Anjin-San Chapter Four
EXPANDED CHAPTER INCORPORATING ADDITIONAL EDITS
V0.05 (first authorial impression: looking at an empty page soon to be populated by spelling errors, random cut-outs and author errors/clunky little bits of writing that could be rephrased more elegantly). Big continuity snarl-up.
In which Emiko and Erma have more adventures in Ankh-Morpork. The Air Watch report puzzling things going on in the sky, Olga Romanoff reviews the evidence so far, and there are more, and louder, explosions and screams at Unseen University. And Sam Williams has several interesting encounters by night.
ORIGINAL NOTES (Nov 2024) New chapters may be interrupted for a while as I'm shortly going on a long-awaited recuperative holiday for two weeks: I will be available still for PM's and to answer reviews! (Genuine PM's, that is, and not bot-generated invitations to buy products from Artstation, via people with no presence on FF, whose personal pages are a single line of text, a website address for ArtStation and absolutely nothing in the way of personal information or what fandoms they read. Scammers and spammers, do at least TRY to do better?) I may post this (incomplete) so you at least get a few scenes that move the story on, while I'm on holiday. This is a first draft, done at speed, and will e expanded later.
UPDATE (Jan 2025) The time is now right to incorporate extra material, originally published separately, to get the chapter looking completely right.
Now read on.
The High Energy Magic Building, Unseen University.
Ponder Stibbons shook his head, as the hapless Bernard Dufflecoat was carried away on a stretcher, burbling gently to himself. It had taken ages to get simple record iconographs of the image on the screen. A very expensive iconograph had become useless, after the imp inside had screamed in terror and exploded. Ponder had sent a runner to the Thaumaturgical Park for a box of freshly trained replacement imps. Two more had followed the first into screaming oblivion when trying to copy what looked like a perfectly natural scene of a woman and a girl standing on the deck of a ship. Puzzled, Ponder had retrieved the half-finished prints from the machine and noted that every time, the imps had self-destructed when it had got to the little girl's face. Her hair was there hanging down over her dress, but there was nothing above the neck. The rest of the page was white.
Ponder had wondered about this.
Eventually a junior Wizard had remembered there was a very old iconographic machine, sir. It's got one of the old-fashioned imps in it, an earlier model, nowhere near as good as the new ones that paint what's actually there, as opposed to what we apparently see. Tim Haslet's been keeping it in working order, feeding the imp and everything... errr...
"Take the iconographs" Ponder ordered. "And thank you, Mr Haslet."
This time, an exact copy emerged of what was on the screen. Ponder, reflecting that it was always advisable to be well in with the Watch, asked for lots of copies. His intuition that the woman and the girl were key to this, and that they were somewhere in Ankh-Morpork, persisted. He could give a stack of copies to Olga Romanoff. He could also get Rincewind to run one past Miss Pretty Butterfly, to ask if she knew the Woman from the Agatean community in the city.
"Can do." Rincewind said, relieved to be allocated a task with little actual danger to it. This made a change.
They watched Mr Bernard Dufflecoat picking up the top print, out of curiosity. Then he screamed and dropped the iconograph print.
Ponder picked it up.
Just for less than a second, the face of the little girl turned from that of a more than usually appealing child, with big eyes and a wide innocent smile, into some sort of snarling shrieking demonic entity. Despite HEX only being able to handle blue at the moment, the child's eyes in the iconograph had become two fiery red almonds. Her mouth hung open with a suspicion of teeth, lots of teeth, and her inhumanly gaping mouth looked like a portal to a dark Hell.
Ponder shuddered and closed his eyes. Working as a wizard could inoculate you against things like this. That sort of thing still wasn't pleasant to encounter, but defensive spells and wards kicked in practically automatically. Ponder was glad of this as he had an instant of primal gut-knotting panicked fear. His eyelids slammed closed and he took a few deep breaths. When he opened them again, the iconograph showed only a cute appealing child with long lustrous black hair.
He breathed out.
"Tell me you saw that too." he requested.
Rincewind also took a long breath.
"That was scary." he admitted. "But not as scary as the time when..."
Ponder let him go on. Inwardly he was thinking "the new-model imps paint what's really there. Not what you actually see. And what they saw was..."
he paused, working it out.
"And Butterfly told us a few odd things this afternoon. Not just to Rincewind , Captain Romanoff of the Air Watch was there too."
The Air Station, Ankh-Morporkq
Olga Romanoff took the evening muster of Air Witches. She smiled benevolently. Sergeant Hanna von Strafenburg, who would take over command for the Night Witches' shift, stood next to her and glowered.
"Good evening! First thing: may I remind you that everyone in this room, no exceptions, is required to do at least two street patrols with the Ground Watch in the course of any given month. Including me. Like it or not, it's in your contracts."
Olga smiled, and brandished a list as the obligatory groans emerged. No Air Witch really liked doing street patrols.
"These are the people who are yet to complete those two mandatories..." She read the names.
"Now, there is an issue out there. I will be getting on to the briefing. As the result of the Issue, we require Air Witches to accompany ground patrols. As far as I'm concerned, this is a good opportunity to complete your mandatories and do something actually useful at the same time. For the rest of you, it's good overtime and we need bodies on the street to deal with a magical incident. Would you like to volunteer, or to be volunteered? Your choice."
Eventually, she exchanged salutes with Hanna.
"All yours, Sergeant." she said. "I'm off to get clean."
The Sauna and Banya House, Clean Cut, Tuesday evening.
The Rodinian officers of the Air Watch, where they could, always contrived to get Tuesday evening off. An Überwaldean officer who also valued physical cleanliness had an open invitation, and in the days when there'd been a Swommi officer, she was welcomed too. Well, sauna. It said it over the door. Some things were understood.
Olga Romanoff looked forward to her daughter being old enough to introduce to Banya culture. At present, she was only three years old. She and her twin brother were back in the apartment with Eddie, and he was capable of administering bath-time, and making it a fun experience. Olga felt pleased her daughter, even at three, insisted on hot water. When it was right for Valentina to come to the banya with Mummy, Olga felt she'd fit in. (1)
She smiled amiably at her officers, and reflected that there was an expression that was beginning to filter into the language, called "team-building". It was the kind of thing that made her shake her head. She didn't know about "team-building", but an evening out with her comrades was always welcome. Then the inner head-shake became an inner wince. She'd just used a word like "team-building", which was bad enough,and followed it up with "tovarischnii". Calling people Comrade was for Irena Politeka.
Olga felt a sudden warmth, anyway. These were her people, whatever collective noun you used, in any language, to describe them.
Rosa, the duty attendant, welcomed them warmly and led them inside.
Vasilisa Budonova, who felt oddly privileged to have been invited, stowed her uniform in the locker provided. She reminded herself she'd been in banyas a thousand times before with female relatives and friends, and this should be no different, even if everybody else in the room was of a senior rank to her. And everybody is naked under her clothes. After the necessary brief hot bath, Vasilisa passed with the others into the steam-room, and carefully refrained from choosing a bench until the others had selected. Then she let herself relax into the steam and the heat, as Olga Anastacia began a discussion with Sergeant Popova and Lieutenant Politeka, and the others joined in the discussion about this mysterious business with the Agateans, the mother, and definitely the daughter, who have been seen wherever mysterious things have happened in the city.
Her head picked up.
"Sergeant Popova!" she said, urgently.
Nadezhda frowned. She tapped her bare arms to make the point.
"Devyushka, am I Sergeant Detritus, who is so proud of his rank that he has sergeants' stripes etched into his arms?" she demanded. Vasilisa recognised this was a fair point. They were all naked, except for towels for those who wanted them. It would be hard to pull rank here.
