Second Strandpiel 36
Bogles in the night
Keeping up the momentum . V0.04 - third round: section breaks and typos. And footnote numbering.
This is tricky right now: awaiting hospital attention (moderately serious op pending) and frankly sleeping a lot. So bear with me, this is constructing slowly and painfully. It feels like hard work right now! Hopefully everything will be sorted out, as constructing stories feels like wading through brain-fog. I'll post this as is – although I'm aware revision is likely to be needed – just to keep the tale going. Next stop – the next chapter of "Price of flight", in which the Air Watch mission in Überwald is discreetly visited by night, and the Pegasus Service flight to the Hubland States continues.
"Always dress down. Never brighter than the floor". Leon the Assassin's advice to Nathalie Portman as Mathilde in the movie... although later in the scene he advises her he'll teach her how to use a knife last of all, as that's the most difficult skill to master.
Wes-Sandrift, Rimwards Howondaland:
Rebecka Smith-Rhodes laid in bed, wanting to sleep, but aware she was stuck in an unenviable place with a tired-out body and a racing mind. The hammering of rain on the roof above her, and the occasional crack of lightning that made light and shadow race across the bedroom, were also a consideration.
As tonight she was sharing the room with Ellie Meyer, who had the pull-out cot bed for an extra unexpected guest, she couldn't even light a lamp, so as to be able to read, or write letters.
She sighed resignedly. She doubted this would trouble Ellie overmuch. One minute the girl had been excitedly chattering about Ankh-Morpork and the wonders that could be found there. Then her chin had slumped, she had slid over to one side, and without fuss or bother, she had fallen fast asleep. Bekki had approved of this, as she'd been wondering how to put "Shut up and be quiet? Please?" into diplomatic language.
At least I got those two reports written for Olga... even if I had to excuse myself and go back to the surgery so as to be able to write them in private...
Her reports were safely stored, waiting for Wednesday morning and her duty flight to Ankh-Morpork. A very busy day full of incident behind her, she tried to push its events out of her mind and to get some sleep.
Nothing more to do now. I wish this rain would stop. And the other stuff.
Again she lamented domestic architecture in Rimwards Howondaland. The rain on the metal-sheet roof overhead sounded like a percussion section with her sister Famke in it. And at least Famke had an unexpected sense of rhythm in her drumming, brought out by musical instruments she was completely in tune with, and by a genuinely gifted teacher. The rain sounded as if Famke's notorious competence on piano had carried over into her drumming.
Bekki had heard that in other places, musicians had been inspired by the natural sounds around them, and these had inspired melodious compositions. HEX the computing engine had once said to Ruth that in another world, a musician living close to a big industrial steel foundry had been moved by the regular rise and fall of a drop-hammer during the night shift, and had structured whole performance pieces around it.(1) At this point, Dad had firmly vetoed the offer HEX had made, to play some of this for Ruth to listen to.
Justnow, Bekki would have actively preferred the rise and fall of a drop-hammer. At least that would have been regular and predictable, something to ignore. She sighed, resignedly, as actinic light lit up the room. She counted two seconds before thunder rolled up to support the light show.
It's striking very close by, then.
She rolled over and tried to wrap a pillow around her ears.
On a higher shelf, the eyes of the matryoshka dolls glowed first orange, and then red. Her eyes closed, Bekki simply did not notice this. She tried to deliberately slow her breathing and to empty her mind of thoughts. After a while she passed into an uneasy half-doze, neither one thing nor the other.
Elsewhere in the house, Anna van Jaasveld shifted uneasily in the bed in the guest room. Her eyes prickled with angry tears and she fought the feelings of rage, frustration and above all, humilation, that were passing over her like a hot red wave. Jan being next to her was a consolation, but not much of one. He had soothed her with reassuring words that it was just possible everything was going to work out now, that we are possibly over the worst, that now sympathetic friends are aware of our difficulties, help is on the way. Horst and Mariella will help and they won't let our plaas fail. Just see.
"Possibly." Anna had replied, curtly. "Maybe. You know what the problem is, Jan. Mevrou Hendricka and Mariella both said so. They said it outright. Your father has got to go. Can you not see that?"
It was the hermit elephant in the room. It wasn't their plaas. The absolute master, by law and custom, was Jan's father. It was his until he died, or until he could be persuaded to retire and sign it over to his son. Or until it went bankrupt and was seized or sold on by creditors.
They had gone to sleep on the argument, or at least, Jan had. Anna had enough sensitivity to let him. Her husband, she conceded, needed sleep, or at least, temporary oblivion. A couple of glasses of Lensen klipdrift had helped. She had taken a glass or two of Lensen wine, appreciating its quality was far better than anything coming off the van Jaasveld vines.
Accepting her judgement had not been helped by half a bottle of wine, she tried to soothe her angry and hurt thoughts, but it was hard. The thoughts and memories of the day chased in her head, like hyena cubs she'd once seen on the high Veldt. Puppies chasing their tails, but warped and malevolent puppies.
The idea she might not get to be mevrou, the mistress of her own plaas. The red shameful humiliation of being part of a failed farm that she'd married into, tied to a failed husband from a failed family. How the other wives, not just in Bitterfontein but back home in the Transvaal, would offer sympathy and compassionate understanding as her world fell from under her feet, sympathy and compassion offered genuinely, but with an undercurrent of thank the Gods that isn't me, it's not my husband's plaas that has failed, gone bankrupt and is being sold off to meet bills.
She considered one of the ideas that had emerged. The girl Rebecka, the one who had been brought up in Ankh-Morpork, had said, meant kindly and thoughtfully, that she'd met people in Ankh-Morpork who had moved there after, well, you know, misfortunes in this country. People who have, well, lost their occupation and their business in Rimwards Howondaland and chose to come full circle, to return to the Central Continent and try their luck there. That there was a big immigrant community there these days and they...we... help each other out. Look after new people arriving.
Mariella had considered this and said, ag, that's true. "My sister, Rebecka's mother, is good at that. Did I tell you she was exiled after a disagreement with the Government? She's more than made it now and the reason for her being exiled got more-or-less forgiven and not-quite forgotten.(2) If it comes to that, and this is only one possibility, Anna, and we should consider everything, Johanna has been known to provide investment capital to new people with good ideas. Interest-free loans. And speaking of investment..."
And of course Ellie had squealed with excitement and had wanted to know why Bekki's mother had been exiled. Anna winced again. She loved the girl, yes. She was family. But she was a drain, on time and energy and goodwill. Looking out for Ellie sapped her strength. A burden. Anna frowned, wondering where that had come from, like a second voice in her head.
She smiled slightly. Even Rebecka didn't know the full story as to why her mother had ended up in Ankh-Morpork in the first place. Apparently her Mum had been taciturn, and had just said. "Things happened. I got a BOSS file. Or at least a bigger BOSS file. So I was sent here, to join the Assassins. Let's leave it at that for now, shall we?"
Mariella had considered.
"I was only about two at the time." she said. "Reckon I'm not the best person to ask. Father and Mother accepted she was better off somewhere else, anyway."(3)
Above all, Anna's mind seethed with the humiliation of it all. A little sane and rational part of her knew and understood that genuine sympathy was being expressed by genuine friends. Those genuine friends were being genuinely constructive and were offering genuine help. Mariella and Horst were prepared to cover the wages bill for the van Jaasveld employees until the harvest was in and sales were made. Horst and his mother, especially his mother, had said that if one white plaas goes under to the point where it cannot pay the blacks, this creates unrest in everybody's labour force. We should do this, even if no ties of friendship were involved, as it makes good sound sense.
Anna noted that the black maids had been sent out of earshot and told that if they were needed, they'd be called for. Do not listen at the door. This talk was for white ears only.
Mariella had then said that as a practical and a decent thing, she was prepared, personally, to pay off the maxed-out credit line at Viani's, so the family could at least maintain a standard of living. "No. Not a loan, Anna. My personal gift. So you don't have to worry about that. And from my money, Hendricka, not from plaas resources. Noblesse oblige."
Anna fought back angry tears. Mariella was being a generous and concerned friend. She knew that. More generous than she could reasonably have expected. So why didn't she feel gratitude? Why did she feel resentment and anger and rage towards Mariella Smith-Rhodes-Lensen, as if she was being somehow patronised and condescended to?
Of course, she's part of the problem too. said the intrusive voice in her head. The woman who has it all. The husband who has the most successful business for a hundred miles in any direction. The looks. The brains. Her handsome husband, who must be actively trying for a family with her. So unlike Jan, don't you think? So unlike Jan - in every way? That family name behind her. Smith-Rhodes. That name opens doors. It also has millions of rand to invest in places like this. Ten years ago, they say this plaas was as failing and decrepit as the one that imprisons you. Only there is no Smith-Rhodes family money for you, to rebuild, to restore, to invest in the van Jaasveld plaas.
