“But it could be dangerous!” said Agnes. “Don’t you think so, Nanny?”
Nanny Ogg turned her chair and looked at the baby.
“Cootchie-cootchie?” she said.
The small head looked around and Esme opened her blue eyes.
Nanny Ogg stared thoughtfully.
“Take her with us,” she said at last. “I used to take our Jason everywhere when he was tiny. They like being with their mum.”
She gave the baby another long hard look.
“Yes,” she went on, “I think that’d be a damn good idea.”
“Er…I feel perhaps there is little that I’d be able to do,” Oats said.
“Oh, it’d be too dangerous to take you,” said Nanny, dismissively.
“But of course my prayers will go with you.”
“That’s nice.” Nanny sniffed.
Drizzling rain soaked Hodgesaargh as he trudged back to the castle. The damp had got into the lure, and the noise it made now could only attract some strange, lost creature, skulking in ancient estuaries. Or possibly a sheep with a very sore throat.
And then he heard the chattering of magpies.
He tied the donkey to a sapling and stepped out into a clearing. The birds were screaming in the trees around him, but erupted away at the sight of King Henry on her perch on the donkey.
Crouched against a mossy rock was……a small magpie. It was bedraggled and wrong, as if put together by someone who had seen one but didn’t know how it was supposed to work. It struggled when it saw him, there was a fluffing of feathers and, now, a smaller version of King Henry was trying to unfold its tattered wings.
He backed away. On her perch, the hooded eagle had its head turned to the strange bird…
…which was now a pigeon. A thrush. A wren…
A sudden intimation of doom made Hodgesaargh cover his eyes, but he saw the flash through the skin of his fingers, felt the thump of the flame, and smelled the scorched hairs on the back of his hand.
A few tufts of grass smoldered on the edge of a circle of scorched earth. Inside it a few pathetic bones glowed red hot and then crumbled into fine ash.
Away in the forest, the magpies screamed. Count Magpyr stirred in the darkness of his room and opened his eyes. The pupils widened to take in more light.
“I think she has gone to ground,” he said.
“That was remarkably quick,” said the Countess. “I thought you said she was quite powerful.”
“Oh, indeed. But human. And she’s getting older. With age comes doubt. It’s so simple. All alone in that barren cottage, no company but the candlelight…it’s so simple to open up all the little cracks and let her mind turn in on itself. It’s like watching a forest fire when the wind changes, and suddenly it’s roaring down on all the houses you thought were built so strongly.”
“So graphically put.”
“Thank you.”
“You were so successful in Escrow, I know…”
“A model for the future. Vampires and humans in harmony at last. There is no need for this animosity, just as I have always said.”
The Countess walked over to the window and gingerly pulled aside the curtain. Despite the overcast sky, gray light filtered in.
“There’s no requirement to be so cautious about this, either,” said her husband, coming up behind her and jerking the curtain aside. The Countess shuddered and turned her face away.
“You see? Still harmless. Every day, in every way, we get better and better,” said Count Magpyr cheerfully. “Self help. Positive thinking. Training. Familiarity. Garlic? A pleasant seasoning. Lemons? Merely an acquired taste. Why, yesterday I mislaid a sock and I simply don’t care. I have lots of socks. Extra socks can be arranged!” His smile faded when he saw his wife’s expression.
“The word ‘but’ is on the tip of your tongue,” he said flatly.
“I was just going to say that there were no witches in Escrow.”
“And the place is all the better for it!”
“Of course, but—”
“There you go again, my dear. There is no room for ‘but’ in our vocabulary. Verence was right, oddly enough. There’s a new world coming, and there won’t be any room in it for those ghastly little gnomes or witches or centaurs and especially not for the firebirds! Away with them! Let us progress! They are unfitted for survival!”
“You only wounded that phoenix, though.”
“My point exactly. It allowed itself to be hurt, and therefore extinction looms. No, my dear, if we won’t fade with the old world we must make shift in the new. Witches? I’m afraid witches are all in the past now.”
