s very hard, being a reader in Invisible Writings.
“I reckon you'd better come too,” said Ridcully.
“Me, Archchancellor?”
“Can't have you skulking around the place inventing millions of other universes that're too small to see and all the rest of that continuinuinuum stuff,” said Ridcully. “Anyway, I shall need someone to carry my rods and crossbo - my stuff,” he corrected himself.
Stibbons stared at his plate. It was no good arguing. What he had really wanted out of life was to spend the next hundred years of it in the University, eating big meals and not moving much in between them. He was a plump young man with a complexion the colour of something that lives under a rock. People were always telling him to make something of his life, and that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to make a bed of it.
“But, Archchancellor,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, “it's still too damn far.”
“Nonsense,” said Ridcully. “They've got that new turnpike open all the way to Sto Helit now. Coaches every Wednesday, reg'lar. Bursaaar! Oh, give him a dried frog pill, someone . . . Mr. Stibbons, if you could happen to find yourself in this universe for five minutes, go and arrange some tickets. There. All sorted out, right?”
Magrat woke up.
And knew she wasn't a witch anymore. The feeling just crept over her, as part of the normal stock-taking that any body automatically does in the first seconds of emergence from the pit of dreams: arms: 2, legs: 2, existential dread: 58%, randomised guilt: 94%, witchcraft level: 00.00.
The point was, she couldn't remember ever being anything else. She'd always been a witch. Magrat Garlick, third witch, that was what she was. The soft one.
She knew she'd never been much good at it. Oh, she could do some spells and do them quite well, and she was good at herbs, but she wasn't a witch in the bone like the old ones. They made sure she knew it.
Well, she'd just have to learn queening. At least she was the only one in Lancre. No one'd be looking over her shoulder the whole time, saying things like “You ain't holding that sceptre right'.”
Right. . .
Someone had stolen her clothes in the night.
She got up in her nightshirt and hopped over the cold flagstones to the door. She was halfway there when it opened of its own accord.
She recognised the small dark girl that came in, barely visible behind a stack of linen. Most people in Lancre knew everyone else.
“Millie Chillum?”
The linen bobbed a curtsy.
“Yes'm?”
Magrat lifted up part of the stack.
“It's me, Magrat,” she said. “Hello.”
“Yes'm.” Another bob.
“What's up with you, Millie?”
“Yes'm.” Bob, bob.
“I said it's me. You don't have to look at me like that.”
“Yes'm.”
The nervous bobbing continued. Magrat found her own knees beginning to jerk in sympathy but as it were behind the beat, so that as she was bobbing down she overtook the girl bobbing up.
“If you say 'yes'm' again, it will go very hard with you,” she managed, as she went past.
“Y-right, your majesty, m'm.”
Faint light began to dawn.