"But that's not true." Anna protested to herself. "They did discuss Smith-Rhodes money coming in to help us. To help us be as successful as they are."
But Jan refused that when he heard the price. the inner voice said. The condition the Smith-Rhodes woman placed on this. The Lensen woman agreed with her. That your husband's parents step back. That his father retires. Jan sees this as loyalty to his father. The Smith-Rhodes woman and her husband see it as misplaced loyalty. And they have said that they will not advance rescue finance or investment while the old man remains in charge. He has to go.
"They're right. He's got to go."
On the brink of uneasy sleep, Anna wondered exactly who or what she was having this conversation with. A tiny part of her mind wondered if this was insanity. Married life with Jan counted. It must do. Not so much living with him, but living with him in that place. Was it tipping her over the edge, creating multiple personalities? They say that's a sure sign. Having arguments with yourself. And the voice in her head was female. It sounded intelligent, kindly.
But Jan won't have it, will he? He's more loyal to his father than he is to you. And the Smith-Rhodes investment capital, the rescue package, is dependent on his going. That's absolute.
"But then they'll own the place. Our plaas. It still won't be ours." Anna objected.
As they reckon it, they'll play fair. the voice said. As they did for the Lensens. You will not be evicted. You will remain, as tenants for the moment. They will invest in you. Modernise. And then it can go one of three ways. You remain tenants forever, earning a salary. If you still go bust, the Smith-Rhodeses and the Lensens can, with extreme reluctance, evict you, with you having given it a fair go. The land and the assets are a surety, so they will not lose out on the deal. Or you thrive and prosper and buy them out, as the Lensens did, and you repay their investment that way. You can still fail, but with their help, failure is less likely.
Anna considered this. It was exciting.
But they want your father-in-law gone. That's the sticking point. There can be no financial deal, no rescue, no hope, as long as Old Jan van Jaasveld remains. And you know he will not retire willingly. He will not fade out. He will not go to a retirement home, provided no doubt by the Lensens, a small huis somewhere perhaps with a smallholding to occupy his declining days and to keep him occupied. I hear that's the decent compassionate thing for a retired plaasjaapie who finds a big concern too much for him?
The voice sounded contemptuous of human kindness, but the impression was fleeting and went quickly.
And until he goes, there is no hope for you or your husband. The Smith-Rhodes woman, and the Lensen woman, did say what the alternative is, but this would be a long-drawn-out decline. When the van Jaasveld plaas is forced to begin selling land to live, the Lensens will contrive to buy it, piecemeal. But they told you, frankly, this will be protracted and painful and will mean they end up paying over the odds at auction over a period of maybe years. Consuming their time and money needlessly. They do not want to do it this way. But the old man remains, and he needs to go. Then there is no barrier.
Anna considered this. A rational part of her mind, deep down, wondered if she was being steered, reeled in like a fish on a hook. Befuddled on wine and tiredness, this impression did not last long.
We know he is distressingly healthy. When the witch-girl healed him – and Witch she is, this is an open secret – he became healthier still. So you know he will not die soon of natural causes. Shame, as this would solve everything.
Anna considered this. A new possibility arose.
Anna, you know his secret. What he did. You are tired out from watching over Ellie, that she is safe from him. You can make her safe from him. Forever. We can help.
Anna felt suddenly excited. Thoughts definitely her own arose. Thoughts she was now consciously vocalising, in cold blood.
"Does a creature like him have a right to live?" she said, to herself.
She heard the other voice laugh. She frowned again. Something wasn't right... still on the edge of sleep, she felt a muffled, distant, unease.
"Look... who are you?" she asked.
The other voice laughed again.
A friend. And friends help other friends. We will help you remove the old man. The old woman, the widow, can be discreetly moved away. To help you achieve your heart's desires. You want the status and the social standing of being a mevrou, a prosperous successful woman. We can help.
The voice paused, as if considering.
And above all, you want a child. But your husband is incapable of giving you one and has been for some time. Oh, we can certainly help with a child. We're renowned for that. And you came here to see the Witch-girl about this? Who isn't even seventeen, is certainly a virgin, knows nothing apart from one uncertain stumbling association with a boy only a little older than she is? What can she possibly do to help?
Anna felt the unease again, as if she was being made a fool of, the butt of the joke. This too swiftly passed.
But we will ask something in return. The farm will be yours. The old man gone. The old woman, who you cannot live with and despise, removed to a retirement house on a pension. And the child you crave will come. In return, you will help us, Anna van Jaasveld.
"How can I help you?" Anna asked. Inside she knew she'd surrendered. "It would help if I knew who you are."
Lightning flashed and cracked again. Anna flinched slightly as the room was illuminated in stark leaping contrasts of black and white. Rumbling thunder followed very quickly. It was coming down very closely nearby.
"On cue." the voice said. "The weather on this world never fails."
Anna realised the voice was no longer in her head. She jerked awake.
"Look at the mirror, Anna van Jaasveld." the voice prompted. "In fact, get out of bed and cross the room to the dresser. Where the mirror is. Thank you."
Nobody else, Anna realised, was physically in the room. She even looked behind her. But the mirror showed a picture of a gloriously beautiful, richly dressed, woman, against the background of a boudoir, decked out in rich white with tones of blue and deep purple. Her voice radiated sympathy and concern. Anna felt suddenly small and worthless.
"It has to be this way." the mirror-woman said, as if talking to herself. "The witch-girl coming to this place was a complication. We thought there were no Witches here, apart from a few cowed natives. No Gods, apart from their pitiful small gods. Blinded with anger and rage at the white people but with little actual power to act. So easy to manage. And they think we're serving them..."
The woman smiled at Anna.
"It has to be this way." she said. "If I show myself more directly, the witch-girl would detect me. On her own she is of little account, but the others who she can call to help her are not so powerless. We have fought them before."
The woman frowned.
"Our first step is therefore to defeat the Witch-girl. She is the immediate enemy."
"Rebecka?" Anna said, horrified. "She healed the filthy animal, yes. But she also eased wounds for my husband. She's a good friend to Ellie."
Anna flinched back.
"But she healed the disgusting old man." the mirror-woman reminded her. "When we move to remove him, she will know. We do not want her making accusations. We do not want her alerting other Witches. The ones in Ankh-Morpork. The dangerous ones."
"She healed the dirty old man." Anna repeated, woodenly. "The pervert."
"And this land is promising for us." the mirror-woman said. "People widely scattered. Fear of an impending war on a far border. People look to a far horizon, fearfully, not realising what is happening in their own land under their own feet. Their fear draws us. A police force who are lazy and idle, officered by a paranoid who sees imaginary threats. A people divided and separated. And until recently, no Witches."
Anna screamed softly. The surface of the mirror rippled, like vertical water, and the woman's arm, against all reason and logic, shot out of the glass. She gripped Anna's arm firmly and dragged it into the mirror-world, up to the elbow. It did not feel like a kindly or a friendly touch. The hand felt cold, not icy cold, but the cold of one who had been outdoors in a cold place. The air around her arm, inside the mirror, had the chill of very cold water.
"We need to remove the Witch." the mirror-woman said. "And the puzzle has several pieces."
Lightning crashed again. Thunder rolled.
"The weather in this country is pleasing." she observed. "Natural power. Raw and undirected. We can use that. But it needs reason. Emotion."
She stared at Anna. It did not feel like a nice stare. Ana felt herself surrendering, feeling a deep and certain sense of her inferiority in the grip of the woman's perfect beauty and strength of mind.
"I need your anger, your resentment, your frustration, your bitterness." she said. "Human negativity. This is also power."
Anna felt the chilly grip on her arm and sagged as something passed from her.
"And thirdly, we need the girl Ellie and what she can provide." the woman said. "A rather dull stupid girl of little intelligence, but she has the vitality and the instinctiveness of childhood. She shapes it. Allows a doorway for my creation. Ellie opens the cage door. Ellie is the cage. You two are the keepers. But I have the key."
Anna tried not to scream as lightning flashed again.
In the stables, Boetjie the Pegasus whickered in sudden alarm and his head rose. He looked about him in fright.
"Hey, Green Yin." Wee Archie Aff The Midden said. There was no response from the still green figure next to him, which was squatting on top of the stall with its chin resting on a hand. Archie spoke an oath, and kicked the green form.
"Will ye no come oot of Sleep Mode and stand by?" he demanded. "Or do I need tae boot ye up..."
The imp shook himself and yawned.
"This had better be good." the demon complained. "I was having a good dream downloading there."
