Wyrd Sisters

'What are you going to try?' said Granny. Since they were on Nanny's territory, the choice was entirely up to her.

'I always say you can't go wrong with a good Invocation,' said Nanny. 'Haven't done one for years.'

Granny Weatherwax frowned. Magrat said, 'Oh, but you can't. Not here. You need a cauldron, and a magic sword. And an octogram. And spices, and all sorts of stuff.'

Granny and Nanny exchanged glances.

'It's not her fault,' said Granny. 'It's all them grimmers she was bought.' She turned to Magrat.

'You don't need none of that,' she said. 'You need head-ology.' She looked around the ancient washroom.

'You just use whatever you've got,' she said.

She picked up the bleached copper stick, and weighed it thoughtfully in her hand.

'We conjure and abjure thee by means of this—' Granny hardly paused – 'sharp and terrible copper stick.'

The waters in the boiler rippled gently.

'See how we scatter—' Magrat sighed – 'rather old washing soda and some extremely hard soap flakes in thy honour. Really, Nanny, I don't think—'

'Silence! Now you, Gytha.'

'And I invoke and bind thee with the balding scrubbing brush of Art and the washboard of Protection,' said Nanny, waving it. The wringer attachment fell off.

'Honesty is all very well,' whispered Magrat, wretchedly, 'but somehow it isn't the same.'

'You listen to me, my girl,' said Granny. 'Demons don't care about the outward shape of things. It's what you think that matters. Get on with it.'

Magrat tried to imagine that the bleached and ancient bar of lye soap was the rarest of scented whatever, ungulants or whatever they were, from distant Klatch. It was an effort. The gods alone knew what kind of demon would respond to a summoning like this.

Granny was also a little uneasy. She didn't much care for demons in any case, and all this business with incantations and implements whiffed of wizardry. It was pandering to the things, making them feel important. Demons ought to come when they were called.

But protocol dictated that the host witch had the choice, and Nanny quite liked demons, who were male, or apparently so.

At this point Granny was alternately cajoling and threatening the nether world with two feet of bleached wood. She was impressed at her own daring.

The waters seethed a little, became very still and then, with a sudden movement and a little popping noise, mounded up into a head. Magrat dropped her soap.

It was a good-looking head, maybe a little cruel around the eyes and beaky about the nose-, but nevertheless handsome in a hard kind of way. There was nothing surprising about this; since the demon was only extending an image of itself into this reality, it might as well make a good job of it. It turned slowly, a gleaming black statue in the fitful moonlight.

'Well?' it said.

'Who're you?' said Granny, bluntly.

The head revolved to face her.

'My name is unpronounceable in your tongue, woman,' it said.

'I'll be the judge of that,' warned Granny, and added, 'Don't you call me woman.'

'Very well. My name is WxrtHltl-jwlpklz,' said the demon smugly.

'Where were you when the vowels were handed out? Behind the door?' said Nanny Ogg.

'Well, Mr— Granny hesitated only fractionally – 'WxrtHltl-jwlpklz, I expect you're wondering why we called you here tonight.'

'You're not supposed to say that,' said the demon. ' You're supposed to say—'

'Shut up. We have the sword of Art and the octogram of Protection, I warn you.'

'Please yourself. They look like a washboard and a copper stick to me,' sneered the demon.

Granny glanced sideways. The corner of the washroom was stacked with kindling wood, with a big heavy sawhorse in front of it. She stared fixedly at the demon and, without looking, brought the stick down hard across the, thick timber.

The dead silence that followed was broken only by the two perfectly-sliced halves of the sawhorse teetering backwards and forwards and folding slowly into the heap of kindling.

The demon's face remained impassive.

'You are allowed three questions,' it said.

'Is there something strange at large in the kingdom?' said Granny.

It appeared to think about it.

'And no lying,' said Magrat earnestly. 'Otherwise it'll be the scrubbing brush for you.'

'You mean stranger than usual?'

'Get on with it,' said Nanny. 'My feet are freezing out here.'

'No. There is nothing strange.'

'But we felt it—' Magrat began.

'Hold on, hold on,' said Granny. Her lips moved soundlessly. Demons were like genies or philosophy professors — if you didn't word things exactly right, they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate and completely misleading answers.

'Is there something in the kingdom that wasn't there before?' she hazarded.

'No.'

Tradition said that there could be only three questions. Granny tried to formulate one that couldn't be deliberately misunderstood. Then she decided that this was playing the wrong kind of game.

'What the hell's going on?' she said carefully. 'And no mucking about trying to wriggle out of it, otherwise I'll boil you.'

The demon appeared to hesitate. This was obviously a new approach.

'Magrat, just kick that kindling over here, will you?' said Granny.

'I protest at this treatment,' said the demon, its voice tinged with uncertainty.

'Yes, well, we haven't got time to bandy legs with you all night,' said Granny. These word games might be all right for wizards, but we've got other fish to fry.'

'Or boil,' said Nanny.

'Look,' said the demon, and now there was a whine of terror in its voice. 'We're not supposed to volunteer information just like that. There are rules, you know.'

