Chapter 14: Epilogue One - Discworld

Chapter Text

Carrot slumped over his lager watching the patrons of the Bucket, and took special notice of the groups who'd sent the visitors home. The witches, wizards, and watchpeople sat at different tables, and he could catch snatches from each of them. It didn't take much concentration to tune in to the witches, since there were fewer of them and sat closer to him. Granny Weatherwax sat straight upright with a small glass of a clear liquid, squinting suspiciously at everyone. A little while ago she'd driven away Archchancellor Ridcully with a tart smile. There was probably a story there, but if it didn't breach the King's Peace he didn't have to know about it.

The small, dumpling-shaped witch handled a tankard of ale successfully - it wasn't her first tankard either, and addressed the youngest woman.

Carrot had learned that this messy-haired and slightly anxious-looking woman was actually the queen of Lancre, and her comfortably dressed companion, who sat peaceably slightly back from the women, was the king. Neither was dressed in anything resembling royal costume. The dumpling-shaped witch had asked the queen a question.

"That was some lovely work you did with the healing. I'm glad we didn't have Binky's master come back." DEATH'S white horse had been named by its original owner's three-year old child. Nanny was glad that the horse's owner had not returned, because she preferred not to play so many games of Cripple Mr. Onion. (The traditional game with DEATH was chess, but Nanny had her own rules.)

"Thank you."

"Those herbs of yours worked better than I thought they would."

Magrat narrowed her eyes. She'd learned, in the way that a person learns something that everyone knows, that it was said that Magrat was considered the better healer, because she knew the exact kinds and measurements of herbs mattered, and Granny was the better witch because she knew they didn't. This was not a proper endorsement of her methods. She smiled briefly. "You're too kind."

Wheedling, and a little annoyed at Magrat's tone, Nanny said, "The way Verence used that clown's horn - was that from when he was a Fool?"

During the time before Verence ascended the throne he'd had been an unhappy Fool. He and Magrat had found true love, although they'd never done anything about it until Granny Weatherwax sent him a letter while the witches were abroad. Verence had started planning a wedding without Magrat, and though everything had worked out, she still wasn't entirely pleased to have been managed by the older witches. As such, she didn't appreciate remarks about Verence's past in public - she was fairly sure the tall red-haired watchman was listening to them - and didn't see why she needed to give an answer. This was one of the changes from five years of queening.

"No, it's something we worked out together. We normally used it for people who are drowning in Lancre River." She put a hand over her mouth and yawned a little. "My goodness, I'm tired. Verence, do you think the tyrant has extra beds in the castle?"

Verence surfaced from his pleasant daydreaming. "He's the Patrician, and yes, I'm sure he has extra space. Do you want to send a message?"

"No, it's a nice evening. We can go to the palace, and then walk in the garden, perhaps. You said he had a large garden."

Verence held out his arm for Magrat and they proceeded graciously from the noisy tavern. It was a long trip to Lancre, and she'd tell them eventually, but it did no harm to leave them curious. She didn't want to explain just yet how she'd learned this newer style of healing and magic. Besides, she didn't want to tell all of it until she'd had time to read Goodie's books again. She'd always been more literate and curious than other witches, who sometimes didn't read at all, and her success as a healer was increased by the books Goodie Whemper had left behind. It may be that when a witch's cottage is empty, the witch will appear who can best use that cottage. Certainly by having any books at all, Goodie was extremely unusual. One shelf was given over to a very old set of seven books. The expensive-looking binding was intact but worn, and the pages were yellow and cracked with age. The magic was unknown to the Disc, either by witch or wizard, and frustratingly, nothing was described in great detail. If she didn't know better, she'd say these were pure fictional tales.

Witches and wizards went to the same school in these stories, and the instructors were also both wizards and witches. What an astonishing idea! The books seemed to be quest-type rather than instruction tools, and it was gratifying that of the three main students in these quests, one was a girl said to be "the brightest witch of her age."

She'd borrowed some of the ideas from the books, and was surprised and gratified when they worked. She'd created a wand for herself - although she knew Nanny and Granny considered them child's toys, they seemed essential to this magic. It had not been child's play to create wands. The method of wand manufacture wasn't given in detail, and she had no idea how to get wand "cores" of the three main types. Unicorn hair - she shuddered - the only one she knew was wild, and Granny was the only witch who could control it. Dragon heartstring - the only noble dragon ever known was the one which had attacked Ankh Morpork and then disappeared. Possibly Duchess Ramkin would give her one when one of her little dragons died? But those were very weak dragons and exploded frequently; they didn't sound like they'd be strong enough for a wand. She'd never heard of a phoenix anywhere.

