Witches Abroad Read Free Page A

witches’ sabbat. This comes from spending too much time in small rooms with the curtains drawn, instead of getting out in the healthy fresh air.
    For example, there’s the dancing around naked. In the average temperate climate there are very few nights when anyone would dance around at midnight with no clothes on, quite apart from the question of stones, thistles, and sudden hedgehogs.
    Then there’s all that business with goat-headed gods. Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.
    And there’s the food and drink – the bits of reptile and so on. In fact, witches don’t go for that sort of thing. The worst you can say about the eating habits of the older type of witch is that they tend to like ginger biscuits dipped in tea with so much sugar in it that the spoon won’t move and will drink it out of the saucer if they think it’s too hot. And do so with appreciative noises more generally associated with the cheaper type of plumbing system. Legs of toad and so on might be better than this.
    Then there’s the mystic ointments. By sheer luck, the artists and writers are on firmer ground here. Most witches are elderly, which is when ointments start to have an attraction, and at least two of those present tonight were wearing Granny Weatherwax’s famous goose-grease-and-sage chest liniment. This didn’t make you fly and see visions, but it did prevent colds, if only because the distressing smell that developed around about the second week kept everyone else so far away you couldn’t catch anything from them.
    And finally there’s sabbats themselves. Your average witch is not, by nature, a social animal as far as other witches are concerned. There’s a conflict of dominant personalities. There’s a group of ringleaders without a ring. There’s the basic unwritten rule of witchcraft, which is ‘Don’t do what you will, do what I say.’ The natural size of a coven is one. Witches only get together when they can’t avoid it.
    Like now.
    The conversation, given Desiderata’s absence, had naturally turned to the increasing shortage of witches. 6
    â€˜What, no-one?’ said Granny Weatherwax.
    â€˜No-one,’ said Gammer Brevis.
    â€˜I call that terrible,’ said Granny. ‘That’s disgustin’.’
    â€˜Eh?’ said Old Mother Dismass.
    â€˜She calls it disgusting!’ shouted Gammer Brevis.
    â€˜Eh?’
    â€˜There’s no girl to put forward! To take Desiderata’s place!’
    â€˜Oh.’
    The implications of this sank in.
    â€˜If anyone doesn’t want their crusts I’ll ’ave ’em,’ said Nanny Ogg.
    â€˜We never had this sort of thing in my young days,’ said Granny. ‘There was a dozen witches this side of the mountain alone. Of course, that was before all this’ – she made a face – ‘making your own entertainment. There’s far too much of this making your own entertainment these days. We never made our own entertainment when I was a girl. We never had time.’
    â€˜Tempers fuggit,’ said Nanny Ogg.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Tempers fuggit. Means that was then and this is now,’ said Nanny.
    â€˜I don’t need no-one to tell me that, Gytha Ogg. I know when now is.’
    â€˜You got to move with the times.’
    â€˜I don’t see why. Don’t see why we—’
    â€˜So I reckon we got to shift the boundaries again,’ said Gammer Brevis.
    â€˜Can’t do that,’ said Granny Weatherwax promptly. ‘I’m doing four villages already. The broomstick hardly has time to cool down.’
    â€˜Well, with Mother Hollow passing on, we’re definitely short handed,’ said Gammer Brevis. ‘I know she didn’t do