Nanny Ogg sat down on the sand and wriggled slightly to settle in firmly. She took out her pipe.

“So,” she said to the recumbent figure, “apart from all that, how are you feeling?”

There was no reply.

“Saw Mrs. Patternoster this morning,” Nanny went on chattily. “Her from over in Slice. Just passed the time of day. Mrs. Ivy is bearing up well, she says.”

She blew out a cloud of smoke.

“I put her right about a few things,” she said.

There was still silence from the shadowy figure.

“The Naming went off all right. The priest’s as wet as a snow omelet, though.”

“I can’t beat ’em, Gytha,” said Granny. “I can’t beat ’em, and that’s a fact.”

One of Nanny Ogg’s hidden talents was knowing when to say nothing. It left a hole in the conversation that the other person felt obliged to fill.

“They’ve got minds like steel. I can’t touch ’em. I’ve been tryin’ everything. Every trick I’ve got! They’ve been searching for me but they can’t focus right when I’m in here. The best one nearly got to me at the cottage. My cottage!”

Nanny Ogg understood the horror. A witch’s cottage was her fortress.

“I’ve never felt anything like it, Gytha. He’s had hundreds of years to get good. You noticed the magpies? He’s using ’em as eyes. And he’s clever, too. He’s not going to fall to a garlic sandwich, that one. I can pick up that much. These vampires has learned. That’s what they’ve never done before. I can’t find a way into ’em anywhere. They’re more powerful, stronger, they think quick…I tell you, going mind to mind with him’s like spittin’ at a thunderstorm.”

“So what’re you going to do?”

“Nothing! There’s nothing I can do! Can’t you understand what I’ve been tellin’ you? Don’t you know I’ve been lying here all day tryin’ to think of something? They know all about magic, Borrowing’s second nature to them, they’re fast, they think we’re like cattle that can talk…I never expected anything like this, Gytha. I’ve thought about it round and round and there’s not a thing I can see to do.”

“There’s always a way,” said Nanny.

“I can’t see it,” said Granny. “This is it, Gytha. I might as well lie here until the water drips on me and I go into stone like the ol’ witch at the door.”

“You’ll find a way,” said Nanny. “Weatherwaxes don’t let ’em-selves get beaten. It’s something in the blood, like I’ve always said.”

“I am beaten, Gytha. Even before I start. Maybe someone else has a way, but I haven’t. I’m up against a mind that’s better’n mine. I just about keep it away from me but I can’t get in. I can’t fight back.”

The chilly feeling crept over Nanny Ogg that Granny Weather-wax meant it.

“I never thought I’d hear you say that,” she muttered.

“Off you go. No sense in keepin’ the baby out in the cold.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Maybe I shall move on. Maybe I’ll just stop here.”

“Can’t stop here forever, Esme.”

“Ask her that is by the door.”

That seemed to be all there was going to be. Nanny walked out, found the others looking slightly too innocent in the next cave, and led the way to the open air.

“Found your pipe, then,” said Magrat.

“Yes, thank you.”

“What’s she going to do?” said Agnes.

“You tell me,” said Nanny. “I knows you was listenin’. You wouldn’t be witches if you wasn’t listenin’ somehow.”

“Well, what can we do that she can’t? If she’s beaten, then so are we, aren’t we?”

“What did Granny mean, ‘from can to can’t’?” said Magrat.

“Oh, from the first moment in the morning when you can see to the last moment in the evenin’ when you can’t,” said Nanny.

“She’s really feeling low, isn’t she?”

Nanny paused by the stone witch. Her pipe had gone out. She struck a match on the hooked nose.

“There’s three of us,” she said. “The right number. So we’ll start by having a proper coven meetin’…”

“Aren’t you worried?” said Agnes. “She’s…giving up…”

“Then it’s up to us to carry on, isn’t it?” said Nanny.