Wyrd Sisters

They drifted between the timbers of the bridge. Granny Weatherwax alighted cautiously on the greasy planking and adjusted her dress.

‘Yes. Well,’ she added, nonchalantly.

‘Better than Black Aliss, everyone’ll say,’ Nanny Ogg went on.

‘Some people will say anything,’ said Granny. She peered over the parapet at the foaming torrent far below, and then up at the distant outcrop on which stood Lancre Castle.

‘Do you think they will?’ she added, nonchalantly.

‘Mark my words.’

‘Hmm.’

‘But you’ve got to complete the spell, mind.’

Granny Weatherwax nodded. She turned to face the dawn, raised her arms, and completed the spell.

——

It is almost impossible to convey the sudden passage of fifteen years and two months in words.

It’s a lot easier in pictures, when you just use a calendar with lots of pages blowing off, or a clock with hands moving faster and faster until they blur, or trees bursting into blossom and fruiting in a matter of seconds …

Well, you know. Or the sun becomes a fiery streak across the sky, and days and nights flicker past jerkily like a bad zoetrope, and the fashions visible in the clothes shop across the road whip on and off faster than a lunchtime stripper with five pubs to do.

There are any amount of ways, but they won’t be required because, in fact, none of this happened.

The sun did jerk sideways a bit, and it seemed that the trees on the rim ward side of the gorge were rather taller, and Nanny couldn’t shake off the sensation that someone had just sat down heavily on her, squashed her flat, and then opened her out again.

This was because the kingdom did not, in so many words, move through time in the normal flickering sky, high-speed photography sense of the word. It moved around it, which is much cleaner, considerably easier to achieve, and saves all that travelling around trying to find a laboratory opposite a dress shop that will keep the same dummy in the window for sixty years,^{41} which has traditionally been the most time-consuming and expensive bit of the whole business.

——

The kiss lasted more than fifteen years.

Not even frogs can manage that.

The Fool drew back, his eyes glazed, his expression one of puzzlement.

‘Did you feel the world move?’ he said.

Magrat peered over his shoulder at the forest.

‘I think she’s done it,’ she said.

‘Done what?’

Magrat hesitated. ‘Oh. Nothing. Nothing much, really.’

‘Shall we have another try? I don’t think we got it quite right that time.’

Magrat nodded.

This time it lasted only fifteen seconds. It seemed longer.

——

A tremor ran through the castle, shaking the breakfast tray from which the Duke Felmet, much to his relief, was eating porridge that wasn’t too salty.

It was felt by the ghosts that now filled Nanny Ogg’s cottage like a rugby team in a telephone box.

It spread to every henhouse in the kingdom, and a number of hands relaxed their grip. And thirty-two purple-faced cockerels took a deep breath and crowed like maniacs, but they were too late, too late …

——

‘I still reckon you were up to something,’ said Granny Weatherwax.

‘Have another cup of tea,’ said Nanny pleasantly.

‘You won’t go and put any drink in it, will you,’ Granny said flatly. ‘It was the drink what did it last night. I would never have put myself forward like that. It’s shameful.’

‘Black Aliss never done anything like it,’ said Nanny, encouragingly. ‘I mean, it was a hundred years, all right, but it was only one castle she moved. I reckon anyone could do a castle.’

Granny’s frown puckered at the edge.

‘And she let all weeds grow over it,’ she observed primly.

‘Right enough.’

‘Very well done,’ said King Verence, eagerly. ‘We all thought it was superb. Being in the ethereal plane, of course, we were in a position to observe closely.’

‘Very good, your graciousness,’ said Nanny Ogg. She turned and observed the crowding ghosts behind him, who hadn’t been granted the privilege of sitting at, or partly through, the kitchen table.

‘But you lot can bugger off back to the outhouse,’ she said. ‘The cheek! Except the kiddies, they can stay,’ she added. ‘Poor little mites.’

‘I am afraid it feels so good to be out of the castle,’ said the king.

Granny Weatherwax yawned.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘we’ve got to find the boy now. That’s the next step.’

‘We shall look for him directly after lunch.’

‘Lunch?’

‘It’s chicken,’ said Nanny. ‘And you’re tired. Besides, making a decent search will take a long time.’

‘He’ll be in Ankh-Morpork,’ said Granny. ‘Mark my words. Everyone ends up there. We’ll start with Ankh-Morpork. You don’t have to search for people when destiny is involved, you just wait for them in Ankh-Morpork.’

Nanny brightened up. ‘Our Karen got married to an innkeeper from there,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen the baby yet. We could get free board and everything.’

‘We needn’t actually go. The whole point is that he should come here. There’s something about that city,’ said Granny. ‘It’s like a drain.’

——

‘It’s five hundred miles away!’ said Magrat. ‘You’ll be away for ages!’