The broomsticks in the present landed just above the treeline, on the edge of the moor. As Agnes had said, it was barely big enough to deserve the term. She could even hear the little mountain brook at the far end.
“I can’t see anything gnarly looking,” said Agnes. She knew it was a stupid thing to say, but the presence of Magrat was getting on her nerves.
Nanny looked up at the sky. The other two followed her gaze.
“You’ve got to get your eye in, but you’ll see it if you watch,” she said. “You can only see it if you stands on the moor.”
Agnes squinted at the overcast.
“Oh…I think I can,” said Magrat.
I bet she doesn’t, said Perdita, I can’t.
And then Agnes did. It was tricky to spot, like a join between two sheets of glass, and it seemed to move away whenever she was certain she could see it, but there was an…inconsistency, flickering in and out on the edge of vision.
Nanny licked a finger and held it up to the wind. Then she pointed.
“This way. An’ shut your eyes.”
“There’s no path,” said Magrat.
“That’s right. You hold on to my hand, Agnes will hold onto yours. I’ve been this way a few times. It ain’t hard.”
“It’s like a children’s story,” said Agnes.
“Yes, we’re down to the bone now, all right,” said Nanny. “And…off we go…”
Agnes felt the heather brush her feet as she stepped forward. She opened her eyes.
Moorland stretched away on every side, even behind them. The air was darker, the clouds heavier, the wind sharper. The mountains looked a long way away. There was a distant thunder of water.
“Where are we now?” said Magrat.
“Still here,” said Nanny. “I remember my dad saying sometimes a deer or somethin’ would run into gnarly ground if it was bein’ hunted.”
“It’d have to be pretty desperate,” said Agnes. The heather was darker here, and scratched so much it was almost thorny. “Everything’s so…nasty looking.”
“Attitude plays a part,” said Nanny. She tapped something with her foot.
It was…well, it had been a standing stone, Agnes thought, but now it was a lying stone. Lichen grew thickly all over it.
“The marker. Hard to get out again if you don’t know about it,” said Nanny. “Let’s head for the mountains. Esme all wrapped up, Magrat? Little Esme, I mean.”
“She’s asleep.”
“Yeah,” said Nanny, in what Agnes thought was an odd tone of voice. “Just as well, really. Let’s go. Oh…I thought we might need these…”
She fumbled in the bottomless storeroom of her knicker leg and produced a couple of pairs of socks so thick that they could have stood up by themselves.
“Lancre wool,” she said. “Our Jason knits ’em of an evenin’ and you know what strong fingers he’s got. You could kick your way through a wall.”
The heather ripped fruitlessly at the wire-like wool as the women hurried over the moor. There was still a sun here, or at least a bright spot in the overcast, but darkness seemed to come up from beneath the ground.
Agnes… said Perdita’s voice, in the privacy of her shared brain.
What? thought Agnes.
Nanny’s worried about something to do with the baby and Granny. Have you noticed?
Agnes
thought: I know Nanny keeps looking at little Esme as if she’s trying to make up her mind about something, if that’s what you mean.
Well, I think it’s to do with Borrowing…
She thinks Granny’s using the baby to keep an eye on us?
I don’t know. But something’s happening…
The roar ahead grew louder.
“There’s a little stream, isn’t there?” said Agnes.
“That’s right,” said Nanny. “Just here.”
The moor fell away. They stared into the abyss, which didn’t stare back. It was huge. White water was just visible far below. Cold damp air blew past their faces.
“That can’t be right,” said Magrat. “That’s wider and deeper than Lancre Gorge!”
Agnes looked down into the mist. It’s a couple of feet deep, Perdita told her. I can see every pebble.
“Perdita thinks it’s a…well, an optical illusion,” Agnes said aloud.
“She could be right,” said Nanny. “Gnarly ground, see? Bigger on the inside.”
Magrat picked up a rock and tossed it in. It bounced off the wall a few times, tumbling end over end, and then nothing was left but a stony echo. The river was too far down even to see the splash.
