Maskerade

rumble to a halt and unload two elderly ladies in black. Both carried a broomstick in one hand and a sack in the other.
    They were arguing. It was not a raised-voice argument, but a chronic wrangle that had clearly been going on for some time and was set in for the rest of the decade.
    “It’s all very well for you, but it’s my three dollars so I don’t see why I can’t say how we go.”
    “I likes flying.”
    “And I’m telling you it’s too draughty on broomsticks this time of year, Esme. The breeze gets into places I wouldn’t dream of talking about.”
    “Really? Can’t imagine where those’d be, then.”
    “Oh, Esme!”
    “Don’t ‘Oh, Esme’ me. It weren’t me that come up with the Amusing Wedding Trifle with the Special Sponge Fingers.”
    “Anyway, Greebo don’t like it on the broomstick. He’s got a delicate stomach.”
    Cutoff noticed that one of the sacks was moving in a lazy way.
    “Gytha, I’ve seen him eat half a skunk, so don’t tell me about his delicate stomach,” said Granny, who disliked cats on principle. “Anyway…he’s been doing It again.”
    Nanny Ogg waved her hands airily.
    “Oh, he only does It sometimes, when he’s really in a corner,” she said.
    “He did It in ole Mrs. Grope’s henhouse last week. She went in to see what all the ruckus was, and he did It right in front of her. She had to have a lie-down.”
    “He was probably more frightened than she was,” said Nanny defensively.
    “That’s what comes of getting strange ideas in foreign parts,” said Granny. “Now you’ve got a cat who—Yes, what is it?”
    Cutoff had meekly approached them and was hovering in the kind of half-crouch of someone trying to be noticed while also not wanting to intrude.
    “Are you ladies waiting for the stagecoach?”
    “Yes,” said the taller of the ladies.
    “Um, I’m afraid the next coach doesn’t stop here. It doesn’t stop until Creel Springs.”
    They gave him a couple of polite stares.
    “Thank you,” said the tall one. She turned to her companion.
    “It gave her a nasty shock, anyway. I dread to think what he’ll learn this time.”
    “He pines when I’m gone. He won’t take food from anyone else.”
    “Only ’cos they try to poison him, and no wonder.”
    Cutoff shook his head sadly and wandered back to his log pile.
    The coach turned up five minutes later, coming around the corner at speed. It drew level with the women—
    —and stopped. That is, the horses tried to stand still and the wheels locked.
    It wasn’t so much a skid as a spin, and the whole thing gradually came to rest about fifty yards down the road, with the driver in a tree.
    The women strolled toward it, still arguing.
    One of them poked the driver with her broomstick. “Two tickets to Ankh-Morpork, please.”
    He landed in the road.
    “What do you mean, two tickets to Ankh-Morpork? The coach doesn’t stop here!”
    “Looks stopped to me .”
    “Did you do something?”
    “What, us?”
    “Listen, lady, even if I was stopping here the tickets are forty damn dollars each!”
    “Oh.”
    “Why’ve you got broomsticks?” shouted the driver. “Are you witches?”
    “Yes. Have you got any special low terms for witches?”
    “Yeah, how about ‘meddling, interfering old baggages’?”
    Cutoff felt that he must have missed part of the conversation, because the next exchange went like this:
    “What was that again, young man?”
    “Two complimentary tickets to Ankh-Morpork, ma’am. No problem.”
    “Inside seats, mind. No traveling on the top.”
    “Certainly, ma’am. Excuse me while I just kneel in the dirt so’s you can step up, ma’am.”
    Cutoff nodded happily to himself as the coach pulled away again. It was nice to see that good manners and courtesy were still alive.

    With great difficulty and much shouting and untangling of ropes far above, the figure was lowered to the stage.
    He was soaked in paint and turpentine. The swelling audience of off-duty staff and rehearsal truants crowded in around him.
    Agnes knelt down, loosened his collar and tried to unwind the rope that had caught around arm and neck.
    “Does anyone know him?” she said.
    “It’s Tommy Cripps,” said a musician. “He paints scenery.”
    Tommy moaned, and opened his eyes.
    “I saw him!” he muttered. “It was horrible!”
    “Saw what?” said Agnes. And then she had a sudden feeling that she’d intruded on some private conversation. Around her there was a babble of