The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

she has a weapon (a frying pan), her granny’s magic book (well, Diseases of the Sheep, actually) and—
    ‘Crivens! Whut aboot us, ye daftie!’
    —oh, yes. She’s also got the Nac Mac Feegle, the Wee Free Men, the fightin’, thievin’, tiny blue-skinned pictsies who were thrown out of Fairyland for being Drunk and Disorderly…
    Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular.
    *
    There was a small part of Tiffany’s brain that wasn’t too certain about the name Tiffany. She was nine years old and felt that Tiffany was going to be a hard name to live up to. Besides, she’d decided only last week that she wanted to be a witch when she grew up, and she was certain Tiffany just wouldn’t work. People would laugh.
    *
    The teachers were useful. They went from village to village delivering short lessons on many subjects. They kept apart from the other travellers, and were quite mysterious in their ragged robes and strange square hats. They used long words, like ‘corrugated iron’. They lived rough lives, surviving on what food they could earn from giving lessons to anyone who would listen. When no one would listen, they lived on baked hedgehog. They went to sleep under the stars, which the maths teachers would count, the astronomy teachers would measure and the literature teachers would name. The geography teachers got lost in the woods and fell into bear traps.
    *
    ‘I would like a question answered today’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s about zoology.’
    ‘Zoology, eh? That’s a big word, isn’t it.’
    ‘No, actually it isn’t,’ said Tiffany. ‘Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.’
    *
    ‘Are you a witch?’ said Tiffany. ‘I don’t mind if you are.’
    ‘What a strange question to spring on someone,’ said the woman. ‘Why would I be a witch?’
    ‘You’re wearing a straw hat with flowers in it.’
    ‘Aha!’ said the woman. ‘That proves it, then. Witches wear tall pointy hats. Everyone knows that, foolish child.’
    ‘Yes, but witches are also very clever,’ said Tiffany calmly. ‘They sneak about. Probably they often don’t look like witches. And a witch coming here would know about the Baron and so she’d wear the kind of hat that everyone knows witches don’t wear.’
    ‘That was an incredible feat of reasoning,’ the woman said at last. ‘Whatever kind of hat I’ve got on, you’d say it proves I’m a witch, yes?’
    ‘Well, the frog sitting on your hat is a bit of a clue, too,’ said Tiffany.
    ‘I’m a toad, actually’ said the creature, which had been peering at Tiffany from between the paper flowers.
    You’re very yellow for a toad.’
    ‘I’ve been a bit ill,’ said the toad.
    ‘And you talk,’ said Tiffany.
    You only have my word for it,’ said the toad, disappearing into the paper flowers. ‘You can’t prove anything.’
    *
    ‘Witches have animals they can talk to, called familiars. Like your toad there.’
    ‘I’m not familiar,’ said a voice from among the paper flowers. ‘I’m just slightly presumptuous.’
    *
    ‘If you have a grandmother who can pass on her pointy hat to you, that saves a great deal of expense. They are incredibly hard to come by, especially ones strong enough to withstand falling farmhouses.’
    *
    ‘You might make a decent witch one day’ she said. ‘But I don’t teach people to be witches. They learn in a special school. I just show them the way, if they’re any good. All witches have special interests, and I like children.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because they’re much easier to fit in the oven,’ said Miss Tick.
    *
    ‘I will give you some free advice.’
    ‘Will it cost me anything?’
    ‘You could say it is priceless. Are you listening?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Good. Now … if you trust in yourself …’
    Yes?’
    ‘… and believe in your dreams …’
    Yes?’
    ‘… and follow your star …’
    Yes?’
    ‘… you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy’
    *
    A lot of the stories were highly suspicious, in her opinion. There was the one that ended when the two good children pushed the wicked witch into her own oven. Tiffany had worried about that after all that trouble with Mrs Snapperly Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She’d read that one and