Witches Abroad (Discworld #12)

Witches Abroad (Discworld #12) Page 39

There was no sound but the rustle of her dress and the soft hiss of her own breathing. She glided into the place between the mirrors.

Her myriad selves looked back at her approvingly. She relaxed.

Then her foot struck something. She looked down and saw on the flagstones, black in the moonlight, a broomstick lying in shards of broken glass.

Her horrified gaze rose to meet a reflection.

It glared back at her.

'Where's the pleasure in bein' the winner if the loser ain't alive to know they've lost?'

Lilith backed away, her mouth opening and shutting.

Granny Weatherwax stepped through the empty frame. Lily looked down, beyond her avenging sister.

'You broke my mirror!'

'Was this what it was all for, then?' said Granny.' Playin' little queens in some damp city? Serving stories? What sort of power is that?'

'You don't understand . . . you've broken the mirror . . .'

'They say you shouldn't do it,' said Granny. 'But I reckoned: what's another seven years' bad luck?'

Image after image shatters, all the way around the great curve of the mirror world, the crack flying out faster than light. . .

'You have to break both to be safe. . . you've upset the balance . . .'

'Hah! I did?' Granny stepped forward, her eyes two sapphires of bitterness. 'I'm goin' to give you the hidin' our Mam never gave you, Lily Weatherwax. Not with magic, not with headology, not with a stick like our Dad had, aye, and used a fair bit as I recall - but with skin. And not because you was the bad one. Not because you meddled with stories. Everyone has a path they got to tread. But because, and I wants you to understand this prop'ly, after you went I had to be the good one. You had all the fun. An' there's no way I can make you pay for that, Lily, but I'm surely goin' to give it a try . . .'

'But... I... I... I'm the good one,' Lily murmured, her face pale with shock. 'I'm the good one. I can't lose. I'm the godmother. You're the wicked witch . . . and you've broken the mirror . . .'

. . . moving like a comet, the crack in the mirrors reaches its furthest point and curves back, speeding down the countless worlds . . .

'You've got to help me put . . . the images must be balanced . . .' Lily murmured faintly, backing up against the remaining glass.

'Good? Good? Feeding people to stories? Twisting people's lives? That's good, is it?' said Granny. 'You mean you didn't even have fun? If I'd been as bad as you, I've have been a whole lot worse. Better at it than you've ever dreamed of.'

She drew back her hand.

. . . the crack returned towards its point of origin, carrying with it the fleeing reflections of all the mirrors . . .

Her eyes widened.

The glass smashed and crazed behind Lily Weatherwax.

And in the mirror, the image of Lily Weatherwax turned around, smiled beatifically, and reached out of the frame to take Lily Weatherwax into its arms.

'Lily!'

All the mirrors shattered, exploding outwards in a thousand pieces from the top of the tower so that, just for a moment, it was wreathed in twinkling fairy dust.

Nanny Ogg and Magrat came up onto the roof like avenging angels after a period of lax celestial quality control.

They stopped.

Where the maze of mirrors had been were empty frames. Glass shards covered the floor and, lying on them, was a figure in a white dress.

Nanny pushed Magrat behind her and crunched forward cautiously. She prodded the figure with the toe of her boot.

'Let's throw her off the tower,' said Magrat.

'All right,' said Nanny. 'Do it, then.'

Magrat hesitated. 'Well,' she said, 'when I said let's throw her off the tower, I didn't mean me personally throwing her off, I meant that if there was any justice she ought to be thrown off- '

'Then I shouldn't say any more on that score, if I was you,' said Nanny, kneeling carefully on the crunching shards. 'Besides, I was right. This is Esme. I'd know that face anywhere. Take off your petticoat.'

'Why?'

'Look at her arms, girl!'

Magrat stared. Then she raised her hands to her mouth.

'What has she been doing?'

'Trying to reach straight through glass, by the looks of it,' said Nanny. 'Now get it off and help me tear it into strips and then go and find Mrs Gogol and see if she's got any ointments and can help us, and tell her if she can't she'd better be a long way away by morning.' Nanny felt Granny Weatherwax's wrist. 'Maybe Lily Weatherwax could make jam of us but I'm damn sure I could knock Mrs Gogol's eye out with the fender if it came to it.'

Nanny removed her patent indestructible hat and fished around inside the point. She pulled out a velvet cloth and unwrapped it, revealing a little cache of needles and a spool of thread.

She licked a thread and held a needle against the moon, squinting.

'Oh, Esme, Esme,' she said, as she bent to her sewing, 'you do take winning hard.'

Lily Weatherwax looked out at the multi-layered, silvery world.

'Where am I?'

INSIDE THE MIRROR.

'Am I dead?'

THE ANSWER TO THAT, said Death, is SOMEWHERE

BETWEEN NO AND YES.

Lily turned, and a billion figures turned with her. 'When can I get out?' WHEN YOU FIND THE ONE THAT'S REAL. Lily Weatherwax ran on through the endless reflections.

A good cook is always the first one into the kitchen every morning and the last one to go home at night.

Mrs Pleasant damped down the fires. She did a quick inventory of the silverware and counted the tureens. She -

She was aware of being stared at.

There was a cat in the doorway. It was big and grey. One eye was an evil yellow-green, the other one pearly white. What remained of its ears looked like the edge of a stamp. Nevertheless, it had a certain swagger, and generated an I-can-beat-you-with-one-paw feel that was strangely familiar.

