Once upon a time the idea of a universe seemed utterly impossible.
Compared to the black infinity, which from the outside is in truth a duck-egg blue, a giant turtle with four elephants on its shell, and the elephants themselves carrying a revolving flat planet on their shoulders without suffering any fiction burn, seems almost sane. Still, this hasn't stopped scientists from calculated the chances of such a world existing, concluding it is a million-to-one. And this has not stop wizards from discovering Million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten.
This is because the Discworld exists right on the edge of reality. The smallest things can break through to the other side. So, on the Discworld, people take things seriously.
Like stories.
Because stories are important.
People think people shape stories. In fact, it's also the other way around. It works in both ways. Stories shape people and people shape the story.
Stories exist independently of their players. If you know it, the knowledge is power.
How effective this power depends on who else knows it and other possible factors, such as real life.
Take for example, Miss Sophie Hatter, the eldest of three daughters, a citizen of the Kingdom of Ingary, in the large expansive region of the Discworld called Octarine Grass Country and into the Ramtop Mountains. A place where everyone knows the eldest child will fail if they try to seek their fortune.
It should be noted to most people outside the region, the idea of any significant kingdoms existing in the Octarine Grass Country and the turnwise Ramtops is virtually a myth. This is due to the strange geography of these areas.
Kingdoms do exist in the Ramtops, and to say they lack geography is a lie. Indeed, the largest and most well-known, Lancre, has been described as having too much geography. The only trouble is, much of it is vertical. As such if any ruler were to offer their daughter and half their kingdom to the young farm boy who manages to slay the monster, there would be nothing left for the King.
And in the hilly, broken area which, because of the strange tint in the local flora, is called Octarine Grass Country, the magical properties of its soil mean nearly everyone is too busy to consider government. For example, it is one of the few places on the Disc where plants produced re-annual varieties, plants which grow backwards in time. You sow the seeds this year and they grow last year.
This does not mean the people of Octarine Grass Country are idiots, far from it, if not they wouldn't be able to live there. The best farmers of the region are very introspective with the calendars and weather forecasts and need a keen sense of timing, as a farmer who fails to sow the harvest he's already collected risks disturbing the space-time continuum, not to mention acute embarrassment.
The almost prejudiced view of Octarine Grass Country as an undeveloped yokel backwater is mainly due to the first main settlement you enter by road. Sheepridge, not far from the Chalk and the Upper Ankh River. It's not even a one-horse town, as if anyone owned a horse, it would've been eaten. The residents made a living by stealing one another's washing, and its town square can hardly be called such, more an enlarged crossroads with a clocktower, it does have a tavern though, so important a place it got rebuilt after an explosive fire, with a cellar too. Although depending when you enter it might just make you view of the place worse.
Further inland, or hubwards, towards the Ramtops and the centre of the Disc, or at the mouth of rivers between Pseudopolis and Llamedos, more substantial towns exist.
The Hatter family were not, as might be expected, poor woodcutters. Sophie's parents ran a well to do ladies' hat shop in the prosperous town of Market Chipping, set in the Folding Valley in the foothills of the Ramtops.
True, her own mother died when with her at the age of two and her sister Lettie as an infant, their father married his young shop assistant, a pretty blonde name Fanny. Fanny later gave birth to the third sister, Martha. This should have made Sophie and Lettie into the Ugly Stepsisters, but in fact all three girls grew quite pretty. Sophie inherited her biological mother's strawberry blonde hair, or as she would put it red gold. Martha, though only twelve when this story begins already attracted young boys, none of them dared put frogs down her blouse or steal the wheels off her toy pram. Everyone considered Lettie a local beauty. And Fanny treated all three girls with equal kindness and never favoured Martha.
Mr Hatter, proud of his three daughters, sent them to the best school in town. Sophie proved the most studious. She read a great deal, and soon realised how little were her chances at an interesting life. Disappointing maybe, but she still lived happily enough, since Fanny always worked busily in the shop Sophie looked after her sisters and grooming Martha to seek her fortune when the time came. Lettie by no means resigned herself to being bound by Narrative Causality.
"It's not fair!" she would shout, "Why should Martha have the best of it just because she was born the youngest? I shall marry a prince, so there!"