Nadezhda softened.
"Here, you may address me as Nadezhda Veranovna." she said.
"And I'm Olga Anastacia." Olga said. "Now what do you need to say, Vasilisa Danutovna?"
Vasilisa explained about the afternoon's incident involving the woman and the girl. Olga frowned and demanded to know why she hadn't been told this before.
"The reports could still be awaiting attention in the in-tray, Olga?" Irena Politeka reminded her.
Olga hoped the growing reddening of her skin could be put down to the general heat. Fortunately for her, Rosa the attendant came in. Rosa, a big wide Rodinian woman in middle age, looked diffident and reluctant to speak for a moment, and then she said
"Olga Anastacia, I realise you're discussing police business and I should not be listening, but such a couple came here this afternoon, an Agatean woman and her daughter? They used the hot bath and eventually left together."
"Describe them." Olga said, as all five watchwomen in the sauna looked at Rosa together. "No, wait."
She swung herself off the bench and wrapped a large towel firmly around herself, for modesty's sake. She remembered the iconographs couriered over from the University by Professor Stibbons, and the story that came with them.
She nodded through the steam of the sauna.
"Cadet Budonova." she said, to communicate this was Watch business again. "Get a towel. Come with me."
She remembered she had a copy of the iconograph in her Watch pouch. Others had been distributed to Air witches going on the night foot patrols. It would be useful. Especially if Rosa and Vasilisa could confirm it was the same couple.
Towel-wrapped, they went with Rosa to the changing rooms.
Konnoblers' Way, just off Grunefair, nearby to the Killing Ground.
Sam Williams was fascinated with this part of the City by night. The public park and open space known as The Killing Ground looked eerie and sinister by night; the children's play area, deserted and lit up only by distant street sconces and intermittent watery moonlight, provoked a slight shudder. The part of his mind that wanted to write creative fiction had a sudden intuition, that if he was magical in any way at all, he might see the lonely ghost of a forlorn child, going through the motions of play and perhaps wondering why it was always dark here, and nobody else was around, like playmates or parents. The mental picture made him shudder with revulsion and with pity for such a child-ghost, even though he was still storing it up for later, as a possible theme for his own comic book, or even for a written novel. (2) He dabbled in written fiction, although his passion was still for comic books.
"Anything wrong, Sam?" Emily Pargeter asked, curiously.
Sam shook his head.
"Maybe I'm too overimaginative." he said, honestly. Then, given that they'd been instructed to block off a potential escape route just in case the people the rest of the patrol were seeking to flush out ran this way, and that they were alone here – he hoped – he explained the thoughts that had gone through his mind.
Emily smiled, kindly.
"I'll take a Look, shall I?" she said. "Cover me."
Sam was reminded that she was a Witch, as she focused and went to a different place inside her own head.
After a moment or two, she shook her head and smiled.
"I can see why you thought that." she said. "It's the sort of place. But there's nothing here, Sam."
"Would you, you know, have been able to do anything about it if there was?" he asked.
"A Deliverance?" she replied. "Perhaps. It depends on how firmly a ghost would be attached to the location, or the circumstance that brought them here. But in principle, yes. If I couldn't do it, I'd need to report it to Captain Romanoff, and she'd send a Squad over. Standard Witch stuff. Even in the Watch, that takes precedence." (3)
Sam Williams understood. He also wondered how Commander Sam Vimes might respond to the idea his Witches were doing exorcisms in Watch time. Was that a valid police duty? And if so, how would they write the report afterwards? He also wondered if, you know, they encountered the ghost of a murder victim, and took a statement. Would that still count in court?
He stored up the interesting thought for a possible fiction story.
After a while, the rest of an enhanced street patrol came back to find them.
"Lost them." Captain Carrot said, with a resigned shrug. "It happens. And now they know we're here, we probably won't see any dealers or customers. They're warned off. Shall we move on?"(4)
They would return this way for another sweep of the Killing Grounds before the end of the shift, but the patrol beat was a big one covering lots of ground. Besides, they had other jobs to do. The five Watchmen, plus Sam, duly moved on down to Grunefair.
The apartment above Mrs Lydia Dustbin's General Stores, Dimwell.
Emiko Yureimoto judged the time was now right. She advised Erma that Mummy-san was going out for a little while, and would be back in maybe an hour, and there are snacks in the ktichen.
Erma acknowledged her with a smile and a wave, and returned to the thrilling adventures of the Warrior Unicorn Princess.
Alone in the kitchen, Emiko opened the window wide, then straddled the broomstick. She remembered her earlier experimentation.
Just fly a few wide circles above. And not very high. For no longer than an hour, or until I feel the magic fading, whichever is sooner, and then home. And maybe the other thing...
She thought of the special fox-tail she had stored, very carefully, in her Luggage.
But later.
After very carefully exiting the open window, and trying not to feel apprehension about the increasing drop beneath her, she visualised the command "Up!", and the city of Ankh-Morpork fell away below her. She ascended to possibly five hundred feet, judged this was high enough, for now, and decided fixing her position against a few landmarks, like the green space of the public parks beneath her, would be prudent.
And if all else fails, I can go low enough to read street names. Or else to go lower and ask for directions.
Emiko flew on, getting the hang of the basics of flying, very quickly. She smiled with a sort of blissful exultation at how easily flight, in the gai-jin way, was coming to her.
She almost didn't notice the Air Watch patrol until she very nearly collided with them.
Ever Upward Street, Dimwell
Sam Williams was realising that patrolling with the Watch involved a lot of continual foot-slogging on the City streets. Ideally this was purposeful movement, being ever aware of the environment around you and being continually watchful for things that didn't quite fit. In practice, he realized, it involved a good ninety percent of "nothing much happening", especially at night. He suspected the remaining ten per cent might well be full of intense activity, and remembered times during his Assassin education, when an unsuspecting student sent on a training mission at night might well relax or think ahead to getting back and a hot drink in the warm and dry. It was usually when you got into that frame of mind that your tutors would spring a little surprise on you.
He shuddered, and resolved to stay attentive.
Loiter's Lane passed by with nothing happening. Sam noted a side-street, a sort of cul-de-sac, really, was called Blairwood Close. It had a darkened general stores on the corner. Nothing much, really, just a typical Dimwell street: downmarket, but not too shabby, certainly not as downmarket as The Shades.
"Whoever lives in the premises above the shop has left a window open." Captain Carrot observed. "I really wish they wouldn't. That's like an invitation card to a second-storey man."
"Maybe some people can't be told, Mr Carrot." said Lance-Constable Ebullent.
"No point in waking up the householder." Carrot remarked. "Not at this time of night."
He shook his head.
"What concerns me is that if somebody could let themselves in on the floor above, then they can get into the shop and rob it." he remarked. "The problem is, Mrs Dustbin sleeps very soundly at night."
They looked up, and saw the moving shapes in the sky. An Air Watch patrol, of two Witches.
"Mr Carrot, maybe we could get their attention. One of them could fly up and close the window over, you know, discreetly. Push it closed, so it's not so obvious from the street." Emily Pargeter suggested.
She looked critically into the sky.
"That's Stacey Matlock up there." she said, confidently. "And Tillie Glossop."
Sam, who was only seeing two dark shapes, was curious.
"How can you tell?" he asked.
Emily looked at him, tolerantly.
"It's easy." she said. "Everyone's got her own flying style. As good as a signature, really. Stacey's got this thing where... well, anyway."
