Lords and Ladies

three-dimensional pattern of vibrations…
    …to see with the nose of a dog, all smells now colors…
    But there was a price. No one asked you to pay it, but the very absence of demand was a moral obligation. You tended not to swat. You dug lightly. You fed the dog. You paid. You cared ; not because it was kind or good, but because it was right. You left nothing but memories, you took nothing but experience.
    But this other roving intelligence…it’d go in and out of another mind like a chainsaw, taking, taking, taking. She could sense the shape of it, the predatory shape, all cruelty and cool unkindness; a mind full of intelligence, that’d use other living things and hurt them because it was fun.
    She could put a name to a mind like that.
    Elf.

    Branches thrashed high in the trees.
    Granny and Nanny strode through the forest. At least, Granny Weatherwax strode. Nanny Ogg scurried.
    “The Lords and Ladies are trying to find a way,” said Granny. “And there’s something else. Something’s already come through. Some kind of animal from the other side. Scrope chased a deer into the circle and the thing must have been there, and they always used to say something can come through if something goes the other way—”
    “What thing?”
    “You know what a bat’s eyesight is like. Just a big shape is all it saw. Something killed old Scrope. It’s still around. Not an…not one o’ the Lords and Ladies,” said Granny, “but something from El…that place.”
    Nanny looked at the shadows. There are a lot of shadows in a forest at night.
    “Ain’t you scared?” she said.
    Granny cracked her knuckles.
    “No. But I hope it is.”
    “Ooo, it’s true what they say. You’re a prideful one, Esmerelda Weatherwax.”
    “Who says that?”
    “Well, you did. Just now.”
    “I wasn’t feeling well.”
    Other people would probably say: I wasn’t myself. But Granny Weatherwax didn’t have anyone else to be.
    The two witches hurried on through the gale.
    From the shelter of a thorn thicket, the unicorn watched them go.

    Diamanda Tockley did indeed wear a floppy black velvet hat. It had a veil, too.
    Perdita Nitt, who had once been merely Agnes Nitt before she got witchcraft, wore a black hat with a veil too, because Diamanda did. Both of them were seventeen. And she wished she was naturally skinny, like Diamanda, but if you can’t be skinny you can at least look unhealthy. So she wore so much thick white makeup in order to conceal her naturally rosy complexion that if she turned around suddenly her face would probably end up on the back of her head.
    They’d done the Raising of the Cone of Power, and some candle magic, and some scrying. Now Diamanda was showing them how to do the cards.
    She said they contained the distilled wisdom of the Ancients. Perdita had found herself treacherously wondering who these Ancients were—they clearly weren’t the same as old people , who were stupid, Diamanda said, but she wasn’t quite clear why they were wiser than, say, modern people.
    Also, she didn’t understand what the Feminine Principle was. And she wasn’t too clear about this Inner Self business. She was coming to suspect that she didn’t have one.
    And she wished she could do her eyes like Diamanda did.
    And she wished she could wear heels like Diamanda did.
    Amanita DeVice had told her that Diamanda slept in a real coffin.
    She wished she had the nerve to have a dagger-and-skull tattoo on her arm like Amanita did, even if it was only in ordinary ink and she had to wash it off every night in case her mother saw it.
    A tiny, nasty voice from Perdita’s inner self suggested that Amanita wasn’t a good choice of name.
    Or Perdita, for that matter.
    And it said that maybe Perdita shouldn’t meddle with things she didn’t understand.
    The trouble was, she knew, that this meant nearly everything.
    She wished she could wear black lace like Diamanda did.
    Diamanda got results.
    Perdita wouldn’t have believed it. She’d always known about witches, of course. They were old women who dressed like crows, except for Magrat Garlick, who was frankly mental and always looked as if she was going to burst into tears. Perdita remembered Magrat bringing a guitar to a Hogswatchnight party once and singing wobbly folk songs with her eyes shut in a way that suggested that she really believed in them. She hadn’t been able to play, but this was all right because she couldn’t sing, either. People had applauded because,