Disclaimer: I bow before the genius of PTerry, I am not worthy! Discworld is his, I'm just borrowing it and taking it for some exercise.

AN: muahaha, 2nd chapter 1 day after the 1st, go me! I should warn you not to expect a chapter every day though, I just happened to have a lot of time today and yesterday.

And special thanks to ihadanepiphany (I love your screename) and wottabout, thanks for the compliments and for the very quick reviews :) makes me fell all warm and fuzzy inside.

Circle Time by shrinni

Chapter 2

"My Queen, we found another one!"

"Are there people nearby this one? The first one you found was completely deserted."

"There's an entire village, my lady."

"Maybe someone here can be convinced to open the door." The Queen's smile was as content as a cat's... and as predatory.

"Sadie, I want you to run to the blacksmith's and fetch me some nails."

Sadie sighed, and put down the chicken she had been plucking. "Yes Mistress Ogg." She walked out of the door without bothering to grab any money. You didn't need money when you were getting something for Mistress Ogg, a courtesy no one ever gave Sadie.

For weeks now Mistress Ogg (Sadie couldn't help but call her that, even in her head) had been treating her like a daughter, not a student. Sadie wasn't sure if this was because she had offended Mistress Ogg in some way, which she did often, or because she had learned all that Mistess Ogg had to teach her. It didn't matter either way, she would be Mistress Ogg's student until Mistress Ogg said she was done.

Sadie walked down the street, barely more than a dirt track, staring down her nose purely out of habit at the other people who were walking by. Her heart wasn't in it though, she was caught up in speculation about what she would do once Mistress Ogg said she was done 'learning'.

I'll make the king pluck my chickens, I'll make the queen sew my dresses. I'll make all the men build me a nice house...

This idle daydreaming was absurd even to Sadie, but it was a pleasant way to occupy her mind so that she didn't have to pay attention to the unpleasantly humid summer day around her. She didn't notice the flowers growing on the wayside or the gentle green of the spring leaves, Sadie couldn't be bothered to notice much that didn't affect her.

She rapped her knuckles sharply on the door of the small shed that served as the village's blacksmith.

"Come in." called a muffled voice.

Sadie pushed open the door and stepped inside. The blacksmith's name was Rand, and he was about five years older than she was. He was a tall man, as most blacksmith's tended to be, but he was wiry instead of hulking. When he lifted the hammer, to most it seemed like he would drop and be crushed under its weight, which luckily for Rand hadn't happened yet.

"Hello Miss Sadie." said Rand, placidly dipping some cherry-red metal into a barrel of steaming water.

"Mistress Ogg would like some nails." Sadie said, not bothering to keep the boredom out of her voice. She thought iron was pretty useless, and more expensive than good wooden pegs or bronze tools. Most of the hunters still used bronze knives and arrowheads, why should they pay extra from something shinier?

"There's a pail o' nails by the door Miss Sadie." Rand said without looking up from his work. "Tell Mistress Ogg thanks for the foot powder she gave to me, it worked wonders."

"I will." Sadie paused, waiting for Rand to at least look at her, but he just continued doing strange things to metal. Sadie sniffed loudly and grabbed the pail of nails. As she left she made sure to slam the door loudly behind her.

She stomped back down the path. She took pride in being a mystery to all the people in the village. Their distrust made her feel cool and edgy. But Rand had treated her like a normal person. She would have to think up an inventive way to punish him later.

Sadie picked up a nail and examined it as she walked. She didn't like iron, it was the only thing (besides octiron, but there wasn't any in the Ramtops) that could be magicked in any way. The nail sat there innocently on her palm, being as pragmatic and real as, well, a lump of iron. It was hard to think of anything less magical or romantic than an iron nail.

When I'm the most powerful witch ever, no one will use iron...

Sadie pushed open the door into the Ogg's kitchen quietly, she had learned her first week there that you never banged things in Mistress Ogg's home, no matter how irritated you were.

"I'm back." She called.

"Oh good," said Mistress Ogg, walking purposefully into the kitchen, "the cabinets in the kitchen need to be replaced. Thomas was making me new ones but he ran out of nails."

Sadie surrendered the pail to Mistress Ogg, who strode towards the back door.

"Mistress Ogg." called Sadie.

She stopped. "Yes Sadie?"

"Why can't you magic iron?" asked Sadie curiously.

Mistress Ogg shrugged. "You just can't." she said pragmatically. She continued out the door, but paused just past the threshold, "Once you finish plucking that chicken you can go, Sadie."

"Thank you Mistress Ogg." said Sadie dutifully.

Sadie was anxious to go, but she very carefully finished plucking the chicken, and putting all the feathers in a separate bowl, before wiping her hands and leaving the house. That was another lesson that had been methodically drilled into Sadie's head by Mistress Ogg. Don't shirk your chores, or there will be Trouble.

Sadie walked slowly down the dirt lane once again, past the blacksmith's shed, past the partly-constructed castle, past the last of the houses and huts and walked sedately into the woods.

When I'm a great witch, I'll have servants pluck my chickens, and cook them, and do all the cleaning up afterwards...

Once she was safely out of sight of the village, Sadie made a sharp turn right and picked up her pace, walking very quickly up the mountain. She had a long way to go, and if she missed supper Mistress Ogg would have questions.

