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It was a warm evening in early summer, and the time of night when the sky turned twilight purple. Just outside of Quirm, two figures on broomsticks descended onto the well-manicured lawn of a large house. Lights and laughter from the guests inside spilled out from the windows and glass-paned doors that were thrown open. Warm lanterns illuminated a stone patio where more guests gathered, surrounded by fresh greenery, pink and yellow flowers, and gauzy white bunting.
The visitors touched down. The landing was a bit rough, but, well, when broom and boot met turf at high speed, that was to be expected.
Nonetheless, Nanny did take a moment to spare a thought for whichever poor gardeners had to stomp all the divots.
A figure appeared out of the shadows by the edge of the lawn.
"You're late," Agnes said.
Granny dismounted, and straightened her shoulders.
"A witch is always precisely on time, no matter when or where she is," she said.
Nanny grinned, and said, "Wotcher, young Agnes."
She dismounted from her broom, less gracefully than Granny. Once she righted herself, she said, "It was a bloody long flight from Lancre. And there's no harm in having a li'l pit stop on the way," she added tactfully.
In actuality, the pit stop had been a copse of fir trees that had the misfortune to have grown for sixty-three years in the aerial route taken that very evening by Granny Weatherwax. As Granny did not believe in getting out of anyone's way 1, there had been a bit of a stand-off en route, and Nanny had been called upon to intervene. The trees had come out the worse for wear, though Nanny's unmentionables would be smelling of pinecones for weeks.
"Humph," Granny said.
"Mrr," said You.
Granny's cat, You 2, had been tucked into her cloak during the long flight. She emerged now, climbing easily up Granny's arm and draping herself with feline satisfaction around Granny's shoulders like a magnificent fluffy white muffler. You yawned and gently flexed her soft paws against Granny's cloak. Nanny was not fooled by this display. The poor fir trees bore the scars from You's sharp claws.
"You've missed the ceremony," Agnes pointed out, as they parked their brooms and started across the lawn towards the house.
The bride was a member of Agnes' traveling theatre and singing troupe. The couple were, Agnes had reported, very eager to welcome the witches to their wedding. Nanny, in turn, was eager to have some fancy Quirm food and drink and generally have a good bash. Granny was likely just eager to suspiciously inspect anything that smacked of Foreign.
"Good, was it?" Nanny said.
"The bride delivered her vows in song," Agnes said in a voice that didn't seem to have decided whether this had been a good thing or a bad thing.
Nanny wasn't bothered about having missed the ceremony. When you didn't know the couple, it was, in her opinion, mostly an opportunity to get in a little shut-eye so you were rested up for all the food and dancing later.
"They haven't finished the canapees, have they?" she said hopefully.
They had reached the stone patio. As if on cue, a server appeared, offering up a tray laden with a selection of delicacies. Pleased, Nanny took the entire tray off his hands with a "Thank you, my young lad!"
The fellow looked a little surprised to find himself standing there without a tray, but he gave a hospitable smile and melted away into the crowd.
Nanny immediately began to try one of each of the things on the tray. One was a tartlet with a delicately piped flower for decoration which melted in her mouth with a bright burst of lemon. Another was shaped like a tiny bird and tasted surprisingly like mushrooms in gravy.
"What have you got on your hat?" Granny said, interrupting Nanny's gastronomic explorations.
Nanny swallowed and raised her head to look more closely at Agnes. In the light from the lanterns, it was easier now to see that 1) Agnes was wearing a very stubborn expression and 2) Agnes had something colourful pinned to her black witch's hat.
Agnes raised her chin, and said, "It's a rose. Tied round with a lacy ribbon. It's thematic."
"It's very theatrical," Nanny said tactfully.
"It's very floral," Granny said.
Nanny offered Agnes a tomato crostini and a comfortable pat on the shoulder. Agnes now spent part of her time on the road with her traveling troupe, and being in such dramatical company seemed to have reignited her gothic sensibilities. Nanny couldn't see the appeal herself, but, well, she'd committed to some very particular Fashions in her own day, too.
"C'mon, now, Esme," she said. "A little gussying up never hurt no one."
Granny sniffed. "Is that why you're wearing that overly shiny broach, Gytha Ogg?"
Nanny did not take offense at this, not least because she was used to Granny's feelings about frills. Plus comments on Fashion from a person with a snoring cat draped over her shoulders were hard to take seriously.
"Oh, there's the bride!" Nanny said, spotting a vaguely human-shaped blob composed entirely of white taffeta and lace.
"She's an alto," confided Agnes.
"Eh?" said Nanny.
"She's very pretty, though," Agnes added quickly.
