Strandpiel Chapter 21: Op die Kaplyn, a discworld fanfic

Strandpiel 21: Op die kaplyn – On The Border

How dual nationality works out for one proud user.

Currently embuggered by loads of ideas and very little time to commit to record because of the demands of a new job. LOTS of ideas for continuing old stories ("Many worlds", et c) and barely enough time to sketch them out for retrieval later. Building skeletons, basically. Still, taking sick leave has some advantages… pain and discomfort, now easing, are a bugger, but at least I can do this.

A series of episodes and glimpses into the later life of a new character. Readers do appear to want to find out more about her. Trying to keep everything in roughly chronological and sequential order with lots of call-backs and flashbacks to related tales in the ongoing saga. Go to my archive and read. You know you want to.

Might be the last one for some time as I return to earning a living soon. Damn. I was enjoying time off with sufficient cash in the bank to make it feel good as the pain and discomfort ebbed. Still. Needs must.

Setting Bekki up for her next big move.

EDIT: sorting out horrible typos and rewriting or smoothing little bits that were a bit clonky first time out. And there's always one you miss after you think it looks perfect and you update chapter. To see it sitting there grinning up at you and saying "You missed me, didn't you!" Bet after I've Updated Chapter for the fourth time, there's still going to be one I missed...

Pork Scratching, Lancre. Bone Fire Night.

The Bone Fire was an annual ritual in Lancre and its origins went back a very long way. Petulia, who had been born locally, explained it in terms of its being one of those points in the year. It marked the edge point, where a witch always stood, with Autumn behind and the last leaves having Fallen, and Winter before. Witches stands on the Edge had been one of the maxims of Mistress Weatherwax, mayhersoulhavemercyontheGods.

The Edge was where realities met. Where a witch had to be aware of different degrees of Real that were meeting where she happened to be standing. Think of it as a sort of beach where sea, land and, as people tend to forget, Sky, come together and meet. A border between worlds, if you will.

Bekki understood this.

"Borders. A Kaplyn." she said. Her family were kaplyn people. Her mother and aunt had been born and brought up on a kaplyn, a border. Which had a people on the other side who periodically tried to cross. In Vondalaans, a kaplyn wasn't just a border between two countries. It denoted a zone you patrolled and were vigilant in, where you habitually carried weapons, and had to be prepared to use them. Bekki understood this. She'd patrolled one kaplyn where the Dungeon Dimensions met her world, and had fought there. She had instinctively realised the Dancers represented another kaplyn. And deep instinct and ancestry had risen in her and said – be prepared to fight here, too. She was at least half Vondalaander. Some things were in the blood. Her family had only ever had to fight Zulus. Bekki's life had so far given her Dungeon Dimension Things and a hint of Elves to come.

"In the mundane sense, a kaplyn between Autumn and Winter." Petulia said. She understood where Bekki was coming from. They'd discussed it, late at night, over a hot drink, with much touching of iron. Bekki had explained about kaplyns, as her mother and Auntie Mariella had explained it to her.

"We need to be here tonight. Down in Lancre, they're dancing the Dark Morris. We light a bonefire. That's as important. There need to be Witches here. To just...ummm... be here. You know. Watch. Observe. Guard. To patrol, you might say."

The Bone Fire was symbolic. Of cleaning up, tidying, getting rid, of things from Summer and Harvest that had served well, but which were no longer needed. Making a clean start. Paring down. For winter. Getting people into the right frame of mind for the winter months.

The massive Bone Fire was made up everything people thought necessary to burn at this time of year. Maybe it was a sacrifice by fire to the Wintersmith. Or else a two fingered gesture to the elemental spirit of Winter that said – you bring cold. But we know how to make fire. At least we didn't weave a huge wicker man and put him on top of the fire, with somebody inside. Not these days, we've moved on. The custom now was to put a human effigy on the top to symbolise that we could put a real person there, if we were so minded. It usually took the form of somebody who was not generally well liked. Usually it was a representation of Duke Felmet, the pretender king. Or his wife. Safer than a living person. There could be consequences and fights, if the person being so honoured were to object.

