‘But— I can’t! And witches don’t have leaders! You’ve just said that, Nanny!’
‘Yes,’ said Nanny. ‘And you must be the best damn leader that we don’t have. Don’t look at me sideways like that, Tiffany Aching. Just think about it. You didn’t try to earn it, but earn it you has, and if you don’t believe me, believe Granny Weatherwax. She tol’ me that you was the only witch who could seriously take her place, she said that on the night after you run with that hare.’
‘She never said anything to me,’ said Tiffany, feeling suddenly very young.
‘Well, she wouldn’t say nothing, o’ course she wouldn’t,’ said Nanny. ‘That’s not Esme’s way, you know that. She would have given a grunt, and maybe said, “Well done, girl.” She just liked people to know their own strengths – and your strengths are formidable.’
‘But, Nanny, you are older, more experienced, than me – you know lots more!’
‘And some of it I wants to forget,’ said Nanny.
‘I’m far too young,’ Tiffany wailed. ‘If I wasn’t a witch, I’d still just be thinking of boyfriends.’
Nanny Ogg almost jumped on her. ‘You’re not too young,’ she said. ‘Years ain’t what’s important here. Granny Weatherwax said to me as you is the one who’s to deal with the future. An’ bein’ young means you’ve got a lot of future.’ She sniffed. ‘Lot more’n me, that’s for sure.’
‘But that’s not how it works,’ Tiffany said. ‘It ought to be a senior witch. It has to be.’ But her Second Thoughts then leaped up in her head, challenging her. Why? Why not do things differently? Why should we do things how they have always been done before? And something inside her suddenly thrilled to the challenge.
‘Huh!’ Nanny retorted. ‘You danced with the hare to save the lives of your friends, my girl. Do you remember being so . . . angry that you picked up a lump of flint and let it dribble between your fingers as if it was water? All the senior witches were there, and they took their hats off to you. You! Hats!’ She stomped off towards the cottage, with just one parting shot. ‘And remember, You chose you. That cat there, she went to you when Esme up and left.’
And there the white cat was, sitting on the stump of an old birch, preening herself, and Tiffany wondered. Oh yes, she wondered.
Just as they got back to the cottage, a dishevelled but very large wizard was trying to land his broomstick by the goat shed.
‘It is good of you to come, Mustrum,’ Nanny Ogg shouted across the garden, as the gentleman smoothed down his robes, trod carefully past the herbs and doffed his hat to them – Tiffany noticed with glee that he had tied it onto his head with string. ‘Tiff, this is Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University.’
Tiffany had only met one or two wizards, and they had mostly been of the type that relied on the robes, pointy hat and staff to make their point, hoping that they never had to actually do anything magical. On the face of it, Ridcully looked exactly the same – beard, big staff with a knob on the top, a pointy hat . . . wait, a pointy hat with a crossbow tucked into the hatband? The witch side of her stepped back and watched carefully. But Ridcully was not interested in her at all. To her astonishment, the Archchancellor actually appeared to be crying.
‘Is it true, then, Nanny? Has she really gone?’
Nanny gave him a handkerchief and as he blew noisily into it, she whispered to Tiffany, ‘He and Esme were, well, you know, good friends when they were younger.’ She winked.
The Archchancellor seemed to be overcome. Nanny handed him her flagon. ‘My famous remedy, your worship. Best to drink it down in one great gulp. Works a right treat for melancholy, it does. Whenever I’m a bit unsure of myself I drinks a lot of it. Medicinal use only, o’ course.’
The Archchancellor took the flagon, swigged down a couple of gulps in one go and then flourished it at Nanny. ‘Here’s to Esmerelda Weatherwax and lost futures,’ he said in a voice choked with sorrow. ‘May we all go round again!’ He removed his hat, unscrewed the pointy bit and brought out a small bottle of brandy and a cup. ‘For you, Mrs Ogg,’ he boomed. ‘And now, may I see her, please?’
‘We have laid her down already, where she wanted to rest,’ said Nanny. ‘You know how it is. She didn’t want no fuss.’ She looked at him, and continued, ‘I’m very sorry about that, Mustrum, but we’ll take you to the spot where she is now. Tiffany, why don’t you lead the way?’
