Wyrd Sisters

by Pratchett, Terry

  They stared at one another in shocked silence. They could both feel it, the tension creeping into their bodies from the ground itself, the hot, aching feeling that they’d started something they must finish, no matter what.

  ‘I knew you when you were a gel,’ said Nanny sullenly. ‘Stuck-up, you were.’

  ‘At least I spent most of the time upright,’ said Granny. ‘Disgustin’, that was. Everyone thought so.’

  ‘How would you know?’ snapped Nanny.

  ‘You were the talk of the whole village,’ said Granny.

  ‘And you were, too! They called you the Ice Maiden. Never knew that, did you?’ sneered Nanny.

  ‘I wouldn’t sully my lips by sayin’ what they called you,’ shouted Granny.

  ‘Oh yes?’ shrieked Nanny. ‘Well, let me tell you, my good woman—’

  ‘Don’t you dare talk to me in that tone of voice! I’m not anyone’s good woman—’

  ‘Right!’

  There was another silence while they stared at one another, nose to nose, but this silence was a whole quantum level of animosity higher than the last one; you could have roasted a turkey in the heat of this silence. There was no more shouting. Things had got far too bad for shouting. Now the voices came in low and full of menace.

  ‘I should have known better than to listen to Magrat,’ growled Granny. ‘This coven business is ridiculous. It attracts entirely the wrong sort of people.’

  ‘I’m very glad we had this little talk,’ hissed Nanny Ogg. ‘Cleared the air.’

  She looked down.

  ‘And you’re in my territory, madam.’

  ‘Madam!’

  Thunder rolled in the distance. The permanent Lancre storm, after a trip through the foothills, had drifted back towards the mountains for a one-night stand. The last rays of sunset shone livid through the clouds, and fat drops of water began to thud on the witches’ pointed hats.

  ‘I really don’t have time for all this,’ snapped Granny, trembling. ‘I have far more important things to do.’

  ‘And me,’ said Nanny.

  ‘Good night to you.’

  ‘And you.’

  They turned their backs on one another and strode away into the downpour.

  The midnight rain drummed on Magrat’s curtained windows as she thumbed her way purposefully through Goodie Whemper’s books of what, for want of any better word, could be called natural magic.

  The old woman had been a great collector of such things and, most unusually, had written them down; witches didn’t normally have much use for literacy. But book after book was filled with tiny, meticulous handwriting detailing the results of patient experiments in applied magic. Goodie Whemper had, in fact, been a research witch.10

  Magrat was looking up love spells. Every time she shut her eyes she saw a red-and-yellow figure on the darkness inside. Something had to be done about it.

  She shut the book with a snap and looked at her notes. First, she had to find out his name. The old peel-the-apple trick should do that. You just peeled an apple, getting one length of peel, and threw the peel behind you; it’d land in the shape of his name. Millions of girls had tried it and had inevitably been disappointed, unless the loved one was called Scscs. That was because they hadn’t used an unripe Sunset Wonder picked three minutes before noon on the first frosty day in the autumn and peeled left-handedly using a silver knife with a blade less than half an inch wide; Goodie had done a lot of experimenting and was quite explicit on the subject. Magrat always kept a few by for emergencies, and this probably was one.

  She took a deep breath, and threw the peel over her shoulder.

  She turned slowly.

  I’m a witch, she told herself. This is just another spell. There’s nothing to be frightened of. Get a grip of yourself, girl. Woman.

  She looked down, and bit the back of her hand out of nervousness and embarrassment.

  ‘Who’d have thought it?’ she said aloud.

  It had worked.

  She turned back to her notes, her heart fluttering. What was next? Ah, yes – gathering fern seed in a silk handkerchief at dawn. Goodie Whemper’s tiny handwriting went on for two pages of detailed botanical instructions which, if carefully followed, resulted in the kind of love potion that had to be kept in a tightly-stoppered jar at the bottom of a bucket of iced water.

  Magrat pulled open her back door. The thunder had passed, but now the first grey light of the new day was drowned in a steady drizzle. But it still qualified as dawn, and Magrat was determined.

  Brambles tugging at her dress, her hair plastered against her head by the rain, she set out into the dripping forest.