But the bulk of the Bone Fire was, as you might expect, made up of bones. Seventy per cent of this one was the leftover skeletons of former pigs. With those of the beef cattle that had been slaughtered for meat. One or two ex-goats and sheep, although neither were extensively farmed up here in the hills. Sheep were a big thing further Rimwards, down in the rolling foothills of The Chalk. And while everybody kept one or two goats, they were only rarely slaughtered. Too useful alive, for milk.

The Bone Fire served a practical purpose. It burnt the bones. Otherwise they'd just pile up. And a day or two later, after the ashes had cooled, canny Lancre people queued up with buckets, wheelbarrows and the odd cart. The bone-ash was wonderful fertiliser on the fields. Petulia usually supervised everyone getting fair shares. Or there'd be fighting. Her own share was mixed with slurry from the lagoon, accumulated pig-waste. This had to be left to calm down for a few years, as it was far too lively to be used as fertilser straight away. Mixing bone-ash intro the slurry stabilised it somehow, meant it could go straight to fields and pastures that needed it. On arrival, Bekki had been asked if she smoked. No objection, but no naked flames near the slurry lagoon. Important.

She had gone down there to see. Once was enough. Pig waste from the sties was trucked here and tipped into the nearest holding tank. The oldest tanks, a year or two old and matured, could be safely drained and used for fertiliser. The newest waste... she shuddered. Her previous conception of the word "lagoon" had been an idyllic tropical island out towards the Rim, with a placid and inviting warm blue water bay under a hot sun, ringed by coral reefs. All those lying traitorous illustrations in the picture books she'd had as a child. This interpretation of the word "lagoon" , a seething noxious bubbling sea of pigshit on a cold winter day in Lancre, had never even occured to the authors of The Child's First Book of Discworld Geography – All The Wonders Of The Disc, With copious colour illustrations!

"Lagoon" here in Lancre meant a wide stagnant hole, lined with thick stone and rusting corrugated iron sheets, backed with very solid earth banks to ensure everything was retained and no leakage occured, discreetly hidden a long way downwind of the pig farm, where the accumulated evidence of the digestive processes of lots of pigs was trucked, tipped, and left to rot down. Building and maintaining one was a specialised sub-function of the Guild of Dunnykindivers. And Highmost Pigmanhey had three or four, which were used in strict and well-understood rotation. Pigs created a lot of waste.

Petulia had planted banks of mint, lavender, sweet basil, Agatean star anise, and other useful herbs, in between the slurry lagoons and the house. Just to mask the smell. The herbs had a hard fight, even though Petulia's Herb Garden was extensive, and leant very heavily on the more fragrant plants. A higher security area, tended only by witches with prominent warning signs at its margins, contained Herbs that had begun as cuttings from the garden of Mistress Weatherwax, mayhersoulhavemercyontheGods. These tended to have different smells.

Tonight, anyway, the folk of Highmost Pigmanhey were out on a communal area outside the hamlet of Pork Scratching, on the edge of the traditional borders of the settlement. This location had been chosen carefully. Mainly to prevent the fire spreading to anything you didn't want to see burnt, and partly for other reasons. The component material of the Bone Fire had been brought here and carefully stacked and layered – everyone for some miles had contributed – and the fire built. A second fire, more of a long wide fire-pit, really, had been created a little way away, and a whole pig carcass, contributed by Petulia and Gouther, and a whole ox contributed by Barnabas Plomley, were rotating on spits. A barbecue had been set up. Bekki frowned. The ramshackle approximate arrangement was a long way away from being a braai. And something Fourecksians, were any present to see it, might generously have described as "Call that a barbie? Suppose it's getting there. But she'll be right, mate. No worries."

It'll roast the sausages. So long as it doesn't collapse.

Just in case, Bekki ran through what she'd learnt about various degrees of burns and how to treat them. You never knew. Or sometimes, you could guess.

As afternon darkened into evening, Petulia and Apricity Brabble, one of the young trainee witches in the Lancre coven, joined her.

"It's time." Petulia said. "Now. We've rehearsed this. It has to be on a count of three."

