‘The word “but” is on the tip of your tongue,’ he said flatly.
‘I was just going to say that there were no witches in Escrow.’
‘And the place is all the better for it!’
‘Of course, but-‘
‘There you go again, my dear. There is no room for ‘but’ in our vocabulary. Verence was right, oddly enough. There’s a new world coming, and there won’t be any room in it for those ghastly little gnomes or witches or centaurs and especially not for the firebirds! Away with them! Let us progress! They are unfitted for survival!’
‘You only wounded that phoenix, though.’
‘My point exactly. It allowed itself to be hurt, and therefore extinction looms. No, my dear, if we won’t fade with the old world we must make shift in the new. Witches? I’m afraid witches are all in the past now.’
The broomsticks in the present landed just above the tree line, on the edge of the moor. As Agnes had said, it was barely big enough to deserve the term. She could even hear the little mountain brook at the far end.
‘I can’t see anything gnarly-looking,’ said Agnes. She knew it was a stupid thing to say, but the presence of Magrat was getting on her nerves.
Nanny looked up at the sky. The other two followed her gaze.
‘You’ve got to get your eye in, but you’ll see it if you watch,’ she said. ‘You can only see it if you stands on the moor.’
Agnes squinted at the overcast.
‘Oh . . . I think I can,’ said Magrat.
I bet she doesn’t, said Perdita, I can’t.
And then Agnes did. It was tricky to spot, like a join between two sheets of glass, and it seemed to move away whenever she was certain she could see it, but there was an . . . inconsistency, flickering in and out on the edge of vision.
Nanny licked a finger and held it up to the wind. Then she pointed.
‘This way. An’ shut your eyes.’
‘There’s no path,’ said Magrat.
‘That’s right. You hold on to my hand, Agnes will hold on to yours. I’ve been this way a few times. It ain’t hard.’
‘It’s like a children’s story,’ said Agnes.
‘Yes, we’re down to the bone now, all right,’ said Nanny. ‘And . . . off we go. . .’
Agnes felt the heather brush her feet as she stepped forward. She opened her eyes.
Moor land stretched away on every side, even behind them. The air was darker, the clouds heavier, the wind sharper. The mountains looked a long way away. There was a distant thunder of water.
‘Where are we now?’ said Magrat.
‘Still here,’ said Nanny. ‘I remember my dad saying sometimes a deer or somethin’ would run into gnarly ground if it was bein’ hunted.’
‘It’d have to be pretty desperate,’ said Agnes. The heather was darker here, and scratched so much it was almost thorny. ‘Everything’s so . . . nasty-looking.’
‘Attitude plays a part,’ said Nanny. She tapped something with her foot.
It was . . . well, it had been a standing stone, Agnes thought, but now it was a lying stone. Lichen grew thickly all over it.
‘The marker. Hard to get out again if you don’t know about it,’ said Nanny. ‘Let’s head for the mountains. Esme all wrapped up, Magrat? Little Esme, I mean.’
‘She’s asleep.’
‘Yeah,’ said Nanny, in what Agnes thought was an odd tone of voice. ‘Just as well, really. Let’s go. Oh, I thought we might need these . . .’
She fumbled in the bottomless storeroom of her knickerleg and produced a couple of pairs of socks so thick that they could have stood up by themselves.
‘Lancre wool,’ she said. ‘Our Jason knits ’em of an evenin’ and you know what strong fingers he’s got. You could kick your way through a wall.’
The heather ripped fruitlessly at the wire-like wool as the women hurried over the moor. There was still a sun here, or at least a bright spot in the overcast, but darkness seemed to come up from beneath the ground.
Agnes . . . said Perdita’s voice, in the privacy of her shared brain.
What? thought Agnes.
Nanny’s worried about something to do with the baby and Granny. Have you noticed?
Agnes thought: I know Nanny keeps looking at little Esme as if she’s trying to make up her mind about something, if that’s what you mean.
