‘What happened to them?’ said Nanny.

‘The wolf ate them. They were the only animals stupid enough to let him get near them, apparently. Nothing was found of them except their spirit level.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘The woodcutter says they didn’t build very good houses, mind you.’

‘Well, it’s only to be expected. What with the trotters and all,’ said Nanny.

‘He says the roof leaks something dreadful, right over his bed.’

The witches walked on in silence.

‘I remember hearing once,’ said Nanny, with the occasional glance at Granny Weatherwax, ‘about some ole enchantress in history who lived on an island and turned shipwrecked sailors into pigs.’^{35}

‘That’s a terrible thing to do,’ said Magrat, on cue.

‘I suppose it’s all according to what you really are, inside,’ said Nanny. ‘I mean, look at Greebo here.’ Greebo, curled around her shoulders like a smelly fur, purred. ‘He’s practically a human.’

‘You do talk a lot of tosh, Gytha,’ said Granny Weatherwax.

‘That’s ’cos people won’t tell me what they really think is going on,’ said Nanny Ogg, grimly.

‘I said I’m not sure,’ said Granny.

‘You looked into the wolf’s mind.’

‘Yes. I did.’

‘Well, then …’

Granny sighed. ‘Someone’s been here before us. Passing through. Someone who knows about the power of stories, and uses ’em. And the stories have … kind of hung around. They do that, when they get fed …’

‘What’d anyone want to do that for?’ said Nanny.

‘Practice,’ said Granny.

‘Practice? What for?’ said Magrat.

‘I expect we’ll find out presently,’ said Granny gnomically.

‘You ought to tell me what you think,’ said Magrat. ‘I am the official godmother around here, you know. I ought to be told things. You’ve got to tell me things.’

Nanny Ogg went chilly. This was the kind of emotional countryside with which she was, as head Ogg, extremely familiar. That sort of comment at this sort of time was like the tiny sliding of snow off the top branch of a tall tree high in the mountains during the thaw season. It was one end of a process that, without a doubt, would end with a dozen villages being engulfed. Whole branches of the Ogg family had stopped talking to other branches of the Ogg family because of a ‘Thank you very much’ in the wrong tones and the wrong place, and this was far worse.

‘Now,’ she said hurriedly, ‘why don’t we —’

‘I don’t have to explain anything,’ said Granny Weatherwax.

‘But we’re supposed to be three witches,’ said Magrat. ‘If you can call us witches,’ she added.

‘What do you mean by that, pray?’ said Granny.

‘Pray?’ thought Nanny. Someone has ended a sentence with ‘pray?’ That’s like that bit when someone hits someone else with a glove and then throws it on the floor. There’s no going back when someone’s ended a sentence with ‘pray?’ But she tried, anyway.

‘How about a nice —’

Magrat plunged on with the brave desperation of someone dancing in the light of their burning bridges.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘it seems to me—’

‘Yes?’ said Granny.

‘It seems to me,’ Magrat tried again, ‘that the only magic we do is all — well, headology. Not what anyone else would call magic. It’s just glaring at people and tricking them. Taking advantage of their gullibility. It wasn’t what I expected when I set out to become a witch—’

‘And who says,’ said Granny Weatherwax, slowly and deliberately, ‘that you’ve become a witch now?’

‘My word, the wind is getting up, perhaps we should—’ said Nanny Ogg.

‘What did you say?’ said Magrat.

Nanny Ogg put her hand over her eyes. Asking someone to repeat a phrase you’d not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble.^{36}

‘I should have thought my voice was clear enough,’ said Granny. ‘I’m very amazed my voice wasn’t clear enough. It sounded clear enough to me.’

‘Looks a bit gusty, why don’t we—?’

‘Well, I should just think I can be smug and bad-tempered and ill-considerate enough to be a witch,’ said Magrat. ‘That’s all that’s required, isn’t it?’

‘Ill-considerate? Me?’

‘You like people who need help, because when they need help they’re weak, and helping them makes you feel strong! What harm would a bit of magic do?’

‘Because it’d never stop at just a bit, you stupid girl!’

Magrat backed off, her face flushed. She reached into her bag and pulled out a slim volume, which she flourished like a weapon.

‘Stupid I may be,’ she panted, ‘but at least I’m trying to learn things! Do you know the kind of things people can use magic for? Not just illusion and bullying! There’s people in this book that can … can … walk on hot coals, and stick their hands in a fire and not get hurt!’

‘Cheap trickery!’ said Granny.

‘They really can!’

‘Impossible. No-one can do that!’

‘It shows they can control things! Magic’s got to be more than just knowing things and manipulating people!’

‘Oh? It’s all wishing on stars and fairy dust,^{37} is it? Making people happier?’