They walked through a crowd of Lancre citizens, who had become quieter and more expectant. The witches were about to make their contribution to the evening. Bekki grinned at Apricity, who was petite, thirteen, and very, very, nervous. She was the one who had shied away on meeting Bekki for the first time, seeing not so much another witch, as a weapon-festooned adventuress. Bekki felt vaguely guilty about this. The other young witches were understanding and somewhat protective of her.

"It should be easy." Bekki said, encouragingly. "Give them some obvious boffo. It's what they want to see."

Apricity, who had a look of terminal neurovore about her, nodded worriedly. Bekki patted her on the shoulder and gave her some more advice concerning what they were going to do and how they were going to do it.

Then the three witches took station around the bonfire, at equal intervals. There was an expectant watchful silence. Bekki waited silently for the prompt from Petulia. She knew a lot of the crowd was somewhere behind her, watching. She focused. It was an ability that had surprised Grandfather Mustrum. Then again, it shouldn't have done... she mentally readjusted. The trick was to make it just big enough...

The fireball appeared, several feet above her head. She knew it was there. She could see it in her mind's eye. The crowd certainly knew it was there, judging by the reaction. Spectacular fireworks always got an Ooooh! and had potential to delight old and young alike.

Hearing the "One... two... three!" from Petulia, she let go of the slowly orbiting fireball, and threw it straight into the Bone Fire. With maximum boffo, for effect.

It joined the fireballs thrown by the other two witches, one of them smaller and more uncertain, and the fire leapt into life. Bone Fire Night had begun. The party could start and Winter would be invited in, like an unwelcome guest, metaphorical vulture's head and all. And Winter was being reminded. We can make fires. We have witches who can make fires. Be told.

Bekki thought back a few years. She had been eleven. She had been at the University to see Dad, her school day over and wanting to take the long way home, maybe meet Dad at his work and travel home with him. It was a nice thing to do sometimes. She had found Grandfather Mustrum had been shouting at him about something or other. Grandfather Mustrum shouted a lot. Often at Dad. Dad accepted this as part of the deal. Grandfather Mustrum was his boss, after all. Bekki accepted this.

But whatever he'd been shouting about, he brightened up when Bekki walked in. He welcomed her warmly. He also asked how she'd got past the Bledlows.

"Oh, Mister Nobbs said where you were. He even gave me directions." Bekki said, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. She gave her adoptive grandfather a very big hug.

"Hmmph. I see. Well, since you're here. Hear you've started learnin' witchy things with Irena and the others? Sure you'll do well. Make a good Witch. Got it in you to. Now, indulge an old man, young Rebecka. Come for a walk with me, if your father says yes."

Bekki had trustingly taken his hand and he'd led her around the labyrinthine corridors of the University. The place fascinated her. Judging by the looks on the faces of the Wizards they passed, it din't see too many eleven year old girls. One of the older wizards they met muttered something about "Ye Gods. It's going to be Eskarina Smith all over again." He didn't sound happy.

Grandfather Mustrum had replied "Pack it in, Runes. Now." And they'd walked on together. He'd also said to a group of younger wizards to stop bloody staring like that, can't a fellow walk with his grand-daughter in peace? She's me grand-daughter. I'm her grandfather. Nothing odd in that, you men?

The younger wizards had looked confused and astonished. Bekki had smiled nicely at them. Dad, who was tagging along, had looked thoughtful for an instant. Then he had grinned quietly.

And then Bekki had been led into a large airy open room in the lower reaches of the University. It was big and empty and well-lit, and the walls were panelled in a warm and alive-looking wood. Small thick looking windows at ceiling-level allowed some light in. Most of the light, Bekki realised, was coming from Elsewhere.

A group of young wizards, too young to actually be wizards, stopped whatever they were doing and watched. They seemed to regard Grandfather Mustrum – and Dad – with wary respect. Grandfather nodded amiably at them.

"Carry on, you fellows." he boomed, amiably. "Don't mind us!"

Then he turned to Bekki.