Martha always retorted she herself would end up disgustingly rich without having to marry anybody. Then Sophie would have to drag them apart and mend their clothes, and quite deft with her needle, later she made clothes for her sisters too. The deep rose outfit for Lettie the May Day before this story really starts, Fanny said looked like it came from the most expensive shop in Kingsbury, the capital of Ingary, high up in an isolated plateau of the Ramtops.
About this time everyone began talking of the Witch of the Waste again. Threating the life of the King's daughter and the King commanded one of his finest wizards, Sir Benjamin Suliman, Baronet, to go into the Waste and deal with the Witch. It seemed not only did he failed, he got himself killed.
A few months after, a tall off-balanced, black castle, elevated on four spindly legs, appeared on the hills above Market Chipping, blowing clouds of black smoke from its four tall and thin turrets. What made it scarier, the castle did no stay in the same place. Sometime a small smudge on the moors hubwards and turnwise, sometimes it reared above the rocks to the widdershins, and other times right downhill to sit in the heather only just beyond the last hubwards farm. You could see it moving sometimes, the leg movements resembling a lizard, with smoke pouring out from the turrets in dirty grey gusts. For a while everyone feared the castle would come right down into the valley before long, and the Mayor talked of sending a message to the King asking for help.
But the castle stayed roving about the hills, and before long people learned it belonged to the Wizard Howl, not the infamous Witch of the Waste as everyone terrifyingly speculated. But soon people talk about the Wizard Howl being a nasty piece of work. An official statement from the Archchancellor of Unseen University, the foremost school for wizards appeared in the papers saying no wizard, not even in the past who studied, let alone passed any exam at UU went by the name of Howl, and Professor Stibbons doubled checked on any variations. Many in Ingary speculated he must have come from their own Royal Sorcery Academy, but no statement from them came at all, this only added to the speculation about Howl. Though he did not seem to want to leave the hills, rumour spread of his amusements, such as collecting young girls and eating their hearts, and soon enough the addition of pretty got included. No girl in Market Chipping could go out alone, which annoyed them greatly.
Other things came to mind before long for the Hatter girls. Mr Hatter died suddenly, just as Sophie reach the appropriate age to leave school for good. And it soon became apparent Mr Hatter felt too proud of his daughter. The school fees he paid left the shop in heavy debts.
When the formalities of the funeral ended Fanny sat the girls down in the parlour of the house connected to the shop, where many of the staff kept their day clothes or sewed in the cottage industry fashion, to explain the situation.
"You'll all have to leave that school, I'm afraid. I've been doing sum back and front and sideways, and the only way I can see keep the business going and take care of the three of you is too settle you in promising apprenticeships. It isn't practical to have you all in the shop. I can't afford it. So, this is what I've decided." She looked to Sophie. "Now it seems only right and just that you Sophie should inherit the hat shop when I retire, being the eldest as you are, so you'll be apprenticed by Bessie. How do you feel about that?"
Sophie could hardly say, she still felt resigned to the hat trade. So, she thanked her stepmother gratefully. Fanny smiled "No, thank you Sophie, the shop meant almost as much to your Father as you three did.", Fanny then addressed Lettie and Martha. "As for you two my dears, that is a bit more difficult, I've made arrangements with Cesari's, the pastry cook in Market Square. They've a name for treating their learners like kings and queens, either of you should be very happy there, as well as learning a useful trade. Mrs Cesari's a good customer and a good friend, and she's agreed to squeeze one of you in as a favour."
Lettie and Martha shared a glance at each other, Lettie turned back. "And the last apprenticeship Mother?"
"Yes, Miss Perspicacia Tick has arrived in town looking for promising girls."
A worried frown came across Martha. "She's a witch, isn't she?"
Fanny sighed. "Yes, but she also a witch-finder. She looks in the regions which are hostile to witches for girls who have the potential to become witches. A person with the gifts of a witch but without the opportunity to develop them can be an unhappy, even dangerous, girl. I imagine that's how the Witch of the Waste started. Miss Tick is not like other witches, most notably is that she was educated at the Quirm College for Young Ladies, they've taught the Duchesses of Ankh, Quirm and Sto Helit, as well as Georgina Bradshaw. And more specifically she's looking for an apprentice for Mistress Tiffany Aching, the Witch of the Chalk, she advices the ruling Baron, who is also by marriage going to inherit the land of Keepsake, and Mistress Aching knows the Queen of Lancre very well."
