Lords and Ladies

then.”
    “That’s better.”
    Nanny Ogg patted her mass of white curls and wondered if she had time to go home and put her corsets on.
    “We must stay on our guard, Gytha.”
    “Yes, yes.”
    “Can’t let other considerations turn our heads.”
    “No, no.”
    “You’re not listening to a word I say, are you?”
    “What?”
    “You could at least find out why Magrat isn’t down here.”
    “All right.”
    Nanny Ogg wandered off, dreamily.
    Granny Weatherwax turned—
    —there should have been violins. The murmur of the crowd should have faded away, and the crowd itself should have parted in a quite natural movement to leave an empty path between her and Ridcully.
    There should have been violins. There should have been something .
    There shouldn’t have been the Librarian accidentally knuckling her on the toe on his way to the buffet, but this, in fact, there was.
    She hardly noticed.
    “Esme?” said Ridcully.
    “Mustrum?” said Granny Weatherwax.
    Nanny Ogg bustled up.
    “Esme, I saw Millie Chillum and she said—”
    Granny Weatherwax’s vicious elbow jab winded her. Nanny took in the scene.
    “Ah,” she said, “I’ll just, I’ll just…I’ll just go away, then.”
    The gazes locked again.
    The Librarian knuckled past again with an entire display of fruit.
    Granny Weatherwax paid him no heed.
    The Bursar, who was currently on the median point of his cycle, tapped Ridcully on the shoulder.
    “I say, Archchancellor, these quails’ eggs are amazingly go—”
    “DROP DEAD. Mr. Stibbons, fish out the frog pills and keep knives away from him, please.”
    The gazes locked again.
    “Well, well,” said Granny, after a year or so.
    “This must be some enchanted evening,” said Ridcully.
    “Yes. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
    “That really is you, isn’t it?”
    “It’s really me,” said Granny.
    “You haven’t changed a bit, Esme.”
    “Nor have you, then. You’re still a rotten liar, Mustrum Ridcully.”
    They walked toward one another. The Librarian shuttled between them with a tray of meringues. Behind them, Ponder Stibbons groveled on the floor for a spilled bottle of dried frog pills.
    “Well, well,” said Ridcully.
    “Fancy that.”
    “Small world.”
    “Yes indeed.”
    “You’re you and I’m me. Amazing. And it’s here and now.”
    “Yes, but then was then .”
    “I sent you a lot of letters,” said Ridcully.
    “Never got ’em.”
    There was a glint in Ridcully’s eye.
    “That’s odd. And there was me putting all those destination spells on them too,” he said. He gave her a critical up-and-down glance. “How much do you weigh, Esme? Not a spare ounce on you, I’ll be bound.”
    “What do you want to know for?”
    “Indulge an old man.”
    “Nine stones, then.”
    “Hmm…should be about right…three miles hubward…you’ll feel a slight lurch to the left, nothing to worry about…”
    In a lightning movement, he grabbed her hand. He felt young and light-headed. The wizards back at the University would have been astonished.
    “Let me take you away from all this.”
    He snapped his fingers.
    There has to be at least an approximate conservation of mass. It’s a fundamental magical rule. If something is moved from A to B, something that was at B has got to find itself at A.
    And then there’s momentum. Slow as the disc spins, various points of its radii are moving at different speeds relative to the Hub, and a wizard projecting himself any distance toward the Rim had better be prepared to land jogging.
    The three miles to Lancre Bridge merely involved a faint tug, which Ridcully had been ready for, and he landed up leaning against the parapet with Esme Weatherwax in his arms.
    The customs troll who had until a fraction of a second previously been sitting there ended up lying full length on the floor of the Great Hall, coincidentally on top of the Bursar.
    Granny Weatherwax looked over at the rushing water, and then at Ridcully.
    “Take me back this instant,” she said. “You’ve got no right to do that.”
    “Dear me, I seem to have run out of power. Can’t understand it, very embarrassing, fingers gone all limp,” said Ridcully. “Of course, we could walk. It’s a lovely evening. You always did get lovely evenings here.”
    “It was all fifty or sixty years ago!” said Granny. “You can’t suddenly turn up and say all those years haven’t happened.”
    “Oh, I know they’ve happened all right,” said Ridcully. “I’m the head