Witches Abroad (Discworld 12)

Give or take the odd laughter line and wrinkle, it was Granny Weatherwax to the life.

Almost. . .

Nanny found she was turning to find the white eagle head in the crowd. All heads were turned to die staircase, but there was one staring as if her gaze was a steel rod.

Lily Weatherwax wore white. Until that point it had never occurred to Nanny Ogg that there could be different colours of white. Now she knew better. The white of Lily Weatherwax's dress seemed to radiate; if all the lights went out, she felt, Lily's dress would glow. It had style. It gleamed, and had puffed sleeves and was edged with lace.

And Lily Weatherwax looked - Nanny Ogg had to admit it - younger. There was the same bone structure and fine Weatherwax complexion, but it looked . . . less worn.

If that's what bein' bad does to you, Nanny thought, I could of done with some of that years ago. The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.

The eyes were the same, though. Somewhere in the genetics of the Weatherwaxes was a piece of sapphire. Maybe generations of them.

The Duc was unbelievably handsome. But that was understandable. He was wearing black. Even his eyes wore black.

Nanny surfaced, and pushed her way through the throng to Granny Weatherwax.

'Esme?'

She grabbed Granny's arm.

'Esme?'

'Hmm?'

Nanny was aware that the crowd was moving, parting like a sea, between the staircase and the chaise-longue at the far end of the hall.

Granny Weatherwax's knuckles were as white as her dress.

'Esme? What's happening? What are you doing?' said Nanny.

'Trying ... to ... stop . . . the story,' said Granny.

'What's she doing, then?'

'Letting . . . things . . . happen!'

The crowd were pulling back past them. It didn't seem to be a conscious thing. It was just happening that a sort of corridor was forming.

The Prince walked slowly along it. Behind Lily, faint images hung in the air so that she appeared to be followed by a succession of fading ghosts.

Magrat stood up.

Nanny was aware of a rainbow hue in the air. Possibly there was the tweeting of bluebirds.

The Prince took Magrat by the hand.

Nanny glanced up at Lily Weatherwax, who had remained a few steps up from the foot of the stairs and was smiling beneficently.

Then she tried to put a focus on the future.

It was horribly easy.

Normally the future is branching off at every turn and it's only possible to have the haziest idea of what is likely to happen, even when you're as temporally sensitive as a witch. But here there were stories coiled around the tree of events, bending it into a new shape.

Granny Weatherwax wouldn't know what a pattern of quantum inevitability was if she found it eating her dinner. If you mentioned the words 'paradigms of space-time' to her she'd just say 'What?' But that didn't mean she was ignorant. It just meant that she didn't have any truck with words, especially gibberish. She just knew that there were certain things that happened continually in human history, like three-dimensional cliches. Stories.

'And now we're part of it! And I can't stop it,' said Granny. 'There's got to be a place where I can stop it, and I can't find it!'