  The trees shook, even without a breeze.

  Nanny Ogg was also out early. She hadn’t been able to get any sleep anyway, and besides, she was worried about Greebo. Greebo was one of her few blind spots. While intellectually she would concede that he was indeed a fat, cunning, evil-smelling multiple rapist, she nevertheless instinctively pictured him as the small fluffy kitten he had been decades before. The fact that he had once chased a female wolf up a tree and seriously surprised a she-bear who had been innocently digging for roots didn’t stop her worrying that something bad might happen to him. It was generally considered by everyone else in the kingdom that the only thing that might slow Greebo down was a direct meteorite strike.

  Now she was using a bit of elementary magic to follow his trail, although anyone with a sense of smell could have managed it. It had led her through the damp streets and to the open gates of the castle.

  She gave the guards a nod as she went through. It didn’t occur to either of them to stop her because witches, like beekeepers and big gorillas, went where they liked. In any case, an elderly lady banging a bowl with a spoon was probably not the spearhead of an invasion force.

  Life as a castle guard in Lancre was extremely boring. One of them, leaning on his spear as Nanny went past, wished there could be some excitement in his job. He will shortly learn the error of his ways. The other guard pulled himself together, and saluted.

  ‘Mornin’, Mum.’

  ‘Mornin’, our Shawn,’ said Nanny, and set off across the inner courtyard.

  Like all witches Nanny Ogg had an aversion to front doors. She went around the back and entered the keep via the kitchens. A couple of maids curtsied to her. So did the head housekeeper, whom Nanny Ogg vaguely recognized as a daughter-in-law, although she couldn’t remember her name.

  And so it was that when Lord Felmet came out of his bedroom he saw, coming along the passage towards him, a witch. There was no doubt about it. From the tip of her pointed hat to her boots, she was a witch. And she was coming for him.

  * * *

  Magrat slid helplessly down a bank. She was soaked to the skin and covered in mud. Somehow, she thought bitterly, when you read these spells you always think of it being a fine sunny morning in late spring. And she had forgotten to check what bloody kind of bloody fern it bloody was.

  A tree tipped a load of raindrops on to her. Magrat pushed her sodden hair out of her eyes and sat down heavily on a fallen log, from which grew great clusters of pale and embarrassing fungus.

  It had seemed such a lovely idea. She’d had great hopes of the coven. She was sure it wasn’t right to be a witch alone, you could get funny ideas. She’d dreamed of wise discussions of natural energies while a huge moon hung in the sky, and then possibly they’d try a few of the old dances described in some of Goodie Whemper’s books. Not actually naked, or skyclad as it was rather delightfully called, because Magrat had no illusions about the shape of her own body and the older witches seemed solid across the hems, and anyway that wasn’t absolutely necessary. The books said that the old-time witches had sometimes danced in their shifts. Magrat had wondered about how you danced in shifts. Perhaps there wasn’t room for them all to dance at once, she’d thought.

  What she hadn’t expected was a couple of crochety old women who were barely civil at the best of times and simply didn’t enter
into the spirit of things. Oh, they’d been kind to the baby, in their own way, but she couldn’t help feeling that if a witch was kind to someone it was entirely for deeply selfish reasons.

  And when they did magic, they made it look as ordinary as housekeeping. They didn’t wear any occult jewellery. Magrat was a great believer in occult jewellery.

  It was all going wrong. And she was going home.

  She stood up, wrapped her damp dress around her, and set off through the misty woods . . .

  . . . and heard the running feet. Someone was coming through them at high speed, without caring who heard him, and over the top of the sound of breaking twigs was a curious dull jingling. Magrat sidled behind a dripping holly bush and peered cautiously through the leaves.

  It was Shawn, the youngest of Nanny Ogg’s sons, and the metal noise was caused by his suit of chain mail, which was several sizes too big for him. Lancre is a poor kingdom, and over the centuries the chain mail of the palace guards has had to be handed down from one generation to another, often on the end of a long stick. This one made him look like a bullet-proof bloodhound.

  She stepped out in front of him.

  ‘Is that you, Mss Magrat?’ said Shawn, raising the flap of mail that covered his eyes. ‘It’s mam!’

  ‘What’s happened to her?’

