Witches Abroad

her hands in front of her, punched the air vigorously and said: “HAAAAiiiii-eeeeeeehgh! Um.”
    Magrat would be the first to admit that she had an open mind. It was as open as a field, as open as the sky. No mind could be more open without special surgical implements. And she was always waiting for something to fill it up.
    What it was currently filling up with was the search for inner peace and cosmic harmony and the true essence of Being.
    When people say “An idea came to me” it isn’t just a metaphor. Raw inspirations, tiny particles of self-contained thought, are sleeting through the cosmos all the time. They get drawn to heads like Magrat’s in the same way that water runs into a hole in the desert.
    It was all due to her mother’s lack of attention to spelling, she speculated. A caring parent would have spelled Margaret correctly. And then she could have been a Peggy, or a Maggie—big, robust names, full of reliability. There wasn’t much you could do with a Magrat. It sounded like something that lived in a hole in a river bank and was always getting flooded out.
    She considered changing it, but knew in her secret heart that this would not work. Even if she became a Chloe or an Isobel on top she’d still be a Magrat underneath. But it would be nice to try. It’d be nice not to be a Magrat, even for a few hours.
    It’s thoughts like this that start people on the road to Finding Themselves. And one of the earliest things Magrat had learned was that anyone Finding Themselves would be unwise to tell Granny Weatherwax, who thought that female emancipation was a women’s complaint that shouldn’t be discussed in front of men.
    Nanny Ogg was more sympathetic but had a tendency to come out with what Magrat thought of as double-intenders, although in Nanny Ogg’s case they were generally single entendres and proud of it.
    In short, Magrat had despaired of learning anything at all from her senior witches, and was casting her net further afield. Much further afield. About as far afield as a field could be.
    It’s a strange thing about determined seekers-after-wisdom that, no matter where they happen to be, they’ll always seek that wisdom which is a long way off. Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is. *
    Currently Magrat was finding herself through the Path of The Scorpion, which offered cosmic harmony, inner one-ness and the possibility of knocking an attacker’s kidneys out through his ears. She’d sent off for it.
    There were problems. The author, Grand Master Lobsang Dibbler, had an address in Ankh-Morpork. This did not seem like a likely seat of cosmic wisdom. Also, although he’d put in lots of stuff about the Way not being used for aggression and only to be used for cosmic wisdom, this was in quite small print between enthusiastic drawings of people hitting one another with rice flails and going “Hai!” Later on you learned how to cut bricks in half with your hand and walk over red hot coals and other cosmic things.
    Magrat thought that Ninja was a nice name for a girl.
    She squared up to herself in the mirror again.
    There was a knock at the door. Magrat went and opened it.
    “Hai?” she said.
    Hurker the poacher took a step backward. He was already rather shaken. An angry wolf had trailed him part of the way through the forest.
    “Um,” he said. He leaned forward, his shock changing to concern. “Have you hurt your head, Miss?”
    She looked at him in incomprehension. Then realization dawned. She reached up and took off the headband with the chrysanthemum pattern on it, without which it is almost impossible to properly seek cosmic wisdom by twisting an opponent’s elbows through 360 degrees.
    “No,” she said. “What do you want?”
    “Got a package for you,” said Hurker, presenting it.
    It was about two feet long, and very thin.
    “There’s a note,” said Hurker helpfully. He shuffled around as she unfolded it, and tried to read it over her shoulder.
    “It’s private,” said Magrat.
    “Is it?” said Hurker, agreeably.
    “Yes!”
    “I was tole you’d give me a penny for delivering it,” said the poacher. Magrat found one in her purse.
    “Money forges the chains which bind the laboring classes,” she warned, handing it over. Hurker, who had never thought of himself as a laboring class in his life, but who was prepared to listen to almost any amount of gibberish in exchange for a penny, nodded innocently.
    “And I hope your head