Wyrd Sisters

took advantage of the opportunity to continue his alcoholic experiments. Then, swiftly as they had fled, several dozen conversations hurriedly got back into gear.
    “It might be a good idea if we can go and talk somewhere more private,” said Granny, as the comforting hubbub streamed over them again.
    They ended up in the washhouse, where Granny tried to give an account of the mind she had encountered.
    “It’s out there somewhere, in the mountains and the high forests,” she said. “And it is very big.”
    “I thought it was looking for someone,” said Magrat. “It put me in mind of a large dog. You know, lost. Puzzled.”
    Granny thought about this. Now she came to think of it…
    “Yes,” she said. “Something like that. A big dog.”
    “Worried,” said Magrat.
    “Searching,” said Granny.
    “And getting angry,” said Magrat.
    “Yes,” said Granny, staring fixedly at Nanny.
    “Could be a troll,” said Nanny Ogg. “I left best part of a pint in there, you know,” she added reproachfully.
    “I know what a troll’s mind feels like, Gytha,” said Granny. She didn’t snap the words out. In fact it was the quiet way she said them that made Nanny hesitate.
    “They say there’s really big trolls up toward the Hub,” said Nanny slowly. “And ice giants, and big hairy wossnames that live above the snowline. But you don’t mean anything like that, do you?”
    “No.”
    “Oh.”
    Magrat shivered. She told herself that a witch had absolute control over her own body, and the goosepimples under her thin nightdress were just a figment of her own imagination. The trouble was, she had an excellent imagination.
    Nanny Ogg sighed.
    “We’d better have a look, then,” she said, and took the lid off the copper.
    Nanny Ogg never used her washhouse, since all her washing was done by the daughters-in-law, a tribe of gray-faced, subdued women whose names she never bothered to remember. It had become, therefore, a storage place for dried-up old bulbs, burnt-out cauldrons and fermenting jars of wasp jam. No fire had been lit under the copper for ten years. Its bricks were crumbling, and rare ferns grew around the firebox. The water under the lid was inky black and, according to rumor, bottomless; the Ogg grandchildren were encouraged to believe that monsters from the dawn of time dwelt in its depths, since Nanny believed that a bit of thrilling and pointless terror was an essential ingredient of the magic of childhood.
    In summer she used it as a beer cooler.
    “It’ll have to do. I think perhaps we should join hands,” she said. “And you, Magrat, make sure the door’s shut.”
    “What are you going to try?” said Granny. Since they were on Nanny’s territory, the choice was entirely up to her.
    “I always say you can’t go wrong with a good Invocation,” said Nanny. “Haven’t done one for years.”
    Granny Weatherwax frowned. Magrat said, “Oh, but you can’t. Not here. You need a cauldron, and a magic sword. And an octogram. And spices, and all sorts of stuff.”
    Granny and Nanny exchanged glances.
    “It’s not her fault,” said Granny. “It’s all them grimmers she was bought.” She turned to Magrat.
    “You don’t need none of that,” she said. “You need headology.” She looked around the ancient washroom.
    “You just use whatever you’ve got,” she said.
    She picked up the bleached copper stick, and weighed it thoughtfully in her hand.

    “ We conjure and abjure thee by means of this —” Granny hardly paused—“sharp and terrible copper stick.”
    The waters in the boiler rippled gently.
    “ See how we scatter —” Magrat sighed—“rather old washing soda and some extremely hard soap flakes in thy honor. Really, Nanny, I don’t think—”
    “Silence! Now you, Gytha.”
    “ And I invoke and bind thee with the balding scrubbing brush of Art and the washboard of Protection,” said Nanny, waving it. The wringer attachment fell off.
    “Honesty is all very well,” whispered Magrat, wretchedly, “but somehow it isn’t the same.”
    “You listen to me, my girl,” said Granny. “Demons don’t care about the outward shape of things. It’s what you think that matters. Get on with it.”
    Magrat tried to imagine that the bleached and ancient bar of lye soap was the rarest of scented whatever, ungulants or whatever they were, from distant Klatch. It was an effort. The gods alone knew what kind of demon would respond to a summoning like this.
    Granny was