“It’s very realistic, isn’t it,” she said weakly.
“We could use the bridge,” said Nanny, pointing.
They regarded the bridge. It had a certain negative quality. That is to say, while it was possible at the limits of probability that if they tried to cross the chasm by walking out over thin air this might just work—because of sudden updrafts, or air molecules suddenly all having a crazy idea at the same time—trying to do the same thing via the bridge would clearly be laughable.
There was no mortar in it. The pillars had been piled up out of rocks laid like a drystone wall, and then a series of big flat stones dropped across the top. The result would have been called primitive even by people who were too primitive to have a word yet for “primitive.” It creaked ominously in the wind. They could hear stone grind against stone.
“That’s not right,” said Magrat. “It wouldn’t stand up to a gale.”
“It wouldn’t stand up to a dead calm,” said Agnes. “I don’t think it’s really real.”
“Ah, I can see where that’d make crossing it a bit tricky, then,” said Nanny.
It’s just a slab laid over a ditch, Perdita insisted. I could cart-wheel over it. Agnes blinked.
“Oh, I understand,” she said. “This is some sort of test, is it? It is, isn’t it? We’re worried, so fear makes it a deep gorge. Perdita’s always confident, so she hardly notices it…”
“I’d like to notice it’s there,” said Magrat. “It’s a bridge.”
“We’re wasting time,” said Agnes. She strode out over the slabs of stone and stopped halfway.
“Rocks a bit, but it’s not too bad,” she called back. “You just have to—”
The slab shifted under her, and tipped her off.
She flung out her hands and caught the edge of the stone by sheer luck. But, strong though her fingers were, a lot of Agnes was penduluming underneath.
She looked down. She didn’t want to, but it was a direction occupying a lot of the world.
The water’s about a foot below you, it really is, said Perdita. All you have to do is drop, and you’d be good at that…
Agnes looked down again. The drop was so long that probably no one would hear the splash. It didn’t just look deep, it felt deep. Clammy air rose around her. She could feel the sucking emptiness under her feet.
“Magrat threw a stone down there!” she hissed.
Yes, and I saw it fall a few inches.
“Now, I’m lyin’ flat and Magrat’s holdin’ on to my legs,” said Nanny Ogg conversationally, right above her. “I’m going to grab your wrists and, you know, I reckon if you swings a little sideways you ought to get your foot on one of the stone pillars and you’ll be right as ninepence.”
“You don’t have to talk to me as if I’m some kind of frightened idiot!” snapped Agnes.
“Just tryin’ to be pleasant.”
“I can’t move my hands!’
“Yes, you can. See, I’ve got your arm now.”
“I can’t move my hands!”
“Don’t rush, we’ve got all day,” said Nanny. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Agnes hung for a while. She couldn’t even sense her hands now. That presumably meant that she wouldn’t feel it when her grip slipped.
The stones groaned.
“Er…Nanny?”
“Yep?”
“Can you talk to me a bit more as if I’m some kind of frightened idiot?”
“Okay.”
“Er…why do they say ‘right as ninepence’? As opposed to, say, tenpence?”
“Interestin’. Maybe it’s—”
“And can you speak up? Perdita’s shouting at me that if I drop eighteen inches I’ll be standing in the stream!”
“Do you think she’s right?”
“Not about the eighteen inches!”
The bridge creaked.
“People seldom are,” said Nanny. “Are you getting anywhere, dear? Only I can’t lift you up, you see. And my arms are going numb, too.”
“I can’t reach the pillar!”
“Then let go,” said Magrat, from somewhere behind Nanny.
“Magrat!” snapped Nanny.
“Well, perhaps it is only a little stream to Perdita. Gnarly ground can be two things at the same time, can’t it? So if that’s how she sees it…well, can’t you let her get on with it? Let her sort it out. Can’t you let her take over?”
“She only does that when I’m really under stress! Shut up!”
“I only—”
“Not you, her! Oh no—”
Her left hand, white and almost numb, pulled itself off the stone and out of Nanny’s grip.
