Free The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett

is here too, and, um, Lucy Warbeck,’Petulia continued – the ‘um’s always got worse when she was in the company of other witches; amazingly, she never used the word when pig-boring, which had to say something about Petulia and pigs.
    Tiffany and Nanny Ogg’s grandsons had put up some makeshift tables. After all, everybody knows what a funeral is really for and most people like eating and drinking whatever the occasion. There was music,and over it all, Agnes’s heavenly voice. She sang the ‘Columbine Lament’, and as its soft tune wafted over the roof and into the forest beyond, Nanny said to Tiffany, ‘That voice could make the trees cry.’
    And there was dancing, no doubt helped along by Nanny Ogg’s brews. Nanny Ogg could get any party singing and dancing. It was a gift, Tiffany thought. Nanny could jolly up a graveyard if sheput her mind to it.
    ‘No long faces for Granny Weatherwax, please,’ Nanny proclaimed. ‘She’s had a good death at home, just as anyone might wish for. Witches know that people die; and if they manages to die after a long time, leavin’ the world better than they went an’ found it, well then, that’s surely a reason to be happy. All the rest of it is just tidyin’ up. Now, let’s dance! Dancin’ makesthe world go round. And it goes round even faster with a drop o’ my home liquor inside you.’
    Up in the roof of Granny’s cottage, swinging from the boughs of the little tree that grew out of the thatch, the Nac Mac Feegles – Rob Anybody, Daft Wullie, Big Yan and the gonnagle, Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin – were in agreement with the latter part of that statement, though they were keeping the dancingfor later, mind. They stayed mostly out of sight, spotted only by one or two of the more observant witches, but now they came down to the scullery where Tiffany was starting on what the elderly, more senior witches always expected the younger girls to do – clearing up. The senior witches were beginning to gather together outside; it was time to discuss the appointment of a new incumbent to GrannyWeatherwax’s steading, and Tiffany wanted to keep out of the way while she thought about what she might say.
    As the haunting tones of Awf’ly Wee Billy Bigchin’s mousepipes played a soft lament for the soul of the hag o’ hags, the other Feegles began raiding the tables for any leftovers the witches had missed.
    ‘Alas, poor Granny, I knew her well,’ sighed Big Yan, swigging from a bottle of Nanny’shome-made hooch.
    ‘No you didn’t,’ Tiffany snapped. ‘Only Granny Weatherwax really knew Granny Weatherwax.’ The day was still too raw for her, and the witches outside were making her nervous.
    ‘Ha ha,’ laughed Daft Wullie. ‘It weren’t me, this time, Rob. Nae me what put my foot in it. I sez the hag were upset, Rob, didnae I?’
    ‘I’ll put my boot inta yer face if ye don’t shut up,’ Big Yan growled.They’d had the drinkin’ and eatin’, postponed the dancin’, but wasn’t it time for a wee fight? He clenched his fists, but then had to suddenly retreat as Tiffany’s friends came into the scullery.
    ‘I think it’s going to be you , Tiffany,’ Dimity hissed, poking her in the back. ‘Nanny Ogg just stood up and asked for you. You’d better get out there.’
    ‘Go on, Tiff,’ Petulia urged. ‘Everyone knows,um, what Granny Weatherwax thought of you . . .’
    And so, pushed and pulled by her friends, Tiffany left the scullery, but she hovered by the back door of the cottage, unwilling to take that final step. To make a claim. This was Granny’s cottage, she still felt. Even though the not-Grannyness was beginning to feel like a huge hole in the air around her. Tiffany looked down at her feet; You wastwining around her legs, arching her back and rubbing her hard little head against Tiffany’s boot.
    Outside, some of the witches were looking at Nanny Ogg, who was saying, ‘Yes, ladies, Esme did tell us who her successor was to be.’ She