until about two hundred years ago is that The Nice and Accurate Prophecies was Agnes’s idea of a family heirloom. Many of the prophecies relate to her descendants and their well-being. She was sort of trying to look after us after she’d gone. That’s the reason for the King’s Lynn prophecy, we think. My father was visiting there at the time, so from Agnes’s point of view, while he was unlikely to be struck by stray rounds from Dallas, there was a good chance he might be hit by a brick.”
“What a nice person,” said Newt. “You could almost overlook her blowing up an entire village.”
Anathema ignored this. “Anyway, that’s about it,” she said. “Ever since then we’ve made it our job to interpret them. After all, it averages out at about one prophecy a month—more now, in fact, as we get closer to the end of the world.”
“And when is that going to be?” said Newt.
Anathema looked meaningfully at the clock.
He gave a horrible little laugh that he hoped sounded suave and worldly. After the events so far today, he wasn’t feeling very sane. And he could smell Anathema’s perfume, which made him uncomfortable.
“Think yourself lucky I don’t need a stopwatch,” said Anathema. “We’ve got, oh, about five or six hours.”
Newt turned this over in his mind. Thus far in his life he’d never had the urge to drink alcohol, but something told him there had to be a first time.
“Do witches keep drink in the house?” he ventured.
“Oh, yes.” She smiled the sort of smile Agnes Nutter probably smiled when unpacking the contents of her lingerie drawer. “Green bubbly stuff with strange Things squirming on the congealing surface. You should know that.”
“Fine. Got any ice?”
It turned out to be gin. There was ice. Anathema, who had picked up witchcraft as she went along, disapproved of liquor in general but approved of it in her specific case.
“Did I tell you about the Tibetan coming out of a hole in the road?” Newt said, relaxing a bit.
“Oh, I know about them,” she said, shuffling the papers on the table. “The two of them came out of the front lawn yesterday. The poor things were quite bewildered, so I gave them a cup of tea and then they borrowed a spade and went down again. I don’t think they quite know what they’re supposed to be doing.”
Newt felt slightly aggrieved. “How did you know they were Tibetan?” he said.
“If it comes to that, how did you know? Did he go ‘Ommm’ when you hit him?”
“Well, he—he looked Tibetan,” said Newt. “Saffron robes, bald head … you know … Tibetan.”
“One of mine spoke quite good English. It seems that one minute he was repairing radios in Lhasa, next minute he was in a tunnel. He doesn’t know how he’s going to get home.”
“If you’d sent him up the road, he could probably have got a lift on a flying saucer,” said Newt gloomily.
“Three aliens? One of them a little tin robot?”
“They landed on your lawn too, did they?”
“It’s about the only place they didn’t land, according to the radio. They keep coming down all over the world delivering a short trite message of cosmic peace, and when people say ‘Yes, well?’ they give them a blank look and take off again. Signs and portents, just like Agnes said.”
“You’re going to tell me she predicted all this too, I suppose?”
Agnes leafed through a battered card index in front of her.
“I kept meaning to put it all on computer,” she said. “Word searches and so forth. You know? It’d make it a lot simpler. The prophecies are arranged in any old order but there are clues, handwriting and so.”
“She did it all in a card index?” said Newt.
“No. A book. But I’ve, er, mislaid it. We’ve always had copies, of course.”
“Lost it, eh?” said Newt, trying to inject some humor into the proceedings. “Bet she didn’t foresee that!”
Anathema glowered at him. If looks could kill, Newt would have been on a slab.
Then she went on: “We’ve built up quite a concordance over the years, though, and my grandfather came up with a useful cross-referencing system … ah. Here we are.”
She pushed a sheet of paper in front of Newt.
3988. Whene menne of crocus come frome the Earth and green manne frome thee Sky, yette ken not why, and Pluto’s barres quitte the lightning castels, and sunken landes riseth, and Leviathan runneth free, and Brazil is vert, then Three cometh together and Four arise, upon