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marypsue · 6 years

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That Old Black Magic

I have no idea what the overlap is between these two fandoms, if there even is any besides me, but I wrote nearly five thousand words of Beth as a Discworld witch and by god I'm gonna share them.

Warning for major injury - nothing too graphic, but it's a big part of one scene.

I'm also on AO3 as MaryPSue!

...

It has been said, by educated men, that no two snowflakes are ever exactly alike.

This may be true*. It's also true, however, that every snowflake is made of the same stuff.

The witches of the Discworld are as many and varied as snowflakes**. Like snowflakes, though, no matter how unique, they share a few things in common. Magic, for one. And a tendency to wear black.

It isn’t a rule, exactly. Such things rarely are. Plenty of witches don’t wear black, and plenty of people who wear black aren’t witches. But it's understood, in much the same way as babies are understood to cry, that wearing black comes with the job.

In the recorded history of the Discworld, there have been five witches noted for wearing white. Three of them have been Weatherwaxes.

Miss Elizabeth Sanchez wasn't one of them, yet, though it wasn't for lack of trying.

The village of Lower Bottom, nestled in the foothills of the formidable Ramtops, had been proud to say it had steaded a witch since the Century of the Desiccated Armadillo, if not before. Its inhabitants had seen their share of witches, their own and their neighbours', and many of them liked to fancy they knew a thing or two about the profession***. Miss Sanchez, with her white robes, foreign-sounding name, and city education, defied all of them. She didn't even wear the hat.

_____

*At least, no one's going to check their work.

**Although, like snowflakes, too many of them in one place end up looking like an indistinguishable mass, and prevent innocent bystanders from getting to work on time.

***In much the same way as anyone at a California cocktail party fancies they know a thing or two about writing.

_____

"It ain't right, Gytha," was the verdict delivered by an unimpressed Granny Weatherwax, at the Witch Trials the first year Miss Sanchez deigned to attend. "Her puttin' on airs like that. It'll draw...attention." She nodded, once, and settled back in the comfortable chair she'd located in a shady spot and glared at its former inhabitants for until they'd suddenly remembered they had urgent business elsewhere.

Gytha Ogg, also known as Nanny, opened her mouth to remind her best friend about a certain ball they'd both attended under false pretences, thought better of it, and took a big bite of the pickle she was holding instead*.

"She says it's for doctorin'," she said, at last, spraying bits of pickle flesh at the world at large. "So if she's tendin' to a sick cow what's got tiny demons in its blood, you can see she don't wear that same blood in to doctor your wean." She took another thoughtful gnaw on her pickle, her sharp eyes looking past the pen where two witches were throwing punes, or plays on words, back and forth at each other, to the distinct pale shape leaning against the fence on the other side. Nanny knew, from personal observation, that Beth Sanchez' white duds were at least as worn, stained, and well-scrubbed as the black dresses and robes of any other witch at the Trials, but from a distance, against all that black, the figure she cut was certainly impressive.

"Hmph," Granny said, folding her arms across her chest. "What, she's sayin' we ain't clean?"

"I...don't think that was it, Esme," Nanny said, carefully. "She's got a bit of that Magrat about her, all that messin' with herbs and potions. Wants things to be scientific."

The snort Granny let out said, it seemed, everything she thought on the matter.

"Science," she said, at last, as the pune-battle ended and the two witches were led off to a smattering of applause. "Huh. What good's that ever done anyone?"

_____

*Which, considering the state of Nanny's teeth, was no mean feat.

_____

Beth Sanchez, as Nanny Ogg had observed, was a great believer in science.

Not necessarily in practising it, or in exercising its methodology. She held a firm and unswayable belief in Science, like some people believe in gods or the moon or the innate worthiness of the rich, as an essential truth of the universe. Beth Sanchez believed in Science the way children believe in the Hogfather.

In any other person, this might have been a character flaw. But Beth was a witch, and, being a witch, she knew a thing or two about belief.

