Wyrd Sisters tds-6

by Terry David John Pratchett

  '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.

  'Well, I'm going to curse him anyway,' said Nanny. 'Under my breath, like. I could of caught my death in that dungeon for all he cared.'

  'We ain't going to curse him,' said Granny. 'We're going to replace him. What did you do with the old king?'

  'I left the rock on the kitchen table,' said Nanny. 'I couldn't stand it any more.'

  'I don't see why,' said Magrat. 'He seemed very pleasant. For a ghost.'

  'Oh, he was all right. It wa
s the others,' said Nanny.

  'Others?'

  ' "Pray carry a stone out of the palace so's I can haunt it, good mother," he says,' said Nanny Ogg. ' "It's bloody boring in here, Mistress Ogg, excuse my Klatchian," he says, so of course I did. I reckon they was all listening. Ho yes, they all thinks, all aboard, time for a bit of a holiday. I've nothing against ghosts. Especially royal ghosts,' she added loyally. 'But my cottage isn't the place for them. I mean, there's some woman in a chariot yelling her head off in the washhouse. I ask you. And there's a couple of little kiddies in the pantry, and men without heads all over the place, and someone screaming under the sink, and there's this little hairy man wandering around looking lost and everything. It's not right.'

  'Just so long as he's not here,' said Granny. 'We don't want any men around.'

  'He's a ghost, not a man,' said Magrat.

  'We don't have to go into details,' Granny said icily.

  'But you can't put the old king back on the throne,' said Magrat. 'Ghosts can't rule. You'd never get the crown to stay on. It'd drop through.'

  'We're going to replace him with his son,' said Granny. 'Proper succession.'

  'Oh, we've been through all that,' said Nanny, dismissively. 'In about fifteen years' time, perhaps, but—'

  'Tonight,' said Granny.

  'A child on the throne? He wouldn't last five minutes.'

  'Not a child,' said Granny quietly. 'A grown man. Remember Aliss Demurrage?'

  There was silence. Then Nanny Ogg sat back.

  'Bloody hell,' she whispered. 'You ain't going to try that, are you?'

  'I mean to have a go.'

  'Bloody hell,' said Nanny again, very quietly, and added. 'You've been thinking about this, have you?'

  'Yes.'

  'See here, Esme. I mean, Black Aliss was one of the best. I mean, you're very good at, well, headology and thinking and that. I mean, Black Aliss, well, she just upped and went at it.'

  'You saying I couldn't do it, are you?'

  'Excuse me,' said Magrat.

  'No. No. Of course not,' said Nanny, ignoring her.

  'Right.'

  'Only . . . well, she was a, you know, a hoyden of witches, like the king said.'

  'Doyenne,' said Granny, who had looked it up. 'Not hoyden.'

  'Excuse me,' said Magrat, louder this time. 'Who was Black Aliss? And,' she added quickly, 'none of this exchanging meaningful glances and talking over my head. There's three witches in this coven, remember?'

  'She was before your time,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Before mine, really. She lived over Skunid way. Very powerful witch.'

  'If you listen to rumour,' said Granny.

  'She turned a pumpkin into a royal coach once,' said Nanny.

  'Showy,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'That's no help to anyone, turning up at a ball smelling like a pie. And that business with the glass slipper. Dangerous, to my mind.'

  'But the biggest thing she ever did,' said Nanny, ignoring the interruption, 'was to send a whole palace to sleep for a hundred years until. . .' She hesitated. 'Can't remember. Was there rose bushes involved, or was it spinning wheels in that one? I think some princess had to finger . . . no, there was a prince. That was it.'

  'Finger a prince?' said Magrat, uneasily.

  'No . . .he had to kiss her. Very romantic, Black Aliss was. There was always a bit of romance in her spells. She liked nothing better than Girl meets Frog.'

  'Why did they call her Black Aliss?'

  'Fingernails,' said Granny.

  'And teeth,' said Nanny Ogg. 'She had a sweet tooth. Lived in a real gingerbread cottage. Couple of kids shoved her in her own oven at the end. Shocking.'

  'And you're going to send the castle to sleep?' said Magrat.

  'She never sent the castle to sleep,' said Granny. 'That's just an old wives' tale,' she added, glaring at Nanny. 'She just stirred up time a little. It's not as hard as people think. Everyone does it all the time. It's like rubber, is time. You can stretch it to suit yourself.'

  Magrat was about to say, that's not right, time is time, every second lasts a second, that's what it's for, that's its job . . .

  And then she recalled weeks that had flown past and afternoons that had lasted forever. Some minutes had lasted hours, some hours had gone past so quickly she hadn't been aware they'd gone past at all . . .

  'But that's just people's perception,' she said. 'Isn't it?'

  'Oh, yes,' said Granny, 'of course it is. It all is. What difference does that make?'

  'A hundred years'd be over-egging it, mind,' said Nanny.

