Wyrd Sisters

'But,' the Fool continued, 'this policy has met with fanatical opposition.'

'What?'

'People don't like it.'

The duchess exploded. 'What does that matter?' she roared. 'We rule! They will do what we say or they will be pitilessly executed!'

The Fool bobbed and capered and waved his hands in a conciliatory fashion.

'But, my love, we will run out of people,' murmured the duke.

'No need, no need!' said the Fool desperately. 'You don't have to do that at all! What you do is, you—' he paused for a moment, his lips moving quickly – 'you embark upon a far-reaching and ambitious plan to expand the agricultural industry, provide long-term employment in the sawmills, open new land for development, and reduce the scope for banditry.'

This time the duke looked baffled. 'How will I do that?' he said.

'Chop down the forests.'

'But you said—'

'Shut up, Felmet,' said the duchess. She subjected the Fool to another long, thoughtful stare.

'Exactly how,' she said, eventually, 'does one go about knocking over the houses of people one does not like?'

'Urban clearance,' said the Fool.

'I was thinking of burning them down.'

'Hygienic urban clearance,' the Fool added promptly.

'And sowing the ground with salt.'

'Marry, I suspect that is hygienic urban clearance and a programme of environmental improvements. It might be a good idea to plant a few trees as well.'

'No more trees!' shouted Felmet.

'Oh, it's all right. They won't survive. The important thing is to have planted them.'

'But I also want us to raise taxes,' said the duchess.

'Why, nuncle—'

'And I am not your nuncle.'

'N'aunt?' said the Fool.

'No.'

'Why . . . prithee . . . you need to finance your ambitious programme for the country.'

'Sorry?' said the duke, who was getting lost again.

'He means that chopping down trees costs money,' said the duchess. She smiled at the Fool. It was the first time he had ever seen her look at him as if he was other than a disgusting little cockroach. There was still a large element of cockroach in her glance, but it said: good little cockroach, you have learned a trick.

'Intriguing,' she said. 'But can your words change the past?'

The Fool considered this.

'More easily, I think,' he said. 'Because the past is what people remember, and memories are words. Who knows how a king behaved a thousand years ago? There is only recollection, and stories. And plays, of course.'

'Ah, yes. I saw a play once,' said Felmet. 'Bunch of funny fellows in tights. A lot of shouting. The people liked it.'

'You tell me history is what people are told?' said the duchess.

The Fool looked around the throne room and found King Gruneberry the Good (906-967).

'Was he?' he said, pointing. 'Who knows, now? What was he good at? But he will be Gruneberry the Good until the end of the world.'

The duke was leaning forward in his throne, his eyes gleaming.

'I want to be a good ruler,' he said. 'I want people to like me. I would like people to remember me fondly.'

'Let us assume,' said the duchess, 'that there were other matters, subject to controversy. Matters of historical record that had . . . been clouded.'

'I didn't do it, you know,' said the duke, quickly. 'He slipped and fell. That was it. Slipped and fell. I wasn't even there. He attacked me. It was self-defence. That's it. He slipped and fell on his own dagger in self-defence.' His voice fell to a mumble. 'I have no recollection of it at this time,' he murmured. He rubbed his dagger hand, although the word was becoming inappropriate.

'Be quiet, husband,' snapped the duchess. 'I know you didn't do it. I wasn't there with you, you may recall. It was I who didn't hand you the dagger.' The duke shuddered again.

'And now, Fool,' said Lady Felmet. 'I was saying, I believe, that perhaps there are matters that should be properly recorded.'

'Marry, that you were not there at the time?' said the Fool, brightly.

It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone's mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them. If words were sweet little lambs, then the Fool watched them bound cheerfully away into the flamethrower of the duchess's glare.

'Not where?' she said.

'Anywhere,' said the Fool hastily.

'Stupid man! Everyone is somewhere.'

'I mean, you were everywhere but at the top of the stairs,' said the Fool.

'Which stairs?'

'Any stairs,' said the Fool, who was beginning to sweat. 'I distinctly remember not seeing you!'

The duchess eyed him for a while.

'So long as you remember it,' she said. The duchess rubbed her chin, which made an audible rasping noise.

'Reality is only weak words, you say. Therefore, words are reality. But how can words become history?'

'It was a very good play, the play that I saw,' said Felmet dreamily. 'There were fights, and no-one really died. Some very good speeches, I thought.'

There was another sandpapery sound from the duchess.

'Fool?' she said.

'Lady?'

'Can you write a play? A play that will go around the world, a play that will be remembered long after rumour has died?'

'No, lady. It is a special talent.'

'But can you find someone who has it?'

'There are such people, lady.'

'Find one,' murmured the duke. 'Find the best. Find the best. The truth will out. Find one.'

The storm was resting. It didn't want to be, but it was. It had spent a fortnight understudying a famous anticyclone over the Circle Sea, turning up every day, hanging around in the cold front, grateful for a chance to uproot the occasional tree or whirl a farmhouse to any available emerald city of its choice. But the big break in the weather had never come.

It consoled itself with the thought that even the really great storms of the past – the Great Gale of 1789, for example, or Hurricane Zelda and Her Amazing Raining Frogs – had gone through this sort of thing at some stage in their career. It was just part of the great tradition of the weather.

