Witches Abroad

The King sagged with relief. Then, as an afterthought, he added, 'Everyone all right?'



'Fine, dad.'



'I was quite worried for a time there. Thought we might have hit a section of conglomerate or something.'



'Just a patch of loose shale, dad.'



'Good.' The King looked at the heap again. He scratched his beard. 'Can't help noticing you seem to have struck pumpkin.'



'I thought it was an odd kind of sandstone, dad.'



The King walked back to the witches.



'Can you turn anything into anything?' he said hopefully.



Nanny Ogg looked sideways at Magrat, who was still staring at the wand in a sort of shock.



'I think we only do pumpkins at the moment,' she said cautiously.



The King looked a little disappointed.



'Well, then,' he said, 'if there's anything I can do for you ladies ... a cup of tea or something . . .'



Granny Weatherwax stepped forward. 'I was just thinking something like that myself,' she said.



The King beamed.



'Only more expensive,' said Granny.



The King stopped beaming.



Nanny Ogg sidled up to Magrat, who was shaking the wand and staring at it.



'Very clever,' she whispered. 'Why'd you think of pumpkins?'



'I didn't!'



'Don't you know how to work it?'



'No! I thought you just had to, you know, want something to happen!'



'There's probably more to it than just wishing,' said Nanny, as sympathetically as possible. 'There generally is.'



Some time around dawn, in so far as dawn happened in the mines, the witches were led to a river somewhere deep in the mountains, where a couple of barges were moored. A small boat was pulled up to a stone jetty.



'This'll take you right through the mountains,' said the King. 'I think it goes all the way to Genua, to tell the truth.' He took a large basket off an attendant dwarf. 'And we've packed you some lovely food,' he said.



'Are we going to go all the way in a boat?' said Magrat. She gave the wand a few surreptitious flourishes. 'I'm not good at boats.'



'Listen,' said Granny, climbing aboard, 'the river knows its way out of the mountains, which is more than we do. We can use the brooms later on, where the landscape's acting a bit more sensible.'



'And we can have a bit of a rest,' said Nanny, sitting back.



Magrat looked at the two older witches, who were making themselves comfortable in the stern like a couple of hens settling down on a nest.



'Do you know how to row a boat?' she said.



'We don't have to,' said Granny.



Magrat nodded gloomily. Then a tiny bit of self-assertion flashed a fin.



'I don't think I do, too,' she ventured.



'That's all right,' said Nanny. 'If we sees you doing anything wrong, we'll be sure to tell you. Cheerio, your kingship.'



Magrat sighed, and picked up the oars.



'The flat bits go in the water,' said Granny helpfully.



The dwarfs waved. The boat drifted out into midstream, moving slowly in a circle of lantern light. Magrat found that all she really had to do was keep it pointing the right way in the current.



She heard Nanny say: 'Beats me why they're always putting invisible runes on their doors. I mean, you pays some wizard to put invisible runes on your door, and how do you know you've got value for money?'



She heard Granny say: 'No problem there. If you can't see 'em, you know you've got proper invisible runes.'



She heard Nanny say: 'Ah, that'd be it. Right, let's see what we've got for lunch.' There was a rustling noise.



'Well, well, well.'



'What is it, Gytha?'



'Pumpkin.'



'Pumpkin what?'



'Pumpkin nothing. Just pumpkin pumpkin.'



'Well, I suppose they've got a lot of pumpkin,' said Magrat. 'You know how it is at the end of the summer, there's always so much in the garden. I'm always at my wits' end to think of new types of chutney and pickles to use it all up - '



In the dim light she could see Granny's face which seemed to be suggesting that if Magrat was at her wits' end, it was a short stroll.



'I,' said Granny, 'have never made a pickle in my life.'



'But you like pickles,' said Magrat. Witches and pickles went together like - she hesitated before the stomach-curdling addition of peaches and cream, and mentally substituted 'things that went together very well'. The sight of Nanny Ogg's single remaining tooth at work on a pickled onion could bring tears to the eyes.



'I likes 'em fine,' said Granny. 'I gets 'em given to me.'



'You know,' said Nanny, investigating the recesses of the basket, 'whenever I deals with dwarfs, the phrase “Duck's arse” swims across my mind.'



'Mean little devils. You should see the prices they tries to charge me when I takes my broom to be repaired,' said Granny.



'Yes, but you never pay," said Magrat.



'That's not the point,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'They shouldn't be allowed to charge that sort of money. That's thievin', that is.'



'I don't see how it can be thieving if you don't pay anyway," Magrat persisted.



'I never pay for anything,' said Granny. 'People never let me pay. I can't help it if people gives me things the whole time, can P When I walks down the street people are always running out with cakes they've just baked, and fresh beer, and old clothes that've hardly been worn at all. “Oh, Mistress Weatherwax, pray take this basket of eggs”, they say. People are always very kind. Treat people right an' they'll treatyou right. That's respect. Not having to pay,' she finished, sternly, 'is what bein' a witch is all about.'



'Here, what's this?' said Nanny, pulling out a small packet. She unwrapped the paper and revealed several hard brown discs.



'My word,' said Granny Weatherwax, 'I take it all back. That's the famous dwarf bread, that is. They don't give that to just anyone.'



Nanny tapped it on the edge of the boat. It made a noise very similar to the kind of noise you get when a wooden ruler is held over the edge of a desk and plucked; a sort of hollow boioioing sound.