  'I reckon fifteen'd be a nice round number,' said Granny. 'That means the lad will be eighteen at the finish. We just do the spell, go and fetch him, he can manifest his destiny, and everything will be nice and neat.'

  Magrat didn't comment on this, because it had occurred to her that destinies sounded easy enough when you talked about them but were never very bankable where real human beings were concerned. But Nanny Ogg sat back and tipped another generous measure of apple brandy in her tea.

  'Could work out nice,' she said. 'A bit of peace and quiet for fifteen years. If I recall the spell, after you say it you have to fly around the castle before cock crow.'

  'I wasn't thinking about that,' said Granny. 'It wouldn't be right. Felmet would still be king all that time. The kingdom would still get sick. No, what I was thinking of doing was moving the whole kingdom.'

  She beamed at them.

  'The whole of Lancre?' said Nanny.

  'Yes.'

  'Fifteen years into the future?'

  'Yes.'

  Nanny looked at Granny's broomstick. It was a well-made thing, built to last, apart from the occasional starting problem. But there were limits.

  'You'll never do it,' she said. 'Not around the whole kingdom in that. That's all the way up to Powderknife and down to Drumlin's Fell. You just couldn't carry enough magic.'

  'I've thought of that,' said Granny.

  She beamed again. It was terrifying.

  She explained the plan. It was dreadful.

  A minute later the moor was deserted, as the witches hurried to their tasks. It was silent for a while, apart from the squeak of bats and the occasional rustle of the wind in the heather.

  Then there was a bubbling from the nearby peat bog. Very slowly, crowned with a thicket of sphagnum moss, the standing stone surfaced and peered around the landscape with an air of deep distrust.

  Greebo was really enjoying this. At first he thought his new friend was taking him to Magrat's cottage, but for some reason he'd wandered off the path in the dark and was taking a stroll in the forest. In one of the more interesting bits, Greebo had always felt. It was a hummocky area, rich in hidden potholes and small, intense swamps, full of mist even in fine weather. Greebo often came up here on the offchance that a wolf was lying up for the day.

  'I thought cats could find their own way home,' the Fool muttered.

  He cursed himself under his breath. It would have been easy to take this wretched creature back to Nanny Ogg's house, which was only a few streets away, almost in the shadow of the castle. But then he'd had the idea of delivering it to Magrat. It would impress her, he thought. Witches were very keen on cats. And then she'd be bound to ask him in, for a cup of tea or something . . .

  He put his foot in another water-filled hole. Something wriggled underneath it. The Fool groaned, and stepped back on to a tumescent mushroom.

  'Look, cat,' he said. 'You've got to come down, right? And then you can find your way home and I'll follow you. Cats are good at seeing in the dark and finding their own way home,' he added hopefully.

  He reached up. Greebo sank his claws into his arm as a friendly warning, and found to his surprise that this had no effect on chain mail.

  'There's a good cat,' said the Fool, and lowered him to the ground. 'Go on, find your way home. Any home will do.'

  Greebo's grin gradually faded, until there was nothing left but the cat. This was nearly as spooky as the opposit
e way round.

  He stretched and yawned to hide his embarrassment. Being called a good cat in the middle of one of his favourite stalking grounds wasn't going to do anything for his prowl-credibility. He disappeared into the undergrowth.

  The Fool peered into the gloom. It dawned on him that while he liked forests, he liked them at one remove, as it were; it was nice to know that they were there, but the forests of the mind were not quite the same as real forests that, for example, you got lost in. They had more mighty oaks and fewer brambles. They also tended to be viewed in daylight, and the trees didn't have malevolent faces and long scratchy branches. The trees of the imagination were proud giants of the forest. Most of the trees here appeared to be vegetable gnomes, mere trellises for fungi and ivy.

  The Fool was vaguely aware that you could tell which direction the Hub lay by seeing which side of the trees the moss grew on. A quick inspection of the nearby trunks indicated that, in defiance of all normal geography, the Hub lay everywhere.

  Greebo had vanished.

  The Fool sighed, removed his chain mail protection, and tinkled gently through the night in search of high ground. High ground seemed a good idea. The ground he was on at the moment appeared to be trembling. He was sure it shouldn't do that.

  Magrat hovered on her broomstick several hundred feet above the Turnwise borders of Lancre, looking down on a sea of mist through which the occasional treetop poked like a seaweed-covered rock at high tide. A bulging moon floated above her, probably gibbous again. Even a decent thin crescent would have been better, she felt. More appropriate.

  She shivered, and wondered where Granny Weatherwax was at this moment.

  The old witch's broomstick was known and feared throughout the skies of Lancre. Granny had been introduced to flying quite late in life, and after some initial suspicion had taken to it like a bluebottle to an ancient fish-head. A problem, however, was that Granny saw every flight simply as a straight line from A to B and was unable to get alongside the idea that other users of the air might have any rights whatsoever; the flight migration patterns of an entire continent had been changed because of that simple fact. High-speed evolution among local birds had developed a generation that flew on their backs, so that they could keep a watchful eye on the skies.