ainât easy, with people like them. Got to use headology. Got to make âem send âemselves. Tell Esme Weatherwax sheâs got to go somewhere and she wonât go out of contrariness, so tell her sheâs not to go and sheâll run there over broken glass. Thatâs the thing about the Weatherwaxes, see. They donât know how to be beaten.â
Something seemed to strike her as funny.
âBut one of âemâs going to have to learn .â
Death said nothing. From where he sat, Desiderata reflected, losing was something that everyone learned.
She drained her tea. Then she stood up, put on her pointy hat with a certain amount of ceremony, and hobbled out of the back door.
There was a deep trench dug under the trees a little way from the house, down into which someone had thoughtfully put a short ladder. She climbed in and, with some difficulty, heaved the ladder on to the leaves. Then she lay down. She sat up.
âMr Chert the troll down at the sawmill does a very good deal on coffins, if you donât mind pine.â
I SHALL DEFINITELY BEAR IT IN MIND .
âI got Hurker the poacher to dig the hole out for me,â she said conversationally, âand heâs goinâ to come along and fill it in on his way home. I believe in being neat. Take it away, maestro.â
W HAT ? O H . A FIGURE OF SPEECH .
He raised his scythe.
Desiderata Hollow went to her rest.
âWell,â she said, âthat was easy. What happens now?â
And this is Genua. The magical kingdom. The diamond city. The fortunate country.
In the centre of the city a woman stood between two mirrors, watching herself reflected all the way to infinity.
The mirrors were themselves in the centre of an octagon of mirrors, open to the sky on the highest tower of the palace. There were so many reflections, in fact, that it was only with extreme difficulty that you could tell where the mirrors ended and the real person began.
Her name was Lady Lilith de Tempscire, although she had answered to many others in the course of a long and eventful life. And that was something you learned to do early on, sheâd found. If you wanted to get anywhere in this world â and sheâd decided, right at the start, that she wanted to get as far as it was possible to go â you wore names lightly, and you took power anywhere you found it. She had buried three husbands, and at least two of them had been already dead.
And you moved around a lot. Because most people didnât move around much. Change countries and your name and, if you had the right manner, the world was your mollusc. For example, sheâd had to go a mere hundred miles to become a Lady.
Sheâd go to any lengths now . . .
The two main mirrors were set almost, but not quite, facing one another, so that Lilith could see over her shoulder and watch her images curve away around the universe inside the mirror.
She could feel herself pouring into herself , multiplying itself via the endless reflections.
When Lilith sighed and strode out from the Space between the mirrors the effect was startling. Images of Lilith hung in the air behind her for a moment, like three-dimensional shadows, before fading.
So . . . Desiderata was dying. Interfering old baggage. She deserved death. Sheâd never understood the kind of power sheâd had. She was one of those people afraid to do good for fear of doing harm, who took it all so seriously that theyâd constipate themselves with moral anguish before granting the wish of a single ant.
Lilith looked down and out over the city. Well, there were no barriers now. The stupid voodoo woman in the swamp was a mere distraction, with no understanding.
Nothing stood in the way of what Lilith liked more than anything else.
A happy ending.
Up on the mountain, the sabbat had settled down a bit.
Artists and writers have always had a rather exaggerated idea about what goes on at a
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