Nanny Ogg realized that she had removed her own hat and was biting nervously at the brim.
“I ‘spect you’re really good at it,” said Granny Weatherwax.
“Quite good,” said Diamanda.
“Show me.”
She is good, thought Nanny Ogg. She’s been facing down Esme’s stare for more’n a minute. Even snakes generally give up after a minute.
If a fly had darted through the few inches of space between their stares it would have flashed into flame in the air.
“I learned my craft from Nanny Gripes,” said Granny Weatherwax, “who learned it from Goody Heggety, who got it from Nanna Plumb, who was taught it by Black Aliss, who-”
“So what you’re saying is,” said Diamanda, loading the words into the sentence like cartridges in a chamber, “that no one has actually learned anything new?”
The silence that followed was broken by Nanny Ogg saying: “Bugger, I’ve bitten right through the brim. Right through.”
“I see, said Granny Weatherwax.
“Look,” said Nanny Ogg hurriedly, nudging the trembling Perdita, “right through the lining and everything. Two dollars and curing his pig that hat cost me. That’s two dollars and a pig cure I shan’t see again in a hurry.”
“So you can just go away, old woman,” said Diamanda. “But we ought to meet again,” said Granny Weatherwax.
The old witch and the young witch weighed one another up.
“Midnight?” said Diamanda.
“Midnight? Nothing special about midnight. Practically anyone can be a witch at midnight,” said Granny Weatherwax. “How about noon?”
“Certainly. What are we fighting for?” said Diamanda.
“Fighting? We ain’t fighting. We’re just showing each other what we can do. Friendly like,” said Granny Weatherwax.
She stood up.
“I’d better be goin’,” she said. “Us old people need our sleep, you know how it is.”
“And what does the winner get?” said Diamanda. There was just a trace of uncertainty in her voice now. It was very faint, on the Richter scale of doubt it was probably no more than a plastic teacup five miles away falling off a low shelf onto a carpet, but it was there.
“Oh, the winner gets to win,” said Granny Weatherwax. “That’s what it’s all about. Don’t bother to see us out. You didn’t see us in.”
The door slammed back.
“Simple psychokinesis,” said Diamanda.
“Oh, well. That’s all right then,” said Granny Weatherwax, disappearing into the night. “Explains it all, that does.”
There used to be such simple directions, back in the days before they invented parallel universes – Up and Down, Right and Left, Backward and Forward, Past and Future . . .
But normal directions don’t work in the multiverse, which has far too many dimensions for anyone to find their way so new ones have to be invented so that the way can be found.
Like: East of the Sun, West of the Moon.
Or: Behind the North Wind.
Or: At the Back of Beyond.
Or: There and Back Again.
Or: Beyond the Fields We Know.
And sometimes there’s a short cut. A door or a gate. Some standing stones, a tree cleft by lightning, a filing cabinet.
Maybe just a spot on some moor land somewhere . . .
A place where there is very nearly here.
Nearly, but not quite. There’s enough leakage to make pendulums swing and psychics get nasty headaches, to give a house a reputation for being haunted, to make the occasional pot hurl across a room. There’s enough leakage to make the drones fly guard.
Oh, yes. The drones.
There are things called drone assemblies. Sometimes, on fine summer days, the drones from hives for miles around will congregate in some spot, and fly circles in the air, buzzing like tiny early warning systems, which is what they are.
Bees are sensible. It’s a human word. But bees are creatures of order, and programmed into their very genes is a hatred of chaos.
If some people once knew where such a spot was, if they had experience of what happens when here and there become entangled, then they might – if they knew how – mark such a spot with certain stones.
In the hope that enough daft buggers would take it as a warning, and keep away.
“Well, what’d you think?” said Granny, as the witches hurried home.
“The little fat quiet one’s got a bit of natural talent,” said Nanny Ogg. “I could feel it. The rest of ’em are just along for the excitement, to my mind. Playing at witches. You know, ooh-jar boards and cards and wearing black lace gloves with no fingers to ’em and paddlin’ with the occult.”
