Terry Pratchett - Carpe Jugulum

On the top of the moor, where a few trees grew out of the rubble of a ruined building, it creaked to a halt.

The horses stood still, occasionally stamping a hoof or tossing their heads. The coachman sat hunched over the reins, waiting.

Four figures flew just above the clouds, in the silvery moonlight. By the sound of their conversation someone was annoyed, although the sharp unpleasant tone to the voice suggested that a better word might be ‘vexed’.

‘You let it get away !’ This voice had a whine to it, the voice of a chronic complainer.

‘It was wounded, Lacci.’ This voice sounded conciliatory, parental, but with just a hint of a repressed desire to give the first voice a thick ear.

‘I really hate those things. They’re so … soppy!’

‘Yes, dear. A symbol of a credulous past.’

‘If I could burn like that I wouldn’t skulk around just looking pretty. Why do they do it?’

‘It must have been of use to them at one time, I suppose.’

‘Then they’re … what did you call them?’

‘An evolutionary cul-de-sac, Lacci. A marooned survivor on the seas of progress.’

‘Then I’m doing them a favour by killing them?’

‘Yes, that is a point. Now, shall—’

‘After all, chickens don’t burn,’ said the voice called Lacci. ‘Not easily, anyway.’

‘We heard you experiment. Killing them first might have been a good idea.’ This was a third voice — young, male, and also somewhat weary with the female. It had ‘older brother’ harmonics on every syllable.

‘What’s the point in that?’

‘Well, dear, it would have been quieter.’

‘Listen to your father, dear.’ And this, the fourth voice, could only be a mother’s voice. It’d love the other voices whatever they did.

‘You’re so unfair!’

‘We did let you drop rocks on the pixies, dear. Life can’t be all fun.’

The coachman stirred as the voices descended through the clouds. And then four figures were standing a little way off. He clambered down and, with difficulty, opened the coach door as they approached.

‘Most of the wretched things got away, though,’ said Mother.

‘Never mind, my dear,’ said Father.

‘I really hate them. Are they a dead end too?’ said Daughter.

‘Not quite dead enough as yet, despite your valiant efforts. Igor! On to Lancre.’

The coachman turned.

‘Yeth, marthter.’

‘Oh, for the last time, man … is that any way to talk?’

‘It’th the only way I know, marthter,’ said Igor.

‘And I told you to take the plumes off the coach, you idiot.’

The coachman shifted uneasily.

‘Gotta have black plumeth, marthter. It’th tradithional .’

‘Remove them at once!’ Mother commanded. ‘What will people think?’

‘Yeth, mithtreth.’

The one addressed as Igor slammed the door and lurched back around to the horse. He removed the plumes reverentially and placed them under his seat.

Inside the coach the vexed voice said, ‘Is Igor an evolutionary dead end too, Father?’

‘We can but hope, dear.’

‘Thod,’ said Igor to himself, as he picked up the reins.

The wording began:

‘ You are cordially invited …’

… and was in that posh runny writing that was hard to read but ever so official.

Nanny Ogg grinned and tucked the card back on the mantelpiece. She liked the idea of ‘cordially’. It had a rich, a thick and above all an alcoholic sound.

She was ironing her best petticoat. That is to say, she was sitting in her chair by the fire while one of her daughters-in-law, whose name she couldn’t remember just at this moment, was doing the actual work. Nanny was helping by pointing out the bits she’d missed.

It was a damn good invite, she thought. Especially the gold edging, which was as thick as syrup. Probably not real gold, but impressively glittery all the same.

‘There’s a bit there that could do with goin’ over again, gel,’ she said, topping up her beer.

‘Yes, Nanny.’

Another daughter-in-law, whose name she’d certainly be able to recall after a few seconds’ thought, was buffing up Nanny’s red boots. A third was very carefully dabbing the lint off Nanny’s best pointy hat, on its stand.

Nanny got up again and wandered over to open the back door. There was little light left in the sky now, and a few rags of cloud were scudding over the early stars. She sniffed the air. Winter hung on late up here in the mountains, but there was definitely a taste of spring on the wind.

A good time, she thought. Best time, really. Oh, she knew that the year started on Hogswatchnight, when the cold tide turned, but the new year started now, with green shoots boring upwards through the last of the snow. Change was in the air, she could feel it in her bones.

Of course, her friend Granny Weatherwax always said you couldn’t trust bones, but Granny Weatherwax said a lot of things like that all the time.

Nanny Ogg closed the door. In the trees at the end of her garden, leafless and scratchy against the sky, something rustled its wings and chattered as a veil of dark crossed the world.

In her own cottage a few miles away the witch Agnes Nitt was in two minds about her new pointy hat. Agnes was generally in two minds about anything.

As she tucked in her hair and observed herself critically in the mirror she sang a song. She sang in harmony. Not, of course, with her reflection in the glass, because that kind of heroine will sooner or later end up singing a duet with Mr Blue Bird and other forest creatures {3} 3 Various Disney heroines have done this: Snow White was the first, but Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty perpetrated similar offences. In the film Mary Poppins , Julie Andrews sings in harmony with her own reflection (‘A Spoonful of Sugar’) and does indeed go on to sing with other creatures. ‘Mr Blue Bird’ comes into the song ‘Zippedy Doo-Dah’, from the Disney film Song of the South , although there may be some older reference. and then there’s nothing for it but a flamethrower.

She simply sang in harmony with herself. Unless she concentrated it was happening more and more these days. Perdita had rather a reedy voice, but she insisted on joining in.

Those who are inclined to casual cruelty say that inside a fat girl is a thin girl and a lot of chocolate. Agnes’s thin girl was Perdita.

She wasn’t sure how she’d acquired the invisible passenger. Her mother had told her that when she was small she’d been in the habit of blaming accidents and mysteries, such as the disappearance of a bowl of cream or the breaking of a prized jug, on ‘the other little girl’.

Only now did she realize that indulging this sort of thing wasn’t a good idea when, despite yourself, you’ve got a bit of natural witchcraft in your blood. The imaginary friend had simply grown up and had never gone away and had turned out to be a pain.

Agnes disliked Perdita, who was vain, selfish and vicious, and Perdita hated going around inside Agnes, whom she regarded as a fat, pathetic, weak-willed blob that people would walk all over were she not so steep.

Agnes told herself she’d simply invented the name Perdita as some convenient label for all those thoughts and desires she knew she shouldn’t have, as a name for that troublesome little commentator that lives on everyone’s shoulder and sneers. But sometimes she thought Perdita had created Agnes for something to pummel.

Agnes tended to obey rules. Perdita didn’t. Perdita thought that not obeying rules was somehow cool . Agnes thought that rules like ‘Don’t fall into this huge pit of spikes’ were there for a purpose. Perdita thought, to take an example at random, that things like table manners were a stupid and repressive idea. Agnes, on the other hand, was against being hit by flying bits of other people’s cabbage.