Legends

by Robert Silverberg

  “Yeah, but this is witching,” said Nanny. “The rules is different.”

  “How so?”

  “There ain’t none.”

  Letice twitched her skirt. “Perhaps it is time there were,” she said.

  “Ah,” said Nanny. “And you just going to go up and tell Esme that? You up for this, Gammer?”

  Gammer Beavis didn’t meet her gaze. Old Mother Dismass was gazing at last week.

  “I understand Miss Weatherwax is a very proud woman,” said Letice.

  Nanny Ogg puffed at her pipe again.

  “You might as well say the sea is full of water,” she said.

  The other witches were silent for a moment.

  “I daresay that was a valuable comment,” said Letice, “but I didn’t understand it.”

  “If there ain’t no water in the sea, it ain’t the sea,” said Nanny Ogg. “It’s just a damn great hole in the ground. Thing about Esme is …” Nanny took another noisy pull at the pipe. “She’s all pride, see? She ain’t just a proud person.”

  “Then perhaps she should learn to be a bit more humble …”

  “What’s she got to be humble about?” said Nanny sharply.

  But Letice, like a lot of people with marshmallow on the outside, had a hard core that was not easily compressed.

  “The woman clearly has a natural talent and, really, she should be grateful for—”

  Nanny Ogg stopped listening at this point. The woman, she thought. So that was how it was going.

  It was the same in just about every trade. Sooner or later someone decided it needed organizing, and the one thing you could be sure of was that the organizers weren’t going to be the people who, by general acknowledgment, were at the top of their craft. They were working too hard. To be fair, it generally wasn’t done by the worst, neither. They were working hard, too. They had to.

  No, it was done by the ones who had just enough time and inclination to scurry and bustle. And, to be fair again, the world needed people who scurried and bustled. You just didn’t have to like them very much.

  The lull told her that Letice had finished.

  “Really? Now, me,” said Nanny, “I’m the one who’s nat’rally talented. Us Oggs’ve got witchcraft in our blood. I never really had to sweat at it. Esme, now … she’s got a bit, true enough, but it ain’t a lot. She just makes it work harder’n hell. And you’re going to tell her she’s not to?”

  “We were rather hoping you would,” said Letice.

  Nanny opened her mouth to deliver one or two swearwords, and then stopped.

  “Tell you what,” she said, “you can tell her tomorrow, and I’ll come with you to hold her back.”

  Granny Weatherwax was gathering Herbs when they came up the track.

  Everyday herbs of sickroom and kitchen are known as simples. Granny’s Herbs weren’t simples. They were complicateds or they were nothing. And there was none of the airy-fairy business with a pretty basket and a pair of dainty snippers. Granny used a knife. And a chair held in front of her. And a leather hat, gloves, and apron as secondary lines of defense.

  Even she didn’t know where some of the Herbs came from. Roots and seed were traded all over the world, and maybe farther. Some had flowers that turned as you passed by, some fired their thorns at passing birds, and several were staked, not so that they wouldn’t fall over, but so they’d still be there next day.

  Nanny Ogg, who never bothered to grow any herb you couldn’t smoke or stuff a chicken with, heard her mutter, “Right, you buggers—”

  “Good morning, Miss Weatherwax,” said Letice Earwig loudly.

  Granny Weatherwax stiffened, and then lowered the chair very carefully and turned around.

  “It’s Mistress,” she said.

  “Whatever,” said Letice brightly. “I trust you are keeping well?”

  “Up till now,” said Granny. She nodded almost imperceptibly at the other three witches.

  There was a thrumming silence, which appalled Nanny Ogg. They should have been invited in for a cup of something. That was how the ritual went. It was gross bad manners to keep people standing around. Nearly, but not quite, as bad as calling an elderly unmarried witch “Miss.”

  “You’ve come about the Trials,” said Granny. Letice almost fainted.