Archie drew his attention to the Pegasus.
"Something's stalking the night." he said. "It isnae guid, Green Yin. The beastie knows something is not right."
Grindguts The Destroying Demon considered this.
"You could be right." he said. "Reckon it's some sort of prowling animal? Mr Horst said to us they sometimes get something coming in at night and we could be useful there. As security. You know, lions and stuff. Dertein said they've been spotted on the other side of the townships."
Wee Archie stood up straight.
"Aye, weel." he said. "One o' yon gey big pussycats sniffin' roond. Nae bother. Pit the heid in the right place, and it'll drop. Shame mah mousepipes are bein' looked after by the Gonnagles, or else ah could play the Notes O' Pain at them."(4)
He leapt down onto Boetjie's neck and ran up to the mane. Sensing a familiar presence, one entitled to do this, the horse quieted.
"Got tae dae this." Wee Archie remarked. "Or he'll spook the other horses. Miss Sophie says one can set off a whole stable. Hey, big man! We're here. Nothing's going tae harm you. It has tae get past me first."
Grindguts grunted, wondering why the rest of the stable was quiet and none of the other horses was expressing anxiety. Wouldn't they all smell a nearby predator? Still, Archie might be a Grade A pillock. But he could soothe a scared Pegasus. One he flew with every day.
"Reckon we should take a look?" he asked. "Quick tour round?"
Wee Archie nodded.
"Aye, Green Yin. Something isnae right. It feels bad. Ah feels it in my spog. It might even be the sort of bad we should talk tae Miss Rebecka about."
They contemplated the rain and the lightning together.
"It's pissing down out there." Grindguts grumbled. "We're going to get bloody soaked, you know that?" he added, pointedly.
Wee Archie shrugged.
"Tis a duty." he said. "Also an obligation tae Mistress Hendricka, and tae Mr Horst and tae Mistress Mariella."
The Feegle stuck his chin out and looked stern.
"Tis our geas." he said. "Tae Miss Rebecka, tae the Service, and tae the Hag O' The High Airs."
Grindguts winced. He also realised that if this meant they'd be reporting to Olga Romanoff, they'd better be on point with this one.
They dropped to the ground and made towards the stable doors.
"You know at some point we need to tell them?" he demanded. "What we found out when we had a nose round Haartebeeste? Rebecka was looking at us all funny, and she said she wanted a word later."
Archie shrugged.
"Time for that later, Green Yin. But let's see what's abidin' here tonight."
He sniffed the air.
"It's nae right. Nae right at all. Ah kin feel it in mah watters."
Bekki awoke, realising something was dreadfully wrong. Her eyes opened all the way and for an instant she tried to fight what felt like a suffocating blanket that had been laid over her. She sensed her recurring nightmare receding, the one where she was cocooned in a warm nurturing place, feeling a nearby pulsating heartbeat. Then the heartbeat began to race and a sense of alarm, of being trapped, overwhelmed her. Without words, a sensation would arise of I must get out of this place!
Remember this is a dream, the Inner Voice said. This in itself is a perception and not dangerous. But every time it's happened, it has been a warning to you to be alert. Bekki closed her inner eyes and tried to emerge, but carefully, without haste or panic.
She became aware of the real world reasserting itself. She felt irritated that the thunder and lightning and the persistent arrhythmic drumbeat of the rain was still there. She sensed the leaping actinic flash of nearby lightning from even behind her closed eyelids. But something didn't feel right, over and above the lightning.
Her eyes snapped open. And this time she knew things were not right.
As light and shadow rippled around the room, she took in several things. For the first time, she realised the eyes of the matryoschka dolls were glowing an intense unblinking red. Bekki also realised a nimbus of blue light was forming round the dolls. She assessed this with a growing sense of anxiety, remembering the eyes had lit up the previous morning, alerting her to the danger of the day ahead. That had been orange light. Justnow it was brilliant red. And the halo of blue light was something she hadn't seen before.
She tried to articulate a question, assembling the syllables in her head.
"Что происходит? В чем опасность?"
Then she realised she was dumb. She couldn't speak it. Her jaw was locked. Very shortly afterwards, she realised, with a flash of horror, that her body was frozen. Paralysed. She couldn't move her head but if she ignored her left eye and paid attention to movement on her right... she ould make out where Ellie, incredibly, was fast asleep on the cot-bed, oblivious to events. And something was forming in the air above Ellie. A cloud of some sort, in a chalky-white essence that seemed to be generating its own light.
You can still think. her Second Thoughts said. You can assemble the question "What's happening and is it dangerous?" in Rodinian. You can use your mind. You are a Witch.
Her Second Thoughts said, in her mother's voice:
Your mind is your weapon and your defence. Oh hell, let me paint you a picture. I'm going to need help here.
A succession of faces passed through the inner screen of her mind, very quickly. Godsmother Irena. Her father. Her adoptive grandfather, Mustrum Ridcully.
Bekki had a quick guilty memory of the talisman, the pendant, that Grandfather Mustrum had given her, the one that would protect her and alert him if she ever got into real trouble. Except it was in her dresser drawer at home in Ankh-Morpork. She felt a prompt of embarrassment and guilt. An absurd thought rose. If it were to activate, Grandfather Mustrum would go charging across town to Spa Lane thinking the peril was there, and he'd wake everybody up...
The absurd thought made her laugh inside. Somehow it helped, rooted her, connecting her; she felt the paralysis weaken and discovered she could twitch her lips in a grin, even turn her head slightly towards the threat. And whatever was coming out of Ellie appeared to be growing and taking form, just sitting above her chest for now, linked to her by some sort of insubstantial wispy threads...
She heard her Second Thoughts again, this time in Godsmother Irena's voice. That was new.
Sleep paralysis, devyuschka! What did I tell you about it? What happened to me?
The memory of past teaching, an older Witch communicating her experience, came faster than her Second Thoughts could speak. Godsmother Irena had been tested by Them. They had come at night. Sleep paralysis happened. Whether it was something your body and mind did to you, or some sort of weapon They used, or a combination of both, it was a state where a magic user would be attacked by Them. The trick was to make your mind into a fortress, a High Tower, as her father said.
This time she heard her father's voice.
"Defences, Bekki! You're good at that!"
As the thing coalesced above Ellie Mayer and Bekki could now see its arms, she also remembered her father's instruction in how to defend against magical attack. She respectfully pushed Tiffany Aching out of her mind, recalling Tiffany telling the young Witches never to make any sort of defensive circle or protective barrier, or else Something would come along, curious to find out why and what it protected.
"It's already here, Mistress Aching." she said, and focused on throwing up a pentagram.
My head. Two hands. Two feet. The five points of the star. Call the lines of force from my core, my centre. The red heartlight of emotion and intuition. The white brainlight of thought and directed intellect. Bring them together.. Imagine...
The five lines of the star fell into place around her. She was almost amused that she could see them, delineated in shockingly glowing pink light, falling into place with silent solid thuds. It seemed such a girly colour...
Now connect them, Bekki. Draw a circle, connect the five points, and close the circle...
Her father's voice, inside her head, was urgent. She sensed the bedroom wall next to her bed falling out of space and time, had a moment of wobbly panic as to how to explain that to Mevrou Hendricka, then realised the wall was still, objectively, there. It was just that the magical circle she had called into being needed to ignore local rules of space and matter, and was projecting outside the wall and outside the huis. She wondered for a moment what somebody outside the huis and looking this way might see...
She saw the clacking lobster-claws on the end of each arm. They were extending towards her and clacking hungrily. She also saw the Thing had a face and a mouth.
And she realised her hair was unbound.
"Oh, no." she said. "No, no, no, no, no!"
Bekki! the voice of Ponder Stibbons shouted. Abstractly, she realised her father sounded worried. Complete the defences!
She remembered. Her father's teaching had been thorough. She visualised pink-white light radiating from the protective circle, rising above her, curving inwards, closing into a half-sphere above her. Her Second Thoughts prompted her again.
Your hair is hanging down, devyuschka. This thing can also attack from underneath. Haven't we taught you sufficiently in the Air Watch about the sneak attack from below?
Bekki thanked her Godsmother and sensed the sphere closing completely around her.
And now she wasn't in a bedroom. Well, I am. I haven't moved from my bed. I'm still paralysed. But I can breathe. I can move my head just enough to realise I'm lying on my back, in the middle of a five-pointed star which in turn is in a protective sphere of magical force. I think it's enclosing all my hair. I hope it's enclosing all my hair.
