Wyrd Sisters (Discworld 6)

They didn't rush things. There was a lot of country between Ankh-Morpork and the Ramtops. It was, Hwel had to admit, fun. It wasn't a word dwarfs were generally at home with.

Please Yourself went over well. It always did. The apprentices excelled themselves. They forgot lines, and played jokes; in Sto Lat the whole third act of Gretalina and Mellias was performed against the backdrop for the second act of The Mage Wars, but no-one seemed to notice that the greatest love scene in history was played on a set depicting a tidal wave sweeping across a continent. That was possibly because Tomjon was playing Gretalina. The effect was so disconcertingly riveting that Hwel made him swap roles for the next house, if you could apply the term to a barn hired for the day, and the effect still had more rivets than a suit of plate armour, including the helmet, and even though Gretalina in this case was now young Wimsloe, who was a bit simple and tended to stutter and whose spots might eventually clear up.

The following day, in some nameless village in the middle of an endless sea of cabbages, he let Tomjon play Old Miskin in Please Yourself, a role that Vitoller always excelled in. You couldn't let anyone play it who was under the age of forty, not unless you wanted an Old Miskin with a cushion up his jerkin and greasepaint wrinkles.

Hwel didn't consider himself old. His father had still been digging three tons of ore a day at the age of two hundred.

Now he felt old. He watched Tomjon hobble off the stage, and for a fleeting instant knew what it was to be a fat old man, pickled in wine, fighting old wars that no-one cared about any more, hanging grimly on to the precipice of late middle-age for fear of dropping off into antiquity, but only with one hand, because with the other he was raising two fingers at Death. Of course, he'd known that when he wrote the part. But he hadn't known it.

Tomjon's still a bit wild. He needs an older head around the place.'

'I'll miss you, laddie. I don't mind telling you. You've been like a son to me. How old are you, exactly? I never did know.'

'A hundred and two.'

Vitoller nodded gloomily. He was sixty, and his arthritis was playing him up.

'You've been like a father to me, then,' he said.

'It evens out in the end,' said Hwel diffidently. 'Half the height, twice the age. You could say that on the overall average we live about the same length of time as humans.'

The playmaster sighed. 'Well, I don't know what I will do without you and Tomjon around, and that's a fact.'

'It's only for the summer, and a lot of the lads are staying. In fact it's mainly the apprentices that are going. You said yourself it'd be good experience.'

Vitoller looked wretched and, in the chilly air of the half-finished theatre, a good deal smaller than usual, like a balloon two weeks after the party. He prodded some wood shavings distractedly with his stick.

'We grow old, Master Hwel. At least,' he corrected himself, 'I grow old and you grow older. We have heard the gongs at midnight.'

'Aye. You don't want him to go, do you?'

'I was all for it at first. You know. Then I thought, there's destiny afoot. Just when things are going well, there's always bloody destiny. I mean, that's where he came from.

Somewhere up in the mountains. Now fate is calling him back. I shan't see him again.'

'It's only for the summer—'

Vitoller held up a hand. 'Don't interrupt. I'd got the right dramatic flow there.'

'Sorry.'

Flick, flick, went the stick on the wood shavings, knocking them into the air.

'I mean, you know he's not my flesh and blood.'

'He's your son, though,' said Hwel. 'This hereditary business isn't all it's cracked up to be.'

'It's fine of you to say that.'

'I mean it. Look at me. I wasn't supposed to be writing plays. Dwarfs aren't even supposed to be able to read. I shouldn't worry too much about destiny, if I was you. I was destined to be a miner. Destiny gets it wrong half the time.'

'But you said he looks like the Fool person. I can't see it myself, mark you.'

'The light's got to be right.'

'Could be some destiny at work there.'

Hwel shrugged. Destiny was funny stuff, he knew. You couldn't trust it. Often you couldn't even see it. Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else – coincidence, maybe, or providence. You barred the door against it, and it was standing behind you. Then just when you thought you had it nailed down it walked away with the hammer.