Lords and Ladies

who’ll listen.” Granny Weatherwax’s eyes seemed to lose their focus.
    “When you’re lonely, and people around you seem too stupid for words, and the world is full of secrets that no one’ll tell you…”
    “Are you reading my mind?”
    “Yours?” Granny’s attention snapped back, and her voice lost its distant quality. “Hah! Flowers and suchlike. Dancing about without yer drawers on. Mucking about with cards and bits of string. And it worked, I expect. She gave you power, for a while. Oh, she must have laughed. And then there is less power and more price. And then no power, and you’re payin’ every day. They always take more than they give. And what they give has less than no value. And they end up taking everything. What they like to get from us is our fear. What they want from us most of all is our belief. If you call them, they will come. You’ll give them a channel if you call them here, at circle time, where the world’s thin enough to hear. The power in the Dancers is weak enough now as it is. And I’m not having the…the Lords and Ladies back.”
    Diamanda opened her mouth.
    “I ain’t finished yet. You’re a bright girl. Lots of things you could be doing. But you don’t want to be a witch. It’s not an easy life.”
    “You mad old woman, you’ve got it all wrong! Elves aren’t like that—”
    “Don’t say the word. Don’t say the word. They come when called.”
    “Good! Elf, elf, elf! Elf—”
    Granny slapped her face, hard.
    “Even you knows that’s stupid and childish,” she said. “Now you listen to me. If you stay here, there’s to be none of this stuff anymore. Or you can go somewhere else and find a future, be a great lady, you’ve got the mind for it. And maybe you’ll come back in ten years loaded down with jewels and stuff, and lord it over all us stay-at-homes, and that will be fine. But if you stay here and keep trying to call the…Lords and Ladies, then you’ll be up against me again. Not playing stupid games in the daylight, but real witchcraft. Not messing around with moons and circles, but the true stuff, out of the blood and the bone and out of the head. And you don’t know nothin ’ about that. Right? And it don’t allow for mercy.”
    Diamanda looked up. Her face was red where the slap had landed.
    “Go?” she said.
    Granny reacted a second too late.
    Diamanda darted between the stones.
    “You stupid child! Not that way!”
    The figure was already getting smaller, even though it appeared to be only a few feet away.
    “Oh, drat!”
    Granny dived after her, and heard her skirt rip as the pocket tore. The poker she’d brought along whirred away and clanked against one of the Dancers.
    There was a series of jerks and tings as the hobnails tore out of her boots and sped toward the stones.
    No iron could go through the stones, no iron at all.
    Granny was already racing over the turf when she realized what that meant. But it didn’t matter. She’d made a choice.
    There was a feeling of dislocation, as directions danced and twirled around. And then snow underfoot. It was white. It had to be white, because it was snow. But patterns of color moved across it, reflecting the wild dance of the permanent aurora in the sky.
    Diamanda was struggling. Her footwear was barely suitable for a city summer, and certainly not for a foot of snow. Whereas Granny Weatherwax’s boots, even without their hobnails, could have survived a trot across lava.
    Even so, the muscles that were propelling them had been doing it for too long. Diamanda was outrunning her.
    More snow was falling, out of a night sky. There was a ring of riders waiting a little way from the stones, with the Queen slightly ahead. Every witch knew her, or the shape of her.
    Diamanda tripped and fell, and then managed to bring herself up to a kneeling position.
    Granny stopped.
    The Queen’s horse whinnied.
    “Kneel before your Queen, you,” said the elf. She was wearing red, with a copper crown in her hair.
    “Shan’t. Won’t,” said Granny Weatherwax.
    “You are in my kingdom, woman,” said the Queen. “You do not come or go without the leave of me. You will kneel!”
    “I come and go without the leave of anyone ,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Never done it before, ain’t starting now.”
    She put a hand on Diamanda’s shoulder.
    “These are your elves,” she said. “Beautiful, ain’t they?”
    The warriors must have been more than two meters tall. They did not wear clothes so