Besides, it had had a good stretch in the equivalent of pantomime down on the plains, bringing seasonal snow and terminal frostbite to millions. It just had to be philosophical about being back up here now with nothing much to do except wave the heather about. If weather was people, this storm would be filling in time wearing a cardboard hat in a hamburger hell.

Currently it was observing three figures moving slowly over the moor, converging with some determination on a bare patch where the standing stone stood, or usually stood, though just at the moment it wasn't visible.

It recognised them as old friends and connoisseurs, and conjured up a brief unseasonal roll of thunder as a form of greeting. This was totally ignored.

'The bloody stone's gone,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'However many there is of it.'

Her face was pale. It might also have been drawn; if so, then it was by a very neurotic artist. She looked as though she meant business. Bad business.

'Light the fire, Magrat,' she added automatically.

'I daresay we'll all feel better for a cup of tea,' said Nanny Ogg, mouthing the words like a mantra. She fumbled in the recesses of her shawl. 'With something in it,' she added, producing a small bottle of applejack.

'Alcohol is a deceiver and tarnishes the soul,' said Magrat virtuously.

'I never touch the stuff,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'We should keep a clear head, Gytha.'

'Just a drop in your tea isn't drinking,' said Nanny. 'It's medicine. It's a chilly old wind up here, sisters.'

'Very well,' said Granny. 'But just a drop.'

They drank in silence. Eventually Granny said, 'Well, Magrat. You know all about the coven business. We might as well do it right. What do we do next?'

Magrat hesitated. She wasn't up to suggesting dancing naked.

'There's a song,' she said. 'In praise of the full moon.'

'It ain't full,' Granny pointed out. 'It's wossname. Bulging.'

'Gibbous,' said Nanny obligingly.

'I think it's in praise of full moons in general,' Magrat hazarded. 'And then we have to raise our consciousness. It really ought to be full moon for that, I'm afraid. Moons are very important.'

Granny gave her a long, calculating look.

'That's modern witchcraft for you, is it?' she said.

'It's part of it, Granny. There's a lot more.'

Granny Weatherwax sighed. 'Each to her own, I suppose. I'm blowed if I'll let a ball of shiny rock tell me what to do.'

'Yes, bugger all that,' said Nanny. 'Let's curse somebody.'

The Fool crept cautiously along the nighttime corridors. He wasn't taking any chances either. Magrat had given him a graphic account of Greebo's general disposition, and the Fool had borrowed a couple of gloves and a sort of metal wimple from the castle's store of hereditary chain mail.

He reached the lumber room, lifted the latch cautiously, pushed the door and then flung himself against the wall.

The corridor became slightly darker as the more intense darkness inside the room spilled out and mingled with the rather lighter darkness already there.

Apart from that, nothing. The number of spitting, enraged balls of murderous fur pouring through the door was zero. The Fool relaxed, and slipped inside.

Greebo dropped on his head.

It had been a long day. The room did not offer the kind of full life that Greebo had come to expect and demand. The only point of interest had been the discovery, around mid-morning, of a colony of mice who had spent generations eating their way through a priceless tapestry history of Lancre and had just got as far as King Murune (709-745), who met a terrible fate[14], when they did, too. He had sharpened his claws on a bust of Lancre's only royal vampire, Queen Grimnir the Impaler (1514-1553, 1553-1557, 1557-1562, 1562-1567 and 1568-1573). He had performed his morning ablutions on a portrait of an unknown monarch, which was beginning to dissolve. Now he was bored, and also angry.

He raked his claws across the place where the Fool's ears should have been, and was rewarded with nothing more than a metallic scraping noise.

'Who's a good boy, den?' said the Fool. 'Wowsa wowsa whoosh.'

This intrigued Greebo. The only other person who had ever spoken to him like this was Nanny Ogg; everyone else addressed him as 'Yarrgeroffoutofityahbarstard'. He leaned down very carefully, intrigued by the new experience.

From the Fool's point of view an upside-down cat face lowered itself slowly into his field of vision, wearing an expression of evil-eyed interest.

'Does oo want to go home, den?' said the Fool hopefully. 'Look, Mr Door is open.'

Greebo increased his grip. He had found a friend.

The Fool shrugged, very carefully, turned, and walked back into the passage. He made his way down through the hall, out into the courtyard, around the side of the guardroom and out through the main gate, nodding – carefully – to the guards.

'Man just went past with a cat on his head,' one of them remarked, after a minute or two's reflection.

'See who it was?'

'The Fool, I think.'

There was a thoughtful pause. The second guard shifted his grip on his halberd.

'It's a rotten job,' he said. 'But I suppose someone's got to do it.'

'We ain't going to curse anyone,' said Granny firmly. 'It hardly ever works if they don't know you've done it.'

'What you do is, you send him a doll of himself with pins in.'

'No, Gytha.'

'All you have to do is get hold of some of his toenails,' Nanny persisted, enthusiastically.

'No.'

'Or some of his hair or anything. I've got some pins.'

'No.'

'Cursing people is morally unsound and extremely bad for your karma,' said Magrat.