‘There’s got to be some of that! Otherwise what’s the good of anything? Anyway … when I went to Desiderata’s cottage you were looking for the wand, weren’t you?’

‘I just didn’t want it falling into the wrong hands!’

‘Like any hands but yours, I expect!’

They glared at each other.

‘Haven’t you got any romance in your soul?’ said Magrat plaintively.

‘No,’ said Granny. ‘I ain’t. And stars don’t care what you wish, and magic don’t make things better, and no-one doesn’t get burned who sticks their hand in a fire.^{38} If you want to amount to anything as a witch, Magrat Garlick, you got to learn three things. What’s real, what’s not real, and what’s the difference—’

‘And always get the young man’s name and address,’ said Nanny. ‘It worked for me every time. Only joking,’ she said, as they both glared at her.

The wind was rising, here on the edge of the forest. Bits of grass and leaves whirled through the air.

‘We’re going the right way, anyway,’ said Nanny madly, seeking anything that would be a distraction. ‘Look. It says “Genua” on the signpost.’

It did indeed. It was an old, worm-eaten signpost right on the edge of the forest. The end of the arm had been carved into the likeness of a pointing finger.

‘A proper road, too,’ Nanny burbled on. The row cooled a bit, simply because both sides were not talking to each other. Not simply not exchanging vocal communication — that’s just an absence of speaking. This went right through that and out the other side, into the horrible glowering worlds of Not Talking to One Another.

‘Yellow bricks,’ said Nanny. ‘Whoever heard of anyone making a road out of yellow bricks?’

Magrat and Granny Weatherwax stood looking in opposite directions with their arms folded.

‘Brightens the place up, I suppose,’ said Nanny. On the horizon, Genua sparkled in the middle of some more greenery. In between, the road dipped into a wide valley dotted with little villages. A river snaked through them on the way to the city.

The wind whipped at their skirts.

‘We’ll never fly in this,’ said Nanny, still womanfully trying to make enough conversation for three people.

‘So we’ll walk, then, eh?’ she said, and added, because there’s a spark of spitefulness even in innocent souls like Nanny Ogg’s, ‘Singing as we go, how about it?’

‘I’m sure it’s not my place to mind what anyone chooses to do,’ said Granny. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. I expect some people with wands and big ideas might have something to say.’

‘Huh!’ said Magrat.

They set off along the brick road towards the distant city, in single file with Nanny Ogg as a kind of mobile buffer state in the middle.

‘What some people need,’ said Magrat, to the world in general, ‘is a bit more heart.’

‘What some people need,’ said Granny Weatherwax, to the stormy sky, ‘is a lot more brain.’

Then she clutched at her hat to stop the wind from blowing it off.

What I need, thought Nanny Ogg fervently, is a drink.^{39}

Three minutes later a farmhouse dropped on her head.

By this time the witches were well spaced out. Granny Weatherwax was striding along in front, Magrat was sulking along at the rear, and Nanny was in the middle.

As she said afterwards, it wasn’t even as if she was singing. It was just that one moment there was a small, plump witch, and the next there was the collapsing remains of a wooden farmhouse.^{40}

Granny Weatherwax turned and found herself looking at a crumbling, unpainted front door. Magrat nearly walked into a back door of the same grey, bleached wood.

There was no sound but the crackle of settling timber.

‘Gytha?’ said Granny.

‘Nanny?’ said Magrat.

They both opened their doors.

It was a very simple design of house, with two downstairs rooms separated by a front-to-back passageway. In the middle of the passageway, surrounded by shattered and termite-ridden floor-boards, under the pointy hat that had been rammed down to her chin, was Nanny Ogg. There was no sign of Greebo.

‘Wha’ happened?’ she said. ‘Wha’ happened?’

‘A farmhouse dropped on your head,’ said Magrat.

‘Oh. One o’ them things,’ said Nanny vaguely.

Granny gripped her by the shoulders.

‘Gytha? How many fingers am I holding up?’ she said urgently.

‘Wha’ fingers? ’S’all gone dark.’

Magrat and Granny gripped the brim of Nanny’s hat and half lifted, half unscrewed it from her head. She blinked at them.

‘That’s the willow reinforcement,’ she said, as the pointy hat creaked back into shape like a resurrecting umbrella. She was swaying gently. ‘Stop a hammer blow, a hat with willow reinforcement. All them struts, see. Distributes the force. I shall write to Mr Vernissage.’

Magrat, bemused, looked around the little house.

‘It just dropped out of the sky!’ she said.

‘Could have been a big tornado or something somewhere,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Picked it up, see, then the wind drops and down it comes. You get funny things happening in high winds. Remember that big gale we had last year? One of my hens laid the same egg four times.’

