Maskerade

people turning around in their seats, bewildered.
    “What’s your name again, dear?” The voice, which had at one point shown traces of condescension, had a distinct beaten-up sound.
    “Ag—Per…Perdita,” said Agnes. “Perdita Nitt. Perdita X…Nitt.”
    “We may have to do something about the Nitt, dear.”

    Granny Weatherwax’s door opened by itself.
    Jarge Weaver hesitated. Of course, she were a witch. People’d told him this sort of thing happened.
    He didn’t like it. But he didn’t like his back, either, especially when his back didn’t like him. It came to something when your vertebrae ganged up on you.
    He eased himself forward, grimacing, balancing himself on two sticks.
    The witch was sitting in a rocking chair, facing away from the door.
    Jarge hesitated.
    “Come on in, Jarge Weaver,” said Granny Weatherwax, “and let me give you something for that back of yours.”
    The shock made him try to stand upright, and this made something white-hot explode somewhere in the region of his belt.
    Granny Weatherwax rolled her eyes, and sighed. “Can you sit down?” she said.
    “No, miss. I can fall over on a chair, though.”
    Granny produced a small black bottle from an apron pocket and shook it vigorously. Jarge’s eyes widened.
    “You got that all ready for me?” he said.
    “Yes,” said Granny truthfully. She’d long ago been resigned to the fact that people expected a bottle of something funny-colored and sticky. It wasn’t the medicine that did the trick, though. It was, in a way, the spoon.
    “This is a mixture of rare herbs and suchlike,” she said. “Including sucrose and akwa.”
    “My word,” said Jarge, impressed.
    “Take a swig now.”
    He obeyed. It tasted faintly of licorice.
    “You got to take another swig last thing at night,” Granny went on. “An’ then walk three times round a chestnut tree.”
    “…three times round a chestnut tree…”
    “An’…an’ put a pine board under your mattress. Got to be pine from a twenty-year-old tree, mind.”
    “…twenty-year-old tree…” said Jarge. He felt he should make a contribution. “So’s the knots in me back end up in the pine?” he hazarded.
    Granny was impressed. It was an outrageously ingenious bit of folk hokum worth remembering for another occasion.
    “You got it exactly right,” she said.
    “And that’s it?”
    “You wanted more?”
    “I…thought there were dancin’ and chantin’ and stuff.”
    “Did that before you got here,” said Granny.
    “My word. Yes. Er…about payin’…”
    “Oh, I don’t want payin’,” said Granny. “’S bad luck, taking money.”
    “Oh. Right.” Jarge brightened up.
    “But maybe…if your wife’s got any old clothes, p’raps, I’m a size twelve, black for preference, or bakes the odd cake, no plums, they gives me wind, or got a bit of old mead put by, could be, or p’raps you’ll be killing a hog about now, best back’s my favorite, maybe some ham, a few pig knuckles…anything you can spare, really. No obligation. I wouldn’t go around puttin’ anyone under obligation, just ’cos I’m a witch. Everyone all right in your house, are they? Blessed with good health, I hope?”
    She watched this sink in.
    “And now let me help you out of the door,” she added.
    Weaver was never quite certain about what happened next. Granny, usually so sure on her feet, seemed to trip over one of his sticks as she went through the door, and fell backward, holding his shoulders, and somehow her knee came up and hit a spot on his backbone as she twisted sideways, and there was a click —
    “Aargh!”
    “Sorry!”
    “Me back! Me back !”
    Still, Jarge reasoned later, she was an old woman. And she might be getting clumsy and she’d always been daft, but she made good potions. They worked damn fast, too. He was carrying his sticks by the time he got home.
    Granny watched him go, shaking her head.
    People were so blind , she reflected. They preferred to believe in gibberish rather than chiropracty.
    Of course, it was just as well this was so. She’d much rather they went “oo” when she seemed to know who was approaching her cottage than work out that it conveniently overlooked a bend in the track, and as for the door latch and the trick with the length of black thread… *
    But what had she done? She’d just tricked a rather dim old man.
    She’d faced wizards, monsters and elves…and now she was feeling pleased with herself because she’d fooled Jarge