Chapter 1: A Most Unlikely Delivery
Granny Weatherwax's cottage perches in the Ramtops like a spider at the center of its web. Not a web of silk, mind, but one of sheer authority over everything that skitters, crawls, or foolishly crosses its path. The air here is sharp and clean, the kind of air that might slap you in the face and tell you to stop being daft. The forest around the cottage hums with its own business: the low buzz of Granny's beehives, the whisper of leaves in the wind, and the occasional snap of a twig under something four-legged that wisely keeps its distance.
Granny herself is not a woman given to idleness. There's always something that needs doing, whether it's brewing up a tincture, clipping herbs, or glaring at the weather until it stops misbehaving. But this morning, her routine is interrupted by an event so peculiar that it immediately sets her teeth on edge: the post has arrived.
The post does not arrive at Granny Weatherwax's cottage. It never has, for the very good reason that nobody dares to send her anything. Letters are for ordinary people, and Esmerelda Weatherwax is no ordinary person. And yet here it is, a single envelope, sitting squarely on her kitchen table where the crow that delivered it now sits preening, clearly pleased with itself and not only for having survived the journey.
In most parts of the Discworld, mail delivery relies on the ingenuity and determination of birds. The very poor might employ pigeons, who flap their way through the skies with the enthusiasm of a creature that doesn't realize it's carrying anything important. The slightly better off might spring for crows, which have the added benefit of glaring menacingly at anyone who dares approach their intended recipient. For the truly discerning (and those who live in areas where the difference between a crow and a raven is a matter of a pinion not opinion), ravens are the bird of choice. They possess an air of gothic professionalism and, if asked nicely, might even recite a bit of poetry to go along with your bills.
Mail in the Ramtops, however, faces a unique challenge: the eagle. To your average Ramtops eagle, a letter tied to a bird is less a form of communication and more a convenient delivery service for dinner. It's the culinary equivalent of a Happy Meal—complete with a toy attached to the drumstick.
This tendency for eagles to intercept post has made mail delivery in the region something of a gamble. The local postmasters have learned to take a philosophical approach, marking undelivered letters as "eaten in transit" and issuing warnings that "contents may have been pre-digested." Recipients, in turn, have learned to temper their expectations and count themselves lucky if even half a postcard survives the journey.
Of course, it's said that one enterprising wizard once tried to enchant an eagle-proof letter by disguising it as a rock. The spell worked perfectly, though the recipient was unable to read the letter having been hit in the head with the enchanted stony correspondence at terminal velocity.
Granny picks it up and turns it over, her expression narrowing to a frown sharp enough to cut glass. The handwriting on the front is shaky but determined, the sort of handwriting that says, I mean business, but I'm still learning my letters. And then there's the postmark: Ankh-Morpork.
Granny sniffs. She's seen the name in her atlas—an ancient tome so outdated that its maps depict parts of the Disc as "Here Be Dragons," and not in the metaphorical sense. Ankh-Morpork. A city beyond the mountains, possibly just over the next hill. She's never had much cause to think about it before. Cities are full of people, and Granny has never seen the appeal of a place where folk insist on living elbow to elbow when there's plenty of perfectly good space elsewhere.
Still, a letter is a letter, and Granny Weatherwax doesn't believe in coincidence. Carefully, and with the air of someone expecting the envelope to explode, she slides a nail under the flap and unfolds the contents.
Dear Hogfather, it begins.
Granny reads the letter once, frowning. She reads it a second time, the frown deepening. By the third read, the frown is so pronounced it's threatening to become permanent.
The letter is from a child. A little girl named Hannah Long. It explains, in that unflinchingly earnest way children have, about a cat called Threepaws, a life shortened by something called "a wasting disease," and a request—a wish, really—for one small, impossible thing: to bring the cat back to life.
Granny puts the letter down and leans back in her chair. Outside, the bees continue their steady hum, oblivious to the sudden weight of the room. Wishes, Granny thinks, are tricky things. They're not magic, not exactly, but they have power. The sort of power that falls under a witch's purview, whether she likes it or not.
She picks the letter up again and studies the wobbly handwriting. "Hogfather," indeed. It's absurd. But even as she scoffs, there's a tightness in her chest that she refuses to call sympathy. What kind of witch would she be if she ignored a letter like this? After all, headology is about understanding what people need, and if this child thinks she needs her cat back, then someone ought to see to it.
"Well, Esme," she mutters to herself, "looks like it's up to you. As usual."
And with that, Granny Weatherwax begins to plan. Because wishes might not be magic, but granting them—properly, mind you—is the closest thing to it.