Well, l think it’s to do with Borrowing . . .
She thinks Granny’s using the baby to keep an eye on us?
I don’t know. But something’s happening . . .
The roar ahead grew louder.
‘There’s a little stream, isn’t there?’ said Agnes.
‘That’s right,’ said Nanny. ‘Just here.’
The moor fell away. They stared into the abyss, which didn’t stare back. It was huge. White water was just visible far below. Cold, damp air blew past their faces.
‘That can’t be right,’ said Magrat. ‘That’s wider and deeper than Lancre Gorge!’
Agnes looked down into the mist. It’s a couple of feet deep, Perdita told her. I can see every pebble.
‘Perdita thinks it’s a . . . well, an optical illusion,’ Agnes said aloud.
‘She could be right,’ said Nanny. ‘Gnarly ground, see? Bigger on the inside.’
Magrat picked up a rock and tossed it in. It bounced off the wall a few times, tumbling end over end, and then nothing was left but a stony echo. The river was too far down even to see the splash.
‘It’s very realistic, isn’t it?’ she said weakly.
‘We could use the bridge,’ said Nanny, pointing.
They regarded the bride. It had a certain negative quality. That is to say, while it was possible at the limits of probability that if they tried to cross the chasm by walking out over thin air this might just work – because of sudden up draughts, or air molecules suddenly all having a crazy idea at the same time – trying to do the same thing via
the bridge would dearly be laughable.
There was no mortar in it. The pillars had been piled up out of rocks laid like a dry stone wall, and then a series of big flat stones dropped across the top. The result would have been called primitive even by people who were too primitive to have a word yet for ‘primitive’. It creaked ominously in the wind. They could hear stone grind against stone.
‘That’s not right,’ said Magrat. ‘It wouldn’t stand up to a gale.’
‘It wouldn’t stand up to a dead calm,’ said Agnes. ‘I don’t think it’s really real.’
‘Ah, I can see where that’d make crossing it a bit tricky, then,’ said Nanny.
It’s just a slab laid over a ditch, Perdita insisted. I could cartwheel over it. Agnes blinked.
‘Oh, I understand,’ she said. ‘This is some sort of test, is it? It is, isn’t it? We’re worried, so fear makes it a deep gorge. Perdita’s always confident, so she hardly notices it . . .’
‘I’d like to notice it’s there,’ said Magrat. ‘It’s a bridge.’
‘We’re wasting time,’ said Agnes. She strode out over the slabs of stone and stopped halfway.
‘Rocks a bit, but it’s not too bad,’ she called back. ‘You just have to-‘
The slab shifted under her, and tipped her off.
She flung out her hands and caught the edge of the stone by sheer luck. But, strong though her fingers were, a lot of Agnes was penduluming underneath.
She looked down. She didn’t want to, but it was a direction occupying a lot of the world.
The water’s about a foot below you, it really is, said Perdita. All you have to do is drop, and you’d be good at that . . .
Agnes looked down again. The drop was so long that probably no one would hear the splash. It didn’t just look deep, it felt deep. Clammy air rose around her. She could feel the sucking emptiness under her feet.
‘Magrat threw a stone down there!’ she hissed.
Yes, and I saw it fall a few inches.
‘Now, I’m lyin’ flat and Magrat’s holdin’ on to my legs,’ said Nanny Ogg conversationally, right above her. ‘I’m going to grab your wrists and, you know, I reckon if you swings a little sideways you ought to get your foot on one of the stone pillars and you’ll be right as nine pence.’
‘You don’t have to talk to me as if I’m some kind of frightened idiot!’ snapped Agnes.
‘Just tryin’ to be pleasant.’
‘I can’t move my hands!’
‘Yes, you can. See, I’ve got your arm now.’
‘I can’t move my hands!’
‘Don’t rush, we’ve got all day,’ said Nanny. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’
Agnes hung for a while. She couldn’t even sense her hands now. That presumably meant that she wouldn’t feel it when her grip slipped.