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Chapter XVI
Moo was asleep upstairs in Nanny's bed and all the guests had left. The grumpy, disappointed children had been promised a Moo's Unbirthday Party only a week hence, but that was at least six months in kid years. Now Agnes and Tiffany waited while Nanny sipped her tea and chortled away to herself.
"Are you planning to let us know what happened today any time soon?" Tiffany asked, as sternly as she could in the face of Nanny's overflowing good humour.
"Oh, yes," smiled Nanny, "very soon, my chick."
"What would be soon in human time?" asked Agnes, who had known Nanny longer than Tiffany had.
"Why, right now, my poppets."
There was a long pause while Agnes and Tiffany waited and Nanny sipped her drink and chuckled.
"Go on," they said in unison when they thought they had waited long enough.
"Well, it's like this, she began, as though she were speaking to children, which, from her perspective, is exactly what they were.
"There's good witches and bad witches: them is as good at witching and them as ain't, you see?
They both nodded.
"Now, I'm a good witch and so are you two and so was Esme, gods rest her, and others. But Old Mother Dismass or our own dear queen couldn't witch for chocolate, you get my meaning?"
Again they both nodded, though feeling slightly treasonous with regard to Queen Margrat.
"And then there are Good witches and Bad witches, ones that we couldn't hold a scarlet, dripping candle to. Black Aliss was a rotten, wicked old crone who baked children in her oven, but she had this great evil power that sparked off her and made everyone near her feel sick. And she was powerful good at the witching itself.
"On the other side there was Glinda, the Good Witch of the Hub, who could no more think an ill thought than she could do a bad deed. She went around righting wrongs and healing the sick; just seeing her made you feel glad to be alive. They happen every century or two for no reason anybody knows…
"You'll need to breathe out soon or you'll do yourselves an injury!" she laughed.
They both did, with a great deal of relief, because they hadn't realised they'd been holding their breaths.
"So is Moo a Good witch?" asked Tiffany. Nanny nodded.
"As Good as it gets."
"And that's why we all felt so great at the party?" Agnes asked.
"Yip," Nanny affirmed, "and it's just as well she's so good at being Good, because what she's going to have to beat is something that's really, really, really Bad."
"Where?" asked Agnes.
"When?" asked Tiffany.
"Where is in the Big Wahoonie. As for when, well that depends how quick you can train her up, but don't go taking too long; the omens are gathering."
"Nanny, how do you know all this?" asked Tiffany.
"Because, my pet, I'm near my end and it is given to us witches to see things at that time." Both young witches suddenly looked sombre, but Nanny just laughed: "oh don't you go worrying about me, I'm quite looking forward to it. I likes an adventure and a chat with the Tall Man. And I might get to see Esme again."
They both smiled and suddenly felt very cheerful.
"I think young Miss Smith has just woken-up," said Nanny.
Sure enough Moo came down the stairs a moment later with a dozy smile on her face. But then her face dropped.
"Aw, where is everyone, did I miss the party?"
"They all had to go," said Tiffany.
"Even Margs!?" asked Moo, with a face that would have melted a banker's heart.
"Yes, my chick, we made her go," said Nanny, "but they'll all be back next week and we'll have a proper birthday party for you. As long as you promise not to faint."
"Yippee," cried Moo, clapping her hands "I promise!"
They all knew that Moo wouldn't faint the next Saturday because, more than anyone on the Disc, she was a woman of her word.
"On the other side, though," Nanny continued, and both Agnes and Tiffany could actually feel Moo's apprehension, "You're going to have to start learning proper witching from tomorrow."
"Whoopee!" she whooped, jumping up and down, and they felt the joy surge through them. It was like drinking North Field, but without all the staggering about; or the hangover. She really did make you feel good to be alive.
Moo's Other Birthday Party came and went and everyone said it was the best time they could ever remember having; without actually being able to say why. And then the training began, if training it could be called, because it was a lot more like pointing and watching.
Tiffany taught her how to fly a broom by basically giving her a broom and saying "fly it". Yes, they'd chosen the branch together -and chanted the charms –but Moo had trimmed it herself and, after they had gathered the twigs, she had taught her how to bind them. But then Moo had jumped on the finished article and been gone, in an instant. Admittedly, her first landing hadn't been great. She'd come in too fast, tried to stop too quickly, buried the tip in the dirt and smashed into the privy. That had required sponging down in a warm, herbal bath and massaging with various soothing balms. But the next morning, black and blue all over, she couldn't eat her breakfast fast enough so that she could get back on.
Agnes told her it was the same with her. One day of basic hexing and she had made Mr. Dunkanschmidd feel so bad about beating his dog that he'd thrown himself in the river and had had to be fished out before he drowned himself. Agnes had admitted to being slightly disappointed.
It wasn't empathy it was Ifeelexactlywhatyoufeelpathy. Tiffany didn't know how she coped with it. When a baby cried Moo's shoulders slumped, and then she straightened them and the baby stopped crying. An old curmudgeon would be almost apoplectic about some children in his apple trees and Moo would look thoughtful; suddenly Mr. Grumpy would smile ruefully and mutter: "Oh, I suppose I was a kid once." Nanny had been right, unsurprisingly, Moo was goodness made manifest and she did it without any seeming effort, apart from the bees.
Granny Weatherwax had taught Tiffany how to borrow and Tiffany had taught Moo. They could slip inside another creature's mind and just sit there, watching. They never tried to influence the hawk, the badger, the eel…they just observed. It was part of the reason witches knew so much, about so many things. But of course some creatures were more difficult than others. Dogs were ridiculously loyal, cats were incredibly selfish, horses were mostly insane and snakes were surprisingly good at mathematics.
