The Borders Are Open
A/N: New chappie! I had quite a lot of fun writing this. I also had to keep looking up things to make sure it was all done in-character. I really hope I succeeded. Thank you for the story alert, by the way.
Chapter Two
The Witches of Lancre
EPISODE 1 PART 1
Granny Weatherwax had always had a feel for the landscape she saw as hers. The kingdom might belong to King Verence II [who had come to power in a rather interesting sort of events, but he was trying to be a good king, so that was alright], but she considered the rocks, the trees, the animals and even the people hers to protect.
In short, Lancre was hers, thankyouverymuch, and only she was allowed to gently terrorize everything in it.
The feeling that had suddenly popped up out of nowhere from all around her was a feeling of… openness.
The last time she'd felt something like that was when a few young gals had taken it into their heads to dance up at the Dancers [Eight red standing stones up on the moor. Think of them as a kind of fence. A very tall one with guards, pointy things every five feet and barbed wire over the top.], wearing down the magnetic field of the stones so it would be easier for elves [NOT the kind that St. North has got messing around in the workshop, but mean ones. Granny had put them in their places a bit back.] to cross into the world.
This was, however, very different. It didn't really feel threatening, or pushy and whining for attention. It just… was there, an option, a potential thing, like you'd have the choice not to go through the open doorway that had suddenly appeared. But, Granny felt, that there was a really real danger of accidentally falling through it, too. She couldn't tell what would happen then, or what was on the other side. This annoyed her.
"I can't be havin' with this," grumbled Granny, detaching her mind from where it had been sort of floating about, looking over Lancre, and stood up. She had someone to talk to.
In the middle of the town of Lancre stood the house of Nanny Ogg, who liked to be surrounded by noise and people. Seeing as these two often went hand in hand, she'd decided that she needed a house in town, which she got. The Ogg family was huge and having all of them staring at you through your window until you'd agree to give their matriarch one of the most expensive, luxurious houses was probably how this had been done, but nobody liked a critic.
Currently Nanny was commanding her troops of pale-faced, nervous daughters-in-law. She had rather a lot of them, seeing as she had been married three times, was a mother of fifteen, and now had an ever-growing bunch of in-laws, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The daughters-in-law were all plain, soft-voiced and every one of them was terrified that their picture would be moved to the cat's basket [Nanny owned a picture of everyone in the family. The way these were placed in the house was a way of keeping track of who were in or out of her favour. The cat's basket was a place of almost-banishment, near-hatred – and Greebo the cat slept there, which also was a reason to not want your picture in there.] after having failed to slave away at cleaning Nanny's house, cooking and the like.
The daughters-in-law stood in a line in front of Nanny, trembling slightly, while she marched past them, stopping occasionally to tap one of them on the shoulders, whisper something in their ear and then watched as they ran off to do as they were told. This was what most mothers-in-law considered to be fun and Nanny, people-person and overall very friendly to everyone, knew this to be one of her negative sides, but she didn't stop doing it or who would do the cooking and cleaning and stuff? Her? The idea.
She'd just send off the last one when there was a series of knocks on the back door [Witches never use the front door. Well, they do, but there were only three possible times this would happen, and all three times they'd be carried. This was after they were born, if they ever married, and after they'd died.] and a loud voice was heard right through the door.
"Gytha Ogg, you open this door right this minute!"
Nanny calmly walked over and opened it.
"Hello Esme," said Nanny Ogg amiably, having grown up with the other witch and used to Granny's ways. "D'you want anything? Tea, something stronger? I'll call one of the girls, if you like."
"No thank you," said Granny, stepping into Nanny's house, her pointed black witch's hat nearly touching the top of the doorpost.
[At this point it may be interesting to point out the importance of a good witch hat. It served as a way to tell everyone 'This head I'm sitting on is the head of a witch. Don't mess with her if you value yourself as you are.', it could be used to protect one's head from falling farmhouses, war hammers and such, and in the case of Nanny Ogg could hold a little bottle of liquor in the tip.]
Nanny shrugged, walked over to a chair and sat down. Granny didn't so much as follow her example, but did the same thing in her own way.
Nanny took off her own hat, took out a little bottle and poured a small drop into her own cup of tea, that had been standing on a table for a while already. She put the bottle back, placed the hat back on her head, took the cup in her hands and took a sip. Then she looked over at her fellow witch, who had pursed her lips a bit at seeing liquor used for non-medical purposes.
