June 26th, 2020
26 Jun 2020 · page 999 of 1306
Opening doors.
A lot of y'all spotted her back in book 5, congrats :3
Cast: Arpana Sherpa, Jack O'Malley
Comments (61)
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So Harry's going to get home and O'Malley won't be there.
Or they will meet in this room/space/thing.
Yes. This is where Harry left from when she went through Nyree's door; this is where Nyree will bring her back to.
So the mountain witch appears first at his anchor .Wonder what she will tell Jack O'Mallory or for that matter teach him about being a witch.?
Except, it doesn't look like this "his" space but a common space for all anchors.
No anchor rancor here.
yep...not sure anyone but the city witch can open his door safely. Can other witches open doors not their own without causing problems?
A shame. I had a head-canon where Mrs Mountain Witch popped over to Widdershins for the knit-and-natter on Thursday afternoons. She's great friends with Mrs Elaine Barber. They swap knitting patterns, complain about their daughters and boast about their grand-children.
Canon is clear here, at least about Mal. (There's a better reference where he actually says he con only open his own door, but: [https://www.widdershinscomi...](https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/july-10th-2018 "https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/july-10th-2018") makes it pretty clear that he can't open other witch's doors.)
Huh, surprised it took Nyree and Harry so long to meet up with him banging on her door like that. You'd think she'd have heard and come looking.
Maybe they need to be within a certain distance? Nyree was on "the mainland" at the time (or something).
Or she did get the signal, but travelling from the mainland simply takes that long. She then headed for her hut first, where she met Harry before finding her door overgrown.
Ooh, the Mountain Witch and her knitting! And she has a name! Mal, Nyree, and Arpana.
According to Google Translate she would (might) spell her name like this: अर्पण शेर्पा
This has nothing to do with this comic and might be completely wrong (I do not know Nepali), I just thought it's interesting to have a look.
Wasn't she in Paris a few years ago, with Ms Invidia and Ms Superbia? :-)
I really need to scrape together the money to get those stories.
Do you mean the book-only bonus material? Arpana isn't in any of those that I'm aware of; I think Sturzkampf was making a French Revolution/Madame Defarge joke.
Correct. But it's worth getting the books. Very reasonable in electronic format.
I'm having a gentle version of the canonical "Madame deFarge" moment here.
Or maybe Madame Nostradamus, I understand she was a "witty little knitter." Had a thing for scarfs, too!
Her sound effect has the same colours the music of the music box had! The colours of two other doors.
maybe it means she hears souls like Mal sees them and Nyree smells them?
Ohhh it was her knocking, not Harry and Nyree. Well, good, at least they won't be waiting in here for him to come back to town.
What kind of yarn is that? ...Red Heart?
I know this is a facetious question, but given the time frame, the bulk of it, the colors, and the area she's from, it's likely sheep's wool, possibly mixed with yak or goat hair, and she might even have spun and dyed it herself.
Legit curious, actually.
(And Red Heart exists simultaneously in all time periods! It is the Neutral Good-ish answer to Cthulhu.)
I admit that I simply assumed that anybody peacefully knitting at the entrance to one of the four most powerful esoteric fonts on the planet was likely to be a witch of something. Especially when she mentioned the gift shop. That was a very witch-like thing to do, in the classic Pratchettian sense.
Witches gotta make a living, dontcha know.
City Witch and Mountain Witch are here. Once Harry comes through, Island Witch might come with her.
And with all of them in the special Witch Space, maybe the others will give Mal some pointers on how he can use long-distance magic within Widdershins to resolve some of the shenanigans the rest of the cast is dealing with.
Awww, he's not wearing the scarf she made him.
I wonder if she’ll be disappointed.
Nonsense. I see it more going "You've forgotten to wear your scarf! Well, I'll just have to make you a new one. Sit right down there, love, and let's talk."