The potions she dosed out to the people of Lower Bottom for various ailments had a tendency to be poisonous colours, and occasionally glowed. But they worked, almost instantly, which was something even Granny Weatherwax couldn’t always say. Often with unexpected side-effects, but no one could say that what they’d got from their witch was anything other than exactly what they’d asked for*.

It had taken time for Lower Bottom to come around to their new witch’s...unconventional habits, but for the most part, come around they had. Old Goody Whitmore, who had held the stead for as long as anyone still living could remember, had been a traditional witch in every sense of the word, but her idea of doctoring had consisted mostly of ‘put a poultice on it and call me in the morning’. The inhabitants of Lower Bottom had quickly decided that they could put up with the idiosyncrasies of the new witch in exchange for a near-50% increase in recovery rates**.

Beth, for her part, had been lucky to land the steading in Lower Bottom. One of the strikes against her in the eyes of the townsfolk was that she hadn’t, as her name suggested, grown up around Lancre. She hadn’t apprenticed under a local witch, or even a witch close enough by to call ‘local’ to an Ankh-Morporkian.

She had not, in point of fact, even intended to go into witchcraft.

Beth had been interested in magic, since long before she’d been sent to the Quirm College for Young Ladies, where a string of teachers had all done their best to stifle that interest and had all failed miserably. She'd devoured books and articles on magical theory, asked probing questions of the maths teachers, and spent inordinate amounts of time doing unspeakable things involving doves and white rabbits. But her application to Unseen University had been summarily rejected. Wizarding, even after all that messy business with the girl and the staff, was still considered no proper occupation for a woman***.

And so Beth had found herself in the last place she'd ever expected to end up, living in a ramshackle cottage in a flyspeck of a village in the back end of nowhere, wiping runny noses and bandaging boo-boos for the entire village. In a way, it was like having children, if you had upward of a hundred of them and all of them, even the fully-grown ones, came running to you at the slightest stirring of trouble, expecting you to fix it as a matter of course and ask nothing in return. Some days Beth had to ask herself why she even bothered.

But then, sometimes, when she least expected it, the job reminded her.

_____

*Well, they could say it, but...

**Though anyone who had been a frequent purchaser of Goody Whitmore’s famous love potions quickly learned not to broach the subject with their new witch.

***There were, of course, a few enlightened thinkers among the faculty, but given that their push to include female students had included a lot of caveats involving tight sweaters and the placement of closures on official department robes, hedge-witchcraft started to look very good in comparison. No-one really cared if a witch wore a tight sweater while she stuck both arms up a cow's most personal parts to haul a particularly recalcitrant calf out into the world or reattached an unlucky lumberjack's severed limb, and most people would take one look at Granny Weatherwax or Nanny Ogg and agree that the best placement for closures on official robes was 'as high up and as often as possible'.

_____

"Miss! Come quick!"

Beth looked up from the patch of weeds she was still, in the face of all the evidence, calling a garden. Ronnie Beetham's oldest was flying up her garden path, gangly limbs flapping all over, so that the impression was of quite a bit more frantic motion than one adolescent boy should be able to produce on his own.

He skidded to a stop beside Beth's turnips, or at least the place where she'd planted turnips, breathing hard and leaning heavily against his knees with both hands. Beth rose to her feet and stepped over what had once been rows of strawberries and now could, perhaps, be generously called a strawberry patch. "What's the matter, Ollie?"

"You got - to come - miss," Oliver Beetham panted out. "Da - the threshing machine - it's his arm -"

Beth didn't need to hear any more. "Ollie," she said, placing a steadying hand on the boy's shoulder and mustering all the clarity and confidence she had to her voice, "go run back and tell them I'm coming. Get your ma to put a pot of water on to boil. Then find me some towels or clean rags. Can you do that?"

Ollie, still gulping air like it was water, looked up and met Beth's eyes. After a moment, he seemed to gather the presence of mind to nod.

Beth smiled.

"Good," she said. "Go. I'm right behind you."