The blob seemed to notice them, as she detached herself from the people she was talking with and floated happily towards them.
"Ags!" the blob exclaimed.
There was a long moment of icy, affronted silence.
Agnes went pink, and then rushed to explain that "Ags" was Agnes' nickname among the troupe and was not, in fact, a disparaging greeting directed at the three witches.
"Thank you for coming! I was so happy that everyone in Agnes' coven could come," the bride said, turning wide luminescent eyes on them. "Three witches! How marvellous."
"Happy day," Nanny said to her cheerfully, and stuffed another chestnut and sage vol-au-vent in her mouth.
"Welcome! The gift table and the guest book are by the front door," the bride added. "And there are drinks in the drawing room!"
"Drinks?" said Nanny, turning in that direction.
"Gift?" Granny repeated, in the tone of someone who hopes they didn't hear what they thought they just heard but if they did hear what they thought they heard there had better be an explanation coming forthwith.
"Ah," Agnes said, and turned to the bride. "Witches don't bring wedding presents. But better than any material gifts, their -- er, our -- presence at weddings brings good luck to the happy couple." 3
The bride was already distracted, having spotted someone else across the room and emitting a small scream of excitement.
"I hope you enjoy the hors d'oeuvres! They're vegan!" she said, and swept away in a cloud of ruffles and perfume.
"Well," Nanny said gamely. "Let's have a go at the guest book, then."
They wandered over to the gift table, piled high with presents that were wrapped, to Nanny's eye, very elaborately, with colourful patterned paper and floppy bows. Nanny believed in wrapping presents in paper you could really tear into, like old newspaper. Or plain brown paper if you wanted to be fancy.
"What's vegan, then?" Granny said, eyeing the tray Nanny was still holding. Nanny took the opportunity to have another of the tiny layered cubes of decadent savoury mousse.
"I think it's like baby elk," she said. She always tried to remain abreast of the newfangled ingredients and trends from Quirm.
The guest book was open on a raised pedestal. Nanny flipped back a few pages. Several other guests had already signed. She couldn't read all the personal messages as many of them were written in Foreign. But the drinks had clearly been flowing for a while, as at least one guest had drawn what Nanny's keen and experienced eye identified as a wizard's staff with a knob on the end.
It was quite comforting to be reminded that wedding guests (and perhaps people more generally) were mostly the same all across the Disc. There weren't very many weddings quite this fancy in a small kingdom like Lancre, but spring and early summer was the wedding season. Only a week ago, Nanny and Granny had attended a wedding in a small hamlet in the Ramptops called Pimple which the entire village 4 had turned out for. A skinny younger son of a shepherd had set off to seek his fortune, and only made it as far as Lancre Town, which, in Nanny's opinion, did not have a lot of fortunes to be sook. 5 But he had apparently been fortunate enough, as he returned to Pimple with a strapping young lumberjack ready to be his husband. Perhaps slightly unusual in Lancre, but none of the wedding guests seemed any more surprised by this turn of events than they were to meet a person willing to move to Pimple.
In any case, the groom's mother, after losing count of how many glasses of Nanny's famous scumble she'd consumed, had been quite willing to demonstrate her expertise in drawing a wizard's staff. Nanny had been impressed. It had been very anatomical.
Nanny turned another page of the guest book, and spotted signatures from both Agnes Nitt and Perdita X. Dream. Perdita had drawn a little heart over the i.
"What, all of them little things are made with baby elk?" Granny was saying.
"It's not elk," Agnes said. "They're vegan. They're made without any animal products."
There was a pause while Granny and Nanny signed the guest book and Nanny finished off the last of the nibblies.
"I thought that was called vegetarian," Nanny said.
Agnes dutifully explained the difference while Nanny led them unerringly towards the drawing room and the drinks, and continued explaining while Nanny taste-tested the three different kinds of punch. One of them had dried rosemary floating in it, but it wasn't so bad as long as you didn't accidentally choke on the rosemary bits. She finally settled on mixing all three together and adding a dash of brandy from the flask in her knickers for an extra kick. The cut-glass punch glasses were disappointingly on the small side, so Nanny was obliged to use her initiative and empty out a tall flower vase into a potted plant to use as a glass.
"Gytha!" Granny hissed disapprovingly. You's tail swished.
Nanny grinned at her unrepentantly. "Well, they need a wider selection! I need at least a grandy size."
Then she informed Agnes that in her opinion every bite of those nibblies on the tray had been delicious and she would eat her hat if there wasn't cheese or bacon fat in there somewhere.
Agnes just smiled absently, sipped her punch from a tiny cut-glass cup, and went off to say hello to other members of her theatre troupe.