Emily raised her right hand and a small ball of blue-white light formed. She flicked her fingers and it shot into the sky.
"Cold fire." she said. "Just light. We use it for signalling."
The other Watchmen looked on appreciatively. This beat leaping out into the street and frantically waving your arms. Less effort involved.
The two brooms turned in flight and circled, seeking the street patrol. They floated down to land and Pilot Officer Stacey Matlock recognised Carrot, saluting him.
"We got the signal, sir." she said. "Plain white light, so no emergency?"
She nodded to Emily Pargeter and smiled, genially.
"What's up, Weeaboo?"
Emily winced. Sam tried to hide a smile. Weeaboo was a not entirely complimentary word for somebody who had a geek-nerd craziness for Agatean culture. He wasn't sure where it came from. (5) It had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He'd heard for the first time in Big Dave Stamper's, among other Agatean comic fans.
"Errr..." Emily said.
"Officer Matlock, we just need a quick helping hand." Carrot said. "See the window up there?"
Stacey got the point.
"On it, sir."
She nodded to Tillie Glossop, the junior pilot. Tillie took to the skies again, or at least to fifteen feet up, paused at the window for an instant, and deftly closed it over. She flew back again.
"Couldn't latch it closed, sir." she apologised. "All that stuff's on the inside. But at least it looks closed now, from outside."
"Occupied?" Stacey asked. Tillie shrugged.
"Night light on. Somebody asleep in there. I got "female". Possibly young. No signs of concern or distress. Just sleep".
She frowned for an instant. Sam and Lance-Constables Ebullent and Congruent looked puzzled. Stacey grinned at them.
"Witch-skill." she said, as if that explained everything. "If you shut up and pay attention, you can sense things. We're nowhere near as good at it as vampires. But we can do it, up to a point."
Carrot accepted this. He thanked them. Then he reminded them of the concern over the Agatean mother and daughter.
"Have you seen anything odd, Officer Matlock?"
"Not more so than usual, no. And nothing Agatean."
She grinned at Emily again.
"But you've got the right person on the team for that."
The Air Witches took to the skies again and resumed their own patrol beat. They flew off in the hubwards-by-widdershins direction, towards Hide Park.
"It looks like a quiet night." Stacey remarked. "Just that one incident for the patrol report. So the paperwork's minimal. Smashing."
A minute or so later, she realised she was absolutely dead wrong, as a third broomstick appeared out of nowhere and all three swerved to avoid a collision.
The foot patrol slogged on, down through Bowyers and onto Can't-Find-It Street. Sam Williams, his Assassin senses twanging suddenly, discreetly drew Captain Carrot's attention to a very dark side alley.
"Feels like somebody's down there, sir. Somebody who's trying hard not to be seen."
Carrot gave him a "go on" encouraging look.
"I got a bit of movement. And it feels like we're being watched."
Carrot took a deep breath. People who had seen an enhanced Watch patrol coming and who had gone into concealment. That was suspicious.
He motioned to the rest of the patrol to be vigilant. Then he called down the alley.
"City Watch! Come out and identify yourselves!"
There was no response. He really hadn't expected one. He beckoned Emily Pargeter forwards.
"Can you put up some of that cold fire?" he asked. "You know, to illuminate the area?"
Emily grinned.
"Nothing easier, sir." she assured him. "But..."
Carrot looked thoughtful for a second. Magic of any sort in police work was frowned upon in some quarters. But then, we employ Witches...
"Relax. I won't tell Mr Vimes. If you won't."
Emily nodded, and fired a ball of cold icy white light. Aimed up into the air, it revealed everything that had previously been hidden. Three men looked at each other in consternation.
"Good evening, gentlemen!" Carrot called. "You can tell us why you're out tonight, and why you were so keen not to say hello to the Watch?"
He applied a policeman's intuition to reading them. It was a short paragraph. They were also familiar Faces, which helped.
"In fact, if you have Thieves' Guild licences, get them out, please."
Sam Williams then realised this was the other ten percent of a Watch patrol, as the three panicked men ran at them to try to get away. One of the larger ones was running at him, possibly sensing the man in black, the one not in Watch uniform, was a weak point. He drew an ugly-looking club, and bared his teeth.
Sam sighed, pushed down an instant of panic, then let his mind switch off as the other skills Miss Pretty Butterfly taught to her students kicked in.
A mae-geri, then a soto-makikomi later, followed by a kesa-gatame and then a touch of kansetzu-waza to immobilize the right arm and to make him drop the cudgel, and his own fight was over.
Sam glanced around. The other two men had surrendered.
"You're right." Sam said, amiably, as the icy light faded. "I don't personally look threatening. But could I invite you to consider that I wear Black? With a capital B? Now that can be a threatening look."
"Here, you ain't a Watchman!"
The thug looked up from a recumbent position. His nose and upper lip were bleeding from the mae-geri punch.
"I can have you! You ain't covered by Watch protection! I could sue your bleeding arse off!"
Captain Carrot shook his head.
"Special Constable Williams?" he said. It took Sam a few moments to realise this had been addressed to him. "Well done. Now let me show you, as part of your Watch training, how to get handcuffs on a suspect."
Sam appreciated the lesson. It was something the Guild of Assassins didn't teach.
"We need to get these people back to the Yard and processed." Carrot said, thoughtfully. "We could march them to the Watch House on Dimwell Street or up on the Soake, but that takes us a long way off our patrol beat. Could cause problems, too." (6)
Carrot scrutinised the arrestées. They were huddled into a dejected and defeated bunch, with both flight and flight knocked out of them. Handcuffs were a consideration, too.
"We really need a hurry-up wagon." he remarked. "Officer Pargeter, is there any way of..."
Emily Pargeter grinned and raised her right arm to throw up another signal. Orange this time, she thought. In the evolving system of Air Watch signals, that was one step up from white and meant Air Watch help needed on the ground and a situation where more bodies were needed.
Then she looked up and saw the movement in the sky. A fast-moving broomstick zipped by at a very fast speed, hotly pursued by two recognisable Air Witches.
"That's a pursuit." she said to Carrot. Her signal forgotten for the moment, she followed the chase as whoever it was, the mystery Witch who didn't want to stop and say hello, performed an insane-looking barrel roll and tight vertical turn, leaving her pursuit overshooting her by quite a long way.
They watched the chase until it disappeared from view into low overhanging cloud cover, illuminated by a weak waning moon.
Emily turned to Carrot.
"I think they're a bit busy right now, sir. I'll try again in ten minutes?"
Stacey and Tillie, scattered in opposite directions by the near-miss, lost a few vital seconds in surprise and confusion. Stacey, the more experienced pilot, orientated herself first and set off in hot pursuit of the unidentified flyer. She took a second to locate Tillie in the sky, and made emphatic gestures to her wing-mate.
Tillie Glossop got it quickly. As a completely novice pilot in the Lancre War, she had discovered that fear and terror made for fast learning. She duly tried to locate herself in the sky, finding a position where she could head off the target broom and block her forward progress, while Stacey moved in from the other flank to shoot her down... Tillie corrected this to make a detention. This was police flying, not aerial combat. Although the skill-sets overlapped.
She wondered what the Mystery Witch had to hide. It was well known in Witchdom that anybody visiting Ankh-Morpork for the first time was invited to drop in at the Air Station, introduce herself, and as a bonus, get a cup of hot sweet tea and a chocolate biscuit. It wasn't illegal at all to be a civilian flyer in Ankh-Morpork and Witches on the local Circuit, these days, used broomsticks to get around the City and evade traffic jams and the many irritations to be found at Street level. Olga and Irena made this a point of protocol and standard operating procedure: you offered a fellow Witch the standard level of hospitality, after all, and the Air Watch liked to keep an informal register of who else was up there flying.
