There wasn’t much pressure for those in any case. Everyone knew what event counted, and it wasn’t Unlucky Charlie.
One year Granny Weatherwax had made the pumpkin explode. No one had ever worked out how she’d done it.
Someone would walk away at the end of today and everyone would know they were the winner, whatever the points said. You could win the Witch With The Pointiest Hat prize and the broomstick dressage, but that was just for the audience. What counted was the Trick you’d been working on all summer.
Nanny had drawn last place, at number nineteen. A lot of witches had turned up this year. News of Granny Weatherwax’s withdrawal had got around, and nothing moves faster than news in the occult community since it doesn’t just have to travel at ground level. Many pointy hats moved and nodded among the crowds.
Witches are among themselves generally as sociable as cats but, as also with cats, there are locations and times and neutral grounds where they meet at something like peace. And what was going on was a sort of slow, complicated dance ..
The witches walked around saying hello to one another, and rushing to meet newcomers, and innocent bystanders might have believed that here was a meeting of old friends. Which, at one level, it probably was. But Nanny watched through a witch’s eyes, and saw the subtle positioning, the careful weighing-up, the little changes of stance, the eye-contact finely tuned by intensity and length.
And when a witch was in the arena, especially if she was comparatively unknown, all the others found some excuse to keep an eye on her, preferably without appearing to do so.
It was like watching cats. Cats spend a lot of time carefully eyeing one another. When they have to fight, that’s merely to rubber-stamp something that’s already been decided in their heads.
Nanny knew all this. And she also knew most of the witches to be kind (on the whole), gentle (to the meek), generous (to the deserving; the undeserving got more than they bargained for), and by and large quite dedicated to a life that really offered more kicks than kisses. Not one of them lived in a house made of confectionery, although some of the conscientious younger ones had experimented with various crispbreads.
Even children who deserved it were not slammed into their ovens.
Generally they did what they’d always done – smooth the passage of their neighbours into and out of the world, and help them over some of the nastier hurdles in between.
You needed to be a special kind of person to do that. You needed a special kind of ear, because you saw people in circumstances where they were inclined to tell you things, like where the money is buried or who the father was or how come they’d got a black eye again. And you needed a special kind of mouth, the sort that stayed shut.
Keeping secrets made you powerful. Being powerful earned you respect.
Respect was hard currency.
And within this sisterhood – except that it wasn’t a sisterhood, it was
a loose assortment of chronic non-joiners; a group of witches wasn’t a
coven, it was a small war – there was always this awareness of position.
It had nothing to do with anything the other world thought of as status.
Nothing was ever said. But if an elderly witch died the local witches would attend her funeral for a few last words, and then go solemnly home alone, with the little insistent thought at the back of their minds: ‘I’ve moved up one.’
And newcomers were watched very, very carefully.
“Morning, Mrs Ogg,’ said a voice behind her. ‘I trust I find you well?’
‘How’d’yer do, Mistress Shimmy,’ said Nanny, turning. Her mental filing system threw up a card: Clarity Shimmy, lives over towards Cutshade with her old mum, takes snuff, good with animals. ‘How’s your mother keepin’?’
‘We buried her last month, Mrs Ogg.’
Nanny Ogg quite liked Clarity, because she didn’t see her very often.
‘Oh dear .. .’ she said.
‘But I shall tell her you asked after her, anyway,’ said Clarity. She glanced briefly towards the ring. ‘Who’s the fat girl on now? Got a backside on her like a bowling ball on a short seesaw.’
‘That’s Agnes Nitt.’
‘That’s a good cursin’ voice she’s got there. You know you’ve been cursed with a voice like that.’
‘Oh yes, she’s been blessed with a good voice for cursin’,’ said Nanny politely. ‘Esme Weatherwax an’ me gave her a few tips,’ she added.
Clarity’s head turned.
At the far edge of the field, a small pink shape sat alone behind the Lucky Dip. It did not seem to be drawing a big crowd.
