Witches Abroad

“The last thing we want is foreign parts up close.”
    “I mean, there’ll be a lot of traveling,” said Magrat wretchedly. “And you’re…not as young as you were.”
    There was a long, crowded silence.
    “We start tomorrow,” said Granny Weatherwax firmly.
    “Look,” said Magrat desperately, “why don’t I go by myself?”
    “’Cos you ain’t experienced at fairy godmothering,” said Granny Weatherwax.
    This was too much even for Magrat’s generous soul.
    “Well, nor are you,” she said.
    “That’s true,” Granny conceded. “But the point is…the point is…the point is we’ve not been experienced for a lot longer than you.”
    “We’ve got a lot of experience of not having any experience,” said Nanny Ogg happily.
    “That’s what counts every time,” said Granny.
    There was only one small, speckled mirror in Granny’s house. When she got home, she buried it at the bottom of the garden.
    “There,” she said. “ Now trying spyin’ on me.”

    It never seemed possible to people that Jason Ogg, master blacksmith and farrier, was Nanny Ogg’s son. He didn’t look as if he could possibly have been born, but as if he must have been constructed. In a shipyard. To his essentially slow and gentle nature genetics had seen fit to add muscles that should have gone to a couple of bullocks, arms like treetrunks, and legs like four beer barrels stacked in twos.
    To his glowing forge were brought the stud stallions, the red-eyed and foam-flecked kings of the horse nation, the soup-plate-hoofed beasts that had kicked lesser men through walls. But Jason Ogg knew the secret of the mystic Horseman’s Word, and he would go alone into the forge, politely shut the door, and lead the creature out again after half an hour, newly shod and strangely docile. *
    Behind his huge brooding shape clustered the rest of Nanny Ogg’s endless family and a lot of other townsfolk who, seeing some interesting activity involving witches, couldn’t resist the opportunity for what was known in the Ramtops as a good oggle.
    “We’m off then, our Jason,” said Nanny Ogg. “They do say the streets in foreign parts are paved with gold. I could prob’ly make my fortune, eh?”
    Jason’s hairy brow creased in intense thought.
    “Us could do with a new anvil down forge,” he volunteered.
    “If I come back rich, you won’t never have to go down the forge ever again,” said Nanny.
    Jason frowned.
    “But I likes t’forge,” he said, slowly.
    Nanny looked momentarily taken aback. “Well, then—then you shall have an anvil made of solid silver.”
    “Wunt be no good, ma. It’d be too soft,” said Jason.
    “If I brings you back an anvil made of solid silver you shall have an anvil made of solid silver, my lad, whether you likes it or not!”
    Jason hung his huge head. “Yes, mum,” he said.
    “You see to it that someone comes in to keep the house aired every day reg’lar,” said Nanny. “I want a fire lit in that grate every morning.”
    “Yes, mum.”
    “And everyone’s to go in through the back door, you hear? I’ve put a curse on the front porch. Where’s those girls got to with my luggage?” She scurried off, a small gray bantam scolding a flock of hens.
    Magrat listened to all this with interest. Her own preparations had consisted of a large sack containing several changes of clothes to accommodate whatever weather foreign parts might suffer from, and a rather smaller one containing a number of useful-looking books from Desiderata Hollow’s cottage. Desiderata had been a great note-taker, and had filled dozens of little books with neat writing and chapter headings like “With Wand and Broomstick Across the Great Nef Desert.”
    What she had never bothered to do, it seemed, was write down any instructions for the wand. As far as Magrat knew, you waved it and wished.
    Along the track to her cottage, several unanticipated pumpkins bore witness to this as an unreliable strategy. One of them still thought it was a stoat.
    Now Magrat was left alone with Jason, who shuffled his feet.
    He touched his forelock. He’d been brought up to be respectful to women, and Magrat fell broadly into this category.
    “You will look after our mum, won’t you, Mistress Garlick?” he said, a hint of worry in his voice. “She’m acting awful strange.”
    Magrat patted him gently on the shoulder.
    “This sort of thing happens all the time,” she said. “You know, after a woman’s raised a family and so on,