Carpe Jugulum

him’s like spittin’ at a thunderstorm.”
    “So what’re you going to do?”
    “Nothing! There’s nothing I can do! Can’t you understand what I’ve been tellin’ you? Don’t you know I’ve been lying here all day tryin’ to think of something? They know all about magic, Borrowing’s second nature to them, they’re fast, they think we’re like cattle that can talk…I never expected anything like this, Gytha. I’ve thought about it round and round and there’s not a thing I can see to do.”
    “There’s always a way,” said Nanny.
    “I can’t see it,” said Granny. “This is it, Gytha. I might as well lie here until the water drips on me and I go into stone like the ol’ witch at the door.”
    “You’ll find a way,” said Nanny. “Weatherwaxes don’t let ’em-selves get beaten. It’s something in the blood, like I’ve always said.”
    “I am beaten, Gytha. Even before I start. Maybe someone else has a way, but I haven’t. I’m up against a mind that’s better’n mine. I just about keep it away from me but I can’t get in. I can’t fight back .”
    The chilly feeling crept over Nanny Ogg that Granny Weather-wax meant it.
    “I never thought I’d hear you say that,” she muttered.
    “Off you go. No sense in keepin’ the baby out in the cold.”
    “And what are you going to do?”
    “Maybe I shall move on. Maybe I’ll just stop here.”
    “Can’t stop here forever, Esme.”
    “Ask her that is by the door.”
    That seemed to be all there was going to be. Nanny walked out, found the others looking slightly too innocent in the next cave, and led the way to the open air.
    “Found your pipe, then,” said Magrat.
    “Yes, thank you.”
    “What’s she going to do?” said Agnes.
    “You tell me,” said Nanny. “I knows you was listenin’. You wouldn’t be witches if you wasn’t listenin’ somehow.”
    “Well, what can we do that she can’t? If she’s beaten, then so are we, aren’t we?”
    “What did Granny mean, ‘from can to can’t’?” said Magrat.
    “Oh, from the first moment in the morning when you can see to the last moment in the evenin’ when you can’t,” said Nanny.
    “She’s really feeling low, isn’t she?”
    Nanny paused by the stone witch. Her pipe had gone out. She struck a match on the hooked nose.
    “There’s three of us,” she said. “The right number. So we’ll start by having a proper coven meetin’…”
    “Aren’t you worried ?” said Agnes. “She’s…giving up…”
    “Then it’s up to us to carry on, isn’t it?” said Nanny.

Nanny had placed the cauldron in the middle of the floor for the look of the thing, although an indoor coven meeting didn’t feel right, and one without Granny Weatherwax felt worse.
    Perdita said it made them look like soppy girls playing at it. The only fire in the room was in the huge black iron range, the very latest model, recently installed for Nanny by her loving sons. On it, the kettle began to boil.
    “I’ll make the tea, shall I?” said Magrat, getting up.
    “No, you sit down. It’s Agnes’s job to make the tea,” said Nanny. “You’re the mother, so it’s your job to pour.”
    “What’s your job, Nanny?” said Agnes.
    “I drinks it,” said Nanny promptly. “Right. We’ve got to find out more while they’re still actin’ friendly. Agnes, you go back to the castle with Magrat and the baby. She needs extra help anyway.”
    “What good will that do?”
    “You told me yourself,” said Nanny. “Vampires don’t affect you. As soon as they try to see Agnes’s mind it sinks down and up pops Perdita like a seesaw. Just when they’re looking at Perdita, here comes Agnes again. Young Vlad’s definitely got his eye on you, ain’t he?”
    “Certainly not!”
    “Yeah, right,” said Nanny. “Men always like women that’ve got a bit of mystery to ’em. They like a challenge, see? And while he’s got his eye on you keeping your eye on Magrat, you’ve got your other eye on him, understand? Everyone’s got a weakness. Maybe we’ll not see the back of these vampires by going over to the curtains and saying ‘my, isn’t it stuffy in here,’ but there’s got to be some other way.”
    “And if there isn’t?”
    “Marry him,” said Nanny firmly. Magrat gasped. The teapot rattled in her hand.
    “That’s horrible!” she said.
    “I’d rather kill myself,” said Agnes. In the morning, said Perdita.
    “Dun’t have to be a long marriage,” said Nanny.