Carpe Jugulum

“Can’t say I fancy being a crone. I ain’t the right shape and anyway I don’t know what sound they make.”
    Agnes had a sudden and very clear and horrible mental image of the broken cup.
    “But Granny isn’t a…wasn’t a…I mean, she didn’t look like a—” she began.
    “There’s no point in lookin’ at a dog an’ sayin’ that’s not a dog ’cos a dog don’t look like that,” said Nanny simply.
    Agnes fell silent. Nanny was right, of course. Nanny was someone’s mum. It was written all over her. If you cut her in half, the word “Ma” would be all the way through. Some girls were just naturally…mothers. And some, Perdita added, were cut out to be professional maidens. As for the third, Agnes went on, ignoring her own interruption, perhaps it wasn’t so odd that people generally called Nanny out for the births and Granny for the deaths.
    “She thinks we don’t need her anymore?”
    “I reckon so.”
    “What is she going to do, then?”
    “Dunno. But if you had three, and now there’s four…well, something’s got to go, hasn’t it?”
    “What about the vampires? The two of us can’t cope with them!”
    “She’s been telling us there’s three of us,” said Nanny.
    “What? Magrat? But she’s—” Agnes stopped herself. “She’s no Nanny Ogg,” she said.
    “Well, I sure as hell ain’t an Esme Weatherwax, if it comes to that,” said Nanny. “The ment’l stuff is meat and drink to her. Getting inside other heads, puttin’ her mind somewhere else…that’s her for-tay, right enough. She’d wipe the smile off that Count’s face for him. From the inside, if I know Esme.”
    They sat and stared glumly at the empty, cold fireplace.
    “Maybe we weren’t always very nice to her,” said Agnes. She kept thinking of the broken cup. She was sure Granny Weatherwax hadn’t done that accidentally. She may have thought she’d done it accidentally, but maybe everyone had a Perdita inside. She’d walked around this gloomy cottage, which was as much in tune with her thoughts by now as a dog is with its master, and she’d had three on her mind. Three, three, three…
    “Esme didn’t thrive on nice,” said Nanny Ogg. “Take her an apple pie and she’ll complain about the pastry.”
    “But people don’t often thank her. And she does do a lot.”
    “She’s not set up for thanks, neither. Ment’ly. To tell you the honest truth, there’s always been a bit of the dark in the Weatherwaxes, and that’s where the trouble is. Look at old Alison Weatherwax.”
    “Who was she?”
    “Her own granny. Went to the bad, they say, just packed up one day and headed for Uberwald. And as for Esme’s sister…” Nanny stopped, and restarted. “Anyway, that’s why she’s always standin’ behind herself and criticizin’ what she’s doing. Some-times I reckon she’s terrified she’ll go bad without noticin’.”
    “Granny? But she’s a moral as—”
    “Oh yes, she is. But that’s because she’s got Granny Weather-wax glarin’ over her shoulder the whole time.”
    Agnes took another look around the spartan room. Now the rain was leaking steadily through the ceiling. She fancied she could hear the walls settling into the clay. She fancied she could hear them thinking.
    “Did she know Magrat was going to call the baby Esme?” she said.
    “Probably. It’s amazin’ what she picks up.”
    “Maybe not tactful, when you think about it,” said Agnes.
    “What do you mean? I ’d have been honored, if it was me.”
    “Perhaps Granny thought the name was being passed on. Inherited.”
    “Oh. Yes,” said Nanny. “Yes, I can just imagine Esme workin’ it up to that, when she’s in one of her gloomy moods.”
    “My granny used to say if you’re too sharp you’ll cut yourself,” said Agnes.
    They sat in gray silence for a while, and then Nanny Ogg said: “My own granny has an old country sayin’ she always trotted out at times like this…”
    “Which was…?”
    “‘Bugger off, you little devil, or I’ll chop off your nose and give it to the cat.’ Of course, that’s not so very helpful at a time like this, I’ll admit.”
    There was a tinkle behind them.
    She turned her head and looked down at the table.
    “There’s a spoon gone…”
    There was another jangle, this time by the door.
    A magpie paused in its attempt to pick the stolen spoon off the doorstep, cocked its head and glared at them with a beady eye. It just managed to get airborne before