Rincewind’s head hurt. Oh, he had expected it to hurt for a second, but that second second was a total surprise. The third second, even coming on the heels of the second second, was also a total surprise. The fourth second was a total surprise, although now it was because he couldn’t believe he’d survived the monstrous pain of the first, second and third seconds. On the fifth second, he feigned a certain world-wariness, but this only deepened his shock on the sixth second when his head went on hurting and he went on being alive. The seventh second brought a mix of total surprise and a deep desire to stop being alive. The eighth and ninth seconds were consumed by existential questions raised by the seventh second, and during the tenth second he decided that it was shocking enough to discover he was still conscious and that he could have a deep desire simply to stop being conscious, and on the eleventh second he passed out.
~
The palace gate was closely guarded, but by Spaniards.
On the second floor, the witches came upon two Italian mercenaries, but fortunately they spoke Amore and Aupair Nogg was able to persuade them to stand aside.
On the fourth floor, there were some German Knights, but they had passed out drunk, and one Englishman who agreed not to tell anybody what he’d seen them doing if they wouldn’t tell anybody what they’d seen him doing.
On the seventh floor, they caught the first inkling that something was amiss. Crouched behind, and in Aupair Nogg’s case half inside, a wine cask, they overheard the maids whispering about strange happenings.
“…and there was the most terrible sound.”
“I heard it. It rocked the tower even in the cellar.”
“No! No! Not that. Tell them, Ava.”
“It were…” the smallest maid squeaked, yet it was a deep, powerful squeak, somehow. “It were a queer sound. Cryin-like, the babe-“
“The
Infanta,” chided the oldest of the maids, whose nose was a passable ski jump.
“The Infanta, sorry mum, the Infanta were cryin, but different. So loud. And broked like. And confused. You know I always say that ba-Infanta, she got clear eyes and watches you. She’s a clever one. When she cries, it’s cause she wants somethin’ and she knows how to get it, like the teat,” with that, the witches discovered the source of the little maid’s powerful voice, as she turned aside and hefted one of her frankly gargantuan bosoms. Aupair Nogg whistled in her wine. “She never yells like that, all messed up and scared and little like.”
“But what was it?”
“Her, I guess. Weren’t nobody else up there. But we all ran to check on her, the Queen herself did, and there she was, all scrunched up and sleepin’ like a angel. Suckin’ away at her little thumb without a care in the world.”
“Then what made the sound?”
“Like I said, must’been her. Maybe that thunderclap scared her for a second.”
The other maids shook their heads.
“Sure is queer.”
“Well, I said so, didn’t I?”
“The Queen seems to think so, too,” said the maid with the ski slope. “And she doesn’t believe it. She’s posted a triple guard for the rest of the night, and she sent Burley the cook up there, too.”
“What’s got her so worried?”
“You know. Don Luna.”
“Oh! He’s a
snake he is.”
“I think he’s handsome,” said the wetnurse. “A real knight!”
“You hold your tongue. You serve the Queen, remember.”
“Anyway, you think anything with a pole is a knight.”
“I do not! I…”
The voices began to fade as the maids exited, and the door to the pantry closed with a bang.
“Now what?” asked Aupair Nogg.
“Now we wait,” said Grandma Climatebuff. “If the guard was just posted, they’ll be drunk by morning.”
“We’re just going to sit here?” Margareta shivered. “In this… Place?”
“Fine by me,” said Aupair Nogg, who had found a bottle of better wine and a round of cheese. “Fine. By. Me.”
~
Rincewind’s head hurt. The sun streaming through the shattered remnants of the window hurt his eyes when he tried, inadvisably and briefly, to open them, hurt the little scratches the glass had etched in his face, hurt the gash beneath his stringy hair, hurt his skin, hurt him everywhere, in fact, because, although he didn’t know it, the light on this planet hit him at approximately 1,873,702,862.5 times the speed of the light on his own. It was going to leave a mark.