Am knitter, can confirm. People not adorned with floofs makes one want to cover them in knitted floofs. laughs
Assuming the wizards graduate at the same time as the rest of the UK's schools, it is probably the middle of summer anyway, not normally scarf wearing weather!
"Sorry I'm late, SOMEBODY let an incredibly envious man summon a deadly at her anchor and I'm still dealing with the after effects".
She's going to offer him a scone, the plate on the table next to her. :-D
Also, perfect timing for Mal to arrive, since I bet Harry's just about to as well!
Now I wonder if Mal is going to get blinded from looking at the Mountain Witch... 😟
Witches can't sense each other like they can other people.
Good point. I suppose I thought about those Nyree's words as related to "this world". Like, in "this world" Mal can't "read" himself (see his own spirit), but in "Witch Space", he could.
But ofc reading themselves and reading other Witches are quite different things, especially as they use different senses for that... it certainly saves lot of trouble, then! :)
Thinking a bit more about "Witch can sense themselves in Witch-Space".
Mal was able to see his spirit in the mirror, but what about other Witches? Can Nyree smell her spirit here? And Arpana... does she hear her spirit here and now? Maybe yellow notes in the air show exactly that?
Since she sent the music box, it would make sense that her witch abilities are sound-based. I bet Voss sounded like a horrible jangling discord when he showed up at her Anchor.
Yeah, it's what I thought (about Voss)! :)
Do we know that Arpana perceives spirits as sound? After all, O'Malley can see and hear them. What if she has some other means of sensing them?
For sure, we don't (know). It's just a matter of the music box and Kate's upvoting a comment "what about the other tohunga, does one hear them?" :D
As for O'Malley, he can hear buggerups as they speak (not human spirits), it's something different. He can touch them, too.
To be fair, everyone seems capable of touching buggerups.
She's tapping her foot. It's a habit some musicians get into while listening to music.
So, I'm assuming if there were a 4th anchor, there would be a corresponding door here in the magic witch space. If there is a 4th anchor, I wonder why they wouldn't have a door.... Or maybe there are only three, and Eliza's globe theory was just too convincing haha
There is a space for a 4th door. Harry or O'Malley (I forget which (pun unintended)) pointed it out when they first got there.
"What's that one, then?" [https://www.widdershinscomi...](https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/september-23rd-2016 "https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/september-23rd-2016")
Oh, and Harry knocking(!) on Mal's door! "Interesting," indeed – even if that foreshadowing apparently was lost on me. :p
And maybe Widdershins door looked like that in "Witchless period", too, given Nyree's words "since the city door came back".
So it might mean just that 4th Anchor doesn't have its Witch now... or something worse.
There she is! :D I'm so excited! I do believe the witching hour is all but upon us :3
Any of you helpful archive experts able to link the page where she showed up back in book 5? Or shall I take this as an excuse for a reread?
Arpana's first appearance - [https://www.widdershinscomi...](https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/may-21st-2014 "https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/may-21st-2014")
But do go ahead and reread the book. Any opportunity to reread a comic this good should always be taken. Plus there's always the stuff you didn't catch the first time around.
Thank you! And this is definitely one of my fav comics and always worth a reread!
I'd rather point out the helpful tags just above the comment section – in particular, the [https://www.widdershinscomi...](https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/search/Arpana%20Sherpa "https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/search/Arpana%20Sherpa") tag. ;)
Haha, oh wow, so there is. That's what I get for reading and commenting at nearly 2:00am. Not firing on all cylinders. Thank you for teaching me how to fish ;)
So... Is this his first time seeing actual colors and not emotional colors then?
That would be when he and Ben got their sight switched in Green-Eyed Monster.
Four anchors, four witches, four senses?
Mal is sight, Nyree is smell, is Arpana hearing?
it looks like I missed a dozen comics... feels like using twitter like a RSS is less and less effective as it started to hide stuff the facebook way...
YESSSSSS I WAS TIGHT I KNEW IT I KNEW IT I KNEW IT YESSSSS