Witches Abroad

a long way before you found anything realer than dwarf bread.
    Then she’d gone off alone to talk to the head dwarf.
    She wouldn’t tell the others what he’d told her, and they didn’t feel bold enough to ask. Now she flew a little ahead of them.
    Occasionally she’d mutter something like “Godmothers!” or “Practicing!”
    But even Magrat, who hadn’t had as much experience, could feel Genua now, as a barometer feels the air pressure. In Genua, stories came to life. In Genua, someone set out to make dreams come true.
    Remember some of your dreams?

    Genua nestled on the delta of the Vieux river, which was the source of its wealth. And Genua was wealthy. Genua had once controlled the river mouth and taxed its traffic in a way that couldn’t be called piracy because it was done by the city government, and therefore sound economics and perfectly all right. And the swamps and lakes back in the delta provided the crawling, swimming and flying ingredients of a cuisine that would have been world famous if, as has already been indicated, people traveled very much.
    Genua was rich, lazy and unthreatened, and had once spent quite a lot of time involved in that special kind of civic politics that comes naturally to some city states. For example, once it had been able to afford the largest branch of the Assassins’ Guild outside Ankh-Morpork, and its members were so busy that you sometimes had to wait for months. *
    But the Assassins had all left years ago. Some things sicken even jackals.
    The city came as a shock. From a distance, it looked like a complicated white crystal growing out of the greens and browns of the swamp.
    Closer to, it resolved into, firstly, an outer ring of smaller buildings, then an inner ring of large, impressive white houses and, finally, at the very center, a palace. It was tall and pretty and multi-turreted, like a toy castle or some kind of confectionery extravaganza. Every slim tower looked designed to hold a captive princess.
    Magrat shivered. But then she thought of the wand. A godmother had responsibilities.
    “Reminds me of another one of them Black Aliss stories,” said Granny Weatherwax. “I remember when she locked up that girl with the long pigtails in a tower just like one of them. Rumplestiltzel or someone.”
    “But she got out,” said Magrat.
    “Yes, it does you good to let your hair down,” said Nanny.
    “Huh. Rural myths,” said Granny.
    They drew nearer to the city walls. Then Magrat said, “There’s guards on the gate. Are we going to fly over?”
    Granny stared at the highest tower through narrowed eyes. “No,” she said. “We’ll land and walk in. So’s not to worry people.”
    “There’s a nice flat green bit just behind those trees,” said Magrat.

    Granny walked up and down experimentally. Her boots squeaked and gurgled in watery accusation.
    “Look, I said I’m sorry,” said Magrat. “It just looked so flat!”
    “Water gen’rally does,” said Nanny, sitting on a tree stump and wringing out her dress.
    “But even you couldn’t tell it was water,” said Magrat. “It looks so…so grassy with all that weed and stuff floating on it.”
    “Seems to me the land and the water around here can’t decide who is which,” said Nanny. She looked around at the miasmic landscape.
    Trees grew out of the swamp. They had a jagged, foreign look and seemed to be rotting as they grew. Where the water was visible, it was black like ink. Occasionally a few bubbles would eructate to the surface like the ghosts of beans on bath night. And somewhere over in the distance was the river, if it was possible to be that sure in this land of thick water and ground that wobbled when you set foot on it.
    She blinked.
    “That’s odd,” she said.
    “What?” said Granny.
    “Thought I saw…something running…” muttered Nanny. “Over there. Between the trees.”
    “Must be a duck then, in this place.”
    “It was bigger’n a duck,” said Nanny. “Funny thing is, it looked a bit like a little house.”
    “Oh yes, running along with smoke coming out of the chimney, I expect,” said Granny witheringly.
    Nanny brightened. “You saw it too?”
    Granny rolled her eyes.
    “Come on,” she said, “let’s get to the road.”
    “Er,” said Magrat, “how?”
    They looked at the nominal ground between their reasonably dry refuge and the road. It had a yellowish appearance. There were floating branches and tufts of suspiciously green grass. Nanny pulled a