The soft thing beneath him hurt his back. The soft thing around his shoulders hurt his shoulders. The soft thing on his stomach and legs hurt his stomach and legs. The soft thing he was clutching in one arm hurt his one arm. The soft thing underneath his head hurt his head, which was plenty hurt on its own.
He did not understand at first why such soft things were hurting him so much and trying to understand hurt his mind, and his mind, seeking to hurt something as much as all these things were hurting it, for reasons unclear chose his inferior vena cava.
Eventually, he turned his head as far as he could from the blitzing warmth on his face and cracked one eye. There was something pink in front of it. Pink and puffy and hairy. He fastened his eyes closed and tried not to shriek.
He stayed this way for a remarkably long while. Long after anyone else would have gritted his teeth, opened his eyes, and got on with it, long after anyone else would have gulped down his fear, clenched a fist, and struck out at the hairy object, long after anyone else would have realized that anything willing to wait an hour and a half for him to open his eyes probably wasn’t very hungry, and long after anyone else, even the most resolute of cowards, would have leapt straight up in the air like a cat on a live wire and rushed blindly for the nearest small child behind whom to hide, Rincewind was there, fetal, febrile, and not even a whisker from where he began. It was the most impressive feat of non-heroism in the history of Earth.* It was not, however, the most impressive feat of non-heroism in the history of Rincewind, and even his resilience to cramps was unimpressive in light of his Zen-like meditative technique, which was to enter a hallucinatory trance wherein he was not rolled into a ball with his eyes squeezed tightly enough to produce a light show on his retinas but rather running away very fast down a hill sloped perfectly for running away very fast, perhaps munching a sausage between gasps, and never getting anywhere he might have to make another round of inevitably bad decisions.
It was only when he heard the soft gasp of the opening of an oaken door to a warm room in a cold castle that he twitched. He managed to hold himself still and his eyes closed as the footfalls approached, but suddenly he was no longer running down that perfect hill but wrapped for the third hour in a fetal ball and all at once he exploded into a sprawled, wide-eyed, and perspiring born pancake, and let out a low, long whine.
“Good morning, Highness,” said a voice, “Are you well this morning?”
“aweeeehuaweeeeehuhuhuaweeeeehu.”
“Very good, very good, Majesty.” There were sounds of scrapping, whooshing, whoofting, of clutter being cleared, cabinets opened, gowns considered and reconsidered. Rincewind, panicked by sudden recollection, glanced wildly at and away from the pink, furry thing on his left arm until he had satisfied himself that it would not, upon eye contact, finally disembowel him. Then he gave it a long look.
It was a bear.
Rincewind had been through a lot, and this was why, he felt it psychologically important to insist to himself later, he wailed and wet himself a second before he realized that the bear was pink, fluffy, too small by half, and, most vitally, stuffed.
The shuffling footfalls ceased, and after a moment became rapid.
A face appeared above him. It was fat and kind, and the fat on it was also fat, and the fat of its fat was swollen, and the swollen fat on its fat was ruddy and red, so that when it smiled, as it did now with a mixture of maternal concern and something else that Rincewind could not identify because he had never seen it in a face that was looking at him, there was no naturally apparent method of distinguishing it from a jolly sack of apples.
“Your Highness, are you well?” The face was expectant, but Rincewind found it in him to do nothing but howl. He was surprised by how little surprise this caused the face. “Does Her Highness wish to break her fast?” The face cocked itself to the side. It sniffed. “Oh, Her Highness has eliminated and wishes to be purified!”
The face glanced behind it.
“Fetch Ava, would you? And tell her the Infanta desires bathing and dressing.”
Rincewind could not make out the reply, but the face was annoyed by it.
“Why would you see to the bathing? You are here to launder the sheets. It may be a task beneath a nurse, but it is assuredly above a laundress. Fetch Ava.”
Again the response was inaudible.
