by The Wit
The Countess smiled. ‘My vord, yes,’ she said.
‘By marriage,’ said Arthur.
‘Can you do that? I thought you had to be bitten,’ said Windle.
‘I don’t see why I should have to go around biting my wife after thirty years of marriage, and that’s flat,’ said the Count.
*
‘This vampiring’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know. Can’t go out in daylight, can’t eat garlic, can’t have a decent shave—’
‘Why can’t you have a—’ Windle began.
‘Can’t use a mirror,’ said Arthur.
*
‘By the way, Sister Drull is a ghoul. If she offers you any of her meat patties, don’t accept.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Windle said. ‘You mean she makes them out of human flesh?’
‘What? Oh. No. She just can’t cook very well.’
*
SOMETIMES PEOPLE CHALLENGE ME TO A GAME. FOR THEIR LIVES, YOU KNOW, [said Death.]
‘Do they ever win?’
NO. LAST YEAR SOMEONE GOT THREE STREETS AND ALL THE UTILITIES.
‘What? What sort of game is that?’
I DON’T RECALL. ‘EXCLUSIVE POSSESSION’, I THINK. I WAS THE BOOT.
*
A compost heap comes to life and threatens a group of wizards:
The heap swivelled and lunged towards the Bursar.
The wizards backed away.
‘It can’t be intelligent, can it?’ said the Bursar.
‘All it’s doing is moving around slowly and eating things,’ said the Dean.
‘Put a pointy hat on it and it’d be a faculty member,’ said the Archchancellor.
*
Miss Flitworth had said that before they could start a graveyard in these parts they’d had to hit someone over the head with the shovel.
*
People have believed for hundreds of years that newts in a well mean that the water’s fresh and drinkable, and in all that time never asked themselves whether the newts got out to go to the lavatory.
*
The ability of skinny old ladies to carry huge loads is phenomenal. Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.
‘Why are you called One Man Bucket?’
in my tribe we’re traditionally named after the first thing the mother sees when she looks out of the teepee after the birth. it’s short for One-Man-Pouring-a-Bucket-of-Water-over-Two-Dogs.
‘That’s pretty unfortunate,’ said Windle.
it’s not too bad, said One-Man-Bucket. it was my twin brother you had to feel sorry for. she looked out ten seconds before me to give him his name.
‘Don’t tell me, let me guess,’ Windle said. ‘Two-Dogs-Fighting?’
Two-Dogs-Fighting? Two-Dogs-Fighting? said One-Man-Bucket. wow, he’d have given his right arm to be called Two-Dogs-Fighting.
In the Ramtop village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.
‘Who’s playing the maracas?’
Death grinned.
MARACAS? I DON’T NEED … MARACAS.
In the village in the Ramtops where they understand what the Morris dance is all about, they dance it just once, at dawn, on the first day of spring. They don’t dance it after that, all through the summer. After all, what would be the point? What use would it be?
But on a certain day when the nights are drawing in, the dancers leave work early and take, from attics and cupboards, the other costume, the black one, and the other bells. And they go by separate ways to a valley among the leafless trees. They don’t speak. There is no music. It’s very hard to imagine what kind there could be.
The bells don’t ring. They’re made of octiron, a magic metal. But they’re not, precisely, silent bells. Silence is merely the absence of noise. They make the opposite of noise, a sort of heavily textured silence.
And in the cold afternoon, as the light drains from the sky, among the frosty leaves and in the damp air, they dance the other Morris. Because of the balance of things.
You’ve got to dance both, they say. Otherwise you can’t dance either.
†Someone who will put certainly salt and probably pepper on any meal you put in front of them whatever it is and regardless of how much it’s got on it already and regardless of how it tastes. Behavioural psychiatrists working for fast-food outlets around the universe have saved billions of whatever the local currency is by noting the autocondimenting phenomenon and advising their employers to leave seasoning out in the first place. This is really true.
IT seemed an easy job … After all, how difficult could it be make sure that a servant girl doesn’t marry a prince? But for the witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Sarlick, travelling to the distant city of Genua, things are never that simple…
Servant girls have to marry the Prince. That’s what life is all about. You can’t fight a Happy Ending.
At least, tip Until now…
Just superstition. But a superstition doesn’t have to be wrong.
*
Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy Seriph of Al-Ybi was once cursed by a badly educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Ybi are renowned for being unusually short and bad-tempered.
*
She had buried three husbands, and at least two of them had been already dead.
Never trust a dog with orange eyebrows.
Artists and writers have always had a rather exaggerated idea about what goes on at a witches’ sabbat. This comes from spending too much time in small rooms with the curtains drawn, instead of getting out in the healthy fresh air.