And thus the most important wizard in the world respectfully followed Tiffany and Nanny Ogg through the woods to the last resting place of the most important witch in the world. The trees surrounding the little clearing were full of birds, singing their souls out. Nanny and Tiffany held back to allow the wizard a private moment by the grave. He sighed. ‘Thank you, Mistress Ogg, Mistress Aching.’
Then the Archchancellor turned to Tiffany and looked at her properly.
‘For the sake of Esmerelda Weatherwax, my dear, if you ever need a friend, you can call on me. Being the most important wizard in the world must mean something.’ He paused. ‘I have heard of you,’ he said, and at her gasp, he added, ‘No, don’t be surprised. You must know that we wizards keep an . . . eye on what you witches do. We know when the magic is disturbed, when something . . . happens. And so I heard about the flint. Was it true?’ His voice was brusque now – a man who did not do small talk, only big talk, and in a big voice too.
‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘All of it.’
‘My word,’ said Ridcully. ‘And now I feel certain that your future is going to be, let us say, very speckled. I can see the signs in you, Mistress Tiffany Aching – and I know many people of power, people who have so much power that they don’t have to wield it. You are hardly into your prime, yet I see this in you, and so I live in wonder about what you might do next.’ His face now fell and he continued, ‘Would you ladies now leave me alone with my feelings. I am sure I can find my way back to the cottage.’
Later on, the Archchancellor walked back to his broomstick and Tiffany and Nanny Ogg watched him disappear in the general direction of Ankh-Morpork. The broomstick itself was wobbling about as he rose over the woods in a final salute.
Nanny smiled. ‘He is a wizard. He can be sober when he likes, and if he ain’t, well, he can fly a broomstick well enough with a brandy or two inside him. After all, there’s not much to bump into up there!’
As the morning progressed, more and more people were coming to pay their respects at the little cottage. The news had spread, and it seemed like everybody wanted to leave a gift for Granny Weatherwax. For the witch who had always been there for them, even if they hadn’t actually liked her. Esme Weatherwax hadn’t done nice. She’d done what was needed. She’d been there for them when they called at the cottage, she’d come out at whatever time of day or night when asked (and sometimes when not, which hadn’t always been comfortable), and somehow she had made them feel . . . safer. They brought hams and cheeses, milk and pickles, jams and beer, bread and fruit . . .
It also seemed that broomsticks were coming through the trees from everywhere, and there was nothing a witch appreciated more than a bit of free food – Tiffany caught one elderly witch trying to stuff an entire chicken up her knickers. And as the witches turned up, the villagers began to melt away. It didn’t do to be around that many witches. Why risk it? Nobody wanted to be turned into a frog – after all, who would bring in the harvest then? They started to make their excuses and sidle off, with those who had partaken of Nanny Ogg’s famous cocktails sidling in a rather wobbly fashion.
None of the witches had been invited, but it seemed to Tiffany they had been drawn there, just like the Archchancellor. Even Mrs Earwig turned up. She came in a carriage and pair, complete with black plumes, and her arms jingled with bangles and charms – as if the percussion section of an orchestra had suddenly fallen off a cliff – while her hat was festooned in silver stars. Her husband was dragged along beside her. Tiffany felt sorry for the man.
‘Hail, sisters, and may the runes protect us on
this momentous occasion,’ Mrs Earwig pronounced, just loud enough to be heard by the remaining villagers – she did like to advertise her witchiness. She gave Tiffany a long stare, which infuriated Nanny Ogg.
Nanny made the briefest possible bow, then turned and said, ‘Look, Tiffany, here’s Agnes Nitt. Wotcha, Agnes!’
Agnes – a witch with a waistline that suggested she had a similar attitude to eating as the Feegles’ kelda – was out of breath, saying, ‘I’ve been touring in Stackpole’s Much Ado About Everybody. I was in Quirm when I heard and I came as fast as I could.’
Tiffany hadn’t met Agnes before, but from one look at her sensible face and good-natured smile, she thought she would probably get along with her very well indeed. Then she was overcome with delight as a broomstick wobbled down to land and she heard the familiar ‘Um’ of her friend Petulia.