  ‘He’s locked her up! Said she was coming to poison him! And I can’t get down to the dungeons to see because there’s all new guards! They say she’s been put in chains—’ Shawn frowned – ‘and that means something horrible’s going to happen. You know what she’s like when she loses her temper. We’ll never hear the last of it, miz.’

  ‘Where were you going?’ demanded Magrat.

  ‘To fetch our Jason and our Wane and our Darron and our—’

  ‘Wait a moment.’

  ‘Oh, Mss Magrat, suppose they try to torture her? You know what a tongue she’s got on her when she gets angry—’

  ‘I’m thinking,’ said Magrat.

  ‘He’s put his own bodyguards on the gates and everything—’

  ‘Look, just shut up a minute, will you, Shawn?’

  ‘When our Jason finds out, he’s going to give the duke a real seeing-to, miz. He says it’s about time someone did.’

  Nanny Ogg’s Jason was a young man with the build and, Magrat had always thought, the brains of a herd of oxen. Thick-skinned though he was, she doubted whether he could survive a hail of arrows.

  ‘Don’t tell him yet,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘There could be another way . . .’

  ‘I’ll go and find Granny Weatherwax, shall I, miz?’ said Shawn, hopping from one leg to another. ‘She’ll know what to do, she’s a witch.’

  Magrat stood absolutely still. She had thought she was angry before, but now she was furious. She was wet and cold and hungry and this person – once upon a time, she heard herself thinking, she would have burst into tears at this point.

  ‘Oops,’ said Shawn. ‘Um. I didn’t mean. Whoops. Um . . .’ He backed away.

  ‘If you happen to see Granny Weatherwax,’ said Magrat slowly, in tones that should have etched her words into glass, ‘you can tell her that I will sort it all out. Now go away before I turn you into a frog. You look like one anyway.’

  She turned, hitched up her skirts, and ran like hell towards her cottage.

  * * *

  Lord Felmet was one of nature’s gloaters. He was good at it.

  ‘Quite comfortable, are we?’ he said.

  Nanny Ogg considered this. ‘Apart from these stocks, you mean?’ she said.

  ‘I am impervious to your foul blandishments,’ said the duke. ‘I scorn your devious wiles. You are to be tortured, I’ll have you know.’

  This didn’t appear to have the required effect. Nanny was staring around the dungeon with the vaguely interested gaze of a sightseer.

  ‘And then you will be burned,’ said the duchess.

  ‘OK,’ said Nanny.

  ‘OK?’

  ‘Well, it’s bloody freezing down here. What’s that big wardrobe thing with the spikes?’

  The duke was trembling. ‘Aha,’ he said. ‘Now you realize, eh? That, my dear lady, is an Iron Maiden. It’s the latest thing. Well may you—’

  ‘Can I have a go in it?’

  ‘Your pleas fall on deaf . . .’ The duke’s voice trailed off. His twitch started up.

  The duchess leaned forward until her big red face was inches away from Nanny’s nose.

  ‘This insouciance gives you pleasure,’ she hissed, ‘but soon you will laugh on the other side of your face!’

  ‘It’s only got this side,’ said Nanny.

  The duchess fingered a tray of implements lovingly. ‘We shall see,’ she said, picking up a pair of pliers.

  ‘And you need not think any others of your people will come to your aid,’ said the duke, who was sweating despite the chill. ‘We alone hold the keys to this dungeon. Ha ha. You will be an example to all those who have been spreading malicious rumours about me. Do not protest your innocence! I hear the voices all the time, lying . . .’

  The duchess gripped him ferociously by the arm. ‘Enough,’ she rasped. ‘Come, Leonal. We will let her reflect on her fate for a while.’

  ‘. . . the faces . . . wicked lies . . . I wasn’t there, and anyway he fell . . . my porridge, all salty . . .’ murmured the duke, swaying.

  The door slammed behind them. There was a click of locks and a thudding of bolts.

  Nanny was left alone in the gloom. A flickering torch high on the wall only made the surrounding darkness more forbidding. Strange metal shapes, designed for no more exalted purpose than the destruct-testing of the human body, cast unpleasant shadows. Nanny Ogg stirred in her chains.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I can see you. Who are you?’

