Carpe Jugulum

she’s taking charge, she’s not cringing slightly like she used to, she’s not WET. That’s because she’s a mother, Agnes thought. Mothers are only slightly damp.
    She was not, herself, hugely in favor of motherhood in general. Obviously it was necessary, but it wasn’t exactly difficult . Even cats managed it. But women acted as if they’d been given a medal that entitled them to boss people around. It was as if, just because they’d got the label which said “mother,” everyone else got a tiny part of the label that said “child”…
    She gave a mental shrug, and concentrated on the craft in hand.
    Light grew and faded inside the green globe. Agnes had only scryed a few times before, but she didn’t remember the light pulsing like this. Every time it dissolved into an image the light flickered and bounced to somewhere else…a patch of heather…a tree…boiling clouds…
    And then Granny Weatherwax came and went. The image appeared and was gone in an instant, and the glow that rolled in with a finality told Agnes that this was all, folks.
    “She was lying down,” said Magrat. “It was all fuzzy.”
    “Then she’s in one of the caves. She said once she goes up there to be alone with her thoughts,” said Nanny. “And did you catch that little twitch? She’s trying to keep us out.”
    “The caves up there are just scoops in the rock,” said Agnes.
    “Yes…and no,” said Nanny. “Did I see her holding a card in her hands?”
    “The ‘I ate’nt dead’ card?” said Magrat.
    “No, she’d left that in the cottage.”
    “Just when we really need her, she goes away into a cave?”
    “Does she know we need her? Did she know about the vampires?” said Agnes.
    “Can’t we go and ask her?” said Magrat.
    “We can’t fly all the way,” said Nanny, scratching her chin. “Can’t fly prop’ly over gnarly ground. The broomsticks act funny.”
    “Then we’ll walk the rest,” said Magrat. “It’s hours to sunset.”
    “You’re not coming, are you?” said Agnes, aghast.
    “Yes, of course.”
    “But what about the baby?”
    “She seems to like it in the sling and it keeps her warm and it’s not as if there’s monsters up there,” said Magrat. “Anyway, I think it’s possible to combine motherhood and a career.”
    “I thought you’d given up witchcraft,” said Agnes.
    “Yes…well…yes. Let’s make sure Granny’s all right and get this all sorted out, and then obviously I’ll have other things to do…”
    “But it could be dangerous!” said Agnes. “Don’t you think so, Nanny?”
    Nanny Ogg turned her chair and looked at the baby.
    “Cootchie-cootchie?” she said.
    The small head looked around and Esme opened her blue eyes.
    Nanny Ogg stared thoughtfully.
    “Take her with us,” she said at last. “I used to take our Jason everywhere when he was tiny. They like being with their mum.”
    She gave the baby another long hard look.
    “Yes,” she went on, “I think that’d be a damn good idea.”
    “Er…I feel perhaps there is little that I’d be able to do,” Oats said.
    “Oh, it’d be too dangerous to take you ,” said Nanny, dismissively.
    “But of course my prayers will go with you.”
    “That’s nice.” Nanny sniffed.

Drizzling rain soaked Hodgesaargh as he trudged back to the castle. The damp had got into the lure, and the noise it made now could only attract some strange, lost creature, skulking in ancient estuaries. Or possibly a sheep with a very sore throat.
    And then he heard the chattering of magpies.
    He tied the donkey to a sapling and stepped out into a clearing. The birds were screaming in the trees around him, but erupted away at the sight of King Henry on her perch on the donkey.
    Crouched against a mossy rock was……a small magpie. It was bedraggled and wrong , as if put together by someone who had seen one but didn’t know how it was supposed to work. It struggled when it saw him, there was a fluffing of feathers and, now, a smaller version of King Henry was trying to unfold its tattered wings.
    He backed away. On her perch, the hooded eagle had its head turned to the strange bird…
    …which was now a pigeon. A thrush. A wren…
    A sudden intimation of doom made Hodgesaargh cover his eyes, but he saw the flash through the skin of his fingers, felt the thump of the flame, and smelled the scorched hairs on the back of his hand.
    A few tufts of grass smoldered on the edge of a circle of scorched earth. Inside it a few