"To what do I owe the pleasure, Esme?" Nanny asked. Granny told her. Nanny sat back in her chair, still nursing her cup of tea, and hummed. "Well… the Ramtops have always been one of the most magical places," she said. "O'course, when a new doorway opens, it's bound to open here first."
"I dint tell it to."
"No Esme. D'you reckon we should take a look at what's on the other side?"
Granny snorted. "We'd be basic'ly giving whatever's on the other side straight directions to Lancre. No, we should probably try and close the doorways. Or barricade them. Maybe we should bring a third witch for it. Are Magrat or Agnes available?"
Nanny hummed a bit again, finishing her cup of tea and then fished for the little bottle in her hat again to put in to her lips and take a healthy sip. She smacked her lips with a satisfied expression on her face [She was very lucky to only have one tooth, or most of her teeth would have fallen out right there and then. That's what Nanny's liquor usually did: it could be used to clean rust straight off metal.] and shook her head.
"Nah. Magrat's too busy queenin' and Agnes is busy learnin' how to witch."
"Oh well," said Granny, who didn't really agree with this kind of argument. In her mind, if Granny Weatherwax said she wanted your help, you'd better give it, with some extra effort thrown in as well. But she also knew that between the two of them, they held a lot of power and could probably manage to close a few measly doorways to unknown places as of yet. "Well. I reckons we could close 'em by ourselves."
"Course we can," agreed Nanny. They exchanged some information as to where the doorways, the weak spots, the… cracks, were, spoke about how they'd go about it, and agreed to meet up in a few hours. Granny tried for midnight, for the right amount of drama and such, but Nanny didn't want to on account of having some grandchildren sleeping over. Granny left to fetch her broom and Nanny stayed to shout a bit more at her daughters-in-law.
Granny Weatherwax on a broom was a fearsome thing to behold. This was because she didn't have much truck with steering, or watching where she was flying, or very much beside yelling for things to get out of the way and curse when she crashed into trees and birds.
And her broom required some running up and down before it would start, which wasn't very dignified to be seen doing. No one in the entire kingdom of Lancre would risk laughing at her, but it was very tiring to have to do a lot of running before being able to fly off.
This time she managed to get into the air after only twenty laps up and down in front of her cabin. For Granny, flying was a straight line from A to B, and this time was no different when she landed, at the end of her trip, in a tree. It was only a few feet up, so all she had to do was, while grumbling about trees that just had to be put right into her path of flight, jump down and walk over to the first and, indeed, the biggest of the doorways, which they would use to close the others. Nanny hadn't arrived yet. Granny leaned her broom against a tree.
Granny spend the time she had to glare at a wolf, which slunk off in the other direction very quickly, to glare at a ripple in the sky that was apparently the doorway [which rippled a bit like water did if you dropped something in it when a butterfly flew past, being disturbingly careful not to touch it] and to see if she had brought her half needed for the spell. She had. It wasn't very much, and it wasn't very magical stuff, but it would do the job. Granny knew it was the intention that counted, not how much magic was in the eye of a newt.
There was a rattle of a cart and a cheerful yell.
"Coo-ee!"
Granny turned to see Nanny Ogg climbing down off a thing that couldn't be called a coach, and neither could it be called a cart because it was only a few hundred feet away from falling apart where it stood. It was lucky to have brought Nanny, her half of the stuff needed for the spell (including a big black cauldron), and her small grandchild this far – wait. Grandchild?
Granny stared at the little four-year-old boy named Pewsey that was lifted off the almost-ex-cart by his gran, shook her head exasperatedly, and marched up to the two of them just as the cart rumbled off again. [It would indeed fall apart about four-hundred feet away.]
"Why'd you bring the lad?" she said sharply.
Nanny shrugged. "His mam was a bit busy cleaning out the privy, and I couldn't see the harm in letting 'im tag along. He can see his gran at work, it'll be interesting for 'im!"
The boy in question stared up at Granny in the way of the very young who knew this was a woman who would probably not give him a sweetie. That's why he turned to his grandmother.
"Want sweetie," he ordered, in quite a deep voice for such a young child.
"Later, luv. C'mon, Esme, it will be fine. What could go wrong?"
