Nanny's face was a picture, possibly one painted by an artist with a very strange sense of humour.

'I'm really sorry she ain't here,' she said, and Agnes knew she was being altogether honest and absolutely nasty.

'Oh dear. I was, er, going to give her some... I was going... er... Is she well, then?'

'I'm sure she'd be all the better for a visit from you,' said Nanny, and once again there was a strange, curvy sort of truth to this. 'It'd be the sort of thing she'd talk about for days. You can come back any time you want.'

Oats looked helpless. 'Then I suppose I'd better, er, be getting back to my, er, tent,' he said. 'May I accompany you ladies down to the town? There are, er, some dangerous things in the woods...'

' We got broomsticks,' said Nanny firmly. The priest looked crestfallen, and Agnes made a decision.

'A broomstick,' she said. 'I'll walk you-.I mean, you can walk me back. If you like.'

The priest looked relieved. Nanny sniffed. There was a certain Weatherwax quality to the sniff.

'Back at my place, then. An' no dilly-dallyin',' she said.

'I don't dilly-dally,' said Agnes.

'Just see you don't start,' said Nanny, and went to find her broomstick.

Agnes and the priest walked in embarrassed silence for a while. At last Agnes said, 'How's the headache?'

'Oh, much better, thank you. It went away. But her majesty was kind enough to give me some pills anyway.'

'That's nice,' said Agnes. She ought to have given him a needle! Look at the size of that boil! said Perdita, one of nature's born squeezers. Why doesn't he do something about it?

'Er... you don't like me very much, do you?' said Oats.

'I've hardly met you.' She was becoming aware of an embarrassing draughtiness in the nether regions.

'A lot of people don't like me as soon as they've met me,' said Oats.

'I suppose that saves time,' said Agnes, and cursed. Perdita had got through on that one, but Oats didn't seem to have noticed. He sighed.

'I'm afraid I have a bit of a difficulty with people,' he went on. 'I fear I'm just not cutout for pastoral work.'

Don't get involved with this twerp, said Perdita. But Agnes said, 'You mean sheep and so on?'

'It all seemed a lot clearer at college,' said Oats, who like many people seldom paid much attention to what others said when he was unrolling his miseries, 'but here, when I tell people some of the more accessible stories from the Book of Om they say things like, "That's not right, mushrooms wouldn't grow in the desert," or, "That's a stupid way to run a vineyard." Everyone here is so very... literal.'

Oats coughed. There seemed to be something preying on his mind. 'Unfortunately, the Old Book of Om is rather unyielding on the subject of witches,' he said.

'Really.'

'Although having studied the passage in question in the original Second Omnian IV text, I have advanced the rather daring theory that the actual word in question translates more accurately as — cockroaches".'

'Yes?'

'Especially since it goes on to say that they can be killed by fire or in "traps of treacle". It also says later on that they bring lascivious dreams.'

'Don't look at me,' said Agnes. 'All you're getting is a walk home.'

To her amazement, and Perdita's crowing delight, he blushed as red as she ever did.

'Er, er, the word in question in that passage might just as easily be read in context as `boiled lobsters",' he said hurriedly.

'Nanny Ogg says Omnians used to burn witches,' said Agnes.

'We used to burn practically everybody,' said Oats gloomily. 'Although some witches did get pushed into big barrels of treacle, I believe.'

He had a boring voice, too. He did appear, she had to admit, to be a boring person. It was almost too perfect a presentation, as if he was trying to make himself seem boring. But one thing had piqued Agnes's curiosity.

'Why did you come to visit Granny Weatherwax?'

'Well, everyone speaks very... highly of her,' said Oats, suddenly picking his words like a man pulling plums from a boiling pot. 'And they said she hadn't turned up last night, which was very strange. And I thought it must be hard for an old lady living by herself. And...'

'Yes?'

'Well, I understand she's quite old and it's never too late to consider the state of your immortal soul,' said Oats. 'Which she must have, of course.'

Agnes gave him a sideways look. 'She's never mentioned it,' she said.

'You probably think I'm foolish.'

'I just think you are an amazingly lucky man, Mr Oats.'

On the other hand... here was someone who'd been told about Granny Weatherwax, and had still walked through these woods that scared him stiff to see her, even though she was possibly a cockroach or a boiled lobster. No one in Lancre ever came to see Granny unless they wanted something. Oh, sometimes they came with little presents (because one day they'd want something again), but they generally made sure she was out first. There was more to Mr Oats than met the eye. There had to be.

A couple of centaurs burst out of the bushes ahead of them and cantered away down the path. Oats grabbed a tree.

'They were running around when I came up!' he said. 'Are they usual?'

'I've never seen them before,' said Agnes. 'I think they're from Uberwald.'

'And the horrible little blue goblins? One of them made a very unpleasant gesture at me!'

'Don't know about them at all.'

'And the vampires? I mean, I knew that things were different here, but really-'

'Vampires?!' shouted Agnes. 'You saw the vampires? Last night?'

'Well, I mean, yes, I studied them at length at the seminary, but I never thought I'd see them standing around talking about drinking blood and things, really, I'm surprised the King allows it-'

'And they didn't... affect your mind?'

'I did have that terrible migraine. Does that count? I thought it was the prawns.'

A cry rang through the woods. It seemed to

have many components, but mostly it sounded as though a turkey was being throttled at the other end of a tin tube.

'And what the heck was that?' shouted Oats.

Agnes looked around, bewildered. She'd grown up in the Lancre woods. Oh, you got strange things sometimes, passing through, but generally they contained nothing more dangerous than other people. Now, in this tarnished light, even the trees were starting to look suspicious.

'Let's at least get down to Bad Ass,' she said, tugging at Oats's hand.

'You what?'

Agnes sighed. 'It's the nearest village.'

'Bad Ass?'

'Look, there was a donkey, and it stopped in the middle of the river, and it wouldn't go backwards or forwards,' said Agnes, as patiently as possible. Lancre people got used to explaining this. 'Bad Ass. See? Yes, I know that "Disobedient Donkey" might have been more... acceptable, but-'

The horrible cry echoed around the woods again. Agnes thought of all the things that were rumoured to be in the mountains, and dragged Oats after her like a badly hitched cart.

Then the sound was right in front of them and, at a turn in the lane, a head emerged from a bush.

Agnes had seen pictures of an ostrich.

So... start with one of them, but make the head and neck in violent yellow, and give the head a huge ruff of red and purple feathers and two big round eyes, the pupils of which jiggled drunkenly as the head moved back and forth...

'Is that some sort of local chicken?' warbled Oats.

'I doubt it,' said Agnes. One of the long feathers had a tartan pattern.

The cry started again, but was strangled halfway through when Agnes stepped forward, grabbed the thing's neck and pulled.

A figure rose from the undergrowth, dragged up by his arm.

'Hodgesaargh?'

He quacked at her.

'Take that thing out of your mouth,' said Agnes. 'You sound like Mr Punch.'