Openings of Discworld novels as yet unwritten…
The first in an occasional series of openings for which I can't yet see a resolution. If anyone wants to run with them message me and I will gladly give them away.
Tiffany Aching followed the line of the river, glad that the journey was over and the impossibly white gleaming city was drawing nearer. Riverboats paddled on below her, and beyond the city she could see and smell the sea.
All she knew was that Granny Weatherwax had set her a test: to locate Mrs Erzulie Gogol and make herself known to the voodoo witch. Granny had also given her a letter to deliver.
Tiffany was aware that she could search the foetid swamps surrounding the city for months, and if the voodoo witch did not want to be found, she would remain elusive. But Nanny Ogg had whispered a lead into her ear, and with this in mind, she steered towards the chocolate-box castle that dominated the city, looking for a flat surface to land on and a chance to rest her aching back. And other parts chafed and bruised by three weeks of broomstick riding.
"Are we there yet, mistress?" a voice behind her inquired. She sighed. Daft Wullie had been asking that at roughly half-hourly intervals since they had left the Chalk.
"Crivvens, how many times do I have to tell ye? We're going further and longer than any Feegle have ever gone before, tae Genua! It's no' like going down the rood tae the alchemist's!"
They'd insisted on escorting her. She was ferrying a honour guard of seventy Feegles, in the bristles and in two panniers, one either side, she suspected travelling more comfortably than she was among spare clothing and other luggage.
But… she sighed, and circled an upper patio of some sort among the high towers. It appeared to glitter, as if a constellation of stars had fallen, and was home to many upright rectangular and oval frames whose purpose was not immediately apparent to her. She landed her stick into dust and litter, her boot-soles grating on what she discovered to be broken glass.
"Somebody should tidy all this up." she mused, disapprovingly. "It looks like it's not been touched in years!"
Tiffany's first reaction on landing was relief that the journey was over, and a need to stretch and rub bruised and numbed parts. Otherwise she might have thought about the implications of what she'd just said.
"You stay here for now." she said, firmly, to her Feegles, who were tumbling off the stick and out of the panniers like a blue eruption. "I'll go down into this castle and see if I can find this Mrs Pleasant. Nanny said she lives in the kitchens. I won't be long."
After she had left, the Feegles held a conference.
"The big wee hag said somebody should clear up around here. Ye cannae ignore the wishes of a hag!"
"Aye, weill. But there are all they broken mirrors and bits o'glass aboot the place. Can we dae it, Big Yin?"
"We did it with yon mirror-ball thingie the coachman was carryin'. We can do it here. 'Tis only a matter of scale! Besides, all yon broken glass lyin' around is dangerous, to my way of thinkin'. Lets's dae the wishes of the hag!"
And the Feegle set to work, industriously sorting and matching and fixing….
Less than an hour later, they were looking at a cleared patio and a series of renewed mirrors.
Daft Wullie and Wee Jock shook hands.
"Looks neater the noo!" Wee Jock said, approvingly. The Feegle had discovered they could rebuild shattered and broken things, up to and including an entire pub, during a recent visit to Ankh-Morpork. Some were even discovering a guilty pleasure in anti-vandalism.
"Have ye noticed, Big Yin, how all they mirrors seem tae make a regular shape?" Daft Wullie remarked. "All of them facin' inwards, aye, as if they're all focusing on a point.."
Big Angus tasted the air. There was a tinny sort of feel to the air, like the moment before a thunderstorm…
"There's hag-magic here!" he decided. "Maybe we should get the wee hag, aye, and the local hag she's come this far tae see… and what'ye daein' there, Wullie?"
Daft Wullie was carefully moving the position of a mirror, leaning hard until the rusty castors on its feet squeaked a few inches.
"This one's oot o'kilter wi'the rest" he said. "Just budge it along a wee bit.. There!"
"No!" screamed the little Gonnagle, realising. He'd been feeling uneasy about this for some time now. But he'd not said anything, reasoning that it kept his brothers out of trouble.
But it was too late.
There was a glittering swirl in the centre of the circle of renewed mirrors. It looked like glass and colour and pieces of a human body, reflected as they would be in broken shards of glass, swirling and moving until they came together as a recognisable human shape. The Feegle watched in numbed horror from seventy different hiding places.
And then the woman was standing there.
Crivvens!
She looks aye like the Hag o'Hags in Lancre!
Lilith de Tempscire stood, whole and renewed in the world, in the middle of a circle of mirrors.
"I chose correctly, it seems." she said to herself.
Then she laughed, exultantly.
"I am back. And it seems as if there is another witch in my castle. A sending from my sister."
She stomped off to the same door Tiffany had used an hour before.
At the doorway, she paused.
"I thank you, nac mac Feegle. I will return to…reward…you later."