Granny was on her way to the edge of the village. "She'll come," she thought, walking surefooted onwards at a constant speed. She found it to be the best way to walk long distances and to wait for people to catch up. She didn't have to look behind. She knew her headology won't allow Gytha to refuse an adventure like this. Not that adventures were fun in any way. Quite the opposite, one ended up in strange places, with no water, no food, or worse, unknown food and no access to personal hygiene. Well, that was untrue, as Granny was a master of all things improvised as long as she had practiced them sufficiently beforehand. Which she always did. She had contingency plans for just about every scenario – at least any one that she had already thought about.
The moment she crossed the unmarked boundary of the village her footstep briefly faltered in midair. She wondered why Nanny wasn't already there. Could it be that her headology hadn't worked? No, impossible, she knew it had worked the moment she had noticed her old friend (partner in… magic, she could have called her, if magic had really ever been truly used) had started using her own brand (or brandy, since the two were connected in this particular case) of headology. But then again… what if? Well, a witch never let what ifs make the best of her, and Granny was first and foremost a witch. Actually she was a woman first and foremost, but the concept applied in either case. If, by a miracle of nature, Gytha had decided not to follow, then good for her. It isn't as if she had any obligation to do so. Not really, anyway. So Granny will just have to go on alone. Nothing new, in all honesty, even though a smidge of help was welcome in this particular conundrum.
She continued on her way, remembering to get on the broom she had packed with her to more quickly get to Uberwald. She started running, she felt the unseen, magical wings open to her sides and the broom lazily took off. The wings were, of course, not really there. It's what she came to feel whenever she was riding the blasted contraption. No matter how fit for witches brooms were, she preferred riding the wings of a real bird. At least she had companionship.
As the air currents flowed around her, she got that strange feeling of being watched again. She looked down to see a small lake whizzing underneath, and, despite the rippling surface and thanks to the great traveling speed, she caught the glimpse of a hooded figure. A sparkle from its face, or was that just a sparkle from the water surface? She could not be sure. But the waved one hand quickly, feeling the water vapors in the air around her just below the cloud's underbelly and she whisked them into foamy, fluffy cloud material. Of course, she did not get wet; water droplets respected her too much to dare touch her when she expressly did not want to, or at least that is what she thought. Regardless as to why, a witch knew better than to constantly and naggingly ask why, she remained dry, and most importantly hidden. Death's enemy, and, by extension, it appeared, also hers, was keeping tabs on her. She decided to keep in mind and obscure all large enough reflective surfaces wherever she went. Things were getting out of hand.
As she was flying, having also entered that state of camouflage that enabled her to blend in with her surroundings effectively letting any unwitting purveyor of the skies at best noticing a broom whizzing through the underbelly of a wispy cloud, her path was rudely crossed by a red blur of a creature that was screaming at the top of its lungs. Had that not been "Heeeeeeeeelp", she might have thought twice before actually considering glancing twice after them – after all, this was the Discworld, and unusual things were rather the norm. As it were, she took a better look at the out of control blur until it took shape in the form of a red-cloaked man on what seemed to be a wardrobe on fire. The poor bloke was clinging to the handles for dear life with one hand, as he was desperately pulling onto his red pointy hat which, as is their wont when exposed to severe gales, was equally desperately trying to leave his balding head.
Granny sighed. It was a sigh of annoyance, really, more than anything, since she knew things never happened for no reason and she had a nagging suspicion a story might be afoot here. She had had dealings with stories before and she found she had to assume this apparently bonkers wizard – not that there ever was any other kind – was going to play a role in the development of the story. She glanced around again, having felt someone snickering. It was a mere fleeting tenth impression, but as impressions go, the tenth is usually the right one. The eleventh is superfluous to skilled witches as Granny, and the tenth is only necessary when forces like the Auditors are involved. She let it go, even though the event still scratched at her attention's door, like a spoiled kitten not having it any way other than his.
Diving in, she reached the screaming poor sod, and gave the fire a look chilling enough to instantly put it out without even a shameful trace of smoke out if it. At that moment, the wardrobe, more of a contraption incased in a wardrobe-like wooden box, started tilting forwards into a nose dive. The fear in the man's eyes was now doubled, as he could only briefly look to Granny with eyes threatening to go on a vacation before closing them in terror as another scream escaped his lungs. That scream sounded as a combination of 'why' and 'no' effectively resulting in "Whoaaah."
His freefall had been funny, though Granny, if the billowing cloak now uncovering his nether regions had not done so. She sighed again. Incompetent wizards never thought of enough plans to cover a few alphabets. Not that competent ones ever did, but she had found throughout the years some of them might have had prepared some plans for their left hand fingers as well. She dove in after the desperate man now leaving a trail of tears in his descent. She came next to it and asked the man what he thought he was doing. He stopped screaming and his look had a touch of mad disbelief to it, the kind one would see when asked whether the hearth fire had burnt their hands when trying to pick up a coal out of it.
"I'm falling, of course! What else could I be doing, woma…" he trailed off, despite the outrage now building in his facial expression, though less evident in his air-currents-muffled voice. Granny's look had cut him off right at the roots of his thoughts. He was only able to muster a strangled "please help" before he went red with shame and shut up.