As Sadie walked, she thought about her lessons so far with Mistress Ogg. She was shamefully aware that all of Mistress Ogg's granddaughters had learned with lightning speed compared to Sadie. Oh, she was probably their equal when it came to making medicines and such, but whenever someone was hurt, Sadie was the last person they asked for.

And when it came to magic... Sadie didn't know why she was so slow, she tried so hard. But it never seemed to make any difference. She couldn't seem to move things with her mind, the way the other girls sometimes would do when Mistress Ogg was out.

Sadie had been told by Mistress Ogg's youngest daughter Margaret once that Sadie would never be a good witch until she understood people. But what was the point of that? Magical power came from her, not the people around her, didn't everyone know that? What was the point of bothering to understand people, when all they did was get in her way?

A treacherous thought popped up. Well, if you understood them, maybe they wouldn't be in your way all the time...

Sadie squashed the thought; she knew that people were the obstacles keeping her from what she needed. She was sure Mistress Ogg was deliberately keeping Sadie from doing well at magic. That must be it.

After a great deal of walking, Sadie finally stopped in front of a rock that looked perfectly normal. She kicked it lightly. "Open up, please."

After about a minute of patient waiting, the rock flipped over, exposing a irritated-looking dwarf with peering up at Sadie from a large hole in the ground.

"Oh," said the dwarf, looking exasperated, "it's you again, is it?"

"Yes Mister Glodsson, it's me."

The dwarf sighed. "What do you want to know this time? How to mine? Which end of the ax is which?"

Every few week, Sadie made the trek up the mountain to see Dorrel Glodsson and asked him questions. He didn't know why she was so curious about everything, but she gave him several gold pieces every time, so he didn't send her away.

"Perhaps next time Mister Glodsson. This week I would like to know why you can't magic iron."

Dorrel pulled himself out of the hole and sat on the edge of it, letting his feet dangle in the darkness. Sadie gingerly lowered herself until she sat across from him. "No one better be down there looking up my skirt." She warned severely.

"Don' worry about it miss." said Dorrel, "Everyone's down in number 3 shaft today following a promising seam."

Sadie nodded. There was always a promising seam somewhere.

Dorrel launched into a long explanation about the properties of iron. It was difficult for Sadie to follow because it was filled with phrases like "load-bearing matrix" and "reality and unreality shift never affect the basic components..." But Sadie was fairly certain she understood the gist:

Most of magic lay in the mind, the ability to bend reality around so that it fit another set of parameters. One of the reasons it was impossible to magic iron was that iron seemed to defy the imagination. It is almost impossible to really imagine iron being anything other than iron, it's too boring, to real to be changed.

Magic also depends on the objects being used. It is easy to change something that is very mutable, like water, or something that has been previously changed, because there is already some uncertainty built into the molecules of the object. But again iron can't be changed because there's no uncertainty. There's nothing really more certain than iron.

Sadie listened to Dorrel talk for a good hour or so before she started to tune him out for her own thoughts, which were more interesting, when something new came up.

"Wait, what did you say?" Sadie asked.

"I said," said Dorrel, looking more irritated than normal, "that there is iron that contains the love of other iron. It came down from the sky in a storm, so we call it thunderbolt iron. We have about ten large bocks of the stuff, but we're not sure what to do with it yet."

"What do you mean that the iron contains the love of iron?"

"It means that normal iron is attracted to it, and sticks to it quite firmly. When we first found it we had to pry quite a few dwarves out of all their clothes to get them unstuck."

Sadie tried, but she couldn't keep from grinning a little at the thought of several angry dwarves stuck firmly to a boulder.

"You may laugh, but it's amazing stuff." Misinterpreting her grin as her doubting the amazing ability of the thunderbolt iron, Dorrel was now pulling several things out of his pocket, a small stone and a fine chain. "Look, I got a fragment of the stuff."

Dorrel held the stone up in one hand. It was reddish brown and lumpy, and certainly didn't look like it contained the love of anything. Dorrel held up the chain in his other hand, about a foot away from the stone. Then he dropped one end of the chain.

Sadie gasped. The chain was sticking out almost horizontally, straining to get towards the thunderbolt iron. She had never seen anything like it. It made the iron chain, despite it's essential non-magicness, seem romantic and exciting.

Dorrel started droning on about the properties of the thunderbolt iron that they had discovered, none of which made any sense to Sadie.

"Thank you Mister Glodsson, it was very interesting." Sadie said, cutting him off almost mid-sentence. She stood slowly, stretching cramped muscles.

"Well, it's always a pleasure to talk to you Miss Sadie." Dorrel said with as much sincerity as he could muster and looking up at her expectantly.

Sadie reached into her purse and pulled out two gold pieces, which she tossed into Dorrel's eager hands. She walked away from him without bothering to say goodbye.

Dorrel bit the gold pieces to make sure they were authentic, pocketed them and the stone and chain, then watched Sadie's retreating back with an abiding mistrust for the human race that no amount of gold could overcome.

When he was sure he was out of earshot he muttered "you bugger", then retreated back down his hole, pulling the rock back on top until there was hint that a home lay underneath it.