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Gander sighed. “Why are you holding that broomstick?” he said.
Esk looked at it as though she had never seen it before.
“Everything's got to be somewhere,” she said.
“Just go home, my girl,” said Gander. “I'm not taking any runaways to Ankh-Morpork. Strange things can happen to little girls in big cities.”
Esk brightened. “What sort of strange things?”
“Look, I said go home, right? Now!”
He picked up his chalk and went on ticking off items on his slate, trying to ignore the steady gaze that seemed to be boring through the top of his head.
“I can be helpful,” said Esk, quietly.
Gander threw down the chalk and scratched his chin irritably.
“How old are you?” he said.
“Nine.”
“Well, Miss nine-years-old, I've got two hundred animals and a hundred people that want to go to Ankh, and half of them hate the other half, and I've not got enough people who can fight, and they say the roads are pretty bad and the bandits are getting really cheeky up in the Paps and the trolls are demanding a bigger bridge toll this year and there's weevils in the supplies and I keep getting these headaches and where, in all this, do I need you?”
“Oh,” said Esk. She looked around the crowded square. “Which one of these roads goes to Ankh, then?”
“The one over there, with the gate.”
“Thank you,” she said gravely. “Goodbye. I hope you don't have any more trouble and your head gets better.”
“Right,” said Gander uncertainly. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop as he watched Esk walk away in the direction of the Ankh road. A long, winding road. A road haunted by thieves and gnolls. A road that wheezed through high mountain passes and crawled, panting, over deserts.
“Oh bugger,” he said, under his breath. “Hey! You!”
Granny Weatherwax was in trouble.
First of all, she decided, she should never have allowed Hilta to talk her into borrowing her broomstick. It was elderly, erratic, would fly only at night and even then couldn't manage a speed much above a trot.
Its lifting spells had worn so thin that it wouldn't even begin to operate until it was already moving at a fair lick. It was, in fact, the only broomstick ever to need bump-starting.
And it was while Granny Weatherwax, sweating and cursing, was running along a forest path holding the damn thing at shoulder height for the tenth time that she had found the bear trap.
The second problem was that a bear had found it first. In fact this hadn't been too much of a problem because Granny, already in a bad temper, hit it right between the eyes with the broomstick and it was now sitting as far away from her as it was possible to get in a pit, and trying to think happy thoughts.
It was not a very comfortable night and the morning wasn't much better for the party of hunters who, around dawn, peered over the edge of the pit.
“About time, too,” said Granny. “Get me out.”
The startled heads withdrew and Granny could hear a hasty whispered conversation. They had seen the hat and broomstick.
Finally a bearded head reappeared, rather reluctantly, as if the body it was attached to was being pushed forward.
“Um,” it began, “look, mother -”
“Im not a mother,” snapped Granny. “I'm certainly not your mother, if you ever had mothers, which I doubt. If I was your mother I'd have run away before you were born.”
“It's only a figure of speech,” said the head reproachfully.
“It's a damned insult is what it is!”