She tried not feel fear or revulsion as the Thing, the Haartebeeste Ghost, moved around the sphere of light, flowing with an unpleasant oozing sort of motion, reminding her of a jellyfish or an octopus or perhaps a large sea-slug in a tank, seeking a way in. She knew she'd cast the protection well. But she couldn't help but feel scared of those claws, like crude scissors, clacking as it moved. And she knew what it wanted, above all else, was her hair. It craved her hair.
"I'm defending." she thought. "What happens next?"
She remembered Godsmother Irena's instinctive defence, aged about twelve, had been to visualise and throw fireballs.
"Take it from me, devyuschka." Irena had said. "Not a bright idea when you live in a wooden house, in a wooden village, in the middle of a forest."
Bekki was reminded that the Lensen huis was largely built of wood. This ruled out killing it with fire. Besides, it was linked to Ellie. How could she destroy, or at least dissipate, the thing, without hurting Ellie?
She watched it slithering on the outside of the defensive sphere of light, looking like a huge leprous-white slug, the scissor-claws on what looked like human arms clacking audibly, and feeling revulsion. She knew all her hair was safe inside the defensive light. But that was no consolation when she had a close-up view of the thing, about three feet away from her face. At least it couldn't get in. Maybe it would just exhaust itself, and return to its host? This lightning storm outside wasn't helping. Periodically she became aware of flashing light and rolling thunder. Would it last as long as the storm lasted? She sighed and settled down for a long wait, confident in her ability to sustain the defences. She studied the Thing, trying not to shudder with revulsion, analysing it, aware she would need to Report.
Provided I don't fall asleep again. She felt a sense of horror. If she gave in to the tiredness, would her defences fail?
Her Second Thoughts took on a new voice.
"Ножницы, Жар-птица! Ножницы!"
The insistent, urgent, voice of Xenia Galena. Bekki remembered the Going-Away party for the old witch. Xenia had been insistent about scissors. A thought nagged her.
"Xenia?" she said, trying to phrase it in Rodinian. "Exactly how many kinds of Second Thoughts have I got? You are the fourth one so far!"
She heard a not unkind laugh.
"I am your fourth voice." she heard. Xenia's voice, but speaking Morporkian with a Rodinian accent. "And here in your head I speak your language. No need for you to try and speak mine. I suspect you give me accent, because you think I should have Rodinian accent, with slight errors, in my Morporkian. But think about it, Firebird. Natalya's dolls. Five dolls. Five voices. Use them wisely. Think like a Witch."
Bekki considered this. Then she realised, looking at the steady angry red lights and the blue halo of clean, pure, light.
Use them wisely.
She grinned. Anyone looking at her from the outside who had encountered her family might, possibly very briefly, have seen Doctor Johanna Smith-Rhodes grin like that. Aunt Mariella could also grin like that. It was the sort of grin that said "I now know exactly what to do and what weapon to deploy to end this situation." It was an Assassin grin. And Rebecka Smith-Rhodes, although a Witch, came from a family of Assassins.
Bekki laid back and cleared her mind. She focused on the dolls...
A Demon and a Feegle moved determinedly through the pelting rain. Their progress around the plaas had taken them in a wide circle, spiralling in from the perimeter back to the centre, picking up two guard-dogs on the way, who had recognised friends and allowed them to get on their backs and ride. This had speeded progress through deepening mud and growing puddles.
"You do know anything with half a brain is in the warm and dry right now?" Grindguts had said, pointedly.
Nothing much had stirred. The cattle were in their byre. The guard-donkeys had retreated to their shelters. The pigs were under cover and the poultry safe in their nesting sheds. Other guard-dogs set to roam their beats had found kennels to stay dry in.
A brief detour to the growing vines had revealed nothing moving among them. And now their progress was leading them back towards the huis.
"Gordon bloody Bennett!" Grindguts exclaimed.
"That's no right." Wee Archie said, in a low voice. "That's no right at all."
The dogs pulled up short, reluctant to go further, and began to whine fearfully.
"We'll have tae walk the rest of the way, Green Yin." Wee Archie said. He set about soothing the dog.
"Towards that?" Grindguts said. He indicated the huge glowing pink half-sphere that projected well outside the side wall of the huis. "Thats eldritch, is that!"
"Ach, weel." Wee Archie said. "And have ye no' realised that's also Miss Rebecka's room? Something's happening, Green Yin!"
Feegle and Demon looked at each other as the dogs, now released, ran gratefully in the opposite direction. Another flash of lightning lit up the night. The pink of the sphere glowed even more brilliantly as it hit, somewhere nearby. In its light, they also got an impression of crawling leprous white.
"She needs us. Oor Hag."
They briefly shook hands, nodded, and charged. A Feegle war-cry rose into the air and was lost in the thunder.
Inside the sphere, Bekki grinned. She was still frightened. She also suspected the Thing had a smell. She didn't want to analyze this too much, as she respected her nose and she had a suspicion that thinking about it would call it into being, adding another little problem.
Like rotting vegetation on a riverbank and old slimy mud at the edge of a pond. Stagnant. But I also remember old hands in the Watch testing us out, talking about finding old bodies that had been neglected a bit and had started getting a bit runny. And smelly. And the colours they go. Why have I got such a good imagination?
She reasoned that the Thing was unable to break her defences, and relaxed slightly, trying to read its mind, if it even had a mind to read. But there was nearly nothing there, no sentience. Just the desire for her hair, to cut it off, to take it away... she frowned. That felt like trophy-hunting. Mum had said some animals did this. Deep-sea predatory shrimp, big enough in terms of claw to almost be small lobsters, liked to keep mementos of old kills and decorate their lairs with them. (5)
"Okay, so you're a mantis shrimp." Bekki said. "But down on the coast, shrimp go on the braai like anything else."
The thought of fireball rose in her mind again. As did a picture of Godsmother Irena, shaking her head and raising a finger in caution.
She noted the Thing flinched away as she thought fireball. She smiled. Then reminded herself about fireballs inside a wooden huis. She let the thought arise of a summer braai and tried to picture the grill and the glowing wood, and the look of grilling meat, with as much detail as she could. This time it really retreated.
Another lightning flash lit the night. Bekki saw her defensive shield flash into a more vivid pink, suddenly strengthened. The Thing seemed to pale slightly, with just a hint of transparency. It wavered for an instant.
She realised. The magical potential of the lightning was working in her favour too. She was using it, competing with the Thing for access to a finite resource. The more she was using and directing, the less was available for it. She was, slowly and surely, winning the battle. If only by attrition.
But she would still prefer to end this quickly, if she could. It also occurred to her that this magical battle was eating a lot of resources. She was probably lighting up a massive beacon that would be visible for a long way in any direction to other magic users and entities. What else might turn up? Bekki shuddered. She was in no mood for Dungeon Dimensions entities to show up, drawn to a massive display of magic. At least, she reminded herself, the Thing in her bedroom wasn't Dungeon Dimensions. It had no sentience, apart from a hunger and need for her hair. A Thing from the Dungeon Dimensions would by now be taunting her, gloating, showing intelligence.
"Must end this, Firebird." the Xenia-voice said again, urgently. "Look to the matryoshka. And think like Witch. Not like Healthcare Practitioner. You are Witch."
She thought again. Five dolls. Remember? The Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Thoughts. Mum. Dad. Godsmother Irena. The deepest and most powerful is Xenia. She put a little of herself into those dolls, the day I received them...
And then dreaded entities from Somewhere Else did indeed turn up to complicate things even more.
"So how do we get in, then?" Grindguts demanded.
Wee Archie squelched his way up from the ground and spat out a mouthful of mud. He shook himself, mud and water spraying largely over Grindguts.
"Aye, weel, Green Yin." he said. "We now ken that Miss Rebecka is guid at her magical defences, aye."
"Could have told you that." the Demon said. He had stood back while the Feegle had tried to break into the defensive sphere by brute force. It had simply bounced him back out again.
Wee Archie drew himself upright.
"We'll just have to take the short way roond." he decided. He grabbed the Demon by the arm.
"Brace yeself, Green Yin. I'm nae too practiced at this sort of crawstepping.."
"Gordon bloody..."
Bekki took in Ellie, who was sleeping in a deep and untroubled sort of way that suggested she was not bothered at all by what was going on around her. She sighed in resignation. Ellie said all this seemed to happen while she was asleep and she kept missing the excitement, every time. It also constrained what she, Rebecka, could actually do, as the Thing seemed somehow linked to Ellie. Would destroying or dissipating it cause her damage, even kill her?
Bekki let her eyes pass to the matroschka dolls on the shelf. The nimbus of blue light surrounding them seemed to have grown in intensity and brightness and the eyes on the outermost doll were blazing in vivid angry red. Again she wondered about the intuition she had had. But she vocalised the thought anyway.
