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Authors: Terry Pratchett

Witches Abroad (27 page)

BOOK: Witches Abroad
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Granny Weatherwax's fingers drummed on the edge of the café table.
Nanny sighed.
‘Now what?' she said.
‘It doesn't happen like this,' said Granny.
‘Listen, Esme, the only kind of magic that'd work right now is wand magic. And Magrat's got the wand.' Nanny nodded at Magrat. ‘Ain't that so, Magrat?'
‘Um,' said Magrat.
‘Not lost it, have you?'
‘No, but—'
‘There you are, then.'
‘Only . . . um . . . Ella said she'd got
two
godmothers . . .'
Granny Weatherwax's hand thumped down on the table. Nanny's drink flew into the air and overturned.
‘That's
right
!' roared Granny.
‘That was nearly full. That was a nearly full drink,' said Nanny reproachfully.
‘Come on!'
‘Best part of a whole glass of—'
‘Gytha!'
‘Did I say I wasn't coming? I was just pointing out—'
‘Now!'
‘Can I just ask the man to get me ano—'
‘Gytha!'
The witches were halfway up the street when a coach rattled out of the driveway and trundled away.
‘That can't be it!' said Magrat. ‘We got rid of it!'
‘We ort to have chopped it up,' said Nanny. ‘There's good eating on a pumpk—'
‘They've got us,' said Granny, slowing down to a stop.
‘Can't you get into the minds of the horses?' said Magrat.
The witches concentrated.
‘They ain't horses,' said Nanny. ‘They feel like . . .'
‘Rats turned into horses,' said Granny, who was even better at getting into people's minds than she was at getting under their skins. ‘They feel like that poor old wolf. Minds like a firework display.' She winced at the taste of them in her own head.
‘I bet,' said Granny, thoughtfully, as the coach skidded around the corner, ‘I bet I could make the wheels fall right off.'
‘That's not the way,' said Magrat. ‘Anyway, Ella's in there!'
‘There may be another way,' said Nanny. ‘I know someone who could get inside them minds right enough.'
‘Who?' said Magrat.
‘Well, we've still got our brooms,' said Nanny. ‘It should be easy to overtake it, right?'
The witches landed in an alleyway a few minutes ahead of the coach.
‘I don't hold with this,' said Granny. ‘It's the sort of thing Lily does. You can't expect me to like this. Think of that wolf!'
Nanny lifted Greebo out of his nest among the bristles.
‘But Greebo's nearly human anyway,' she said.
‘Hah!'
‘And it'll only be temp'ry, even with the three of us doing it,' she said. ‘Anyway, it'll be int'resting to see if it works.'
‘Yes, but it's
wrong
,' said Granny.
‘Not for these parts, it seems,' said Nanny.
‘Besides,' said Magrat virtuously, ‘it can't be bad if
we're
doing it. We're the good ones.'
‘Oh yes, so we is,' said Granny, ‘and there was me forgetting it for a minute there.'
Nanny stood back. Greebo, aware that something was expected of him, sat up.
‘You must admit we can't think of anything better, Granny,' said Magrat.
Granny hesitated. But under all the revulsion was the little treacherous flame of fascination with the idea. Besides, she and Greebo had hated one another cordially for years. Almost human, eh? Give him a taste of it, then, and see how he likes it . . . She felt a bit ashamed of the thought. But not much.
‘Oh,
all
right.'
They concentrated.
As Lily knew, changing the shape of an object is one of the hardest magics there is. But it's easier if the object is alive. After all, a living thing already knows what shape it is. All you have to do is change its mind.
Greebo yawned and stretched. To his amazement he went on stretching.
Through the pathways of his feline brain surged a tide of belief. He suddenly believed he was human. He wasn't simply under the
impression
that he was human; he believed it implicitly. The sheer force of the unshakeable belief flowed out into his morphic field, overriding its objections, rewriting the very blueprint of his self.
Fresh instructions surged back.