‘Um, Tiffany, I heard you were here. Um, do you want some help with making any sandwiches?’ Petulia offered, waving a big side of bacon as she landed. Petulia was married to a pig farmer and was acknowledged to be Lancre’s best pig-borer.fn1 She was also one of Tiffany’s very best friends. ‘Dimity is here too, and, um, Lucy Warbeck,’ Petulia continued – the ‘um’s always got worse when she was in the company of other witches; amazingly, she never used the word when pig-boring, which had to say something about Petulia and pigs.
Tiffany and Nanny Ogg’s grandsons had put up some makeshift tables. After all, everybody knows what a funeral is really for and most people like eating and drinking whatever the occasion. There was music, and over it all, Agnes’s heavenly voice. She sang the ‘Columbine Lament’, and as its soft tune wafted over the roof and into the forest beyond, Nanny said to Tiffany, ‘That voice could make the trees cry.’
And there was dancing, no doubt helped along by Nanny Ogg’s brews. Nanny Ogg could get any party singing and dancing. It was a gift, Tiffany thought. Nanny could jolly up a graveyard if she put her mind to it.
‘No long faces for Granny Weatherwax, please,’ Nanny proclaimed. ‘She’s had a good death at home, just as anyone might wish for. Witches know that people die; and if they manages to die after a long time, leavin’ the world better than they went an’ found it, well then, that’s surely a reason to be happy. All the rest of it is just tidyin’ up. Now, let’s dance! Dancin’ makes the world go round. And it goes round even faster with a drop o’ my home liquor inside you.’
Up in the roof of Granny’s cottage, swinging from the boughs of the little tree that grew out of the thatch, the Nac Mac Feegles – Rob Anybody, Daft Wullie, Big Yan and the gonnagle, Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin – were in agreement with the latter part of that statement, though they were keeping the dancing for later, mind. They stayed mostly out of sight, spotted only by one or two of the more observant witches, but now they came down to the scullery where Tiffany was starting on what the elderly, more senior witches always expected the younger girls to do – clearing up. The senior witches were beginning to gather together outside; it was time to discuss the appointment of a new incumbent to Granny Weatherwax’s steading, and Tiffany wanted to keep out of the way while she thought about what she might say.
As the haunting tones of Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin’s mousepipes played a soft lament for the soul of the hag o’ hags, the other Feegles began raiding the tables for any leftovers the witches had missed.
‘Alas, poor Granny, I knew her well,’ sighed Big Yan, swigging from a bottle of Nanny’s home-made hooch.
‘No you didn’t,’ Tiffany snapped. ‘Only Granny Weatherwax really knew Granny Weatherwax.’ The day was still too raw for her, and the witches outside were making her nervous.
‘Ha ha,’ laughed Daft Wullie. ‘It weren’t me, this time, Rob. Nae me what put my foot in it. I sez the hag were upset, Rob, didnae I?’
‘I’ll put my boot inta yer face if ye don’t shut up,’ Big Yan growled. They’d had the drinkin’ and eatin’, postponed the dancin’, but wasn’t it time for a wee fight? He clenched his fists, but then had to suddenly retreat as Tiffany’s friends came into the scullery.
‘I think it’s going to be you, Tiffany,’ Dimity hissed, poking her in the back. ‘Nanny Ogg just stood up and asked for you. You’d better get out there.’
‘Go on, Tiff,’ Petulia urged. ‘Everyone knows, um, what Granny Weatherwax thought of you . . .’
And so, pushed and pulled by her friends, Tiffany left the scullery, but she hovered by the back door of the cottage, unwilling to take that final step. To make a claim. This was Granny’s cottage, she still felt. Even though the not-Grannyness was beginning to feel like a huge hole in the air around her. Tiffany looked down at her feet; You was twining around her legs, arching her back and rubbing her hard little head against Tiffany’s boot.
Outside, some of the witches were looking at Nanny Ogg, who was saying, ‘Yes, ladies, Esme did tell us who her successor was to be.’ She turned and gestured to Tiffany to come nearer. ‘I wish I’d been there,’ she added, ‘when Esme Weatherwax was made witch by Nanny Gripes. You think who makes you a witch is the kind of witch you’re goin’ to become, but we all has to find our own way, as we go along like. Granny Weatherwax was always her own true witch self – never just another Nanny Gripes. And though I think we can all talk for ourselves, people like the Archchancellor, and Lord Vetinari, and indeed someone like the Low Queen of the dwarfs – well, they want to know sometimes that they can talk to somebody who can speak, officially like, for all witches. And I’m pretty certain they looked on Esme as bein’ that voice of witchcraft. So we needs to listen to her voice too. And she tol’ me who her successor should be. Yes, and wrote it on this here card.’ Nanny brandished in the air the card Granny Weatherwax had left on her bedside chest.