Ollie tore off back down the garden path, elbows flailing, and Beth hiked up her skirts and ran for the cottage. Her big black bag sat just behind the door, beside the umbrella stand, for occasions just such as this one. Beth didn't stop for longer than it took to scoop the bag up, not bothering even to check that the cottage door banged shut behind her. Anyone stupid enough to try to steal from a witch - even an odd one - deserved whatever they got*.

Ronnie Beetham, Beth knew, considered himself something of an inventor. The rest of Lower Bottom mostly considered him a damn fool, but Beth liked him. She really hoped that whichever of his inventions he'd fallen afoul of this time hadn't done any damage she couldn't repair.

_____

*Usually, a couple of badly-tarnished silver teaspoons, the odd trinket or two, and sometimes a root vegetable. Witchcraft wasn't a profession that anyone went into expecting to get rich.

_____

Ronnie Beetham's arm had, in fact, been caught in his threshing machine. This would have been less of a problem if the threshing machine were anything more than a row of very large spinning blades.

There was blood all over the walls.

Someone had, thankfully, had the presence of mind to turn the machine off, so Beth wasn't also spattered with blood as she came through the door. Ronnie was on the floor in the middle of the room, back leaned against the leg of his workbench, looking as pale as Beth's dress and cradling his right arm in his left. There was a cloth wrapped around it that Beth was fairly sure hadn't started the day that shade of crimson. It glistened obscenely.

"Let me see," Beth said, kneeling in the sawdust next to him, heedless of the red soaking into her skirt. Her hands were still dripping from the quick wash she'd done at the pump, and she absently dried them on her skirts.

Ronnie Beetham looked up, met her eyes, and, mutely, unwrapped the cloth from his right arm.

Even Beth couldn't help but wince. Fingers weren't meant to flap loose like that.

"All right," she said, turning to dig in her big black bag and swallowing the bile that rose in her throat. "Ollie, how's your mother coming with that boiling water?"

With impeccable narrative timing, Euphemia Beetham chose that moment to step into the workshop with a big copper pot under one arm, looking almost as pale as her husband.

"It happened so fast," she babbled, as she set the pot down on the anvil by Ronnie's little forge, where Beth knew he built and adjusted the fiddly bits of inventions he didn't trust the smith with. "He just reached to calibrate a wobbly blade - we'll have to scrub this whole room, how will I ever get all the blood off of everything is what I want to know, if we leave it it'll just rust -"

"Mrs. Beetham," Beth said, firmly, but Mrs. Beetham went on like she hadn't heard.

"...and I'll have to replace all this sawdust, of course..."

"Euphemia," Beth said, sternly, in her best, most authoritative voice. Finally, the woman stopped talking, blinking at Beth like a trapped animal. Beth took a deep breath in, deliberately softening her voice. It wouldn't help anyone to have Mrs. Beetham melt down into tears right now. "Thank you for the water. I need you to do one more thing for me. Go out and find me a stone about the size and shape of your husband's fist. Take your time if you must, but find one as close to the real thing as you can. Once you've found it, go and bury it in the dead centre of your garden, as deep as you can manage. Can you do that?"

Mrs. Beetham blinked a few times more, and for a second, Beth thought she might dissolve into tears anyway. But she held Beth's gaze, and after a moment, nodded, before turning and practically sprinting for the door.

"Are you..." Ronnie Beetham asked, through gritted teeth, and Beth turned back to him, startled. She hadn't thought he was in any shape to follow what was going on, let alone speak. "Are you...going to put...the pain...into the stone...?"

"Ronnie, that's a damn good idea," Beth said, drawing needle and thread from her big black bag. She didn't tell him that she'd sent Euphemia Beetham on a fool's errand to get her out of the sickroom and give her something to occupy her mind, some purpose to make her feel useful, to keep her from having the hysterics she'd clearly been ready to fall into. If she did tell him, Ronnie might not trust her, and then all of this would be a great deal harder than necessary. Especially the part where she put his pain into the stone. "If you hadn't been an inventor, you might've made a fine witch. Now, hold still there for me for a moment."