  “Er, how did—”

  “’Cos you look like a committee. It don’t take much reasoning,” said Granny, pulling off her gloves. “We didn’t used to need a committee. The news just got around and we all turned up. Now suddenly there’s folk arrangin’ things.” For a moment Granny looked as though she was fighting some serious internal battle, and then she added in throwaway tones, “Kettle’s on. You’d better come in.”

  Nanny relaxed. Maybe there were some customs even Granny Weatherwax wouldn’t defy, after all. Even if someone was your worst enemy, you invited them in and gave them tea and biscuits. In fact, the worser your enemy, the better the crockery you got out and the higher the quality of the biscuits. You might wish black hell on ‘em later, but while they were under your roof you’d feed ’em till they choked.

  Her dark little eyes noted that the kitchen table gleamed and was still damp from scrubbing.

  After cups had been poured and pleasantries exchanged, or at least offered by Letice and received in silence by Granny, the self-elected chairwoman wriggled in her seat and said:

  “There’s such a lot of interest in the Trials this year, Miss—Mistress Weatherwax.”

  “Good.”

  “It does look as though witchcraft in the Ramtops is going through something of a renaissance, in fact.”

  “A renaissance, eh? There’s a thing.”

  “It’s such a good route to empowerment for young women, don’t you think?”

  Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax could listen in a cutting way. She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it.

  “That’s a good hat you’ve got there.” said Granny. “Velvet, is it? Not made local, I expect.”

  Letice touched the brim and gave a little laugh.

  “It’s from Boggi’s in Ankh-Morpork,” she said.

  “Oh? Shop-bought?”

  Nanny Ogg glanced at the corner of the room, where a battered wooden cone stood on a stand. Pinned to it were lengths of black calico and strips of willow wood, the foundations for Granny’s spring hat.

  “Tailor-made,” said Letice.

  “And those hatpins you’ve got,” Granny went on. “All them crescent moons and cat shapes—”

  “You’ve got a brooch that’s crescent-shaped, too, ain’t that so, Esme?” said Nanny Ogg, deciding it was time for a warning shot. Granny occasionally had a lot to say about jewelry on witches when she was feeling in an acid mood.

  “This is true, Gytha. I have a brooch what is shaped like a crescent. That’s just the truth of the shape it happens to be. Very practical shape for holding a cloak, is a crescent. But I don’t mean nothing by it. Anyway, you interrupted just as I was about to remark to Mrs. Earwig how fetchin’ her hatpins are. Very witchy.”

  Nanny, swiveling like a spectator at a tennis match, glanced at Letice to see if this deadly bolt had gone home. But the woman was actually smiling. Some people just couldn’t spot the obvious on the end of a ten-pound hammer.

  “On the subject of witchcraft,” said Letice, with the born chairwoman’s touch for the enforced segue, “I thought I might raise with you the question of your participation in the Trials.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you … ah … don’t you think it is unfair to other people that you win every year?”

  Granny Weatherwax looked down at the floor and then up at the ceiling.

  “No,” she said, eventually. “I’m better’n them.”

  “You don’t think it is a little dispiriting for the other contestants?”

  Once again, the floor-to-ceiling search.

  “No,” said Granny.

  “But they start off k
nowing they’re not going to win.”

  “So do I.”

  “Oh, no, you surely—”

  “I meant that I start off knowing they’re not goin’ to win, too,” said Granny witheringly. “And they ought to start off knowing I’m not going to win. No wonder they lose, if they ain’t getting their minds right.”

  “It does rather dash their enthusiasm.”

  Granny looked genuinely puzzled. “What’s wrong with ’em striving to come second?” she said.

  Letice plunged on.

  “What we were hoping to persuade you to do, Esme, is to accept an emeritus position. You would perhaps make a nice little speech of encouragement, present the award, and … and possibly even be, er, one of the judges …”

  “There’s going to be judges?” said Granny. “We’ve never had judges. Everyone just used to know who’d won.”

  “That’s true,” said Nanny. She remembered the scenes at the end of one or two trials. When Granny Weatherwax won, everyone knew. “Oh, that’s very true.”

  “It would be a very nice gesture,” Letice went on.