Sophie, listening, felt Fanny worked everything out just as it should be, she could practically predict the outcome. Lettie, who is thought to be probably the most pretty of the three, as the second daughter, would never likely amount to much, so she wouldn't be picked as the apprentice witch and Fanny would put her where she might meet a handsome young apprentice and live happily ever after.
Martha as the youngest and the best chance to have magic, would be bound to strike out and make her fortune, would have witchcraft and rich friends to help her.
Next day Miss Tick arrived at the house. She apologised from being late as she needed to find a place to park her cavern and tether her mule, Joseph, to graze. Fanny pretended said cavern and mule didn't exist, it did not suit someone who would have been in the same classroom as Lady Sybil Vimes, the Duchess of Ankh, to consort with mules.
Miss Tick resembled an old and friendly female teacher with a black witch's attire superimposed onto her. Skinny with a sharp and thin nose. She didn't have any jewellery, nor any broom about her person. At first it seemed she didn't have the pointed hat, not until Fanny made the girls promise not to announce Miss Tick's status as a witch in fear of causes riots in town. Only then did the toad on her hat release a spring lock and the point unwound like coiled spring upward in prefect form. The Toad, happened to be a magical lawyer, and member of the Guild of Lawyers of Ankh-Morpork, Mr James Natter, or Natter Jack, his toad form came about due to a lawsuit against a Fairy Godmother.
Sophie kept out of the way, she simply looked on as she began to dampen and mould a new hat, she did know a lot about the trade already.
Fanny introduced Lettie and Martha to Miss Tick. Both Lettie and Martha looked unsure but interested as Miss Tick explained an important rule.
"It not all whizzing about on broomsticks and waving wand, no matter what Letice Earwig says, it's got a lot of grime and dirt. Witches don't use magic unless they really must. It's hard work and difficult to control. It is not a toy. We do other things. A witch pays attention to everything that's going on. A witch uses her head. A witch is sure of herself. A witch always has a piece of string…"
Sophie without saying anything picked up a pair of the leftover spools of knotted thread. Knotted because near the Ramtops, situated under a thick ley line and with dozens of sharp mountains conducting and earthing the thaumaturgical discharges, random magical occurrences will happen. For example, next door's Hogswatch tree last year seemed to be full of shelled peanuts. And in the Hatter's case threads would get tied with impossible knots every few finger lengths, the worst of these instances you would need to completely unwind the spool and undo every knot from end to the beginning before they would stay unwound. Since Mr Hatter ran a business he couldn't waste workhours, which often spread into spare time, meticulously going through the occasional magically tied thread, so he shelved them and intended to through them away.
Sophie put the spools down and a took a couple of scissors from a draw in the table. Then returned to her corner.
Miss Tick watched her for a moment, then returned to the two girls before her, "Now, let's see if either of you can make a shamble, if you can't do that then you are very unlikely to be a witch, it's not always the case, there are always exceptions, I mean Granny Weatherwax never made one, but this is a tried and tested method of telling. A shamble will give you focus!"
Sophie, listening to this in between measuring and trimming the silk linings, observed Miss Tick spoke in a repeated manner, she must have done this lesson hundreds of times in the, many, years as a witch-finder.
Miss Tick raised her hand in the air, and, something, suddenly appeared in it. One moment nothing, the next she held, something. No flash or sparks. Nothing like what Sophie heard about wizards' magic. It didn't need to be. The air boiled, dancing, fluttering, alive even, and Miss Tick continued, "See how the air moves, see how it waits, it's the place my shamble could be, where it could advise me."
So, Sophie thought, a potential shamble. She looked back again and now Miss Tick held an egg in her hand, with some twigs, thread and a small stone with a hole in it.
Miss Tick's eyes studied the room. Fanny looked with awe, almost like she stood before a god, she looked closer, disgust at the jumble in her grasp. Martha bit her lip and sweat appeared on her brow. Lettie blinked, her eyes shook astounded. And Sophie, she just watched, studying. Miss Tick gave a small nodded and broke the silence with her lecture.
"These items I had about me could make that shamble." She studied all the serious faces and sighed, this always happened, "But now it's time for each of you to male your shamble." She pointed to the egg. "And it must have something living in it. Just shut your eyes and make a shamble out of anything you have with you."
Lettie nodded and started going through her pockets. Martha scratched her head, and somehow pulled out a spider from it, much to her mother's dismay. She briefly glanced to Sophie, using her thread, needles and scraps of cloth. Then to Fanny, she looked to Sophie as well with an air of disappointment and regret, but, even with her experience, learning the truth is still hard. A girl might be useful at home helping raise her younger siblings or working in a family business.
