Free Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett Page A

know some foreign lingo.”
    She hammered on the door.
    “Openny vous, gunga din, chop-chop, pretty damn quick,” she said.
    Granny Weatherwax listened carefully.
    “That’s speaking foreign, is it?”
    “My grandson Shane is a sailor,” said Nanny Ogg. “You’d be amazed, the words he learns about foreign parts.”
    “I expects I would,” said Granny. “And I ’opes they works better for him.”
    She thumped on the door again. And this time it opened, very slowly. A pale face peered around it.
    “Excuse me—” Magrat began.
    Granny pushed the door open. The face’s owner had been leaning on it; they could hear the scrape of his boots over the floor as he was shoved gently backward.
    “Blessings be on this house,” Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people’s minds on what other things might be on this house, and reminded them about any fresh cakes, newly-baked bread or bundles of useful old clothing that might have temporarily escaped their minds.
    It looked like one of the other things had been on this house already.
    It was an inn, of sorts. The three witches had never seen such a cheerless place in their lives. But it was quite crowded. A score or more pale-faced people watched them solemnly from benches around the walls.
    Nanny Ogg sniffed.
    “Cor,” she said. “Talk about garlic!” And, indeed, bunches of it hung from every beam. “You can’t have too much garlic, I always say. I can see I’m going to like it here.”
    She nodded to a white-faced man behind the bar.
    “Gooden day, big-feller mine host! Trois beers por favor avec us, silver plate.”
    “What’s a silver plate got to do with it?” demanded Granny.
    “It’s foreign for please,” said Nanny.
    “I bet it isn’t really,” said Granny. “You’re just making it up as you goes along.”
    The innkeeper, who worked on the fairly simple principle that anyone walking through the door wanted something to drink, drew three beers.
    “See?” said Nanny, triumphantly.
    “I don’t like the way everyone’s looking at us,” said Magrat, as Nanny babbled on to the perplexed man in her very own esperanto. “A man over there grinned at me.”
    Granny Weatherwax sat down on a bench, endeavoring to position herself so that as small an amount of her body as possible was in contact with the wood, in case being foreign was something you could catch.
    “There,” said Nanny, bustling up with a tray, “nothing to it. I just cussed at him until he understood.”
    “It looks horrible,” said Granny.
    “Garlic sausage and garlic bread,” said Nanny. “My favorite.”
    “You ought to have got some fresh vegetables,” said Magrat the dietitian.
    “I did. There’s some garlic,” said Nanny happily, cutting a generous slice of eye-watering sausage. “And I think I definitely saw something like pickled onions on one of the shelves.”
    “Yes? Then we’re going to need at least two rooms for tonight,” said Granny sternly.
    “Three,” said Magrat, very quickly.
    She risked another look around the room. The silent villagers were staring at them intently, with alook she could only describe to herself as a sort of hopeful sadness. Of course, anyone who spent much time in the company of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg got used to being stared at; they were the kind of people that filled every space from edge to edge. And probably people in these parts didn’t often see strangers, what with the thick forests and all. And the sight of Nanny Ogg eating a sausage with extreme gusto would even outrank her pickled onion number as major entertainment anywhere.
    Even so…the way people were staring…
    Outside, deep in the trees, a wolf howled.
    The assembled villagers shivered in unison, as though they had been practicing. The landlord muttered something to them. They got up, reluctantly, and filed out of the door, trying to keep together. An old lady laid her hand on Magrat’s