Nanny Ogg reckoned she knew what the cause of the problem was.

She coughed.

'Saw Magrat the other day,' she ventured, looking sidelong at Granny.

There was no reaction.

'She's looking well. Queening suits her.'

'Hmm?'

Nanny groaned inwardly. If Granny couldn't even be bothered to make a nasty remark, then she was really missing Magrat.

Nanny Ogg had never believed it at the start, but Magrat Garlick, wet as a sponge though she was half the time, had been dead right about one thing.

Three was a natural number for witches.

And they'd lost one. Well, not lost, exactly. Magrat was queen now, and queens were hard to mislay. But... that meant that there were only two of them instead of three.

When you had three, you had one to run around getting people to make up when there'd been a row. Magrat had been good for that. Without Magrat, Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax got on one another's nerves. With her, all three had been able to get on the nerves of absolutely everyone else in the whole world, which had been a lot more fun.

And there was no having Magrat back... at least, to be precise about it, there was no having Magrat back yet.

Because, while three was a good number for witches... it had to be the right sort of three. The right sort of... types.

Nanny Ogg found herself embarrassed even to think about this, and this was unusual because embarrassment normally came as naturally to Nanny as altruism comes to a cat.

As a witch, she naturally didn't believe in any occult nonsense of any sort. But there were one or two truths down below the bedrock of the soul which had to be faced, and right in among them was this business of, well, of the maiden, the mother and the... other one.

There. She'd put words around it.

Of course, it was nothing but an old superstition and belonged to the unenlightened days when 'maiden' or 'mother' or... the other one... encompassed every woman over the age of twelve or so, except maybe for nine months of her life. These days, any girl bright enough to count and sensible enough to take Nanny's advice could put off being at least one of them for quite some time.