If he was human, he didn't need all this fur. And he ought to be bigger . . .
The witches watched, fascinated.
‘I
never
thought we'd do it,' said Granny.
. . . no points on the ears, the whiskers were too long . . .
. . . he needed more muscle, all these bones were the wrong shape, these legs ought to be longer . . .
And then it was finished.
Greebo unfolded himself and stood up, a little unsteadily.
Nanny stared, her mouth open.
Then her eyes moved downwards.
‘Cor,' she said.
‘I think,' said Granny Weatherwax, ‘that we'd better imagine some clothes on him
right now
.'
That was easy enough. When Greebo had been clothed to her satisfaction Granny nodded and stood back.
‘Magrat, you can open your eyes,' she said.
‘I hadn't got them closed.'
‘Well, you should have had.'
Greebo turned slowly, a faint, lazy smile on his scarred face. As a human, his nose was broken and a black patch covered his bad eye. But the other one glittered like the sins of angels, and his smile was the downfall of saints. Female ones, anyway.
Perhaps it was pheromones, or the way his muscles rippled under his black leather shirt. Greebo broadcast a kind of greasy diabolic sexuality in the megawatt range. Just looking at him was enough to set dark wings fluttering in the crimson night.
‘Uh, Greebo,' said Nanny.
He opened his mouth. Incisors glittered.
‘Wrowwwwl,' he said.
‘Can you understand me?'
‘Yessss, Nannyyy.'
Nanny Ogg leaned against the wall for support.
There was the sound of hooves. The coach had turned into the street.
‘Get out there and stop that coach!'
Greebo grinned again, and darted out of the alley.
Nanny fanned herself with her hat.
‘Whoo-eee,' she said. ‘And to think I used to tickle his tummy . . . No wonder all the lady cats scream at night.'
‘Gytha!'
‘Well,
you've
gone very red, Esme.'
‘I'm just out of breath,' said Granny.
‘Funny, that. It's not as if you've been running.'
The coach rattled down the street.
The coachmen and footmen were not at all sure what they were. Their minds oscillated wildly. One moment they were men thinking about cheese and bacon rinds. And the next they were mice wondering why they had trousers on.
As for the horses . . . horses are a little insane anyway, and being a rat as well wasn't any help.
So none of them were in a very stable frame of mind when Greebo stepped out of the shadows and
grinned
at them.
He said, ‘Wrowwwl.'
The horses tried to stop, which is practically impossible with a coach still piling along behind you. The coachmen froze in terror.
‘Wrowwwl?'
The coach skidded around and came up broadside against a wall, knocking the coachmen off. Greebo picked one of them up by his collar and bounced him up and down while the maddened horses fought to get out of the shafts.
‘Run awayy, furry toy?' he suggested.
Behind the frightened eyes man and mouse fought for supremacy. But they needn't have bothered. They would lose either way. As consciousness flickered between the states it saw either a grinning cat or a six-foot, well-muscled, one-eyed grinning bully.
The coachmouse fainted. Greebo patted him a few times, in case he was going to move . . .
‘Wake up, little mousey . . .'
. . . and then lost interest.
The coach door rattled, jammed, and then opened.
‘What's happening?' said Ella.
‘Wrowwwwl!'
Nanny Ogg's boot hit Greebo on the back of his head.
‘Oh no you don't, my lad,' she said.
‘Want to,' said Greebo sulkily.
‘You always do, that's your trouble,' said Nanny, and smiled at Ella. ‘Out you come, dear.'
Greebo shrugged, and then slunk off, dragging the stunned coachman after him.
‘What's
happening
?' complained Ella. ‘Oh. Magrat. Did you do this?'
Magrat allowed herself a moment's shy pride.
‘I
said
you wouldn't have to go to the ball, didn't I?'
Ella looked around at the disabled coach, and then back to the witches.
‘You ain't got any snake women in there with you, have you?' said Granny. Magrat gripped the wand.
‘They went on ahead,' said Ella. Her face clouded as she recalled something.
