This is my first fic for the site, born of a flash of inspiration regarding the origin of our favorite Mad Assassin. I'm not sure where this will end up, but I intend to follow the storyline at least until after the events of the Hogfather.
Of course, All The Things belong to Mr. Terry Pratchett, and due diligence and respect is owed to the many far-superior fanfic writers who have explored the Good Ship Death n' Doom before me. And away we go ...
"Verence sat beside the Queen of the Elves. His pupils were tiny pinpoints; he smiled faintly, permanently, in a way very reminiscent of the Bursar."— Terry Pratchett, "Lords and Ladies"
"'And she takes children,' said Tiffany. 'Aye. Your wee brother's not the first,' said Rob Anybody. 'There's not a lot of fun and laughter here, ye ken. She thinks she's good wi' children." — "The Wee Free Men"
CHAPTER 1: PROLOGUE
It began with a whisper. A nearly-imperceptible susurrus, like the breath of silk. On the high moors of the Ramtop Mountains, the silence began to stir, witnessed only by eight squat little stones standing vigil on the crown of a low and lonely hill.
It eased with a gentle insistence through the surrounding landscape, like ripples expanding in a pond. It insinuated through the briars and the trees of the forest, sending a shiver even through the notoriously indomitable Ramtops hardwoods, which generally had the attitude of a Nac Mac Feegle in the midst of an Anhk-Morpork bar brawl. Battle-scarred branches curled protectively around the leafbuds of early spring.
In Lancre village, townspeople stirred and tossed in their beds, pulling the blankets tight against the sudden chill. Those of a more formidable liver stalked quietly to the liquor cabinet, or whatever hidden spot passed for a liquor cabinet. All across town, windows slammed shut and houses filled with the light of stoked fires and a smell like apples soaked in a decaying goat.
It was like a long-forgotten song, echoing softly at the edges of the mind ...
The smell of snow.
High on the mountain, the spell of the stirring wind was broken by the greasy thump, thump of hobnailed boots hitting a stone floor, resonating from a practical cottage roofed in unruly thatch. Inside, a figure rocked slowly in an old rocking chair near the hearth. A long shadow cast by the dying embers of the fire rolled across the floor and up the wall behind the figure, ending at a point.
Esmerelda Weatherwax rocked and stared into the coals. She would have never said she was afraid, or worried; bothered, that's what she was. She pulled her tall hat off her head and into her lap, turning it round and round in her hands, thinking. Suddenly, her back stiffened, and her upper lip curled. She sniffed the air again.
A whisper ... a smell of snow ...
Granny — no, Mistress Weatherwax, not Granny, she reminded herself; she was hardly old enough for that yet — stood up and screwed the hat back on her head. As the rear door swung shut behind her, the barest hint of frost kissed the pane of a single window.
Nanny Gripes had told her that This Time would come. It had been on one of the old witch's last lucid days, which were even more disconcerting for the then-young Esme Weatherwax than the stretches of weeks she had spent stealthily taking the old cat off of the stove and the kettle off of the back porch after Nanny had gone to bed. Esme was not unfamiliar with the urgently honest nature of the dying, having over three decades looked after more than her share of the sick and the old. It was part of the job. But even for a witch of her water, Death still had its surprises.
They had been shucking peas together, in the warm sun on the lawn of the cottage. Nanny Gripes had been noisily sipping on a bottle of scumble between peapods, on the grounds, she said, that it kept her joints properly lubricated. From time to time, she waved the bottle under Esme's nose, foul vapors attacking the younger witch's sinuses like boiling acid. "You ought to try some," Nanny cackled, light dancing behind her clouded eyes. "It'd do ya good, put some warts on your face, that sort of thing."
Esme had taken a few respectful sips, taking care to breathe through her mouth, and through the sudden buzzing fog continued with her shucking. A period of peaceful silence was broken by Nanny Gripes' lusty and pointed throat-clearing.
"So, what ever happened 'twixt you and that young Ridicullously boy, from up Bad Ass way?"
Esme almost spilled her peas. Nanny Gripes chuckled obscenely.
"Aye, I knows all about that summer, gel." Her sightless gaze lit straight through Esme's own blue eyes and into her thoughts. "No, it wasn't that Gytha Ogg that told me, don't be getting your fire up. There's more than a few who noticed you two running around the hills them three months, like a pair of deer in spring."
Esme sucked in a breath. "His name was Ridcully. Mustrum Ridcully." She forced herself to relax her white-knuckled grip on the edges of the pea bowl. "Nothing happened. I didn't care about him. He was a little fool. Thought he was going to be a wizard." An awkward sensation, like being a teenager again, crept up in her throat. She spat. "He went away, like I told him he ought to."
Nanny Gripes cheerfully hummed a few off-key notes. "Nothing inappo'riate then. I thought not. Odd summer, that was. It always is, at Circle Time. I reckon She finds some way to put thoughts in people's heads."
You could have sharpened a knife on the silence that followed. The old witch's knotted fingers resumed working at the peas, her face growing hard and resolved as she gazed out over the landscape.
"You ain't a daft one, Esmerelda Weatherwax, and that's the truth. You'd been able to take care of yourself since long before you stepped foot in this cottage. But I ain't gonna be here much longer, and some things has got to be taught. You might be just a gel yet, but there's a duty that comes along with this house, duty that's born in the bones and in the old stories that only gets told in this cottage. Handed down, one by one. Just between us," Nanny Gripes cleared her throat again, softer this time, "the other ones."
Even thirteen years later, as she trudged up the snaking path toward the moors, Esme Weatherwax could hear old Nanny Gripes' gravelly voice guiding and warning her. The Dancers were a dangerous place during Circle Time, when the borders were thin and The Gentry could come sneaking out and things from this world could fall into theirs, just by accident. But it was all part of the pattern, just like the wax and wane of the moon. And just as the moon must pass through darkness halfway toward becoming full again, so must the cycle of this universe and the parasite world of the Lords and Ladies wane until it came to a midpoint.
Half-Circle Time.
They would not be monsters, Nanny Gripes had said. They would be creatures of this world that had wandered, or been stolen, into the land of the Gentry, and languished there outside of time. Their bodies would remain unchanged but their minds would be cracked like a pane of glass, worn down by the oppressive un-reality of Fairy Land and the fading memory of their previous lives. And when Half-Circle Time came, the Queen would briefly lose her grip on the things she had taken, and some of them would slip back into the Real World.
"Sometimes, it'll just be animals, beasts mad and rabid, stumbling lost back into a land they half-forgot," Nanny Gripes had whispered, urgently. "Searching for their packs, long since dead. But sometimes it's men — bards or poets, clinging onto one old verse, wandering blindly and singing until they fall to their death in some gorge. Eyes with just a speck of black in the center, like they'd been staring at the sun for a century. And that ain't the worst. Sometimes it's children."
Now within sight of the Dancers, Granny Weatherwax shivered at the memory of the words.
"There ain't no kindness in letting 'em live like that."
A sudden, sharp sound from the stones interrupted her thoughts. A high-pitched giggle.
Granny broke into a run.
There, at the base of the Piper, lay a gurgling bundle. The witch held her breath. It was a child.
There was a round cherub head crowned in a mess of blond curls, a sleeping face contorted into a faint smile. It was hard to tell, swaddled as it was in a tattered black blanket, but Esme guessed the child's age at around three or four. A boy.
Suddenly, as if it had been open the whole time, one alarming eye regarded Esmerelda Weatherwax. It was a pale eye, with no apparent iris, and a pupil like the sharp prick of a hatpin.
The boy giggled again.