The Shepherd's Crown (35 page)

It says a lot for Terry’s resilience and determination not to go down without a fight that he wrote five more
full-length bestselling novels between
Nation
and
The Shepherd’s Crown
(as well as collaborating with Stephen Baxter on five
Long Earth
novels). And Terry was still developing new ideas for books right up to his final few months.
^fn1

Terry usually had more than one book on the go at a time and he discovered what each was about as he went along. He would start somewhere, telling himself the story
as he wrote it, writing the bits he could see clearly and assembling it all into a whole – like a giant literary jigsaw – when he was done. Once it was shaped, he would keep writing it too, adding to it, fixing bits, constantly polishing and adding linking sequences, tossing in just one more footnote or event. His publishers often had to prise the manuscript away from him, as there was always more
he felt he could do, even though by then he would be well into the next story which was tugging at his elbow. Eventually the book was sent to the printer, and reluctantly Terry would let it go.

Terry had been thinking about the key elements in Tiffany Aching and Granny Weatherwax’s last story for a few years. He wrote the pivotal scenes while he was still writing
Raising Steam
and then re-wrote
them several times as he shaped the rest of
The Shepherd’s Crown
around them.

The Shepherd’s Crown
has a beginning, a middle and an end, and all the bits in between. Terry wrote all of those. But even so, it was, still, not quite as finished as he would have liked when he died.

If Terry had lived longer, he would almost certainly have written more of this book. There are things we all wish we
knew more about. But what we have is a remarkable book, Terry’s final book, and anything you wish to know more about in here, you are welcome to imagine yourself.

Rob Wilkins
May 2015
Salisbury, UK

^fn1
We will now not know how the old folk of
Twilight Canyons
solve the mystery of a missing treasure and defeat the rise of a Dark Lord despite their failing memories, nor the secret of the crystal cave and the carnivorous plants in
The Dark Incontinent
, nor how Constable Feeney solves a whodunnit amongst the congenitally decent and honest goblins, nor how the second book about the redoubtable Maurice as a ship’s cat might have turned out. And these are just a few of the ideas his office and family know about.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Despite the effects of his Alzheimer’s disease, Terry wanted to keep writing as long as possible and was able to do so not least through the assistance of his fine editorial team. Lyn, Rhianna and Rob would most especially like to thank Philippa Dickinson and Sue Cook for their tireless help and encouragement that kept the words flowing.

A Feegle Glossary

adjusted for those of a delicate disposition
(A Work In Progress By Miss Perspicacia Tick, witch)

Bigjobs
: human beings

Big Man
: chief of the clan (usually the husband of the kelda)

Blethers
: rubbish, nonsense

Bogle
: see
Schemie

Boggin
: to be desperate, as in ‘I’m boggin for a cup of tea’

Brose
: porridge with a drop of strong drink added – or more than a drop. Be warned:
it will put hairs on your chest

Bunty
: a weak person

Carlin
: old woman

Cludgie
: the privy

Corbies
: big, black burdies known by most people as crows

Crivens!
: a general exclamation that can mean anything from ‘My goodness!’ to ‘I’ve just lost my temper and there is going to be trouble’

Dree your/my/his/her weird
: facing the fate that is in store for you/me/him/her

Een
: eyes

Eldritch
: weird,
strange; sometimes means oblong too, for some reason

Fash
: worry, upset

Geas
: a very important obligation, backed up by tradition and magic. Not a bird

Gonnagle
: the bard of the clan, skilled in music and stories

Hag
: a witch, of any age

Hag o’ hags
: a very important witch

Hagging/Haggling
: anything a witch does

Hiddlins
: secrets

Kelda
: the female head of the clan, and eventually the mother
of most of it. Feegle babies are very small, and a kelda will have hundreds in her lifetime

Lang syne
: long ago

Last World
: the Feegles believe that they are dead. This world is so filled with all they like, they argue, that they must have been really good in a past life and then died and ended up here. Appearing to die here means merely going back to the Last World, which they believe is rather
dull

Mowpie
: furry animals with white tufts as tails, making them easy to spot. Sometimes called rabbits. Good to eat, especially with a dab of snail relish on the side

Mudlin
: useless person

Pished
: I am assured that this means ‘tired’

Schemie
: an unpleasant person

Scuggan
: a really unpleasant person

Scunner
: a generally unpleasant person

Ships
: woolly things that eat grass and go baa.
Easily confused with the other kind