In the end, she borrowed from the strongest magic she knew - the standing stones which loved metal. They'd trapped elves, and could attract nails, bridles, and some bits of armor she'd tried. She chipped a tiny bit from each stone, not enough to weaken its magic, and then packed it into a stick of sapient pearwood, traded in all the way from the same areas which produced wizards' staffs. Even a queen developed a housewife's thriftiness, and she ended up with three of them, with more pearwood and stone chips in storage. She'd needed several trial wands, not having the more than two thousand years' experience crafting them like the wand shop in the books. She finally found the right balance.

Then with her new wands she set out to see what she could learn. Her most significant use so far was the folded table. It had taken multiple steps - first to enchant a bag to expand and lighten the weight of what it held, then multiple attempts to reduce items and re-expand them, and finally to keep potions and cordials in glass vials and safely reduce and expand those. Creating all this had taken every minute of free time she had, and it had been worth it. Five years later and she had stuffed her bag with everything she could think of. And, again with thriftiness, she kept multiple vials and checked them frequently. She'd learned some things from Granny, especially that the elder witch was so effective because she wasn't prepared to accept failure. Sometimes it took days for Granny to recover from what she'd needed to do, or weeks when she defied DEATH, but she never wavered in her belief. Magrat wasn't nearly as strong as Granny in many ways, but there was no witch on the Disc who practiced her kind of magic.

That was why she'd been so amazed to learn just whom the injured witch and wizard were. Remus Lupin and 'Don't call me Nymphadora' Tonks were in her books. They'd had various separate adventures, and a romance she sighed over. "Too old, too poor, too dangerous." If Verence had said those things, she would have married him anyway. At the end of the last book they'd had a child and then - they came separately to the final battle, and were later seen dead, with injuries the same as they'd had here. It was too strange to think that these old books had possibly called them here, in some type of time spell, and she and the Igors had healed them to send back to their battle. Would she ever know? She shut off her wandering mind. She would find out or she wouldn't, and it didn't make any different in the tasks she had.

Carrot turned his attention towards the wizards. They were a louder bunch and seemed to have consumed both ale and stronger liquids. If they'd been ordinary men, he'd have watched them more carefully for signs of violence. As it was, the average wizard weighed about fifty pounds more than the average man, and they were as a group too elderly and too eccentric to fight. The Archchancellor spoke only in a shout and kept repeating his exploits shooting birds with a crossbow and catching legendary fish, but these feats all predated his return to UU. He had, Carrot had learned, ruthlessly dispatched other wizards who thought they could ruthlessly dispatch him (the University's means of promotion known as Dead Man's Shoes). It wasn't Mustrum Ridcully's fault that they'd all pictured him as the sort of countryside wizard who talks to birds in soft voices, wears brown and reveres Mother Nature.

Still, he wasn't breaching any peace. All the lethal rivalry at UU had stayed inside its boundaries, like the Assassins' Guild, and Carrot had long ago learned to leave this type of death alone.

The wizard who'd gone to Roundworld came slowly through the doors of the Bucket, and was welcomed with shouts by his fellows. They gestured him to sit near the head of the table, but he shook them off, seating himself next to the odd wizard (even odder wizard), Ponder Stibbons, who ran the magic machine Hex.

"How are you? We didn't have to do a ritual to get you back - Ridcully said you'd know about the library."

"Yes, I came through L-space. It's a bit of a hike, but not difficult. It's all downhill."

Here the two wizards jawed at each other for a few minutes about the mechanics of Rincewind's return, and Carrot tuned them out.

"So you visited the library at their university? To check out their librarian?"

Rincewind rolled his eyes. "You know better than that. Madam Pince needed help getting things in better shape. I'm not sure exactly what caused the damage, but the books were all scattered on the floor, and the shelves fallen over. It might have been vibrations from the giants."

"They had giants?"

"Or the enormous spiders, those were a real treat."

"Enormous spiders! Did they have Rodents of Unusual Size, also?"

"Not that I saw, but there were some centaurs, some werewolves, some -"

"Stop." The research wizard put his hand on Rincewind's arm. "I'm not letting you go off on any adventures again."

"You think I go all over the Disc on purpose?"

"I know it's not on purpose, but you have the worst luck of anyone."