And, Tillie thought, thinking like a Watchwoman, anyone running from the Watch was self-evidently a person with something to hide. Anyone seen running, the Watch followed. It was built in. You couldn't help yourself.
She briefly got close enough to get details. The broom itself was a standard Yak (7), the sort available to civilian Witches. Not a match for the souped-up high-performance Watch brooms, like the standard ME109, which could fly circles around one. So in theory they should be able to bring her down.
In theory...
Tillie got close enough to register that the pilot was wearing a skirt. It was as if she was new to flying and hadn't yet realised a long dress skirt would inevitably ruck up to mid-thigh. Witches as a rule didn't give a damn about exposing their legs if they had to or circumstances dictated. It just looked inelegant, and most crucially, if you were at a thousand feet up on a night like this, things would get cold.
Tillie frowned. Wearing a skirt on a broom was a mark of a novice flyer, one who'd yet to hear about the vital role played by trousers and ideally by warm leggings. And thicker footwear, like boots, and not street shoes. Other things, little awkwardnesses, suggested a novice. Yet...
Tille got Not all that tall. Petite build. Middle twenties? Also long black hair streaming behind her in the wind. We all love to do that, until we realise bunning it up or plaiting it is far more practical. That's a novice thing too, feeling the slipstream in your hair and not wearing any head covering. You soon realise you need a hat of some sort, because it's cold up here, and it fits better over a bun or plaits... Something else about her...
And then the seemingly novice pilot wasn't there any more. One second, Stacey had been pulling into view, making very emphatic hand gestures to the Mystery Witch in the direction of "Down!", and then...
Stacey and Tillie looked at each other in surprise, and then into suddenly empty air. It took a little while to locate the Witch they were pursuing. She was a long way away travelling in the opposite direction.
Stacey shook her head.
"That was a von Strafenburg turn!"(8) she shouted. "How the Hells can a complete novice know to do that?"
They laboriously turned and set out in renewed pursuit, trying to exploit superior speed to get close to the target again.
Stacey sighed a renewed sigh, suspecting it was now pointless. In the uncomfortable realisation that two Lancre War veterans had just been outclassed by an unknown pilot, and not looking forward to having to report all this to the inventor of the von Strafenburg turn, when they got back to the Air Station, she watched the Mystery Witch disappearing into the cloud bank above them. She did not re-emerge.
Down below somewhere, a white light briefly flared, magnesium-white and lingered for a few seconds. Stacey shook her head and assessed her priorities. She thought Blast, why does everything happen at once and events don't have the common decency to wait for their turn? Message received, but as it isn't an emergency, currently unable to respond."
Stacey tried to get a fix on the octarine discharge of the broom, reasoning they could at least try to track that.(9) She cleared her mind and sought to sense the trail any broom left, knowing it didn't last for long. Tillie followed. They got as far as the Killing Grounds before a massive octarine pulse, and then another, came from the Hubwards-by Widdershins, swamping the tenuous trace they were following.
Tillie heard Stacey swearing as their brooms bounced briefly on the wave of magical turbulence.
"Bloody wizards! Why now?" (10) she shouted.
The orange light shooting up from the ground, indicating a Watch patrol in need of assistance, was a welcome diversion. Whatever it was, it would delay the awkward moment when they'd have to report back to Sergeant von Strafenburg at the Yard, and admit they'd lost the suspect in an aerial chase.
Stacey sighed, and indicated downwards. Suddenly, it was one of those nights.
Emiko Yureimoto, shaking slightly from her close encounter with the Air Watch, very carefully descended to just below the level of the cloud cover, cautiously dipping in and out of the cloud as she got her bearings. At least the two frightening Air Guardians had vanished. Or so she hoped. If flight here was the preserve of the rulers of this city, and only its agents and guardians could fly, she had been terrified of being arrested and brought before the man who was at least Daimyo here, maybe even its Shogun. Daimyos and the Shogun at Home were imperious dictatorial people and their punishments for transgression could be terrible. And she had heard about the dark and sinister Lord Vetinari, who was Daimyo over this city. Maybe even its Shogun.
Above all, she had been terrified at the prospect of arrest, which meant separation from Erma. How would her daughter cope on her own? And what if she came looking for Mother-san, and discovered Mummy was in a prison cell? Erma would not be pleased about that...
She put the appalling picture out of her head, and used the cloud-cover to dead-reckon her way back, in the correct direction. Taking the fastest route back to Blairwood Close, she wondered where the idea had come from, knowing she was too slow to outfly the pursuit, to perform that insane move, which at one point had left her dangling upside down from the broom with her body screaming in terror at the thought of the drop.
It had worked, however, and by the time her pursuers had recovered from the surprise, she had been a very long way ahead of them, vanishing into the cloud.
She realised she had a lot to learn about flight, if she were ever to be allowed the opportunity for further learning. She had simply not seen the two other broomsticks till she nearly collided with them. At the very least, she had to learn to observe while in the air.
She had a vision of herself thrown from her broom and falling across the sky, as fleeting and ephemeral in the great scheme of things as a petal of cherry blossom on a spring breeze, and shuddered.
Emiko had another moment of disquiet when she returned to the apartment and, to her shock and horror, saw the window she had very carefully left open was now closed. She wondered who had closed it; Erma had been given very strict instructions to leave it open.
After she had worked out how to give the broomstick the instruction to hover in place, she tested the window out and realised, with relief, it was simply pushed over and not latched.
Perhaps the wind blew it closed.
She quickly pulled it open and scrambled in, pulling the broomstick behind her. She thanked the stick and bowed to it, not knowing exactly why she was doing it, but knowing this to be right and correct. Then she went to check on Erma, who to her relief was fast asleep.
Emiko heard the foxes calling in the night, and the other urge rose, strongly and compellingly. Reasoning she could put in an hour, maybe two, at a Witch-skill which had nothing to do with flying, she went over to the large travelling chest that had accompanied her from Agatea. It sat, unregarded, in a corner of the shared bedroom.
She rapped once on its lid.
"Open!" she commanded, in Agatean.
The chest rocked on its many footings, and the lid opened, slowly and lazily. Something like a long tongue emerged as her Luggage recognised its Mistress. The tongue felt rough, like sandpaper, as it affectionately licked Emiko's hand.
"I require my Affinity." she said. "My kitsune-no-shippo."
The Luggage appeared to consider this. Its lid closed, and after a couple of seconds re-opened. The tongue re-emerged and protruded. It carried what looked like an ornamental fox-fur with a very long tail.
"I thank you." Emiko said, taking the fox-tail and holding it with careful reverence. Flying a broomstick in the gai-jin way could be fun, when it didn't involve evading the local police. But this, she thought, running her fingers through the red hair, was 妖術 . Youjutsu. Her own people's magical heritage and tradition.
Emiko quickly checked that the other thing was in place. She'd spent a few minutes down in the unspeakable alley on the other side of the shop, making sure.
She smiled. It would not do to be seen naked in the streets here. People would notice, and awkward situations might result. She smiled in anticipation, and undressed. Then she donned the fox fur.
A few minutes later, a larger than usual and somewhat attractive vixen leapt off the window-sill and ran down the old large plank that somebody had propped up against the wall, underneath an upper window.
The fox scampered off down the alley, and yipped in excited vulpine delight.
A little while after Mummy-san had left the apartment, Erma awoke, wide awake and feeling restless.
