The Cold and the Cunning
By Vifetoile
A/N: Perhaps it would never be in-character for Granny to share this story, but, really, if I relied on that interpretation, there would be no story to tell. So here we are.
Set post-I Shall Wear Midnight, requires knowledge of Witches Abroad. I don't own anything in Discworld, though I wouldn't mind if I did.
If it had happened to anyone else, you would say that the woman had come down with a bad case of pneumonia. But this was not anyone. This was Granny Weatherwax. Typically she put pneumonia down, not the other way around.
But something in her didn't fight this time; somehow the years of work and asceticism and little rest had caught up to her in one fell swoop, and left her bedridden for a time.
Not that she went hungry. Soups, chowders, sausages, preserves, and a fresh loaf of bread every other day, silent gifts from the watchful, timid villagers. One little child even left a loose bundle of flowers on her doorstep, and mint, for tea. And she wasn't left to suffer, either. Gytha Ogg was over daily without fail. Magrat, Agnes, Miss Level, even Miss Tick, all paid visits, with remedies for the cold she did not have. Then Tiffany – rather, Miss Aching – made plans to spend the night, and by that we mean she arrived at Granny's cottage with a small overnight bag and simply did not leave. In the manner of witches.
After Nany and Agnes had left, and the sun had set, it was just Tiffany, Granny, You, and a pot of tea.
After a long draught of tea, with a comfortable silence, Granny had said, "Spit it out."
Tiffany knew what she meant. She supposed the words had been spilling over all night.
"How did you defeat him? The Cunning Man?"
Granny was silent for a long time. But she meant to answer. Some people take to sharing their lives the same way a cat takes to sharing its kill, but all the same, there's a need for communication, to share a sense of Yes, I did that too – I remember how it was that's probably as fixed in the human past as two monkeys assuring themselves they once slept in the same tree, yes, that was a nice tree indeed, back in the day.
Granny fixed her blue eyes on her student, who sat, mild as milquetoast, awaiting an answer. Finally she looked away, stroked You on her lap, and said, "I had help."
The younger witch's eyes widened. That was the last thing she'd expected to hear. She doubted that Granny had ever uttered that phrase before in her life. "Oh?"
"I had a sister. Little older than me. Name was Lily. She was a witch, too. Plenty of power. And him, when he came, he hunted us both. Now I was the primary target – but Lily caught his eye, too. People said she was beautiful – she certainly acted like she was – and she was cunning, too. Like him. She thought of a way to trap him, once we'd caught on to his chase. How to trap him with mirrors, and the ice, and herself as bait."
"The ice…"
"Yes. She always could plan."
There was a spilt word there. "Did it work?"
"Mostly. It was… headology, outwitting him, but when you're against the Cunning Man, you need to borrow the power of others. You used fire, and the burning of the King, and all the cycles of the Chalk… and that fit you. But I used the cold. And Lily used mirrors."
"But did it work?"
"There was a hitch at the last minute…* Nothing a mill pond and water-wheel couldn't help. But I banished him. Me, no matter what Lily tried to say." Tiffany nodded.
Then Granny backtracked. "I succeeded using her as bait. It was Lily's idea. And it worked. But that encounter changed her. It was too close. He leaked into her mind. After that day she always linked witches and evil. She couldn't ever wash her hands enough. She looked down at me for wearing a pointed hat. One day she got a wand. She wasn't going to be a witch. She would be a shining fairy godmother." The last phrase received as much condescension as Mrs. Earwig ever merited on her worst day.
"And she drew herself further and further into mirrors… and then one day she ran away and never came back."
Tiffany's mind, or maybe spilt words, supplied the epilogue: And she became a bad witch, a glittering, beautiful witch, but a bad witch all the same. And because there always has to be a good witch and a bad witch, I had to be the good witch. But oh, if I could have been wicked – I could have been wicked!
But all that Granny said, leaning back in her chair with a sigh, was "That had deep echoes, echoes along the years. And sooner or later you always have to pay the price you didn't foresee. Lily and me, both. Time does make fools of us all."
* Tiffany had a feeling that a "hitch" according to Granny Weatherwax would involve fire raining from the sky.