Wyrd Sisters

that?”
    “I was never very good with words, you know,” said Champot. “I always found it easier to hit people with something. But I gather it all boils down to how alive you were. When you were alive, I mean. Something called—” he paused—“animal vitality. Yes, that was it. Animal vitality. The more you had, the more you stay yourself, as it were, if you’re a ghost. I expect you were one hundred percent alive, when you were alive,” he added.
    Despite himself, Verence felt flattered. “I tried to keep myself busy,” he said. They had strolled through the wall into the Great Hall, which was now empty. The sight of the trestle tables triggered an automatic reaction in the king.
    “How do we go about getting breakfast?” he said.
    Champot’s head looked surprised.
    “We don’t,” he said. “We’re ghosts.”
    “But I’m hungry!”
    “You’re not, you know. It’s just your imagination.”
    There was a clattering from the kitchens. The cooks were already up and, in the absence of any other instructions, were preparing the castle’s normal breakfast menu. Familiar smells were wafting up from the dark archway that led to the kitchens.
    Verence sniffed.
    “Sausages,” he said dreamily. “Bacon. Eggs. Smoked fish.” He stared at Champot. “Black pudding,” he whispered.
    “You haven’t actually got a stomach,” the old ghost pointed out. “It’s all in the mind. Just force of habit. You just think you’re hungry.”
    “I think I’m ravenous.”
    “Yes, but you can’t actually touch anything, you see,” Champot explained gently. “Nothing at all.”
    Verence lowered himself gently onto a bench, so that he did not drift through it, and sank his head in his hands. He’d heard that death could be bad. He just hadn’t realized how bad.
    He wanted revenge. He wanted to get out of this suddenly horrible castle, to find his son. But he was even more terrified to find that what he really wanted, right now, was a plate of kidneys.

    A damp dawn flooded across the landscape, scaled the battlements of Lancre Castle, stormed the keep and finally made it through the casement of the solar.
    Duke Felmet stared out gloomily at the dripping forest. There was such a lot of it. It wasn’t, he decided, that he had anything against trees as such, it was just that the sight of so much of them was terribly depressing. He kept wanting to count them.
    “Indeed, my love,” he said.
    The duke put those who met him in mind of some sort of lizard, possibly the type that lives on volcanic islands, moves once a day, has a vestigial third eye and blinks on a monthly basis. He considered himself to be a civilized man more suited to the dry air and bright sun of a properly-organized climate.
    On the other hand, he mused, it might be nice to be a tree. Trees didn’t have ears, he was pretty sure of this. And they seemed to manage without the blessed state of matrimony. A male oak tree—he’d have to look this up—a male oak tree just shed its pollen on the breeze and all the business with the acorns, unless it was oak apples, no, he was pretty sure it was acorns, took place somewhere else…
    “Yes, my precious,” he said.
    Yes, trees had got it all worked out. Duke Felmet glared at the forest roof. Selfish bastards.
    “Certainly, my dear,” he said.
    “What?” said the duchess.
    The duke hesitated, desperately trying to replay the monologue of the last five minutes. There had been something about him being half a man, and…infirm on purpose? And he was sure there had been a complaint about the coldness of the castle. Yes, that was probably it. Well, those wretched trees could do a decent day’s work for once.
    “I’ll have some cut down and brought in directly, my cherished,” he said.
    Lady Felmet was momentarily speechless. This was by way of being a calendar event. She was a large and impressive woman, who gave people confronting her for the first time the impression that they were seeing a galleon under full sail; the effect was heightened by her unfortunate belief that red velvet rather suited her. However, it didn’t set off her complexion. It matched it.
    The duke often mused on his good luck in marrying her. If it wasn’t for the engine of her ambition he’d be just another local lord, with nothing much to do but hunt, drink and exercise his droit de seigneur. * Instead, he was now just a step away from the throne, and might soon be monarch of all he surveyed.
    Provided that all