Wyrd Sisters

and was trying to plait some daisies in her hair, without much success.
    The Fool held his breath. On long nights on the hard flagstones he had dreamed of women like her. Although, if he really thought about it, not much like her; they were better endowed around the chest, their noses weren’t so red and pointed, and their hair tended to flow more. But the Fool’s libido was bright enough to tell the difference between the impossible and the conceivably attainable, and hurriedly cut in some filter circuits.
    Magrat was picking flowers and talking to them. The Fool strained to hear.
    “Here’s Woolly Fellwort,” she said. “And Treacle Wormseed, which is for inflammation of the ears…”
    Even Nanny Ogg, who took a fairly cheerful view of the world, would have been hard put to say anything complimentary about Magrat’s voice. But it fell on the Fool’s ears like blossom.
    “…and Five-leaved False Mandrake, sovereign against fluxes of the bladder. Ah, and here’s Old Man’s Frogbit. That’s for constipation.”
    The Fool stood up sheepishly, in a carillon of jingles. To Magrat it was as if the meadow, hitherto supporting nothing more hazardous than clouds of pale blue butterflies and a few self-employed bumblebees, had sprouted a large red-and-yellow demon.
    It was opening and shutting its mouth. It had three menacing horns.
    An urgent voice at the back of her mind said: You should run away now, like a timid gazelle; this is the accepted action in these circumstances.
    Common sense intervened. In her most optimistic moments Magrat would not have compared herself to a gazelle, timid or otherwise. Besides, it added, the basic snag about running away like a timid gazelle was that in all probability she would easily out-distance him.
    “Er,” said the apparition.
    Uncommon sense, which, despite Granny Weatherwax’s general belief that Magrat was several sticks short of a bundle, she still had in sufficiency, pointed out that few demons tinkled pathetically and appeared to be quite so breathless.
    “Hallo,” she said.
    The Fool’s mind was also working hard. He was beginning to panic.
    Magrat shunned the traditional pointed hat, as worn by the other witches, but she still held to one of the most fundamental rules of witchcraft. It’s not much use being a witch unless you look like one. In her case this meant lots of silver jewelry with octograms, bats, spiders, dragons and other symbols of everyday mysticism; Magrat would have painted her fingernails black, except that she didn’t think she would be able to face Granny’s withering scorn.
    It was dawning on the Fool that he had surprised a witch.
    “Whoops,” he said, and turned to run for it.
    “Don’t—” Magrat began, but the Fool was already pounding down the forest path that led back to the castle.
    Magrat stood and stared at the wilting posy in her hands. She ran her fingers through her hair and a shower of wilted petals fell out.
    She felt that an important moment had been allowed to slip out of her grasp as fast as a greased pig in a narrow passageway.
    She felt an overpowering urge to curse. She knew a great many curses. Goodie Whemper had been really imaginative in that department; even the creatures of the forest used to go past her cottage at a dead run.
    She couldn’t find a single one that fully expressed her feelings.
    “Oh, bugger,” she said.

    It was a full moon again that night, and most unusually all three witches arrived at the standing stone early; it was so embarrassed by this that it went and hid in some gorse bushes.
    “Greebo hasn’t been home for two days,” said Nanny Ogg, as soon as she arrived. “It’s not like him. I can’t find him anywhere.”
    “Cats can look after themselves,” said Granny Weatherwax. “Countries can’t. I have intelligence to report. Light the fire, Magrat.”
    “Mmm?”
    “I said, light the fire, Magrat.”
    “Mmm? Oh. Yes.”
    The two old women watched her drift vaguely across the moorland, tugging absently at dried-up whin clumps. Magrat seemed to have her mind on something.
    “Doesn’t seem to be her normal self,” said Nanny Ogg.
    “Yes. Could be an improvement,” said Granny shortly, and sat down on a rock. “She should of got it lit before we arrived. It’s her job.”
    “She means well,” said Nanny Ogg, studying Magrat’s back reflectively.
    “I used to mean well when I was a girl, but that didn’t stop the sharp end of Goodie Filter’s tongue. Youngest