Witches Abroad

Afterwards, Nanny suggested that they walk for a while. It was a nice day, she said. This was an interesting kind of forest, she said, with lots of new herbs which could do with bein' looked at. Everyone'd feel better for a stroll in the sunshine, she said. It'd improve their tempers.

And it was, indeed, a nice forest. After half an hour or so, even Granny Weatherwax was prepared to admit that in certain respects it wasn't totally foreign and shoddy. Magrat wandered off the path occasionally, picking flowers. Nanny even sang a few verses of 'A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End' with no more than a couple of token protests from the other two.

But there was still something wrong. Nanny Ogg and Magrat could feel something between them and Granny Weatherwax, some sort of mental wall, something important deliberately hidden and unsaid. Witches usually had few secrets from one another, if only because they were all so nosy that there was never any chance to have secrets. It was worrying.

And then they turned a corner by a stand of huge oak trees and met the little girl in the red cloak.

She was skipping along in the middle of the path, singing a song that was simpler and a good deal cleaner than any in Nanny Ogg's repertoire. She didn't see the witches until she was almost on top of them. She stopped, and then smiled innocently.

'Hello, old women,' she said.

'Ahem,' said Magrat.

Granny Weatherwax bent down.

'What're you doing out in the forest all by yourself, young lady?'

'I'm taking this basket of goodies to my granny,' said the girl.

Granny straightened up, a faraway look in her eyes.

'Esme,' said Nanny Ogg urgently.

'I know. I know,' said Granny.

Magrat leaned down and set her face in the idiot grimace generally used by adults who'd love to be good with children and don't stand a dog's chance of ever achieving it. 'Er. Tell me, Miss . . . did your mother tell you to watch out for any bad wolves that might happen to be in the vicinity?'

'That's right.'

'And your granny . . .' said Nanny Ogg. 'I guess she's a bit bed-bound at the moment, right?'

'That's why I'm taking her this basket of goodies - ' the child began.

'Thought so.'

'Do you know my granny?' said the child.

'Ye-ess,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'In a way.'

'It happened over Skund way when I was a girl,' said Nanny Ogg quietly. 'They never even found the gran - '

'And where is your granny's cottage, little girl?' said Granny Weatherwax loudly, nudging Nanny sharply in the ribs.

The girl pointed up a side track.

'You're not the wicked witch, are you?' she said.

Nanny Ogg coughed.

'Me? No. We're - we're - ' Granny began.

'Fairies,' said Magrat.

Granny Weatherwax's mouth dropped open. Such an explanation would never have occurred to her.

'Only my mummy warned me about the wicked witch too,' said the girl. She gave Magrat a sharp look. 'What kind of fairies?'

'Er. Flower fairies?' said Magrat. 'Look, I've got a wand -'

'Which ones?'

'What?'

'Which flowers?'

I2O

'Er,' said Magrat. 'Well. I'm . . . Fairy Tulip and that's ..." she avoided looking directly at Granny, '. . . Fairy . . . Daisy . . . and this is . . .'

'Fairy Hedgehog,' said Nanny Ogg.

This addition to the supernatural pantheon was given duc consideration.

'You can't be Fairy Hedgehog,' said the child, after some thought. 'A hedgehog's not a flower.'

'How do you know?'

' 'Cos it's got spikes.'

'So's holly. And thistles.'

'Oh.'

'And I've got a wand,' said Magrat. Only now did she risk a look at Fairy Daisy.

'We ought to be getting along,' said Granny Weather-wax. 'You just stay here with Fairy Tulip, I think it was, and we'll just go and make sure your granny's all right. All right?'

'I bet it's not a real wand,' said the child, ignoring her and facing Magrat with a child's unerring ability to find a weak link in any chain. 'I bet it can't turn things into things.'

'Well - ' Magrat began.

'I bet,' said the girl, 'I bet you can't turn that tree stump over there into . . . into . . . into a pumpkin. Haha, bet you anything you can't. Bet you a trillion dollars you can't turn that stump into a pumpkin.'

'I can see the two of you are going to get along fine,' said Fairy Hedgehog. 'We won't be long.'

Two broomsticks skimmed low above the forest path.

'Could just be coincidence,' said Nanny Ogg.

' 'T'aint,' said Granny. "The child even has a red cloak on!'

'I had a red cloak when I was fifteen,' said Nanny.

'Yes, but your granny lived next door. You didn't have to worry about wolves when you visited her,' said Granny.

'Except old Sumpkins the lodger.'

'Yes, but that was just coincidence.'

A trail of blue smoke drifted among the trees ahead of them. Somewhere away to one side there was the sound of a falling tree.

'Woodcutters!' said Nanny. 'It's all right if there's woodcutters! One of them rushes in - '

'That's only what children get told,' said Granny, as they sped onwards. 'Anyway, that's no good to the grandmother, is it? She's already been et!'

'I always hated that story,' said Nanny. 'No-one ever cares what happens to poor defenceless old women.'

The path vanished abruptly on the edge of a glade. Hemmed in by the trees was a straggly kitchen garden, in which a few pathetic stalks fought for what little sun there was. In the middle of the garden was what had to be a thatched cottage because no-one would build a haystack that badly.

They leapt off the broomsticks, leaving them to drift to a halt in the bushes, and hammered on the cottage door.

'We could be too late,' said Nanny. 'The wolf might - '

After a while there was the muffled sound of someone shuffling across the floor within, and then the door opened a crack. A suspicious eye was visible in the gloom.

