Witches Abroad (Discworld 12)

'A fairy godmother stopping a girl from marryin“ a prince?' said Nanny. 'Sounds a bit... contrary.”

'Should be an easy enough wish to grant, anyway,' said Granny. 'Millions of girls don't marry a prince.'

Magrat made an effort.

'Genua really is a long way away,' she said.

'I should 'ope so,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'The last thing we want is foreign parts up close.'

'I mean, there'll be a lot of travelling,' said Magrat wretchedly. 'And you're . . . not as young as you were.'

There was a long, crowded silence.

'We start tomorrow,' said Granny Weatherwax firmly.

'Look,' said Magrat desperately, 'why don't I go by myself?'

' 'Cos you ain't experienced at fairy godmothering,' said Granny Weatherwax.

This was too much even for Magrat's generous soul.

'Well, nor are you,' she said.

'That's true,' Granny conceded. 'But the point is ... the point is ... the point is we've not been experienced for a lot longer than you.'

'We've got a lot of experience of not having any experience,' said Nanny Ogg happily.

"That's what counts every time,' said Granny.

There was only one small, speckled mirror in Granny's house. When she got home, she buried it at the bottom of the garden.

'There,' she said. 'Now trying spyin' on me.'

It never seemed possible to people that Jason Ogg, master blacksmith and farrier, was Nanny Ogg's son. He didn't look as if he could possibly have been born, but as if he must have been constructed. In a shipyard. To his essentially slow and gentle nature genetics had seen fit to add muscles that should have gone to a couple of bullocks, arms like treetrunks, and legs like four beer barrels stacked in twos.

To his glowing forge were brought the stud stallions, the red-eyed and foam-flecked kings of the horse nation, the soup-plate-hoofed beasts that had kicked lesser men through walls. But Jason Ogg knew the secret of the mystic Horseman's Word, and he would go alone into the forge, politely shut the door, and lead the creature out again after half an hour, newly shod and strangely docile.*

Behind his huge brooding shape clustered the rest of Nanny Ogg's endless family and a lot of other townsfolk who, seeing some interesting activity involving witches, couldn't resist the opportunity for what was known in the Ramtops as a good oggle.

'We'm off then, our Jason,' said Nanny Ogg. 'They do say the streets in foreign parts are paved with gold. I could prob'ly make my fortune, eh?'

Jason's hairy brow creased in intense thought.

'Us could do with a new anvil down forge,' he volunteered.

* Granny Weatherwax had once pressed him about this, and since there are no secrets from a witch, he'd shyly replied, 'Well, ma'am, what happens is, I gets hold of 'un and smacks 'un between the eyes with hammer before 'un knows what's 'appening, and then I whispers in his ear, I sez, “Cross me, you bugger, and I'll have thy goolies on t'anvil, thou knows I can.”'

'If I come back rich, you won't never have to go down the forge ever again,' said Nanny.

Jason frowned.

'But I likes t'forge,' he said, slowly.

Nanny looked momentarily taken aback. 'Well, then -then you shall have an anvil made of solid silver.'

'Wunt be no good, ma. It'd be too soft,' said Jason.

'If I brings you back an anvil made of solid silver you shall have an anvil made of solid silver, my lad, whether you likes it or not!'