Wyrd Sisters

It’s unhappy. It wants a king that cares for it .”
    “How—” Magrat began, but Granny waved her into silence.
    “You don’t mean people, do you?” she said. The glistening head shook. “No, I didn’t think so.”
    “What—” Nanny began. Granny put a finger to her lips.
    She turned and walked to the washhouse’s window, a dusty spiderweb graveyard of faded butterfly wings and last summer’s bluebottles. A faint glow beyond the frosted panes suggested that, against all reason, a new day would soon dawn.
    “Can you tell us why?” she said, without turning around. She’d felt the mind of a whole country…
    She was rather impressed.
    “ I’m just a demon. What do I know? Only what is, not the why and how of it .”
    “I see.”
    “ May I go now ?”
    “Um?”
    “ Please ?”
    Granny jerked upright again.
    “Oh. Yes. Run along,” she said distractedly. “Thank you.”
    The head didn’t move. It hung around, like a hotel porter who has just carried fifteen suitcases up ten flights of stairs, shown everyone where the bathroom is, plumped up the pillows, and feels he has adjusted all the curtains he is going to adjust.
    “ You wouldn’t mind banishing me, would you ?” said the demon, when no one seemed to be taking the hint.
    “What?” said Granny, who was thinking again.
    “ Only I’d feel better for being properly banished. ‘Run along’ lacks that certain something ,” said the head.
    “Oh. Well, if it gives you any pleasure. Magrat!”
    “Yes?” said Magrat, startled.
    Granny tossed the copper stick to her.
    “Do the honors, will you?” she said.
    Magrat caught the stick by what she hoped Granny was imagining as the handle, and smiled.
    “Certainly. Right. OK. Um. Begone, foul fiend, unto the blackest pit—”
    The head smiled contentedly as the words rolled over it. This was more like it.
    It melted back into the waters of the copper like candlewax under a flame. Its last contemptuous comment, almost lost in the swirl, was, “ Run aaaalonggg …”

    Granny went home alone as the cold pink light of dawn glided across the snow, and let herself into her cottage.
    The goats were uneasy in their outhouse. The starlings muttered and rattled their false teeth under the roof. The mice were squeaking behind the kitchen dresser.
    She made a pot of tea, conscious that every sound in the kitchen seemed slightly louder than it ought to be. When she dropped the spoon into the sink it sounded like a bell being hit with a hammer.
    She always felt uncomfortable after getting involved in organized magic or, as she would put it, out of sorts with herself. She found herself wandering around the place looking for things to do and then forgetting them when they were half-complete. She paced back and forth across the cold flagstones.
    It is at times like this that the mind finds the oddest jobs to do in order to avoid its primary purpose, i.e. thinking about things. If anyone had been watching they would have been amazed at the sheer dedication with which Granny tackled such tasks as cleaning the teapot stand, rooting ancient nuts out of the fruit bowl on the dresser, and levering fossilized bread crusts out of the cracks in the flagstones with the back of a teaspoon.
    Animals had minds. People had minds, although human minds were vague foggy things. Even insects had minds, little pointy bits of light in the darkness of non-mind.
    Granny considered herself something of an expert on minds. She was pretty certain things like countries didn’t have minds.
    They weren’t even alive , for goodness sake. A country was, well, was—
    Hold on. Hold on…A thought stole gently into Granny’s mind and sheepishly tried to attract her attention.
    There was a way in which those brooding forests could have a mind. Granny sat up, a piece of antique loaf in her hand, and gazed speculatively at the fireplace. Her mind’s eye looked through it, out at the snow-filled aisles of trees. Yes. It had never occurred to her before. Of course, it’d be a mind made up of all the other little minds inside it; plant minds, bird minds, bear minds, even the great slow minds of the trees themselves…
    She sat down in her rocking chair, which started to rock all by itself.
    She’d often thought of the forest as a sprawling creature, but only metterforically, as a wizard would put it; drowsy and purring with bumblebees in the summer, roaring and raging in autumn gales, curled in on itself and sleeping in the winter.