* Hence, for example, the Way of Mrs Cosmopolite, very popular among young people who live in the hidden valleys above the snowline in the high Ramtops. Disdaining the utterances of their own saffron-clad, prayer-wheel-spinning elders, they occasionally travel all the way to No. 3 Quirm Street in flat and foggy Ankh-Morpork, to seek wisdom at the feet of Mrs Marietta Cosmopolite, a seamstress. No-one knows the reason for this apart from the aforesaid attractiveness of distant wisdom, since they can’t understand a word she says or, more usually, screams at them. Many a bald young monk returns to his high fastness to meditate on the strange mantra vouchsafed to him, such as ‘Push off you!’ and ‘If I see one more of you little orange devils peering in at me he’ll feel the edge of my hand, all right?’ and ‘Why are you buggers all coming round here staring at my feet?’ They have even developed a special branch of martial arts based on their experiences, where they shout incomprehensibly at one another and then hit their opponent with a broom.
Currently Magrat was finding herself through the Path of The Scorpion, which offered cosmic harmony, inner one-ness and the possibility of knocking an attacker’s kidneys out through his ears. She’d sent off for it.
There were problems. The author, Grand Master Lobsang Dibbler, had an address in Ankh-Morpork. This did not seem like a likely seat of cosmic wisdom. Also, although he’d put in lots of stuff about the Way not being used for aggression and only to be used for cosmic wisdom, this was in quite small print between enthusiastic drawings of people hitting one another with rice flails and going ‘Hai!’ Later on you learned how to cut bricks in half with your hand and walk over red hot coals and other cosmic things.
Magrat thought that Ninja was a nice name for a girl.
She squared up to herself in the mirror again.
There was a knock at the door. Magrat went and opened it.
‘Hai?’ she said.
Hurker the poacher took a step backwards. He was already rather shaken. An angry wolf had trailed him part of the way through the forest.
‘Um,’ he said. He leaned forward, his shock changing to concern. ‘Have you hurt your head, Miss?’
She looked at him in incomprehension. Then realization dawned. She reached up and took off the headband with the chrysanthemum pattern on it, without which it is almost impossible to properly seek cosmic wisdom by twisting an opponent’s elbows through 360 degrees.
‘No,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’
‘Got a package for you,’ said Hurker, presenting it.
It was about two feet long, and very thin.
‘There’s a note,’ said Hurker helpfully. He shuffled around as she unfolded it, and tried to read it over her shoulder.
‘It’s private,’ said Magrat.
‘Is it?’ said Hurker, agreeably.
‘Yes!’
‘I was tole you’d give me a penny for delivering it,’ said the poacher. Magrat found one in her purse.
‘Money forges the chains which bind the labouring classes,’ she warned, handing it over. Hurker, who had never thought of himself as a labouring class in his life, but who was prepared to listen to almost any amount of gibberish in exchange for a penny, nodded innocently.
‘And I hope your head gets better, Miss,’ he said.
When Magrat was left alone in her kitchen-cum-dojo she unwrapped the parcel. It contained one slim white rod.
She looked at the note again. It said, ‘I niver had time to Trane a replaysment so youll have to Do. You must goe to the city of Genua. I would of done thys myself only cannot by reason of bein dead. Ella Saturday muste NOTTE marry the prins. PS This is importent.’
She looked at her reflection in the mirror.
She looked down at the note again.
‘PSPS Tell those 2 Olde Biddys they are Notte to come with Youe, they will onlie Ruine everythin.’
There was more.
‘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.