Nanny Ogg sighed.
“Them.” she said. “You know. Them. We ain't certain, but. . .”
“Who's Them?”
Nanny hesitated. There were some things you didn't tell ordinary people. On the other hand, Jason was a blacksmith, which meant he wasn't ordinary. Blacksmiths had to keep secrets. And he was family; Nanny Ogg had had an adventurous youth and wasn't very good at counting, but she was pretty certain he was her son.
“You see,” she said, waving her hands vaguely, “them stones. . . the Dancers . . . see, in the old days . . . see, once upon a time. . .”
She stopped, and tried again to explain the essentially fractal nature of reality.
“Like . . . there's some places that're thinner than others, where the old doorways used to be, well, not doorways, never exactly understood it myself, not doorways as such, more places where the world is thinner . . . Anyway, the thing is, the Dancers . . . are a kind of fence . . . we, well, when I say we I mean thousands of years ago . . . I mean, but they're not just stones, they're some kind of thunderbolt iron but . . . there's things like tides, only not with water, it's when worlds get closer together'n you can nearly step between 'em . . . anyway, if people've been hangin' around the stones, playin' around . . . then They'll be back, if we're not careful.”
“What They?”
“That's the whole trouble,” said Nanny, miserably. “If I tells you, you'll get it all wrong. They lives on the other side of the Dancers.”
Her son stared at her. Then a faint grin of realisation wandered across his face.
“Ah,” he said. “I knows. I heard them wizards down in Ankh is always accidentally rippin' holes in this fabric o' reality they got down there, and you get them horrible things coming out o' the Dungeon Dimensions. Huge buggers with dozens o' eyeballs and more legs'n a Morris team.” He gripped his No. 5 hammer. “Don't you worry. Mum. If they starts poppin' out here, we'll soon-”
“No, it ain't like that,” said Nanny “Those live outside. But Them lives. . . over there.”
Jason looked completely lost.
Nanny shrugged. She'd have to tell someone, sooner or later.
“The Lords and Ladies,” she said.
“Who're they?”
Nanny looked around. But, after all, this was a forge. There had been a forge here long before there was a castle, long before there was even a kingdom. There were horseshoes everywhere. Iron had entered the very walls. It wasn't just a place of iron, it was a place where iron died and was reborn. If you couldn't speak the words here, you couldn't speak 'em anywhere.
Even so, she'd rather not.
“You know,” she said. “The Fair Folk. The Gentry. The Shining Ones. The Star People. You know.”
“What?”
Nanny put her hand on the anvil, just in case, and said the word.
Jason's frown very gently cleared, at about the same speed as a sunrise.
“Them?” he said. “But aren't they nice and-?”
'“See?” said Nanny. “I told you you'd get it wrong!”
“How much?” said Ridcully.
The coachman shrugged.
“Take it or leave it,” he said.
“I'm sorry, sir,” said Ponder Stibbons. “It's the only coach.”
“Fifty dollars each is daylight robbery!”
“No,” said the coachman patiently. “Daylight robbery,” he said, in the authoritative tones of the experienced, “is when someone steps out into the road with an arrow pointing at us and then all his friends swings down from the rocks and trees and take away all our money and things. And then there's nighttime robbery, which is like daytime robbery except they set fire to the coach so's they can see what they're about. Twilight robbery, now, your basic twilight robbery is-”