Terry Pratchett: Witches Abroad

Desiderata Hollow was making her will.

When Desiderata Hollow was a girl, her grandmother had given her four important pieces of advice to guide her young footsteps on the unexpectedly twisting pathway of life.

They were:

Never trust a dog with orange eyebrows,

Always get the young man's name and address,

Never get between two mirrors,

And always wear completely clean underwear every day because you never knew when you were going to be knocked down and killed by a runaway horse and if people found you had unsatisfactory underwear on, you'd die of shame.

And then Desiderata grew up to become a witch. And one of the minor benefits of being a witch is that you know exactly when you're going to die and can wear what underwear you like.

That had been eighty years earlier, when the idea of knowing exactly when you were going to die had seemed quite attractive because secretly, of course, you knew you were going to live forever.

That was then.

And this was now.

Forever didn't seem to last as long these days as once it did.

Another log crumbled to ash in the fireplace. Desiderata hadn't bothered to order any fuel for the winter. Not much point, really.

And then, of course, there was this other thing...

She'd wrapped it up carefully into a long, slim package. Now she folded up the letter, addressed it, and pushed it under the string. Job done.

She looked up. Desiderata had been blind for thirty years, but this hadn't been a problem. She'd always been blessed, if that was the word, with second sight. So when the ordinary eyes gave out you just trained yourself to see into the present, which anyway was easier than the future. And since the eyeball of the occult didn't depend on light, you saved on candles. There was always a silver lining, if you knew where to look. In a manner of speaking.

There was a mirror on the wall in front of her.

The face in it was not her own, which was round and pink.

It was the face of a woman who was used to giving orders. Desiderata wasn't the sort to give orders. Quite the reverse, in fact.

The woman said, "You are dying, Desiderata."

"I am that, too."

"You've grown old. Your sort always do. Your power is nearly gone."

"That's a fact, Lilith," said Desiderata mildly.

"So your protection is withdrawing from her."

" ‘Fraid so," said Desiderata.

"So now it's just me and the evil swamp woman. And I will win."

"That's how it seems, I'm afraid."

"You should have found a successor."

"Never had the time. I'm not the planning sort, you know."

The face in the mirror got closer, as if the figure had moved a little nearer to its side of the mirror.

"You've lost, Desiderata Hollow."

"So it goes." Desiderata got to her feet, a little unsteadily, and picked up a cloth.

The figure seemed to be getting angry. It clearly felt that people who had lost ought to look downcast, and not as if they were enjoying a joke at your expense.

"Don't you understand what losing means?"

"Some people are very clear about that," said Desiderata. "Goodbye, m'lady." She hung the cloth over the mirror.

There was an angry intake of breath, and then silence.

Desiderata stood as if lost in thought.

Then she raised her head, and said: "Kettle boiled just now. Would you like a cup of tea?"

NO, THANK YOU, said a voice right behind her.

"How long have you been waiting?"

FOREVER.

"Not keeping you, am I?"

IT'S A QUIET NIGHT.

"I'm making a cup of tea. I think there's one biscuit left."

NO, THANK YOU.

"If you feel peckish, it's in the jar on the mantelpiece. That's genuine Klatchian pottery, you know. Made by a genuine Klatchian craftsman. From Klatch," she added.

INDEED?

"I used to get about a lot in my younger days."

YES?

"Great times." Desiderata poked the fire. "It was the job, you see. Of course, I expect it's very much the same for you."

YES.

"I never knew when I was going to be called out. Well, of course you'd know about that, wouldn't you. Kitchens, mainly. It always seemed to be kitchens. Balls sometimes, but generally it was kitchens." She picked up the kettle and poured the boiling water into the teapot on the hearth.

INDEED.

"I used to grant their wishes."

Death looked puzzled.

WHAT? YOU MEAN LIKE... FITTED CUPBOARDS? NEW SINKS? THAT KIND OF THING?

"No, no. The people." Desiderata sighed. "It's a big responsibility, fairy godmothering. Knowing when to stop, I mean. People whose wishes get granted often don't turn out to be very nice people. So should you give them what they want - or what they need?"

Death nodded politely. From his point of view, people got what they were given.

"Like this Genua thing - " Desiderata began.

Death looked up sharply.

GENUA?

"You know it? Well, of course you would."

I... KNOW EVERYWHERE, OF COURSE.

Desiderata's expression softened. Her inner eyes were looking elsewhere.

"There were two of us. Godmothers go in twos, you know. Me and Lady Lilith? There's a lot of power in godmothering. It's like being part of history. Anyway, the girl was born, out of wedlock but none the worse for that, it wasn't as if they couldn't have married, they just never got round to it... and Lilith wished for her to have beauty and power and marry a prince. Hah! And she's been working on that ever since. What could I do? You can't argue with wishes like that. Lilith knows the power of a story. I've done the best I could, but Lilith's got the power. I hear she runs the city now. Changing a whole country just to make a story work! And now it's too late anyway. For me. So I'm handing on the responsibility. That's how it goes, with fairy godmothering. No-one ever wants to be a fairy godmother. Except Lilith, of course. Got a bee in her bonnet about it. So I'm sending someone else. I may have left things too late."

Desiderata was a kindly soul. Fairy godmothers develop a very deep understanding about human nature, which makes the good ones kind and the bad ones powerful.

She was not someone to use extreme language, but it was possible to be sure that when she deployed a mild term like ‘a bee in her bonnet' she was using it to define someone whom she believed to be several miles over the madness horizon and accelerating.

She poured out the tea.

"That's the trouble with second sight," she said. "You can see what's happenin', but you don't know what it means. I've seen the future. There's a coach made out of a pumpkin. And that's impossible. And there's coachmen made out of mice, which is unlikely. And there's a clock striking midnight, and something about a glass slipper. And it's all going to happen. Because that's how stories have to work. And then I thought: I knows some people who make stories work their way."

She sighed again. "Wish I was going to Genua," she said. "I could do with the warmth. And it's Fat Tuesday coming up. Always went to Genua for Fat Tuesday in the old days."

There was an expectant silence.

Then Death said, YOU SURELY ARE NOT ASKING ME TO GRANT A WISH ?

"Hah! No-one grants a fairy godmother's wishes." Desiderata had that inward look again, her voice talking to herself. "See? I got to get the three of them to Genua. Got to get ‘em there because I've seen ‘em there. Got to be all three. And that ain't easy, with people like them. Got to use headology. Got to make ‘em send ‘emselves. Tell Esme Weatherwax she's got to go somewhere and she won't go out of contrariness, so tell her she's not to go and she'll run there over broken glass. That's the thing about the Weatherwaxes, see. They don't know how to be beaten."

Something seemed to strike her as funny.

"But one of ‘em's going to have to learn."