[Wrong phrase to use, as it would soon turn out.]
"Fine," grumbled Granny. "But he's staying out of the way. Why dint you bring a length of rope to tie 'im to a tree?"
With little Pewsey at a distance, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg set up the spell. Technically it was just a very big black cauldron with stuff in it, but Discworld magic could be fooled by a lot of things. If you were impressive enough about it, you could get away with it while the magic was still wondering how exactly you'd done that trick with its watch.
Currently, however, they were having a bit of a problem. Or, to be more precise, a bit of an argument about a missing ingredient.
"No, Esme, I'm pretty sure you should have brought the flour," said Nanny, standing in front of Granny with her hands on her hips.
Granny narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. "Gytha Ogg, I checked it myself. You should have brought it. I ain't forgetful about things like that."
"No, you is never forgetful 'bout anything. I always says, Esme never forgets a thing."
"Gytha."
"Well, 's true. Sort of."
Granny stepped a bit closer. "If you'd have brought along the flour instead of that sticky grandchild of yours, we wouldn't have to go back for it. We was this close from closing the doorways, if that laddie-" she pointed to where Pewsey had been standing. He wasn't there. She paused. She looked. Pewsey was innocently toddling over to where the ripple in the sky was. "Gytha!"
He was three feet away from it.
"You could have brought it along, easy as that, Esme," began Nanny reproachfully.
Two.
"No, Gytha, look!" snapped Granny. When Nanny didn't react quickly enough to Granny's liking, she hitched up her skirts with one hand, grabbed her hat with the other and started running.
One.
Granny was five feet away from him when…
Zero.
…Pewsey touched the ripple in the sky. It spread out like static on a TV screen, like an aura in the vision of a migraine patient, like the rippling of water after throwing in a giant boulder. It spread out, taking Pewsey with it…
Granny was two feet away from the doorway. She screeched to a halt, staring thin-lipped at where Pewsey had been, only a second ago.
"I tole you," she mumbled. She turned to yell at Nanny, who was quite a bit shocked at having her grandson disappear into thin air. "I tole you that boy'd be trouble! Next time you bring 'im along, you're taking some rope with you! We can't have that boy trapped in there. We'll have to go and fetch him. Come along, Gytha!"
Without further ado, she turned around again, took a deep breath, and strode into the once-more-rippling doorway. The ripple took Granny Weatherwax along with it, leaving Nanny standing there looking dumb-founded. Then she reached for a little piece of paper stuck in her hat, and a pencil.
With the tip of her tongue out of her mouth, she began to scribble on the piece of paper. To Nanny, spelling was optional.
This is what she wrote:
Dear Jason and all but not at No. 61 until she takes back what she said about our Sharon,
Well we always new lil Pewsey was a coorious lad but this takes the sherry. Notte to worry, Granny Weatherwaxe an I will bring him back safe an sound. Untill then no one is to stop their choores and No. 34, I'm talkin to you. Tak care of Greebo for me.
Love, MOM.
PS: Granny sends her Love.
Nanny carefully folded the paper into a small square, walked up to a tree and wedged it behind a piece of bark with just a little tip of the paper showing. Then she fetched Granny's broom, laid it over her shoulder and stopped right in front of the doorway.
Balancing the broom between her shoulder blade and one of her arms, laid across it, she rubbed her hands gleefully together, letting out a delighted chuckle before making a standing jump into the rippling doorway, shouting, "Whoopie!"
The sky rippled. Nanny was gone. The wind blew over the hills. For about ten seconds, nothing happened. Then a grey tomcat with only one eye poked his head up amongst some thorn bushes. His name was Greebo, he was covered in scars and he had an air of maliciousness around him. He didn't know what to make of the rippling air that had made his, eh, 'mummy', disappear, but he felt that wherever Nanny went, interesting things were bound to happen. Greebo liked interesting things. He slunk out of the bushes without so much as getting his fur caught in the thorns and pawed over to the doorway. He considered it for a while. With a twitch of his tail he took a step forwards. He disappeared, leaving the Discworld with just a little bit less evil in it. For the moment, anyway.
To be continued.
A/N: Don't know why I ever stopped writing. It's so much fun and it gives you a bit of a power rush. Please tell me what you think!
Insert some sort of original goodbye,
Lisette