At the University, Professor Rincewind awoke, wondering what the scratching noise was.
"Be quiet, you." he told his Luggage, which was restless and scratching at the door as if it wanted to be let out. Rincewind sighed.
"Just...settle down, will you? I promise you I can take you out for a walk if that's what you want. But in daylight, okay?"
The Luggage seemed to get this and settled down. Rincewind sighed, wondering what the Hells it was this time. It had got restless, he remembered, when Butterfly had received some things sent over from Agatea. A new Luggage in town had aroused what Rincewind thought of as the F-Reflex in it.(11) Either way it had caused disruption.
Rincewind shrugged. It was night, for goodness sake. Night was not to be wasted on thinking. He rolled over and tried to go to sleep again.
"It happens to all of us." Captain Carrot said, sympathetically. "Sometimes when you chase, they get away. No blame."
He gave Stacey Matlock a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
Sam Williams noted that the Air Watch officer seemed a little bit more subdued, as if she'd had a little of her confidence and self-assuredness knocked out of her. He also wondered if that was the very first thing people noticed about Stacey Matlock when they met her. Thinking like somebody who'd spent seven years at the Assassins' Guild School, Sam got that she'd probably just had the moment when an excess of self-confidence had suddenly tipped into over-confidence. People tended to look like that when it happened. The following moment would have the hideous embarrassment involved in, for instance, Miss Alice Band or Doctor Smith-Rhodes loudly saying "Now, class, can anyone sum up the reasons why Mr Williams got everything absolutely dead wrong just now?"
He speculated that the fearsome Sergeant von Strafenburg occupied the same adjacent space for the Air Watch as Miss Band would fill at the Guild School, and felt a moment of fellow-feeling and sympathy.
He glanced over to his right, where Emily Pargeter had an indefinable but unmistakably beatific look on her face. Drawing on his experience as a student Assassin, Sam sensed this was going to be payback time. Nobody liked to be called a Weeaboo.
"Bad luck, Stacey." Emily said, sympathetically. "Looks like she pulled a von Strafenburg turn on you, and it caught you completely flat-footed."
Sam tried not to grin.
"And speaking of Sergeant von Strafenburg..." Emily added, looking thoughtful and sympathetic.
Stacey flushed slightly.
"Moving on." Captain Carrot said, quickly. "Can one of you fly to the nearest Watch House, give them our location, and ask them to get their hurry-up wagon out here? Three for the cells."
"I'll do it, sir." Stacey said. Sam got that anything allowing her to delay the moment when she had to report in to the Yard and explain things to her Sergeant would be welcome. It would defer the Miss Alice Band moment for her.
Stacey was just about to get airborne again when she heard a distinct grunting oink-oink noise from the direction of the prisoners. She wasn't the only one; three Air Witches turned and glared in the direction of the prisoners. None seemed happy.
A suspicion of snigger died on the air. Two of the prisoners tried to get as far away as they could from the third, without incurring any suspicion they were going to start running for it. It was a fine judgement call.
Emily Pargeter reached for something on her belt, then stepped forward. Sam Williams watched, realising this was a different Emily. He'd never associated her with the word scary before, for one thing.
The man who had oinked then found himself backed into a wall with a Watch truncheon pressed tightly against his neck.
Emily smiled at him.
"Got a bad throat?" she asked, pleasantly. "That sounded like you were trying to clear a bit of catarrh from your airways. Just nod."
The frightened man nodded, eyes suddenly wide.
"We may be Watch, but we're also Witches." Emily remarked, in a pleasant voice. "We've got lots of things we can do for bad throats."
She pushed the truncheon more tightly into his neck.
"You know. Remedies." Tillie Glossop added.
Somehow, Sam reflected, this didn't sound completely like a threat.
Emily smiled at him again.
"You don't need a remedy for a bad throat, no? Then keep quiet."
Stacey Matlock grinned. She tapped the arm-of-service patch on her upper right shoulder. (12)
"They call us the Flying Pigs." she said, pleasantly. "Well, we call ourselves the Flying Pigs. Anyone else who draws attention to it, however, had better do it respectfully."
She smiled at the man. It was almost pleasant.
"I'm off to get a hurry-up wagon." she said. "Just for you, I'll ask the driver to go fast over the ruts and the pot-holes, while you're shackled up inside. Won't that be nice?"
Then she was in the air.
Prisoners and escorts silently waited for her return, or the sound of hooves and wagon-wheels.
For want of anything to do, Sam and Emily walked over to check out the alley. It was the usual neglected dumping-ground for all sorts of rubbish and waste, and neither cared to go further than its mouth.
They heard a distinct scratching and scuttling sound. It sounded as if some feral creature was in there, warily observing the humans it could see and smell.
Probably rats.
Then a fox barked.
Sam sighed. At least urban foxes were at the acceptable end of normal for this city. Everyday. Lots of things for them to feed on, provided they avoided informal trackers and hunters who could get money for the pelts from the fur trade. Besides, he'd heard of urban wolves and there was a rumour of at least one urban hermit elephant in the city. One of his old tutors at the Assassins' School had, at least for a while, kept a lion as a pet. He strongly doubted the hermit elephant one. Hard to conceal, for one thing. But Doctor Smith-Rhodes and her pet lion had become a school legend.
"Just foxes." Captain Carrot said. Sam remembered the stories about his almost-wife, Captain Angua von Überwald. She'd become, according to rumour, another sort of urban creature in the city. He shuddered, preferring foxes. And at the Agatean Embassy...
Three spooked foxes broke cover and ran from the alley. They looked like they were braving the street for as long as it took to get to the cover of another dingy ally, on the opposite side.
"Just foxes." Carrot said. "You see them on night shifts. Some people leave food out for them."
Sam, fascinated by them, blinked in sudden recognition. Emily made a sudden squeal of delighted surprise.
"Captain Carrot!" he said, urgently. "How many foxes do you see that have got two tails?" he demanded. "That's a kitsune!"
They watched the unique double-tailed fox, larger and better-kept than the others, as it ran out of sight.
Erma Yureimoto poured herself a glass of milk in the kitchen and considered her own options, sitting on a chair that was slightly too tall for her, letting her legs swing in the air.
Mama-san had evidently decided to go running as a kitsune. That was alright. Her mother had to do that, as a part of her Affinity. That was Mummy-san. Her clothes had been neatly folded on the top of Chow-mein. (13) Erma had no fears: Mummy-san always came home after running as a fox. Any humans trying to trap or hunt her would always come off worse. She was good at that. She liked teaching fox-hunters a few lessons, in fact.
Erma finished her milk, and dutifully rinsed the glass. Then she looked out of the kitchen window and into the night, feeling wide awake and feeling her own affinity with the darkness. The dark had never frightened her.
She remembered there was a park nearby, with swings and things for children. It might be nice to go there for a little while.
She quickly contemplated how to leave the flat, and after a moment's thought, elected to use the Way of the Wall.
An outside observer, one who managed to retain their sanity, might have witnessed the impossible sight of a little girl dressed in white, possibly eight or nine years old, who somehow managed to flow through an upper wall of an otherwise unremarkable street in Dimwell, who then, in defiance of gravity, somehow flowed and glided up the outside wall to the roof, finally adding a third impossible thing before breakfast by spreading her arms and taking flight.
Erma flew in the general direction of the Killing Fields. She was looking forward to playing in the park. The swings were so tempting.
"So a kitsune is a were-fox." Carrot said. "From Agatea."
"Yes, sir." Sam said. Emily nodded, emphatically.