“I don’t hold with paddlin’ with the occult,” said Granny firmly. “Once you start paddlin’ with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you’re believing in gods. And then you’re in touble.”
“But all them things exist,” said Nanny Ogg.
“That’s no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages ’em.”
Granny Weatherwax slowed to a walk.
“What about her?” she said.
“What exactly about her do you mean?” – “You felt the power there?”
“Oh, yeah. Made my hair stand on end.”
“Someone gave it to her, and I know who. Just a slip of a gel with a head full of wet ideas out of books, and suddenly she’s got the power and don’t know how to deal with it. Cards! Candles! That’s not witchcraft, that’s just party games. Paddlin’ with the occult. Did you see she’d got black fingernails?”
“Well, mine ain’t so clean-”
“I mean painted.”
“I used to paint my toenails red when I was young,” said Nanny, wistfully.
“Toenails is different. So’s red. Anyway,” said Granny, “you only did it to appear allurin’.”
“It worked, too.”
“Hah!”
They walked along in silence for a bit.
“I felt a lot of power there,” Nanny Ogg said, eventually.
“Yes. I know.”
“A lot.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not saying you couldn’t beat her,” said Nanny quickly. “I’m not saying that. But I don’t reckon I could, and it seemed to me it’d raise a bit of a sweat even on you. You’ll have to hurt her to beat her.”
“I’m losin’ my judgment, aren’t I?”
“Oh, I-”
“She riled me, Gytha. Couldn’t help myself. Now I’ve got to duel with a gel of seventeen, and if I wins I’m a wicked bullyin’ old witch, and if I loses . . .”
She kicked up a drift of old leaves.
“Can’t stop myself, that’s my trouble.”
Nanny Ogg said nothing.
“And I loses my temper over the least little-”
“Yes, but-”
“I hadn’t finished talkin’.”
“Sorry, Esme.”
A bat fluttered by. Granny nodded to it.
“Heard how Magrat’s getting along?” she said, in a tone of voice which forced casualness embraced like a corset.
“Settling in fine, our Shawn says.”
“Right.”
They reached a crossroads; the white dust glowed very faintly in the moonlight. One way led into Lancre, where Nanny Ogg lived. Another eventually got lost in the forest, became a footpath, then a track, and eventually reached Granny Weatherwax’s cottage.
“When shall we . . . two . . . meet again?” said Nanny
Ogg.
“Listen,” said Granny Weatherwax. “She’s well out of it, d’you hear? She’ll be a lot happier as a queen!”
“I never said nothing,” said Nanny Ogg mildly.
“I know you never! I could hear you not saying anything! You’ve got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn’t dead!”
“See you about eleven o’clock, then?”
“Right!”
The wind got up again as Granny walked along the track to her cottage.
She knew she was on edge. There was just too much to do. She’d got Magrat sorted out, and Nanny could look after herself, but the Lords and the Ladies . . . she hadn’t counted on them.
The point was . . .
The point was that Granny Weatherwax had a feeling she was going to die. This was beginning to get on her nerves.
Knowing the time of your death is one of those strange bonuses that comes with being a true magic user. And, on the whole, it is a bonus.
Many a wizard has passed away happily drinking the last of his wine cellar and incidentally owing very large sums of money.
Granny Weatherwax had always wondered how it felt, what it was that you suddenly saw looming up. And what it turned out to be was a blankness.
People think that they live life as a moving dot travelling from the Past into the Future, with memory streaming out behind them like some kind of mental cometary tail. But memory spreads out in front as well as behind. It’s just that most humans aren’t good at dealing with it, and so it arrives as premonitions, forebodings, intuitions, and hunches. Witches are good at dealing with it, and to suddenly find a blank where these tendrils of the future should be has much the same effect on a witch as emerging from a cloud bank and seeing a team of sherpas looking down on him does on an airline pilot.