‘Yes, but she can’t control rivers and rocks-‘ Agnes began.
‘Here? Dunno. Very . . . responsive place, this.’
They inched their way across the log, passing the baby from one to the other.
Agnes leaned against the stone wall. ‘How much further?’
‘Well, technic’ly a few inches,’ said Nanny. ‘That’s helpful to know, isn’t it?’
‘Is it just me,’ said Magrat, ‘or is it getting warmer?’
‘Now that,’ said Agnes, pointing ahead, ‘I don’t believe.’
At the end of a slope a crevasse had opened in the rock. Red light spilled out. As they stared at it, a ball of flame rolled up and burst across the ceiling.
‘Oh deary deary me,’ said Nanny, who had taken a turn to carry the baby. ‘An’ it’s not even as if there’s any volcanoes anywhere near here. What can she be thinking?’ She headed purposefully towards the fire.
‘Careful!’ Agnes shouted. ‘Perdita says it’s real!’
‘What’s that got to do with the price of fish?’ said Nanny, and stepped into the fire.
The flames snapped out.
The other two stood in the chilly, damp gloom.
Magrat shuddered. ‘Nanny, you are carrying the baby.’
‘The harm you come to here is what you brings with you,’ said Nanny. ‘And it’s Granny’s thoughts that are shaping this place. But she wouldn’t raise a hand to a child. Couldn’t do it. Hasn’t got it in her.’
‘This place is reacting to what she’s thinking?’ said Agnes.
‘I reckon so,’ said Nanny, setting off again.
‘I’d hate to be inside her head!’
‘You nearly are,’ said Nanny. ‘Come on. We’ve passed the fire. I don’t think there’ll be anything else.’
They found her in a cavern. It had sand on the floor, smooth and unmarked by anything except one set of footprints. Her hat had been placed neatly beside her. Her head rested on a rolled-up sack. She held a card in stiff hands.
It read:
GOE AWAY
‘That’s not very helpful,’ said Magrat, and sat down with the baby across her lap. ‘After all this, too.’
‘Can’t We wake her up?’ said Agnes.
‘That’s dangerous,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Trying to call her back when she ain’t ready to come? Tricky.’
‘Well, can we at least take her out of here?’
‘She won’t bend round corners but, hah, maybe we could use her as a bridge,’ said Nanny. ‘No, she came here for a reason . . .’
She pulled the sack out from under Granny’s head, which did not move, and opened it.
‘Wrinkly apple, bottle of water and a cheese sandwich you could bend horseshoes round,’ she said. ‘And her old box.’
She set it down on the floor between them.
‘What is in there?’ said Agnes.
‘Oh, keepsakes. Memorororabiliha, like I said. That sort of thing,’ said Nanny. ‘She always says it’s full of things she’s got no further use for.’ She drummed her fingers on the box as if accompanying a thought on the piano, and then picked it up.
‘Should you do that?’ said Agnes.
‘No,’ said Nanny. She lifted out a bundle of papers tied with ribbon and put them on one side.
They all saw the light shining up from underneath. Nanny reached in and took out a small glass medicine bottle, tightly corked, and held it up. A little glow inside was quite bright in the gloom of the cave.
‘Seen this bottle before,’ said Nanny. ‘She’s got all kinds of odds and ends in here. Never noticed it glowing, though.’
Agnes took the bottle. Inside there was what looked like a piece of fern, or . . . no, it was a feather, quite black except for the very tip, which was as yellow and bright as a candle flame.
‘Do you know what it is?’
‘No. She’s always pickin’ up stuff. She’s had the bottle a long time, ‘cos I’ve seen it in there-‘
‘I faw her fick it uff-‘ Magrat removed a safetypin from her mouth. ‘I saw her pick that thing up years ago,’ she tried again. ‘It was around this time of year, too. We were walking back through the woods and there was a shooting star and this sort of light fell off it and we went to look and there it was. It looked like a flame but she was able to pick it up.’
‘Sounds like a firebird feather,’ said Nanny. ‘There used to be old stories about them. They pass through here. But if you touch their feathers you’d better be damn sure of yourself, because the old stories say they burn in the presence of evil-‘
‘Firebird? You mean a phoenix?’ said Agnes. ‘Hodgesaargh was going on about one.’