She shook her head. She came to test the younger girls. She could tell both possessed the innate magical talent, she knew her witches. But deciding to train as a witch require more than the talent. Hard work and dedication would most certainly be involved, and even then, it would not be easy. She knew Fanny would support one of the girls, indeed encourage it, but perhaps for the wrong reason. She would talk to Mistress Aching about this.
She could also tell a lot about a girl from the contents of their pockets, and a lot from what they don't have. Miss Tick carried a small cheese in her pocket, you couldn't do good magic without a snack. Out load she advised, "Even a worm is alive, keeping one in a little box with some leaves is fine."
Lettie chuckled. "Like Billy Samsonite." Then she looked aside and got up from her chair to run upstairs. She returned quickly with a small white mouse scurrying around her finger, she comforted it, "It's all right Sooty, it's only for a little while."
Martha turned to Miss Tick. "That's not far, she didn't have her pet mouse on her person."
Miss Tick laughed. "Part of being a witch is being clever, well done Lettie."
Lettie carefully tied the knotted thread around Sooty in a knot meant not to hurt him. Martha struggled with the spider and hairpins. With them distracted Miss Tick looked to Sophie, who currently wafted a fly away, but it kept landing in the mess of spares she assembled on the opposite side of the table.
The room suddenly started to shudder. Lettie and Martha simultaneously looked to their shambles. Then a steam whistle blew. The two girls flinched and turned dejected, Martha blushed. Miss Tick shook her head with a smile, everyone tried to claim reasonability for something, whether it be a flash of lightning, or a sunrise, or a sudden breath of wind. Still, a little self-belief in a witch is a start, it would need to be curbed before it turned to arrogance, or else she could go Cackling.
Lettie gasped as she pulled the thread. Sooty the mouse and the bag of marbles floated a few millimetres of the table.
Miss Tick smiled "Well done.", she turned to Martha and blinked, as soon as the girl pulled hers off it came apart, the spider on a piece of felt scarp floated gently to the floor. The moment the piece hit, a spark of magic escaped Martha's fingers and hit the spool of knotted thread. It turned into an egg timer filled with multicoloured sand. She put her fingers to her mouth.
"Interesting." Miss Tick said "Both of you have got the hang of it. After that it's just a matter of learning, and every day." She then inhaled wryly. "The trouble is, Mistress Aching is only expecting one girl."
Fanny nodded. "And so is Cesari's." She put her hand on Martha's shoulder. "You had the best reaction Martha, I think you should go."
Miss Tick narrowed her eyes. She looked to Lettie, who untied her mouse, making a good attempted at hiding her disappointment and frustration. Then to Sophie, who didn't seem to notice. She just sowed the linings to the hat. The scraps beside her looked slightly rearranged, and the fly remained, but it could have easily been the train's doing.
She got up and talked with Fanny and Martha, she would be leaving, not wanting to stay for too long so close to the territory of the Witch of the Waste.
Sophie paused, she wondered about mentioning the Wizard Howl, but she thought better than to butt into Martha's chances. It would just be rude.
The next day Sophie helped Martha pack her clothes in a box and the morning after they all saw her off following Miss Tick's little wagon on the carrier's cart, looking small, upright and nervous, for the road to the Chalk where Mistress Aching lived.
"She'll be all right," said Lettie. She refused any help when packing. When the witch-finder's party disappeared into the vanishing point, Lettie crammed all her possessions into a pillowcase and paid the neighbour's boot boy sixpence to wheel it in a barrow to Cesari's in Market Square. She marched behind it looking much more cheerful than Sophie expected. Indeed, around her sister hung an air of shaking the dust of the hat shop off her feet.
The boot boy brought back a scribbled note from Lettie saying she put her things in the girls' dormitory and Cesari's seemed great fun. A couple of weeks later the carrier brought a letter from Martha to say she arrived safely and saying things about Mistress Aching being a serious but caring dear, some nonsense about little blue men and the intense stare of Mistress Aching's aged white cat.
Sophie didn't hear from her sisters from quite a while, because she officially started her own apprenticeship the day Martha and Lettie left.
