This is where the story continues:
The young man arrived with the post coach on one of the first days of the summer, with a huge knapsack, a cross bow slung over his shoulder and a large walking stick. He was tall and well built and growing a beard that was already thick, though certainly nothing to sneeze at or lose anything in either. Yet. He looked around, breathed in the fresh air, smiled, and began to walk.
Some hours later, and with not so much of a smile, he enquired his way to the smithy in Lancre town. The blacksmith's wife, with a little boy clinging to her skirts, a baby on her hip and another on the way, assured him that his hopes were not yet crushed, and pointed him in the correct direction. She leaned on the door and watched him until he was out of sight, not without a sigh of regret, because although he was no oil painting he was a fairly decent water colour, and just because a woman's married and bedded, numerous times, doesn't mean she's dead.
And now, here is a cottage, on the top of a hill.
There is a hint of green amidst the thatch, which will in a few decades be a flourishing tree. There is a bee hive or two around the back. There is a privy, dug some way off from the house; and there is also the beginning of what will become known as The Herbs. There is a wash tub by the side of the door, and a goat tethered by the other side of the door.
There is also, in addition to all of this, a young woman who has just finished milking the goat and is about to carry the resulting bucket indoors. As she turns around, she sees the young man coming up the hill, leaning on his walking stick.
Their eyes meet.
He is the first to speak. "Hallo."
She looks at him for some time. The bees buzz, the wind rustles the young leaves, and the goat breaks wind. That last sound effect definitely breaks the spell. "You'd best come in."
She keeps well clear of him as he shrugs off the pack but she points at one of the two chairs pulled up to the table; as he's seating himself she'd already pouring some of the milk into a mug and cutting a hunk off a fresh baked loaf of bread. Home made; she's still at that stage where she prefers to make things herself, rather than wait for them to be given to her. She adds a few slices of ham and some cheese and leaves from the kitchen garden, pushes it before him and makes a plate for herself before sitting down as well. Obediently he starts eating. Neither of them says anything until they've both finished.
This time she's the first to speak. "Probably nothing like as good as you'd get at that university of yourn."
"Probably." He's seen her casting looks at his waist line. She'll be hard put to find any difference there; he's been jogging every morning eight years running, come hell or high water; and often both had.
"Or at that big house of yours."
"Possibly." He'd been hard put to stop his mother from cramming him full to bursting with her cooking, though he could never resist her chutneys.
"Thought if you'd ever show up again, you'd be in all your fancy robes. Red velvet and gold and glitter and all that rubbish."
"Oh, I left them at home. I didn't want to stand out from the crowd too much."
"Hmmm."
She sits back in her chair and looks at him. He follows her gaze and smiles.
"What d'you think? It's growing quite well."
"I've seen worse. At least you're keeping it trimmed."
"I sent you a lot of letters, you know."
"Never got 'em."
He sees her bluff, raises her a blatantly false acceptance. "Dear me. And there was me puttin' all those direction spells on 'em as well. Tragic."
She meets his eyes easily. He's always loved that about her. "What're you here for, Mustrum? You got your education, all that stuff you talked about. What do you want now?"
"Well, funny you should say that, Esme. Reminds me of what you said, that last day. On the bridge. You remember."
It's not a question. She does, and she stiffens. "Mustrum-"
"No, let me finish. On the bridge, you told me there was time enough. That this…between us, might just be a thing of high summer. That I wasn't yet sure of what I wanted."
She inclines her head to concede that yes, that was more or less what she'd said, right enough.
"You said there were things we both wanted to do. Well, I went off and did one of 'em. Got all the way to Seventh Level mage!"
"And that's good, is it?"
"Yes, it is! One of the youngest ever to manage it, as a matter of fact!" He knows all too well that she never lets herself be impressed by anything, but he still likes to make the effort.
"That's nice, then."
"And you? Have you gotten what you wanted?"
She purses her lips. "Talked to trolls, and dwarves. Went and camped on Nanny Gripe's lawn until she'd teach me, like I said I would. Buried Mam." She looks at the clock on the mantelpiece, back to him.
He didn't say how sorry he was. He said, "Went peacefully?"
"As peaceful as could be. Banished the Cunning Man." She said this bit with such finality that it was clear he was not meant to enquire, wonder or even think about it. "Got myself a cottage and a village. And a hat. I am very well respected in these parts!"
"Of course."
