'I really hate them. Are they a dead end too?' said Daughter.
'Not quite dead enough as yet, despite your valiant efforts. Igor! On to Lancre.'
The coachman turned.
'Meth, marthter.'
'Oh, for the last time, man... is that any way to talk?'
'It'th the only way I know, marthter,' said Igor.
'And I told you to take the plumes off the coach, you idiot.'
The coachman shifted uneasily.
'Gotta have black plumeth, marthter. It'th tradithional.'
'Remove them at once!' Mother commanded. 'What will people think?'
'Yeth, mithtreth.'
The one addressed as Igor slammed the door and lurched back around to the horse. He removed the plumes reverentially and placed them under his seat.
Inside the coach the vexed voice said, 'Is Igor an evolutionary dead end too, Father?'
'We can but hope, dear.'
'Thod,' said Igor to himself, as he picked up the reins.
The wording began:
'You are cordially invited...'
... and was in that posh runny writing that was hard to read but ever so official.
Nanny Ogg grinned and tucked the card back on the mantelpiece. She liked the idea of 'cordially'. It had a rich, a thick and above all an alcoholic sound.
She was ironing her best petticoat. That is to say, she was sitting in her chair by the fire while one of her daughters-in-law, whose name she couldn't remember just at this moment, was doing the actual work. Nanny was helping by pointing out the bits she'd missed.
It was a damn good invite, she thought. Especially the gold edging, which was as thick as syrup. Probably not real gold, but impressively glittery all the same.
'There's a bit there that could do with goin' over again, gel,' she said, topping up her beer.
'Yes, Nanny.'
Another daughter-in-law, whose name she'd certainly be able to recall after a few seconds' thought, was buffing up Nanny's red boots. A third was very carefully dabbing the lint off Nanny's best pointy hat, on its stand.
Nanny got up again and wandered over to open the back door. There was little light left in the sky now, and a few rags of cloud were scudding over the early stars. She sniffed the air. Winter hung on late up here in the mountains, but there was definitely a taste of spring on the wind.
A good time, she thought. Best time, really. Oh, she knew that the year started on Hogswatchnight, when the cold tide turned, but the new year started now, with green shoots boring upwards through the last of the snow. Change was in the air, she could feel it in her bones.
Of course, her friend Granny Weatherwax always said you couldn't trust bones, but Granny Weatherwax said a lot of things like that all the time.
Nanny Ogg closed the door. In the trees at the end of her garden, leafless and scratchy against the sky, something rustled its wings and chattered as a veil of dark crossed the world.
In her own cottage a few miles away the witch Agnes Nitt was in two minds about her new pointy hat. Agnes was generally in two minds about anything.
As she tucked in her hair and observed herself critically in the mirror she sang a song. She sang in harmony. Not, of course, with her reflection in the glass, because that kind of heroine will sooner or later end up singing a duet with Mr Blue Bird and other forest creatures and then there's nothing for it but a flamethrower.