"You could say that the only good luck I have is how quickly I escape my bad luck." Rincewind looked into his drink. It was gone. He'd just got here, why was his drink gone? Possibly there had been even more than one drink, to keep him from remembering what he didn't want to remember.

"Well," Ponder lifted his hand from Rincewind's arm and began to pleat his napkin into a fan, which flopped apart, "There could be other ways of getting good luck."

"Yes?" Rincewind couldn't see Ponder's eyes and wasn't at all sure what he meant. He said so.

"I was thinking that we've adjusted several components of Hex since you left. The FTBs worked, but I think I have to reposition them a bit. They now seem to want rocking chairs and beds. Adrian figured it out."

"Oh. Is Adrian working on it now?" Rincewind wanted to escape the general noise of the tavern and go lie down with a cool washcloth. Crossing dimensions took it out of a person, even if it was downhill. There was the funny bit where one's stomach turned inside out, which was followed by the rest of the organs seeming to turn inside out as well. Everything righted itself in a few seconds, but it was debilitating.

"No, he left. Said something about drums and guitars."

"They're not trying to bring back Music with Rocks In!"

"If I don't hear the noise, I don't have to discipline them for it. Meanwhile, Hex is mostly quiet this time of night." He arched an eyebrow at Rincewind.

"Ponder, did you just ask me to come up and see your machine?" Rincewind said, sounding puzzled.

"Might have done." The other wizard replied in what he hoped was an insouciant manner, but then saw Rincewind had missed any implication. His gaze had become distracted and sad.

"I keep remembering - this was pretty bad. The Librarian had to use many of his bombs. So many people died, fifty or more, some of them were kids. The wizards fighting us had horrible bony masks, I could smell the evil on them, and there were kids, and -"

Ponder put his hand on Rincewind's shoulder. "Stop. Come up and you can sit in a cushy chair and just be quiet. I'll bring you a quilt and the FTBs. They don't seem to work as well unless we take them out and cuddle them. I'm working on an algorithm which will let me know exactly how long in between - "

The two young wizards left the bar, not quite sneaking away from their fellows, but not shouting their goodbyes either.

"Hey." Angua swung herself into the seat besides Carrot. He smiled. She smelled amazing, he thought, and then he realized it was the scent of freshly baked bread. Nothing in Ankh-Morpork matched the crunchy (most would say iron-hard) dwarf bread, but he'd grown to enjoy the city's soft types as well.

"That's not from here, is it? I don't trust snacks from the Bucket."

"No, I smuggled it in from the new bakery. It's Check."

"Check?"

"That's what the lady said. They have these rolls with sausages inside them, and some square ones with fruit in the center, or a cream icing, or fruit with a cream icing. These just came out of the oven and I brought them straight over."

"Do they have any rat?"

"Carrot..."

Although he'd branched out in every direction from his childhood taste palette, and would eat curry, samosas, goat kebabs, pork ribs, suspicious meat in sandwiches, pizza - a new addition to Ankh-Morpork - even fried octopus, he still held a longing for a dwarf's favorite home-cooked meat. Angua was not picky about any meat when she was under the moon's influence, but when not, she was almost vegetarian. Almost meaning she wouldn't order any meat but would steal bites from his plate. Except rat. He was on his own there.

"...No Carrot, no rat today. They're new to the city." She sighed quietly. "Maybe they'll add some later to expand into the dwarf market." She gave him a sausage roll, which was quite spicy. It tingled in his throat, and he drank more lager.

"The wizards say that the Roundworld people got home alright," he said after a few minutes.

"Yes, Ponder stopped at the Watch House to tell us on his way here."

"Rincewind was here a minute ago, and I heard him talking to Stibbons. It sounded like a very dangerous battle - giants, centaurs, enormous spiders. I couldn't hear everything. But there were children fighting as well."

"No!"

"That's what Rincewind said."

"Did Rincewind say what happened to Remus and Tonks?" She snorted. "'Tonks.' Although I believe she said 'It's Do-Not-Call-Me-Nymphadora' Tonks."

"Her husband kept calling her Dora."

"Not my problem. I think Tonks will get her way. She's still just getting over having a baby. You know their child is less than three weeks old? I can't imagine having to go to a war less than a month - anyway - " and she veered away from the subject of children once again.

"Rincewind didn't say much, just that they were okay. They came to the library with him - he went to their library to help clean it up - and then disappeared into the back corners. He didn't go hunt them out before he left."

"So he was visiting their librarian?"

