Thief of Time

murmured.
    “It’s more like not actually ever going in the first place,” said Lu-Tze. “I’ve studied the technique a bit, but…well, unless it’s built in, you have to learn how to do it, and would you want to bet on getting it right first time? Tricky one. You’d have to be desperate. I hope I’m never that desperate.”
    Tick
    Susan recognized the country of Lancre from the air, a little bowl of woods and fields perched like a nest on the edge of the Ramtop Mountains. And she found the cottage, too, which was not the corkscrew-chimneyed compost-heap kind of witch’s house popularized by Grim Fairy Tales and other books, but a spanking new one with gleaming thatch and a manicured front lawn.
    There were more ornaments—gnomes, toadstools, pink bunnies, big-eyed deer—around a tiny pond than any sensible gardener should have allowed. Susan spotted one brightly painted gnome fishi—no, that wasn’t a rod he was holding, was it? Surely a nice old lady wouldn’t put something like that in her garden, would she? Would she?
    Susan was bright enough to go around to the back, because witches were allergic to front doors. It was opened by a small, fat, rosy-cheeked woman whose little currant eyes said, yep, that’s my gnome all right, and be thankful he’s only widdling in the pond.
    “Mrs. Ogg? The midwife?”
    There was a pause before Mrs. Ogg said, “The very same.”
    “You don’t know me, but—” said Susan and realized that Mrs. Ogg was looking past her at Binky, who was standing by the gate. The woman was a witch, after all.
    “Maybe I do know you,” said Mrs. Ogg. “O’course, if you just stole that horse, you just don’t know how much trouble you are in.”
    “I borrowed it. The owner is…my grandfather.”
    Another pause, and it was disconcerting how those friendly little eyes could bore into yours like an auger.
    “You’d better come in,” said Mrs. Ogg.
    The inside of the cottage was as clean and new as the outside. Things gleamed, and there were a lot of them to gleam. The place was a shrine to bad but enthusiastically painted china ornaments, which occupied every flat surface. What space was left was full of framed pictures. Two harassed-looking women were polishing and dusting.
    “I got comp’ny,” said Mrs. Ogg sternly, and the women left with such alacrity that the word “fled” might have been appropriate.
    “My daughters-in-law,” said Mrs. Ogg, sitting down in a plump armchair which, over the years, had shaped itself to fit her. “They like to help a poor old lady who’s all alone in the world.”
    Susan took in the pictures. If they were all of family members, Mrs. Ogg was head of an army. Mrs. Ogg, unashamedly caught out in a flagrant lie, went on: “Sit down, girl, and say what’s on your mind. There’s tea brewing.”
    “I need to know something.”
    “Most people do,” said Mrs. Ogg. “And they can go on wantin’.”
    “I want to know about…a birth,” said Susan, persevering.
    “Oh, yes? Well, I done hundreds of confinements. Thousands, prob’ly.”
    “I imagine this one was difficult.”
    “A lot of them are,” said Mrs. Ogg.
    “You’d remember this one. I don’t know how it started, but I’d imagine that a stranger came knocking.”
    “Oh?” Mrs. Ogg’s face became a wall. The black eyes stared out at Susan as if she was an invading army.
    “You’re not helping me, Mrs. Ogg.”
    “That’s right. I ain’t,” said Mrs. Ogg. “I think I know about you, miss, but I don’t care who you are, you see. You can go and get the other one, if you like. Don’t think I ain’t seen him, neither. I’ve been at plenty of deathbeds, too. But deathbeds is public, mostly, and birthbeds ain’t. Not if the lady don’t want them to be. So you get the other one, and I’ll spit in his eye.”
    “This is very important, Mrs. Ogg.”
    “You’re right there,” said Mrs. Ogg firmly.
    “I can’t say how long ago it was. It may have been last week, even. Time, that’s the key.”
    And there it was. Mrs. Ogg was not a poker player, at least against someone like Susan. There was the tiniest flicker of the eyes.
    Mrs. Ogg’s chair was rammed back in her effort to rise, but Susan got to the mantelpiece first and snatched what was there, hidden in plain view among the ornaments.
    “You give that here!” shouted Mrs. Ogg, as Susan held it out of her reach. She could feel the power in the thing. It seemed to pulse in her hand.
    “Have you any