Terry Pratchett - The Sea and Little Fishes

Damn! She’d been relying on that frog to beat her. She’d heard it whistling quite beautifully on the summer evenings.

She concentrated.

Pieces of straw rustled through the stubble. All she had to do was use the little bits of wind that drifted across the field, allowed to move here and here , spiral up and —

She tried to stop her hands from shaking. She’d done this a hundred times, she could tie the damn stuff in knots by now. She kept seeing the face of Esme Weatherwax, and the way she’d just sat there, looking puzzled and hurt, while for a few seconds Nanny had been ready to kill —

For a moment she managed to get the legs right, and a suggestion of arms and head. There was a smattering of applause from the watchers. Then an errant eddy caught the thing before she could concentrate on its first step, and it spun down, just a lot of useless straw.

She made some frantic gestures to get it to rise again. It flopped about, tangled itself, and lay still.

There was a bit more applause, nervous and sporadic.

“Sorry ... don’t seem to be able to get the hang of it today,” she muttered, walking off the field.

The judges went into a huddle.

“I reckon that frog did really well ,” said Nanny, more loudly than was necessary.

The wind, so contrary a little while ago, blew sharper now. What might be called the psychic darkness of the event was being enhanced by real twilight.

The shadow of the bonfire loomed on the far side of the field. No one as yet had the heart to light it. Almost all the non-witches had gone home. Anything good about the day had long drained away.

The circle of judges broke up and Mrs Earwig advanced on the nervous crowd, her smile only slightly waxen at the corners.

“Well, what a difficult decision it has been,” she said brightly. “But what a marvellous turnout, too! It really has been a most tricky choice —”

Between me and a frog that lost its whistle and got its foot stuck in its banjo, thought Nanny. She looked sidelong at the faces of her sister witches. She’d known some of them for sixty years. If she’d ever read books, she’d have been able to read the faces just like one.

“We all know who won, Mrs Earwig,” she said, interrupting the flow.

“What do you mean, Mrs Ogg?”

“There’s not a witch here who could get her mind right today,” said Nanny. “And most of ’em have bought lucky charms, too. Witches? Buying lucky charms?” Several women stared at the ground.

“I don’t know why everyone seems so afraid of Miss Weatherwax! I certainly am not! You think she’s put a spell on you, then?”

“A pretty sharp one, by the feel of it,” said Nanny. “Look, Mrs Earwig, no one’s won, not with the stuff we’ve managed today. We all know it. So let’s just all go home, eh?”

“Certainly not! I paid ten dollars for this cup and I mean to present it —”

The dying leaves shivered on the trees.

The witches drew together.

Branches rattled.

“It’s the wind ,” said Nanny Ogg. “That’s all ...”

And then Granny was simply there . It was as if they’d just not noticed that she’d been there all the time. She had the knack of fading out of the foreground.

“I jus’ thought I’d come to see who won,” she said. “join in the applause, and so on ...”

Letice advanced on her, wild with rage.

“Have you been getting into people’s heads?” she shrieked.

“An’ how could I do that, Mrs Earwig?” said Granny meekly. “Past all them lucky charms?”

“You’re lying!”

Nanny Ogg heard the indrawn breaths, and hers was loudest. Witches lived by their words.

“I don’t lie, Mrs Earwig.”

“Do you deny that you set out to ruin my day?”

Some of the witches at the edge of the crowd started to back away.

“I’ll grant my jam ain’t to everyone’s taste but I never —” Granny began, in a modest little tone.

“You’ve been putting a ’fluence on everyone!”

“I just set out to help, you can ask anyone —”

“You did! Admit it!” Mrs Earwig’s voice was as shrill as a gull.

“— and I certainly didn’t do any —”

Granny’s head turned as the slap came.

For the moment no one breathed, no one moved.

She lifted a hand slowly and rubbed her cheek.

“ You know you could have done it easily! ”

It seemed to Nanny that Letice’s scream echoed off the mountains.

The cup dropped from her hands and crunched on the stubble.

Then the tableau unfroze. A couple of her sister witches stepped forward, put their hands on Letice’s shoulders and she was pulled, gently and unprotesting, away ...

Everyone else waited to see what Granny Weatherwax would do. She raised her head.

“I hope Mrs Earwig is all right,” she said. “She seemed a bit ... distraught.”

There was silence. Nanny picked up the abandoned cup and tapped it with a forefinger.

“Hmm,” she said. “Just plated, I reckon. If she paid ten dollars for it, the poor woman was robbed.” She tossed it to Gammer Beavis, who fumbled it out of the air. “Can you give it back to her tomorrow, Gammer?”

Gammer nodded, trying not to catch Granny’s eye.

“Still, we don’t have to let it spoil everything,” Granny said pleasantly. “Let’s have the proper ending to the day, eh? Traditional, like. Roast potatoes and marshmallows and old stories round the fire. And forgiveness. And let’s let bygones be bygones.”

Nanny could feel the sudden relief spreading out like a fan. The witches seemed to come alive, at the breaking of the spell that had never actually been there in the first place. There was a general straightening up and the beginnings of a bustle as they headed for the saddlebags on their broomsticks.

“Mr Hopcroft gave me a whole sack of spuds,” said Nanny, as conversation rose around them. “I’ll go and drag ’em over. Can you get the fire lit, Esme?”

A sudden change in the air made her look up. Granny’s eyes gleamed in the dusk.

Nanny knew enough to fling herself to the ground.

Granny Weatherwax’s hand curved through the air like a comet and the spark flew out, crackling.

The bonfire exploded. A blue-white flame shot up through the stacked branches and danced into the sky, etching shadows on the forest. It blew off hats and overturned tables and formed figures and castles and scenes from famous battles and joined hands and danced in a ring. It left a purple image on the eye that burned into the brain —

And settled down, and was just a bonfire.

“I never said nothin’ about forgettin’ ,” said Granny.

When Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg walked home through the dawn, their boots kicked up the mist. It had, on the whole, been a good night.

After some while, Nanny said: “That wasn’t nice, what you done.”

“I done nothin’.”

“Yeah, well ... it wasn’t nice, what you didn’t do. It was like pullin’ away someone’s chair when they’re expecting to sit down.”

“People who don’t look where they’re sitting should stay stood up,” said Granny.

There was a brief pattering on the leaves, one of those very brief showers you get when a few raindrops don’t want to bond with the group.

“Well, all right,” Nanny conceded. “But it was a little bit cruel.”

“Right,” said Granny.

“And some people might think it was a little bit nasty.”

“Right.”

Nanny shivered. The thoughts that’d gone through her head in those few seconds after Pewsey had screamed —

“I gave you no cause,” said Granny. “I put nothin’ in anyone’s head that weren’t there already.”