"No, not that. In fact - " and Carrot related the tale of how Ponder took Rincewind off to see Hex and hold a teddy bear.

"That's interesting." Angua looked up from her meal. "Is that what they're calling it these days?"

Carrot had become sophisticated enough that he didn't have a dwarf's typical embarrassment at a possibly-sex-related-comment. "No, he means sitting quietly. Rincewind was very disturbed by the battle."

Carrot had in fact progressed a lot in his thinking - he thought mostly as a human these days, but in musing about whether he would ever ask Angua to bite him, he'd gotten as far as these steps.

1.I would like to share all parts of her life.

would not be a responsible thing to do. It could cause problems if we were both absent at the full moon.

Sometime later he arrived at the next thought, which was:

3...NAKED?

Angua was often naked unexpectedly, and had told him that the successful female werewolf was adept at fashioning clothes out of any nearby fabric. But - he still couldn't do that because of the next reason.

4. He was a dwarf. He wasn't belligerent or aggressive about being a dwarf, he was just fundamentally a dwarf, just as a tree was fundamentally a tree. Maybe part of his insistence on this was because others so often questioned him because of his height.

And dwarfs didn't deal much with the undead.

He'd gotten over that prejudice in loving Angua, but he'd seen it when Cheery was new and kept blathering on about how much she hated werewolves, until Angua had had to rescue her, and gotten a mouthful of silver. The other dwarf had been wearing a silver vest, and the sores stayed around Angua's mouth for a week. Angua was undead, but she was the person he loved. He could get past that. But he'd never get past becoming undead himself, and so he'd have to let her go, accompanied only by the horrible Gaspode. Gaspode did not know that Carrot knew that Gaspode wanted to romance Angua, and tried in the ineptest ways. It made him laugh. Mostly. The little smelly dog was ridiculous. But the other werewolf might have not been bad looking, if he hadn't been broken and minced. There were already a couple of other werewolves in the city. Although Angua didn't mix with them, he knew she ran into them at Biers, the undead bar. He remembered her wolf friend Gavin (well, his name wasn't Gavin, but he'd once eaten someone by that name. Not all of him, just enough to prevent him from setting wolf traps.) Gavin had died protecting him from Angua's vicious brother Wolfgang. If she met a werewolf who looked like him, with bright amber eyes and a fast gallop - would she decide to enjoy his company on those nights?

Angua could tell that Carrot was brooding. He was intensely private and said little about what he felt personally. She might have resented that more if she weren't intensely private herself. He'd looked at Remus, though, with something in his mind, after she'd been nursing Remus all night and frantic about his survival. She had needed to lick him, push food into his mouth so that he could heal. Yes, she'd thought for a few hours of how satisfying it would be to know another werewolf, someone who could understand why having to interview a witness at the abattoir near a full moon was difficult. Blood tricked the nose and tried to block the human inside her. She suppressed those instincts and left the blood alone because of course she did. She was a Watchman. It would have been a relief to know someone she didn't have to explain things to.

But he came from another world, and needed to go back to it. Even if he could stay, he was married. She wasn't going to waste time wishing things were different - wolves never looked back. She had an excellent man next to her whose only defects were too much enthusiasm for rat snacks and dwarf bread. Sometimes he tried out that simple nature that wasn't simple at all, but she was on to him, and these days he rarely tried to hide his intelligence from her. He was faithful, loyal, handsome, and so easy to tease. If he hadn't developed a good tan since he left the mines of his childhood, she would have made him blush ten or twenty times a day. Now his cheeks merely grew dark for an instant. Quite disappointing. She didn't want to tease now. This was important, so of course she couldn't say it. She turned to him, stretched up, and kissed his cheek. His smiled and captured her hand, clasping it and interweaving their fingers. An outside observer would have been disappointed in their seeming lack of intimacy. The outside observer would never know that they were broadcasting "Mine. Now. Forever. Love. Love. Love."

Notes:

Many thanks to my beta readers, Ana and Truckle, who've not only caught grammatical errors but also aided with interpretation of the characters. In this epilogue Truckle helped me define the nature of Carrot and Angua, and I've quoted directly from him in several sentences.

This work was partly inspired by copperbadge's "Fireworks" /works/895179, which is a meet-up of Angua and Lupin. I wanted to read more about them, couldn't find any, and decided I had to write it. Then I chose to make this a fix-it for Remus and Tonks, so the Angua/Lupin needed to be one-sided and brief.