Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett [63]
“Showy,” said Granny Weatherwax. “That’s no help to anyone, turning up at a ball smelling like a pie. And that business with the glass slipper. Dangerous, to my mind.”
“But the biggest thing she ever did,” said Nanny, ignoring the interruption, “was to send a whole palace to sleep for a hundred years until…” She hesitated. “Can’t remember. Was there rose bushes involved, or was it spinning wheels in that one? I think some princess had to finger…no, there was a prince. That was it.”
“Finger a prince?” said Magrat, uneasily.
“No…he had to kiss her. Very romantic, Black Aliss was. There was always a bit of romance in her spells. She liked nothing better than Girl meets Frog.”
“Why did they call her Black Aliss?”
“Fingernails,” said Granny.
“And teeth,” said Nanny Ogg. “She had a sweet tooth. Lived in a real gingerbread cottage. Couple of kids shoved her in her own oven at the end. Shocking.”
“And you’re going to send the castle to sleep?” said Magrat.
“She never sent the castle to sleep,” said Granny. “That’s just an old wives’ tale,” she added, glaring at Nanny. “She just stirred up time a little. It’s not as hard as people think. Everyone does it all the time. It’s like rubber, is time. You can stretch it to suit yourself.”
Magrat was about to say, that’s not right, time is time, every second lasts a second, that’s what it’s for, that’s its job…
And then she recalled weeks that had flown past and afternoons that had lasted forever. Some minutes had lasted hours, some hours had gone past so quickly she hadn’t been aware they’d gone past at all…
“But that’s just people’s perception,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” said Granny, “of course it is. It all is. What difference does that make?”
“A hundred years’d be over-egging it, mind,” said Nanny.
“I reckon fifteen’d be a nice around number,” said Granny. “That means the lad will be eighteen at the finish. We just do the spell, go and fetch him, he can manifest his destiny, and everything will be nice and neat.”
Magrat didn’t comment on this, because it had occurred to her that destinies sounded easy enough when you talked about them but were never very bankable where real human beings were concerned. But Nanny Ogg sat back and tipped another generous measure of apple brandy in her tea.
“Could work out nice,” she said. “A bit of peace and quiet for fifteen years. If I recall the spell, after you say it you have to fly around the castle before cock crow.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that,” said Granny. “It wouldn’t be right. Felmet would still be king all that time. The kingdom would still get sick. No, what I was thinking of doing was moving the whole kingdom.”
She beamed at them.
“The whole of Lancre?” said Nanny.
“Yes.”
“Fifteen years into the future?”
“Yes.”
Nanny looked at Granny’s broomstick. It was a well-made thing, built to last, apart from the occasional starting problem. But there were limits.
“You’ll never do it,” she said. “Not around the whole kingdom in that. That’s all the way up to Powderknife and down to Drumlin’s Fell. You just couldn’t carry enough magic.”
“I’ve thought of that,” said Granny.
She beamed again. It was terrifying.
She explained the plan. It was dreadful.
A minute later the moor was deserted, as the witches hurried to their tasks. It was silent for a while, apart from the squeak of bats and the occasional rustle of the wind in the heather.
Then there was a bubbling from the nearby peat bog. Very slowly, crowned with a thicket of sphagnum moss, the standing stone surfaced and peered around the landscape with an air of deep distrust.
Greebo was really enjoying this. At first he thought his new friend was taking him to Magrat’s cottage, but for some reason he’d wandered off the path in the dark and was taking a stroll in the forest. In one of the more interesting bits, Greebo had always felt. It was a hummocky area, rich in hidden potholes and small, intense swamps, full of mist even in fine weather. Greebo often came up here on the offchance that a wolf was lying up for the day.
“I thought cats could find