Wyrd Sisters

‘Look,’ said Granny. ‘What can I do about it? It’s no good you coming to me. He’s the new lord. This is his kingdom. I can’t go meddling. It’s not right to go meddling, on account of I can’t interfere with people ruling. It has to sort itself out, good or bad. Fundamental rule of magic, is that. You can’t go round ruling people with spells, because you’d have to use more and more spells all the time.’ She sat back, grateful that long-standing tradition didn’t allow the Crafty and the Wise to rule. She remembered what it had felt like to wear the crown, even for a few seconds.

No, things like crowns had a troublesome effect on clever folk; it was best to leave all the reigning to the kind of people whose eyebrows met in the middle when they tried to think. In a funny sort of way, they were much better at it.

She added, ‘People have to sort it out for themselves. Well-known fact.’

She felt that one of the larger stags was giving her a particularly doubting look.

‘Yes, well, so he killed the old king,’ she conceded. ‘That’s nature’s way, ain’t it? Your lot know all about this. Survival of the wossname. You wouldn’t know what an heir was, unless you thought it was a sort of rabbit.’

She drummed her fingers on her knees.

‘Anyway, the old king wasn’t much of a friend to you, was he? All that hunting, and such.’

Three hundred pairs of dark eyes bored in at her.

‘It’s no good you all looking at me,’ she tried. ‘I can’t go around mucking about with kings just because you don’t like them. Where would it all end? It’s not as if he’s done me any harm.’

She tried to avoid the gaze of a particularly cross-eyed stoat.

‘All right, so it’s selfish,’ she said. ‘That’s what bein’ a witch is all about. Good day to you.’

She stamped inside, and tried to slam the door. It stuck once or twice, which rather spoiled the effect.

Once inside she drew the curtains and sat down in the rocking chair and rocked fiercely.

‘That’s the whole point,’ she said. ‘I can’t go around meddling. That’s the whole point.’

——

The lattys lurched slowly over the rutted roads, towards yet another little city whose name the company couldn’t quite remember and would instantly forget. The winter sun hung low over the damp, misty cabbage fields of the Sto Plains, and the foggy silence magnified the creaking of the wheels.

Hwel sat with his stubby legs dangling over the backboard of the last latty.

He’d done his best. Vitoller had left the education of Tomjon in his hands; ‘You’re better at all that business,’ he’d said, adding with his usual tact, ‘Besides, you’re more his height.’

But it wasn’t working.

‘Apple,’ he repeated, waving the fruit in the air.

Tomjon grinned at him. He was nearly three years old, and hadn’t said a word anyone could understand. Hwel was harbouring dark suspicions about the witches.

‘But he seems bright enough,’ said Mrs Vitoller, who was travelling inside the latty and darning the chain mail. ‘He knows what things are. He does what he’s told. I just wish you’d speak,’ she said softly, patting the boy on the cheek.

Hwel gave the apple to Tomjon, who accepted it gravely.

‘I reckon them witches did you a bad turn, missus,’ said the dwarf. ‘You know. Changelings and whatnot. There used to be a lot of that sort of thing. My great-great-grandmother said it was done to us, once. The fairies swapped a human and a dwarf. We never realized until he started banging his head on things, they say—’

‘They say this fruit be like unto the world
So sweet. Or like, say I, the heart of man
So red without and yet within, unclue’d,
We find the worm, the rot, the flaw.
However glows his bloom the bite
Proves many a man be rotten at the core.’

The two of them swivelled around to stare at Tomjon, who nodded to them and proceeded to eat the apple.

‘That was the Worm speech from The Tyrant,’ whispered Hwel. His normal grasp of the language temporarily deserted him. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said.

‘But he sounded just like—’

‘I’m going to get Vitoller,’ said Hwel, and dropped off the tailboard and ran through the frozen puddles to the front of the convoy, where the actor-manager was whistling tunelessly and, yes, strolling.

‘What ho, b’zugda-hiara[8],’ he said cheerfully.

‘You’ve got to come at once! He’s talking!’

‘Talking?’

Hwel jumped up and down. ‘He’s quoting!’ he shouted. ‘You’ve got to come! He sounds just like—’

‘Me?’ said Vitoller, a few minutes later, after they had pulled the lattys into a grove of leafless trees by the roadside. ‘Do I sound like that?’

‘Yes,’ chorused the company.

Young Willikins, who specialized in female roles, prodded Tomjon gently as he stood on an upturned barrel in the middle of the clearing.

‘Here, boy, do you know my speech from Please Yourself?’ he said.