"Legends say some people are born as kitsune. True weres. Others, like Agatean witches, learn how to do it, but they need a properly enchanted fox-skin."
"Witches in Agatea call it their Affinity, sir." Emily added. "A Witch can only have one Affinity, so they have to choose carefully. But any animal is up for grabs, in the land or sea or air."
"We've got to report this." Carrot decided. "If nothing else, Captain von Überwald needs to know there's a new Were in town. One who isn't declared or Registered. That's her job."
"Maybe we should ask her to patrol here, sir?" Sam added.
Carrot made a face. It was the face of a man who isn't looking forward to making a request of Angua von Überwald.
"You're right." he said. "But I happen to know Angua doesn't like Agatean were-foxes. She says they're aggravating and tricky, and as straight as a corkscrew. She had some trouble with one a few years ago..."
Eventually, after handing over the prisoners to a hurry-up wagon and preparing urgent reports for Tillie and Stacey to take back to the Yard, they resumed a patrol beat that took them back in the direction of the Killing Fields. It also put them nearer to Pseudopolis Yard for their eventual return there.
A unique vixen scrambled up the plank and leapt in through the window of the upstairs apartment on Blairwood Close. Emiko wasn't surprised to find Erma had gone off for a wander on her own. She Changed, in both senses of the word, and chose to calm her agitated nerves by making a cup of tea. It was the Short Tea Ceremony of Emperor Cohen: stripped down to its essentials of The Symbolic Marriage Of Tea Leaves And Boiling Water. With Sugar.(14)
She sat and awaited Erma's return.
Then a bad thought grabbed her attention. There had been no wind outside. So how had the window closed over? Who else had been here?
The Killing Ground, a public open space in Ankh-Morpork.
Sam Williams reflected on the night. Especially on the mystery of the foxes. No, not a mystery: he had a very good idea of what it was. But it was now Angua von Überwald's call: she had gone fox-hunting. Overhead, there'd been some sort of aerial chase: two Witches on broomsticks chasing down a third, who obviously didn't want to stop. Sam wondered if it was a traffic thing, could you be drunk in charge of a broomstick, or break a speed limit, or something? Emily, excited, had said that for some reason, that Witch doesn't want to introduce herself. "That's suspicious, as any Witch visiting the City knows to call in at the Air Station, so she's Known. She can get a cup of tea and a biscuit out of it, for one thing. It's also good manners. So I wonder what the woman they were chasing was up to?"
They turned the corner and were back at the childrens' play area.
This time, Sam saw the ghost of a little girl, a child so pale her skin appeared corpse-white, dressed in a white funeral shroud loosely belted at the waist. She had long black hair that covered half her face, and was quite happily propelling herself on the swing, as if being in a park on her own at one in the morning was the most natural thing on earth. The sparklingly clean white tabi socks on her feet were a visible detail.
"She might be sleepwalking. Or just wandering by night." Captain Carrot said. "We'd better bring her in, for her own safety. Officer Pargeter, walk with me?"
Carrot and Emily walked forward.
Carrot called, in a reassuring voice, "Hello, miss. What's your name?"
The little girl got off the swing, and stood up. She gave a wide appealing smile that Emily thought was absolutely adorable and the cutest thing ever, and made a shy little wave of "hello". Carrot and Emily drew nearer.
Then the girl lifted off the ground slowly, almost lazily, gathering speed as she ascended, rising vertically, in a standing position, until she was about fifty feet up. Then she waved goodbye to the nice policeman, fell forward onto her front, and flew at a fast speed in the direction of Dimwell, a diminishing white spot in the sky.
Carrot turned to Emily.
"Officer Pargeter. You did see that, didn't you?"
"Yes, sir." she replied.
He shook his head.
"Thank Io for that. I wasn't hallucinating it, then."
Sam Williams ran up.
"I know what we're dealing with now!" he half-shouted in excitement. "That's a classic onryo!"
Emily Pargeter suddenly remembered. An Air Watch patrol had located them and come to ground; the pilot, Amelia Cronkhart, had passed an iconograph over to Emily and said Captain Romanoff wanted these to go out to everyone on the Ground as a matter of urgency. If you see anyone who looks like this, try to get an idea as to where they live, but do not approach as there's a possibility they can get dangerous. She reached for her pouch.
It had got a bit crumpled around the edges, but the image, in familiar shades of blue, was still visible under the flickering light of a street-sconce. Sam looked over her shoulder and said "Where did this come from?"
"Err... Mr Carrot?" she said, nervously. "I think this is the girl..."
And here we have to leave it: I probably won't be able to return to it for about a fortnight, except for nibbling at the edges with a basic Ipod thingie, with one of those keyboards where you have to prod at the letters with a fingertip. Fingers too fat, keyboard too small... see you after we get back from Kent!
(1) In countries with a sauna/banya culture, it is recommended that six is the youngest feasible age, as very young children are not capable of standing the heat. And even after the age of six, should not be exposed to heat for longer than 15-20 minutes at a time. Puberty is considered to be the best time for full exposure to sauna/banya heat. Also, Sam Vimes was as near to happy as he ever got, knowing his Rodinian officers' idea of a good night out wasn't necessarily six double vodkas and a lot of shrieking, (1a) but merely that they went to the baths together as a social thing.
(1a) They could also do the lots-of-vodka thing. But not on bath night.)
(2) This is the theme of Alice Cooper's haunting songs about Steven (side two of Welcome To My Nightmare) in which the ghost of an abused and murdered little boy finds solace in haunting the playground he loved to visit in life. I'm also pretty sure Stephen King has used this idea somewhere. I see the Discworld's Sam Williams, like his Roundworld counterpart, evolving into a successful author of macabre horror fiction. Well, Sam married into a family who provide a reliable stream of ideas.
(3) Olga and Irena perform such an exorcism, with the help of other Witches, in my story Hyperemesis Gravidarum. These are unquiet souls of people who died violently and who heeded help in moving on. Discworld Witches do not mess around.
(4)By night, the Killing Grounds were a market for things like illegal drugs and for people willing to brave the perils and buy them. The Watch ran patrols here to arrest, if they could, or at least to disrupt criminal activity.
Additional footnotes inserted after edit:
(5) TV Tropes suggests "weeaboo" originated from the Western fandom for Japanese pop-culture, and is used to denote fans of animé, manga and Japanese culture who even other fans of animé, manga and Japanese culture might consider to be a bit obsessive and taking it too far. Variants might be "Wapanese", "Weeb", and the slightly less loaded "otaku". On the Discworld, maybe "Wagatean"? It's fair to say many Otakus have claimed the word for themselves and have claimed what TVT describes as "N-Word Privileges".
(6) There had been instances of Watch patrols, marching prisoners to Watch-Houses, being attacked by friends and neighbours of the arrestees, demanding they be set free. While the Watch could deal with this, it caused bother and disruption as well as taking time out from regular patrolling. Carrot was keen to avoid this as far as he could.
(7) The ME109 is the standard Air Watch patrol broom/fighter. (Design number 10, sub-model 9, by the Dwarf brothers the Messers Schmidt.) The typical civilian broom is disparagingly called a Yak by the Air Watch, as in a slow, clumsy, ungainly thing that manoevres and flies like a big shaggy cow.
(8) The Von Strafenburg turn is a manouvre involving a vertical climb, a half-loop and a barrel roll to get you right-side-up again. It has to be done in the tightest possible space and is explicitly designed to confound pursuit, allowing the formerly pursued air vehicle to get behind its former pursuers and line up a shot. On Roundworld, devised by ace German pilot Maximilian von Immelman in the WW1 biplane days.