  “Who decided there would be judges?” said Granny.

  “Er … the committee … which is … that is … a few of us got together. Only to steer things …”

  “Oh. I see,” said Granny. “Flags?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Are you going to have them lines of little flags? And maybe someone selling apples on a stick, that kind of thing?”

  “Some bunting would certainly be—”

  “Right. Don’t forget the bonfire.”

  “So long as it’s nice and safe.”

  “Oh. Right. Things should be nice. And safe,” said Granny.

  Mrs. Earwig perceptibly sighed with relief. “Well, that’s sorted out nicely,” she said.

  “Is it?” said Granny.

  “I thought we’d agreed that—”

  “Had we? Really?” She picked up the poker from the hearth and prodded fiercely at the fire. “I’ll give matters my consideration.”

  “I wonder if I may be frank for a moment, Mistress Weatherwax?” said Letice. The poker paused in mid-prod.

  “Yes?”

  “Times are changing, you know. Now, I think I know why you feel it necessary to be so overbearing and unpleasant to everyone, but believe me when I tell you, as a friend, that you’d find it so much easier if you just relaxed a little bit and tried being nicer, like our sister Gytha here.”

  Nanny Ogg’s smile had fossilized into a mask. Letice didn’t seem to notice.

  “You seem to have all the witches in awe of you for fifty miles around,” she went on. “Now, I daresay you have some valuable skills, but witchcraft isn’t about being an old grump and frightening people anymore. I’m telling you this as a friend—”

  “Call again whenever you’re passing,” said Granny.

  This was a signal. Nanny Ogg stood up hurriedly.

  “I thought we could discuss—” Letice protested.

  “I’ll walk with you all down to the main track,” said Nanny, hauling the other witches out of their seats.

  “Gytha!” said Granny sharply, as the group reached the door.

  “Yes, Esme?

  “You’ll come back here afterward, I expect.”

  “Yes, Esme.”

  Nanny ran to catch up with the trio on the path.

  Letice had what Nanny thought of as a deliberate walk. It had been wrong to judge her by the floppy jowls and the overfussy hair and the silly way she waggled her hands as she talked. She was a witch, after all. Scratch any witch and … well, you’d be facing a witch you’d just scratched.

  “She is not a nice person,” Letice trilled. But it was the trill of some large hunting bird.

  “You’re right there,” said Nanny. “But—”

  “It’s high time she was taken down a peg or two!”

  “We-ell …”

  “She bullies you most terribly, Mrs. Ogg. A married lady of your mature years, too!”

  Just for a moment, Nanny’s eyes narrowed.

  “It’s her way,” she said.

  “A very petty and nasty way, to my mind!”

  “Oh, yes,” said Nanny simply. “Ways often are. But look, you—”

  “Will you be bringing anything to the produce stall, Gytha?” said Gammer Beavis quickly.

  “Oh, a couple of bottles, I expect,” said Nanny, deflating.

  “Oh, homemade wine?” said Letice. “How nice.”

  “Sort of like wine, yes. Well, here’s the path,” said Nanny. “I’ll just … I’ll just nip back and say goodnight—”

  “It’s belittling, you know, the way you run around after her,” said Letice.

  “Yes. Well. You get used to people. Good night to you.”

  When she got back to the cottage Granny Weatherwax was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor with a face like an unmade bed and her arms folded. One foot tapped on the floor.

  “She married a wizard,” said Granny, as soon as her friend had entered. “You can’t tell me that’s right.”

  “Well, wizards can marry, you know. They just have to hand in the staff and pointy hat. There’s no actual law says they can’t, so long as they gives up wizarding. They’re supposed to be married to the job.”

  “I should reckon it’s a job being married to her,” said Granny. Her face screwed up in a sour smile.

  “Been pickling much this year?” said Nanny, employing a fresh association of ideas around the word “vinegar,” which had just popped into her head.

  “My onions all got the screwfly.”

  “That’s a pity. You like onions.”

  “Even screwflies’ve got to eat,” said Granny. She glared at the door. “Nice,” she said.

