Witches Abroad

'PSPSPS It has tendincy to resett to pumpkins but you will gett the hange of it in noe time.'

Magrat looked at the mirror again. And then down at the wand.

One minute life is simple, and then suddenly it stretches away full of complications.

'Oh, my,' she said. 'I'm a fairy godmother!'

Granny Weatherwax was still standing staring at the crazily-webbed fragments when Nanny Ogg ran in.

'Esme Weatherwax, what have you done? That's bad luck, that is ... Esme?'

'Her? Her?'

'Are you all right?'

Granny Weatherwax screwed up her eyes for a moment, and then shook her head as if trying to dislodge an unthinkable thought.

'What?'

'You've gone all pale. Never seen you go all pale like that before.'

Granny slowly removed a fragment of glass from her hat.

'Well... bit of a turn, the glass breaking like that. . .' she mumbled.

Nanny looked at Granny Weatherwax's hand. It was bleeding. Then she looked at Granny Weatherwax's face, and decided that she'd never admit that she'd looked at Granny Weatherwax's hand.

'Could be a sign,' she said, randomly selecting a safe topic. 'Once someone dies, you get that sort of thing. Pictures fallin' off walls, clocks stopping . . . great big wardrobes falling down the stairs . . . that sort of thing.'

'I've never believed in that stuff, it's . . . what do you mean, wardrobes falling down the stairs?' said Granny. She was breathing deeply. If it wasn't well known that Granny Weatherwax was tough, anyone might have thought she had just had the shock of her life and was practically desperate to take part in a bit of ordinary everyday bickering.

'That's what happened after my Great-Aunt Sophie died,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Three days and four hours and six minutes to the very minute after she died, her wardrobe fell down the stairs. Our Darren and our Jason were trying to get it round the bend and it sort of slipped, just like that. Uncanny. Weeell, I wasn't going to leave it there for her Agatha, was I, only ever visited her mum on Hogswatchday, and it was me that nursed Sophie all the way through to the end - '

Granny let the familiar, soothing litany of Nanny Ogg's family feud wash over her as she groped for the teacups.

The Oggs were what is known as an extended family - in fact not only extended but elongated, protracted and persistent. No normal sheet of paper could possibly trace their family tree, which in any case was more like a mangrove thicket. And every single branch had a low-key, chronic vendetta against every other branch, based on such well-established causes celebres as What Their Kevin Said About Our Stan At Cousin Di's Wedding and Who Got The Silver Cutlery That Auntie Em Promised Our Doreen Was To Have After She Died, I'd Like To Know, Thank You Very Much, #You Don't Mind.

Nanny Ogg, as undisputed matriarch, encouraged all sides indiscriminately. It was the nearest thing she had to a hobby.

The Oggs contained, in just one family, enough feuds to keep an entire Ozark of normal hillbillies going for a century.

And sometimes this encouraged a foolish outsider to join in and perhaps make an uncomplimentary remark about one Ogg to another Ogg. Whereupon every single Ogg would turn on him, every part of the family closing up together like the parts of a well-oiled, blue-steeled engine to deal instant merciless destruction to the interloper.

Ramtop people believed that the Ogg feud was a blessing. The thought of them turning their immense energy on the world in general was a terrible one. Fortunately, there was no-one an Ogg would rather fight than another Ogg. It was family.

Odd things, families, when you came to think of it...

'Esme? You all right?'

'What?'

'You've got them cups rattling like nobody's business! And tea all over the tray.'

Granny looked down blankly at the mess, and rallied as best she could.

'Not my damn fault if the damn cups are too small,' she muttered.

The door opened.

'Morning, Magrat,' she added, without looking around. 'What're you doing here?'

It was something about the way the hinges creaked. Magrat could even open a door apologetically.

The younger witch sidled speechlessly into the room, face beetroot red, arms held behind her back.

'We'd just popped in to sort out Desiderata's things, as our duty to a sister witch,' said Granny loudly.

'And not to look for her magic wand,' said Nanny.

'Gytha Ogg!'

Nanny Ogg looked momentarily guilty, and then hung her head.

'Sorry, Esme.'

Magrat brought her arms around in front of her.

'Er,' she said, and blushed further.

'You found it!' said Nanny.

'Uh, no,' said Magrat, not daring to look Granny in the eyes. 'Desiderata gave it to ... me.'

The silence crackled and hummed.

'She gave it to you? said Granny Weatherwax.

'Uh. Yes.'

Nanny and Granny looked at one another.

'Well!' said Nanny.

'She does know you, doesn't she?' demanded Granny, turning back to Magrat.

'I used to come over here quite often to look at her 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-hal Curryin' favour!' snapped Granny.

'But I never thought she'd leave me the wand,' said Magrat. 'Really I didn't!'

'There's probably some mistake,' said Nanny Ogg kindly. 'She probably wanted you to give it to one of us.'

'That'll be it, right enough,' said Granny. 'She knew you were good at running errands and so on. Let's have a look at it.'

She held out her hand.

Magrat's knuckles tightened on the wand.

'. . . she gave it me . . .' she said, in a tiny voice.

'Her mind was definitely wandering towards the end,' said Granny.

'. . . she gave it me . . .'

'Fairy godmotherin's a terrible responsibility,' said Nanny. 'You got to be resourceful and flexible and tactful and able to deal with complicated affairs of the heart and stuff. Desiderata would have known that.'

