Witches Abroad

of someone coming up beside her.
    “S’cuse me, missus.”
    It turned out to be a small, repulsive lower-class woman with a big ingratiating smile.
    “What do you want, old woman?” said Lady Volentia.
    “S’cuse me,” said Nanny Ogg. “My friend over there would like a word with you.”
    Lady Volentia looked around haughtily into…
    …icy, blue-eyed, hypnotic oblivion.

    “What’s this thing like an extra bu…hobo?”
    “It’s a bustle, Esme.”
    “It’s damn uncomfortable is what it is. I keep on feeling someone’s following me around.”
    “The white suits you, anyway.”
    “No it don’t. Black’s the only color for a proper witch. And this wig is too hot. Who wants a foot of hair on their heads?”
    Granny donned her mask. It was an eagle’s face in white feathers stuck with sequins.
    Nanny adjusted some unmentionable underpinning somewhere beneath her crinoline and straightened up.
    “Cor, look at us,” she said. “Them feathers in your hair really look good.”

“I’ve never been vain,” said Granny Weatherwax. “You know that, Gytha. No one could ever call me vain.”
    “No, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg.
    Granny twirled a bit.
    “Are you ready then, Dame Ogg?” she said.
    “Yes. Let’s do it, Lady Weatherwax.”

    The dance floor was thronged. Decorations hung from every pillar, but they were black and silver, the colors of the festival of Samedi Nuit Mort. An orchestra was playing on a balcony. Dancers whirled. The din was immense.
    A waiter with a tray of drinks suddenly found that he was a waiter without a tray of drinks. He looked around, and then down to a small fox under a huge white wig.
    “Bugger off and get us some more,” said Nanny pleasantly. “Can you see her, your ladyship?”
    “There’s too many people.”
    “Well, can you see the Duc?”
    “How do I know? Everyone’s got masks on!”
    “Hey, is that food over there?”
    Many of the less energetic or more hungry of the Genua nobility were clustered around the long buffet. All they were aware of, apart from sharp digs with a pair of industrious elbows, was an amiable monotone at chest height, on the lines of “…mind your backs…stand aside there…comin’ through.”
    Nanny fought her way to the table and nudged a space for Granny Weatherwax.
    “Cor, what a spread, eh?” she said. “Mind you, they have tiny chickens in these parts.” She grabbed a plate.
    “Them’s quails.”
    “I’ll ’ave three. ’Ere, charlie chan!”
    A flunkey stared at her.
    “Got any pickles?”
    “I’m afraid not, ma’am.”
    Nanny Ogg looked along a table which included roast swans, a roasted peacock that probably wouldn’t have felt any better about it even if it had known that its tail feathers were going to be stuck back in afterward, and more fruits, boiled lobsters, nuts, cakes, creams and trifles than a hermit’s dream.
    “Well, got any relish?”
    “ No , ma’am.”
    “Tomato ketchup?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “And they call this a gormay paradise,” muttered Nanny, as the band struck up the next dance. She nudged a tall figure helping himself to the lobster. “Some place, eh?”
    V ERY NICE .
    “Good mask you’ve got there.”
    T HANK YOU .
    Nanny was spun around by Granny Weatherwax’s hand on her shoulder.
    “There’s Magrat!”
    “Where? Where?” said Nanny.
    “Over there…sitting by the potted plants.”
    “Oh, yes. On the chassy longyew,” said Nanny. “That’s ‘sofa’ in foreign, you know,” she added.
    “What’s she doing?”
    “Being attractive to men, I think.”
    “What, Magrat ?”
    “Yeah. You’re really getting good at that hypnotism, ain’t you.”

    Magrat fluttered her fan and looked up at the Compte de Yoyo.
    “La, sir,” she said. “You may get me another plate of lark’s eggs, if you really must.”
    “Like a shot, dear lady!” The old man bustled off in the direction of the buffet.
    Magrat surveyed her empire of admirers, and then extended a languorous hand toward Captain de Vere of the Palace Guard. He stood to attention.
    “ Dear captain,” she said, “you may have the pleasure of the next dance.”

    “Acting like a hussy,” said Granny disapprovingly.
    Nanny gave her an odd look.
    “Not really,” she said. “Anyway, a bit of hussing never did anyone any harm. At least none of those men look like the Duc. ’Ere, what you doing?”
    This was to a small bald-headed man who was trying surreptitiously to set up a small easel in front of