'Then what will you do?'
'Wait.'
'Waif?'
'Wait, and consider. Patience is a virtue.' The duke sat back. The smile he smiled could have spent a million years sitting on a rock. And then, just below one eye, he started to twitch. Blood was oozing between the bandages on his hand.
Once again the full moon rode the clouds.
Granny Weatherwax milked and fed the goats, banked me fire put a cloth over the minor and pulled her broomstick out from behind the door. She went out, locked the back door behind her, and hung the key on its nail in the privy.
This was quite sufficient. Only once, in the entire history of witchery in the Ramtops, had a thief broken into a witch's cottage. The witch concerned visited the most terrible punishment on him.[4]
Granny sat on the broom and muttered a few words, but without much conviction. After a further couple of tries she got off, fiddled with the binding, and had another go. There was a suspicion of glitter from one end of the stick, which quickly died away.
'Drat,' she said, under her breath.
She looked around carefully, in case anyone was watching. In fact it was only a hunting badger who, hearing the thumping of running feet, poked its head out from the bushes and saw Granny hurtling down the path with the broomstick held stiff-armed beside her. At last the magic caught, and she managed to vault clumsily on to it before it trundled into the night sky as gracefully as a duck with one wing missing.
From above the trees came a muffled curse against all dwarfish mechanics.
Most witches preferred to live in isolated cottages with the traditional curly chimneys and weed-grown thatch. Granny Weatherwax approved of this; it was no good being a witch unless you let people know.
Nanny Ogg didn't care much about what people knew and even less for what they thought, and lived in a new, knick-knack crammed cottage in the middle of Lancre town itself and at the heart of her own private empire. Various daughters and daughters-in-law came in to cook and clean on a sort of rota. Every flat surface was stuffed with ornaments brought back by far-travelling members of the family. Sons and grandsons kept the logpile stacked, the roof shingled, the chimney swept; the drinks cupboard was always full, the pouch by her rocking chair always stuffed with tobacco. Above the hearth was a huge pokerwork sign saying 'Mother'. No tyrant in the whole history of the world had ever achieved a domination so complete.
Nanny Ogg also kept a cat, a huge one-eyed grey torn called Greebo who divided his time between sleeping, eating and fathering the most enormous incestuous feline tribe. He opened his eye like a yellow window into Hell when he heard Granny's broomstick land awkwardly on the back lawn. With the instinct of his kind he recognised Granny as an inveterate cat-hater and oozed gently under a chair.
Magrat was already seated primly by the fire.
It is one of the few unbendable rules of magic that its practitioners cannot change their own appearance for any length of time. Their bodies develop a kind of morphic inertia and gradually return to their original shape. But Magrat tried. Every morning her hair was long, thick and blond, but by the evening it had always returned to its normal worried frizz. To ameliorate the effect she had tried to plait violets and cowslips in it. The result was not all she had hoped. It gave the impression that a window box had fallen on her head.
'Good evening,' said Granny.
'Well met by moonlight,' said Magrat politely. 'Merry meet. A star shines on—'
'Wotcha,' said Nanny Ogg. Magrat winced.
Granny sat down and started removing the pins that nailed her tall hat to her bun. Finally the sight of Magrat dawned on her.
'Magrat!'
The young witch jumped, and clamped her knuckly hands to the virtuous frontage of her gown.
'Yes?' she quavered.
'What have you got on your lap?'
'It's my familiar,' she said defensively.
'What happened to that toad you had?'
'It wandered off,' muttered Magrat. 'Anyway, it wasn't very good.'
Granny sighed. Magrat's desperate search for a reliable familiar had been going on for some time, and despite the love and attention she lavished on them they all seemed to have some terrible flaw, such as a tendency to bite, get trodden on or, in extreme cases, metamorphose.
'That makes fifteen this year,' said Granny. 'Not counting the horse. What's this one?'
'It's a rock,' chuckled Nanny Ogg.