"Five dolls. So far, four levels of Inner Thoughts." she said. "Taking the form of older, wiser, people who've all taught me something of what I am. Thank you."
She kept a wary eye on the Thing, that had retreated partway towards Ellie but which was still hovering in the air, clacking its crude scissors.
"I believe I am the fifth and smallest doll at the heart of the matryoshka." Bekki said. "You are the four shells keeping me safe and protected, and I thank you. But the dolls are also greater than the sum of the parts..."
She was interrupted by a double popping noise in the air.
"...Bennett!"
"Ach, ye scunner of a bogle, ye! I am gaun tae give ye such a kickin' it turns ye purple frae all the bruises!"
She winced as Wee Archie leapt at the Thing, easily evading the claws. But not missing its mouth. The Feegle was somehow sucked in, kicking and punching all the way. Then he was gone.
"Matryoshka. I'm out of ideas here as to how to end this. But I believe the sum of all the parts might have a name. And that name is Natalya Svetlanovna."
For a second nothing happened. Bekki wondered if she was wrong. She took in Grindguts The Destroying Demon, who had frozen in astonishment and disbelief. He looked somehow saddened and bereaved.
She also felt concern for Wee Archie, who'd been absorbed by the Thing. She wondered how to explain it to Kelda Peigi. And to Olga Romanoff. Would Archie get his name on the Air Watch memorial plaque? Would Mr Vimes grumble about a twenty-one dollar callout charge from the mason? (6)
Lightning flashed again. One very big bolt hit, uncomfortably nearby to the huis. Thunder followed on almost immediately. The psychic atmosphere changed.
The cloud of blue light emanating from the dolls closed in and coalesced. It became a single radiant beam. The red light from the eyes glowed brilliantly and strongly and the two eyes became one. Where the two light-streams met and overlapped, the light became a glorious magenta-purple.
It reached out. Bekki wondered if boxing matches worked this way. If in the instant before the decisive knockout punch, the boxer's movements appeared to move with the same deceptive slowness at first, time slowing down...
She yelped as the defensive field around her vanished and slipped away, the pink light losing its shape and becoming an amorphous mass. Then she realized the other reason why you set up a strong fortification.
The High Tower. Remember? her father's voice said. You're a Wizard's daughter. A tower isn't just a defence. You use it as a base to launch counterattacks.
She watched the three streams of light as they hit the Thing. The red, the blue, and the pink. The Thing appeared to be screaming, but no sound emerged. She watched it shrink and recede to a point. Then it was gone. For now. It seemed to have shrunk and receded into Ellie.
Bekki suddenly realised she could move freely again. She scrambled to a sitting position. She heard a distant scream from somewhere else in the huis, loud, penetrating and female, and she frowned.
"Thanks, dad." she said. She heard Ponder Stibbons make his usual self-deprecating nervous laugh.
I learnt that from being around your mother.
She was about to reply when Wee Archie reappeared. He popped back into the air about three feet above the ground, rolled slightly, and landed on Ellie in her bed. Bekki winced. She'd seen the classic picture of a young woman brought out of sleep with a villainous goblin-like creature sitting on her chest and grinning at her. She wouldn't wish that on Ellie Meyer.
"Get off her." Bekki said, sternly.
Wee Archie nimbly leapt down to the ground.
"Aye, weel." he said. "That was an experience."
"Won't say I wasn't worried, you daft sod." Grindguts said. "That thing bloody well ate you!"
Archie shrugged.
"Give it indigestion while ah wuz in there." he said. "Its insides got such a kickin'. Then the oul Hag showed up and said "You. Out. Ain't your time for the Last World yet."
Bekki scowled. "This old Hag." she said. "Was she Rodinian, by any chance?"
"Funny you should say that, mistress..."
Ellie stirred and mumbled.
"Disappear." Bekki said. "And thank you." As Ellie woke up, Bekki wondered who had screamed. She narrowed it down to one person, and wondered...
The scream awoke Mariella Smith-Rhodes. Long-ago learnt reflexes activated, and without conscious thought she was fully awake, rolling out of bed, grabbing ready-use weapons from the top of her dressing table.
She spared a scowl for Horst, who was being slow.
"Astfgwywl?" he mumbled, stirring awake.
"Word wakker, jou bliksem!" she called as she raced for the door. "Moeilikheid!"
She paused to listen to the space on the other side of the bedroom door. Feeling confident – well, fairly confident – that there was nothing out there waiting for the door to open nor pointing weapons at it, she wrenched the door open, making sure the size and thickness of it was in between her and, for instance, any crossbow bolts coming the other way.
Horst, who by now was out of bed and armed, took the necessary look and said "Alles klaar. Is leeg."
They moved together down the corridor, an Assassin-trained threat to any intruders, towards the source of the scream.
"What's happening?" Ellie Meyer asked, half-asleep.
"Couldn't properly get to sleep because of the thunderstorm." Bekki said. "Then when I did, I had a sort of bad dream. Sorry if it woke you."
"Mmph." Ellie said, drowsily. "I thought I heard somebody scream..."
Then she fell asleep again.
Bekki shook her head.
She wasn't entirely surprised when Aunt Mariella knocked on her door.
"Oh. You're awake." she said. Mariella didn't sound surprised. "Got a problem. You're needed. Got a medical kit handy?"
In distant Ankh-Morpork, a disregarded pendant necklace in a bedroom dresser drawer at 18 Spa Lane was glowing blue. As the bedroom was empty and its usual occupant was several thousand miles away, nobody noticed.
Professor Ponder Stibbons was deeply asleep, so deeply asleep that a couple of deferential little prompts and low-level alarms barely reached him He completely missed it too.
At Unseen University, however, the duty grad student tending to the thinking engine HEX watched the machine clatter into life and begin printing. It was just one word.
++MALIGNITY++
The grad student frowned. Lignite was a sort of coal, wasn't it? Not a good grade, either. Was HEX warning them that the quality of fuel was going to get worse? Bad lignite?
He dutifully logged the report and decided it was probably just one of those things. Then went back to playing Fort Night on one of HEX's gaming terminals (8), linking up with a player at Braseneck who was in-your-facing through PEX, and an overnight employee at the Royal Bank who had found a way to join in via the Glooper's interweb link to HEX.(9)
He smiled. This was what the Discwide Interweb was for. (10)
And in the cold clear and more-or-less clean sky over Ankh-Morpork, Lieutenant Irena Politek, commanding the overnight Air Watch presence, stirred from enjoying the pure pleasure of flight. Something at the back of her mind was niggling at her. Something was not right somewhere. She was getting a warning from her own Second Thoughts, ones that had been around for a long time.
Something was rippling the still waters, like a pike surfacing in a river. A hungry pike, looking for prey...
"Govno." she said.
Irena tried to fix on the impression. Far away. A long way away. So faint it was like a distant echo. But out there in the Discworld, something had intruded that had no right to be there. Something from outside...
She sniffed the air. She was three angels up, joy-riding, really, but it was a quiet night. She was nowhere near the River. So why was she getting a tang of swamp and rotting vegetation, of marsh? Only faintly. But obvious.
She decided, and angled the nose of her stick downwards to resume a more usual patrolling height of five hundred feet. Her break was over.
"Red Star to Control. Need to talk to you when I land, Nottie, I'm not sure what, but something isn't feeling right, Just a feeling. Over."
~~Read you, Red Star. Witch business? I know those sort of Feelings. I'll get the kettle on. Over.
Irena acknowledged this gratefully. Nottie Garlick was an experienced Witch who could read the spill words.
But she sighed a deep resigned Rodinian sigh, now aware of Olga Romanoff having been right when she had said "you get to be Air Watch commander, and the first thing you realize is how little flying time you're allowed."
Pravda, Irena thought, as several puzzling mental images flashed across the inner screen, gone too fast for her to fix and interrogate any of them. Xenia Galena, the shamaness, came and went. Then, oddly, Ponder Stibbons. Her godsdaughter Rebecka Smith-Rhodes stayed for longer. There was an intuitive flash of "she is at the centre of this". And finally her old teacher Natalya Svetlanovna, not the old crone who had Gone Away earlier in the year, but younger, in her middle seventies perhaps, as she had looked when taking Irena as a pupil Witch. She grinned at Irena and there was a suspicion of cackle, and her lips moved as if speaking, but Irena heard no sound.
Irena sighed, said "Nichevo..." and corrected course for the Air Station.
Bekki was not surprised to find the emergency involved Anna van Jaasveld. She was huddled in a ball on the floor of the guest bedroom, shuddering and whimpering, her eyes wide-open in a catatonic faraway stare. Jan was hovering, anxious and worried, as Bekki knelt beside the casualty. She distantly heard Uncle Horst saying, in a kind and gentle voice "Might be a good idea if you put some pants on, Jan", and the suppressed "mmmph..." of Aunt Mariella trying not to snicker.