She knew the people who worked there. Most of them the late Mr Hatter remembered from his days a boy. Sophie knew Bessie, the only remaining shop assistant. She knew the customers who bought the hats and the man who drove the cart which fetched raw straw hats in from the country to be shaped on the blocks in the shed. She knew the other suppliers and how you made felt for winter hats. Fanny did not teach her much, except perhaps the best way to get customer to buy a hat.
"You lead up to the right hat, love," Fanny said. "Show them the ones that won't quite do first, so they know the difference as soon as they put the right one on."
In fact, Sophie did not sell hats very much. After a day or so observing in the work shed, and another day going around the clothier and the silk merchants with Fanny, Fanny, set her to trimming hats. Sophie sat in a small room in the back of the shop, indeed leading off the staff workroom, sewing roses to bonnets and veiling to velour, lining all of them with silk and arranging wax fruit and ribbons stylishly on the outsides. And good at it. She liked doing it. But she felt isolated and a little dull.
She could set a watch by the times of the train, which ran directly under her window. The light grey smoke shutting out her light, however she managed to focus on the stitching, even in such reduced light.
The workshop people were too old or too silly to be much fun and besides, they treated her as someone apart who would inherit the business someday. Bessie treated her the same way, and she would only talk about the farmer she would be marrying the week after May Day. Sophie rather envied Fanny, who could bustle of to bargain with the silk merchant whenever she wanted.
The most interesting thing being the talk from the customers. Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping. Sophie sat in her room and stitched overhearing how the Mayor would never eat green vegetables, and Howl's Castle moved around the cliffs again. The voices always dropped low when they talked of the Wizard Howl, but gathered he caught a girl down the valley last month.
"Bluebeard!" said the whispers, and then the voices would resume and say Jane Farrier looked a perfect disgrace the way she did her hair, she would never attract Howl, let alone a respectable man. There would be a fleeting, fearful whisper about the Witch of the Waste. Sophie began to feel the Wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste should get together.
"They seem to be made for one another. Someone ought to arrange a match," she remarked to the hat she trimmed at the time.
By the end of the month the gossip in the shop became all about Lettie. Cesari's, it seemed, got packed with gentlemen from morning to night, each one buying quantities of cakes and demanding to be served by Lettie. She got ten marriage proposals, ranging in quality from the Mayor's son to the lad who swept the streets, she refused them all, declaring herself too young to make up her mind yet.
"I call that sensible of her," Sophie said to a bonnet she pleated silk into.
Fanny became pleased with the news. "I knew she'd be all right!", it occurred to Sophie, Fanny seemed glad to have Lettie out of the shop.
"Lettie's bad for customers," she told the bonnet, pleating away at the mushroom-coloured silk. "She would make even you look glamorous, you dowdy old thing. Other ladies look at Lettie and despair."
Sophie talked to hats more and more as weeks went by. No one much else to talk to. With Fanny out bargaining or trying to whip up customers much of the day, and Bessie busy serving and telling everyone her wedding plans. Sophie got into the habit of putting each hat on its stand as she finished it, where it sat looking almost like a head without a body and pausing while she told the hat what the body under it ought to be like. She flattered the hats a bit, because you should flatter customers.
"You have a mysterious allure," she told one all veiling with hidden twinkles. To a wide creamy hat with roses under the brim she said, "You are going to have to marry money", and to a caterpillar-green straw with a curly green feather she said, "You are as young as a spring leaf." She told pink bonnets they carried dimpled charm and smart hats trimmed with velvet to be witty. She told the mushroom-pleated bonnet, "You have a heart of gold and someone in a high position will see it and fall in love with you." She felt sorry for this bonnet, it looked so fussy and plain.
Jane Farrier bought the bonnet. Sophie felt more pity when she chose it. About a week before May Day someone asked for a mushroom bonnet like the one Jane Farrier wore when she ran off with the Earl of Cataract. And everyone bought hats and bonnets. Maybe Fanny's sales talks worked, or Springtime, but the hat trade picked up. Fanny turned a little guiltily, "I think I shouldn't have been in such a hurry to get Martha and Lettie placed out. At this rate we might have managed."
New gossip came to the shop. The King quarrelled with his own brother Prince Justin, and the Prince went into exile. Nobody knew the reason for the quarrel, but the Prince supposedly came through Market Chipping in disguise a couple of months back. The Earl of Cataract came by order of the King to look for the Prince when he happened to meet Jane Farrier instead.
