Wyrd Sisters

Hogswatchnight came round, marking the start of another year. And, with alarming suddenness, nothing happened.

The skies were clear, the snow deep and crisped like icing sugar.

The freezing forests were silent and smelled of tin. The only things that fell from the sky were the occasional fresh showers of snow.

A man walked across the moors from Razorback to Lancre town without seeing a single marshlight, headless dog, strolling tree, ghostly coach or comet, and had to be taken in by a tavern and given a drink to unsteady his nerves.

The stoicism of the Ramtoppers, developed over the years as a sovereign resistance to the thaumaturgical chaos, found itself unable to cope with the sudden change. It was like a noise which isn’t heard until it stops.

Granny Weatherwax heard it now as she lay snug under a pile of quilts in her freezing bedroom. Hogswatchnight is, traditionally, the one night of the Disc’s long year when witches are expected to stay at home, and she’d had an early night in the company of a bag of apples and a stone hotwater bottle. But something had awoken her from her doze.

An ordinary person would have crept downstairs, possibly armed with a poker. Granny simply hugged her knees and let her mind wander.

It hadn’t been in the house. She could feel the small, fast minds of mice, and the fuzzy minds of her goats as they lay in their cosy flatulence in the outhouse. A hunting owl was a sudden dagger of alertness as it glided over the rooftops.

Granny concentrated harder, until her mind was full of the tiny chittering of the insects in the thatch and the woodworm in the beams. Nothing of interest there.

She snuggled down and let herself drift out into the forest, which was silent except for the occasional muffled thump as snow slid off a tree. Even in midwinter the forest was full of life, usually dozing in burrows or hibernating in the middle of trees.

All as usual. She spread herself further, to the high moors and secret passes where the wolves ran silently over the frozen crust; she touched their minds, sharp as knives. Higher still, and there was nothing in the snowfields but packs of vermine.[6]

Everything was as it should be, with the exception that nothing was right. There was something—yes, there was something alive out there, something young and ancient and …

Granny turned over the feeling in her mind. Yes. That was it. Something forlorn. Something lost. And …

Feelings were never simple, Granny knew. Strip them away and there were others underneath …

Something that, if it didn’t stop feeling lost and forlorn very soon, was going to get angry.

And still she couldn’t find it. She could feel the tiny minds of chrysalises down under the frozen leaf-mould. She could sense the earthworms, which had migrated below the frost line. She could even sense a few people, who were hardest of all—human minds were thinking so many thoughts all at the same time that they were nearly impossible to locate; it was like trying to nail fog to the wall.

Nothing there. Nothing there. The feeling was all around her, and there was nothing to cause it. She’d gone down about as far as she could, to the smallest creature in the kingdom, and there was nothing there.

Granny Weatherwax sat up in bed, lit a candle and reached for an apple. She glared at her bedroom wall.

She didn’t like being beaten. There was something out there, something drinking in magic, something growing, something that seemed so alive it was all around the house, and she couldn’t find it.

She reduced the apple to its core and placed it carefully in the tray of the candlestick. Then she blew out the candle.

The cold velvet of the night slid back into the room.

Granny had one last try. Perhaps she was looking in the wrong way …

A moment later she was lying on the floor with the pillow clasped around her head.

And to think she had expected it to be small …

——

Lancre Castle shook. It wasn’t a violent shaking, but it didn’t need to be, the construction of the castle being such that it swayed slightly even in a gentle breeze. A small turret toppled slowly into the depths of the misty canyon.

The Fool lay on his flagstones and shivered in his sleep. He appreciated the honour, if it was an honour, but sleeping in the corridor always made him dream of the Fools’ Guild, behind whose severe grey walls he had trembled his way through seven years of terrible tuition. The flagstones were slightly softer than the beds there, though.

A few feet away a suit of armour jingled gently. Its pike vibrated in its mailed glove until, swishing through the night air like a swooping bat, it slid down and shattered the flagstone by the Fool’s ear.

The Fool sat up and realized he was still shivering. So was the floor.

In Lord Felmet’s room the shaking sent cascades of dust down from the ancient four-poster. He awoke from a dream that a great beast was tramping around the castle, and decided with horror that it might be true.