'Can't do that,' said Granny Weatherwax promptly.
* Desiderata had sent a note via Old Mother Dismass asking to be excused on account of being dead. Second sight enables you to keep a very tight rein on your social engagements.
'I'm doing four villages already. The broomstick hardly has time to cool down.'
'Well, with Mother Hollow passing on, we're definitely short handed,' said Gammer Brevis. 'I know she didn't do a lot, what with her other work, but she was there. That's what it's all about. Being there. There's got to be a local witch.'
The four witches stared gloomily at the fire. Well, three of them did. Nanny Ogg, who tended to look on the cheerful side, made toast.
'They've got a wizard in, down in Creel Springs,' said Gammer Brevis. 'There wasn't anyone to take over when old Granny Hopliss passed on, so they sent off to Ankh-Morpork for a wizard. An actual wizard. With a staff. He's got a shop there and everything, with a brass sign on the door. It says “Wizard”.'
The witches sighed.
'Mrs Singe passed on,' said Gammer Brevis. 'And Gammer Peavey passed on.'
'Did she? Old Mabel Peavey?' said Nanny Ogg, through a shower of crumbs. 'How old was she?'
'One hundred and nineteen,' said Gammer Brevis. 'I said to her, “You don't want to go climbing mountains at your age” but she wouldn't listen.'
'Some people are like that,' said Granny. 'Stubborn as mules. Tell them they mustn't do something and they won't stop till they've tried it.'
'I actually heard her very last words,' said Gammer.
'What did she say?' said Granny.
'As I recall, “oh bugger”,' said Gammer.
'It's the way she would have wanted to go,' said Nanny Ogg. The other witches nodded.
'You know ... we could be looking at the end of witchcraft in these parts,' said Gammer Brevis.
They stared at the fire again.
'I don't 'spect anyone's brought any marshmallows?' said Nanny Ogg, hopefully.
Granny Weatherwax looked at her sister witches. Gammer Brevis she couldn't stand; the old woman taught school on the other side of the mountain, and had a nasty habit of being reasonable when provoked. And Old Mother Dismass was possibly the most useless sibyl in the history of oracular revelation. And Granny really couldn't be having at all with Nanny Ogg, who was her best friend.
'What about young Magrat?' said Old Mother Dismass innocently. 'Her patch runs right alongside Desiderata's. Maybe she could take on a bit extra?'
Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg exchanged glances.
'She's gone funny in the head,' said Granny.
'Now, come on, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg. ' 'Well, I call it funny,' said Granny. 'You can't tell me that saying all that stuff about relatives isn't going funny in the head."
'She didn't say that,' said Nanny. 'She said she wanted to relate to herself.'
'That's what I said,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'I told her: Simplicity Garlick was your mother, Araminta Garlick was your granny. Yolande Garlick is your aunt and you're your . , . you're your me.'
She sat back with the satisfied look of someone who has solved everything anyone could ever want to know about a personal identity crisis.
'She wouldn't listen,' she added.
Gammer Brevis wrinkled her forehead.
'Magrat?' she said. She tried to get a mental picture of the Ramtops' youngest witch and recalled - well, not a face, just a slightly watery-eyed expression of hopeless goodwill wedged between a body like a maypole and hair like a haystack after a gale. A relentless doer of good works. A worrier. The kind of person who rescued small lost baby birds and cried when they died, which is the function kind old Mother Nature usually reserves for small lost baby birds.
'Doesn't sound like her,' she said.
'And she said she wanted to be more self-assertive,' said Granny.
'Nothing wrong with being self-assertive,' said Nanny. 'Self-asserting's what witching's all about.'
'I never said there was anything wrong with it,' said Granny. 'I told her there was nothing wrong with it. You can be as self-assertive as you like, I said, just so long as you do what you're told.'
'Rub this on and it'll clear up in a week or two,' said Old Mother Dismass.
The other three witches watched her expectantly, in case there was going to be anything else. It became clear that there wasn't.
'And she's running - what's that she's running, Gytha?' said Granny. •
'Self-defence classes,' said Nanny.
'But she's a witch,' Gammer Brevis pointed out.
'I told her that,' said Granny Weatherwax, who had walked nightly without fear in the bandit-haunted forests of the mountains all her life in the certain knowledge that the darkness held nothing more terrible than she was. 'She said that wasn't the point. Wasn't the point. That's what she said.'
'No-one goes to them, anyway,' said Nanny Ogg.
'I thought she was going to get married to the king,' said Gammer Brevis.
'Everyone did,' said Nanny. 'But you know Magrat. She tends to be open to Ideas. Now she says she refuses to be a sex object.'
They all thought about this. Finally Gammer Brevis said, slowly, in the manner of one surfacing from the depths of fascinated cogitation, 'But she's never been a sex object.'
'I'm pleased to say I don't even know what a sex object is,' said Granny Weatherwax firmly.
'I do,' said Nanny Ogg.
They looked at her.
'Our Shane brought one home from foreign parts once.'
They carried on looking at her.
'It was brown and fat and had beads on and a face and two holes for the string.'
This didn't seem to avert their gaze.
'Well, that's what he said it was,' said Nanny.
'I think you're talking about a fertility idol,' said Gammer Brevis helpfully.
Granny shook her head.
'Doesn't sound much like Magrat to me - ' she began.
