There are any amount of ways, but they won’t be required because, in fact, none of this happened.
The sun did jerk sideways a bit, and it seemed that the trees on the rimward side of the gorge were rather taller, and Nanny couldn’t shake off the sensation that someone had just sat down heavily on her, squashed her flat, and then opened her out again.
This was because the kingdom did not, in so many words, move through time in the normal flickering sky, high-speed photography sense of the word. It moved around it, which is much cleaner, considerably easier to achieve, and saves all that travelling around trying to find a laboratory opposite a dress shop that will keep the same dummy in the window for sixty years, which has traditionally been the most time-consuming and expensive bit of the whole business.
The kiss lasted more than fifteen years.
Not even frogs can manage that.
The Fool drew back, his eyes glazed, his expression one of puzzlement.
‘Did you feel the world move?’ he said.
Magrat peered over his shoulder at the forest.
‘I think she’s done it,’ she said.
‘Done what?’
Magrat hesitated. ‘Oh. Nothing. Nothing much, really.’
‘Shall we have another try? I don’t think we got it quite right that time.’
Magrat nodded.
This time it lasted only fifteen seconds. It seemed longer.
A tremor ran through the castle, shaking the breakfast tray from which the Duke Felmet, much to his relief, was eating porridge that wasn’t too salty.
It was felt by the ghosts that now filled Nanny Ogg’s cottage like a rugby team in a telephone box.
It spread to every henhouse in the kingdom, and a number of hands relaxed their grip. And thirty-two purple-faced cockerels took a deep bream and crowed like maniacs, but they were too late, too late . . .
‘I still reckon you were up to something,’ said Granny Weatherwax.
‘Have another cup of tea,’ said Nanny pleasantly.
‘You won’t go and put any drink in it, will you,’ Granny said flatly. ‘It was the drink what did it last night. I would never have put myself forward like that. It’s shameful.’
‘Black Aliss never done anything like it,’ said Nanny, encouragingly. ‘I mean, it was a hundred years, all right, but it was only one castle she moved. I reckon anyone could do a castle.’
Granny’s frown puckered at the edge.
‘And she let all weeds grow over it,’ she observed primly.
‘Right enough.’
‘Very well done,’ said King Verence, eagerly. ‘We all thought it was superb. Being in the ethereal plane, of course, we were in a position to observe closely.’
‘Very good, your graciousness,’ said Nanny Ogg. She turned and observed the crowding ghosts behind him, who hadn’t been granted the privilege of sitting at, or partly through, the kitchen table.
‘But you lot can bugger off back to the outhouse,’ she said. ‘The cheek! Except the kiddies, they can stay,’ she added. ‘Poor little mites.’
‘I am afraid it feels so good to be out of the castle,’ said the king.
Granny Weatherwax yawned.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘we’ve got to find the boy now. That’s the next step.’
‘We shall look for him directly after lunch.’
‘Lunch?’
‘It’s chicken,’ said Nanny. ‘And you’re tired. Besides, making a decent search will take a long time.’
‘He’ll be in Ankh-Morpork,’ said Granny. ‘Mark my words. Everyone ends up there. We’ll start with Ankh-Morpork. You don’t have to search for people when destiny is involved, you just wait for them in Ankh-Morpork.’
Nanny brightened up. ‘Our Karen got married to an innkeeper from there,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen the baby yet. We could get free board and everything.’
‘We needn’t actually go. The whole point is that he should come here. There’s something about that city,’ said Granny. ‘It’s like a drain.’
‘It’s five hundred miles away!’ said Magrat. ‘You’ll be away for ages!’
‘I can’t help it,’ said the Fool. ‘The duke’s given me special instructions. He trusts me.’
‘Huh! To hire more soldiers, I expect?’
‘No. Nothing like that. Not as bad as that.’ The Fool hesitated. He’d introduced Felmet to the world of words. Surely that was better than hitting people with swords? Wouldn’t that buy time? Wouldn’t it be best for everybody, in the circumstances?
‘But you don’t have to go! You don’t want to go!’
‘That doesn’t have much to do with it. I promised to be loyal to him—’
‘Yes, yes, until you’re dead. But you don’t even believe that! You were telling me how much you hated the whole Guild and everything!’
‘Well, yes. But I still have to do it. I gave my word.’
Magrat came close to stamping her foot, but didn’t sink so low.
‘Just when we were getting to know one another!’ she shouted. ‘You’re pathetic!’
The Fool’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’d only be pathetic if I broke my word,’ he said. ‘But I may be incredibly ill-advised. I’m sorry. I’ll be back in a few weeks, anyway.’
‘Don’t you understand I’m asking you not to listen to him?’
‘I said I’m sorry. I couldn’t see you again before I go, could I?’
‘I shall be washing my hair,’ said Magrat stiffly.
‘When?’
‘Whenever!’
Hwel pinched the bridge of his nose and squinted wearily at the wax-spattered paper.
The play wasn’t going at all well.
He’d sorted out the falling chandelier, and found a place for a villain who wore a mask to conceal his disfigurement, and he’d rewritten one of the funny bits to allow for the fact that the hero had been born in a handbag. It was the clowns who were giving him trouble again. They kept changing every time he thought about them. He preferred them in twos, that was traditional, but now there seemed to be a third one, and he was blowed if he could think of any funny lines for him.
His quill moved scratchily over the latest sheet of paper, trying to catch the voices that had streamed through his dreaming mind and had seemed so funny at the time.
His tongue began to stick out of the corner of his mouth. He was sweating.
This iss My Little Study, he wrote. Hey, with a Little Study youe could goe a Long Way. And I wishe youed start now. Iffe You can’t leave yn a Cab then leave yn a Huff. Iffthates too soone, thenn leave yn a minute and a Huff. Say, have you Gott a Pensil? A crayon?—
Hwel stared at this in horror. On the page it looked nonsensical, ridiculous. And yet, and yet, in the thronged auditorium of his mind . . .
He dipped the quill in the inkpot, and chased the echoes further.
Seconde Clown: Atsa right, Boss.
Third Clowne: [businesse with bladder on stick] Honk. Honk.
Hwel gave up. Yes, it was funny, he knew it was funny, he’d heard the laughter in his dreams. But it wasn’t right. Not yet. Maybe never. It was like the other idea about the two clowns, one fat, one thin . . . Thys ys amain Dainty Messe youe have got me into, Stanleigh . . . He had laughed until his chest ached, and the rest of the company had looked at him in astonishment. But in his dreams it was hilarious.
He laid down the pen and rubbed his eyes. It must be nearly midnight, and the habit of a lifetime told him to spare the candles although, for a fact, they could afford all the candles they could eat now, whatever Vitoller might say.
Hour gongs were being struck all across the city and nightwatchmen were proclaiming that it was indeed midnight and also that, in the face of all the evidence, all was well. Many of them got as far as the end of the sentence before being mugged.
Hwel pushed open the shutters and looked out at Ankh-Morpork.
It would be tempting to say the twin city was at its best this time of year, but that wouldn’t be entirely correct. It was at its most typical.
The river Ankh, the cloaca of half a continent, was already pretty wide and silt laden when it reached the city’s outskirts. By the time it left it didn’t so much flow as exude. Owing to the accretion of the mud of centuries the bed of the river was in fact higher than some of the low lying areas and now, with the snow melt swelling the flow, many of the low-rent districts on the Morpork side were flooded, if you can use that word for a liquid you could pick up in a net. This sort of thing happened every year and would have caused havoc with the drains and sewage systems, so it is just as well that the city didn’t have very many. Its inhabitants merely kept a punt handy in the back yard and, periodically, built another storey on the house.