“What do you mean, who’s Ava? The Infanta’s wetnurse. Small woman? Short. Thin. Brown hair? Unusually… Blessed. Yes, her. Fetch her.”
Mumbling.
“She has a room next to the kitchens. They like to keep her well-grazed. What do you mean, where are the kitchens? Are you new to the palace? Who are you? What does that mean, double, double, toil and trouble? Now see here, I do not like trouble and… And I won’t have… And… I… Well, why don’t I fetch Ava myself? Yes, I suppose I could do with a good walk. I’ll just…”
The voice faded. With a whoosh the door closed. The heat began to rise. There were more footsteps, these lighter. A face appeared, half as fat as its predecessor but still fat for all that. It was very merry, and contained not a trace of that something Rincewind could not identify.
“Well, hello there.” Its smile was all tooth. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Agatha, get out of my way,” said another voice, and another face jostled in. There were two black pools in it that were as deep as a midnight sky and could easily be mistaken for eyes by the unwary. They narrowed. “Well, out with it, who are you?”
“Let me see, let me see,” said a third voice, high and reedy, and a face like a flat iron squeezed between the other two. In contrast, its eyes could easily be mistaken for something else, crossed and near-sighted and cataracted as they were, but they were kind, too, and very nervous and a bit confused and it was immediately apparent that the person who looked through them was hopelessly lost. It was so apparent as to be apparent even to Rincewind, who fell immediately in love. The face scrunched. It looked up at something. It looked down. It looked up. It looked down.
“Come out with it, fella, who are you and how in damnation did you wind up in this shithole?” asked the first face again, still as merry as a cow on Hogswatch Eve.
“Don’t curse at the baby!” yipped the third face. The first faced laughed.
“That’s no baby,” said the second face, “even if he smells like one. Who are you?”
“I…” Rincewind said, and he paused, more startled than alarmed, and chewed his lip. He realized he wasn’t quite sure. So much had happened in the hours since last he thought of himself, his circumstances were utterly alien, and, although he didn’t know it, the neutrinos of this world were blazing fiery trails through his forebrain. Most of all, however, was the look, the look of something, that he could not quite define but recalled at the periphery, at the margins, as though it had passed through the corner of his eye all his life without ever coming inside. “I…”
“All right, Eye Eye, and where’d you come from? Did we summon you?”
“I…”
The first face leaned in and examined him.
“Maybe that is the baby, Emse. They feed ‘em weird down here, you know.”
“No.”
“But-“ the third face began.
“No.”
“Emse, look at it. Poor thing. Maybe it can’t tell you its name cause it don’t know its name.”
“You two shut up,” the second face said. “Neither of you has ever met royalty. I have.”
“Oh, right. I’m sure they have you up to the palace all the fu-“
“Don’t curse in front of the baby!”
“That’s no, baby,” the second face said firmly. “I looked into my share of queen’s eyes and that’s no queen.”
Something about this broke the amnesic dam that Rincewind’s mind had been happily building between that something look and everything that had gone before it. All at once, he remembered who he was.
“See! See!” shouted the third face triumphantly. “Crying. Just like a baby.”
*Up to that point. See:
Understanding Barack Obama: A History of the “Come On Guys, They’re Not So Stupid As To Keep Believing In All Those Things Now” Presidency, Exxon-Harvard University Press (2019).
~
“Will the Queen play her part?”
“Oh, yes. She hates the bastard more than I do.”
“But does she have enough influence?”
The other man snorted. It was the snort of a pig the other pigs avoided at wallowings.
“With
my father? She has a tar pit between those palm trees of hers, doesn’t she?”
There was a silence.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, sire, but it’s things like that that set people at court to talking.”
“And what do they say?”
“Nothing, nothing, except that your wife...”
“Yes?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t know or I wouldn’t ask.”
“That your wife, she is…”
“…”
“Unblooded, sire.”
