Wyrd Sisters

Granny turned slowly in her seat to look at the audience. They were staring at the performance, their faces rapt. The words washed over them in the breathless air. This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it.

Granny had never had much time for words. They were so insubstantial. Now she wished that she had found the time. Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.

That’s us down there, she thought. Everyone knows who we really are, but the things down there are what they’ll remember—three gibbering old baggages in pointy hats. All we’ve ever done, all we’ve ever been, won’t exist any more.

She looked at the ghost of the king. Well, he’d been no worse than any other king. Oh, he might burn down the odd cottage every now and again, in a sort of absent-minded way, but only when he was really angry about something, and he could give it up any time he liked. Where he wounded the world, he left the kind of wounds that healed.

Whoever wrote this Theatre knew about the uses of magic. Even I believe what’s happening, and I know there’s no truth in it.

This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That’s why everything is exactly the wrong way round.

We’ve lost. There is nothing we can do against this without becoming exactly what we aren’t.

Nanny Ogg gave her a violent nudge in the ribs.

‘Did you hear that?’ she said. ‘One of ‘em said we put babbies in the cauldron! They’ve done a slander on me! I’m not sitting here and have ‘em say we put babbies in a cauldron!’

Granny grabbed her shawl as she tried to stand up.

‘Don’t do anything!’ she hissed. ‘It’ll make things worse.’

‘“Ditch-delivered by a drabe”, they said.^{73} That’ll be young Millie Hipwood, who didn’t dare tell her mum and then went out gathering firewood. I was up all night with that one,’ Nanny muttered. ‘Fine girl she produced. It’s a slander! What’s a drabe?’ she added.

‘Words,’ said Granny, half to herself. ‘That’s all that’s left. Words.’

‘And now there’s a man with a trumpet come on. What’s he going to do? Oh. End of Act One,’ said Nanny.

The words won’t be forgotten, thought Granny. They’ve got a power to them. They’re damn good words, as words go.

There was yet another rattle of thunder, which ended with the kind of crash made, for example, by a sheet of tin escaping from someone’s hands and hitting the wall.

In the world outside the stage the heat pressed down like a pillow, squeezing the very life out of the air. Granny saw a footman bend down to the duke’s ear. No, he won’t stop the play. Of course he won’t. He wants it to run its course.

The duke must have felt the heat of her gaze on the back of his neck. He turned, focused on her, and gave her a strange little smile. Then he nudged his wife. They both laughed.

Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world’s great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn’t mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.

She felt the land below her, even through several feet of foundations, flagstones, one thickness of leather and two thicknesses of sock. She felt it waiting.

She heard the king say, ‘My own flesh and blood? Why has he done this to me? I’m going to confront him!’

She gently took Nanny Ogg’s hand.

‘Come, Gytha,’ she said.

***

Lord Felmet sat back in his throne and beamed madly at the world, which was looking good right at the moment. Things were working out better than he had dared to hope. He could feel the past melting behind him, like ice in the spring thaw.

On an impulse he called the footman back.

‘Call the captain of the guard,’ he said, ‘and tell him to find the witches and arrest them.’

The duchess snorted.

‘Remember what happened last time, foolish man?’

‘We left two of them loose,’ said the duke. ‘This time … all three. The tide of public feeling is on our side. That sort of thing affects witches, depend upon it.’

The duchess cracked her knuckles to indicate her view of public opinion.

‘You must admit, my treasure, that the experiment seems to be working.’

‘It would appear so.’

‘Very well. Don’t just stand there, man. Before the play ends, tell him. Those witches are to be under lock and key.’

——

Death adjusted his cardboard skull in front of the mirror, twitched his cowl into a suitable shape, stood back and considered the general effect. It was going to be his first speaking part. He wanted to get it right.

‘Cower now, Brief Mortals,’ he said. ‘For I am Death, ‘Gainst Whom No … no … no … Hwel, ‘gainst whom no?’