"Been meanin' to do this for a while now." he said. "Never really been able to find the time. Still, better try this out. Bekki, m'dear, this is the Gymnasium. Where wizards come to try out spells. Your father's a wizard, and you got the stuff from him. Just want to see what you can actually do. You know. The standard tests. Just so we know."

He smiled amiably down at her.

"I'm here. Your dad's here. And this is a safe place. I want you to give me a fireball. In your own time!"

"Here." Dad said, quickly. "And only in here." Dad seemed really keen to establish the rules, she noted. Grandfather Mustrum smiled benignly down at her.

"Just chuck it at the wall." he said. "Any wall, doesn't matter. That's octiron and sapient pearwood. Absorbs the magic. Vents it up on the roof, out of sight and out of mind. Your mum and her people never take student Assassins up there, by the way. Too hazardous. Even for Assassins."

Bekki gulped, then focused. She heard the sniggering whispers of student wizards nearby.

Just a kid. And a girl. Bet she can't.

This made her angry. She decided she would show them. Bekki, her cheeks colouring with anger (1), let her mind focus on the idea of fire and flame...

"Big as you like, m'dear!"

Let's see. Draw up warmth from the heart. Intention from the mind. Visualise a colour. What's the hottest colour?

It was surprisingly easy to do. Bekki smiled slightly and threw the fireball towards, but just over the heads of, the group of sniggering and smug student wizards who were keen to see her fail...

"Great Om on a crutch!" an alarmed wizard shrieked, throwing himself to one side. The sniggering stopped and the group of students scattered for cover.

A very large and very hot fireball slammed into the sapient pearwood and octiron, making the room shake. Ponder Stibbons reflected that even though it shouldn't, it left a regular rose-shaped scorch mark on the wood that persisted for some time before fading.

But in the main, his eyes shut down in self-defence and he blinked away the afterimages for a while after.

Ridcully stood in reflective silence. It took a lot to silence him.

Bekki said "Was that big enough? I can make that bigger, if you like..."

"No need, m'dear." he said, abstractly. "No need at all. We've established you can do it."

Then he grinned at the group of stunned and scared students.

"You know, if you bright buggers were student Assassins, this young lady's mother would be shouting at you for being over-confident." he remarked. He let this sink in.

"Don't think I wasn't payin' attention. You think women and girls can't do magic. Never heard of witches? And this little girl is the daughter of Professor Stibbons, here. Who in his own quiet way is good at magic. Her mum, lovely lady that she is, is not magical at all. Not in the slightest. She is, however, an Assassin. And one of the best at what they do. And young Rebecka here takes after both her parents."

Grandfather Mustrum made them apologise to Bekki for being ungallant and what's more, bloody thick. She appreciated this. Then he bade them stick around, they might actually learn something.

She had then been given a masterclass in generating, controlling, and safely using, fire spells. Grandfather Mustrum said he suspected she'd have an affinity with this. Given the red hair, her mother's side of the family being what they were. And her mother's speciality as an Assassin.

"Might come in useful one day." he said. "For lighting fires and suchlike."

Her father had nodded, in a grim sort of stoic acceptance. And Bekki, on and off, had learnt a little Wizard magic. On the fly. As and when. Her father had made absolutely sure that it was not to be used randomly, capriciously or on a whim. He had been very definite about that. She had taken good note, but still appreciated the knowledge and the informal lessons.

"Good one, miss." Victor Lumming said, respectfully. Bekki nodded. Respect was hard currency to a witch, she'd learnt. And they'd remember that fireball.

She'd now been junior witch in Pork Scratching for nearly three months. Three months was long enough to build a bit of experience. Local farms and homesteads were used to the young witch in the strange clothes who carried a big sword. People clued up on stories and newspapers and illustrated periodicals out of Ankh-Morpork had even worked out whose daughter she was. Mum had featured a lot in the news. She was one of the dozen or so Assassins who anybody could identify. The famous ones. That helped too.

