Wyrd Sisters

foolishness and pretense and artifice and sham. She seemed somehow a lot bigger than normal. She pointed an angry finger at the guilty party.
    “He done it!” she shouted triumphantly. “We all seed ’im! He done it with a dagger!”

    The audience filed out, contented. It had been a good play on the whole, they decided, although not very easy to follow. But it had been a jolly good laugh when all the kings had run off, and the woman in black had jumped up and did all the shouting. That alone had been well worth the ha’penny admission.
    The three witches sat alone on the edge of the stage.
    “I wonder how they get all them kings and lords to come here and do this?” said Granny, totally unabashed. “I’d have thought they’d been too busy. Ruling and similar.”
    “No,” said Magrat, wearily. “I still don’t think you quite understand.”
    “Well, I’m going to get to the bottom of it,” snapped Granny. She got back onto the stage and pulled aside the sacking curtains.
    “You!” she shouted. “You’re dead!”
    The luckless former corpse, who was eating a ham sandwich to calm his nerves, fell backward off his stool.
    Granny kicked a bush. Her boot went right through it.
    “See?” she said to the world in general in a strangely satisfied voice. “Nothing’s real! It’s all just paint, and sticks and paper at the back.”
    “May I assist you, good ladies?”
    It was a rich and wonderful voice, with every diphthong gliding beautifully into place. It was a golden brown voice. If the Creator of the multiverse had a voice, it was a voice such as this. If it had a drawback, it was that it wasn’t a voice you could use, for example, for ordering coal. Coal ordered by this voice would become diamonds.
    It apparently belonged to a large fat man who had been badly savaged by a mustache. Pink veins made a map of quite a large city on his cheeks; his nose could have hidden successfully in a bowl of strawberries. He wore a ragged jerkin and holey tights with an aplomb that nearly convinced you that his velvet-and-vermine robes were in the wash just at the moment. In one hand he held a towel, with which he had clearly been removing the make-up that still greased his features.
    “I know you,” said Granny. “You done the murder.” She looked sideways at Magrat, and admitted, grudgingly, “Leastways, it looked like it.”
    “ So glad. It is always a pleasure to meet a true connoisseur. Olwyn Vitoller, at your service. Manager of this band of vagabonds,” said the man and, removing his moth-eaten hat, he treated her to a low bow. It was less an obeisance than an exercise in advanced topology.
    The hat swerved and jerked through a series of complex arcs, ending up at the end of an arm which was now pointing in the direction of the sky. One of his legs, meanwhile, had wandered off behind him. The rest of his body sagged politely until his head was level with Granny’s knees.
    “Yes, well,” said Granny. She felt that her clothes had grown a bit larger and much hotter.
    “I thought you was very good, too,” said Nanny Ogg. “The way you shouted all them words so graciously. I could tell you was a king.”
    “I hope we didn’t upset things,” said Magrat.
    “My dear lady,” said Vitoller. “Could I begin to tell you how gratifying it is for a mere mummer to learn that his audience has seen behind the mere shell of greasepaint to the spirit beneath?”
    “I expect you could,” said Granny. “I expect you could say anything, Mr. Vitoller.”
    He replaced his hat and their eyes met in the long and calculating stare of one professional weighing up another. Vitoller broke first, and tried to pretend he hadn’t been competing.
    “And now,” he said, “to what do I owe this visit from three such charming ladies?”
    In fact he’d won. Granny’s mouth fell open. She would not have described herself as anything much above “handsome, considering.” Nanny, on the other hand, was as gummy as a baby and had a face like a small dried raisin. The best you could say for Magrat was that she was decently plain and well-scrubbed and as flat-chested as an ironing board with a couple of peas on it, even if her head was too well stuffed with fancies. Granny could feel something, some sort of magic at work. But not the kind she was used to.
    It was Vitoller’s voice. By the mere process of articulation it transformed everything it talked about.
    Look at the two of them, she told herself, primping