In the end, it was a good thing Nanny had been so forward-thinking with her vase, as they were soon whisked into a large banquet hall for dinner. She wouldn't want to be without her drink at a table facing three other guests, who looked surprised and a little unnerved to find themselves at the witches' table.
The server delivered their dinner, but Nanny didn't understand a word of what he told them was on the plate. And she'd even read Quirm, Pray, Love 6 and considered herself well prepared for Quirmish haute cuisine.
Luckily, the server had also brought wine.
Everything smelled rich and fragrant, and even Granny's natural suspicions about food that hadn't been well-boiled seemed to be wavering. Nanny ate every indecipherable morsel on her plate with gusto.
"A good workout for the ole tooth, eh?" she said, nudging Agnes.
Agnes let out a hiccup.
The other guests found the food to be excellent quality as well, which sustained the cross-table conversation for a short while.
"This chef is incroyable," the gentleman said. He was wearing what Nanny had heard Agnes refer to as a "hipster monocle." Apparently this, too, was Fashion.
"He uses small-batch artisanal products and fresh, local ingredients," he went on. "Direct farm-to-table cuisine."
Nanny considered this. She was intimately familiar with what happened to vegetables on the farm end of that particular spectrum.
"Hmm," she said. "Not even a brief stop in the kitchen, then?"
Agnes hiccuped next to her.
You chose that moment to yawn and stretch, showing off her pale pink toe beans. One of the ladies across the table gave a loud gasp.
"Excusez," she said. "Is your stole alive?"
Granny levelled her with A Look.
"Yes," she said.
The lady responded with an aghast look of her own.
Granny, with great deliberation, produced a can of sardines from her cloak, opened it, and dumped the contents onto an empty salad plate. You delicately stepped off Granny's shoulders and onto the table where she began to make short work of the sardines.
The aghast looks had spread to all three of their tablemates.
"Hic," said Agnes.
Conversation was frosty after that, and the other guests abandoned their table before the wedding speeches. But at least Granny seemed in a better mood now that she'd gotten in a few good withering glares. The speeches themselves were incomprehensible to Nanny, due to either the speaker's excessive drunkenness or the fact they were speaking a different language. Nanny couldn't tell which due to the glasses of fizzy that had gone around. The bride and groom seemed to enjoy them, anyway.
The wedding cake wasn't a cake at all, it turned out, but tiny individual cakes. Nanny, who generally tended to enjoy food in miniature 7, found this to be unaccountably disappointing.
"Cupcakes," Agnes explained helpfully, which wasn't helpful at all.
"Baked in cups?" Granny said skeptically.
"Loses a bit of the drama, don't it," Nanny said, waving her hand airily to demonstrate all of the lost drama.
The cupcakes weren't bad, though, and Nanny felt well-satisfied: full of good food, good company, and good cheer. Even if they were in Quirm.
Agnes had finally managed to control her hiccups. "This travelling troupe business is all right, then?" Nanny said to her.
Agnes flushed. "I keep up with all my witchly responsibilities, you know," she said defensively.
Nanny grinned at her. "Oh, I know, my gel," she said. "If you hadn't, you'd've heard about that."
Granny grunted from Nanny's other side.
Agnes eyed them both. "I told you already I won't have you meddling," she said. "I like travelling to different places. And the people are quite nice, actually. Kind of like a -- a little family."
"Nice to get home again to Lancre, though?" Nanny prodded.
Agnes gave her a small, genuine smile. "Oh yes. I really love coming home again."
Granny grunted again, but this time it sounded approving.
"Mrr," said You sleepily, who was perched on Granny's shoulder again.
"Well, that's all right, then," Nanny said, and reached over to re-pin the rose in Agnes' hat which had started to droop.
A person had all kinds of families, after all.
"Who's for a jolly singalong?" she added, and ignored Granny's groan.
She stood up and took a deep breath.
"For the hedgehog can never be buggered at all …"
END
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1 Or anything's way, if it came to that. [return to text]
2 Named as in "Hey, You!" or "You KICK You? You kick her body like the football? Oh! Oh! Jail for Granny! Jail for Granny for one thousand years!" [return to text]
3 Or, at the very least, it prevents bad luck in the form of witches holding a grudge. Witches have long memories and very rigid views on comeuppance. [return to text]
4 Sixteen people and five goats. [return to text]
5 With an exception, of course, for her own recipe for Strawberry Wobbler Surprise, which she considered to be beyond price. [return to text]
6 Well, skimmed. [return to text]
7 As long as there was a sufficient quantity of said miniatures. [return to text]