'There's some old oil in the can on the shelf, Magrat,' said Nanny.

'If I simply tell you—' the demon began.

'Yes?' said Granny, encouragingly.

'You won't let on, will you?' it implored.

'Not a word,' promised Granny.

'Lips are sealed,' said Magrat.

'There is nothing new in the kingdom,' said the demon, 'but the land has woken up.'

'What do you mean?' said Granny.

'It's unhappy. It wants a king that cares for it.'

'How—' Magrat began, but Granny waved her into silence.

'You don't mean people, do you?' she said. The glistening head shook. 'No, I didn't think so.'

'What—' Nanny began. Granny put a finger to her lips.

She turned and walked to the washhouse's window, a dusty spiderweb graveyard of faded butterfly wings and last summer's bluebottles. A faint glow beyond the frosted panes suggested that, against all reason, a new day would soon dawn.

'Can you tell us why?' she said, without turning round. She'd felt the mind of a whole country . . .

She was rather impressed.

'I'm just a demon. What do I know? Only what is, not the why and how of it.'

'I see.'

'May I go now?'

'Um?'

'Please?'

Granny jerked upright again.

'Oh. Yes. Run along,' she said distractedly. 'Thank you.'

The head didn't move. It hung around, like a hotel porter who has just carried fifteen suitcases up ten flights of stairs, shown everyone where the bathroom is, plumped up the pillows, and feels he has adjusted all the curtains he is going to adjust.

'You wouldn't mind banishing me, would you?' said the demon, when no-one seemed to be taking the hint.

'What?' said Granny, who was thinking again.

'Only I'd feel better for being properly banished. “Run along” lacks that certain something,' said the head.

'Oh. Well, if it gives you any pleasure. Magrat!'

'Yes?' said Magrat, startled.

Granny tossed the copper stick to her.

'Do the honours, will you?' she said.

Magrat caught the stick by what she hoped Granny was imagining as the handle, and smiled.

'Certainly. Right. Okay. Um. Begone, foul fiend, unto the blackest pit—'

The head smiled contentedly as the words rolled over it. This was more like it.

It melted back into the waters of the copper like candlewax under a flame. Its last contemptuous comment, almost lost in the swirl, was, 'Run aaaalonggg . . .'

Granny went home alone as the cold pink light of dawn glided across the snow, and let herself into her cottage.

The goats were uneasy in their outhouse. The starlings muttered and rattled their false teeth under the roof. The mice were squeaking behind the kitchen dresser.

She made a pot of tea, conscious that every sound in the kitchen seemed slightly louder than it ought to be. When she dropped the spoon into the sink it sounded like a bell being hit with a hammer.

She always felt uncomfortable after getting involved in organised magic or, as she would put it, out of sorts with herself. She found herself wandering around the place looking for things to do and then forgetting them when they were half-complete. She paced back and forth across the cold flagstones.

It is at times like this that the mind finds the oddest jobs to do in order to avoid its primary purpose, i.e., thinking about things. If anyone had been watching they would have been amazed at the sheer dedication with which Granny tackled such tasks as cleaning the teapot stand, rooting ancient nuts out of the fruit bowl on the dresser, and levering fossilised bread crusts out of the cracks in the flagstones with the back of a teaspoon.

Animals had minds. People had minds, although human minds were vague foggy things. Even insects had minds, little pointy bits of light in the darkness of non-mind.

Granny considered herself something of an expert on minds. She was pretty certain things like countries didn't have minds.

They weren't even alive, for goodness sake. A country was, well, was—

Hold on. Hold on . . . A thought stole gently into Granny's mind and sheepishly tried to attract her attention.

There was a way in which those brooding forests could have a mind. Granny sat up, a piece of antique loaf in her hand, and gazed speculatively at the fireplace. Her mind's eye looked through it, out at the snow-filled aisles of trees. Yes. It had never occurred to her before. Of course, it'd be a mind made up of all the other little minds inside it; plant minds, bird minds, bear minds, even the great slow minds of the trees themselves . . .

She sat down in her rocking chair, which started to rock all by itself.

She'd often thought of the forest as a sprawling creature, but only metterforicaily, as a wizard would put it; drowsy and purring with bumblebees in the summer, roaring and raging in autumn gales, curled in on itself and sleeping in the winter. It occurred to her that in addition to being a collection of other things, the forest was a thing in itself. Alive, only not alive in the way that, say, a shrew was alive.

And much slower.

That would have to be important. How fast did a forest's heart beat? Once a year, maybe. Yes, that sounded about right. Out there the forest was waiting for the brighter sun and longer days that would pump a million gallons of sap several hundred feet into the sky in one great systolic thump too big and loud to be heard.

And it was at about this point that Granny bit her lip.

She'd just thought the word 'systolic', and it certainly wasn't in her vocabulary.

Somebody was inside her head with her.

Some thing.

Had she just thought all those thoughts, or had they been thought through her?

She glared at the floor, trying to keep her ideas to herself. But her mind was being watched as easily as if her head was made of glass.

Granny Weatherwax got to her feet and opened the curtains.

And they were out there on what – in warmer months -was the lawn. And every single one of them was staring at her.