'Yes?' said a small and quavering voice from somewhere beneath the eye.

'Are you grandmother?' Granny Weatherwax demanded.

'Are you the taxgatherers, dear?'

'No, ma'am, we're - '

'- fairies,' said Fairy Hedgehog quickly.

'I don't open the door to people I don't know, dear,' said the voice, and then it took on a slightly petulant tone. ' 'Specially people who never does the washing up even after I leaves out a bowl of nearly fresh milk for 'em.'

'We'd like to talk to you for a few minutes,' said Fairy Daisy.

'Yes? Have you got any identification, dear?'

'I know we've got the right grandmother,' said Fairy Hedgehog. 'There's a family likeness. She's got big ears.'

'Look, it's not her that's got the big ears,' snapped Fairy Daisy. 'It'll be the wolf that's got big ears. That's the whole point. Don't you ever pay attention?'

The grandmother watched them with interest. After a lifetime of believing in them she was seeing fairies for the first time, and it was an experience. Granny Weatherwax caught her perplexed expression.

'Put it like this, ma'am,' she said, in a despotically reasonable tone of voice, 'how would you like to be eaten alive by a wolf?'

'I don't think I would like that, dear, no,' said the hidden grandmother.

'The alternative's us,' said Granny.

'Lawks. Are you sure?'

'On our word as fairies,' said Fairy Hedgehog.

'Well. Really? All right. You can come in. But none of your tricks. And mind you do the washing up. You haven't got a pot of gold about you, have you?'

"That's pixies, isn't it?'

'No, they're the ones in wells. It's goblins she means."

'Don't be daft. They're the ones you get under bridges.'

'That's trolls. Everyone knows that's trolls.'

'Not us, anyway.'

'Oh,' said the grandmother. 'I might have known.'

Magrat liked to think she was good with children, and worried that she wasn't. She didn't like them very much, and worried about this too. Nanny Ogg seemed to be effortlessly good with children by alternately and randomly giving them either a sweet or a thick ear, while Granny Weatherwax ignored them for most of the time and that seemed to work just as well. Whereas Magrat cared. It didn't seem fair.

'Bet you a million trillion zillion dollars you can't turn that bush into a pumpkin,' said the child.

'But, look, all the others got turned into pumpkins,' Magrat pointed out.

'It's bound not to work sooner or later,' said the child placidly.

Magrat looked helplessly at the wand. She'd tried everything- wishing, sub-vocalizing and even, when she'd thought the other witches were out of earshot, banging it against things and shouting, 'Anything but pumpkins!'

'You don't know how to do it really, do you,' stated the child.

'Tell me,' said Magrat, 'you said your mummy knows about the big bad wolf in the woods, didn't you?'

'That's right.'

'But nevertheless she sent you out by yourself to take those goodies to your granny?'

"That's right. Why?'

'Nothing. Just thinking. And you owe me a million trillion zillion squillion dollars.'

There's a certain freemasonry about grandmothers, with the added benefit that no-one has to stand on one leg or recite any oaths in order to join. Once inside the cottage, and with a kettle on the boil, Nanny Ogg was quite at home. Greebo stretched out in front of the meagre fire and dozed off as the witches tried to explain.

'I don't see how a wolf can get in here, dear,' said the grandmother kindly. 'I mean, they're wolves. They can't open doors.'

Granny Weatherwax twitched aside a rag of curtain and glared out at the clearing.

'We know,' she said.

Nanny Ogg nodded towards the little bed in an alcove by the fireplace.

'Is that where you always sleep?' she said.

'When I'm feeling poorly, dear. Other times I sleeps in the attic.'

'I should get along up there now, if I was you. And take my cat up with you, will you? We don't want him getting in the way.'

'Is this the bit where you clean the house and do all the washing for a saucer of milk?' said the grandmother hopefully.

'Could be. You never know.'

'Funny, dear. I was expecting you to be shorter - '

'We get out in the fresh air a lot,' said Nanny. 'Off you go now.'

That left the two of them. Granny Weatherwax looked around the cave-like room. The rushes on the floor were well on the way to composthood. Soot encrusted the cobwebs on the ceiling.

The only way housework could be done in this place was with a shovel or, for preference, a match.

'Funny, really,' said Nanny, when the old woman had climbed the rickety stairs. 'She's younger'n me. Mind you, I take exercise.'

'You never took exercise in your life,' said Granny Weatherwax, still watching the bushes. 'You never did anything you didn't want to do.'

'That's what I mean,' said Nanny happily. 'Look, Esme, I still say this could all be just - '

'It ain't! I can feel the story. Someone's been making stories happen in these parts, I know it.'

'And you know who, too. Don't you, Esme?' said Nanny slyly.

She saw Granny look around wildly at the grubby walls.

'I reckon she's too poor to afford a mirror,' said Nanny. 'I ain't blind, Esme. And I know mirrors and fairy godmothers go together. So what's going on?'

'I ain't saying. I don't want to look a fool if I'm wrong. I'm not going to - there's something coming!'

Nanny Ogg pressed her nose against the dirty window.

'Can't see anything.'

"The bushes moved. Get into the bed!'

'Me? I thought it was you who was going into the bed!'

'Can't imagine why you'd think that.'

'No. Come to think of it, neither can I,' said Nanny wearily. She picked up the floppy mob-cap from the bedpost, put it on, and slid under the patchwork quilt.