Witches Abroad

son?”
    “It’s all right, dad. No faulting or anything.”
    The King sagged with relief. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Everyone all right?”
    “Fine, dad.”
    “I was quite worried for a time there. Thought we might have hit a section of conglomerate or something.”
    “Just a patch of loose shale, dad.”
    “Good.” The King looked at the heap again. He scratched his beard. “Can’t help noticing you seem to have struck pumpkin.”
    “I thought it was an odd kind of sandstone, dad.”
    The King walked back to the witches.
    “Can you turn anything into anything?” he said hopefully.
    Nanny Ogg looked sideways at Magrat, who was still staring at the wand in a sort of shock.
    “I think we only do pumpkins at the moment,” she said cautiously.
    The King looked a little disappointed.
    “Well, then,” he said, “if there’s anything I can do for you ladies…a cup of tea or something…”
    Granny Weatherwax stepped forward. “I was just thinking something like that myself,” she said.
    The King beamed.
    “Only more expensive,” said Granny.
    The King stopped beaming.
    Nanny Ogg sidled up to Magrat, who was shaking the wand and staring at it.
    “Very clever,” she whispered. “Why’d you think of pumpkins?”
    “I didn’t!”
    “Don’t you know how to work it?”
    “No! I thought you just had to, you know, want something to happen!”
    “There’s probably more to it than just wishing,” said Nanny, as sympathetically as possible. “There generally is.”

    Some time around dawn, in so far as dawn happened in the mines, the witches were led to a river somewhere deep in the mountains, where a couple of barges were moored. A small boat was pulled up to a stone jetty.
    “This’ll take you right through the mountains,” said the King. “I think it goes all the way to Genua, to tell the truth.” He took a large basket off an attendant dwarf. “And we’ve packed you some lovely food,” he said.
    “Are we going to go all the way in a boat?” said Magrat. She gave the wand a few surreptitious flourishes. “I’m not good at boats.”
    “Listen,” said Granny, climbing aboard, “the river knows its way out of the mountains, which is more than we do. We can use the brooms later on, where the landscape’s acting a bit more sensible.”
    “And we can have a bit of a rest,” said Nanny, sitting back.
    Magrat looked at the two older witches, who were making themselves comfortable in the stern like a couple of hens settling down on a nest.
    “Do you know how to row a boat?” she said.
    “We don’t have to,” said Granny.
    Magrat nodded gloomily. Then a tiny bit of self-assertion flashed a fin.
    “I don’t think I do, too,” she ventured.
    “That’s all right,” said Nanny. “If we sees you doing anything wrong, we’ll be sure to tell you. Cheerio, your kingship.”
    Magrat sighed, and picked up the oars.
    “The flat bits go in the water,” said Granny helpfully.
    The dwarfs waved. The boat drifted out into midstream, moving slowly in a circle of lantern light. Magrat found that all she really had to do was keep it pointing the right way in the current.
    She heard Nanny say: “Beats me why they’re always putting invisible runes on their doors. I mean, you pays some wizard to put invisible runes on your door, and how do you know you’ve got value for money?”
    She heard Granny say: “No problem there. If you can’t see ’em, you know you’ve got proper invisible runes.”
    She heard Nanny say: “Ah, that’d be it. Right, let’s see what we’ve got for lunch.” There was a rustling noise.
    “Well, well, well.”
    “What is it, Gytha?”
    “Pumpkin.”
    “Pumpkin what?”
    “Pumpkin nothing. Just pumpkin pumpkin.”
    “Well, I suppose they’ve got a lot of pumpkin,” said Magrat. “You know how it is at the end of the summer, there’s always so much in the garden. I’m always at my wits’ end to think of new types of chutney and pickles to use it all up—”
    In the dim light she could see Granny’s face which seemed to be suggesting that if Magrat was at her wits’ end, it was a short stroll.
    “ I ,” said Granny, “have never made a pickle in my life.”
    “But you like pickles,” said Magrat. Witches and pickles went together like—she hesitated before the stomach-curdling addition of peaches and cream, and mentally substituted “things that went together very well.” The sight of Nanny Ogg’s single remaining tooth at