Wyrd Sisters

Bees were busy, or at least endeavouring to look and sound busy, in the thyme by the trackside. Cloud shadows flickered over the alpine meadows. There was the kind of big, empty silence made by an environment that not only doesn't have any people in it, but doesn't need them either.

Or signposts.

'We were lost ten miles ago,' said Hwel. 'There's got to be a new word for what we are now.'

'You said the mountains were honeycombed with dwarf mines,' said Tomjon. 'You said a dwarf could tell wherever he was in the mountains.'

'Underground,

I said. It's all a matter of strata and rock formations. Not on the surface. All the landscape gets in the way.'

'We could dig you a hole,' said Tomjon.

But it was a nice day and, as the road meandered through clumps of hemlock and pine, outposts of the forest, it was pleasant enough to let the mules go at their own pace. The road, Hwel felt, had to go somewhere.

This geographical fiction has been the death of many people. Roads don't necessarily have to go anywhere, they just have to have somewhere to start.

'We are lost, aren't we?' said Tomjon, after a while.

'Certainly not.'

'Where are we, then?'

'The mountains. Perfectly clear on any atlas.'

'We ought to stop and ask someone.'

Tomjon gazed around at the rolling countryside. Somewhere a lonely curlew howled, or possibly it was a badger – Hwel was a little hazy about rural matters, at least those that took place higher than about the limestone layer. There wasn't another human being within miles.

'Who did you have in mind?' he said sarcastically.

'That old woman in the funny hat,' said Tomjon, pointing. 'I've been watching her. She keeps ducking down behind a bush when she thinks I've seen her.'

Hwel turned and looked down at a bramble bush, which wobbled.

'Ho there, good mother,' he said.

The bush sprouted an indignant head.

'Whose mother?' it said.

Hwel hesitated. 'Just a figure of speech, Mrs . . . Miss . . .'

'Mistress,' snapped Granny Weatherwax. 'And I'm a poor old woman gathering wood,' she added defiantly.

She cleared her throat. 'Lawks,' she went on. 'You did give me a fright, young master. My poor old heart.'

There was silence from the carts. Then Tomjon said, 'I'm sorry?'

'What?' said Granny.

'Your poor old heart what?'

'What about my poor old heart?' said Granny, who wasn't used to acting like an old woman and had a very limited repertoire in this area. But it's traditional that young heirs seeking their destiny get help from mysterious old women gathering wood, and she wasn't about to buck tradition.