Carpe Jugulum

one out. He said they let him get on with all the work and the breathin’ and eatin’ and they had all the fun. Remember? He said it was hellish when he had a drink and they all started fightin’ for a tastebud. Sometimes he couldn’t hear himself think in his own head, he said— Now! Now! Now! ”
    Agnes opened her eyes. Her jaw hurt.
    Nanny Ogg was peering at her closely, while rubbing some feeling back into her wrist. From a couple of inches away, her face looked like a friendly pile of elderly laundry.
    “Yes, that’s Agnes,” she said, standing back. “Her face goes sharper when it’s the other one. See? I told you she’d be the one that came back. She’s got more practice.”
    Magrat let go of her arms. Agnes rubbed her chin.
    “That hurt ,” she said reproachfully.
    “Just a bit of tough love,” said Nanny. “Can’t have that Perdita running around at a time like this.”
    “You just sort of grabbed the bridge and came right back up,” said Magrat.
    “I felt her stand on the ground!” said Agnes.
    “And that too, then,” said Nanny. “Come on. Not far now. Sometimes. And let’s just take it easy, shall we? Some of us might have further to fall than others.”
    They edged forward, despite an increasingly insistent voice in Agnes’s head that kept telling her she was being a stupid coward and of course she wouldn’t be hurt. She tried to ignore it.
    The caves that Agnes remembered hadn’t been much more than rock overhangs. These were caverns. The difference is basically one of rugged and poetic grandeur. These had a lot of both.
    “Gnarly ground’s a bit like icebergs,” said Nanny, leading them up a little gully to one of the largest.
    “Nine-tenths of it is under water?” said Agnes. Her chin still hurt.
    “There’s more to it than meets the eye, I mean.”
    “There’s someone there!” said Magrat.
    “Oh, that’s the witch,” said Nanny. “She’s not a problem.”
    Light from the entrance fell on a hunched figure, sitting among pools of water. Closer to, it looked like a statue, and perhaps not quite as human as the eye at first suggested. Water glistened on it; drops formed on the end of the long hooked nose and fell into a pool with the occasional plink .
    “I come up here with a young wizard once, when I was a girl,” said Nanny. “He liked nothing so much as bashing at rocks with his little hammer…well, almost nothing,” she added, with a smile toward the past and then a happy sigh. “He said the witch was just a lot of ol’ stuff from the rocks, left there by the water drippin’. But my granny said it was a witch that sat up here to think about some big spell, and she turned to stone. Person’ly, I keep an open mind.”
    “It’s a long way to bring someone,” said Agnes.
    “Oh, there was a lot of us kids at home and it was rainin’ a lot and you need a lot of privacy for really good geology,” said Nanny vaguely. “I think his hammer’s still around here somewhere. He quite forgot about it after a while. Mind how you tread, the rocks is very slippery. How’s young Esme doing, Magrat?”
    “Oh, gurgling away. I’ll have to feed her soon.”
    “We’ve got to look after her,” said Nanny.
    “Well, yes. Of course.”
    Nanny clapped her hands together and pulled them apart gently. The glow between them wasn’t the showy light that wizards made, but a grainy graveyard glimmer. It was just enough to ensure that no one fell down a hole.
    “Probably some dwarfs in a place like this,” said Magrat, as they picked their way along a tunnel.
    “Shouldn’t think so. They don’t like places that don’t stay the same. No one comes up here now but animals and Granny when she wants to be alone with her thoughts.”
    “And you when you were banging rocks,” said Magrat.
    “Hah! But it was different then. There was flowers on the moor and the bridge was just stepping stones. That’s ’cos I was in love.”
    “You mean it really does change because of the way you feel?” said Agnes.
    “You spotted it. It’s amazing how high and rocky the bridge can be if you’re in a bad mood, I know that.”
    “I wonder how high it was for Granny, then?”
    “Probably clouds could go underneath, girl.”
    Nanny stopped where the path forked, and then pointed.
    “I reckon she’s gone this way. Hold on—”
    She thrust out an arm. Stone groaned, and a slab of roof thudded down, throwing up spray and pebbles.
    “So we’ll just have to climb over this