‘Lilith turned the real coachmen into beetles,' she whispered. ‘I mean, they weren't that bad! She made them get some mice and she made them human and then she said, there's got to be balance, and the sisters dragged in the coachmen and she turned them into beetles and then . . . she
trod
on them . . .'
She stopped, horrified.
A firework burst in the sky, but in the street below a bubble of terrible silence hung in the air.
‘Witches don't kill people,' said Magrat.
‘This is foreign parts,' muttered Nanny, looking away.
‘I think,' said Granny Weatherwax, ‘that you ought to get right away from here, young lady.'
‘They just went crack –'
‘We've got the brooms,' said Magrat. ‘We could
all
get away.'
‘She'd send something after you,' said Ella darkly. ‘I know her. Something from out of a mirror.'
‘So we'd fight it,' said Magrat.
‘No,' said Granny. ‘Whatever's going to happen's going to happen here. We'll send the young lady off somewhere safe and then . . . we shall see.'
‘But if I go away
she'll
know,' said Ella. ‘She's expecting to see me at the ball right now! And she'll come looking!'
‘That sounds right, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘You want to face her somewhere you choose. I don't want her lookin' for us on a night like this. I want to see her coming.'
There was a fluttering in the darkness above them. A small dark shape glided down and landed on the cobbles. Even in the darkness its eyes gleamed. It stared expectantly at the witches with far too much intelligence for a mere fowl.
‘That's Mrs Gogol's cockerel,' said Nanny, ‘ain't it?'
‘Exactly what it is I might never exactly decide,' said Granny. ‘I wish I knew where she stood.'
‘Good or bad, you mean?' said Magrat.
‘She's a good cook,' said Nanny. ‘I don't think anyone can cook like she do and be
that
bad.'
‘Is she the woman who lives out in the swamp?' said Ella. ‘I've heard all kinds of stories about her.'
‘She's a bit too ready to turn dead people into zombies,' said Granny. ‘And that's not right.'
‘Well, we just turned a cat into a person – I mean, a
human
person' – Nanny, inveterate cat lover, corrected herself – ‘and that's not strictly right either. It's probably a long way from strictly right.'
‘Yes, but we did it for the right reasons,' said Granny.
‘We don't know what Mrs Gogol's reasons are –'
There was a growl from the alleyway. Nanny scuttled towards it, and they heard her scolding voice.
‘No! Put him down this minute!'
‘Mine! Mine!'
Legba strutted a little way along the street, and then turned and looked expectantly at them.
Granny scratched her chin, and walked a little way away from Magrat and Ella, sizing them up. Then she turned and looked around.
‘Hmm,' she said. ‘Lily is expecting to see you, ain't she?'
‘She can look out of reflections,' said Ella nervously.
‘Hmm,' said Granny again. She stuck her finger in her ear and twiddled it for a moment. ‘Well, Magrat, you're the godmother around here. What's the most important thing we have to do?'
Magrat had never played a card game in her life.
‘Keep Ella safe,' she said promptly, amazed at Granny suddenly admitting that she was, after all, the one who had been given the wand. ‘That's what fairy godmothering is all about.'
‘Yes?'
Granny Weatherwax frowned.
‘You know,' she said, ‘you two are just about the same size . . .'
Magrat's expression of puzzlement lasted for half a second before it was replaced by one of sudden horror.
She backed away.
‘Someone's got to do it,' said Granny.
‘Oh, no! No! It wouldn't work! It really wouldn't work! No!'
‘Magrat Garlick,' said Granny Weatherwax, triumphantly, ‘you
shall
go to the ball!'
The coach cornered on two wheels. Greebo stood on the coachman's box, swaying and grinning madly and cracking the whip. This was even better than his fluffy ball with a bell in it . . .
Inside the coach Magrat was wedged between the two older witches, her head in her hands.
‘But Ella might get lost in the swamp!'
BOOK: Witches Abroad
9.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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