‘Haven’t seen one go over for years,’ said Nanny. ‘Sometimes you’d see two or three at a time when I was a girl, just lights flying high up in the sky.’
‘No, no, the phoenix . . . there’s only one of it, that’s the whole point,’ said Agnes.
‘One of anything’s no bloody use,’ said Nanny.
Granny Weatherwax smacked her lips, like someone emerging from a very deep sleep. Her eyelids flickered.
‘Ah, I knew opening her box’d work,’ said Nanny happily.
Granny Weatherwax’s eyes opened. She stared straight up for a moment, and then swivelled them towards Nanny Ogg.
‘W’t’r,’ she mumbled. Agnes hastily passed her the water bottle. She touched Granny’s fingers, and they were as chilly as stone.
The old witch took a gulp.
‘Oh. It’s you three,’ she whispered. ‘Why did you come here?’
‘You told us to,’ said Agnes.
‘No, I didn’t!’ Granny snapped. ‘Wrote you a note, did I?’
‘No, but the stuff-‘ Agnes stopped. ‘Well, we thought you wanted us to.’
‘Three witches?’ said Granny. ‘Well, no reason why not. The maiden, the mother and the-‘
‘Go carefully,’ Nanny Ogg warned.
‘-the other one,’ said Granny. ‘That’s up to you, I’m sure. It’s not something about which I would venture any sort of opinion. So I expect you’ve got some dancin’ to be doing, and good day to you. I’ll have my pillow back, thank you very much.’
‘You know there’s vampires in Lancre?’ Nanny demanded.
‘Yes. They got invited.’
‘You know they’re taking over?’
‘Pest’
‘So why did you run away up here?’ said Agnes.
The temperature of a deep cave should remain constant, but suddenly this one was a lot colder.
‘I can go where I like,’ said Granny.
‘Yes, but you ought-‘ Agnes began. She wished she could bite the word back, but it was too late.
‘Oh, ought, is it? Where does it say ought? I don’t remember it saying ought anywhere. Anyone going to tell me where it says ought? There’s lots of things that ought, I dare say. But they ain’t.’
‘You know a magpie stole your invite?’ said Nanny. ‘Shawn delivered it okay, but them thieving devils had it away and into a nest.’
She flourished the crumpled, smudged yet gold laden invitation.
In the moment of silence Agnes fancied she could hear the stalactites grow.
‘Yes, of course I did,’ said Granny. ‘Worked that out first thing.’ But the moment had been just slightly too long, and just slightly too quiet.
‘And you know Verence got an Omnian
priest in to do the Naming of young Esme?’
Again . . . fractionally too long, infinitesimally too silent.
‘You know I put my mind to business,’ said Granny. She glanced at the baby sitting on Magrat’s lap.
‘Why’s she got a pointy head?’ she said.
‘It’s the little hood Nanny knitted for her,’ said Magrat. ‘It’s meant to look like that. Would you like to hold her?’
‘She looks comfortable where she is,’ said Granny diffidently.
She didn’t know the baby’s name! Perdita whispered. I told you! Nanny thinks Granny’s been in the baby’s mind, l can tell by the way she’s been looking at her, but if she had she’d know the name and she doesn’t, I swear. She wouldn’t do anything that might hurt a child. . .
Granny shook herself. ‘Anyway, if there’s a problem, well, you’ve got your three witches. It doesn’t say anywhere that one of them ought,’ she nodded at Agnes, ‘to be Granny Weatherwax. You sort it out. I’ve been witching in these parts for altogether too long and it’s time to . . . move on . . . do something else. . .’
‘You’re going to hide up here?’ said Magrat.
‘I’m not going to keep on repeating myself, my girl. People aren’t going to tell me what I ought to do no more. I know what’s ought and what’s not. Your husband invited vampires into the country, did he? That’s modern for you. Well, everyone else knows that a vampire don’t have no power over you ‘less you invite it in, and if it’s a king as does the inviting, then they’ve got their teeth into the whole country. And I’m an ol’ woman living in the woods and I’ve got to make it all better? When there’s three of you? I’ve had a lifetime of ought from can to can’t and now it’s over, and I’ll thank you for gettin’ out of my cave. And that’s an end of it.’