After a while something tapped Mrs Gogol on the shoulder and handed her the jug. It was empty.
Might as well begin . . .
'Lady Bon Anna smile on me. Mister Safe Way protect me. Stride Wide Man guide me. Hotaloga Andrews catch me.
'I stand between the light and the dark, but that no matter, because I am between.
'Here is rum for you. Tobacco for you. Food for you. A home for you.
'Now you listen to me good . . .'
. . . bong.
For Magrat it was like waking from a dream into a dream. She'd been idly dreaming that she was dancing with the most handsome man in the room, and . . . she was dancing with the most handsome man in the room.
Except that he wore two circles of smoked glass over his eyes.
Although Magrat was soft-hearted, a compulsive daydreamer and, as Granny Weatherwax put it, a wet hen, she wouldn't be a witch if she didn't have certain instincts and the sense to trust them. She reached up and, before his hands could move, tweaked the things away.
Magrat had seen eyes like that before, but never on something walking upright.
Her feet, which a moment before had been moving gracefully across the floor, tripped over themselves.
'Er . . .' she began.
And she was aware that his hands, pink and well-manicured, were also cold and damp.
Magrat turned and ran, knocking the couples aside in her madness to get away. Her legs tangled in the dress. The stupid shoes skittered on the floor.
A couple of footmen blocked the stairs to the hall.
Magrat's eyes narrowed. Getting out was what mattered.
'Hai!'
'Ouch!'
And then she ran on, slipping at the top of the stairs. A glass slipper slithered across the marble.
'How the hell's anyone supposed to move in these things?' she screamed at the world in general. Hopping frantically on one foot, she wrenched the other shoe off and ran into the night.
The Prince walked slowly to the top of the steps and picked up the discarded slipper.
He held it. The light glittered off its facets.
Granny Weatherwax leaned against the wall in the shadows. All stories had a turning point, and it had to be close.
She was good at getting into other people's minds, but now she had to get into hers. She concentrated. Down deeper . . . past everyday thoughts and minor concerns, faster, faster . . . through layers of deep cogitation . . . deeper . . . past things sealed off and crusted over, old guilts and congealed regrets, but there was no time for them now . . . down . . . and there . . . the silver thread of the story. She'd been part of it, was part of it, so it had to be a part of her.
It poured past. She reached out.
She hated everything that predestined people, that fooled them, that made them slightly less than human.
The story whipped along like a steel hawser. She gripped it.
Her eyes opened in shock. Then she stepped forward.
y Weatherwax's knuckles were as white as her dress.