Carpe Jugulum

the willies—Oh no, as if we didn’t have enough…What’s he doing here?”
    Mightily Oats was advancing through the wood. He walked awkwardly, as city people do when traversing real, rutted, leaf-moldy, twig-strewn soil, and had the concerned look of someone who was expecting to be attacked at any moment by owls or beetles.
    In his strange black and white clothing he looked like a human magpie himself.
    The magpies screamed from the trees.
    “‘Seven for a secret never to be told,’” said Agnes.
    “‘Seven’s a devil, his own sel’,’” said Nanny, darkly. “You’ve got your rhyme, I’ve got mine.”
    When Oats saw the witches he brightened up very slightly and blew his nose at them.
    “What a waste of skin,” muttered Nanny.
    “Ah, Mrs. Ogg…and Miss Nitt,” said Oats, inching around some mud. “Er…I trust I find you well?”
    “Up till now,” said Nanny.
    “I had, er, hoped to see Mrs. Weatherwax.”
    For a moment the only sound was the chattering of the ravens.
    “Hoped?” said Agnes.
    “ Mrs. Weatherwax?” said Nanny.
    “Er, yes. It is part of my…I’m supposed to…one of the things we…Well, I heard she might be ill, and visiting the elderly and infirm is part, er, of our pastoral duties…Of course, I realize that technically I have no pastoral duties, but still, while I’m here…”
    Nanny’s face was a picture, possibly one painted by an artist with a very strange sense of humor.
    “I’m really sorry she ain’t here,” she said, and Agnes knew she was being altogether honest and absolutely nasty.
    “Oh dear. I was, er, going to give her some…I was going…er…Is she well, then?”
    “I’m sure she’d be all the better for a visit from you,” said Nanny, and once again there was a strange, curvy sort of truth to this. “It’d be the sort of thing she’d talk about for days. You can come back any time you want.”
    Oats looked helpless. “Then I suppose I’d better, er, be getting back to my, er, tent,” he said. “May I accompany you ladies down to the town? There are, er, some dangerous things in the woods…”
    “We got broomsticks,” said Nanny firmly. The priest looked crestfallen, and Agnes made a decision.
    “ A broomstick,” she said. “I’ll walk you—I mean, you can walk me back. If you like.”
    The priest looked relieved. Nanny sniffed. There was a certain Weatherwax quality to the sniff.
    “Back at my place, then. An’ no dilly-dallyin’,” she said.
    “I don’t dilly-dally,” said Agnes.
    “Just see you don’t start,” said Nanny, and went to find her broomstick.
    Agnes and the priest walked in embarrassed silence for a while. At last Agnes said: “How’s the headache?”
    “Oh, much better, thank you. It went away. But her majesty was kind enough to give me some pills anyway.”
    “That’s nice,” said Agnes. She ought to have given him a needle! Look at the size of that boil! said Perdita, one of nature’s born squeezers. Why doesn’t he do something about it?
    “Er…you don’t like me very much, do you,” said Oats.
    “I’ve hardly met you.” She was becoming aware of an embarrassing draftiness in the nether regions.
    “A lot of people don’t like me as soon as they’ve met me,” said Oats.
    “I suppose that saves time,” said Agnes, and cursed. Perdita had got through on that one, but Oats didn’t seem to have noticed. He sighed.
    “I’m afraid I have a bit of a difficulty with people,” he went on. “I fear I’m just not cut out for pastoral work.”
    Don’t get involved with this twerp, said Perdita. But Agnes said, “You mean sheep and so on?”
    “It all seemed a lot clearer at college,” said Oats, who like many people seldom paid much attention to what others said when he was unrolling his miseries, “but here, when I tell people some of the more accessible stories from the Book of Om they say things like, ‘That’s not right, mushrooms wouldn’t grow in the desert,’ or ‘That’s a stupid way to run a vineyard.’ Everyone here is so very…literal.”
    Oats coughed. There seemed to be something preying on his mind. “Unfortunately, the Old Book of Om is rather unyielding on the subject of witches,” he said.
    “Really.”
    “Although having studied the passage in question in the original Second Omnian IV text, I have advanced the rather daring theory that the actual word in question translates more accurately as ‘cockroaches.’”
    “Yes?”
    “Especially since