"She must have been sleepwalking..." Jan said, distractedly. "I heard her scream and realized she wasn't in bed."
"Unfamiliar room in the dark." Mariella said, gently. "She must have tripped up. Fallen against the mirror. Don't worry about the mirror, Jan. Accidents happen. I'll get it replaced."
Bekki glanced up. The mirror had indeed shattered, yes. One long break, top to bottom, with the sort of cratered circular indentation that suggested it had been punched or something. She frowned.
"Oh, and Jan?" Mariella suggested with the same gentleness. "I've seen it before and I'm damn sure Bekki's seen it before. No surprises. But... pants?"
"I need my medical kit." Bekki said. She was using the long edge of a bedsheet that she'd dragged over, improvising for just now, to staunch blood. She hoped the makeshift bandage would also hide that she was using practical everyday witch magic, to slow Anna's panic, to calm her, to still her racing heart so that less blood flowed. A cautionary voice in her head was telling her Keep the magic to a minimum. For lots of reasons. She wondered, again, what sort of beacon she'd lit up and exactly how far the signal had transmitted.
In the background, Mariella was giving instructions to unseen others. She was aware of Wee Archie replying "Aye, Mistress Mariella. Ye heard the lady, Green Yin!"
Bekki was also looking for any shards or fragments of glass embedded in the wounds. Glass was tricky and treacherous.
She barely noticed young Jan pulling on trousers and looked past him, to the broken mirror, looking at the circular crater, trying to assess exactly how many glass fragments needed to be accounted for.
But if she punched the mirror for whatever reason, there's an obvious place to look...
She very gently stretched out first one arm and then the other, taking especial care with the bleeding right arm. Then she frowned with puzzlement. The knuckles of both hands, and the hands themselves, were completely unmarked. There were none of the lacerations you'd expect to see on somebody who'd just punched a pane of glass...no embedded shards... and the pattern of injuries higher up her right forearm, not far from the elbow, were wrong too. They seemed to go all around the arm, like a red bracelet, okay then, an armlet. They were regularly distributed, not quite an unbroken circle but near enough to.
Bekki tried to fight off tiredness. Just this one last job. Then I can sleep. And three or four hours is better than none...
Bekki looked down into Anna's face. She looked as if she'd been terrified by something. Bekki wondered for an instant if Anna had also had night terrors. She was certainly not responding to conversation.
She looked up, and explained to Jan about night terrors.
"It's terrifying for other people around them while it's happening, and afterwards." Bekki explained. She tried to remember Witch-lore she'd had from Irena and the others, and more formal medical texts she'd read from her mother's technical library.(11)
"Ah, thanks, guys. Dankie." she said, as her medical bag, wet from the outside rain, scuttled in of its own volition. Wee Archie and Grindguts carefully set it down where she could reach it and retreated. Bekki unpacked the things she needed.
"Anna?" she said. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I need to tell you what I'm doing. You've got a few cuts on your arm and I think the deeper one might need a couple of stitches, but you've been really lucky. I'm going to tidy those up, but I'm also going to give you a sedative."
Aware she was speaking to the others more than she was to Anna, she went on,
"You're going to go into a very deep sleep for a few hours. It'll be so deep you won't even dream and you are going to wake up with a muzzy head, but there's no help for it. The injection will also be, in some respects, a muscle relaxant. Can you help get her up onto the bed, please? Dankie."
Bekki looked over to the broken mirror again and felt uneasy. She tried to work out why. Then, when Anna was deeply sleeping, she cleaned and dressed the wounds, wondering how she'd got circular cuts going all around her forearm.
"I'm not prying or anything." Bekki lied, carefully, "But she's been stressed out of her mind at Haartebeeste and I get that she's been feeling as if she can't let her guard down once. The other business can't have helped."
Jan nodded, but said nothing.
"And she's like a front-line soldier coming out of the front line and into the rear." Mariella said. "I've seen that. So has Horst. The moment you're out of danger and you think you can relax in a place of safety, it all piles in at once and there's no defence against it. The headshrinkers call it PTSD."
"Hence the sleepwalking and the night terror and the catatonia." Bekki said. She felt another gust of deadly tiredness. "My guess is that she'll wake up later with absolutely no memory of what happened during the night, and she'll want to know why her arm stings and throbs and there's a bandage on her."
She looked over to the mirror again.
"When she was... sleepwalking..." Bekki said, carefully, as she crossed the room to the mirror. "She could have stumbled over something and fallen onto the mirror and hit it on her right side. But there are no tripping obstacles on the floor. My best guess is that she was in a sort of waking dream. Suggestible. She saw something in the mirror, in her dream, that frightened her and she tried to hit it."
"But obviously there was nothing there." Aunt Mariella said. She looked searchingly at Bekki, then at Jan. "And again, Jan. Accidents happen. I'll pay for a new mirror."
Bekki examined the mirror. That round regular hole about three inches across, with sharp jagged sides, most of the glass shards having fallen forwards onto the dresser table... I could fit my whole arm in there. She saw the hole had been punched all the way through and wondered again about Anna's arm wounds. So if she punched it all the way through, and got her arm trapped, why are the shards on this side of the hole?
Bekki even looked, as far as she could, behind the dresser where she would have expected the glass would have fallen. Nothing there. She decided to look again in daylight.
Mariella raised an eyebrow.
"I might have read some of the medical books at your mother's." she remarked. "The ones from Quirm. Did she ever ask you to translate any for her? For instance, Le texte académique du médecin, "Qu'est-ce que vous faites très attention de ne pas dire à haute voix?"
Bekki smiled.
"Oui, ma chere tante. Le médecin de la prudence, de la discrétion, et des choses qu'on ne peut pas dire en publique."(12)
She switched back to Vondalaans.
"The same doctor said to identify the trigger for a nervous attack. Aunt Mariella, if the trigger for Anna is what she saw in the mirror, it might not be a good idea to leave it where she can see it in the morning? What can we cover it with in case the sight brings on another attack?"
Mariella saw to it that the mirror was covered, the glass shards removed and disposed of, and that Anna was safely in bed and Jan instructed to call for help if anything else happened.
Mariella and Bekki retreated to the kitchen.
"I can see you're all in." her aunt said, kindly. "I'll fix it for you to sleep in late. When Hendricka wakes up, she'll need to be told."
"I'm surprised she hasn't already." Bekki said, frankly.
Mariella grinned.
"You set up some evening therapy exercises. Remember?" she said, kindly. "You instructed Martha into how to do the topical rub on her legs. You know. The stuff with side-effects, if she's ever in pain at night. She'll have had the best night's sleep of anyone here. She and Ellie."
"Ellie." Bekki said, flatly. Mariella looked concerned.
"Okay, Bekki." she said. "In a little while's time we're both going to our beds as we both need sleep. You, especially. At least that bloody storm seems to have moved on. It died quickly, didn't it?"
Mariella looked over the rim of her tea mug.
"It felt like that night Horst and I stayed over at Haartebeeste." Mariella remarked. "Right down to the thunder and lightning. And that sense of something not being right. So tell me what happened, here, tonight, in my own home. Because something did. I can see it in your face. And besides, the dogs are spooked. It takes a lot to frighten a Ridgeback."
Mariella took her hand.
Just a summary will do. I'm betting this is something you'll have to add to your report for Olga, so best you get everything straight in your head now?"
Bekki explained events. After a while Mariella called, softly "Come over here. On the table where I can see you. Dankie. Now what did you two see?"
Wee Archie and Grindguts obediently joined them at the table. In recognition of their bravery, Mariella provided two very small glasses of klipdrift.
A picture emerged of the night's events. Mariella went to find a notepad and pen. (13)
Eventually, Bekki got to go back to bed. There were no more disturbances in the night.
In distant Ankh-Morpork, Irena Politek discussed her feelings of unease with Nottie Garlick.
"Something's happening." Nottie agreed. "Definitely. I don't doubt you. But we need a better reason than that to send a patrol out on spec to another country. And all you've got is that something's happening, you're not sure what, and you have a vague idea it involves Firebird."
Irena felt deflated. Phrased that way, it did sound a bit dumb.
"You can't go, as it would look bad for the Air Watch Commander to go chasing off on a whim and abandoning her station." Nottie pointed out. "And if we woke up Olga in the middle of the night, she'd be all tetchy, and she'd demand some sort of objective proof and more hard facts before she sanctioned a mission."