Ollie was busy wringing out rags into the copper pot. He started when Beth came up behind him with her needle and thread, dropping a rag into the sawdust. "Miss! I boiled the rags, miss, like I seen you done when you delivered our Charlotte." He held out the bowl they lay in like an offering, and Beth couldn't help but smile as she took it.

"Very well done, Ollie, that'll help keep - uh - 'tiny demons' from getting into your father's blood." She took the rags, and then, feeling a sudden rush of something she couldn't quite name, "Go get your father some good thick blankets, will you? I can manage here."

"I've got a strong stomach, miss," Oliver Beetham said, looking so solemn that for a moment Beth almost caved.

Instead, she patted him on the shoulder with the hand holding needle and thread. "I'm sure you do, Ollie. Thank you for all your help. But none of us should have to have a strong stomach when it comes to our own parents. Go get the blankets, then run and help your ma. I'm sure she could use your strong young arms to help dig that hole."

Ollie still didn't look convinced, so Beth added, "I'll yell if I need you."

"You really will, miss?" Ollie asked, sounding doubtful, and Beth barely suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.

"I really will, Ollie. I may be a witch, but even witches have only so many hands. Now go."

She watched as Ollie raced for the door, then turned back to considering the best way to sterilise needle and thread without scalding her fingers.

Ronnie, who had been watching her the whole time with the peculiar blank expression of someone sitting atop a plateau of pain, said, "Am I...going to lose...my hand?"

"Not if I can help it," Beth said, finally settling for holding the ends of the thread and using it to dangle the needle in the pot point-first. "And, Ronnie, I can help it."

She pulled the needle from the pot. It glinted sharp in the workshop's golden light as Beth settled it atop the freshly-washed rags. Ronnie Beetham took one look at it, and his good left hand went scrabbling for his breast pocket.

Beth crossed the room and knelt back down beside him, carefully unwrapping the blood-soaked cloth from around his right hand. The damage was bad, almost more startling now that she could get a proper look at it, but already she could see where and how the repairs needed to be done.

She held a hand out for the flask Ronnie had found in the depths of his vest, and he handed it to her with a gentleness that was either reverence or weakness from blood loss and shock. "Gonna...use it...t'clean th'wound?" he slurred, and Beth smiled in his direction before tossing back a slug of Euphemia Beetham's horrible homebrew.

"In a manner of speaking," she said, once the taste had been sufficiently burned out of her mouth by the alcohol. "Oh, don't look so worried, Ronnie, you know me. You know how good I am at this."

She handed the flask back to him, and picked up a rag with her left hand, the needle with her right.

"This will hurt," she said.

_____

Oliver found Beth out by the pump, where she was washing her hands. The blood had got under her fingernails and dried there. It always seemed to do that, no matter how short she kept her nails. Perhaps once Ronnie was back on his feet she'd ask him to mock up something like a little brush for scrubbing underneath them.

"That was some fine stitching you done there, miss," Ollie said, so quiet that at first Beth didn't hear him over the water.

"Wh- oh. Thank you, Ollie." Beth was almost too tired to smile at the boy. She wasn't sure how long she'd been in that workshop, stitching, but she did know it had been hours. All she wanted was her own bed.

It was because she was so tired that it took her longer than usual to notice the way Ollie was fidgeting. "Your da will be fine," she said, already dreaming about a hot cup of tea. "He might have to leave the fine needlework to your ma from now on, but he'll use his hand again. Don't worry."

"I'm not, miss. I know you're the best," Ollie stated, matter-of-factly, not seeming to notice that he'd just become Beth's new favourite person. He wrung the bottom of his shirt in both hands as he said, "I was wondering, miss, how it was that you became a witch, miss?"

Beth blinked at him.

"When the steading came open, a friend recommended me," she said. And then, with an idea of what this was really about slowly creeping up on her, added, "But the usual way is to apprentice yourself to another witch."

Ollie twisted and twisted the bottom of his shirt until Beth worried it might tear.

