Wyrd Sisters

‘It’s not her fault,’ said Granny. ‘It’s all them grimmers she was bought.’ She turned to Magrat.

‘You don’t need none of that,’ she said. ‘You need headology.’ She looked around the ancient washroom.

‘You just use whatever you’ve got,’ she said.

She picked up the bleached copper stick, and weighed it thoughtfully in her hand.

——

‘We conjure and abjure thee by means of this—’ Granny hardly paused —’sharp and terrible copper stick.’

The waters in the boiler rippled gently.

‘See how we scatter—’ Magrat sighed —’rather old washing soda and some extremely hard soap flakes in thy honour. Really, Nanny, I don’t think—’

‘Silence! Now you, Gytha.’

‘And I invoke and bind thee with the balding scrubbing brush of Art and the washboard of Protection,’ said Nanny, waving it. The wringer attachment fell off.

‘Honesty is all very well,’ whispered Magrat, wretchedly, ‘but somehow it isn’t the same.’

‘You listen to me, my girl,’ said Granny. ‘Demons don’t care about the outward shape of things. It’s what you think that matters. Get on with it.’

Magrat tried to imagine that the bleached and ancient bar of lye soap was the rarest of scented whatever, ungulants or whatever they were, from distant Klatch. It was an effort. The gods alone knew what kind of demon would respond to a summoning like this.

Granny was also a little uneasy. She didn’t much care for demons in any case, and all this business with incantations and implements whiffed of wizardry. It was pandering to the things, making them feel important. Demons ought to come when they were called.

But protocol dictated that the host witch had the choice, and Nanny quite liked demons, who were male, or apparently so.

At this point Granny was alternately cajoling and threatening the nether world with two feet of bleached wood. She was impressed at her own daring.

The waters seethed a little, became very still and then, with a sudden movement and a little popping noise, mounded up into a head. Magrat dropped her soap.

It was a good-looking head, maybe a little cruel around the eyes and beaky about the nose, but nevertheless handsome in a hard kind of way. There was nothing surprising about this; since the demon was only extending an image of itself into this reality, it might as well make a good job of it. It turned slowly, a gleaming black statue in the fitful moonlight.

‘Well?’ it said.

‘Who’re you?’ said Granny, bluntly.

The head revolved to face her.

‘My name is unpronounceable in your tongue, woman,’ it said.

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ warned Granny, and added, ‘Don’t you call me woman.’

‘Very well. My name is WxrtHltl-jwlpklz,’ said the demon smugly.

‘Where were you when the vowels were handed out? Behind the door?’ said Nanny Ogg.

‘Well, Mr—’ Granny hesitated only fractionally —’WxrtHltl-jwlpklz, I expect you’re wondering why we called you here tonight.’

‘You’re not supposed to say that,’ said the demon. ‘You’re supposed to say—’

‘Shut up. We have the sword of Art and the octogram of Protection, I warn you.’

‘Please yourself. They look like a washboard and a copper stick to me,’ sneered the demon.

Granny glanced sideways. The corner of the washroom was stacked with kindling wood, with a big heavy sawhorse in front of it. She stared fixedly at the demon and, without looking, brought the stick down hard across the thick timber.

The dead silence that followed was broken only by the two perfectly-sliced halves of the sawhorse teetering backwards and forwards and folding slowly into the heap of kindling.

The demon’s face remained impassive.

‘You are allowed three questions,’ it said.

‘Is there something strange at large in the kingdom?’ said Granny.

It appeared to think about it.

‘And no lying,’ said Magrat earnestly. ‘Otherwise it’ll be the scrubbing brush for you.’

‘You mean stranger than usual?’

‘Get on with it,’ said Nanny. ‘My feet are freezing out here.’

‘No. There is nothing strange.’

‘But we felt it—’ Magrat began.

‘Hold on, hold on,’ said Granny. Her lips moved soundlessly. Demons were like genies or philosophy professors—if you didn’t word things exactly right, they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate and completely misleading answers.

‘Is there something in the kingdom that wasn’t there before?’ she hazarded.

‘No.’

Tradition said that there could be only three questions. Granny tried to formulate one that couldn’t be deliberately misunderstood. Then she decided that this was playing the wrong kind of game.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ she said carefully. ‘And no mucking about trying to wriggle out of it, otherwise I’ll boil you.’

The demon appeared to hesitate. This was obviously a new approach.