“Is that all?” said the other man, laughing with relief. “I know it goes against our traditions, but I am a modern man. I’ll admit it. I’m not ashamed of it. No, I haven’t punched her, not even once.”
A shuffle of feet. A cough.
“Of course, sire.”
~
“Rincewind.”
“No, your
name.”
“That’s my name. My name is Rincewind.”
The first face, the one that had identified itself as Aupair Nogg, chuckled.
“Come on, quit foolin’. What is it really?”
“Rincewind. It’s really Rincewind.”
“You wouldn’t want me cross, boy,” Grandma Climatebuff said.
“No, no. But that’s it. It’s Rincewind.”
The witches looked at one another. Aupair Nogg shrugged.
“That’s a horrible name,” she said.
“I know,” said Rincewind, “I know.” He began to sniffle again.
“None of that,” said Grandma Climatebuff. “It’s not your fault.”
“No, no,” said Aupair Nogg, “it’s your parents should be ashamed of themselves.”
“Ah, yes, my parents…”
“You don’t have any parents either?”
“Well…”
“Mother have mercy.”
“It’s all right. I mean, I have plenty of…”
“Friends?”
“I was going to say coal. I guess that’s not as good.”
“You haven’t got
any friends?”
“I… Well. I haven’t really thought about it very much. I do have this piece of luggage that seems to like me. Anyway, it goes everywhere with me and…” He trailed off as he looked around. There were chests and cabinets and armoires and vanities and many other pieces of furniture, but no piece of luggage. “I guess it’s not here now.”
Aupair Nogg patted his shoulder, but Grandma was livid.
“And why are you here? Why did you come?”
“I don’t really know.”
“You don’t
know?
“I really don’t. I never really do, I’m afraid.”
“And where do you come from?”
“Ankh-Morpork.”
Grandma’s eyes narrowed.
“Do your people spend all their time thinking up silly names for everything?”
“There’s nothing wrong with Ankh-Morpork,” said Rincewind, and he even bristled, even if the bristles were limp and a bit sweaty and only Margareta noticed.
“Better than less,” said Aupair Nogg. “Even you have to admit that, Emse.”
“And do you serve the Devil or the Lord?”
“Er. Well. We don’t have a
Lord per se… More like a… You see, some people have rather a lot of…”
“It’s like that everywhere,” Grandma said, waving him off. “I mean the spiritual sort of Lord. The Almighty. God.”
“Blind Io?”
“That what you call Him?”
“Well,” said Rincewind. “Not to his face.”
“
His face,” said Margareta. “And His
Name is God.”
“His name don’t matter,” said Grandma. “Point is, you serve Him?”
“I…” Rincewind began, and stopped, sensing a trap. Or, perhaps that was too precise, sensing a sudden desire to run away. “I guess so.”
“Damn,” said Aupair Nogg. Grandma nodded.
“What?” asked Margareta.
“We was hoping for the Devil.”
“
What?”
“See,” said Aupair Nogg, a bit sheepishly, “this is more his area…”
“The
Devil?”
“Hush,” said Grandma. “What would it take for you to… Fall for a couple of hours?”
“Er… I don’t, er, well. I mean, how high up are we?”
Grandma and Aupair Nogg exchanged a look.
“Exactly what sort of angel are you?” asked Aupair Nogg.
“The not an angel sort, I think.”
“Then what on Earth are you anyway?”
“A wizzard,” said Rincewind.
“Ah!” said Aupair Nogg, rubbing her hands together. Margareta clapped. “That’s more like it. Hear that Emse, he’s a wizard. It’s all right afterall. So swords in stone blocks, flying literature, crystal balls, owls, golden snitches, that sort of thing?”
“Wait a damned minute,” said Grandma. “Say that again. I don’t think I heard you right.”
“I’m a wizzard.”
“A wizard, Emse!”
“We’re saved! But what did you mean about the Devil and-“
“There ain’t two “z’s” in wizard.”
