“He asked her what she was doing there, on the heath with her broom in the evening. “Sweeping the world,” she said. And Alveric wondered what rejected things she was sweeping away from the world, with grey dust mournfully turning over and over as it drifted across our fields, going slowly into the darkness that was gathering beyond our coasts. “Why are you sweeping the world, Mother Witch?” he said. “There’s things in the world that ought not to be here,” said she.”