Spavie
: see
Mudlin

Special Sheep Liniment
: probably moonshine whisky, I am very sorry to say. A favourite of the Feegles. Do not try to make this at home

Spog
: a small leather bag at the front of a Feegle’s kilt, which covers whatever he presumably thinks needs to be hidden, and generally holds things like something he is halfway through eating, something
he’d found that now therefore belongs to him, and whatever he was using as a handkerchief, which might not necessarily be dead

Steamie
: only found in the big Feegle mounds in the mountains, where there’s enough water to allow regular bathing; it’s a kind of sauna. Feegles on the Chalk tend to rely on the fact that you can only get so much dirt on you before it starts to fall off of its own accord

Waily
: a general cry of despair

The Witches of Discworld

by Jacqueline Simpson
(co-author of
The Folklore of Discworld
)

The witches of Discworld spend rather less time than one might suppose on actually doing magic. Mostly, they are called in to cope with other people’s problems. It is to them that the village turns when a child or a cow falls desperately sick, when a woman is having a difficult labour, when those who are dying
cannot actually die. It is then that witches have to bring help – and take responsibility. There is nothing romantic about this work, nothing dramatic, no magic potions to cure the sick in an instant. Witchcraft is mostly about helping people by doing quite ordinary things.

However, cures and advice are more likely to be accepted if they
sound
magical. On one occasion a rather rational witch
had been carefully telling one family that their well was much too close to their privy, so the water was full of tiny, tiny creatures which were making the children sick. They listened politely, but did nothing. Then Granny Weatherwax visited them and told them the illness was caused by goblins who were attracted to the smell of the privy, and that very day the man of the house and his friends began
digging a new well at the other end of the garden. A story gets things done.

Witches also often adjudicate in neighbourly disputes; they see to it that where there has been injustice there will be a reckoning. It is a life of hard work, and rather lonely, for though a witch gains respect, she is always slightly feared.

It is also a witch’s duty to defend her homeland against the insidious incursions
of malevolent beings from other dimensions, such as elves. She must keep watch, she must guard the borders and the gateways, even if in doing so she puts herself in danger too.

How does a girl become a witch? First, she must have some natural inborn talent, even if she does not yet realize it. Here, heredity can help, and in Tiffany’s case it does: the Achings, like the Weatherwaxes, have witching
in their blood. But she needs training too, so when she is about eleven she must leave home and become part servant, part apprentice to an old witch, from whom she will learn about herbs and medicines and magical techniques, and whose area she will normally take over when the old one dies.

These techniques, unlike those of wizards, are not showy. True, there are a few witches who go in for grimoires
and occult silver jewellery, but they are either conceited or inexperienced. The best witches use the simplest means – no need for a crystal ball for scrying when a few drops of ink in an old saucer of rainwater are quite as good; no carved wand when any stick will do. Their main tool is the ‘shambles’, a powerful magic-detector and -projector which looks a bit like a particularly complicated
cat’s cradle, a bit like a broken set of puppet-strings, and a bit like a very untidy dream-catcher. But even this is formed from the simplest things. You have to make your own, fresh every time, out of whatever happens to be in your pockets. In the centre you put something alive – an egg, say, or a beetle or small worm – and pull the strings, and as the objects twirl past or even through one
another, the device works. In the presence of really powerful magic, it may explode.

One of the minor benefits of being a witch is that you know, months or even years in advance, exactly when you are going to die, so you can stage-manage the event to perfection. Having done all the obvious things (cleaned the cottage, made a will, destroyed any embarrassing old letters or spells still lying around),
had a nice grave dug ready for you, some witches choose to throw a really good ‘going-away party’. This is like a wake, but with yourself as guest of honour, still taking a keen interest, and distributing pleasant keepsakes to your friends. But there are also some who go in privacy to meet their old acquaintance, the Reaper.

About the Author

Terry Pratchett
was the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld
^®
series, the first of which,
The Colour of Magic
, was published in 1983.
The Shepherd’s Crown
is his forty-first Discworld novel. His books have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, as well as being awarded a knighthood for
services to literature. He died in March 2015.

For more information about Terry Pratchett and his books, please visit
www.terrypratchett.co.uk

BOOKS BY TERRY PRATCHETT

 
The Discworld
^®
series