"Would you consider taking an apprentice, miss?" he asked the dirt at his feet.

"I'm barely more than an apprentice myself, Ollie," Beth said. "But - there may be someone around with an opening. The best place to start asking would be at the Witch Trials next summer, but I can start to put the word out that someone around here is looking."

Ollie's smile was incandescent.

"Thank you, miss!" he said, and then, a little belatedly, "Can I make you a cup of tea, miss?"

"Thank you, Ollie, but I need to get home and have a proper wash-up," Beth sighed, brushing back a stray lock of hair from her face. She moved to dry her hands on her skirts, but, realising what a stiff, sticky mess of rapidly-drying blood they'd become, opted to shake her hands dry as best she could instead. "May I ask you, why the sudden interest in witchcraft?"

Oliver Beetham took so long to answer that at first, Beth thought he wasn't going to.

" 'tain't sudden, miss," he said, in a very small voice. "I seen you deliver our Charlotte, miss. We still got our ma - and now our da's still got his hand - because of you, miss."

"But why not medicine, then? Or wizardry, if you've got an interest in magic? Why witchcraft?"

Ollie bobbed his head from side to side. "What doctor's going to bother with us out here, miss? And what's a wizard going to do, miss, poof it all better? What's all that going to cost us, miss?"

When Beth didn't answer right away, Ollie turned beetroot-red to the tips of his ears and turned his gaze back onto the ground. "Pardon me if I spoke outta line, miss."

"No-o-o," Beth said, slowly. "You've just given me something to think about, that's all. Thank you, Ollie."

Oliver Beetham nodded, and then, as if finally sensing that this might not be the time or place, turned and scarpered, leaving Beth standing alone with blood drying in her skirts and her hands dripping.

_____

Dusk was gathering over the mountains as Beth dragged herself up the garden path to the cottage, only a few last glimmers of purple light trapped between the peaks. Her big black bag felt like it was stuffed with lead, her boots even more so.

The cottage seemed somehow smaller and darker than usual in the fading light, the moss covering the roof like a huge, lumpy beast hunched over the building. It was not the most inviting thing to come home to at the end of a day like the one she’d just had.

The big black bag hit the floor as soon as she crossed the threshold, landing back in its place beside the umbrella stand. She’d replace the needle and thread in the morning. She’d just have to hope that nobody else needed emergency surgery in the middle of the night.

Beth shuffled down the hall and turned left into the kitchen, taking the matches from their place above the fireplace. She knelt, reaching for the kindling - and then froze.

Somewhere in the darkness of the parlour, something had just moved.

Beth straightened, slowly, grabbing a piece of wood off the pile she kept in the basket by the fireplace. As weapons went, it wasn’t a particularly good one, but she’d never felt the need to have anything better on hand. Most people weren’t big enough idiots enough to break into a witch’s cottage.

“You were cursed the moment you stepped across the threshold,” she said, weighing the split log in her hand. At least it was heavy enough to do some damage, if whoever was in there got within reach. “I’m the only person who can remove it -”

“Do - do you feed that line of bullshit to all your visitors?” a familiar voice sawed out of the parlour, and Beth dropped the log out of sheer surprise. It clattered against the flagstones, the only sound in the sudden silence.

“Dad?”

Beth’s father unfolded himself from one of the two mismatched chairs, sauntering into the kitchen with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his white wizard’s robes. “Hey, uh, Beth. Long time no see.”

“I haven’t seen you since Quirm,” Beth agreed. It took her a minute to gather up her wits, to remember how cold and dark the cottage around her was. She crouched down and grabbed a handful of kindling, tossing it into the fireplace. “Sorry, this place is a mess - if I’d known you were coming -”

Before she could even reach for the matches, a fire burst to life in the hearth, green flames licking up around her battered tin kettle. Beth straightened up again, looking over at her father, who still had both hands in his pockets.

“Thought you were a witch,” he said, and Beth felt the tips of her ears burn.

