Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett [31]
Three dots emerged from the cloud layer.
“I can see why travelin’ doesn’t catch on. I call this boring. Nothing but forest for hours and hours.”
“Yes, but flying gets you to places quickly, Granny.”
“How long’ve we been flying, anyway?”
“About ten minutes since you last asked, Esme.”
“You see? Boring.”
“It’s sitting on the sticks I don’t like. I reckon there ought to be a special broomstick for going long distances, right? One you could stretch out on and have a snooze.”
They all considered this.
“And have your meals on,” added Nanny. “Proper meals, I mean. With gravy. Not just sandwiches and stuff.” An experiment in aerial cookery on a small oil burner had been hastily curtailed after it threatened to set fire to Nanny’s broomstick.
“I suppose you could do it if you had a really big broomstick,” said Magrat. “About the size of a tree, perhaps. Then one of us could do the steering and another one could do the cooking.”
“It’d never happen,” said Nanny Ogg. “The reason being, the dwarfs would make you pay a fortune for a stick that big.”
“Yes, but what you could do,” said Magrat, warming to her subject, “is get people to pay you to give them rides. There must be lots of people fed up with highwaymen and…and being seasick and that sort of thing.”
“How about it, Esme?” said Nanny Ogg. “I’ll do the steering and Magrat’ll do the cooking.”
“What shall I do, then?” said Granny Weatherwax suspiciously.
“Oh…well…there ought to be someone to, you know, welcome people onto the stick and give them their meals,” said Magrat. “And tell them what to do if the magic fails, for example.”
“If the magic fails everyone’ll crash into the ground and die,” Granny pointed out.
“Yes, but someone will have to tell them how to do that,” said Nanny Ogg, winking at Magrat. “They won’t know how to, not being experienced in flying.”
“And we could call ourselves…” she paused. As always on the Discworld, which was right on the very edge of unreality, little bits of realness crept in whenever someone’s mind was resonating properly. This happened now.
“…Three Witches Airborne,” she said. “How about that?”
“Broomsticks Airborne,” said Magrat. “Or Pan…air…”
“There’s no need to bring religion into it,” sniffed Granny.
Nanny Ogg looked slyly from Granny to Magrat.
“We could call it Vir—” she began.
A gust of wind caught all three sticks and whirled them up. There was a brief panic as the witches brought them under control.
“Load of nonsense,” muttered Granny.
“Well, it passes the time,” said Nanny Ogg.
Granny looked morosely at the greenery below.
“You’d never get people to do it,” she said. “Load of nonsense.”
Dear Jason en famile,
Overleaf on the other side please find enclosed a sketch of somewhere some king died and was buried, search me why. It’s in some village wear we stopped last night. We had some stuff it was chewy you’ll never guess it was snails, and not bad and Esme had three helpins before she found out and then had a Row with the cook and Magrat was sick all night just at the thought of it and had the dire rear. Thinking of you your loving MUM. PS the privies here are DESGUSTING, they have them INDORES, so much for HIGEINE.
Several days passed.
In a quiet little inn in a tiny country Granny Weatherwax sat and regarded the food with deep suspicion. The owner hovered with the frantic expression of one who knows, even before he starts, that he’s not going to come out of this ahead of the game.
“Good simple home cooking,” said Granny. “That’s all I require. You know me. I’m not the demanding sort. No one could say I’m the demanding sort. I just want simple food. Not all grease and stuff. It comes to something when you complain about something in your lettuce and it turns out to be what you ordered.”
Nanny Ogg tucked her napkin into the top of her dress and said nothing.
“Like that place last night,” said Granny. “You’d think you’d be all right with sandwiches, wouldn’t you? I mean…sandwiches? Simplest food there is in the whole world. You’d think even foreigners