Maskerade

Agnes said nothing. Her own half?room, the other half of this one, didn't have a mirror. She was glad of that. She did not regard mirrors as naturally friendly. It wasn't just the images they showed her. There was something… worrying… about mirrors. She'd always felt that. They seemed to be looking at her. Agnes hated being looked at.

Christine stepped into the small space in the middle of the floor and twirled. There was something very enjoyable about watching her. It was the sparkle, Agnes thought. Something about Christine suggested sequins.

“Isn't this nice?!” she said.

Not liking Christine would be like not liking small fluffy animals. And Christine was just like a small fluffy animal. A rabbit, perhaps. It was certainly impossible for her to get a whole idea into her head in one go. She had to nibble it into manageable bits.

Agnes glanced at the mirror again. Her reflection stared at her. She could have done with some time to herself right now. Everything had happened so quickly. And this place made her uneasy. Everything would feel a lot better if she could just have some time to herself.

Christine stopped twirling. “Are you all right?!”

Agnes nodded.

“Do tell me about yourself?!”

“Er… well…” Agnes was gratified, despite herself. “I'm from somewhere up in the mountains you've probably never heard of…”

She stopped. A light had gone off in Christine's head, and Agnes realized that the question had been asked not because Christine in any way wanted to know the answer but for something to say. She went on: “…and my father is the Emperor of Klatch and my mother is a small tray of raspberry puddings.”

“That's interesting!” said Christine, who was looking at the mirror. “Do you think my hair looks right?!”

What Agnes would have said, if Christine had been capable of listening to anything for more than a couple of seconds, was:

She'd woken up one morning with the horrible realization that she'd been saddled with a lovely personality. It was as simple as that. Oh, and very good hair.

It wasn't so much the personality, it was the 'but' that people always added when they talked about it. But she's got a lovely personality, they said. It was the lack of choice that rankled. No one had asked her, before she was born, whether she wanted a lovely personality or whether she'd prefer, say, a miserable personality but a body that could take size 9 in dresses. Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin?deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys.

She could feel a future trying to land on her.

She'd caught herself saying 'poot!' and 'dang!' when she wanted to swear, and using pink writing paper.

She'd got a reputation for being calm and capable in a crisis.

Next thing she knew she'd be making shortbread and apple pies as good as her mother's, and then there'd be no hope for her.

So she'd introduced Perdita. She'd heard somewhere that inside every fat woman was a thin woman trying to get out,[3] so she'd named her Perdita. She was a good repository for all those thoughts that Agnes couldn't think on account of her wonderful personality. Perdita would use black writing paper if she could get away with it, and would be beautifully pale instead of embarrassingly flushed. Perdita wanted to be an interestingly lost soul in plumcoloured lipstick. Just occasionally, though, Agnes thought Perdita was as dumb as she was.

Was the only alternative the witches? She'd felt their interest in her, in a way she couldn't exactly identify. It was of a piece with knowing when someone was watching you, although she had, in fact, occasionally seen Nanny Ogg watching her in a critical kind of fashion, like someone inspecting a second?hand horse.

She knew she did have some talent. Sometimes she knew things that were going to happen, although always in a sufficiently confused way that the knowledge was totally useless until afterwards. And there was her voice. She was aware it wasn't quite natural. She'd always enjoyed singing and, somehow, her voice had just done everything she'd wanted it to do.

But she'd seen the ways the witches lived. Oh, Nanny Ogg was all right — quite a nice old baggage really. But the others were weird, lying crosswise on the world instead of nicely parallel to it like everyone else… old Mother Dismass who could see into the past and the future but was totally blind in the present, and Millie Hopwood over in Slice, who stuttered and had runny ears, and as for Granny Weatherwax…

Oh, yes. Finest job in the world? Being a sour old woman with no friends?

They were always looking for weird people like themselves.

Well, they could look in vain for Agnes Nitt.

Fed up with living in Lancre, and fed up with the witches, and above all fed up with being Agnes Nitt, she'd… escaped.

Nanny Ogg didn't look built for running, but she covered the ground deceptively fast, her great heavy boots kicking up shoals of leaves.

There was a trumpeting overhead. Another skein of geese passed across the sky, so fast in pursuit of the summer that their wings were hardly moving in the ballistic rush.

Granny Weatherwax's cottage looked deserted. It had, Nanny felt, a particularly empty feel.

She scurried around to the back door and burst through, pounded up the stairs, saw the gaunt figure on the bed, reached an instant conclusion, grabbed the pitcher of water from its place on the marble washstand, ran forward…

A hand shot up and grabbed her wrist.

“I was having a nap,” said Granny, opening her eyes. “Gytha, I swear I could feel you comin' half a mile away—”

“We got to make a cup of tea quick!” gasped Nanny, almost sagging with relief.

Granny Weatherwax was more than bright enough not to ask questions.

But you couldn't hurry a good cup of tea. Nanny Ogg jiggled from one foot to the other while the fire was pumped up, the small frogs fished out of the water bucket, the water boiled, the dried leaves allowed to seep.

“I ain't saying nothing,” said Nanny, sitting down at last. “Just pour a cup, that's all.”

On the whole, witches despised fortune?telling from tealeaves. Tea?leaves are not uniquely fortunate in knowing what the future holds. They are really just something for the eyes to rest on while the mind does the work. Practically anything would do. The scum on a puddle, the skin on a custard… anything. Nanny Ogg could see the future in the froth on a beermug. It invariably showed that she was going to enjoy a refreshing drink which she almost certainly was not going to pay for.

“You recall young Agnes Nitt?” said Nanny as Granny Weatherwax tried to find the milk.

Granny hesitated.

“Agnes who calls herself Perditax?”

“Perdita X,” said Nanny. She at least respected anyone's right to recreate themselves.

Granny shrugged. “Fat girl. Big hair. Walks with her feet turned out. Sings to herself in the woods. Good voice. Reads books. Says 'poot!' instead of swearing. Blushes when anyone looks at her. Wears black lace gloves with the fingers cut out.”

“You remember we once talked about maybe how possibly she might be… suitable.”

“Oh, there's a twist in the soul there, you're right,” said Granny. “But… it's an unfortunate name.”

“Her father's name was Terminal,” said Nanny Ogg reflectively. “There were three sons: Primal, Medial and Terminal. I'm afraid the family's always had a problem with education.”

“I meant Agnes,” said Granny. “Always puts me in mind of carpet fluff, that name.”

“Prob'ly that's why she called herself Perdita,” said Nanny.

“Worse.”