Airs Pleasant stared at it for a while. She was a close personal friend of Mrs Gogol and knew that shape is merely a matter of deeply-ingrained personal habit, and if you're a resident of Genua around Samedi Nuit Mort you learn to trust your judgement rather more than you trust your senses.

'Well now,' she said, with barely a trace of a tremor in her voice, 'I expect you'd like some more fish legs, I mean heads, how about that?'

Greebo stretched and arched his back.

'And there's some milk in the coolroom,' said Mrs Pleasant.

Greebo yawned happily.

Then he scratched his ear with his back leg. Humanity's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

It was a day later.

'Mrs Gogol's healing ointment really seems to work,' said Magrat. She held up a jar that was half-full of something pale green and strangely gritty and had a subtle smell which, you could quite possibly believe, occupied the whole world.

'It's got snakes' heads in it,' said Nanny Ogg.

'Don't you try to upset me,' said Magrat. 'I know the Snake's Head is a kind of flower. A fritillary, I think. It's amazing what you can do with flowers, you know.'

Nanny Ogg, who had in fact spent an instructive if gruesome half-hour watching Mrs Gogol make the stuff, hadn't the heart to say so.

'That's right,' she said. 'Flowers. No getting anything past you, I can see that.'

Magrat yawned.

They had been given the run of the palace, although no-one felt like running anywhere. Granny had been installed in the next room.

'Go and get some sleep,' said Nanny. 'I'll go and take over from Mrs Gogol in a moment.'

'But Nanny . . . Gytha ..." said Magrat.

'Hmm?'

'All that . . . stuff . . . she was saying, when we were travelling. It was so ... so cold. Wasn't it? Not wishing for things, not using magic to help people, not being able to do that fire thing - and then she went and did all those things! What am I supposed to make of that?'

'Ah, well,' said Nanny. 'It's all according to the general and the specific, right?'

'What does that mean?' Magrat lay down on the bed.

'Means when Esme uses words like “Everyone” and “No-one” she doesn't include herself.'

'You know . . . when you think about it ... that's terrible.'

'That's witchcraft. Up at the sharp end. And now . . . get some sleep.'

Magrat was too tired to object. She stretched out and was soon snoring in a genteel sort of way.

Nanny sat and smoked her pipe for a while, staring at the wall.

Then she got up and pushed open the door.

Mrs Gogol looked up from her stool by the bed.

'You go and get some sleep too,' said Nanny. 'I'll take over for a spell.'

"There's something not right,' said Mrs Gogol. 'Her hands are fine. She just won't wake up.'

'It's all in the mind, with Esme,' said Nanny.

'I could make some new gods and get everyone to believe in 'em real good. How about that?' said Mrs Gogol. Nanny shook her head.

'I shouldn't think Esme'd want that. She's not keen on gods. She thinks they're a waste of space.'

'I could cook up some gumbo, then. People'll come a long way to taste that.'

'It might be worth a try,' Nanny conceded. 'Every little helps, I always say. Why not see to it? Leave the rum here.'

After the voodoo lady had gone Nanny smoked her pipe some more and drank a little rum in a thoughtful sort of way, looking at the figure on the bed.

Then she bent down close to Granny Weatherwax's ear, and whispered:

'You ain't going to lose, are you?'

Granny Weatherwax looked out at the multi-layered, silvery world.

'Where am I?'

INSIDE THE MIRROR.

'Am I dead?'

THE ANSWER TO THAT, said Death, is SOMEWHERE

BETWEEN NO AND YES.

Esme turned, and a billion figures turned with her.

'When can I get out?'

WHEN YOU FIND THE ONE THAT'S REAL.

'Is this a trick question?'

No.

Granny looked down at herself.

'This one,' she said.

And stories just want happy endings. They don't give a damn who they're for.

Dear Jason eksetra,

Well so much for Genua but I leanred about Mrs Gogol's zombie medicin and she gave me the Hityi Hidtfrt/[?] told me how to make banananana dakry and gave me a thing call a banjo youll be amazed and all in all is a decent soul I reckon if you keeps her where you can see her. It looks like we got

Esme back but I don't know shes actin funny and quiet not like herself normally so Im keepin an Eye on her just in case Lily puled a farst one in the mirror. But I think shes geting better because when she woke up she arsked Magratfor a look at the wand and then she kind of twidled and twisted them rings on it and turned the po into a bunch of flowers and Magrat said she could never make the wand do that and Esme said no because, she wasted time wishing for thinges instead of working out how to make them happen. What I say is, what a good job Esme never got a wand when she was young, Lily would have bin a Picnic by comparisen. Enclosed is a picture of the cemtry here you can see folks are buried in boxes above ground the soil being so wet because you dont want to be dead and drownded at the same time, they say travelin brordens the mind, I reckon I could pull mine out my ears now and knot it under my chin, all the best, MUM.

In the swamp Mrs Gogol the voodoo witch draped the tail coat over its crude stand, stuck the hat on the top of the pole and fastened the cane to one end of the crosspiece with a bit of twine.

She stood back.

There was a fluttering of wings. Legba dropped out of the sky and perched on the hat. Then he crowed. Usually he only crowed at nightfall, because he was a bird of power, but for once he was inclined to acknowledge the new day.

It was said afterwards that, every year on Samedi Nuit Moit, when the carnival was at its height and the drums were loudest and the rum was nearly all gone, a man in a tail coat and a top hat and with the energy of a demon would appear out of nowhere and lead the dance.