(9) Like the con-trail on a high-flying aircraft.
(10) Experiments at the High Energy Magic Building frequently required waste magical energy to be safely vented off. The University did advise the Air Watch of approximate times when this would happen, so as to spare Incidents.
(11) A dominant Luggage will do one of two things beginning with F when it meets a newcomer. Jubokko. Remember? The real-world mythological reference for Sapient Pearwood. (And discovering something like sapient pearwood exists in Japanese mythology/folklore is a discovery that makes me very happy indeed. Terry Pratchett was indecently well read!)
(12) The Air Watch had got it that to a certain turn of mind, they'd be the Flying Pigs whatever they said. Therefore they had made the phrase theirs, and their arm-of-service distinction was a challenge – the unit patch denoted a pig, wearing a pointy hat, astride a broomstick. People on the street were invited to, you know, have a good snigger, and we can get that out of the way early in any interaction. Sam Vimes had defined making pig references around an Air Witch as not only being a breach of the peace, but a prima facia crime of Being Bloody Stupid.
(13) Excuse the lapse into a Chinese rather than Japanese idiom here. Emiko called her Luggage "Chow Mein" because you could put anything into it.
(14) See Interesting Times, a novel by Terry Pratchett, for the Short Tea Ceremony.
Notes Dump:
Maybe some more Erma notes for people more familiar with the Discworld? I've already sketched out my understanding of what the webcomic is about through forewords and endnotes to the three chapters previously published, so the following will be more random bits:
In the canonical webcom, Erma's grandparents/Emiko's parents are called Osamu and Amaya. Amaya takes a completely human form with nothing obviously "youkai" about her. Very powerful Witch? However, Word of God (Brandon Santiago) in a commentary on his comic strip, says she is a Kijo (鬼 女, lit. demon woman), an oni woman from Japanese legends.
Osamu, family head, is Tengu or a Shinto Kami. "Shinto Kami" suggests an entity with god-like powers: (although in the Discworld, "god-like" is everything on the spectrum from Blind Io, Greatest of Gods, right down to a Small God)
Other designations (copied here to get the characterisations right in my head – should any enter the story - and to have reference points for look-ups)
Emiko (in the webcom) - is an onryo. (In my version, she necessarily has to be re-cast as human to fit continuity with her earlier appearances and flying Witch status)
Kentaro (brother) is an oni (Japanese troll) oldest brother to six sisters.
Fumiko (oldest sister) - is a harionaga ("Barbed Woman") Family head in the absence of her parents. Locks of her long hair terminate in lethally sharp razor barbs.
Yori (sister) - Rokurokugi (woman with unfeasibly prehensile neck) mother of Mitsu and Momu (Zashiki-Warashi) Her husband was either killed or jailed for life by Osamu leaving the delinquent twins fatherless. (so a little of Yori's backstory is conflated into my Emiko)
Rin (sister) Nurei-onna. Effectively an enormous serpent with a human head, kin to the Indian concept of a Naga.
Ena (sister) - Nuekubi (has detachable floating head capable of autonomous movement)
Mayumi (youngest sister) The "Faceless", a Noppera-Bo. Can use her totally blank face as a canvas which can take whatever form she wishes.
Discworld notes for Erma readers:
I will stick strictly to Canon here. (My Discworld begins here but adds OCs, and expands on characters and concepts TP only hinted at)
Sir Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" is a "what-if" fantasy scenario, beginning from the premis that there really is a flat Earth out there and people living normal unremarkable perfectly ordinary lives on it. Terry also concluded that the only thing which can really make it work would be Magic – as basic physics and cosmology have come up with many very good reasons why a Flat Earth is impossible and would not just be difficult to live on, it may even be inimical to life. (braces for angry rebuttals from Flat Earthers – there seem to be a depressingly large number of those around lately).
And where there's Magic, there's a niche for all those magical or mythological species and peoples – Trolls, Dwarfs, E*s, Gnolls, Pegasi, Unicorns, et c. If you can name it, it exists somewhere on the Disc. This i especially true of supernatural entities from all and every tradition.
The focal point of the Discworld is the great sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork, with well over a million inhabitants, a place where a fugitive from somewhere else can easily disappear and fade in. A-M is based on various aspects of London, especially in the later books, a London drawn from the Earth era of maybe 1850-1920. (with little pockets of earlier Londons). Look at the City Mappe, rotate it through 90, and that river is the Thames.
As the books evolved, they moved from a purely fantasy world to be a mirror of our Earth: various Earth nations were "mapped" to aspects of the Discworld yet to be properly visited in the stories.
Agatea/The Counterweight Continent was probably the first. It appeared right at the start of the first book, where an Agatean tourist called Twoflower turns up in Ankh-Morpork and leaves a trail of chaos behind him. (Word of God is that TP intended Twoflower to be a version of all the Japanese tourists who turn up in places like London and Paris to marvel at the sights)
Later novels developed the idea of Agatea, a continent a long way away from Ankh Morpork (there's a reason why British people refer to Japan and China as "The Far East" - this might not be a perception or a convention outside the UK?). In the novel "Interesting Times", it becomes a sort of portmanteau of China and Japan, with the local culture taken Up To Eleven. Other writings introduce a region called BhangBangduc (the Discworld's Thailand) and the novel "Snuff" even has a BhangBangDuc-ese character (or at least, half-"Thai").
Other non-novel writings from the wider Discworld universe introduce a "Korea" on the Disc, although this is not explored in great detail. There's also a region way at the other end of the Central Continent (the main landmass) called Rehigreed, which may from inference be a Discworld Mongolia. (A place for fast-moving horse-tribes to come from). Elsewhere, "Sumtri" appears to be a Discworld take on Indonesia (Sumatra) and the Brown Islands may well be a sort of Polynesia combined with locations like Fiji and Borneo.
Meanwhile, Ankh-Morpork and its environs became the Discworld analogue of England and the English, with The Shires, Lancre, and the Chalk representing various sorts of Englishness. Wales and possibly Ireland are a bit further out, as Llamedos and Hergen, while the general idea of Scottishness doesn't have a canonical physical location as such, but is embodied in the Pictsie folk of the NacMacFeegle.
Other European nations are, as you might expect, roughly in the same sort of geographical relationship to Ankh-Morpork that you might expect from looking at a map of Europe, to get an idea of Britain's relationship with its European neighbours. (5) "Belgium", "Luxembourg" and "The Netherlands" appear to be relatively near to, while "Poland" and "Russia" are a longer way away, for instance. (One "Rodinian" pilot in the Air Watch comes from the Lake Mouldavia region – as far away relative to Ankh-Morpork as Lake Baikal in Siberia is from London)
Another continent called Klatch or Howondaland (it depends what end of it you're from) conveys the notion of the Discworld's "Africa". The "Mediterranean" end of it has the vibe of Arab North Africa; there's a Sahara Desert (The Great Nef). There's a "Sub-Saharan" belt (Syrrit and Laotan) and after an interestingly out-of-place idea that belongs to an earlier conception of the Discworld (6), you get "The Kingdoms of Howondaland" - ie, a take on places ranging from Nigeria to what was once called the Zulu Empire. There is even a suspicion, in canon, that the far end of Howondaland, almost at the Rim of the Disc, has a white-skinned population left over from Empire and General Tacticus's conquests. (If elsewhere the canonical Disc has Fourecks and the Foggy Islands – its Australia and New Zealand – then why not also a South Africa?) Similar hints exist concerning a Discworld Canada/USA, also a former imperial Dominion of Ankh-Morpork.
