISDOM OF DISCWORLD

(compiled by Stephen Briggs)

THE FOLKLORE OF DISCWORLD

(with Jacqueline Simpson)

MISS FELICITY BEEDLE'S THE WORLD OF POO

(with the Discworld Emporium)

Discworld maps

THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK

(with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)

THE DISCWORLD MAPP

(with Stephen Briggs, painted by Stephen Player)

A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE – A DISCWORLD MAPP

(with Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby)

DEATH'S DOMAIN

(with Paul Kidby)

THE COMPLETE ANKH-MORPORK

(with the Discworld Emporium)

A complete list of Terry Pratchett ebooks and audio books as well as other books based on the Discworld series – illustrated screenplays, graphic novels, comics and plays – can be found on
www.terrypratchett.co.uk

Non-Discworld books

THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN

STRATA

THE UNADULTERATED CAT (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe)

GOOD OMENS (with Neil Gaiman)

THE LONG EARTH (with Stephen Baxter)

Non-Discworld novels for young adults

THE CARPET PEOPLE

TRUCKERS

DIGGERS

WINGS

ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND*

JOHNNY AND THE DEAD

JOHNNY AND THE BOMB

NATION

DODGER

*
www.ifnotyouthenwho.com

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
A Random House Group Company
www.transworldbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz Ltd

Copyright © Terry and Lyn Pratchett 1988

Terry Pratchett has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Discworld
^®
and Unseen University
^®
are trademarks registered by Terry Pratchett

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781407034621
ISBN 9780552134606

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.