  “She’s got a knitted cover on the lid in her privy,” said Nanny.

  “Pink?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nice.”

  “She’s not bad,” said Nanny. “She does good work over in Fiddler’s Elbow. People speak highly of her.”

  Granny sniffed. “Do they speak highly of me?” she said.

  “No, they speaks quietly of you, Esme.”

  “Good. Did you see her hatpins?”

  “I thought they were rather … nice, Esme.”

  “That’s witchcraft today. All jewelry and no drawers.”

  Nanny, who considered both to be optional, tried to build an embankment against the rising tide of ire.

  “You could think of it as an honor, really, them not wanting you to take part,” she said.

  “That’s nice.”

  Nanny sighed.

  “Sometimes nice is worth tryin’, Esme,” she said.

  “I never does anyone a bad turn if I can’t do ’em a good one, Gytha, you know that. I don’t have to do no frills or fancy labels.”

  Nanny sighed. Of course, it was true. Granny was an old-fashioned witch. She didn’t do good for people, she did right by them. But Nanny knew that people don’t always appreciate right. Like old Pollitt the other day, when he fell off his horse. What he wanted was a painkiller. What he needed was the few seconds of agony as Granny popped the joint back into place. The trouble was, people remembered the pain.

  You got on a lot better with people when you remembered to put frills round it, and took an interest and said things like “How are you?” Esme didn’t bother with that kind of stuff because she knew already. Nanny Ogg knew too, but also knew that letting on you knew gave people the serious willies.

  She put her head on one side. Granny’s foot was still tapping.

  “You planning anything, Esme? I know you. You’ve got that look.”

  “What look, pray?”

  “That look you had when that bandit was found naked up a tree and crying all the time and going on about the horrible thing that was after him. Funny thing, we never found any paw prints. That look.”

  “He deserved more’n that for what he done.”

  “Yeah … well, you h
ad that look just before ole Hoggett was found beaten black and blue in his own pigsty and wouldn’t talk about it?”

  “You mean old Hoggett the wife beater? Or old Hoggett who won’t never lift his hand to a woman no more?” said Granny. The thing her lips had pursed into might have been called a smile.

  “And it’s the look you had the time all the snow slid down on ole Millson’s house just after he called you an interfering old baggage …” said Nanny.

  Granny hesitated. Nanny was pretty sure that had been natural causes, and also that Granny knew she suspected this, and that pride was fighting a battle with honesty—

  “That’s as may be,” said Granny, noncommittally.

  “Like someone who might go along to the Trials and … do something,” said Nanny.

  Her friend’s glare should have made the air sizzle.

  “Oh? So that’s what you think of me? That’s what we’ve come to, have we?”

  “Letice thinks we should move with the times—”

  “Well? I moves with the times. We ought to move with the times. No one said we ought to give them a push. I expect you’ll be wanting to be going, Gytha. I want to be alone with my thoughts!”

  Nanny’s own thoughts, as she scurried home in relief, were that Granny Weatherwax was not an advertisement for witchcraft. Oh, she was one of the best at it, no doubt about that. At a certain kind, certainly. But a girl starting out in life might well say to herself, Is this it? You worked hard and denied yourself things and what you got at the end of it was hard work and self-denial?

  Granny wasn’t exactly friendless, but what she commanded mostly was respect. People learned to respect storm clouds, too. They refreshed the ground. You needed them. But they weren’t nice.

  Nanny Ogg went to bed in three flannelette nightdresses, because sharp frosts were already pricking the autumn air. She was also in a troubled frame of mind.

  Some sort of war had been declared, she knew. Granny could do some terrible things when roused, and the fact that they’d been done to those who richly deserved them didn’t make them any the less terrible. She’d be planning something pretty dreadful, Nanny Ogg knew.

  She herself didn’t like winning things. Winning was a habit that was hard to break and brought you a dangerous status that was hard to defend. You’d walk uneasily through life, always on the lookout for the next girl with a better broomstick and a quicker hand on the frog.