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A trail of blue smoke drifted among the trees ahead of them. Somewhere away to one side there was the sound of a falling tree.
'Woodcutters!' said Nanny. 'It's all right if there's woodcutters! One of them rushes in - '
'That's only what children get told,' said Granny, as they sped onwards. 'Anyway, that's no good to the grandmother, is it? She's already been et!'
'I always hated that story,' said Nanny. 'No-one ever cares what happens to poor defenceless old women.'
The path vanished abruptly on the edge of a glade. Hemmed in by the trees was a straggly kitchen garden, in which a few pathetic stalks fought for what little sun there was. In the middle of the garden was what had to be a thatched cottage because no-one would build a haystack that badly.
They leapt off the broomsticks, leaving them to drift to a halt in the bushes, and hammered on the cottage door.
'We could be too late,' said Nanny. 'The wolf might - '
After a while there was the muffled sound of someone shuffling across the floor within, and then the door opened a crack. A suspicious eye was visible in the gloom.
'Yes?' said a small and quavering voice from somewhere beneath the eye.
'Are you grandmother?' Granny Weatherwax demanded.
'Are you the taxgatherers, dear?'
'No, ma'am, we're - '
'- fairies,' said Fairy Hedgehog quickly.
'I don't open the door to people I don't know, dear,' said the voice, and then it took on a slightly petulant tone. ' 'Specially people who never does the washing up even after I leaves out a bowl of nearly fresh milk for 'em.'
'We'd like to talk to you for a few minutes,' said Fairy Daisy.
'Yes? Have you got any identification, dear?'
'I know we've got the right grandmother,' said Fairy Hedgehog. 'There's a family likeness. She's got big ears.'
'Look, it's not her that's got the big ears,' snapped Fairy Daisy. 'It'll be the wolf that's got big ears. That's the whole point. Don't you ever pay attention?'
The grandmother watched them with interest. After a lifetime of believing in them she was seeing fairies for the first time, and it was an experience. Granny Weatherwax caught her perplexed expression.
'Put it like this, ma'am,' she said, in a despotically reasonable tone of voice, 'how would you like to be eaten alive by a wolf?'
'I don't think I would like that, dear, no,' said the hidden grandmother.
'The alternative's us,' said Granny.
'Lawks. Are you sure?'
'On our word as fairies,' said Fairy Hedgehog.
'Well. Really? All right. You can come in. But none of your tricks. And mind you do the washing up. You haven't got a pot of gold about you, have you?'
"That's pixies, isn't it?'
'No, they're the ones in wells. It's goblins she means."
'Don't be daft. They're the ones you get under bridges.'
'That's trolls. Everyone knows that's trolls.'
'Not us, anyway.'
