Magrat hovered on her broomstick several hundred feet above the Turnwise borders of Lancre, looking down on a sea of mist through which the occasional treetop poked like a seaweed-covered rock at high tide. A bulging moon floated above her, probably gibbous again. Even a decent thin crescent would have been better, she felt. More appropriate.
She shivered, and wondered where Granny Weatherwax was at this moment.
The old witch’s broomstick was known and feared throughout the skies of Lancre. Granny had been introduced to flying quite late in life, and after some initial suspicion had taken to it like a bluebottle to an ancient fish-head. A problem, however, was that Granny saw every flight simply as a straight line from A to B and was unable to get alongside the idea that other users of the air might have any rights whatsoever; the flight migration patterns of an entire continent had been changed because of that simple fact. High-speed evolution among local birds had developed a generation that flew on their backs, so that they could keep a watchful eye on the skies.
Granny’s implicit belief that everything should get out of her way extended to other witches, very tall trees and, on occasion, mountains.
Granny had also browbeaten the dwarfs who lived under the mountains and in fear of their lives into speeding the thing up. Many an egg had been laid in mid-air by unsuspecting fowls who had suddenly glimpsed Granny bearing down on them, scowling over the top of the broomstick.
‘Oh dear,’ thought Magrat. ‘I hope she hasn’t happened to someone.’
A midnight breeze turned her gently around in the air, like an unsupported weathercock. She shivered and squinted at the moonlit mountains, the high Ramtops, whose freezing crags and ice-green chasms acknowledged no king or cartographer. Only on the Rim ward side was Lancre open to the world; the rest of its borders looked as jagged as a wolfs mouth and far more impassable. From up here it was possible to see the whole kingdom . . .
There was a ripping noise in the sky above her, a blast of wind that spun her around again, and a Doppler-distorted cry of, ‘Stop dreaming, girl!’
She gripped the bristles with her knees and urged the stick upward.
It took several minutes to catch up with Granny, who was lying almost full length along her broomstick to reduce wind resistance. Dark treetops roared far below them as Magrat came alongside. Granny turned to her, holding her hat on with one hand.
‘Not before time,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t reckon this one’s got more’n a few minutes flight left. Come on, get a move on.’
She reached out a hand. So did Magrat. Unsteadily, the broomsticks bucking and dipping in one another’s slipstream, they touched fingertips.
Magrat’s arm tingled as the power flowed up it.[15] Granny’s broomstick jerked forward.
‘Leave me a bit,’ shouted Magrat. ‘I’ve got to get down!’
‘Shouldn’t be difficult,’ screamed Granny, above the noise of the wind.
‘I mean get down safely!’
‘You’re a witch, ain’t you? By the way, did you bring the cocoa? I’m freezing up here!’
Magrat nodded desperately, and with her spare hand passed up a straw bag.
‘Right,’ said Granny. ‘Well done. See you at Lancre Bridge.’
She uncurled her fingers.
Magrat whirled away in the buffeting wind, clinging tightly to a broomstick which now, she feared, had about as much buoyancy as a bit of firewood. It certainly wasn’t capable of sustaining a full-grown woman against the beckoning fingers of gravity.
As she plunged down towards the forest roof in a long shallow dive she reflected that there was possibly something complimentary in the way Granny Weatherwax resolutely refused to consider other people’s problems. It implied that, in her considerable opinion, they were quite capable of sorting them out by themselves.
Some kind of Change spell was probably in order.
Magrat concentrated.
Well, that seemed to work.
Nothing in the sight of mortal man had in fact changed. What Magrat had achieved was a mere adjustment of the mental processes, from a bewildered and slightly frightened woman gliding inexorably towards the inhospitable ground to a clearheaded, optimistic and positive thinking woman who had really got it together, was taking full responsibility for her own life and in general knew where she was coming from although, unfortunately, where she was heading had not changed in any way. But she felt a lot better about it.
