Lords and Ladies

stand iron. It blinded them, or something. Blinded them all over.
    There weren’t many witches now. Not proper witches. More of a problem, though, was that people didn’t seem to be able to remember what it was like with the elves around. Life was certainly more interesting then, but usually because it was shorter. And it was more colorful, if you liked the color of blood. It got so people didn’t even dare talk openly about the bastards.
    You said: The Shining Ones. You said: The Fair Folk. And you spat, and touched iron. But generations later, you forgot about the spitting and the iron, and you forgot why you used those names for them, and you remembered only that they were beautiful.
    Yes, there’d been a lot of witches in them days. Too many women found an empty cradle, or a husband that never came home from the hunt. Had been the hunt.
    Elves! The bastards…and yet…and yet…somehow, yes, they did things to memory.
    Nanny Ogg turned over in bed. Greebo growled in protest.
    Take dwarfs and trolls, for e.g. People said: Oh, you can’t trust ’em, trolls are OK if you’ve got ’em in front of you, and some of ’em are decent enough in their way, but they’re cowardly and stupid, and as for dwarfs, well, they’re greedy and devious devils, all right, fair enough, sometimes you meet one of the clever little sods that’s not too bad, but overall they’re no better’n trolls, in fact—
    —they’re just like us .
    But they ain’t any prettier to look at and they’ve got no style . And we’re stupid, and the memory plays tricks, and we remember the elves for their beauty and the way they move, and forget what they were . We’re like mice saying, “Say what you like, cats have got real style .”
    People never quaked in their beds for fear of dwarfs. They never hid under the stairs from trolls. They might have chased ’em out of the henhouse, but trolls and dwarfs were never any more than a bloody nuisance. They were never a terror in the night.
    We only remembers that the elves sang. We forgets what it was they were singing about.
    Nanny Ogg turned over again. There was a slithering noise from the end of the bed, and a muffled yowl as Greebo hit the floor.
    And Nanny sat up.
    “Get your walking paws on, young fella-me-lad. We’re going out.”
    As she passed through the midnight kitchen she paused, took one of the big black flatirons from the hob by the fire, and attached it to a length of clothesline.
    For all her life she’d walked at night through Lancre with no thought of carrying a weapon of any sort. Of course, for most of that time she’d recognizably been a witch, and any importunate prowler would’ve ended up taking his essentials away in a paper bag, but even so it was generally true of any woman in Lancre. Man too, come to that.
    Now she could sense her own fear.
    The elves were coming back all right, casting their shadows before them.

    Diamanda reached the crest of the hill.
    She paused. She wouldn’t put it past that old Weatherwax woman to have followed her. She felt sure there had been something tracking her in the woods.
    There was no one else around.
    She turned.
    “Evenin’, miss.”
    “You? You did follow me!”
    Granny got to her feet from the shadow of the Piper, where she had been sitting quite invisibly in the blackness.
    “Learned that from my dad,” she said. “When he went hunting. He always used to say a bad hunter chases, a good hunter waits.”
    “Oh? So you’re hunting me now?”
    “No. I was just waiting. I knew you’d come up here. You haven’t got anywhere else to go. You’ve come to call her, haven’t you? Let me see your hands.”
    It wasn’t a request, it was a command. Diamanda found her hands moving of their own accord. Before she could pull them back the old woman had grabbed them and held them firmly; her skin felt like sacking.
    “Never done a hard day’s work in your life, have you?” said Granny, pleasantly. “Never picked cabbages with the ice on ’em, or dug a grave, or milked a cow, or laid out a corpse.”
    “You don’t have to do all that to be a witch!” Diamanda snapped.
    “Did I say so? And let me tell you something. About beautiful women in red with stars in their hair. And probably moons, too. And voices in your head when you slept. And power when you came up here. She offered you lots of power, I expect. All you wanted. For free.”
    Diamanda was silent.
    “Because it happened before. There’s always someone