"Pravda." Irena agreed. Nottie was being practical and level-headed and her observations were making Irena feel a little bit, well, silly. But it was good to have another experienced Witch to discuss these things with. It kept you grounded.
Nottie grinned.
"I'm not doubting you, Irena. Nobody gets pictures like that coming out of the blue without a reason. But let me ask you honestly. Do you think, right now, at this precise moment in time, that Firebird's in any danger?"
Nottie reached out and took Irena's hands, operating on the basis that two minds were better than one. She tried to clear her mind as completely as she could, focusing on her pupil and godsdaughter Rebecka Smith-Rhodes.
Again, pictures came in very quick flashes that didn't settle for long enough. This time they involved the local Spirit Small, Mrs Evadne Cake. Irena winced. But one of the glimpses, the flash pictures, was of Rebecka and her Aunt Mariella, both in nightgowns, sitting at a table in a night-dark kitchen with one lamp lit. They were drinking tea. Two small humanoid shapes, one blue and one green, were also on the table.
Irena felt a rush of relief. Senses she couldn't quantify were telling her that this was a real-time picture, that Rebecka was safe for now, and Mariella Smith-Rhodes was involved. As were, by inference, Wee Archie and Grindguts the Demon. Bekki was as safe as she could be. So no point in going chasing yet.
"I got that too." Nottie said. "Also that that Feegle of hers has had a Hell of an adventure tonight. Getting that he went somewhere weird. Well, weirder than normal. And definitely not nice. But apart from one other thing, that's all."
"And the other thing is?" Irena asked.
Nottie grimaced.
"We're going to get a visit from Mrs Cake." she said, authoritatively. "Whatever you picked up on tonight, Irena, Mrs Cake would have got it worse. And she's going to come over soon and demand to know what we're going to do about it."
Irena thought about this. Then winced. Mrs Cake did spirit mediumism. What Irena had barely glimpsed as a disturbance happening several thousand miles away, Mrs Cake was likely to have seen in full live-action colour, with sound, for as long as it lasted. Big magical disturbances always set up ripples like this, and Mrs Cake was sensitive to ripples.
"Okay, so if we pencil an extraordinary Pegasus flight for daylight?" she asked. "Whoever's available at shift change. They fly to Howondaland, establish contact, check up, and report back. Just to be sure."
And by then, we might have a better idea as to what all this is about.
More to come. And hopefully sooner!
(1) Tony Iommi, lead guitarist of heavy rock band Black Sabbath. It is possible Ponder Stibbons was aware of this from his visits to the Roundworld and might have considered the ritual invocation of Satan, which is the essence of the song "Black Sabbath", to be courting trouble. The crashing chords of this song were indeed inspired by the West Midlands steel-foundry just down the road from Iommi.
(2) Going right back to the start, in "The Graduation Class", now a piece of early-instalment-weirdness that I keep meaning to rewrite with better Afrikaans rather than the original "this should fill the gap" cod-Dutch-mixed-with-German. This introduces Johanna as a belligerent Amoral Afrikaner who is sent to Ankh-Morpork and the care of the Guild of Assassins, owing to the fact she started a freelance war with the Zulu Empire. (Indirectly, she set off the chain of events that resulted in the death of her aunt Johanna Francesca some months later, a detail I want to incorporate in any rewrite.) The Guild accepted a promising Mature Student while the Rimwards Howondalandian Government, after giving her a definitive one-way ticket, reasoned if she survived Assassin training, she could be useful. And if she didn't, then it was a problem solved. A couple of decades later, she is still there...
(3) Bekki had got it: Mum would tell her, herself, some day, and it wasn't Aunt Mariella's place to fill in the gaps. She did wonder if there was any truth in the School gossip Famke had excitedly related to her: one day there'd been a Zulu prince, who had led a destructive raid over the border into the Transvaal. A few days later, that Zulu prince's kraal had been replaced with a massive smouldering lifeless crater in the ground, a classic case of Inhumation With Extreme Prejudice(3.1), and the two nations had teetered on the brink of all-out war. Bekki had evaluated this and thought it was all too likely, knowing Mum had been a bit of a Famke in her time. Well, a lot of a Famke. And not long after that, the Zulus had attacked again and family members had been killed. Bekki had then warned Famke from asking Mum directly as it was likely she was sensitive about this, do you hear me, Famke Cornelia?
(3.1) And, as the wittier School pupils pointed out, prejudice can't possibly get any more extreme than that, a White Howondalandian with a grievance against the Black Howondalandians.
(4) Wee Archie was still only an apprentice Gonnagle, like many of the other Air Watch Feegle. Opinion among his tutors was that he was to the mousepipes what Famke Smith-Rhodes-Stibbons was to piano playing. By tacit consent, his sponsoring Gonnagle and the Council of Gonnagles had agreed that aye, weel, as the boy's serving with the Air Watch as a Navigator, aye, and that is a honourable and a noble Profession, aye, then we can afford to defer this part of the boy's training. Aye, weel. He needs to learn the playin' o' the mousepipes, aye, but we can afford to defer this. Indefinitely, if needs be.
The Notes of Pain, attempted by Wee Archie, could do anything, unpredictably. Gonnagles agreed that The Notes Of Turning A Beastie Intae A Homicidal Maniac could be counter-productive.
(5) "Mantis shrimp". Mum had said. "You can think of them as the psycho serial killers of the ocean, Rebecka. They inhume prey species and take souvenirs."
(6) It's a dollar a letter, remember.
(7) He would awake later with glimpses and shreds of a largely forgotten dream concerning his daughter Rebecka, but that's for later.
(8) The grad student would be irritated at a glitch in the game programming that took the form of a team-member going rogue and reminding him about the poor-quality coal and insisting he do something about it. However many times he shot the irritation, it kept coming back.
(9) With three Thinking Engines now operating on the Disc and Fourecks close to making their break-through at Bugarup (9.1), some things were inevitable.
(9.1) Bugarup's Thinking Engine was called XXX. The issue with linking it to the others was one of sheer distance and the inevitable Inverse Square Rule. Some of the finest wizarding minds were working on this, however.
(10) Once Vice-Chancellor Stibbons and Arch-Chancellor Ridcully had had a chance to confer about ++MALIGNITY++ the next morning, however, there would be a certain regrettable amount of early-morning shouting going on. Not all of it would come from Ridcully. By then Ponder would have realised what those dream-fragments, concerning telling his daughter to set up magical defences, actually meant. After Ponder had stopped shouting, he would meaningfully open the dictionary to "M" and indicate an entry.
(11) In one of those late-night mother-daughter chats, Johanna had said it wouldn't be a bad idea if Rebecka got at least an intelligent lay-person's understanding of what could go wrong inside the head. You're bound to see at least a few, as a Witch. Bekki had then been guided to the standard introductory texts.
(12) Mariella has asked what Rebecka is very carefully not saying. She has replied with reference to the medical skills of caution, discretion, and not saying some things out loud in public.
(13) Bekki would get them the next morning with a helpful note from Mariella saying "might help you to expand your report"
Notes Dump - this time, a jumbled disordered multidirectional mess.
From tvtropes;
Finland was never conquered and never occupied, and her economy quickly revived after the disaster of the war. There is even a specific word for this trope in the Finnish language, torjuntavoitto, roughly translating to "victory by causing the aggressor to fail".
A beauty.
From Wikipedia: the tale of a forgotten town in South Africa, right in the middle of what I am depicting as the Bitterfontein Plattelaand, which could well be Haartebeeste:
Gamkaskloof ("Die Hel") was discovered in the early 19th century by farmers, but the first permanent resident was Peter Swanepoel, who settled in the valley in the 1830s. Some time later, the Marais, Cordier and Joubert Nel Mostert families settled in the valley, growing to a community of around 160 people. The residents used donkeys and travelled by foot across the Swartberg mountains to reach Prince Albert and Calitzdorp. Later, a school was established, with the teacher also leading the Sunday church. The settlers farmed grain, vegetables, fruits, tea and tobacco. They also distilled witblits, and brewed beer from wild honey.
For many years, the residents petitioned the South African government to build a road into the valley. In 1962, the requested road was completed. Ironically, this led to the depopulation of the community, with the local children attending high schools in the nearby villages and most of them refusing to return to a life of subsistence farming in the valley. The elderly residents retired to retirement villages outside the valley, with the number of permanent residents diminishing. Eventually, all homes except one were sold to the Western Cape Nature Conservation Board, with the last sale taking place in 1991.
The Gamkaskloof valley was declared a national monument in 1997, and was subsequently included into the Swartberg Nature Reserve. The cottages in the valley have been renovated, and equipped with solar power and bathrooms.