Bekki got a plateful of barbecue food and a drink and watched the Bone Fire. It was also there to guard and defend, Petulia had said. To make a stement to anything else that might be watching. Fire, at the onset of Winter, lit on an Edge. Another local word for it, she had learnt, was wendfire. It could summon, and it could banish. Bekki wondered what exactly might be summoned. She was listening for local stories and folklore to try to get clues. She was witch enough to know folk legends always had truth in them, at bottom.

She was uneasy about the stories of how small animals tried to hibernate in piles of wood and other combustible materials the thoughtful humans had built up for them to sleep warmly in. She and Petulia had diligently put out a few charms to deter them before lightling the fire; quite a few hedgehogs had got the message and scuttled away. She was glad of thnt. But there might be a few slow learners who'd never get a chance to realise it was a death-trap; Petulia had said you can't protect all of them.

She heard a scuttling and looked down.

SQUEAK.

Knowing she was one of only three people present who would be able to see this, she looked down to see the skeleton of a rat, wearing a black cowl, standing up on its hind legs, and holding a very small scythe. It was ushering the souls of several slow-learning rats out of the flames. Rats who had failed the class.

It looked up at Bekki with an expression of reproach on its skull.

"I'm sorry." she said. "But at least it keeps you in work. Give my regards to Miss Susan when you see her next?"

SQUEAK. said the Death of Rats. He did a lot of his work in farming communities, in the never-ending war of attrition between country folk and rodents. Bekki had met him before.

"What do you know about Wendfire, by the way?" she added. The Death of Rats looked up at her thoughtfully.

SQUEAK? SQUEAK SQUEAK! SCREE! SQUEAK!

She thoughtfully decoded the answers inside her head, and thanked him. (2)

"You know we don't do the Rite of Ash'kente stuff." she said. "Nor does my dad. He told me there's no need, as you're usually happy to answer a honest question, whenever you meet. And I suspect my mentioning that Miss Susan knows me, and she was my teacher for a while, makes you more inclined to answer me. But thank you, anyway. Have a nice night."

She looked down at the Death of Rats.

"I suspect if you're quick, you can nick something off the buffet table." she said. "Mrs Cranage won't be able to see you. And I won't tell."

SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats. It conveyed the idea that he, The Death of Rats, would have done that anyway, but it was nice to be invited. He disappeared. (3)

Bekki smiled, and returned to the party. It was a nice festive occassion. And, Hogswatch excepted, there wouldn't be nearly enough of them for the next three months. Better make the most of it.

She thought she glimpsed the white cat again, watching from cover nearby to the fire. That was cats for you: staying in the warm, and discreetly unseen. By the time she got to where she'd seen it it had gone. But she still left a few cat-sized bites of choice pork in a likely spot and said "For You."

And wondered why she'd put a capital letter on the You. It felt right.

Bekki returned to the party. She was still watching the shadows, in the purposeful and methodical way her mother and Godsmother Alice had taught her, for any unspecified Things that might gatecrash. But the night had a distinct dearth of them. Maybe the Bone Fire had done its job and they'd all been properly warned off.

And the next day, the snow really started to come down. Bekki dug out the winter clothing Irena and Olga had sent her. She reflected that in the padded suit and the valenki overboots, she really did look like a well-swaddled small troll. But with the fur cap, with its pull-out semi-floppy black point that Irena called a budionovka, she was at least warm...

She went to work humming one of the Far Überwaldean songs the Watch Witches had taught her. Something about fire and ice meeting. Apparently with interesting results. Bekki frowned. You'd just get a warm puddle, surely? And her Second Thoughts said Eventually, yes. She let it go, and got on with witching.

She thought ahead. Mum wanted her home for Hogswatch Week. She was keen to go. And in the spring, Mistress Aching had offered to take her in for a month or two to learn about sheep. Which meant lambing season. Bekki was cynical enough to suspect at that time of year, you couldn't have too many Witches out in the hills helping to lamb ewes. Extra labour. Largely, she suspected, unpaid. But she was looking forward to it anyway. The excited little girl in her wanted to see lambs. Lots of little baby lambs. And the older Bekki who took after her mother was thinking - Lamb. It'll be a welcome change from pork on the dinner plate. Ask to take some of Petulia's mint with you for the sauce.

