Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett Page B

Granny helpfully.
    The dwarfs waved. The boat drifted out into midstream, moving slowly in a circle of lantern light. Magrat found that all she really had to do was keep it pointing the right way in the current.
    She heard Nanny say: “Beats me why they’re always putting invisible runes on their doors. I mean, you pays some wizard to put invisible runes on your door, and how do you know you’ve got value for money?”
    She heard Granny say: “No problem there. If you can’t see ’em, you know you’ve got proper invisible runes.”
    She heard Nanny say: “Ah, that’d be it. Right, let’s see what we’ve got for lunch.” There was a rustling noise.
    “Well, well, well.”
    “What is it, Gytha?”
    “Pumpkin.”
    “Pumpkin what?”
    “Pumpkin nothing. Just pumpkin pumpkin.”
    “Well, I suppose they’ve got a lot of pumpkin,” said Magrat. “You know how it is at the end of the summer, there’s always so much in the garden. I’m always at my wits’ end to think of new types of chutney and pickles to use it all up—”
    In the dim light she could see Granny’s face which seemed to be suggesting that if Magrat was at her wits’ end, it was a short stroll.
    “ I ,” said Granny, “have never made a pickle in my life.”
    “But you like pickles,” said Magrat. Witches and pickles went together like—she hesitated before the stomach-curdling addition of peaches and cream, and mentally substituted “things that went together very well.” The sight of Nanny Ogg’s single remaining tooth at work on a pickled onion could bring tears to the eyes.
    “I likes ’em fine,” said Granny. “I gets ’em given to me.”
    “You know,” said Nanny, investigating the recesses of the basket, “whenever I deals with dwarfs, the phrase ‘Duck’s arse’ swims across my mind.”
    “Mean little devils. You should see the prices they tries to charge me when I takes my broom to be repaired,” said Granny.
    “Yes, but you never pay,” said Magrat.
    “That’s not the point,” said Granny Weatherwax. “They shouldn’t be allowed to charge that sort of money. That’s thievin’, that is.”
    “I don’t see how it can be thieving if you don’t pay anyway,” Magrat persisted.
    “I never pay for anything,” said Granny. “People never let me pay. I can’t help it if people gives me things the whole time, can I? When I walks down the street people are always running out with cakes they’ve just baked, and fresh beer, and old clothes that’ve hardly been worn at all. ‘Oh, Mistress Weatherwax, pray take this basket of eggs,’ they say. People are always very kind. Treat people right an’ they’ll treat you right. That’s respect. Not having to pay,” she finished, sternly, “is what bein’ a witch is all about.”
    “Here, what’s this?” said Nanny, pulling out a small packet. She unwrapped the paper and revealed several hard brown discs.
    “My word,” said Granny Weatherwax, “I take it all back. That’s the famous dwarf bread, that is. They don’t give that to just anyone.”
    Nanny tapped it on the edge of the boat. It made a noise very similar to the kind of noise you get when a wooden ruler is held over the edge of a desk and plucked; a sort of hollow boioioing sound.
    “They say it never goes stale even if you stores it for years,” said Granny.
    “It’d keep you going for days and days,” said Nanny Ogg.
    Magrat reached across, took one of the flat loaves, tried to break it, and gave up.
    “You’re supposed to eat it?” she said.
    “Oh, I don’t think it’s for eating,” said Nanny. “It’s more for sort of—”
    “—keeping you going,” said Granny. “They say that—”
    She stopped.
    Above the noise of the river and the occasional drip of water from the ceiling they could all hear, now, the steady slosh-slosh of another craft heading toward them.
    “Someone’s following us!” hissed Magrat.
    Two pale glows appeared at the edge of the lamplight.