Wyrd Sisters

Hwel looked across a sort of misty sea in which buildings clustered like a sandcastle competition at high tide. Flares and lighted windows made pleasing patterns on the iridescent surface, but there was one glare of light, much closer to hand, which particularly occupied his attention.

On a patch of slightly higher ground by the river, bought by Vitoller for a ruinous sum, a new building was rising. It was growing even by night, like a mushroom—Hwel could see the cressets burning all along the scaffolding as the hired craftsmen and even some of the players themselves refused to let the mere shade of the sky interrupt their labours.

New buildings were rare in Morpork, but this was even a new type of building.

The Dysk.^{46}

Vitoller had been aghast at the idea at first, but young Tomjon had kept at him. And everyone knew that once the lad had got the feel of it he could persuade water to flow uphill.

‘But we’ve always moved around, laddie,’ said Vitoller, in the desperate voice of one who knows that, at the end of it all, he’s going to lose the argument. ‘I can’t go around settling down at my time of life.’

‘It’s not doing you any good,’ said Tomjon firmly. ‘All these cold nights and frosty mornings. You’re not getting any younger. We should stay put somewhere, and let people come to us. And they will, too. You know the crowds we’re getting now. Hwel’s plays are famous.’

‘It’s not my plays,’ Hwel had said. ‘It’s the players.’

‘I can’t see me sitting by a fire in a stuffy room and sleeping on feather beds and all that nonsense,’ said Vitoller, but he’d seen the look on his wife’s face and had given in.

And then there had been the theatre itself. Making water run uphill was a parlour trick compared to getting the cash out of Vitoller but, it was a fact, they had been doing well these days. Ever since Tomjon had been big enough to wear a ruff and say two words without his voice cracking.

Hwel and Vitoller had watched the first few beams of the wooden framework go up.

‘It’s against nature,’ Vitoller had complained, leaning on his stick. ‘Capturing the spirit of the theatre, putting it in a cage. It’ll kill it.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Hwel diffidently. Tomjon had laid his plans well, he’d devoted an entire evening to Hwel before even broaching the subject to his father, and now the dwarf’s mind was on fire with the possibilities of backdrops and scenery changes and wings and flies and magnificent engines that could lower gods from the heavens and trapdoors that could raise demons from hell. Hwel was no more capable of objecting to the new theatre than a monkey was of resenting a banana plantation.

‘Damn thing hasn’t even got a name,’ Vitoller had said. ‘I should call it the Golde Mine, because that’s what it’s costing me. Where’s the money going to come from, that’s what I’d like to know.’

In fact they’d tried a lot of names, none of which suited Tomjon.

‘It’s got to be a name that means everything,’ he said. ‘Because there’s everything inside it. The whole world on the stage, do you see?’

And Hwel had said, knowing as he said it that what he was saying was exactly right, ‘The Disc.’

And now the Dysk was nearly done, and still he hadn’t written the new play.

He shut the window and wandered back to his desk, picked up the quill, and pulled another sheet of paper towards him. A thought struck him. The whole world was a stage, to the gods …

Presently he began to write.

All the Disc it is but an Theater, he wrote, Ane alle men and wymmen are but Players. He made the mistake of pausing, and another inspiration sleeted down, sending his train of thought off along an entirely new track.

He looked at what he had written and added: Except Those who selle popcorn.

After a while he crossed this out, and tried: Like unto thee Staje of a Theater ys the World, whereon alle Persons strut as Players.

This seemed a bit better.

He thought for a bit, and continued conscientiously: Sometimes they walke on. Sometimes they walke off.^{47}

He seemed to be losing it. Time, time, what he needed was an infinity …

There was a muffled cry and a thump from the next room. Hwel dropped the quill and pushed open the door cautiously.

The boy was sitting up in bed, white-faced. He relaxed when Hwel came in.

‘Hwel?’

‘What’s up, lad? Nightmares?’

‘Gods, it was terrible! I saw them again! I really thought for a minute that—’

Hwel, who was absent-mindedly picking up the clothes that Tomjon had strewn around the room, paused in his work. He was keen on dreams. That was when the ideas came.

‘That what?’ he said.

‘It was like … I mean, I was sort of inside something, like a bowl, and there were these three terrible faces peering in at me.’

‘Aye?’