“Now, Emse, don’t you start that again.”
“No, she’s right,” said Rincewind, avoiding Margareta’s eyes, in part because he couldn’t bear to see the sudden hopefulness disappear from them and in part because with the hopefulness in them they suddenly didn’t seem so fetching. “I’m not a
wizard. I’m a
wizzard.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Um, that is…” He looked at Margareta and was both crushed and aroused to find no hopefulness in them. Their kinship was restored. “Everything. The power. The power, mostly.”
“But we summoned you!” burst Margareta. “We summoned a great storm to sweep away the palace!”
“Oh, well. Did it?”
“NO.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t… Well, you know, weather can be tricky. So can magic, believe me. Don’t take it too hard.”
“So you don’t do anything?” asked Aupair Nogg. “Anything special? Fire balls? Lightning arrows? Dragons?”
“No. Gods,
no.” Rincewind shuddered.
“Then,” said Grandma, “why. are. you. here.” It was not a question this time, and Rincewind did not answer it.
“Ice storms?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t make a lick of sense,” said Grandma and she plopped down on the floor, stroking her chin hair.
“Maybe claws sort of… Shoot out of your knuckles?”
“No!”
“Are you all right?” asked Margareta. She was asking Rincewind, not Grandma. She had hoped this would be pointed, but the old witch was deep in thought, and anyway her own indifference would have been pointed enough to burst Margareta into tears.
Rincewind gaped at her. He was so surprised he didn’t answer. Margareta asked him again.
“I… Yes. I mean, no, not really, but yes, since you asked,
because you asked, and… But no, no, dreadful, actually. I’m dreadful. I’m DREADFUL. Oh, yes. DREADFUL. Thank you, thank you.” Rincewind beamed at her. She blushed, so Rincewind blushed. They gazed at one another.
Grandma was peering at the portrait on the wall and did not seem to hear. Aupair Nogg, however, looked from one to the other and saw at once what was happening, and felt, as a matron and chaperon of Margareta’s virginity, a keen obligation to come to the Maid’s rescue.
“Stick out your chest,” she whispered. “Lads love that.”
Margareta gasped, but Grandma leapt to her feet and cut her off.
“There’s something funny going on,” she said, “something about this. Look here, where did you say you come from?”
“Did you hear what she-“
“Yes. Agatha, shame on you. You always give ‘em the same advice and what happens? We’ve gone through so many of ‘em we have to take the Frog daughter of a whore-“
“My mo-“
“-and you have so many grandchildren and great grandchildren and great great grandchildren the Holy Father sent your family a congratulatory fruit basket and fifteen pounds of dried sheep intestine last Christ’s Mass.”
“Yep. Chewy, but delicious.”
“And Margareta, you know the rules. Always Three There Are, and Always in Their Places.” She glanced at Rincewind. “Besides, I don’t think he’s up to a French lass.”
Rincewind’s ears could have guided ships home in fog.
“I,” he coughed.
“And you, where did you say you come from?”
“Ankh-Morpork.”
“And just where is that?”
“On the river Ankh, at the edge of the plains of Sto Helit.”
“That’s not in France, is it?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“And it’s not in Spain. But you talk like us.”
“I have a gift,” said Rincewind, with something not like pride, but certainly pride’s much degraded, down-on-its-luck descendant, “For languages.”
“Yes, I reckon you do. I reckon you just sort of… Fade into the scenery, don’t you? I reckon you become what all them people out there think you are.”
Rincewind coughed. He wasn’t sure whether this was a compliment or a grievous insult, but that ambiguity itself filled him with a certain warmth.
“But you don’t even, say, kick really, really high and fast?” asked Aupair Nogg.
“No. My balance is actually quite poor.”
"It didn’t work,” she said, turning to the witches. “Face facts. It didn’t work.”
“It didn’t work!” Margareta began to sob, and despite herself she wished she had that stone to sit on.
