Wyrd Sisters

trying to make a fool of her.
    Up on the stage a man in a sheet was giving a spirited monologue. Granny listened intently for some minutes, and then nudged Magrat in the ribs.
    “What’s he on about now?” she demanded.
    “He’s saying how sorry he was that the other man’s dead,” said Magrat, and in an attempt to change the subject added hurriedly, “There’s a lot of crowns, isn’t there?”
    Granny was not to be distracted. “What’d he go and kill him for, then?” she said.
    “Well, it’s a bit complicated—” said Magrat, weakly.
    “It’s shameful!” snapped Granny. “And the poor dead thing still lying there!”
    Magrat gave an imploring look to Nanny Ogg, who was masticating an apple and studying the stage with the glare of a research scientist.
    “I reckon ,” she said slowly, “I reckon it’s all just pretendin’. Look, he’s still breathing.”
    The rest of the audience, who by now had already decided that this commentary was all part of the play, stared as one man at the corpse. It blushed.
    “And look at his boots, too,” said Nanny critically. “A real king’d be ashamed of boots like that.”
    The corpse tried to shuffle its feet behind a cardboard bush.
    Granny, feeling in some obscure way that they had scored a minor triumph over the purveyors of untruth and artifice, helped herself to an apple from the bag and began to take a fresh interest. Magrat’s nerves started to unknot, and she began to settle down to enjoy the play. But not, as it turned out, for very long. Her willing suspension of disbelief was interrupted by a voice saying:
    “What’s this bit?”
    Magrat sighed. “Well,” she hazarded, “ he thinks that he is the prince, but he’s really the other king’s daughter, dressed up as a man.”
    Granny subjected the actor to a long analytical stare.
    “He is a man,” she said. “In a straw wig. Making his voice squeaky.”
    Magrat shuddered. She knew a little about the conventions of the theater. She had been dreading this bit. Granny Weatherwax had Views.
    “Yes, but,” she said wretchedly, “it’s the Theater, see. All the women are played by men.”
    “Why?”
    “They don’t allow no women on the stage,” said Magrat in a small voice. She shut her eyes.
    In fact, there was no outburst from the seat on her left. She risked a quick glance.
    Granny was quietly chewing the same bit of apple over and over again, her eyes never leaving the action.
    “Don’t make a fuss, Esme,” said Nanny, who also knew about Granny’s Views. “This is a good bit. I reckon I’m getting the hang of it.”
    Someone tapped Granny on the shoulder and a voice said, “Madam, will you kindly remove your hat?”
    Granny turned around very slowly on her stool, as though propelled by hidden motors, and subjected the interrupter to a hundred kilowatt diamond-blue stare. The man wilted under it and sagged back onto his stool, her face following him all the way down.
    “No,” she said.
    He considered the options. “All right,” he said.
    Granny turned back and nodded to the actors, who had paused to watch her.
    “I don’t know what you’re staring at,” she growled. “Get on with it.”
    Nanny Ogg passed her another bag.
    “Have a humbug,” she said.
    Silence again filled the makeshift theater except for the hesitant voices of the actors, who kept glancing at the bristling figure of Granny Weatherwax, and the sucking sounds of a couple of boiled humbugs being relentlessly churned from cheek to cheek.
    Then Granny said, in a piercing voice that made one actor drop his wooden sword, “There’s a man over on the side there whispering to them!”
    “He’s a prompter,” said Magrat. “He tells them what to say.”
    “Don’t they know?”
    “I think they’re forgetting,” said Magrat sourly. “For some reason.”
    Granny nudged Nanny Ogg.
    “What’s going on now?” she said. “Why’re all them kings and people up there?”
    “It’s a banquet, see,” said Nanny Ogg authoritatively. “Because of the dead king, him in the boots, as was, only now if you look, you’ll see he’s pretending to be a soldier, and everyone’s making speeches about how good he was and wondering who killed him.”
    “Are they?” said Granny, grimly. She cast her eyes along the cast, looking for the murderer.
    She was making up her mind.
    Then she stood up.
    Her black shawl billowed around her like the wings of an avenging angel, come to rid the world of all that was