Wyrd Sisters

“However many there is of it.”
    Her face was pale. It might also have been drawn; if so, then it was by a very neurotic artist. She looked as though she meant business. Bad business.
    “Light the fire, Magrat,” she added automatically.
    “I daresay we’ll all feel better for a cup of tea,” said Nanny Ogg, mouthing the words like a mantra. She fumbled in the recesses of her shawl. “With something in it,” she added, producing a small bottle of applejack.
    “Alcohol is a deceiver and tarnishes the soul,” said Magrat virtuously.
    “I never touch the stuff,” said Granny Weatherwax. “We should keep a clear head, Gytha.”
    “Just a drop in your tea isn’t drinking,” said Nanny. “It’s medicine. It’s a chilly old wind up here, sisters.”
    “Very well,” said Granny. “But just a drop.”
    They drank in silence. Eventually Granny said, “Well, Magrat. You know all about the coven business. We might as well do it right. What do we do next?”
    Magrat hesitated. She wasn’t up to suggesting dancing naked.
    “There’s a song,” she said. “In praise of the full moon.”
    “It ain’t full,” Granny pointed out. “It’s wossname. Bulging.”
    “Gibbous,” said Nanny obligingly.
    “I think it’s in praise of full moons in general,” Magrat hazarded. “And then we have to raise our consciousness. It really ought to be full moon for that, I’m afraid. Moons are very important.”
    Granny gave her a long, calculating look.
    “That’s modern witchcraft for you, is it?” she said.
    “It’s part of it, Granny. There’s a lot more.”
    Granny Weatherwax sighed. “Each to her own, I suppose. I’m blowed if I’ll let a ball of shiny rock tell me what to do.”
    “Yes, bugger all that,” said Nanny. “Let’s curse somebody.”

    The Fool crept cautiously along the nighttime corridors. He wasn’t taking any chances either. Magrat had given him a graphic account of Greebo’s general disposition, and the Fool had borrowed a couple of gloves and a sort of metal wimple from the castle’s store of hereditary chain mail.
    He reached the lumber room, lifted the latch cautiously, pushed the door and then flung himself against the wall.
    The corridor became slightly darker as the more intense darkness inside the room spilled out and mingled with the rather lighter darkness already there.
    Apart from that, nothing. The number of spitting, enraged balls of murderous fur pouring through the door was zero. The Fool relaxed, and slipped inside.
    Greebo dropped on his head.
    It had been a long day. The room did not offer the kind of full life that Greebo had come to expect and demand. The only point of interest had been the discovery, around mid-morning, of a colony of mice who had spent generations eating their way through a priceless tapestry history of Lancre and had just got as far as King Murune (709-745), who met a terrible fate, * when they did, too. He had sharpened his claws on a bust of Lancre’s only royal vampire, Queen Grimnir the Impaler (1514-1553, 1553-1557, 1557-1562, 1562-1567 and 1568-1573). He had performed his morning ablutions on a portrait of an unknown monarch, which was beginning to dissolve. Now he was bored, and also angry.
    He raked his claws across the place where the Fool’s ears should have been, and was rewarded with nothing more than a metallic scraping noise.
    “Who’s a good boy, den?” said the Fool. “Wowsa wowsa whoosh.”
    This intrigued Greebo. The only other person who had ever spoken to him like this was Nanny Ogg; everyone else addressed him as “Yarrgeroffoutofityahbarstard.” He leaned down very carefully, intrigued by the new experience.
    From the Fool’s point of view an upside-down cat face lowered itself slowly into his field of vision, wearing an expression of evil-eyed interest.
    “Does oo want to go home, den?” said the Fool hopefully. “Look, Mr. Door is open .”
    Greebo increased his grip. He had found a friend.
    The Fool shrugged, very carefully, turned, and walked back into the passage. He made his way down through the hall, out into the courtyard, around the side of the guardroom and out through the main gate, nodding—carefully—to the guards.
    “Man just went past with a cat on his head,” one of them remarked, after a minute or two’s reflection.
    “See who it was?”
    “The Fool, I think.”
    There was a thoughtful pause. The second guard shifted his grip on his halberd.
    “It’s a rotten job,” he said.