She smirked inwardly. Grabbing the wooden crate by a corner, it synchronized its flight with the broom which quickly went on a level flight trajectory. The man clearly relaxed and repositioned his hat on his head, fastening it under his chin. His features included, but were not limited to, a ginger beard streaked with sufficient grey to render the first a mere impression, wide, teary, muddy-green eyes which tended to slant downwards towards the edges of his very plump face under a set of thick but equally grey and slanted eyebrows and framing a flat, broken nose, which all gave the impression he were constantly on the verge of crying. The balding head with the grayish hair still hanging for dear life just above the ears was mostly hidden under the red hat with the pointy tip and the slightly too wide brim, which matched his cloak of a darker shade of red. No ornaments adorned either, which Granny found rather odd in a wizard, but which she somehow appreciated, as she saw a bit of witchiness in that decision. He allowed his body to sulk as he breathed heavily and his face regained a slightly under the weather composure.
"Thanks for that," he moaned, looking at Esme. "I put the ruddy thing on high power to make sure I manage to take off, but it had failed to consider the interference of such high wind velocities with the internal wing structure and gyro-mechanism," he explained further, turning a few knobs on the surface of the wardrobe-crate and then looked at Granny again. He saw puzzlement on her face for a fleeting second after which her look changed to an impassive one of apparent disinterest. "This is a self propelled apparatus capable of long distance, one directional flight…" he continued, hoping this would spike the witch's attention. Since that elicited no response, and since the woman was starting to scare him more than the previous experience itself, he ended his explanation in the quiet tone of someone who admits defeat on the way to the end line "… also called ACOLD."
"Where's the F?" asked Granny nonplussed. The woman was a complete mystery to him.
"What F?" asked the wizard confused.
"The one from flight. Or is the name given due to the cold on which the passenger is bound to travel?" asked Granny, missing the sarcasm in her own voice entirely. "Strange woman," thought the wizard, but answered:
"No, it's the acronym and the F is implied. Besides, ACOLD sounds better than ACOLDF and my marketing department considered it sounded better that way." Neither Granny let it show she was not entirely sure what marketing meant, nor did the wizard mention his marketing department consisted of his dog who simply stopped wagging his tail every time he heard the word ACOLDF.
"I see," said Granny in a level tone. She couldn't care less about the name of the damn contraption. Her hand holding the stuff was beginning to tire and she wanted to get out of this situation as quickly as possible. Besides, Uberwald was approaching, and she wanted to know more about this man who was clearly going to accompany her on this quest. Her mouth pursed a bit at that thought, since its mere presence showed how deep into the story she had entered.
"Listen," said the wizard, before she could start asking questions. "Thank you for your help, but I must really reach the ground soon or I might freeze. It's quite chilly up here, don't you think?" Ah, wizards, the masters of stating the obvious and not preparing for it, thought Granny. She began her descent, and, as she drew breath to talk, he went on "Oh, thank you, dear…" her look made him falter. Such a difficult woman, he thought. "… respected… witch?" he went on, checking at each word to see her reaction. Since she stopped giving him the look, he went on more relieved, but still on his toes. She seemed to not be a woman to mess with, and since she had stopped his ACOLD at top speed in an instant and at her age – was she a hundred? – he thought it better to always stay on her good side. "I am Donnovan Tinker, natural wizard and mechanics aficionado. I'd extend my hand, but my hat keeps trying to desert me, and as you may know…"
"I know. You love your hats," answered an unimpressed Granny. Again, the Don'Tinker joke completely missed her by miles.
"We don't love them, but they are …" started Don apologetically.
"I said I know," Granny cut him off, from lack of time. They were about to land and she had always hated landings. It took much of her strength to bring them to the ground with only a few bruised on Don's part, who had flown off his contraption as soon as it had hit the ground, and only what seemed to be minor damage to the wardrobe-crate itself. Granny thought it a decent landing. Don appeared to think otherwise.
"Oy, you almost killed me! And look at my ACOLD, it will take me ages to put it back together! And where are we, anyway?" He had quickly gotten back on his feet, holding his shoulder and hurrying towards his now fuming contraption. He had thrown Granny an angry look and then turned to gaze helplessly at the now properly burning ACOLD. Esme thought it a waste of time arguing with him. As he had begun complaining, she had decided she was not going to let him join her on her quest, the story be damned. She was not going to let him mock her.
"Hey, where are you going?! You can't leave me here like this, you… m'am? Madam? Sir? Hmm mmm?" he ended in a pitiful whine as her stare bore down into his soul and seemed to bring him back to the times when his own mother towered over him as he was trying to badly explain a mistake he did and kept making more on the way.
"You can find your own way back from Uberwald, Mr. Wizard. You are not coming with me!"
"Mhm!" nodded a still speechless Don, biting both his lips, his face expressing the pain of a child told to go away. Granny felt no pang of pity, as she was a proper witch. She knew better than that. She did feel a pang of weariness due to the flight, and that dread of being watched again, which made her break eye contact to investigate their surroundings.