“Don’t let her do this to us!” Agnes shrieked. “I’ll fall hundreds of feet onto sharp rocks!”
“Yes, but since you’re going to do that anyway, anything’s worth a try, isn’t it?” said Nanny. “I should shut your eyes, if I was you—”
The right hand came loose.
Agnes shut her eyes. She fell.
Perdita opened her eyes. She was standing in the stream.
“Damn!” And Agnes would never say “damn,” which was why Perdita did so at every suitable occasion.
She reached up to the slab just above her, got a grip, and hauled herself up. Then, catching sight of Nanny Ogg’s expression, she jerked her hands around into a new position and kicked her legs up.
That stupid Agnes never realizes how strong she is, Perdita thought. There’s all these muscles she’s afraid of using…
She pushed gently until her toes pointed at the sky and she was doing a handstand on the edge. The effect, she felt, was spoilt by her skirt falling over her eyes. “You’ve still got that tear in yer knickers,” said Nanny sharply.
Perdita flicked herself onto her feet.
Magrat had her eyes tight shut. “She didn’t do a handstand on the edge, did she?”
“She did,” said Nanny. “Now then, A—Perdita, stop that showing off, we’ve wasted too much time. Let Agnes have the body back, you know it’s hers really—”
Perdita did a cartwheel. “This body’s wasted on her,” she said. “And you should see the stuff she eats! Do you know she’s still got two shelves full of soft toys? And dolls? And she wonders why she can’t get along with boys!”
“Nothing like being stared at by a teddy bear to put a young man off his stroke,” said Nanny Ogg. “Remember old Mrs. Sleeves, Magrat? Used to need two of us when she had one of her nasty turns.”
“What’s that got to do with toys?” said Perdita suspiciously.
“And what’s it—Oh yes,” said Magrat.
“Now, I recall that old bellringer down in Ohulan,” said Nanny, leading the way. “He had no fewer than seven personalities in his head. Three of ’em
were women and four of ’em were men. Poor old chap. He said he was always the odd one out. He said they let him get on with all the work and the breathin’ and eatin’ and they had all the fun. Remember? He said it was hellish when he had a drink and they all started fightin’ for a tastebud. Sometimes he couldn’t hear himself think in his own head, he said—Now! Now! Now!”
Agnes opened her eyes. Her jaw hurt.
Nanny Ogg was peering at her closely, while rubbing some feeling back into her wrist. From a couple of inches away, her face looked like a friendly pile of elderly laundry.
“Yes, that’s Agnes,” she said, standing back. “Her face goes sharper when it’s the other one. See? I told you she’d be the one that came back. She’s got more practice.”
Magrat let go of her arms. Agnes rubbed her chin.
“That hurt,” she said reproachfully.
“Just a bit of tough love,” said Nanny. “Can’t have that Perdita running around at a time like this.”
“You just sort of grabbed the bridge and came right back up,” said Magrat.
“I felt her stand on the ground!” said Agnes.
“And that too, then,” said Nanny. “Come on. Not far now. Sometimes. And let’s just take it easy, shall we? Some of us might have further to fall than others.”
They edged forward, despite an increasingly insistent voice in Agnes’s head that kept telling her she was being a stupid coward and of course she wouldn’t be hurt. She tried to ignore it.
The caves that Agnes remembered hadn’t been much more than rock overhangs. These were caverns. The difference is basically one of rugged and poetic grandeur. These had a lot of both.
“Gnarly ground’s a bit like icebergs,” said Nanny, leading them up a little gully to one of the largest.
“Nine-tenths of it is under water?” said Agnes. Her chin still hurt.
“There’s more to it than meets the eye, I mean.”
“There’s someone there!” said Magrat.
“Oh, that’s the witch,” said Nanny. “She’s not a problem.”
Light from the entrance fell on a hunched figure, sitting among pools of water. Closer to, it looked like a statue, and perhaps not quite as human as the eye at first suggested. Water glistened on it; drops formed on the end of the long hooked nose and fell into a pool with the occasional plink.