For example, there’s the dancing around naked. In the average temperate climate there are very few nights when anyone would dance around at midnight with no clothes on, quite apart from the question of stones, thistles, and sudden hedge-hogs.
Then there’s all that business with goat-headed gods. Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.
And there’s the food and drink -the bits of reptile and so on. In fact, witches don’t go for that sort of thing. The worst you can say about the eating habits of the older type of witch is that they tend to like ginger biscuits dipped in tea with so much sugar in it that the spoon won’t move and will drink it out of the saucer if they think it’s too hot. And do so with appreciative noises more generally associated with the cheaper type of plumbing system. Legs of toad and so on might be better than this.
Then there’s the mystic ointments. By sheer luck, the artists and writers are on firmer ground here. Most witches are elderly, which is when ointments start to have an attraction, and at least two of those present tonight were wearing Granny Weatherwax’s famous goose-grease-and-sage chest liniment. This didn’t make you fly and see visions, but it did prevent colds, if only because the distressing smell that developed around about the second week kept everyone else so far away you couldn’t catch anything from them.
And finally there’s sabbats themselves. Your average witch is not, by nature, a social animal as far as other witches are concerned. There’s a conflict of dominant personalities. There’s a group of ringleaders without a ring. The natural size of a coven is one.
‘I can’t be having with f
oreign parts,’ said Granny Weather wax.
‘You’ve been to Ankh-Morpork,’ said Nanny mildly. ‘That’s foreign.’
‘No it’s not. It’s just a long way off
Magrat would be the first to admit that she had an open mind. It was as open as a field, as open as the sky. No mind could be more open without special surgical implements. And she was always waiting for something to fill it up.
*
‘I used to come over here quite often to look at Desiderata’s 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.
*
Magrat has adopted trousers as practical wear for travelling by broomstick.
‘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.’
*
To the rest of the world he was an enormous tomcat, a parcel of incredibly indestructible life forces in a skin that looked less like a fur than a piece of bread that had been left in a damp place for a fortnight. Ferocious dogs would whine and hide under the stairs when Greebo sauntered down the street. Foxes kept away from the village. Wolves made a detour.
‘He’s an old softie really,’ said Nanny.
*
Above the noise of the river they could all hear, now, the steady slosh-slosh of another craft heading towards them.
‘Someone’s following us!’ hissed Magrat.
Two pale glows appeared at the edge of the lamplight. Eventually they turned out to be the eyes of a small grey creature, vaguely froglike, paddling towards them on a log.
It reached the boat. Long clammy fingers grabbed the side, and a lugubrious face rose level with Nanny Ogg’s.
‘ ’ullo,’ it said. ‘It’sss my birthday.’
All three of them stared at it for a while. Then Granny Weatherwax picked up an oar and hit it firmly over the head. There was a splash, and a distant cursing.
‘Horrible little bugger,’ said Granny, as they rowed on. ‘Looked like a troublemaker to me.’
*
‘Blessings be on this house,’ Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people’s minds on what other things might be on this house.
*
Sometimes Magrat really wondered about the others’ commitment to witchcraft. Half the time they didn’t seem to bother.
Take medicine, for example … Granny just gave people a bottle of coloured water and told them they felt a lot better.
And what was so annoying was that they often did.
Where was the witchcraft in that?
*
Granny Weatherwax waking up was quite an impressive sight, and one not seen by many people.
Most people, on waking up, accelerate through a quick panicky pre-consciousness check-up: who am I, where am I, who is he/she, good god, why am I cuddling a policeman’s helmet, what happened last nightl
And this is because people are riddled by Doubt.
Granny Weatherwax went straight from fast asleep to instant operation on all six cylinders. She never needed to find herself because she always knew who was doing the looking.
Vampires have risen from the dead,
the grave and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat.
Nanny Ogg sent a number of cards home to her family, not a single one of which got back before she did. This is traditional, and happens everywhere in the universe.
*
In a quiet little inn in a tiny country Granny Weatherwax sat and regarded the food with deep suspicion.
‘Good simple home cooking,’ said Granny. ‘That’s all I require. 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.’
Knowing how stories work is almost all the battle.
For example, when an obvious innocent sits down with three experienced card sharpers and says ‘How do you play this game, then?’, someone is about to be shaken down until their teeth fall out.
The dwarf bread was brought out for inspection. But it was miraculous, the dwarf bread. No one ever went hungry when they had some dwarf bread to avoid. You only had to look at it for a moment, and instantly you could think of dozens of things you’d rather eat. Your boots, for example. Mountains. Raw sheep. Your own foot.
*
There were only six suits of chain mail in the whole of Lancre, made on the basis of one-size-doesn’t-quite-fit-all.
*
‘When did you last have a bath, Esme?’