Sophie sewed at night, and admitted she lived a dull life. She started wearing a demure grey dress, tied her long strawberry blonde hair into a pony tail with little pink ribbons, primarily so her strands wouldn't get caught in her sowing, and helped in the shop. But the demand meant she would spend most of her time trimming hats. Every evening she finished the orders to be sold next day.
She did not go out. Either she could not find the time or the energy or it seemed a great distance to Market Square, or she remembered not to go on her own lest she come across the Wizard Howl. But she began to think differently. Whenever she helped in the shop no one would strike up a conversation besides her sisters. She didn't get any suitors, could she be the less pretty of the three, as the eldest? She wondered. Could she in fact be ugly? In the black and white family iconographs she noticed more similarities with her late father. She must have a man's face.
Anyway, it seemed odd, every day it seemed more difficult to go and see her sister. She always considered Lettie the strongest minded of the three, but Sophie thought she came close, but now she could only do stuff she wanted when no excuses were left.
"This is absurd," she mussed "It's just a quick tram ride over to Market Square." She decided to go to Cesari's when the hat shop closed early for May Day.
Hello readers.
First, thank you for deciding to read this. Now I can move on to some explanations.
The genesis for this story came when I first attempted to read the original book by the late Dame Diana Wynne Jones. Having become familiar with the Discworld books with work like Mort and Reaper Man I found myself thinking, 'The book Howl's Moving Castle reads very much like an early Discworld book,'. I must admit I could not find much enjoyment in my first attempt at reading it, partly due to being at University at the time, but more primarily because of my familiarity with the film by Hayao Miyazaki, being the second Studio Ghibli film, I ever watch, and a favourite of mine, despite the troubled plot.
I let the book lie for a while as I formulated my thought on it and the film, worked through my third year at University, and read and listened (via audiobooks) to more Discworld books and gained more familiarity with the setting and characters.
Only after re-reading a few of my collection of roughly twenty Discworld books at least once during a Christmas temporary job as something to do during my breaks, and between acquiring a few more, I pricked up my copy of Dame Diana Wynne Jones's book and read through it properly. And then as I did so, I started finding several things I could do to connect the two stories, and I became determined to incorporate the film as well, so expect many elements from both versions of Howl's Moving Castle.
I will note to better integrate the writing style of Pratchett and Jones, I am not going to include Pratchett's famous footnotes. I'm sorry if some view that as a disappointment.
Onto the story itself. With my chapter annotations.
It should go without saying the title is a joke on the English translation of the title ending ballad for the film.
I choose to develop Octarine Grass Country as it's a region of the Discworld which has always fascinated me. I feel a little disappointed Sir Terry never returned to it in detail after Reaper Man, we've had brief details mention of it in Thud! like how the River Koom runs through and in Raising Steam, but nothing truly substantial. And despite what some people might say, I have looked through I Shall Wear Midnight and nowhere in there or in The Shepherd's Crown does it say Keepsake Hall is in Octarine Grass Country or that it's landholding extend to Sheepridge and according to the route map of the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway provided in my paperback of Raising Steam, Sheepridge is outside of the Chalk, but presumably close enough for Magrat Garlick to have made it by broomstick to the market there to buy a tortoise, as she claims to have done in Wyrd Sisters.
You might be surprised, but I didn't make up the shell peanuts things out of the blue. My family Christmas tree for 2017 (Time of writing is mid May 2018) was full of shell peanuts and we don't know why.
The knotted threads bit was inspired by a small bit in writer Sweet Inu Girl's massive work The Accession. (If you are a fan of Inuyasha, I highly recommend her works.)
The comment of Billy Samsonite is a reference to William "Compo" Simmonite from the long running BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine. It's character interaction is a lot like in the Discworld books.
Lettie's pet mouse named Sooty and the bag of marbles, first I wanted to develop Lettie a little further, given how she acts in the book I thought a mild tomboy would make sense for her. And as for the name of her mouse, there's a rather cute moment in the Sooty & Co episode Sooty's Magic Solutions where briefly the titular magical teddy bear as a white mouse on his head.
I changed the name of the Count of Catterack in the book, to the Earl of Cataract as an attempt at Pratchett play on word humour. Although I fear it might be a bit childish.
I hope you enjoyed this first chapter. Most of this is lifted from the book with elements of the film, and obviously elements from the Tiffany Aching books added in. Next chapter will pick up where the film begins.
See you next time.