She smiled and got on with the job that was in front of her.

Hogswatch first. Then back to Pork Scratching for a month or two. Then to see what the Chalk Country had to offer a learning witch. And I'll be working alongside Mistress Aching. What an education!

To be continued

(1) Unkind people said this made her look like an aggressive tomato. It made Bekki angrier and redder. something of a vicious circle here. People who made the "angry tomato" joke tended not to, after a while.

(2) Apparently Wendfire summoned the Wild Hunted, led by their patron god Herne the Hunted, in an unforgettable cavalcade across the sky that was said to drive men insane at the merest terrible glimpse of it. Yes. English folklore, and another nod to Alan Garner here, specifically The Moon of Gomrath. Bekki suspected Apricity Brabble was a Discly avatar of Herne the Hunted: small, timid, nervous, and looking as if she'd run in panic if anyone looked even slightly the wrong way at her. Yet she was brilliant at plants, botany, and tending growing crops. Arable farmers were learning to respect her.

(3) Mrs Irma Cranage, who was assisting with the buffet and plating things for appreciative eaters, blinked slightly. She was sure a beef sausage in a bap should have been in that space on the trestle table just now. Never mind, maybe she'd imagined it…

Notes Dump:

Somewhere in a sea roughly halfway between two continents, the one of the tale being currently written and the semi-glimpsed one of future tales yet to be committed to paper, where isolated ideas are given lifebelts and a signal rocket against being spotted and rescued.

Interesting idea in the Michael Palin diaries. The real reason for the demise of the British film industry wasn't necessarily bad management, bad films, lack of talent and lack of finance (although these things played a part).

Palin recalls playing a part in a mediaeval fantasy film (Jabberwocky) sometime around 1977. He had to play a scene where he was fishing from a coracle as a mediaeval peasant, that conveyed something of the timeless romantic Dung Ages and bucolic isolation. He recalls this was on a stretch of river that in former times had doubled for Africa in Bogart's The African Queen, allowing large chunks of the movie to be made in Africa without ever leaving North London. And that he had to do any number of retakes for one very pressing reason.

It hadn't mattered at all in the 1930's. And it had been hardly a problem in the 1950's. But in the 1970's, Britain's two major film studios at Elstree and Shepperton were now right under the flight-paths for London's two major airports. The "British Hollywood" was now having to break off outside filming every two or three minutes because of jet planes either landing at, or taking off from, Heathrow and Gatwick. Not just jet planes coming into view in a mediaeval panoramic shot – but the sheer sound and noise getting onto the soundtrack. This is a drawback to the film-maker – and you just cannot up sticks and relocate to a new location elsewhere. Not with a whole movie-making complex. I can see this would be a big problem with regards to suspension of disbelief.

Apricity – one of those wonderfully obsolete English words. It denotes - when it's a cold winter's day but the sun is just gloriously warm, or seems warmer than it has a right to be for the time of year. That's "apricity" and the word dates back to the 1620s.

Brabble: to have an excessively loud argument concerning over something inconsequential. The loudness of the argument is in inverse proportion to its importance. Everybody has brabbled at some point, especially online.

From a weird words site – is this Polish? Zenzizenzizenzic –" yes, I might have saved the best two for last two. You've been rewarded, reader that stuck with me! This wondrous word means to the power of eight. In the 16th century, when people explained it to one another, they'd say: "It doth represent the square of squares quite squarely." Nice." Name for a character, or a Wizard, perhaps.

(1) Unkind people said this made her look like an aggressive tomato. It made Bekki angrier and redder. something of a vicious circle here. people who made the "angry tomato" joke tended not to, after a while.

(2) apparently Wendfire summoned the Wild Hunted, led by their patron god Herne the Hunted, in an unforgettable cavalcade across the sky that was said to drive men insane at the merest terrible glimpse of it. Yes. English folklore, and another nod to Alan Garner here, specifically The Moon of Gomrath. Bekki suspected Apricity Brabble was a Discly avatar of Herne the Hunted: small, timid and nervous.