It was quite amazing that a stall so many people didn’t know was there should be quite so popular.
“What’s in there?” said Esk. “What’s everyone buying?”
“Medicines,” said Granny firmly.
“There must be a lot of very sick people in towns,” said Esk gravely.
Inside, the stall was a mass of velvet shadows and the herbal scent was thick enough to bottle. Granny poked a few bundles of dry leaves with an expert finger. Esk pulled away from her and tried to read the scrawled labels on the bottles in front of her. She was expert at most of Granny’s preparations, but she didn’t recognise anything here. The names were quite amusing, like Tiger Oil, Maiden’s Prayer and Husband’s Helper, and one or two of the stoppers smelled like Granny’s scullery after she had done some of her secret distillations.
A shape moved in the stall’s dim recesses and a brown wrinkled hand slid lightly on to hers.
“Can I assist you, missy?” said a cracked voice, in tones of syrup of figs, “Is it your fortune you want telling, or is it your future you want changing, maybe?”
“She’s with me,” snapped Granny, spinning around, “and your eyes are betraying you, Hilta Goatfounder, if you can’t tell her age.”
The shape in front of Esk bent forward.
“Esme Weatherwax?” it asked.
“The very same,” said Granny. “Still selling thunder drops and penny wishes, Hilta? How goes it?”
“All the better for seeing you,” said the shape. “What brings you down from the mountains, Esme? And this child—your assistant, perhaps?”
“What’s it you’re selling, please?” asked Esk. The shape laughed.
“Oh, things to stop things that shouldn’t be and help things that should, love,” it said. “Let me just close up, my dears, and I will be right with you.”
The shape bustled past Esk in a nasal kaleidoscope of fragrances and buttoned up the curtains at the front of the stall. Then the drapes at the back were thrown up, letting in the afternoon sunlight.
“Can’t stand the dark and fug myself,” said Hilta Goatfounder, “but the customers expect it. You know how it is.”
“Yes,” Esk nodded sagely. “Headology.”
Hilta, a small fat woman wearing an enormous hat with fruit on it, glanced from her to Granny and grinned.
“That’s the way of it,” she agreed. “Will you take some tea?”
They sat on bales of unknown herbs in the private corner made by the stall between the angled walls of the houses, and drank something fragrant and green out of surprisingly delicate cups. Unlike Granny, who dressed like a very respectable raven, Hilta Goatfounder was all lace and shawls and colours and earrings and so many bangles that a mere movement of her arms sounded like a percussion section falling off a cliff. But Esk could see the likeness.
It was hard to describe. You couldn’t imagine them curtseying to anyone.
“So,” said Granny, “how goes the life?”
The other witch shrugged, causing the drummers to lose their grip again, just when they had nearly climbed back up.
“Like the hurried lover, it comes and goe—” she began, and stopped at Granny’s meaningful glance at Esk.
“Not bad, not bad,” she amended hurriedly. “The council have tried to run me out once or twice, you know, but they all have wives and somehow it never quite happens. They say I’m not the right sort, but I say there’d be many a family in this town a good deal bigger and poorer if it wasn’t for Madame Goatfounder’s Pennyroyal Preventives. I know who comes into my shop, I do. I remember who buys buckeroo drops and ShoNuff Ointment, I do. Life isn’t bad. And how is it up in your village with the funny name?”
“Bad Ass,” said Esk helpfully. She picked a small clay pot off the counter and sniffed at its contents.
“It is well enough,” conceded Granny. “The handmaidens of nature are ever in demand.”
Esk sniffed again at the powder, which seemed to be pennyroyal with a base she couldn’t quite identify, and carefully replaced the lid. While the two women exchanged gossip in a kind of feminine code, full of eye contact and unspoken adjectives, she examined the other exotic potions on display. Or rather, not on display. In some strange way they appeared to be artfully half-hidden, as if Hilta wasn’t entirely keen to sell.
“I don’t recognise any of these,” she said, half to herself. “What do they give to people?”
“Freedom,” said Hilta, who had good hearing. She turned back to Granny. “How much have you taught her?”
“Not
Hilta turned around very slowly and looked Esk up and down.
“Ah,” she said, “That explains the staff. I wondered what the bees were talking about. Well, well. Give me your hand, child.”
Esk held out her hand. Hilta’s fingers were so heavy with rings it was like dipping into a sack of walnuts.
Granny sat upright, radiating disapproval, as Hilta began to inspect Esk’s palm.
“I really don’t think that is necessary,” she said sternly. “Not between us.”
“
Granny shifted uneasily. “Yes, well,” she said. “It’s all according. You just hold their hand and people do their own fortune-telling. But there’s no need to go around
“The Powers That Be have many strange qualities, and puzzling and varied are the ways in which they make their desires known in this circle of firelight we call the physical world,” said Hilta solemnly. She winked at Esk.
“Well, really,” snapped Granny.
“No, straight up,” said Hilta. “It’s true.”
“Hmph.”
“I see you going upon a long journey,” said Hilta.
“Will I meet a tall dark stranger?” said Esk, examining her palm. “Granny always says that to women, she says—”
“No,” said Hilta, while Granny snorted. “But it will be a very strange journey. You’ll go a long way while staying in the same place. And the direction will be a strange one. It will be an exploration.”
“You can tell all that from my hand?”
“Well, mainly I’m just guessing,” said Hilta, sitting back and reaching for the teapot (the lead drummer, who had climbed halfway back, fell on to the toiling cymbalists). She looked carefully at Esk and added, “A female wizard, eh?”
“Granny is taking me to Unseen University,” said Esk.
Hilta raised her eyebrows. “Do you know where it is?”
Granny frowned. “Not in so many words,” she admitted. “I was hoping you could give me more explicit directions, you being more familiar with bricks and things.”
“They say it has many doors, but the ones in this world are in the city of Ankh-Morpork,” said Hilta. Granny looked blank. “On the Circle Sea,” Hilta added. Granny’s look of polite enquiry persisted. “Five hundred miles away,” said Hilta.
“Oh,” said Granny.
She stood up and brushed an imaginary speck of dust off her dress.
“We’d better be going, then,” she added.
Hilta laughed. Esk quite liked the sound. Granny never laughed, she merely let the corners of her mouth turn up, but Hilta laughed like someone who had thought hard about Life and had seen the joke.
“Start tomorrow, anyway,” she said. “I’ve got room at home, you can stay with me, and tomorrow you’ll have the light.”
“We wouldn’t want to presume,” said Granny.
“Nonsense. Why not have a look around while I pack up the stall?”
