Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett [106]
She drew back her hand.
…the crack returned toward its point of origin, carrying with it the fleeing reflections of all the mirrors…
Her eyes widened.
The glass smashed and crazed behind Lily Weatherwax.
And in the mirror, the image of Lily Weatherwax turned around, smiled beatifically, and reached out of the frame to take Lily Weatherwax into its arms.
“Lily!”
All the mirrors shattered, exploding outward in a thousand pieces from the top of the tower so that, just for a moment, it was wreathed in twinkling fairy dust.
Nanny Ogg and Magrat came up onto the roof like avenging angels after a period of lax celestial quality control.
They stopped.
Where the maze of mirrors had been were empty frames. Glass shards covered the floor and, lying on them, was a figure in a white dress.
Nanny pushed Magrat behind her and crunched forward cautiously. She prodded the figure with the toe of her boot.
“Let’s throw her off the tower,” said Magrat.
“All right,” said Nanny. “Do it, then.”
Magrat hesitated. “Well,” she said, “when I said let’s throw her off the tower, I didn’t mean me personally throwing her off, I meant that if there was any justice she ought to be thrown off—”
“Then I shouldn’t say any more on that score, if I was you,” said Nanny, kneeling carefully on the crunching shards. “Besides, I was right. This is Esme. I’d know that face anywhere. Take off your petticoat.”
“Why?”
“Look at her arms, girl!”
Magrat stared. Then she raised her hands to her mouth.
“What has she been doing?”
“Trying to reach straight through glass, by the looks of it,” said Nanny. “Now get it off and help me tear it into strips and then go and find Mrs. Gogol and see if she’s got any ointments and can help us, and tell her if she can’t she’d better be a long way away by morning.” Nanny felt Granny Weatherwax’s wrist. “Maybe Lily Weatherwax could make jam of us but I’m damn sure I could knock Mrs. Gogol’s eye out with the fender if it came to it.”
Nanny removed her patent indestructible hat and fished around inside the point. She pulled out a velvet cloth and unwrapped it, revealing a little cache of needles and a spool of thread.
She licked a thread and held a needle against the moon, squinting.
“Oh, Esme, Esme,” she said, as she bent to her sewing, “you do take winning hard.”
Lily Weatherwax looked out at the multi-layered, silvery world.
“Where am I?”
INSIDE THE MIRROR.
“Am I dead?”
THE ANSWER TO THAT, said Death, IS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN NO AND YES.
Lily turned, and a billion figures turned with her.
“When can I get out?”
WHEN YOU FIND THE ONE THAT’S REAL.
Lily Weatherwax ran on through the endless reflections.
A good cook is always the first one into the kitchen every morning and the last one to go home at night.
Mrs. Pleasant damped down the fires. She did a quick inventory of the silverware and counted the tureens. She—
She was aware of being stared at.
There was a cat in the doorway. It was big and gray. One eye was an evil yellow-green, the other one pearly white. What remained of its ears looked like the edge of a stamp. Nevertheless, it had a certain swagger, and generated an I-can-beat-you-with-one-paw feel that was strangely familiar.
Mrs. Pleasant stared at it for a while. She was a close personal friend of Mrs. Gogol and knew that shape is merely a matter of deeply-ingrained personal habit, and if you’re a resident of Genua around Samedi Nuit Mort you learn to trust your judgment rather more than you trust your senses.
“Well now,” she said, with barely a trace of a tremor in her voice, “I expect you’d like some more fish legs, I mean heads, how about that?”
Greebo stretched and arched his back.
“And there’s some milk in the coolroom,” said Mrs. Pleasant.
Greebo yawned happily.
Then he scratched his ear with his back leg. Humanity’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.
It was a day later.
“Mrs. Gogol’s healing ointment really seems to work,” said Magrat. She held up a jar that was half-full of something pale green and strangely gritty and had a subtle