Witches Abroad

“but at least I’m trying to learn things! Do you know the kind of things people can use magic for? Not just illusion and bullying! There’s people in this book that can…can…walk on hot coals, and stick their hands in a fire and not get hurt!”
    “Cheap trickery!” said Granny.
    “They really can!”
    “Impossible. No one can do that!”
    “It shows they can control things! Magic’s got to be more than just knowing things and manipulating people!”
    “Oh? It’s all wishing on stars and fairy dust, is it? Making people happier?”
    “There’s got to be some of that! Otherwise what’s the good of anything ? Anyway…when I went to Desiderata’s cottage you were looking for the wand, weren’t you?”
    “I just didn’t want it falling into the wrong hands!”
    “Like any hands but yours, I expect!”
    They glared at each other.
    “Haven’t you got any romance in your soul?” said Magrat plaintively.
    “No,” said Granny. “I ain’t. And stars don’t care what you wish, and magic don’t make things better, and no one doesn’t get burned who sticks their hand in a fire. If you want to amount to anything as a witch, Magrat Garlick, you got to learn three things. What’s real, what’s not real, and what’s the difference—”
    “And always get the young man’s name and address,” said Nanny. “It worked for me every time. Only joking,” she said, as they both glared at her.
    The wind was rising, here on the edge of the forest. Bits of grass and leaves whirled through the air.
    “We’re going the right way, anyway,” said Nanny madly, seeking anything that would be a distraction. “Look. It says ‘Genua’ on the signpost.”
    It did indeed. It was an old, worm-eaten signpost right on the edge of the forest. The end of the arm had been carved into the likeness of a pointing finger.
    “A proper road, too,” Nanny burbled on. The row cooled a bit, simply because both sides were not talking to each other. Not simply not exchanging vocal communication—that’s just an absence of speaking. This went right through that and out the other side, into the horrible glowering worlds of Not Talking to One Another.
    “Yellow bricks,” said Nanny. “Whoever heard of anyone making a road out of yellow bricks?”
    Magrat and Granny Weatherwax stood looking in opposite directions with their arms folded.
    “Brightens the place up, I suppose,” said Nanny. On the horizon, Genua sparkled in the middle of some more greenery. In between, the road dipped into a wide valley dotted with little villages. A river snaked through them on the way to the city.
    The wind whipped at their skirts.
    “We’ll never fly in this,” said Nanny, still womanfully trying to make enough conversation for three people.
    “So we’ll walk, then, eh?” she said, and added, because there’s a spark of spitefulness even in innocent souls like Nanny Ogg’s, “Singing as we go, how about it?”
    “I’m sure it’s not my place to mind what anyone chooses to do,” said Granny. “It’s nothing to do with me. I expect some people with wands and big ideas might have something to say.”
    “Huh!” said Magrat.
    They set off along the brick road toward the distant city, in single file with Nanny Ogg as a kind of mobile buffer state in the middle.
    “What some people need,” said Magrat, to the world in general, “is a bit more heart.”
    “What some people need,” said Granny Weatherwax, to the stormy sky, “is a lot more brain.”
    Then she clutched at her hat to stop the wind from blowing it off.
    What I need, thought Nanny Ogg fervently, is a drink.
    Three minutes later a farmhouse dropped on her head.

    By this time the witches were well spaced out. Granny Weatherwax was striding along in front, Magrat was sulking along at the rear, and Nanny was in the middle.
    As she said afterward, it wasn’t even as if she was singing. It was just that one moment there was a small, plump witch, and the next there was the collapsing remains of a wooden farmhouse.
    Granny Weatherwax turned and found herself looking at a crumbling, unpainted front door. Magrat nearly walked into a back door of the same gray, bleached wood.
    There was no sound but the crackle of settling timber.
    “Gytha?” said Granny.
    “Nanny?” said Magrat.
    They both opened their doors.
    It was a very simple design of house, with two downstairs rooms separated by a front-to-back passageway. In the middle of the passageway, surrounded by