“Tea?” she asked, rather than respond to that, crossing the kitchen to light the gas lamp in the window. She pulled the pot and two chipped cups from the cupboard beside the window, turning towards the icebox for the milk.

“Nahhh,” her dad said, and Beth returned the teapot and one of the mugs directly back into the cupboard without breaking stride. “Do you - don’t you keep any - any booze in this dump?”

Beth drew in a deep breath.

“I do not,” she admitted, turning back towards the fireplace, and her father. “What, uh, what brings you all the way up here? I thought it was too far to visit.”

“Oh, yeah, it is,” her dad agreed. “This place is in the middle of - of - of nowhere. Hate to see you wasting your potential in a shithole like this.” He pulled a hand out of his pocket, waving what at first glance Beth thought was a handkerchief, and then realised was an envelope. “Which is why I’m here.”

Beth managed to stifle her questions before she started blithering. Either the letter her father handed over to her would answer them all, or it wouldn’t. Regardless, she would look stupid asking questions if she literally had the answers in her hands. And if there was one thing her father had neither time nor patience for, it was stupidity.

There was nothing written on the front of the envelope, but the heavy purple wax seal on the back was stamped with two interlocking “U”s. For a moment, Beth felt as though she’d been frozen, fixed in a solid block of ice, unable to move or even breathe.

“You planning to open that sometime tonight?” her dad demanded, and Beth breathed out.

Her fingers shook as she broke the seal. Beth tried to tell herself it was simply because she hadn’t eaten dinner yet, because of how long and tiring her day had been, but she knew better.

“It’s a - a - a full scholarship,” her dad interrupted, clearly growing bored with how long the letter was taking Beth to unfold. “Those pricks wanted me, they had to take you too. That’s what you wurrpanted, right?”

The letter was printed in elegant hand on soft, creamy paper, crisp and white, stamped with the University’s crest. The first few sentences were welcoming, positive, almost unctuous. The rest glazed over into a blur of grey as Beth stared at it, uncomprehending.

“This is...” she started, and then stopped. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You could start with ‘thank you’,” her father suggested.

“Thank you,” Beth repeated. “This is...a lot. Too much.” The creamy, soft paper was crumpling under her thumb. She hadn’t touched anything like it since she’d left Quirm College. The inhabitants of Lower Bottom thought the semi-gloss paper the mail-order catalogue was printed on was fancy. “I need to think about it.”

“What - what’s there to think about?” her dad sneered, feeding a log into the fire absently and grinning when it threw up a rainbow of sparks. “You can come back with me, live out your little dream of whatever you wanted to do at the University, and have everything you ever wanted. Or, you can stay here, in this garbage pit of a house, picking up after a pack of idiot hicks whose idea of a good time is - is - is taking their half-sister on a romantic date to a lynching.” He glanced over at Beth with a shrug. “Your call.”

Beth looked into the fire, into the leaping green flames, and then past the fireplace, out into the hall, to the shadowy shape of her big black bag.

“I need to think about it,” she repeated. And then, feeling as though she was waking from a dream, “You’re welcome to stay the night, though I’ve only got the one bedroom. I hope you won’t mind there’s a draught from the roof. Steven Gidding keeps saying he’ll come fix it, but he’s always got some excuse -”

“I literally could not care less about your small-town problems,” her dad interrupted, and Beth managed a smile.

“Good. Then, if you don’t mind, I need to change.” She gestured down at her skirt, at the dried blood the green light turned almost black, before starting in the direction of the bedroom. “Make yourself at home.”

“I won’t,” her father called after her. “And you shouldn’t either.”

Beth hummed, low in her throat, but she didn’t turn around.

The letter in her hand crackled much like the fire in the hearth behind her.

#rick and morty #discworld #this is mary's fic tag #I am so so sorry for this thing what I made #but I think I finally solved The Problem Of The Footnotes #sir terry would have made all of the additional names and place names clever Latin or Greek puns but I am not clever #I couldn't fit it in but jerry is definitely mightily oats in this scenario

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