‘What do you mean, last? Baths is unhygienic,’ Granny declared. ‘You know I’ve never agreed with baths. Sittin’ around in your own dirt like that.’
‘What do you do, then?’ said Magrat.
‘I just washes,’ said Granny. ‘All the bits. You know. As and when they becomes available.’
*
Granny Weatherwax had never turned anyone into a frog. The way she saw it, there was a technically less cruel but cheaper and much more satisfying thing you could do. You could leave them human and make them think they were a frog, which also provided much innocent entertainment for passers-by.
*
‘I don’t mind criticism,’ said Granny. ‘You know me. I’ve never been one to take offence at criticism. No one could say I’m the sort to take offence at criticism—’
‘Not twice, anyway’ said Nanny.
*
People like Nanny Ogg turn up everywhere. It’s as if there’s some special morphic generator dedicated to the production of old women who like a laugh and aren’t averse to the odd pint, especially of some drink normally sold in very small glasses. You find them all over the place, often in pairs.†
*
Nanny Ogg quite liked cooking, provided there were other people around to do things like chop up the vegetables and wash the dishes afterwards.
*
‘That’s the trouble with second sight,’ Desiderata said. ‘You can see what’s happenin’, but you don’t know what it means. I’ve seen the future. There’s a coach made out of a pumpkin. And that’s impossible. And there’s coachmen made out of mice, which is unlikely. And there’s a clock striking midnight, and something about a glass slipper. And it’s all going to happen. Because that’s how stories have to work.’
*
But then Granny and Nanny have to try to stop the story from happening.
‘It’s no good, you know [said Lily Weatherwax]. You can’t stop this sort of thing. It has the momentum of inevitability. You can’t spoil a good story. I should know.’
She handed the slipper to the Prince, but without taking her eyes off Granny.
‘It’ll fit her,’ she said.
Two of the courtiers held Magrat’s leg as the Prince wrestled the slipper past her protesting toes.
‘There,’ said Lily, still without looking down. ‘And do stop trying that hedge-witch hypnotism on me, Esme.’
‘It fits,’ said the Prince, but in a doubtful tone of voice.
‘Yes, anything would fit,’ said a cheerful voice from somewhere towards the back of the crowd, ‘if you were allowed to put two pairs of hairy socks on first.’
Lily looked down. Then she looked at Magrat’s mask. She reached out and pulled it off.
‘Wrong girl,’ said Lily. ‘But it still doesn’t matter, Esme, because it is the right slipper. So all we have to do is find the gir
l whose foot it fits—’
There was a commotion at the back of the crowd. Courtiers parted, revealing Nanny Ogg.
‘If it’s a five-and-a-half narrow fit, I’m your man,’ she said. ‘Just let me get these boots off…’
‘I wasn’t referring to you, old woman,’ said Lily coldly.
‘Oh, yes you was,’ said Nanny. ‘We know how this bit goes, see. The Prince goes all round the city with the slipper, trying to find the girl whose foot fits. That’s what you was plannin’. So I can save you a bit of trouble, how about it?’
There was a flicker of uncertainty in Lily’s expression.
‘A girl,’ she said, ‘of marriageable age.’
‘No problem there,’ said Nanny cheerfully …
Nanny grabbed the slipper out of the Prince’s hands and, before anyone else could move, slid it on to her foot.
Then she waggled the foot in the air.
It was a perfect fit.
‘There!’ she said. ‘See? You could have wasted the whole day’
‘Especially because there must be hundreds of five-and-a-half—’
‘– narrow fit –’
‘—narrow fit wearers in a city this size,’ Granny went on. ‘Unless, of course, you happened to sort of go to the right house right at the start. If you had, you know, a lucky guess?’
‘But that’d be cheatin’,’ said Nanny.
She nudged the Prince.
‘I’d just like to add,’ she said, ‘that I don’t mind doin’ all the waving and opening things and other royal stuff, but I draw the line at sleepin’ in the same bed as sunny jim here.’
‘Because he doesn’t sleep in a bed,’ said Granny.
‘No, he sleeps in a pond,’ said Nanny.
‘Because he’s a frog,’ said Granny.
‘This is Greebo. Between you and me, he’s a fiend from hell.’
‘Well, he’s a cat,’ said Mrs Gogol. ‘It’s only to be expected.’
No one knew better than Granny Weatherwax that hats were important. They weren’t just clothing. Hats defined the head. They defined who you were. No one had ever heard of a wizard without a pointy hat - at least, no wizard worth speaking of. And you certainly never heard of a witch without one … It wasn’t the wearing of the hats that counted so much as having one to wear. Every trade, every craft had its hat. That’s why kings had hats. Take the crown off a king and all you had was someone good at having a weak chin and waving to people. Hats had power. Hats were important.