TP, alas, died before being to expand on some of these ideas, and in my own unworthy way, I've been running with the ball on them. (Especially that elusive, hinted-at, idea that the Discworld has a "South Africa")
Discworld locations:
Dimwell: a stolidly working-class inner city suburb of the city. It parellels the dockside residential areas of London, such as Millwall. Downmarket, but nowhere near as downmarket as THE SHADES, which could best be described as the abode of the avoiding-working classes and a classic fantasy fiction Den of Iniquity. Best avoided, as Emiko finds out for herself. Sheer Street is noted for hosting the headquarters of the (hem, hem) Guild of Seamstresses, who are a seriously affluent working Guild.
Nap Hill is a pretty affluent well-off suburb, possibly an equivalent of Islington or Clapham, (but not the high-end Belgravia/Mayfair/St James' Wood parts of London – that's Scoone Avenue and King's Way).
Unseen University began as the standard fantasy-fiction world's College of Wizardry and Magic. Magic is still very much in the mix, but it's evolved into a parody of Oxbridge colleges with their several-hundred-years old traditions and academic snobbery. (7)
Ankh-Morpork itself is a sort of democracy. It's run by Lord Vetinari, the Patrician, who has contrived to be the One Man with the One Vote.
Order is kept by the City Watch, who have evolved into a surprisingly competent and wide-reaching police force. This includes the Air Watch, which canonically began in "Snuff" with Feegle (aggressive Scottish-flavoured pictsies) on ravens and trained birds of prey. Maybe because the one class of human who can command and rebuke Feegle without getting beaten up are Witches, I imagined Sam Vimes recruiting his first Witch Police Constables, pilots who brought their own broomsticks. (at the time, viewed as a great saving) My Air Watch continues where TP left off.
Elsewhere, the seaport of Bes Pelargic in "Agatea" began as a place with a suitably random and plausible fantasy name, but which evolved into a take on Hong Kong and possibly Shanghai, with Japanese overtones – Nagasaki, perhaps, or given that people from Bes Pelargic are universally considered odd and strange, perhaps Osaka in the Kansai Prefecture. "Agatea" (especially in the novel Interesting Times) promiscuously mixed up-to-eleven Chinese and Japanese cultural features into one great big chow mein stir-fry with teriyaki sauce; my take on the Discworld seeks to separate "China" from "Japan", (as far as my understanding applies).
(5) Do not mention Brexit at this point. A lot of us are hideously embarrassed about what this almighty screw-up did to European perceptions of British people. Some of us actually quite like being Europeans.
(6) In Reaper Man, TP introduces the concept of "Native Americans" to the Discworld, in the context of spirit small Mrs Evadne Cake having the stereotypical Red Indian Spirit Guide. As this was at a time when TP was adamantly against having any form of North America whatsoever on the Disc, he has One-Man Bucket explaining his tribe roamed the majestic open prairies of Howondaland. Discworld "Native Americans" are therefore to be found in the heart of "Africa". I use this notion in my travelogue road-trip tale "Gap Year Adventures". And yes – it sounds odd. But that's where TP put them.
(7) For non-British readers: "Oxbridge" is a portmanteau word for the two "Great Universities", as in "Oxford and Cambridge". Often used in a semi-derogatory way, as in "Oh, I see the BBC gave the latest bunch of Footlights graduates from Oxbridge their own comedy show, what a surprise." ("Footlights" is the comedy revue club at Cambridge; the perception is that BBC executives and producers who are also Oxbridge grads are looking after their own here, and providing a career ladder not available to others. In fairness, it works when the performers/writers are actually funny – eg, Monty Python, Douglas Adams.).
Re werefoxes: a reply to a PM from reader Ksandra Malan, which jogged my memory of asides and side-plotlets in previous tales:
The Agatean were-fox (Kitsune-san) at the Embassy makes an appearance in "The Many Worlds Interpretation", when a group of City weres of various species decides to go out roaming together in Effing Forest. I did once have a continuation fic planned where Angua is driven nuts trying to apprehend a new Were in town who hasn't yet registered herself at the Watch-house, as is now mandatory for new people in town (after the business with the were-leopards: Vetinari has made it clear he would like to be aware of such things). A honest hard-working werewolf is outwitted and annoyed by a were-fox, sort of thing. Never got round to it, though: Angua does acknowledge in one tale that it drove her nuts. So this remains a noodle incident.
Going on holiday for a fortnight tomorrow (Saturday 9th) but hoping to get something up before, even if it's a shorter-length chapter. It's in preparation.
I recollect from the web comic that Erma has so strange books on her shelves alongside her W.U.P. collection; I'll look these up and then refer to them as part of the Library's collection. I may also hint the Librarian is a bit sniffy about graphic novels, which are beginning to appear on the shelves and cluttering the place up (even though Unseen University Library is potentially infinite in size, we all know the number of books you accumulate always exceeds the shelf-space available for them, which is an interesting philosophical conundrum. Does this apply even in an infinitely large Library?) The Librarian, confronted with graphic novels, has to think "They're book-shaped. But..."
Endnotes copied over from the interim version separately published:
Notes Dump:
Had a magnificent idea for developing the Ponder –Famke father-daughter dynamic. It incorporates Marvel (or DC) comic characters, two in particular. I'll bung it into the next chap of Strandpiel, I think.
I've been trying to watch "The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power" and to be brutally honest, it's largely shit. Expensive "no-expense-spared on sets and costumes" shit, but still, alas, mainly shit. There are a few nuggets of gold on the midden - that are heartbreaking because they're an indication of how good this could have been, if only it had been plotted and scripted properly. But you have to dig through a lot of crap to find them.
First thoughts:
I knew this was going to be a turkey when those bloody hobbits appeared. I mean. WHY? Did some finance-controlling executive from the company insist the show must have hobbits in it, or something?
If they wanted to re-write the original and completely twist its ethos, they might as well have gone all the way down the comedy/parody route and get somebody who thinks like Terry Pratchett (sadly deceased) to write the script. I mean... that scene where an Orc off to battle says a tender goodbye to Mrs Orc and the hatchling... that's something Terry Pratchett would have loved to set in the Discworld. (He'd have written it better) And the Numenor versus Mordor/Easterlings thing - that's Ankh-Morpork versus Klatch. And speaking of Ankh-Morpork... as a model for Numenor, only with gritty realism thrown in and perhaps a monarch who thinks like Lord Vetinari. When "Halbrand" gets into that fight in the street - imagining him getting nicked by a street patrol led by Sam Vimes, who'd have spotted a wrong'un sooner than Galadriel did ("You're six thousand years old? Well, I've been a copper for thirty. And I'm telling you, madam, he's a wrong'un." And: "You're not part-werewolf, are you? You remind me of somebody.")
I dropped out, pretty much, when the Morgoth-worshipping yokel works out he's got a Key and knows where the lock is. He then inserts key into lock and switches on a Doomsday Machine that calls Mordor into being.
Sorry, no, can't suspend disbelief any more, goodbye.
Also, from a discussion on FB about how politics and religion intersect, and whether any political party today can be said to embody Christian principles. My half-penny's worth:
The Labour Party was shaped by the "Christian Socialist" values of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, arguing that left progressive values were entirely in keeping with the life, teaching, and demonstrated values, of Jesus Christ. (kicking the moneylenders out of the Temple, the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, et c). Unfortunately today it's completely lost those original guiding values and it's just another corporationist and centrist party. It's more likely to accommodate ultra-rich people, for instance, by building a massively over-scale needle with an eye big enough to sail a super-yacht through!