She dug her heels in and forced the broomstick to yield the last dregs of its power in a brief burst, sending it skimming erratically a few feet from the trees. As it sagged again and started to plough a furrow among the midnight leaves she tensed herself, prayed to whatever gods of the forest might be listening that she would land on something soft, and let go.
There are three thousand known major gods on the Disc, and research theologians discover more every week. Apart from the minor gods of rock, tree and water, there are two that haunt the Ramtops – Hoki, half a man, half a goat, and entirely a bad practical joker, who was banished from Dunmanifestin for pulling the old exploding mistletoe joke on Blind Io, chief of all the gods; and also Herne the Hunted, the terrified and apprehensive deity of all small furry creatures whose destiny it is to end their lives as a brief, crunchy squeak . . .
Either could have been candidates for the small miracle which then occurred, for – in a forest full of cold rocks, jagged stumps and thorn bushes – Magrat landed on something soft.
Granny, meanwhile, was accelerating towards the mountains on the second leg of the journey. She consumed the regrettably tepid cocoa and, with proper environmental consideration, dropped the bottle as she passed over an upland lake.
It turned out that Magrat’s idea of sustaining food was two rounds of egg and cress sandwiches with the crusts cut off and, Granny noticed before the wind whipped it away, a small piece of parsley placed with consideration and care on top of each one. Granny regarded them for some time. Then she ate them.
A chasm loomed, still choked with winter snow. Like a tiny spark in the darkness, a dot of light against the hugeness of the Ramtops, Granny tackled the maze of the mountains.
Back in the forest, Magrat sat up and absent-mindedly pulled a twig from her hair. A few yards away the broomstick dropped through the trees, showering leaves.
A groan and a small, half-hearted tinkle caused her to peer into the gloom. An indistinct figure was on its hands and knees, searching for something.
‘Did I land on you?’ said Magrat.
‘Someone did,’ said the Fool.
They crawled nearer to one another.
‘You?’
‘You!’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Marry, I was walking along the ground,’ said the Fool. ‘A lot of people do, you know. I mean, I know it’s been done before. It’s not original. It probably lacks imagination but, well, it’s always been good enough for me.’
‘Did I hurt you?’
‘I think I’ve got one or two bells that won’t be the same again.’
The Fool scrabbled through the leafmould, and finally located his hated hat. It clonked.
‘Totally crushed, i’faith,’ he said, putting it on anyway. He seemed to feel better for that, and went on, ‘Rain, yes, hail, yes, even lumps of rock. Fish and small frogs, okay. Women no, up till now. Is it going to happen again?’
‘You’ve got a bloody hard head,’ said Magrat, pulling herself to her feet.
‘Modesty forbids me to comment,’ said the Fool, and then remembered himself and added, quickly, ‘Prithee.’
They stared at one another again, their minds racing.
Magrat thought: Nanny said look at him properly. I’m looking at him. He just looks the same. A sad thin little man in a ridiculous jester’s outfit, he’s practically a hunchback.
Then, in the same way that a few random bulges in a cloud can suddenly become a galleon or a whale in the eye of the beholder, Magrat realised that the Fool was not a little man. He was at least of average height, but he made himself small, by hunching his shoulders, bandying his legs and walking in a half-crouch that made him appear as though he was capering on the spot.
I wonder what else Gytha Ogg noticed? she thought, intrigued.
He rubbed his arm and gave her a lopsided grin.
‘I suppose you haven’t got any idea where we are?’ he said.
‘Witches never get lost,’ said Magrat firmly. ‘Although they can become temporarily mislaid. Lancre’s over that way, I think. I’ve got to find a hill, if you’ll excuse me.’
‘To see where you are?’
‘To see when, I think. There’s a lot of magic going on tonight.’
‘Is there? Then I think I’ll accompany you,’ the Fool added chivalrously, after peering cautiously into the tree-haunted gloom that apparently lay between him and his flagstones. ‘I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.’