Terry Pratchett - Witches Abroad

ANY TIME.

The figure continued onwards and upwards.

"He had a good mask on, didn't he," said Magrat, eventually.

She and Nanny sought confirmation in each other's face.

Magrat went pale. She looked up the stairs.

"I think we should run back up and - " she began.

Nanny Ogg was much older. "I think we should walk," she said.

Lady Volentia D'Arrangement sat in the rose garden under the big tower and blew her nose.

She'd been waiting for half an hour and she'd had enough.

She'd hoped for a romantic tete-a-tete: he'd seemed such a nice man, sort of eager and shy at the same time. Instead, she'd nearly been hit on the head when an old woman on a broom and wearing what looked, as far as she could see through the blur of speed, like Lady Volentia's own dress, had screamed down out of the mist. Her boots had ploughed through the roses before the curve of her flight took her up again.

And some filthy smelly tomcat kept brushing up against her legs.

And it had started off as such a nice evening...

" ‘ullo, your Ladyship?"

She looked around at the bushes.

"My name's Casanunda," said a hopeful voice.

Lily Weatherwax turned when she heard the tinkle of glass from within the maze of mirrors.

Her brow wrinkled. She ran across the flagstones and opened the door into the mirror world.

There was no sound but the rustle of her dress and the soft hiss of her own breathing. She glided into the place between the mirrors.

Her myriad selves looked back at her approvingly. She relaxed.

Then her foot struck something. She looked down and saw on the flagstones, black in the moonlight, a broomstick lying in shards of broken glass.

Her horrified gaze rose to meet a reflection.

It glared back at her.

"Where's the pleasure in bein' the winner if the loser ain't alive to know they've lost?"

Lilith backed away, her mouth opening and shutting.

Granny Weatherwax stepped through the empty frame. Lily looked down, beyond her avenging sister.

"You broke my mirror!"

"Was this what it was all for, then?" said Granny." Playin' little queens in some damp city? Serving stories? What sort of power is that?"

"You don't understand... you've broken the mirror..."

"They say you shouldn't do it," said Granny. "But I reckoned: what's another seven years' bad luck?"

Image after image shatters, all the way around the great curve of the mirror world, the crack flying out faster than light...

"You have to break both to be safe... you've upset the balance..."

"Hah! I did?" Granny stepped forward, her eyes two sapphires of bitterness. "I'm goin' to give you the hidin' our Mam never gave you, Lily Weatherwax. Not with magic, not with headology, not with a stick like our Dad had, aye, and used a fair bit as I recall - but with skin. And not because you was the bad one. Not because you meddled with stories. Everyone has a path they got to tread. But because, and I wants you to understand this prop'ly, after you went I had to be the good one. You had all the fun. An' there's no way I can make you pay for that, Lily, but I'm surely goin' to give it a try..."

"But... I... I... I'm the good one," Lily murmured, her face pale with shock. "I'm the good one. I can't lose. I'm the godmother. You're the wicked witch... and you've broken the mirror..."

... moving like a comet, the crack in the mirrors reaches its furthest point and curves back, speeding down the countless worlds...

"You've got to help me put... the images must be balanced..." Lily murmured faintly, backing up against the remaining glass.

"Good? Good? Feeding people to stories? Twisting people's lives? That's good, is it?" said Granny. "You mean you didn't even have fun? If I'd been as bad as you, I'd have been a whole lot worse. Better at it than you've ever dreamed of."

She drew back her hand.

... the crack returned towards its point of origin, carrying with it the fleeing reflections of all the mirrors...

Her eyes widened.

The glass smashed and crazed behind Lily Weatherwax.

And in the mirror, the image of Lily Weatherwax turned around, smiled beatifically, and reached out of the frame to take Lily Weatherwax into its arms.

"Lily!"

All the mirrors shattered, exploding outwards in a thousand pieces from the top of the tower so that, just for a moment, it was wreathed in twinkling fairy dust.

Nanny Ogg and Magrat came up onto the roof like avenging angels after a period of lax celestial quality control.

They stopped.

Where the maze of mirrors had been were empty frames. Glass shards covered the floor and, lying on them, was a figure in a white dress.

Nanny pushed Magrat behind her and crunched forward cautiously. She prodded the figure with the toe of her boot.

"Let's throw her off the tower," said Magrat.

"All right," said Nanny. "Do it, then."

Magrat hesitated. "Well," she said, "when I said let's throw her off the tower, I didn't mean me personally throwing her off, I meant that if there was any justice she ought to be thrown off- "

"Then I shouldn't say any more on that score, if I was you," said Nanny, kneeling carefully on the crunching shards. "Besides, I was right. This is Esme. I'd know that face anywhere. Take off your petticoat."

"Why?"

"Look at her arms, girl!"

Magrat stared. Then she raised her hands to her mouth.

"What has she been doing?"

"Trying to reach straight through glass, by the looks of it," said Nanny. "Now get it off and help me tear it into strips and then go and find Mrs Gogol and see if she's got any ointments and can help us, and tell her if she can't she'd better be a long way away by morning." Nanny felt Granny Weatherwax's wrist. "Maybe Lily Weatherwax could make jam of us but I'm damn sure I could knock Mrs Gogol's eye out with the fender if it came to it."

Nanny removed her patent indestructible hat and fished around inside the point. She pulled out a velvet cloth and unwrapped it, revealing a little cache of needles and a spool of thread.

She licked a thread and held a needle against the moon, squinting.

"Oh, Esme, Esme," she said, as she bent to her sewing, "you do take winning hard."

Lily Weatherwax looked out at the multi-layered, silvery world.

"Where am I?"

INSIDE THE MIRROR.

"Am I dead?"

THE ANSWER TO THAT, said Death, is SOMEWHERE BETWEEN NO AND YES.

Lily turned, and a billion figures turned with her. "When can I get out?"

WHEN YOU FIND THE ONE THAT'S REAL.

Lily Weatherwax ran on through the endless reflections.

A good cook is always the first one into the kitchen every morning and the last one to go home at night.

Mrs Pleasant damped down the fires. She did a quick inventory of the silverware and counted the tureens. She -

She was aware of being stared at.

There was a cat in the doorway. It was big and grey. One eye was an evil yellow-green, the other one pearly white. What remained of its ears looked like the edge of a stamp. Nevertheless, it had a certain swagger, and generated an I-can-beat-you-with-one-paw feel that was strangely familiar.

Airs Pleasant stared at it for a while. She was a close personal friend of Mrs Gogol and knew that shape is merely a matter of deeply-ingrained personal habit, and if you're a resident of Genua around Samedi Nuit Mort you learn to trust your judgement rather more than you trust your senses.

"Well now," she said, with barely a trace of a tremor in her voice, "I expect you'd like some more fish legs, I mean heads, how about that?"

Greebo stretched and arched his back.

"And there's some milk in the coolroom," said Mrs Pleasant.

Greebo yawned happily.

Then he scratched his ear with his back leg. Humanity's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.