Gamkasloof. The village that time forgot, is now maintained as a sort of historical curiosity, a reminder of life at its most basic as lived by the first Boer settlers in South Africa. I have got to fit this in somewhere. It's the perfect setting for the van Jaasveld family at Haartebeeste.
I wrote a "short" for Facebook, based on a cartoon that perfectly illustrated the "Lies To Children" idea of the "Science of Discworld" novels. A minor feature of the cartoon was a satirical reference to the big controversy in the USA right now, the thing about gender fluidity, exposing kids to the pernicious influence of drag artists, and so on, which is causing right-wing conservatives to go completely Librarian-poo whilst the soggy end of liberal thought goes equally Bursar in the opposite direction. Battle lines drawn, and there is a battle of sequinned handbags against armour-plated Bibles. (And I know. A lot can be said but I don't want to be bogged down).
Anyway. Within a couple of hours it had drawn over a hundred comments and only TWO of them grasped the point I was making about "lies-to-children". The rest became as acrimonious and North American as you might expect.
Eventually it was taken down. No alternative.
This is the accompanying text I wrote, saved by the kindness of Kim White:
"Are you confused as to why I started the class this way?" Doctor Smith Rhodes said, to her class in Zoology at the Assassins' Guild School. The class looked back with dutiful attention and respect. They also wondered why the big capital letters at the top of the blackboard, underlined for emphasis, were "LIES-TO-CHILDREN".
"Lekker." she said, after a pause, lapsing into her first language.
She reverted to speaking Morporkian, but with her native Rimwards Howondalandian accent, the one that incautious people likened to "chewing bricks and spitting gravel." Guild students prayed the gravel wasn't going to be spat in their direction.
"Science is about bringing order out of confusion. But there will always be a degree of confusion. Therefore we approach this in easy, simple, stages. On the left we have the simple concept, the "lie to children". On the right we have the complex explanation, the next level up. But even after that there is a higher-order explanation still."
She smiled pleasantly.
"This diagram covers mathematics, physics, and current theory in Gender Studies. We may discuss this later, as this begins in observable science, but then moves into the realms of the soft sciences, of sociology and psychology. Now if I add a fourth box on the left, one that says Nature has two fundamental kingdoms, the Animal and the Vegetable, and all life on the Discworld stems from one or the other..."
She paused, waiting for a luckless student who hadn't got it yet to fall into the trap, and say "But isn't that correct, Miss?" There was always one.
After a while she shook her head and said "Dead wrong, Mr Blakemore."
Then she explained. Chalking in the eight fundamental Kingdoms of Discworld zoological taxonomy. Animalae, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, Eubacteria, Archaebacteria, Silicarae and Sanguniarae Un-Naturalis. "Anyone confused yet?" she asked, pleasantly.
Gymnastiorka: The one-piece smock-style standard tunic for Soviet soldiers in WW2, which was based on the traditional peasant shirt called "kosovorotka". This tunic also resembles the modern U.S. "Combat shirt", except made of less advanced materials.
Kaftan: For Russians, a long man's coat with tight sleeves. Now mostly worn by reconstructors and some of the Orthodox Church clergy.
Kokoshnik: A traditional female headdress, used with:
Sarafan: a sleeveless jumper-dress. Mostly used now for folk dances, along with the previous item (though a simpler, more formal-looking version is also common in school uniforms).
Kosovorotka: A male Russian peasant's shirt, literally "oblique collar" after its collar, which seals to the side. Not tucked in.
Regenerative cooling of gases - devised in the 1890's for the most thermally efficient production possible of liquid hydrogen and other gases. The Siemens Cycle (1857)
Harteck and Bonhoeffer - "parahydrogen"(1929) - efficient storage of a liquid gas that is in a form which is less likely to boil back into the gas state. ("To prevent loss of the liquid during long-term storage, it is therefore intentionally converted to the para isomer as part of the production process, typically using a catalyst such as iron(III) oxide, activated carbon, platinized asbestos, rare earth metals, uranium compounds, chromium(III) oxide, or some nickel compounds.")
A slice of personal reflection, based on the fact comedian Tommy Chong (half of Cheech and Chong) is 85 today:
A living reminder I was born at least a decade too late. For the 1960's I was under ten and missed most of the good stuff; turned 16 when the 1970's were turning greyer and grimmer and felt alienated in the Thatcher/Reagan 1980's when I came of age and social values and attitudes became somehow revolting. (the music was, well, crappy, and I was more in tune with the stuff I'd grown up with from 1964 - 76. Still am.) Thinking about it, I was adult in the 1980's with a 1960's soul, and Cheech and Chong - who had influenced a lot of comedians, not just in the USA but in GB - were a part of that. so happy birthday Tommy, glad you're still here, and what did you make of the way Reagan, Thatcher and their successors rolled back and obliterated all the freedom and potential of the Sixties?
Parking this here for now – I submitted this to the Guardian newspaper talkboards in Nov 2008...
Briane, you are right: for one thing, nobody was more appalled than me (you'd have had to look hard) to discover that for once in our respective lives, the Daily Mail and I actually agreed about something ! (ie, the need for the BBC to do something about Russell Brand). But having had time to think about it, this is where it's got to end: unless he pulls a similar gratuitously unfunny stunt in either medium, I don't want to see him lose his Guardian column (I hardly ever touch the sports pages on Saturday) or his Channel Four show. (which i don't watch). I can live and let live here. He was just wrong on Radio Two, which is the default radio station in this house. No point in a witch-hunt, and hopefully he's learnt something from this episode. And elsewhere I've posted on the rank hypocrisy of the Mail: on Saturday it published a historical retrospective of the Kristallnacht atrocity of November 1938, whilst at the same time letting columnist Amanda Platell use language to describe Travellers and gipsies that would have raised eyebrows had she used it about Jews - the attitude underlying the comments wasn't that far away from Hitler's newspaper "Der Sturmer".
I wanted to post this as nobody seems to have touched on this aspect of the story before:-
As a parellel to the way public opinion has forced the BBC to bloody well listen over Brand and Ross, it's worth noting that the last comparable incident occured fifteen or so years ago. Radio Four was seeking to reinvent its schedules, in much the same way Lesley Douglas was forcing change on Radio Two prior to her departure. One of the changes to Four was the introduction of a two-hour magazine show called Anderson Country, hosted by a genial Irish bloke called Gerry Anderson. Unlike Brand he wan't juvenile, immature, coarse or crude - he was an urbane radio professional with a solid track record behind him, and from what I heard of the show, it was OK (but possibly more suited for Radio Five) - but this didn't stop it drawing in a barrage of complaints and negative listener feedback on a scale with what we've seen over the last week. This is all the more notable as this was at a time when Internet was in its infancy and the vast majority of people could only write or phone in with complaints about this being "dumbing-down" and "unsuited for Radio Four". People were also dead set against the scaling down of "Women's Hour" and its transfer to an early-afternoon slot on Four.
This drew such an avalanche of listener complaint that the BBC was forced to cave in - the hapless Anderson returned to the relative obscurity of local radio in Northern Ireland, and Womens' Hour is even today still a daily morning show.
The parallel, I guess, is that the BBC annoys its listeners - seriously annoys them - at its peril; that the radio listener has a keener idea than the station controller of what belongs on Radio Two or Four or whatever, and you mess with the formula at your own risk.
However, the Beeb can probably console itself with the knowledge that real unrest like this only happens, on average, once every fifteen years or so , and now they've got it out of the way this time, it'll be 2023 before the next one...
Now I wrote the above in 2008. Today, in 2023, the latest controversy is in full swing in BBC radio, concerning the direction and editorial content of BBC Radio 2...
From Facebook, on Yen Buddhism:
I have tried to get in touch with the Buddha-Mind to express my complete and utter willingness to forgo any sort of enlightenment or spiritual advancement in this earthly incarnation (well, the next ten or a dozen, in fact, why stop at one?) because I truly feel I need a greater direct appreciation of all the tricks and illusions that Mana will put in my way, such as perfect health, a long life locked into this vale of tears and illusion, and of course an excess of the earthly snare and illusion known as Too Much Money.
After all, if I selflessly volunteer not just for my own share of such deception and illusion, and opt to carry several other people's share of such earthly impediment to spiritual advancement, then I still earn brownie points for taking the burden from my fellow man and allowing them a shot at Enlightenment, right?
The logic of reincarnation says I've got to come back a possibly infinite number of times until I finally live that one perfect life where i get it all faultlessly right, so if I inevitably get there in the end, why stress? I'm only ever going to be conscious of one earthly life at a time, so I might as well have a few where the keynote is "stuff enlightenment, give me lots of money and no stress."
But meanwhile, has some selfish bastard who thinks along those lines ended up porking my share of the good stuff?
