Maskerade Read Free Page B

the trick, though. It was, in a way, the spoon.
    “This is a mixture of rare herbs and suchlike,” she said. “Including sucrose and akwa.”
    “My word,” said Jarge, impressed.
    “Take a swig now.”
    He obeyed. It tasted faintly of licorice.
    “You got to take another swig last thing at night,” Granny went on. “An’ then walk three times round a chestnut tree.”
    “…three times round a chestnut tree…”
    “An’…an’ put a pine board under your mattress. Got to be pine from a twenty-year-old tree, mind.”
    “…twenty-year-old tree…” said Jarge. He felt he should make a contribution. “So’s the knots in me back end up in the pine?” he hazarded.
    Granny was impressed. It was an outrageously ingenious bit of folk hokum worth remembering for another occasion.
    “You got it exactly right,” she said.
    “And that’s it?”
    “You wanted more?”
    “I…thought there were dancin’ and chantin’ and stuff.”
    “Did that before you got here,” said Granny.
    “My word. Yes. Er…about payin’…”
    “Oh, I don’t want payin’,” said Granny. “’S bad luck, taking money.”
    “Oh. Right.” Jarge brightened up.
    “But maybe…if your wife’s got any old clothes, p’raps, I’m a size twelve, black for preference, or bakes the odd cake, no plums, they gives me wind, or got a bit of old mead put by, could be, or p’raps you’ll be killing a hog about now, best back’s my favorite, maybe some ham, a few pig knuckles…anything you can spare, really. No obligation. I wouldn’t go around puttin’ anyone under obligation, just ’cos I’m a witch. Everyone all right in your house, are they? Blessed with good health, I hope?”
    She watched this sink in.
    “And now let me help you out of the door,” she added.
    Weaver was never quite certain about what happened next. Granny, usually so sure on her feet, seemed to trip over one of his sticks as she went through the door, and fell backward, holding his shoulders, and somehow her knee came up and hit a spot on his backbone as she twisted sideways, and there was a click —
    “Aargh!”
    “Sorry!”
    “Me back! Me back !”
    Still, Jarge reasoned later, she was an old woman. And she might be getting clumsy and she’d always been daft, but she made good potions. They worked damn fast, too. He was carrying his sticks by the time he got home.
    Granny watched him go, shaking her head.
    People were so blind , she reflected. They preferred to believe in gibberish rather than chiropracty.
    Of course, it was just as well this was so. She’d much rather they went “oo” when she seemed to know who was approaching her cottage than work out that it conveniently overlooked a bend in the track, and as for the door latch and the trick with the length of black thread… *
    But what had she done? She’d just tricked a rather dim old man.
    She’d faced wizards, monsters and elves…and now she was feeling pleased with herself because she’d fooled Jarge Weaver, a man who’d twice failed to become Village Idiot through being over-qualified.
    It was the slippery slope. Next thing it’d be cackling and gibbering and luring children into the oven. And it wasn’t as if she even liked children.
    For years Granny Weatherwax had been contented enough with the challenge that village witchcraft could offer. And then she’d been forced to go traveling, and she’d seen a bit of the world, and it had made her itchy—especially at this time of the year, when the geese were flying overhead and the first frost had mugged innocent leaves in the deeper valleys.
    She looked around at the kitchen. It needed sweeping. The washing-up needed doing. The walls had grown grubby. There seemed to be so much to do that she couldn’t bring herself to do any of it.
    There was a honking far above, and a ragged V of geese sped over the clearing.
    They were heading for warmer weather in places Granny Weatherwax had only heard about.
    It was tempting.

    The