Terry Pratchett Book Club: The Shepherd’s Crown, Part II

Some folks just know where they’re meant to be. And they come with a very unnerving goat.

Summary

Mrs. Earwig visits Tiffany while she’s working, and tells her that she’s spread too thin and should let Mrs. Earwig take over Granny’s steading as the older more experienced witch. Tiffany tells the woman that she finds her brand of magic ridiculous, and dismisses her. She asks the Feegle to help her with the washing duty she’s doing for a local elderly man, and decides that she’ll have to change how she’s doing things. The fairy queen and her raiding party follow Of the Lathe the Swarf into the human world and have their first encounter with a train. The goblin throws iron shards at Lord Peaseblossom when he threatens him. Joe Aching is drinking in the pub and the locals are praising Tiffany and hoping she doesn’t move away. Roland comes to speak to Tiffany and tell her that there have been complaints about her absence, which infuriates her. Roland leaves, embarrassed in spite of himself. The Fairy Queen takes her raiding party home, but Peaseblossom is growing in strength and insisting that all the weakness they’ve shown is the queen’s fault. He turns the other fairies against her, destroys her glamour, tells the others to tear off her wings and cast her out, and usurps her place.

Tiffany flies back to Lancre that evening and meets Geoffrey when he arrives at the back door of the cottage. She can tell that he’s run away from home and was well-off, but he insists that he wants to learn to be a witch—not a wizard. Nanny arrives and Tiffany tells her what Geoffrey means to do, so she sends him with Nanny to Mr. Nimlet’s to clip his impossible toenails, all to give him an idea of what real witching is like. Miss Tick interviews new witches to help Tiffany on the Chalk, the fairies gain momentum for their upcoming incursion, and Geoffrey begins observing the elderly men of Lancre and how they seem to be in the way in their own homes. He suggests that they build themselves sheds, and ingratiates himself to everyone in Lancre very quickly; he has a calming presence to everyone and Mephistopheles quickly becomes talk of the town for his own feats. Tiffany introduces him to Feegle only to find out that he already knows about them from sleeping in the lean-to with them. She brings him to the kelda and Jeannie finds out that he’s a vegetarian and tells Tiffany that he’s a special sort and she must treasure him.

Tiffany decides that she’ll take him to Ankh-Morpork the next day and perhaps see Preston while she’s there. She takes him to the new broomstick shop at the train station, and gives Granny’s old stick to refurbish for Geoffrey in exchange for healing one of them of their back pain. She and Geoffrey stay with Mrs. Proust for the night, and the old witch asks Tiffany about Preston. Tiffany admits that she’s sad because they’re both married to their work, but Mrs. Proust tells her not to worry; things might work out at a later date. Tiffany and Preston have a nice visit, and then she picks up Geoffrey’s broomstick, which he is a natural with, to her surprise. They head back to Lancre. The fairy queen is thrown into the human world and Feegle find her and bring her back to the mound because she’s wounded and alone, so no good for fighting.

Jeannie has Tiffany summoned, and Tiffany tells them that they aren’t to hurt the queen, whose true name is Nightshade. She is their prisoner, and Tiffany makes Big Yan and Wee Mad Arthur her guards. The beer keeps going off at the local Chalk pub because the fairies are messing about with it, and the locals wonder why Tiffany hasn’t sorted it yet. Two young men show up to the flumes to become workers who guide logs down the river so they can get delivered far and wide. The man in charge, Mr. Slack, tells them that the job is hard, but they’ll make good money. Some of the wood they cut down is Predictive Pine, and if the tree likes you, it’ll show you the future. He hires the two lads, Martin and Frank, but when he touches a pine, he has a vision of a horrible fight about to happen, and he tells them to run. They escape using the flumes while the lumberjacks are slaughtered by a raiding party of elves. Elsewhere, humans and animals are being terrorized by them, very few managing to successfully fight back…

Commentary

Of course, now is the part where I talk about the fact that this isn’t entirely the story of a boy becoming a witch, but rather a person who was raised as a boy becoming a witch. Because this is what Geoffrey has to say about his gender:

An agender sovereign. But, you know, tell us again that Pratchett wouldn’t have held with that “transgender trend.” We’ll wait for all the usual excuses, the inevitable “but everyone feels that way obviously.” No, they don’t, in point of fact.

But Geoffrey does.

Geoffrey’s work with the older men of the town is meant to give them a sense of purpose later in life, but can’t fix the core issue at hand, being a strict division of the “realms” of gender. The spheres of influence that state that women rule the homestead, while men make their life outside the home. It runs alongside a certain strain of “old-fashioned” thinking within this world, one meant to satirize our own. And while it’s a stereotype that does bear out in many areas of our society (and more so among older generations), I’m curious as to whether later books wouldn’t have included an advent in more current thinking. More men on the Disc who actually participated in the household. After all, if Sam Vimes thinks parenting his son actively is so important, it couldn’t hurt Nanny Ogg’s sons to do a dish or two.

Tiffany’s little face-off with Mrs. Earwig is so satisfying, in part due to the progression of these books. Tiffany has been through the process of learning when to hold her tongue and when to speak her mind—A Hat Full of Sky was in large part about the pain of that process. But Tiffany is grown now, and she is Granny’s chosen heir, and she has been through so much: She is owed respect that Mrs. Earwig doesn’t know how to give anyone. So Tiffany tells her off. She’s not cruel about it, merely truthful, and she sends the woman packing.

There is a rushed quality to parts of this book that makes it clear that Pratchett was determined to get this story as finished as possible. It’s difficult to note, but it makes the places where he takes more time and care stand out all the more. The importance of Tiffany and Preston’s meeting is one of those places, along with her talk to Mrs. Proust about it beforehand. It’s intriguing coming just after a book where we see Moist and Adora Belle enjoying a marriage that doesn’t consist much of spending time together—the trouble for Tiffany and Preston is distance and their jobs existing in two entirely different places.

And now the former fairy queen is living among the people of the Chalk. We’ll see how that goes…

Asides and little thoughts

• I forgot to mention in the last segment: Granny Weatherwax letting the bees know about her impending departure is in keeping with an ancient beekeeping tradition. “Telling the bees” is when the beekeeper lets the bees know about major events in life, including deaths and marriages. It’s possible that this sprang from a Celtic tradition. There are beliefs that bees are close to the gods; not informing the bees could result in them vacating the hives or refusing to produce honey.

• I really do love the idea of calm-weavers as a class of witch. It’s an underrated skill, being able to keep people at ease. And Lancre could certainly use it in Granny’s absence—Nanny Ogg isn’t really about that.

• How did I forget about the “Lumberjack Song” reference? How did I forget that? It just sneaks up in the flume section…

Pratchettisms

Next week we finish the book and perhaps end our little book club! Which is giving me a lot of feelings. Um.