“No,” said Grandma, “no, it worked.” She looked Rincewind from head to toe. “They was words of power, good ones, and they worked. Just maybe not the way we thought.”
“How can that be, Emse? Just look at him.” She shook her head. “Nice enough lad, bit daft, but how could
he stop the whole Spanish Empire?”
Grandma looked up at the portrait and smiled.
“By ruling it,” she said.
~
Of course, you protest, this is all wrong. If this is a parallel world, Grandma Climatebuff is obviously Granny Weatherwax’s parallel witch, and Granny Watherwax would
never do this. Summon a storm to destroy a palace! To lay waste to an entire nation! Never. Granny is Right with a capital R.
Unless. Unless it’s not just her name that’s different. Maybe everything is opposite here. You see, on the Discworld, people don’t talk much about Right with a capital R and Wrong with a capital W, and they think about them even less. On Earth, people talk about Right with a capital R all the time, and they talk about Wrong with a capital W all the time, and they all think they know what’s Right and what’s Wrong, but this is misleading. On Earth Right and Wrong are mostly about where you store your soft bits.
But if Earth was the Discworld, where Right and Wrong mean different things, surely Granny Weatherwax would not approve of a witch using her powers (and magik, no less!) to destroy a whole country. Yet that is what Grandma Climatebuff is trying to do. Does that mean Grandma Climatebuff is Wrong with a capital W?
If you’re reading this on the Discworld, you already know the answer. If you’re reading it on Earth, you’re probably too preoccupied with yours and your neighbors’ soft bits to care.
“But,” Rincewind said, “won’t they notice? Won’t they be angry with me when they do?”
“The nurse didn’t notice, and she’s the
nurse.”
“But… But… I’m a man!”
“Well.”
“Biologically!”
“You haven’t looked at that picture there, have you?” Grandma Climatebuff asked quietly. She nodded to it. Rincewind turned. His eyes buggered.
“It’s the nose, really,” said Aupair Nogg, admiring it with him. “Uncanny.”
“How… How… She’s a baby! A
girl baby!”
“A princess baby, in fact.”
“What’s
wrong with her?”
“Nothin’. Spaniards all look that way as babies. But you can tell she’s royalty from how they keep the beard trimmed.”
“So there it is. They won’t notice.”
“But I’m so much bigger than she is!”
“Actually,” said Aupair Nogg, “you’re pretty scrawny yourself. When’s the last time you got some food in you?”
Rincewind tried to tot it up, but he ran out of fingers and shrugged instead.
“I was living off the land.”
“Even so. You couldn’t at least chew some bark, man?”
“No, no. I mean
off the land. A dragon was taking me to meet her parents.”
“They won’t notice that you’re bigger,” said Grandma, “because they won’t want to. You’re Close Enough. I don’t know about where you come from, but around here Close Enough is all people need.”
They heard a peep from just outside the nursery, and after a moment it was followed by a peeping Margareta.
“The wetnurse is coming!”
Rincewind gulped.
“
Wetnurse?”
“You’ll be fine.” Aupair Nogg patted his arm. “Just mind the teeth, hear?” She gripped his arm, clawed it. “Mind those teeth.”
Margareta blanched.
“We’d better go,” said Grandma, and she began to climb out the window.
“You’re going to fly away and leave me?”
“Of course not,” said Aupair Nogg, “We can’t fly. We’re not crows. We’re going to climb.”
“But you are going to leave me?”
“Yes.”
“Gods.”
“For now,” said Grandma, “we’ll be back at half moon. Just sit tight, and for chrissake don’t say anything.”
She dropped from sight. Aupair Nogg followed. Margareta lingered, giving him one last, long, bewildered look that he would take to his grave. Just as she too disappeared, however, a thought occurred to him, and he ran to the window.
“If they think I’m Princess Isabella,” he shouted after them, “Where is the real Princess Isabella?”
“We don’t know,” came the reply, faint on the wind.