‘She’s rambling,’ said Magrat.

‘No I ain’t, that’s just my normal talking,’ said Nanny.

Granny Weatherwax peered into one of the rooms. ‘I suppose there wouldn’t be any food and drink about the place?’ she said.

‘I think I could force myself to drink some brandy,’ said Nanny quickly.

Magrat peered up the stairs.

‘Coo-ee,’ she called, in the strangled voice of someone who wants to be heard without doing anything so bad-mannered as raise their voice. ‘Is there anyone here?’

Nanny, on the other hand, looked under the stairs. Greebo was a cowering ball of fur in a corner. She hauled him out by the scruff of his neck and gave him a slightly bewildered pat. Despite Mr Vernissage’s millinery masterpiece, despite the worm-eaten floor, and despite even the legendary thick skull of the Oggs, she was definitely feeling several twinkles short of a glitter and suffering a slight homesick-tinged dip in her usual sunny nature. People didn’t hit you over the head with farmhouses back home.

‘You know, Greebo,’ she said, ‘I don’t think we’re in Lancre.’^{41}

‘I’ve found some jam,’ said Granny Weatherwax, from the kitchen.

It didn’t take a lot to cheer up Nanny Ogg. ‘That’s fine,’ she called out. ‘It’ll go nicely on the dwarf bread.’

Magrat came into the room.

‘I’m not sure we should be taking other people’s provisions,’ she said. ‘I mean, this place must belong to someone.’

‘Oh. Did someone speak, Gytha?’ said Granny Weatherwax archly.

Nanny rolled her eyes.

‘I was merely saying, Nanny,’ said Magrat, ‘that this isn’t our property.’

‘She says it don’t belong to us, Esme,’ said Nanny.

‘Tell anyone who wants to know, Gytha, that it’s like salvage from a shipwreck,’ said Granny.

‘She says finders keepers, Magrat,’ said Nanny.

Something flickered past the window. Magrat went and peered out through the grimy pane.

‘That’s funny. There’s a lot of dwarfs dancing round the house,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes?’ said Nanny, opening a cupboard.

Granny stiffened. ‘Are they — I means, ask her if they’re singing,’ she said.

‘They singing, Magrat?’

‘I can hear something,’ said Magrat. ‘Sounds like “Dingdong, dingdong”.’

‘That’s a dwarf song all right,’ said Nanny. ‘They’re the only people who can make a hiho last all day.’

‘They seem very happy about it,’ said Magrat doubtfully.

‘Probably it was their farmhouse and they’re glad to get it back.’

There was a hammering on the back door. Magrat opened it. A crowd of brightly dressed and embarrassed dwarfs stepped back hurriedly and then peered up at her.

‘Er,’ said the one who was apparently the leader, ‘is … is the old witch dead?’

‘Which old witch?’ said Magrat.

The dwarf looked at her for a while with his mouth open. He turned and had a whispered consultation with his colleagues. Then he turned back.

‘How many have you got?’

‘There’s a choice of two,’ said Magrat. She wasn’t feeling in a very good mood and wasn’t prompted to aid the conversation more than necessary. Uncharacteristic nastiness made her add, ‘Free for the asking.’

‘Oh.’ The dwarf considered this. ‘Well, which old witch did the house land on?’

‘Nanny? No, she’s not dead. She’s just a bit stunned. But thanks all the same for asking,’ said Magrat. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

This seemed to puzzle the dwarfs. They went into a huddle. There was a lot of sotto voce arguing.

Then the head dwarf turned back to Magrat. He removed his helmet and turned it around and around nervously in his hands.

‘Er,’ he said, ‘can we have her boots?’

‘What?’

‘Her boots?’ said the dwarf, blushing. ‘Can we have them, please?’

‘What do you want her boots for?’

The dwarf looked at her. Then he turned and went into a huddle with his colleagues again. He turned back to Magrat.

‘We’ve just got this … feeling … that we ought to have her boots,’ he said.

He stood there blinking.

‘Well, I’ll go and ask,’ said Magrat. ‘But I don’t think she’ll say yes.’

As she went to close the door the dwarf twiddled his hat some more.

‘They are ruby-coloured, aren’t they?’ he said.

‘Well, they’re red,’ said Magrat. ‘Is red all right?’

‘They’ve got to be red.’ All the other dwarfs nodded. ‘It’s no good if they’re not red.’

Magrat gave him a blank look and shut the door.

‘Nanny,’ she said slowly, when she was back in the kitchen, ‘there’s some dwarfs outside who want your boots.’

Nanny looked up. She’d found a stale loaf in a cupboard and was industriously chewing. It was amazing what you’re eat if the alternative was dwarf bread.

‘What d’they want ’em for?’ she said.