Wyrd Sisters

It’s going to be like when that man tried to rob us back in Sto Lat, Hwel thought. If they end up giving us their swords, what the hell can we do with them? And it’s so embarrassing when they start crying.

It was at this moment that the world around him took a green tint and he thought he could make out, right on the cusp of hearing, other voices.

‘There’s men with swords, Granny!’

‘—rend with glowing blades the marvel of the world—’ Tomjon said, and the voices at the edge of imagination said, ‘No king of mine is going to beg anything off anyone. Give me that milk jug, Magrat.’

‘—the heart of compassion, the kiss—’

‘That was a present from my aunt.’

‘—this jewel of jewels, this crown of crowns.’

There was silence. One or two of the bandits were weeping silently into their hands.

Their chief said, ‘Is that it?’

For the first time in his life Tomjon looked non-plussed.

‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘Er. Would you like me to repeat it?’

‘It was a good speech,’ the bandit conceded. ‘But I don’t see what it’s got to do with me. I’m a practical man. Hand over your valuables.’

His sword came up until it was level with Tomjon’s throat.

‘And all the rest of you shouldn’t be standing there like idiots,’ he added. ‘Come on. Or the boy gets it.’

Wimsloe the apprentice raised a cautious hand.

‘What?’ said the bandit.

‘A-are you s-sure you listened carefully, sir?’

‘I won’t tell you again! Either I hear the clink of coins, or you hear a gurgle!’

In fact what they all heard was a whistling noise, high in the air, and the crash as a milk jug, its sides frosted with the ice of altitude, dropped out of the sky on to the spike atop the chief’s helmet.

The remaining bandits took one look at the results, and fled.

The actors stared down at the recumbent bandit. Hwel prodded a lump of frozen milk with his boot.

‘Well, well,’ he said weakly.

‘He didn’t take any notice!’ whispered Tomjon.

‘A born critic,’ said the dwarf. It was a blue and white jug. Funny how little details stood out at a time like this. It had been smashed several times in the past, he could see, because the pieces had been carefully glued together again. Someone had really loved that jug.

‘What we’re dealing with here,’ he said, rallying some shreds of logic, ‘is a freak whirlwind. Obviously.’

‘But milk jugs don’t just drop out of the sky,’ said Tomjon, demonstrating the astonishing human art of denying the obvious.

‘I don’t know about that. I’ve heard of fish and frogs and rocks,’ said Hwel. ‘There’s nothing against crockery.’ He began to rally. ‘It’s just one of these uncommon phenomenons. They happen all the time in this part of the world, there’s nothing unusual about it.’

They got back on to the carts and rode on in unaccustomed silence. Young Wimsloe collected every bit of jug he could find and stored them carefully in the props box, and spent the rest of the day watching the sky, hoping for a sugar basin.

——

The lattys toiled up the dusty slopes of the Ramtops, mere motes in the foggy glass of the crystal.

‘Are they all right?’ said Magrat.

‘They’re wandering all over the place,’ said Granny. ‘They may be good at the acting, but they’ve got something to learn about the travelling.’

‘It was a nice jug,’ said Magrat. ‘You can’t get them like that any more. I mean, if you’d have said what was on your mind, there was a flatiron on the shelf.’

‘There’s more to life than milk jugs.’

‘It had a daisy pattern round the top.’

Granny ignored her.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘it’s time we had a look at this new king. Close up.’ She cackled.

‘You cackled, Granny,’ said Magrat darkly.

‘I did not! It was,’ Granny fumbled for a word, ‘a chuckle.’

‘I bet Black Aliss used to cackle.’

‘You want to watch out you don’t end up the same way as she did,’ said Nanny, from her seat by the fire. ‘She went a bit funny at the finish, you know. Poisoned apples and suchlike.’

‘Just because I might have chuckled a … a bit roughly,’ sniffed Granny. She felt that she was being unduly defensive. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with cackling. In moderation.’

——

‘I think,’ said Tomjon, ‘that we’re lost.’

Hwel looked at the baking purple moorland around them, which stretched up to the towering spires of the Ramtops themselves. Even in the height of summer there were pennants of snow flying from the highest peaks. It was a landscape of describable beauty.

Bees were busy, or at least endeavouring to look and sound busy, in the thyme by the trackside. Cloud shadows flickered over the alpine meadows. There was the kind of big, empty silence made by an environment that not only doesn’t have any people in it, but doesn’t need them either.

Or signposts.

‘We were lost ten miles ago,’ said Hwel. ‘There’s got to be a new word for what we are now.’

‘You said the mountains were honeycombed with dwarf mines,’ said Tomjon. ‘You said a dwarf could tell wherever he was in the mountains.’