'You can't tell me that's worth tuppence,' said Old Mother Dismass, from whatever moment of time she was currently occupying.
No-one was ever quite sure which it was.
It was an occupational hazard for those gifted with second sight. The human mind isn't really designed to be sent rocketing backwards and forwards along the great freeway of time and can become, as it were, detached from its anchorage, seeing randomly into the past and the future and only occasionally into the present. Old Mother Dismass was temporally unfocused. This meant that if you spoke to her in August she was probably listening to you in March. It was best just to say something now and hope she'd pick it up next time her mind was passing through.
Granny waved her hands experimentally in front of Old Mother Dismass's unseeing eyes.
'She's gone again,' she said.
'Well, if Magrat can't take it on there's Millie Hopgood from over Slice way,' said Gammer Brevis. 'She's a hardworking girl. Mind you, she's got a worse squint than Magrat.'
'Nothing wrong with that. A squint looks good on a witch,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'But you have to know how to use it,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Old Gertie Simmons used to have a squint and she was always putting the evil influence on the end of her own nose. We can't have people thinkin' that if you upsets a witch she curses and mutters and then her own nose drops off.'
They all stared at the fire again.
'I suppose Desiderata wouldn't have chosen her own successor?' said Gammer Brevis.
'Can't go doin' that,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'That's not how we do things in these parts.'
'Yes, but Desiderata didn't spend much time in these parts. It was the job. She was always going off to foreign parts.'
'I can't be having with foreign parts,' said Granny Weatherwax.
'You've been to Ankh-Morpork,' said Nanny mildly. 'That's foreign.'
'No it's not. It's just a long way off. That's not the same as foreign. Foreign's where they gabble at you in heathen lingo and eat foreign muck and worship, you know, objects,' said Granny Weatherwax, goodwill diplomat. 'Foreign can be quite close to, if you're not careful. Huh,' she added witheringly. 'Yes, she could bring back just about anything from foreign parts.'
'She brought me back a nice blue and white plate once,' said Nanny Ogg.
'That's a point,' said Gammer Brevis. 'Someone'd better go and see to her cottage. She had quite a lot of good stuff there. It'd be dreadful to think of some thief getting in there and having a rummage.'
'Can't imagine any thief'd want to break into a witch's - ' Granny began, and then stopped abruptly.
'Yes,' she said meekly. 'Good idea. I'll see to it directly.'
'No, I'll see to it,' said Nanny Ogg, who'd also had time to work something out. 'It's right on my way home. No problem.'
'No, you'll be wanting to get home early,' said Granny. 'Don't you bother yourself. It'd be no trouble.'
'Oh, it won't be any trouble at all,' said Nanny.
'You don't want to go tiring yourself out at your age,' said Granny Weatherwax.
They glared at one another.
'I really don't see that it matters,' said Gammer Brevis. 'You might as well go together rather than fight about it.'
'I'm a bit busy tomorrow,' said Granny. 'How about after lunch?'
'Right,' said Nanny Ogg. 'We'll meet at her cottage. Right after lunch.'
'We had one once but the bit you unscrew fell off and got lost,' said Old Mother Dismass.
Hurker the poacher shovelled the last of the earth into the hole. He felt he ought to say a few words.
'Well, that's about it, then,' he said.
She'd definitely been one of the better witches, he thought, as he wandered back to the cottage in the pre-dawn gloom. Some of the other ones - while of course being wonderful human beings, he added to himself hurriedly, as fine a bunch of women as you could ever hope to avoid - were just a bit overpowering. Mistress Hollow had been a listening kind of person.
On the kitchen table was a long package, a small pile of coins, and an envelope.
He opened the envelope, although it was not addressed to him.
Inside was a smaller envelope, and a note.
The note said: I'm watching you, Albert Hurker. Deliver the packige and the envlope and if you dare take a peek inside something dretful will happen to you. As a profesional Good Farey Godmother I aint allowed to curse anyone but I Predict it would probly involve bein bittern by an enraged wolf and your leg going green and runny and dropping off, dont arsk me how I know anyway you carnt because, I am dead. All the best, Desiderata.
He picked up the package with his eyes shut.
Light travels slowly in the Discworld's vast magical field, which means that time does too. As Nanny Ogg would put it, when it's teatime in Genua it's Tuesday over here . . .
In fact it was dawn in Genua. Lilith sat in her tower, using a mirror, sending her own image out to scan the world. She was searching.
Wherever there was a sparkle on a wave crest, wherever there was a sheet of ice, wherever there was a mirror or a reflection then Lilith knew she could see out. You didn't need a magic mirror. Any mirror would do, if you knew how to use it. And Lilith, crackling with the power of a million images, knew that very well.
There was just a nagging doubt. Presumably Desiderata would have got rid of it. Her sort were like that. Conscientious. And presumably it would be to that stupid girl with the watery eyes who sometimes visited the cottage, the one with all the cheap jewellery and the bad taste in clothes. She looked just the type.
But Lilith wanted to be sure. She hadn't got where she was today without being sure.
In puddles and windows all over Lancre, the face of Lilith appeared momentarily and then moved on ...
And now it was dawn in Lancre. Autumn mists rolled through the forest.
Granny Weatherwax pushed open the cottage door. It wasn't locked. The only visitor Desiderata had been expecting wasn't the sort to be put off by locks.
