Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett [70]
Ahead of her she made out Granny Weatherwax dropping like a stone, one hand clutching her hat, the other trying to prevent gravity from seeing up her skirts. She urged the stick forward until it creaked, snatched the falling witch around the waist, fought the plunging stick back up to level flight, and sagged.
The subsequent silence was broken by Granny Weatherwax saying, “Don’t you ever do that again, Gytha Ogg.”
“I promise.”
“Now turn us around. We’re heading for Lancre Bridge, remember?”
Nanny obediently turned the broomstick, brushing the canyon walls as she did so.
“It’s still miles to go,” she said.
“I mean to do it,” said Granny. “There’s plenty of night left.”
“Not enough, I’m thinking.”
“A witch doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘failure,’ Gytha.”
They shot up into the clear air again. The horizon was a line of golden light as the slow dawn of the Disc sped across the land, bulldozing the suburbs of the night.
“Esme?” said Nanny Ogg, after a while.
“What?”
“It means ‘lack of success.’”
They flew in chilly silence for several seconds.
“I was speaking wossname. Figuratively,” said Granny.
“Oh. Well. You should of said.”
The line of light was bigger, brighter. For the first time a flicker of doubt invaded Granny Weatherwax’s mind, puzzled to find itself in such unfamiliar surroundings.
“I wonder how many cockerels there are in Lancre?” she said quietly.
“Was that one of them wossname questions?”
“I was just wondering.”
Nanny Ogg sat back. There were thirty-two of crowing age, she knew. She knew because she’d worked it out last night—tonight—and had given Jason his instructions. She had fifteen grown-up children and innumerable grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and they’d had most of the evening to get into position. It should be enough.
“Did you hear that?” said Granny. “Over Razorback way?”
Nanny looked innocently across the misty landscape. Sound traveled very clearly in these early hours.
“What?” she said.
“Sort of an ‘urk’ noise?”
“No.”
Granny spun around.
“Over there,” she said. “I definitely heard it this time. Something like ‘cock-a-doo-arrgh.’”
“Can’t say I did, Esme,” said Nanny, smiling at the sky. “Lancre Bridge up ahead.”
“And over there! Right down there! It was a definite squawk!”
“Dawn chorus, Esme, I expect. Look, only half a mile to go.”
Granny glared at the back of her colleague’s head.
“There’s something going on here,” she said.
“Search me, Esme.”
“Your shoulders are shaking!”
“Lost my shawl back there. I’m a bit chilly. Look, we’re nearly there.”
Granny glared ahead, her mind a maze of suspicions. She was going to get to the bottom of this. When she had time.
The damp logs of Lancre’s main link to the outside world drifted gently underneath them. From the chicken farm half a mile away came a chorus of strangled squawks and a thud.
“And that? What was that, then?” demanded Granny.
“Fowl pest. Careful, I’m bringing us down.”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Just pleased for you, Esme. You’ll go down in history for this, you know.”
They drifted between the timbers of the bridge. Granny Weatherwax alighted cautiously on the greasy planking and adjusted her dress.
“Yes. Well,” she added, nonchalantly.
“Better than Black Aliss, everyone’ll say,” Nanny Ogg went on.
“Some people will say anything,” said Granny. She peered over the parapet at the foaming torrent far below, and then up at the distant outcrop on which stood Lancre Castle.
“Do you think they will?” she added, nonchalantly.
“Mark my words.”
“Hmm.”
“But you’ve got to complete the spell, mind.”
Granny Weatherwax nodded. She turned to face the dawn, raised her arms, and completed the spell.
It is almost impossible to convey the sudden passage of fifteen years and two months in words.
It’s a lot easier in pictures, when you just use a calendar with lots of pages blowing off, or a clock with hands moving faster and faster until they blur, or trees bursting into blossom and fruiting in a matter of seconds…
Well, you know. Or the sun becomes a fiery streak across the sky, and