But they could get down all the way to insects. It wasn't much fun being a fly as they had about as much brain as a pebble had and annoyed every creature on the Disc including, it would seem, themselves. It was hard to work out how they ever managed to make little flies, though they seemed to do it in prodigious numbers. But flies were easy enough, not like bees.
Tiffany had learned early that there was no such thing as a bee; there was a hive and then there was The Swarm. She had difficulty coping with a hive, highly intelligent though it was, because it felt a bit like being aware of your own cells, so she generally left The Swarm to itself. Moo, on the other hand, loved it.
It was hard to assess Moo's happiness level as it started somewhere between really pleased and ecstatic, and then went up from there, quite steeply. But she always got her biggest buzz off the bees. And being with Margs. Tiffany had a best friend; so best that she thought she would lay down her life for Agnes if it came to it. Though it would be thought hard to describe how someone could possibly feel more for another than that, it was as nothing compared to how Moo and Margs felt about each other.
She'd first felt this when they'd been sitting up with Moo after the mysterious incident that had happened somewhere or other. She'd wondered sometimes in the past if Margs had a bit of witch in her too, but now she wondered if she had a bit of Good Witch in her because that night, she would swear, she actually felt how much Margs cared for Moo and how worried she was. And it was an awful, awful, awful lot.
Then one morning she had woken to find Moo standing by her bed looking tousled and excited, but as that was the way she looked most of the time, Tiffany didn't give it much thought.
"Mizzz" she said, "therezzz zzzome little blue men in the kitzzzen, who zzzay they want to zzzzpeak wizzzz you."
"Moo, have you been at the bees again?" she asked, mock sternly, "you know I've warned you about that."
"Beezzzz? Yezzz, Mizzzz," said Moo, as incapable of lying as ever.
"Well, give yourself a shake," Tiffany scolded, "you need to clear your head."
Moo's obedience gene kicked in and she literally gave herself a shake. Tiffany managed to suppress her laugh.
"Better now?" she asked.
"Not quite, Mizzz," replied Moo, and shook herself again. This time Tiffany couldn't stifle a giggle.
"Did that help?"
"Yes, Miss, all better now."
"Good, because I've dealt with these wee, blue men before and we'll need clear heads; just to decipher their accent."
There was no sign of them in the kitchen, where Moo had seen them, and no evidence they had been there, but that was their way: a place was either going to be completely untouched, or a complete wreck.
"Come oot, come oot, wherever youz ur; the game's a bogey," said Tiffany.
One tiny, tattooed, kilt-wearing package of bad-temper emerged from behind the biscuit tin and the other popped out of the coal scuttle.
"Hullaw, Big Lassie," said the less diminutive of the two.
"Do I know you?" she asked.
"Naw, but we know you, Mistress Tiffany. I'm Magnus Og and this is Lachie Mór."
The Nac-Mac-Feegle really did have ideas above their stature. She was surprised that Moo had even seen them, especially with a headful of Beezzz, though she probably shouldn't have been. It wasn't just their tiny size; it was the furious speed at which they moved that made them almost invisible to bigjobs. In fact, some bigjobs couldn't see them even when they were being beaten senseless by them. Not that a Nac-Mac-Feegle would tend to attack abigjob other than on his own, as though he needed to be mob-handed; "Oh, the shame of the thing!" A fight between a six-inch Pictsie and a six-foot man was barely a contest at all.
Their interests were few: cattle-rustling, fighting and drinking almost unbelievable quantities of whisky. Tiffany and the Wee Free Men went way back, so she knew her duties as a hostess.
"Would ye tak a huge dram an tell me aw aboot yersels?"
"Aye, hen," said Magnus, "And everythin they said aboot ye is true."
Moo watched in astonishment as Tiffany took two small glasses –about half the size of the little men themselves- and filled them to the brim from a bottle of whisky that she kept under the sink for just such occasions.
"Aw, ya wee brammer," said Magnus, as he and Lachie drained their glasses in one. Moo thought that much whisky would have knocked her unconscious, but the little men seemed completely unaffected and just held out their empty vessels, which Tiffany dutifully refilled.
"Now," she said, sitting down and motioning Moo to do the same, "tell me why you're here."
"Weel," said Magnus, Lachie was a fighter not a talker, "oor Kelda has been talkin tae your heid bummer…"
"You mean Nanny Ogg?" Tiffany interrupted.
"The very wummin," said Magnus.
"And what have they decided we're going to do?"
"Go doon to the Big Place; there's fichtin tae be done. And there's loads a coo beastie and huge drams tae, so we've been telt."
Tiffany knew enough about the Wee Free Men to know that they would happily have travelled all the way to Ankh-Morpork just for a good ficht; the easy availability of beef and whisky was simply an added bonus.
"And why are you telling me this?"
"Fur we're away the morra and we're tae meet ye there."
"And how long will it take you to get there?"
"Oan these wee legs? A while, mibbe a while an a hauf."
The Nac-Mac-Feegle didn't reckon time as others did, so Tiffany was forced to work it out for herself. It was a long way to the Big City and they did, indeed, have very short legs, but what they lacked in stature they more than made up for in stamina. They would run there for most of the twenty-two hours in the day, stopping only to snaffle coo beastie and swally huge drams where they could find them. Tiffany thought it would still take them about a month.
"Then we'll see you there," she said, when she had finished calculating, "Give my regards to Big Senga."
"Wull dae, missus," said Magnus, and they were gone.
"What!" asked Moo, her eyes like saucers, "were those?"
"Those, my child, were the Wee Free Men, and we're going to be going on a long journey fairly soon."
"Yipee," yipped Moo, clapping her hands.
I wouldn't yip too early, she thought, it's far more likely to be pee.