Maskerade

look, not to see.
    She closed her eyes.
    This was when you started being a witch. It wasn’t when you did headology on daft old men, or mixed up medicines, or stuck up for yourself, or knew one herb from another.
    It was when you opened your mind to the world and carefully examined everything it picked up.
    She ignored her ears until the sounds of the audience became just a distant buzz.
    Or, at least, a distant buzz broken by the voice of Nanny Ogg.
    “Says here that Dame Timpani, who sings the part of Quizella, is a diva,” said Nanny. “So I reckon this is like a part-time job, then. Prob’ly quite a good idea, on account of you have to be able to hold your breath. Good trainin’ for the singin’.”
    Granny nodded without opening her eyes.
    She kept them closed as the opera started. Nanny, who knew when to leave her friend to her own devices, tried to keep quiet but felt impelled to give out a running commentary.
    Then she said, “There’s Agnes! Hey, that’s Agnes!”
    “Stop wavin’ and sit down,” murmured Granny, trying to hold on to her waking dream.
    Nanny leaned over the balcony.
    “She’s dressed up as a gypsy,” she said. “And now there’s a girl come forward to sing”—she peered at the stolen program—“the famous ‘Departure’ aria, it says here. Now that’s what I call a good voice—”
    “That’s Agnes singin’,” said Granny.
    “No, it’s this girl Christine.”
    “Shut your eyes, you daft old woman, and tell me if that isn’t Agnes singin’,” said Granny.
    Nanny Ogg obediently shut her eyes for a moment, and then opened them again. “It’s Agnes singing!”
    “Yes.”
    “But there’s that girl with the big smile right out there in front moving her lips and everything!”
    “Yes.”
    Nanny scratched her head. “Something a bit wrong here, Esme. Can’t have people stealing our Agnes’s voice.”
    Granny’s eyes were still shut. “Tell me if the curtains on that Box down there on the right have moved,” she said.
    “I just saw them twitch, Esme.”
    “Ah.”
    Granny let herself relax again. She sank into the seat as the aria washed over her, and opened her mind once more…
    Edges, walls, doors…
    Once a space was enclosed it became a universe of its own. Some things remained trapped in it.
    The music passed through one side of her head and out the other, but with it came other things, strands of things, echoes of old screams…
    She drifted down further, down below the conscious, into the darkness beyond the circle of firelight.
    There was fear here. It stalked the place like a great dark animal. It lurked in every corner. It was in the stones. Old terror crouched in the shadows. It was one of the most ancient terrors, the one that meant that no sooner had mankind learned to walk on two legs than it dropped to its knees. It was the terror of impermanence, the knowledge that all this would pass away, that a beautiful voice or a wonderful figure was something whose arrival you couldn’t control and whose departure you couldn’t delay. It wasn’t what she had been looking for, but it was perhaps the sea in which it swam.
    She went deeper.
    And there it was, roaring through the nighttime of the soul of the place like a deep cold current.
    As she drew closer she saw that it was not one thing but two, twisted around one another. She reached out…
    Trickery. Lies. Deceit. Murder.
    “No!”
    She blinked.
    Everyone had turned to look at her.
    Nanny tugged at her dress. “Sit down, Esme!”
    Granny stared. The chandelier hung peacefully over the crowded seats.
    “They beat him to death!”
    “What’s that, Esme?”
    “And they throw him into the river!”
    “Esme!”
    “ Sh! ”
    “ Madam, will you sit down at once! ”
    “… and now it’s started on the Nougat Whirls! ”
    Granny snatched at her hat and did a crabwise run along the row, crushing some of the finest footwear in Ankh-Morpork under her thick Lancre soles.
    Nanny hung back reluctantly. She’d quite enjoyed the song, and she wanted to applaud. But her pair of hands wasn’t necessary. The audience had exploded as soon as the last note had died away.
    Nanny Ogg looked at the stage, and took note of something, and smiled. “Like that, eh?”
    “Gytha!”
    She sighed. “Coming, Esme. ’Scuse me. ’Scuse me. Sorry. ’Scuse me…”
    Granny Weatherwax was out in the red plush corridor, leaning with her forehead against the wall.
    “This is a bad one, Gytha,” she muttered.