Maskerade - Terry Pratchett [30]
Agnes stood alone in the darkness.
People always tended to assume that she could cope, as if capability went with mass, like gravity. And merely saying briskly, “Nonsense, mirrors don’t talk,” would probably not be any help, especially with one half of the dialogue buried beneath the bedclothes.
She felt her way into the next room, stubbing her foot on the bed in the darkness.
There must be a candle in here, somewhere. She felt for the tiny bedside table, hoping to start the reassuring rattle of a matchbox.
A faint glimmer from the midnight city filtered through the window. The mirror seemed to glow.
She sat down on the bed, which creaked ominously under her.
Oh well…one bed was as good as another…
She was about to lie back when something in the darkness went:…ting.
It was a tuning fork.
And a voice said: “Christine…please attend.”
She sat upright, staring at the darkness.
And then realization dawned. No men, they’d said. They’d been very strict about that, as if opera were some kind of religion. It was not a problem in Agnes’s case, at least in the way they meant, but for someone like Christine…They said love always found a way and, of course, so did a number of associated activities.
Oh, good grief. She felt the blush start. In darkness! What kind of a reaction was that?
Agnes’s life unrolled in front of her. It didn’t look as though it were going to have many high points. But it did hold years and years of being capable and having a lovely personality. It almost certainly held chocolate rather than sex and, while Agnes was not in a position to make a direct comparison, and regardless of the fact that a bar of chocolate could be made to last all day, it did not seem a very fair exchange.
She felt the same feeling she’d felt back home. Sometimes life reaches that desperate point where the wrong thing to do has to be the right thing to do.
It doesn’t matter what direction you go. Sometimes you just have to go.
She gripped the bedclothes and replayed in her mind the way her friend spoke. You had to have that little gulp, that breathless tinkle in the tone that people got whose minds played with the fairies half the time. She tried it out in her head, and then delivered it to her vocal cords.
“Yes?! Who’s there?!”
“A friend.”
Agnes pulled the bedclothes up higher. “In the middle of the night?!”
“Night is nothing to me. I belong to the night. And I can help you.” It was a pleasant voice. It seemed to be coming from the mirror.
“Help me to do what?!”
“Don’t you want to be the best singer in the opera?”
“Oh, Perdita is a lot better than me!!”
There was silence for a moment, and then the voice said: “But while I cannot teach her to look and move like you, I can teach you to sing like her.”
Agnes stared into the darkness, shock and humiliation rising from her like steam.
“Tomorrow you will sing the part of Iodine. But I will teach you how to sing it perfectly…”
Next morning the witches had the interior of the coach almost to themselves. News like Greebo gets around. But Henry Slugg was there, if that was indeed his name, sitting next to a very welldressed, thin little man.
“Well, here we are again, then,” said Nanny Ogg.
Henry smiled nervously.
“That was some good singing last night,” Nanny went on.
Henry’s face set in a good-natured grimace. In his eyes, terror waved a white flag.
“I am afraid Señor Basilica doesn’t speak Morporkian, ma’am,” said the thin man. “But I will translate for you, if you like.”
“What?” said Nanny. “Then how come—Ow!”
“Sorry,” said Granny Weatherwax. “My elbow must have slipped.”
Nanny Ogg rubbed her side. “I was saying,” she said, “that he was—Ow!”
“Dear me, I seem to have done it again,” said Granny. “This gentleman was telling us that his friend doesn’t speak our language, Gytha.”
“Eh? But—What? Oh. But—Ah. Really? Oh. All right,” said Nanny. “Oh, yes. Eats our pies, though, when—Ow!”
“Excuse my friend, it’s her time of life. She gets confused,” said Granny. “We did enjoy his singing.