  King Verence stepped forward.

  ‘I saw you making faces behind him,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘All I could do to keep a straight face myself.’

  ‘I wasn’t making faces, woman, I was scowling.’

  Nanny squinted. ‘’Ere, I know you,’ she said. ‘You’re dead.’

  ‘I prefer the term “passed over”,’ said the king.

  ‘I’d bow,12’ said Nanny. ‘Only there’s all these chains and things. You haven’t seen a cat around here, have you?’

  ‘Yes. He’s in the room upstairs, asleep.’

  Nanny appeared to relax. ‘That’s all right, then,’ she said. ‘I was beginning to worry.’ She stared around the dungeon again. ‘What’s that big bed thing over there?’

  ‘The rack,’ said the king, and explained its use. Nanny Ogg nodded.

  ‘What a busy little mind he’s got,’ she said.

  ‘I fear, madam, that I may be responsible for your present predicament,’ said Verence, sitting down on or at least just above a handy anvil. ‘I wished to attract a witch.’

  ‘I suppose you’re no good at locks?’

  ‘I fear they would be beyond my capabilities as yet . . . but surely—’ the ghost of the king waved a hand in a vague gesture which encompassed the dungeon, Nanny and the manacles – ‘to a witch all this is just so much—’

  ‘Solid iron,’ said Nanny. ‘You might be able to walk through it, but I can’t.’

  ‘I didn’t realize,’ said Verence. ‘I thought witches could do magic.’

  ‘Young man,’ said Nanny, ‘you will oblige me by shutting up.’

  ‘Madam! I am a king!’

  ‘You are also dead, so I wouldn’t aspire to hold any opinions if I was you. Now just be quiet and wait, like a good boy.’

  Against all his instincts, the king found himself obeying. There was no gainsaying that tone of voice. It spoke to him across the years, from his days in the nursery. Its echoes told him that if he didn’t eat it all up he would be sent straight to bed.

  Nanny Ogg stirred in her chains. She hoped they would turn up soon.

  ‘Er,’ said the king uneasily. ‘I feel I owe you an explanation . . .’

  * *
*

  ‘Thank you,’ said Granny Weatherwax, and because Shawn seemed to be expecting it, added, ‘You’ve been a good boy.’

  ‘Yes’m,’ said Shawn. ‘M’m?’

  ‘Was there something else?’

  Shawn twisted the end of his chain-mail vest out of embarrassment. ‘It’s not true what everyone’s been saying about our mam, is it, m’m?’ he said. ‘She doesn’t go round putting evil curses on folk. Except for Daviss the butcher. And old Cakebread, after he kicked her cat. But they wasn’t what you’d call real curses, was they, m’m?’

  ‘You can stop calling me m’m.’

  ‘Yes, m’m.’

  ‘They’ve been saying that, have they?’

  ‘Yes, m’m.’

  ‘Well, your mam does upset people sometimes.’

  Shawn hopped from one leg to another.

  ‘Yes, m’m, but they says terrible things about you, m’m, savin’ your presence, m’m.’

  Granny stiffened.

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Don’t like to say, m’m.’

  ‘What things?’

  Shawn considered his next move. There weren’t many choices.

  ‘A lot of things what aren’t true, m’m,’ he said, establishing his credentials as early as possible. ‘All sorts of things. Like, old Verence was a bad king and you helped him on the throne, and you caused that bad winter the other year, and old Norbut’s cow dint give no milk after you looked at it. Lot of lies, m’m,’ he added, loyally.

  ‘Right,’ said Granny.

  She shut the door in his panting face, stood in thought for a moment, and retired to her rocking chair.

  Eventually she said, once more, ‘Right.’

  A little later she added, ‘She’s a daft old besom, but we can’t have people going round doing things to witches. Once you’ve lost your respect, you ain’t got a thing. I don’t remember looking at old Norbut’s cow. Who’s old Norbut?’

  She stood up, took her pointed hat from its hook behind the door and, glaring into the mirror, skewered it in place with a number of ferocious hatpins. They slid on one by one, as unstoppable as the wrath of God.

  She vanished into the outhouse for a moment and came back with her witch’s cloak, which served as a blanket for sick goats when not otherwise employed.