She glares at him. "Don't you try smarming your way around me, Mustrum Ridcully, with your words and your fine ways! I may not have gotten all famous and such, but I'm more important than you! I'm needed!"
"And are you loved?"
She jerks her head as if to shoo off a fly. "Don't get all soppy, Mustrum, it don't suit you."
"Oh for-!" He cuts himself off, smiles, reaches forward and gives her plenty of time to pull her hands away before he can touch them. They remain where they are, he takes them in his.
"I'm not for a minute suggestin' we go waltzin' down to make a shy request of whatever priest jobby happens to be passin' through," he says, stroking one knuckle with a thumb. The flesh under his is stiff but growing slowly softer. "It's been eight years, after all. But let's make the most of this summer, eh?"
"I still got work to do," she says. "They won't stop being stupid or ill or dying for the summer."
"Yes, people are apt to be inconvenient buggers like that." Success! Her mouth curls just a little bit, though she forces it down. "But surely you wouldn't object if I came to visit, perhaps a day or two a week? I do still have some relatives in Bad Ass willin' to put up with me, and it's only a short walk."
"It's only a short walk mostly anywhere, in this country," she can't help pointing out.
"True, that."
They sit and stare at each other. Two equally stubborn people.
As he had said, it had been eight years, and one of the things they didn't do was pay a visit to any person of any clerical persuasion in the immediate weeks that followed. Lancre was, on the whole, not a big place for miracles.*
But the residents of Bad Ass could help but notice the big strapping young man who began to follow after their witch and watch her work, and talk to her. Those who had long memories, or at least memories that stretched back across the eons of eight whole years, began to smile; although never, it must be noted, where the witch could see them.
The two of them went for walks, sometimes, on occasional afternoons when people ever so courteously refrained from being ill or stupid or dead. The man shot birds for Old Mrs Korbick's meals. In fact he shot birds for any one who asked, and some who didn't. He caught fish and would walk up to the witch's cottage when he knew she'd be in – and he very often did - and present her with the best of his catch. She'd cook them for supper and occasionally let him have some.
He became fairly popular, as he fit in well with the no nonsense Lancre people, in a way that the witch didn't. Not quite. No one could say whether this annoyed her or not, least of all the witch herself. Witches, after all, weren't generally supposed to quite fit; they were the circle shaped pegs in a world of square holes that, more often than might be thought, needed a circle to complete the pattern, because without the circles the world was completely off.
So the witch and the man went on with their walks and their talks, and everyone was very careful not to notice that the walking stick the man carried around everywhere might also be described as some sort of staff, because even if a witch didn't quite fit, in this witch's case she could bloody well do what she liked, when she liked, with whomever she liked, thank you very much. The people watched, and they smiled, and mostly they didn't talk, and those who might have done had themselves received a talk from a certain woman married to the Lancre blacksmith that ensured that they often didn't talk for the next few days. Also that they tended to hide when they saw her coming.
The witch and the wizard started, a few days after midsummer, to walk in the evenings. They would stroll in the woods, or up to the castle, or over to Lancre Gorge. One night the wizard dived off it into the river below. The witch watched him hit the water, and smiled, as she was pretty certain that there was no one there to see her. She dived too.
The weeks went by and by and it was very late summer, and what fields Lancre had were harvested. The witch supervised along with her fellows and the wizard helped with the work, and afterwards stood and watched as the men prepared to fire the stubble. A certain friend of the witch, who also happened to be a witch, sidled up to the wizard and nudged him. "Here," she said. "You'll want to watch this."
And she pointed, and the wizard watched as a hare raced towards the flame and leapt through it, to land safe on the other side. "Heard about that," he said, shaking his head in admiration. "Never thought I'd see it, though."
"Well, now you have." The witch had come to his side and her friend smiled and left them to stand and watch the flame come towards them.
The witch was near as surprised as the wizard when she reached down and grabbed his hand, but she didn't let go. "Don't suppose you heard other things about jumpin' over flames?"
"Hughnon said somethin' once about an old form of marriage rite-" He choked on his own words and she didn't even give him time to turn and stare at her; she gripped his wrist and ran, and she could always run faster than him. He could do a pretty good job of keeping up, though. Her hat blew off her head (neatly fielded by her friend, whose smile had been recorded in a painting with teeth that followed you around the room) and he'd left his staff back at his lodgings, and the witch and wizard raced at the fire coming towards them and together timed just right and leapt, his beard crisping so slightly in the heat, the leather of her father's boots protecting her feet.