Someone had clearly raised the idea of Mrs Earwig taking over the steading – or Mrs Earwig had raised the prospect of her latest trainee getting the cottage. Nanny glared at her, and there was no trace of the jolly witch in her now, oh no.
‘Letice Earwig just makes shiny things for her would-be witches!’ she stated. She ignored the ‘Humph’ from Mrs Earwig as she continued, ‘But Tiffany Aching – yes, sisters, Tiffany Aching – we’ve all seen what she can do. It’s not about shiny charms. Not about books. It’s about bein’ a witch to the bone in the darkness, an’ dealing with the lamentation an’ the tears! It’s about bein’ real. Esme Weatherwax knew this, knew this with every bone in her body. And so does Tiffany Aching, and this steadin’ is hers.’
Tiffany gasped as the other witches turned to look at her. And as the muttering began, she stepped forward hesitantly.
Then You meowed, the cry cutting through the murmuring in the crowd, and the white cat came again to Tiffany’s side. Suddenly there was a humming in the air, and the bees were there too. They flowed out of Granny Weatherwax’s hive, circling Tiffany like a halo, crowning her, and swarm and girl stood on the threshold of the cottage and Tiffany reached out her arms and the bees settled along them, and welcomed her home.
And after that, on that terrible day when a farewell was said to the witch of witches, there was no more argument as Tiffany Aching became in all eyes the witch to follow.
fn1 Pig-boring saved a lot of nasty squealing. A pig-borer, like Petulia, would talk to the pigs until they simply died of boredom.
CHAPTER 5
A Changing World
THE QUEEN OF the Elves sat in state on a diamond throne in her palace, surrounded by her courtiers, foundlings and lost boys, and creeping creatures with no names – all the detritus of the fairy folk.
She had chosen to sparkle today. The everlasting sunlight shining through the exquisitely carved stone windows had been pitched exactly to strike the tiny gems on her wings so that delicate rainbows of light danced around the audience chamber as she moved. The courtiers lounging about the place in lace-trimmed velvet and feathers were almost, but not quite, as beautifully dressed.
Her eyes slid sideways, ever alert to the actions of her lords and ladies. Was
that Lord Lankin over there in the corner with Lord Mustardseed? Whispering . . . And where was Lord Peaseblossom? One day, she thought, she would have his head on a pole! She didn’t trust him at all, and his glamour had been strong of late, almost as glorious as her own. Or, she reminded herself bitterly, as glorious as her own had been . . . before.
Before that young witch – Tiffany Aching – had come into Fairyland and humiliated her.
Lately she had felt shivers between their two worlds, understood that things were shifting, the edges becoming more blurred. Softer. A few of the stronger elves had even been slipping through from time to time for a little mischief. Perhaps soon she could lead the elves on a proper raiding party . . . fetch another child to play with. Have her revenge on the Aching witch. The Queen smiled at the thought, licking her lips in anticipation of the fun ahead.
But for now there was other troubling news to deal with. Goblins! Mere worms, who should be grateful if an elvish lord or lady even looked their way, but who were now foolishly refusing to do her bidding. She would show them all, she thought. Lords Lankin, Mustardseed, Peaseblossom – they would all see how powerful she was again. They would see her strike down this goblin filth . . .
But where was Peaseblossom?
The goblin prisoner was brought into the audience chamber under guard. The whole effect was visually stunning, the goblin thought sourly. Exactly as a fairy court would look in a human child’s story book. Until you looked at the faces and realized that there was something not quite right about the eyes and the expressions of the beautiful creatures in the scene.
The Queen considered the goblin for a while, resting her fine-boned chin on the fingers of one exquisitely thin hand. Her alabaster brow furrowed.
‘You, goblin, you call yourself Of the Dew the Sunlight, I believe. You and your kind have long enjoyed the protection of this court. Yet I hear talk of rebellion. A refusal to do my bidding. Before I hand you over to my guards for their . . . amusement, tell me why this is.’