Clarity leaned closer.
‘What’s she . .. …. . doing?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nanny. ‘I think she’s decided to be nice about it.’
‘Esme? Nice about it?’
‘….. . yes,’ said Nanny. It didn’t sound any better now she was telling someone.
Clarity stared at her. Nanny saw her make a little sign with her left hand, and then hurry off.
The pointy hats were bunching up now. There were little groups of three or four. You could see the points come together, cluster in animated conversation, and then open out again like a flower, and turn towards the distant blob of pinkness. Then a hat would leave that group and head off purposefully to another one, where the process would start all over again. It was a bit like watching very slow nuclear fission.
There was a lot of excitement, and soon there would be an explosion.
Every so often someone would turn and look at Nanny, so she hurried away among the sideshows until she fetched up beside the stall of the dwarf Zakzak Stronginthearm, maker and purveyor of occult knicknackery to the more impressionable. He nodded at her cheerfully over the top of a display saying ‘Lucky Horseshoes $2 Each’.
‘Hello, Mrs Ogg,’ he said.
Nanny realized she was flustered.
‘What’s lucky about ‘em?’ she said, picking up a horseshoe.
‘Well, I get two dollars each for them,’ said Stronginthearm.
‘And that makes them lucky?’
‘Lucky for me,’ said Stronginthearm. ‘I expect you’ll be wanting one too, Mrs Ogg? I’d have fetched along another box if I’d known they’d be so popular. Some of the ladies’ve bought two.’
There was an inflection to the word ‘ladies’.
‘Witches have been buying lucky horseshoes?’ said Nanny.
‘Like there’s no tomorrow,’ said Zakzak. He frowned for a moment. They had been witches, after all. ‘Er. .. there will be… won’t there?’ he added.
‘I’m very nearly certain of it,’ said Nanny, which didn’t seem to comfort him.
‘Suddenly been doing a roaring trade in protective herbs, too,’ said Zakzak. And, being a dwarf, which meant that he’d see the Flood as a marvellous opportunity to sell towels, he added, ‘Can I interest you, Mrs Ogg?’
Nanny shook her head. If trouble was going to come from the direction everyone had been looking, then a sprig of rue wasn’t going to be much help. A large oak tree’d be better, but only maybe.
The atmosphere was changing. The sky was a wide pale blue, but there was thunder on the horizons of the mind. The witches were uneasy and with so many in one place the nervousness was bouncing from one to another and, amplified, rebroadcasting itself to everyone. It meant that even ordinary people who thought that a rune was a dried plum were beginning to feel a deep, existential worry, the kind that causes you to snap at your kids and want a drink.
Nanny peered through a gap between a couple of stalls. The pink figure was still sitting patiently, and a little crestfallen, behind the barrel. There was, as it were, a huge queue of no one at all.
Then Nanny scuttled from the cover of one tent to another until she could see the produce stand. It had already been doing a busy trade but there, forlorn in the middle of the cloth, was the pile of terrible cakes. And the jar of jam. Some wag had chalked up a sign beside it: ‘Get Thee fpoon out of thee Jar, 3 tries for A Penney!!!’
She thought she’d been careful to stay concealed, but she heard the straw rustle behind her. The committee had tracked her down.
‘That’s your handwriting, isn’t it, Mrs Earwig?’ she said.
‘That’s cruel.
That ain’t … nice.’
‘We’ve decided you’re to go and talk to Miss Weatherwax,’ said Letice.
‘She’s got to stop it.’
‘Stop what?’
‘She’s doing something to people’s heads! She’s come here to put the ‘fluence on us, right? Everyone knows she does head magic. We can all feel it! She’s spoiling it for everyone!’
‘She’s only sitting there,’ said Nanny.
‘Ah, yes, but how is she sitting there, may we ask?’
Nanny peered around the stall again.
‘Well … like normal. You know … bent in the middle and the knees…’