They were deep in the Uberwald forest, but not close enough to the witch she knew and wanted to visit for more information. O'challa was a proper witch, she had always thought, deep in the darkest forest of all, still not driven mad by the solitude and still doing witchy things in the neighboring villages. She hadn't seen her in years, but she will soon enough. She half felt the bag of cinnamon buns in her bag. A toll was required, and she had provided. Now to deal with this nuisance. She turned on the spot after throwing the man another stern glance, and started through the trees in the right direction – a witch always knew the right direction, as all directions picked by a witch are the right one, regardless where they actually lead.
She had been walking for a few minutes when she heard the rustling leaves. That man…
"I told you to stay there!" she said slightly annoyed, stopping.
"I couldn't," answered Don, shaking the cobwebs off his hat. "You're a bit taller than I, how come yours is still clean?" he asked puzzled, pointing to her hat.
"They know to avoid me," answered Granny simply, inwardly relishing his bewildered reaction, and deeper still wondering why she would relish it and what that said about her.
"But how…" his question trailed off. He wouldn't have gotten an answer anyway, he thought, so why bother anymore. "Anyway, I decided to join you since I see you know your way around here and will probably get somewhere populated since witches work with people. Unlike us, or me, anyway, since I mostly work with machines. As you have probably seen. I've heard yo… they can also tell a lot about people just by looking at them, which I never really got the hang of. And since I'm not going to put ACOLD back together again here in the forest, and I already have all the plans and the adjustments in my head, I'll tag along and see where I can resume work. You see, I don't get a lot of support from my fellow wizards, since I refuse to work with imps, so I'm more or less on my own, repairing whatever people bring my associate, who handles business as I concentrate more on the job itself and on other inventions, like the one you've seen, but I digress, 'cuz what I wanted to say is that I manage to take my plans wherever we go with our fix-it-all cart and it's all because I have them in my head, but I can still do other things, such as repairing furniture, or clocks, or carts, or mirrors, even a war machine or two…" Granny, who had, after grudgingly accepted the inevitability of his companionship had kept going ahead of him, in the dim hope he might lose sight of her and get lost, suddenly stopped. That was it, and it was now clear why she had met him. He was still ranting on about what he could repair as he absentmindedly bumped into her.
"Tell me about the mirrors," said Granny, in a tone which let a bit of apprehension slip through. Don, though confused by the sudden halt, was a bit queasy about the lack of the preliminary question "Did you say mirrors?" But, then again, this seemed not to be just any ordinary witch, and he just had to go with it.
"Well…" he started, scratching his head, "… I repair people's mirrors now and then. They never look the same, it's true, not without magic imps, but I invented this resin that has the same density as the glass, and if I apply it correctly it looks almost brand new, though it may sometimes still be noticeable from various angles. And it also depends on the type of glass or crystal… they have other refraction indices and that ends up being a pain, altering the formula, but I managed to combine materials once with diamond and glass," he stopped his self-absorbed tirade of thought and stared past Granny, despite her stare. He seemed to be in a non responsive trance ever since he had gotten out of danger. It had never happened to Granny before. They all responded to her headology. And he did too, when he was in the air. But now he seemed to be in his own world, only marginally answering to outside intervention. Focusing on her eyes after a few moments, he went on "but I completely forgot how I did it." Granny slightly raised her eyebrows. "I swear I forgot!" he said alarm in his voice. Scratching his head and furrowing his brow, he said "I never forget! I never write down my findings precisely because I don't need to, which, let me tell you, is great for keeping my advancements secret from other snoops, and…"
"You were saying about the glass and the diamond?" said Granny more than slightly impatiently. He had this really irritating habit of going off on tangents, and right now what he was saying could very well be what she needed.
"Well, as I was just saying," he answered with a bit of reproach in his voice, "I forgot how I did it… or what I did, too. Funny, how one can forget things just like this. I'm sure it happens to everyone, but not me, very seldomly me, and I'm sure even to you…"
"I only forget what I need to or want to," said Granny dryly.
"Sorry for offending you," said Don, the unfocused look returning in his eyes, a sign he is about to embark on another pointless talk about whatever crossed his mind at the moment. Granny had no time for that. She clearly couldn't get any more out of him here in the middle of the forest and to dig deeper here was folly. Uberwald was not the safest of places, and she would much prefer to be in O'challa's home. She started walking again, with the wizard in tow, going over the information she had thus far. Mirrors, glass and diamonds, the Auditors, the covenant of eight, what did it all mean? There was clearly a powerful witch in the covenant that was using mirrors, and was trying to get rid of her some way or another. Who knew whether the near-miss in the air wasn't also one of their ploys to get rid of her? After all, the out of control contrivance could have done real damage had it not been for Granny's own brand of special sense, which she had honed in all her years of witchcraft giving her the ability to sense others watching her or coming towards her, or warding off rain. She might have been old and her senses were dulled, but she was still able to avoid the hit. She felt a touch a pride and calm at that thought. It was still possible, perhaps, to get out of it alive. Death will have a lot more explaining to do once this is all over!