Maskerade

role?”
    “Good grief, no. We’d be a laughingstock.”
    “Quite so. She seems quite…amenable, though.”
    “Wonderful personality, I thought. And good hair, of course.”

    She’d never expected it to be this easy…
    Agnes listened in a kind of trance while people talked at her about wages (very little), the need for training (a lot), and accommodation (members of the chorus lived in the Opera House itself, up near the roof).
    And then, more or less, she was forgotten about. She stood and watched at the side of the stage while a group of ballet hopefuls were put through their delicate paces.
    “You do have an amazing voice,” said someone behind her.
    She turned. As Nanny Ogg had once remarked, it was an education seeing Agnes turn around. She was light enough on her feet but the inertia of outlying parts meant that bits of Agnes were still trying to work out which way to face for some time afterward.
    The girl who had spoken to her was slightly built, even by ordinary standards, and had gone to some pains to make herself look even thinner. She had long blond hair and the happy smile of someone who is aware that she is thin and has long blond hair.
    “My name’s Christine!” she said. “Isn’t this exciting?!”
    And she had the type of voice that can exclaim a question. It seemed to have an excited little squeak permanently screwed to it.
    “Er, yes,” said Agnes.
    “I’ve been waiting for this day for years !”
    Agnes had been waiting for it for about twenty-four hours, ever since she’d seen the notice outside the Opera House. But she’d be danged if she’d say that.
    “Where did you train?!” said Christine. “I spent three years with Mme. Venturi at the Quirm Conservatory!”
    “Um. I was…” Agnes hesitated, trying out the upcoming sentence in her head. “…I trained with…Dame Ogg. But she hasn’t got a conservatory, because it’s hard to get the glass up the mountain.”
    Christine didn’t appear to want to question this. Anything she found too difficult to understand, she ignored.
    “The money in the chorus isn’t very good, is it?!” she said.
    “No.” It was less than you’d get for scrubbing floors. The reason was that, when you advertised a dirty floor, hundreds of hopefuls didn’t turn up.
    “But it’s what I’ve always wanted to do! Besides, there’s the status!”
    “Yes, I expect there is.”
    “I’ve been to look at the rooms we get! They’re very poky! What room have you been given?!”
    Agnes looked down blankly at the key she had been handed, along with many sharp instructions about no men and an unpleasant not-that-you-need-telling expression on the chorus mistress’s face.
    “Oh…17.”
    Christine clapped her hands. “Oh, goody!!”
    “Pardon?”
    “I’m so glad!! You’re next to me!!”
    Agnes was taken aback. She’d always been resigned to being the last to be picked in the great team game of Life.
    “Well…yes, I suppose so…” she said.
    “You’re so lucky!! You’ve got such a majestic figure for opera!! And such marvelous hair, the way you pile it up like that!! Black suits you, by the way!!”
    Majestic, thought Agnes. It was a word that would never, ever have occurred to her. And she’d always steered away from white because in white she looked like a washing-line on a windy day.
    She followed Christine.
    It occurred to Agnes, as she trudged after the girl en route to her new lodgings, that if you spent much time in the same room as Christine you’d need to open a window to stop from drowning in punctuation.
    From somewhere at the back of the stage, quite unheeded, someone watched them go.

    People were generally glad to see Nanny Ogg. She was good at making them feel at home in their own home.
    But she was a witch, and therefore also expert at arriving just after cakes were baked or sausages were made. Nanny Ogg generally traveled with a string bag stuffed up one knee-length knicker leg—in case, as she put it, someone wants to give me something.
    “So, Mrs. Nitt,” she observed, around about the third cake and fourth cup of tea, “how’s that daughter of yours? Agnes it is to whom I refer.”
    “Oh, didn’t you hear, Mrs. Ogg? She’s gone off to Ankh-Morpork to be a singer.”
    Nanny Ogg’s heart sank.
    “That’s nice,” she said. “She has a good singing voice, I remember. Of course, I gave her a few tips. I used to hear her singing in the woods.”
    “It’s the air here,” said Mrs. Nitt. “She’s