'They say it never goes stale even if you stores it for years,' said Granny.



'It'd keep you going for days and days,' said Nanny Ogg-



Magrat reached across, took one of the flat loaves, tried to break it, and gave up.



'You're supposed to eat it?' she said.



'Oh, I don't think it's for eating,' said Nanny. 'It's more for sort of - '



' - keeping you going,' said Granny. 'They say that - '



She stopped.



Above the noise of the river and the occasional drip of water from the ceiling they could all hear, now, the steady slosh-slosh of another craft heading towards them.



'Someone's following us!' hissed Magrat.



Two pale glows appeared at the edge of the lamplight. Eventually they turned out to be the eyes of a small grey creature, vaguely froglike, paddling towards them on a log.



It reached the boat. Long clammy fingers grabbed the side, and a lugubrious face rose level with Nanny Ogg's.



' 'ullo,' it said. 'It'sss my birthday.'



All three of them stared at it for a while. Then Granny Weatherwax picked up an oar and hit it firmly over the head. There was a splash, and a distant cursing.



'Horrible little bugger,' said Granny, as they rowed on. 'Looked like a troublemaker to me.'



'Yeah,' said Nanny Ogg. 'It's the slimy ones you have to watch out for.'



'I wonder what he wanted?' said Magrat.



After half an hour the boat drifted out through a cave mouth and into a narrow gorge between cliffs. Ice glistened on the walls, and there were drifts of snow on some of the outcrops.



Nanny Ogg looked around guilelessly, and then fumbled somewhere in the depths of her many skirts and produced a small bottle. There was a glugging noise.



'I bet there's a fine echo here,' she said, after a while.



'Oh no you don't,' said Granny firmly.



'Don't what?'



'Don't sing That Song.'



'Pardon, Esme?'



'I ain't going,' said Granny, 'if you insists on singing That Song.'



'What song would that be?' said Nanny innocently.



'You know the song to whom I am referring,' said Granny icily. 'You always get drunk and let me down and sing it.'



'Can't recall any song like that, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg meekly.



'The one,' said Granny, 'about the rodent that can't -that can't ever be persuaded to care about anything.'



'Oh,' said Nanny, beaming as light dawned, 'you mean The Hedgehog Can Never Be Bugg- '



'That's the one!'



'But it's traditional,' said Nanny. 'Anyway, in foreign parts people won't know what the words mean.'



'They will the way you sings them,' said Granny. 'The way you sings them, creatures what lives on the bottoms of ponds'd know what they mean.'



Magrat looked over the side of the boat. Here and there the ripples were edged with white. The current was running a bit faster, and there were lumps of ice in it.



'It's only a folk song, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg.



'Hah!' said Granny Weatherwax. 'I should just say it is a folk song! I knows all about folk songs. Hah! You think you're listenin' to a nice song about . . . about cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about . . . about something else entirely,' she added darkly. 'You can't trust folk songs. They always sneak up on you.'



Magrat fended them off a rock. An eddy spun them around slowly.



'I know one about two little bluebirds,' said Nanny Ogg.



'Um,' said Magrat.



'They may start out by being bluebirds, but I bet they ends up some kind of mettyfor,' said Granny.



'Er, Granny,' said Magrat.



'It was bad enough Magrat telling me about maypoles and what's behind 'em,' said Granny. She added, wistfully, 'I used to enjoy looking at a maypole of a spring morning.'



'I think the river's getting a bit sort of rough,' said Magrat.



'I don't see why people can't just let things be,' said Granny.



'I mean really quite rough, really . . .' said Magrat, pushing them away from a jagged rock.



'She's right, you know,' said Nanny Ogg. 'It's a bit on the choppy side.'



Granny looked over Magrat's shoulder at the river ahead. It had a cut-off look, such as might be associated with, for example, an imminent waterfall. The boat was now surging along. There was a muted roar.



'They never said anything about a waterfall,' she said.



'I 'spect they thought we'd find out for ourselves,' said Nanny Ogg, gathering up her possessions and hauling



Greebo out of the bottom of the boat by the scruff of his neck. 'Very sparin' with information, your average dwarf. Thank goodness witches float. Anyway, they knew we'd got the brooms.'



'You've got brooms,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'How'm I supposed to get mine started in a boat? Can't run up and down, can I? And stop movin' about like that, you'll have us all over - '



'Get your foot out of the way, Esme - '



The boat rocked violently.



Magrat rose to the occasion. She pulled out the wand, just as a wavelet washed over the boat.



'Don't worry,' she said, 'I'll use the wand. I think I've got the hang of it now - '



'No!' screamed Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg together.



There was a large, damp noise. The boat changed shape. It also changed colour. It became a cheery sort of orange.



'Pumpkins!' screamed Nanny Ogg, as she was gently tipped into the water. 'More bloody pumpkins!'



Lilith sat back. The ice around the river hadn't been that good as a mirror, but it had been good enough.



Well. A wishy-washy overgrown girl more suitable to the attentions of a fairy godmother than to being one, and a little old washerwoman-type who got drunk and sang songs. And a wand the stupid girl didn't know how to use.



It was annoying. More than that, it was demeaning. Surely Desiderata and Mrs Gogol could have achieved something better than this. You derived status by the strength of your enemies.