'. . . yes, but she gave it me . . .'

'Magrat Garlick, as senior witch I command you to give me the wand,' said Granny. 'They cause nothing but trouble!'

'Hold on, hold on,' said Nanny. 'That's going a bit far-'

'. . . no . . .' said Magrat.

'Anyway, you ain't senior witch,' said Nanny. 'Old Mother Dismass is older'n you.'

'Shut up. Anyway, she's non compost mental,' said Granny.

'. . . you can't order me. Witches are non-hierarchical . . .' said Magrat.

'That is wanton behaviour, Magrat Garlick!'

'No it's not,' said Nanny Ogg, trying to keep the peace. 'Wanton behaviour is where you go around without wearing any - '

She stopped. Both of the older witches watched a small piece of paper fall out of Magrat's sleeve and zigzag down to the floor. Granny darted forward and snatched it up.

'Aha!' she said triumphantly. 'Let's see what Desiderata really said ..."

Her lips moved as she read the note. Magrat tried to wind herself up tighter.

A couple of muscles flickered on Granny's face. Then, calmly, she screwed up the note.

'Just as I thought,' she said, 'Desiderata says we are to give Magrat all the help we can, what with her being young and everything. Didn't she, Magrat?'

Magrat looked up into Granny's face.

You could call her out, she thought. The note was very clear. . . well, the bit about the older witches was, anyway . . . and you could make her read it aloud. It's as plain as day. Do you want to be third witch forever? And then the flame of rebellion, burning in a very unfamiliar hearth, died.

'Yes,' she muttered hopelessly, 'something like that.'

'It says it's very important we go to some place somewhere to help someone marry a prince,' said Granny.

'It's Genua,' said Magrat. 'I looked it up in Desiderata's books. And we've got to make sure she doesn't marry a prince.'

'A fairy godmother stopping a girl from marryin“ a prince?' said Nanny. 'Sounds a bit... contrary.”

'Should be an easy enough wish to grant, anyway,' said Granny. 'Millions of girls don't marry a prince.'

Magrat made an effort.

'Genua really is a long way away,' she said.

'I should 'ope so,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'The last thing we want is foreign parts up close.'

'I mean, there'll be a lot of travelling,' said Magrat wretchedly. 'And you're . . . not as young as you were.'

There was a long, crowded silence.

'We start tomorrow,' said Granny Weatherwax firmly.

'Look,' said Magrat desperately, 'why don't I go by myself?'

' 'Cos you ain't experienced at fairy godmothering,' said Granny Weatherwax.

This was too much even for Magrat's generous soul.

'Well, nor are you,' she said.

'That's true,' Granny conceded. 'But the point is ... the point is ... the point is we've not been experienced for a lot longer than you.'

'We've got a lot of experience of not having any experience,' said Nanny Ogg happily.

"That's what counts every time,' said Granny.

There was only one small, speckled mirror in Granny's house. When she got home, she buried it at the bottom of the garden.

'There,' she said. 'Now trying spyin' on me.'

It never seemed possible to people that Jason Ogg, master blacksmith and farrier, was Nanny Ogg's son. He didn't look as if he could possibly have been born, but as if he must have been constructed. In a shipyard. To his essentially slow and gentle nature genetics had seen fit to add muscles that should have gone to a couple of bullocks, arms like treetrunks, and legs like four beer barrels stacked in twos.

To his glowing forge were brought the stud stallions, the red-eyed and foam-flecked kings of the horse nation, the soup-plate-hoofed beasts that had kicked lesser men through walls. But Jason Ogg knew the secret of the mystic Horseman's Word, and he would go alone into the forge, politely shut the door, and lead the creature out again after half an hour, newly shod and strangely docile.*

Behind his huge brooding shape clustered the rest of Nanny Ogg's endless family and a lot of other townsfolk who, seeing some interesting activity involving witches, couldn't resist the opportunity for what was known in the Ramtops as a good oggle.

'We'm off then, our Jason,' said Nanny Ogg. 'They do say the streets in foreign parts are paved with gold. I could prob'ly make my fortune, eh?'

Jason's hairy brow creased in intense thought.

'Us could do with a new anvil down forge,' he volunteered.

* Granny Weatherwax had once pressed him about this, and since there are no secrets from a witch, he'd shyly replied, 'Well, ma'am, what happens is, I gets hold of 'un and smacks 'un between the eyes with hammer before 'un knows what's 'appening, and then I whispers in his ear, I sez, “Cross me, you bugger, and I'll have thy goolies on t'anvil, thou knows I can.”'

'If I come back rich, you won't never have to go down the forge ever again,' said Nanny.

Jason frowned.

'But I likes t'forge,' he said, slowly.

Nanny looked momentarily taken aback. 'Well, then -then you shall have an anvil made of solid silver.'

'Wunt be no good, ma. It'd be too soft,' said Jason.

'If I brings you back an anvil made of solid silver you shall have an anvil made of solid silver, my lad, whether you likes it or not!'

Jason hung his huge head. 'Yes, mum,' he said.

'You see to it that someone comes in to keep the house aired every day reg'lar,' said Nanny. 'I want a fire lit in that grate every morning.'

'Yes, mum.'

'And everyone's to go in through the back door, you hear? I've put a curse on the front porch. Where's those girls got to with my luggage?' She scurried off, a small grey bantam scolding a flock of hens.