Witches Abroad

gets better, Miss,” he said.
    When Magrat was left alone in her kitchen-cum-dojo she unwrapped the parcel. It contained one slim white rod.
    She looked at the note again. It said, “I niver had time to Trane a replaysment so youll have to Do. You must goe to the city of Genua. I would of done thys myself only cannot by reason of bein dead. Ella Saturday muste NOTTE marry the prins. PS This is importent.”
    She looked at her reflection in the mirror.
    She looked down at the note again.
    “PSPS Tell those 2 Olde Biddys they are Notte to come with Youe, they will onlie Ruine everythin.”
    There was more.
    “PSPSPS It has tendincy to resett to pumpkins but you will gett the hange of it in noe time.”
    Magrat looked at the mirror again. And then down at the wand.
    One minute life is simple, and then suddenly it stretches away full of complications.
    “Oh, my,” she said. “I’m a fairy godmother!”

    Granny Weatherwax was still standing staring at the crazily-webbed fragments when Nanny Ogg ran in.
    “Esme Weatherwax, what have you done? That’s bad luck, that is…Esme?”
    “Her? Her ?”
    “Are you all right?”
    Granny Weatherwax screwed up her eyes for a moment, and then shook her head as if trying to dislodge an unthinkable thought.
    “What?”
    “You’ve gone all pale. Never seen you go all pale like that before.”
    Granny slowly removed a fragment of glass from her hat.
    “Well…bit of a turn, the glass breaking like that…” she mumbled.
    Nanny looked at Granny Weatherwax’s hand. It was bleeding. Then she looked at Granny Weatherwax’s face, and decided that she’d never admit that she’d looked at Granny Weatherwax’s hand.
    “Could be a sign,” she said, randomly selecting a safe topic. “Once someone dies, you get that sort of thing. Pictures fallin’ off walls, clocks stopping…great big wardrobes falling down the stairs…that sort of thing.”
    “I’ve never believed in that stuff, it’s…what do you mean, wardrobes falling down the stairs?” said Granny. She was breathing deeply. If it wasn’t well known that Granny Weatherwax was tough , anyone might have thought she had just had the shock of her life and was practically desperate to take part in a bit of ordinary everyday bickering.
    “That’s what happened after my Great-Aunt Sophie died,” said Nanny Ogg. “Three days and four hours and six minutes to the very minute after she died, her wardrobe fell down the stairs. Our Darren and our Jason were trying to get it around the bend and it sort of slipped, just like that. Uncanny. Weeell, I wasn’t going to leave it there for her Agatha, was I, only ever visited her mum on Hogswatchday, and it was me that nursed Sophie all the way through to the end—”
    Granny let the familiar, soothing litany of Nanny Ogg’s family feud wash over her as she groped for the teacups.
    The Oggs were what is known as an extended family—in fact not only extended but elongated, protracted and persistent. No normal sheet of paper could possibly trace their family tree, which in any case was more like a mangrove thicket. And every single branch had a low-key, chronic vendetta against every other branch, based on such well-established causes célèbres as What Their Kevin Said About Our Stan At Cousin Di’s Wedding and Who Got The Silver Cutlery That Auntie Em Promised Our Doreen Was To Have After She Died, I’d Like To Know, Thank You Very Much, If You Don’t Mind.
    Nanny Ogg, as undisputed matriarch, encouraged all sides indiscriminately. It was the nearest thing she had to a hobby.
    The Oggs contained, in just one family, enough feuds to keep an entire Ozark of normal hillbillies going for a century.
    And sometimes this encouraged a foolish outsider to join in and perhaps make an uncomplimentary remark about one Ogg to another Ogg. Whereupon every single Ogg would turn on him, every part of the family closing up together like the parts of a well-oiled, blue-steeled engine to deal instant merciless destruction to the interloper.
    Ramtop people believed that the Ogg feud was a blessing. The thought of them turning their immense energy on the world in general was a terrible one. Fortunately, there was no one an Ogg would rather fight than another Ogg. It was family .
    Odd things, families, when you came to think of it…
    “Esme? You all right?”
    “What?”
    “You’ve got them cups rattling like nobody’s business! And tea all over the tray.”
    Granny looked down