They hung there in the heart of the flame, a witch and wizard a wizard and witch, two equally stubborn people who wouldn't let anyone or anything on the disc dictate what they could and could not do, who in other times and worlds had chosen not to acknowledge the thing between them and to walk away, or had refused to make the move that was needed to keep things moving. On this world, they had. On this world, they chose. On this world Esme and Mustrum leapt over the fire, to the cry somewhere behind them and around them and within them of "Leap, knave! Jump, whore! Be married now forever more!" and tumbled into the hot ashes on the other side wrapped in each others arms.
They stayed as such for about a quarter of a minute in order to get their breath back, after which they let each other go and stared up at the darkening sky.
Mustrum said, "Not exactly the most cultured choice of wordin', was it?"
Esme said, "Not for this, o'course. But as your Hugnon says, old. Meanins' of words change. Time was that those words simply meant man and woman."
"Really? Hmmm." Mustrum pondered this. "Wonder if we'll live up to both meanings?"
"Mustrum Ridcully, may you be forgiven!"
Mustrum laughed at that, and Esme had to at least smile. He said, "Speaking of that, my dear mother'll never forgive me if we don't get an Ionian ceremony as well, though."
"I should think your dear mother weren't expectin' you to have any sort of ceremony at all." She sat up and looked down at him, reaching out to touch his jaw. "Your beard got all burnt."
"It'll grow back."
"Hm." She stood up and held out a hand to help him. They went into each others' arms for a heart beat or two. It didn't matter what anyone could or couldn't see, what with this light.
"D'you think they'll come after you?"
"Not sure. I always tried to stay out of the way of university politics. If I gave up magic, probably not."
"But you'll not be giving that up."
"Well, we shall have to see. Won't deny it's been useful, but they always drill it into you about not usin' it in the first place. I could live easy enough without it, if that's what you're askin'."
"That's up to you, I'm not askin' anything. I'll not decide what's your own affair." Esme looked up at him in the dying fire light. "I'm not takin' your name, though."
"Oh come on now, Esme; Mustrum Weatherwax?"
"It's a fine name. And it's also a matter of principle."
And they walked back to the light and the crowd, preparing themselves for many things; the most prominent - in Esme's mind at least - being the need to say that whoever had called out that particular phrase about men and women who were supposedly no better than they ought to be was going to get such a ding around the ear with the flat of her hand, pointedly not looking at Gytha Ogg's grinning face as she did so.
Two equally stubborn, equally in love people. A wise man once said that, given a lever and a steady place to stand on, he could move the earth; while he most likely didn't have the Discworld in mind, he certainly could have stood on Esmeralda Weatherwax or Mustrum Ridcully.**
Imagine the person who could stand, metaphorically at least, on the shoulders of both of them. Imagine the sort of lever they could make. Imagine how far that person could move the world.
Well, lucky you; you don't just get to imagine, you get to see.
*This is not to say that miraculous things did not happen in Lancre. Far from it. To name just a few examples: the heavens above the diminutive country routinely rained things one didn't normally see in the sky which were often still alive, although usually not for very long; and animals birthed young with more heads than is the general norm on a basis that would have been incredibly disturbing to anyone from the plains but in the mountains was merely a matter of course, if something of a bastard to feed. There was, in short, enough material to fill several books of several testaments, but the knowledge that it was all the result of a highly magical field caused by a close proximity to the Hub rather than a display of divine power rather took away any mysticism to be had from the whole affair. The Ramtops were both generally and rather ironically - considering their close situation to the realm of Cori Celesti, the mansions of deities - not good growing country for gods. After all, stretching out your hand and causing amphibians to fall from the sky is rather less impressive when that happens anyway on most Tuesdays without any help from you, and furthermore does not endear you by any means to those whose morning ritual is to look out of the window and cry out unto the heavens, "Oh, not more bloody frogs?"
**Although probably not for very long before he had to crawl away with either a matching pair of broken knee caps or a mind that was under the hopefully temporary belief that it belonged to a cockroach.
I'm sure that, reading through this chapter and its footnotes, you can find reference to either some of Terry's other work, or the work of a certain close friend of his. :) Also A.A. pessimal pointed out the roots of the words whore and knave, meaning woman and man in Norse and German respectively, so I did a little tweak. Thanks, A.A!