Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett [76]
She stared for a long time.
Then, with tears streaking her face and changing color as they caught the light of the fireworks, she took the knife and began to cut the dress into very small pieces.
The senior coachman’s head bounced gently off his sandwiches.
Nanny Ogg stood up, a little unsteadily. She placed the junior footman’s wig under his slumbering head, because she was not an unkind woman. Then she stepped out into the night.
A figure moved near the wall.
“Magrat?” hissed Nanny.
“Nanny?”
“Did you see to the dress?”
“Have you seen to the footmen?”
“Right, then,” said Granny Weatherwax, stepping out of the shadows. “Then there’s just the coach.”
She tiptoed theatrically to the coachhouse and opened the door. It grated loudly on the cobbles.
“Shsss!” said Nanny.
There was a stub of candle and some matches on a ledge. Magrat fumbled the candle alight.
The coach lit up like a glitter ball.
It was excessively ornate, as if someone had taken a perfectly ordinary coach and then gone insane with fretwork and gold paint.
Granny Weatherwax walked around it.
“A bit showy,” she said.
“Seems a real shame to smash it up,” said Nanny sadly. She rolled up her sleeves and then, as an afterthought, tucked the hem of her skirt into her drawers.
“Bound to be a hammer somewhere around here,” she said, turning to the benches along the walls.
“Don’t! That’d make too much noise!” hissed Magrat. “Hang on a moment…”
She pulled the despised wand out of her belt, gripped it tightly, and waved it toward the coach.
There was a brief inrush of air.
“Blow me down,” said Nanny Ogg. “I never would have thought of that.”
On the floor was a large orange pumpkin.
“It was nothing,” said Magrat, risking a touch of pride.
“Hah! That’s one coach that’ll never roll again,” said Nanny.
“Hey…can you do that to the horses too?” said Granny.
Magrat shook her head. “Um, I think that would be very cruel.”
“You’re right. You’re right,” said Granny. “No excuse for cruelty to dumb animals.”
The two stallions watched her with equine curiosity as she undid the loose-box gates.
“Off you go,” she said. “Big green fields out there somewhere.”
She glanced momentarily at Magrat. “You have been em-horse-sipated.”
This didn’t seem to have much effect.
Granny sighed. She climbed up onto the wooden wall that separated the boxes, reached up, grabbed a horse ear in either hand, and gently dragged their heads down level with her mouth.
She whispered something.
The stallions turned and looked one another in the eye.
Then they looked down at Granny.
She grinned at them, and nodded.
Then…
It is impossible for a horse to go instantly from a standing start to a gallop, but they almost managed it.
“What on earth did you say to them?” said Magrat.
“Mystic horseman’s word,” said Granny. “Passed down to Gytha’s Jason, who passed it up to me. Works every time.”
“He told you it?” said Nanny.
“Yes.”
“What, all of it?”
“Yes,” said Granny, smugly.
Magrat tucked the wand back into her belt. As she did so, a square of white material fell onto the floor.
White gems and silk glimmered in the candlelight as she reached down hurriedly to pick it up, but there wasn’t a lot that escaped Granny Weatherwax.
She sighed.
“Magrat Garlick…” she began.
“Yes,” said Magrat meekly. “Yes. I know. I’m a wet hen.”
Nanny patted her gently on the shoulder.
“Never mind,” she said. “We’ve done a good night’s work here. That Ella has about as much chance of being sent to the ball tonight as I have of…of becoming queen.”
“No dress, no footmen, no horses and no coach,” said Granny. “I’d like to see her get out of that one. Stories? Hah!”
“So what’re we going to do now?” said Magrat, as they crept out of the yard.
“It’s Fat Lunchtime!” said Nanny. “Hot diggety pig!” Greebo wandered out of the darkness and rubbed against her legs.
“I thought Lily was trying to stamp it out,” said Magrat.
“May as well try to stamp out a flood,” said Nanny. “Kick out a jam!”
“I don’t agree with dancing in the streets,” said Granny. “How much of that