Equal Rites

Terry Pratchett

Thanks to Neil Gaiman, who loaned
us the last surviving copy of the Liber
Paginarum Fulvarum, and a big hallo to all the
kids at the H.P. Lovecraft Holiday Fun Club.

I would like it to be clearly understood that this book is
not wacky. Only dumb redheads in fifties' sitcoms
are wacky.

No, it's not zany, either.

This is a story about magic and where it goes and perhaps more importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesn't pretend to answer all or any of these questions.
It may, however, help to explain why Gandalf never got married and why Merlin was a man. Because this is also a story about sex, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense unless the characters get totally beyond the author's control. They might.
However, it is primarily a story about a world. Here it comes now. Watch closely, the special effects are quite expensive.
A bass note sounds. It is a deep, vibrating chord that hints that the brass section may break in at any moment with a fanfare for the cosmos, because the scene is the blackness of deep space with a few stars glittering like the dandruff on the shoulders of God.
Then it comes into view overhead, bigger than the biggest, most unpleasantly armed starcruiser in the imagination of a three-ring film-maker: a turtle, ten thousand miles long. It is Great A'Tuin, one of the rare astrochelonians from a universe where things are less as they are and more like people imagine them to be, and it carries on its meteor-pocked shell four giant elephants who bear on their enormous shoulders the great round wheel of the Discworld.
As the viewpoint swings around, the whole of the world can be seen by the light of its tiny orbiting sun. There are continents, archipelagos, seas, deserts, mountain ranges and even a tiny central ice cap. The inhabitants of this place, it is obvious, won't have any truck with global theories. Their world, bounded by an encircling ocean that falls forever into space in one long waterfall, is as round and flat as a geological pizza, although without the anchovies.
A world like that, which exists only because the gods enjoy a joke, must be a place where magic can survive. And sex too, of course.
He came walking through the thunderstorm and you could tell he was a wizard, partly because of the long cloak and careen staff but mainly because the raindrops were stopping several feet from his head, and steaming.
It was good thunderstorm country, up here in the Ramtop Mountains, a country of jagged peaks, dense forests and little river valleys so deep the daylight had no sooner reached the bottom than it was time to leave again. Ragged wisps of cloud clung to the lesser peaks below the mountain trail along which the wizard slithered and slid. A few slot-eyed goats watched him with mild interest. It doesn't take a lot to interest goats.
Sometimes he would stop and throw his heavy staff into the air. It always came down pointing the same way and the wizard would sigh, pick it up, and continue his squelchy progress.
The storm walked around the hills on legs of lightning, shouting and grumbling.
The wizard disappeared around the bend in the track and the goats went back to their damp grazing.
Until something else caused them to look up. They stiffened, their eyes widening, their nostrils flaring.
This was strange, because there was nothing on the path. But the goats still watched it pass by until it was out of sight.
There was a village tucked in a narrow valley between steep woods. It wasn't a large village, and wouldn't have shown up on a map of the mountains. It barely showed up on a map of the village.
It was, in fact, one of those places that exist merely so that people can have come from them. The universe is littered with them: hidden villages, windswept little towns under wide skies, isolated cabins on chilly mountains, whose only mark on history is to be the incredibly ordinary place where something extraordinary started to happen. Often there is no more than a little plaque to reveal that, against all ecological probability, someone very famous was born halfway up a wall.
Mist curled between the houses as the wizard crossed a narrow bridge over the swollen stream and made his way to the village smithy, although the two facts had nothing to do with one another. The mist would have curled anyway: it was experienced mist and had got curling down to a fine art.
The smithy was fairly crowded, of course. A smithy is one place where you can depend on finding a good fire and someone to talk to. Several villagers were lounging in the warm shadows but, as the wizard approached, they sat up expectantly and tried to look intelligent, generally with indifferent success.
The smith didn't feel the need to be quite so subservient. He nodded at the wizard, but it was a greeting between equals, or at least between equals as far as the smith was concerned. After all, any halfway competent blacksmith has more than a nodding acquaintance with magic, or at least likes to think he has.
The wizard bowed. A white cat that had been sleeping by the furnace woke up and watched him carefully.
"What is the name of this place, sir?" said the wizard.
The blacksmith shrugged.
"Bad Ass," he said.
"Bad - ?"
"Ass," repeated the blacksmith, his tone defying anyone to make something of it.
The wizard considered this.
"A name with a story behind it," he said at last, "which were circumstances otherwise I would be pleased to hear. But I would like to speak to you, smith, about your son."
"Which one?" said the smith, and the hangers-on sniggered. The wizard smiled.
"You have seven sons, do you not? And you yourself were an eighth son?"
The smith's face stiffened. He turned to the other villagers.
"All right, the rain's stopping," he said. "Piss off, the lot of you. Me and -" he looked at the wizard with raised eyebrows.
"Drum Billet," said the wizard.
"Me and Mr. Billet have things to talk about." He waved his hammer vaguely and, one after another, craning over their shoulders in case the wizard did anything interesting, the audience departed.
The smith drew a couple of stools from under a bench. He took a bottle out of a cupboard by the water tank and poured a couple of very small glasses of clear liquid.
The two men sat and watched the rain and the mist rolling over the bridge. Then the smith said: "I know what son you mean. Old Granny is up with my wife now. Eighth son of an eighth son, of course. It did cross my mind but I never gave it much thought, to be honest. Well, well. A wizard in the family, eh?"
"You catch on very quickly," said Billet. The white cat jumped down from its perch, sauntered across the floor and vaulted into the wizard's lap, where it curled up. His thin fingers stroked it absentmindedly.
"Well, well," said the smith again. "A wizard in Bad Ass, eh?"
"Possibly, possibly," said Billet. "Of course, he'll have to go to University first. He may do very well, of course."
The smith considered the idea from all angles, and decided he liked it a lot. A thought struck him.
"Hang on," he said. "I'm trying to remember what my father told me. A wizard who knows he's going to die can sort of pass on his sort of wizardness to a sort of successor, right?"
"I have never heard it put so succinctly, yes," said the wizard.
"So you're going to sort of die?"
"Oh yes." The cat purred as the fingers tickled it behind the ear.
The smith looked embarrassed. "When?"
The wizard thought for a moment. "In about six minutes' time."
"Oh."
"Don't worry," said the wizard. "I'm quite looking forward to it, to tell you the truth. I've heard it's quite painless."
The blacksmith considered this. "Who told you?" he said at last.
The wizard pretended not to hear him. He was watching the bridge, looking for tell-tale turbulence in the mist.
"Look," said the smith. "You'd better tell me how we go about bringing up a wizard, you see, because there isn't a wizard in these parts and -" .
"It will all sort itself out," said Billet pleasantly. "The magic has guided me to you and the magic will take care of everything. It usually does. Did I hear a cry?"
The blacksmith looked at the ceiling. Above the splash of the rain he could make out the sound of a pair of new lungs at full bore.
The wizard smiled. "Have him brought down here," he said.
The cat sat up and looked interestedly at the forge's wide doorway. As the smith called excitedly up the stairs it jumped down and padded slowly across the floor, purring like a bandsaw.
A tall white-haired woman appeared at the bottom of the stairs, clutching a bundle in a blanket. The smith hurried her over to where the wizard sat.
"But -"she began.
"This is very important," said the smith importantly. "What do we do now, sir?"
The wizard held up his staff. It was man-high and nearly as thick as his wrist, and covered with carvings that seemed to change as the smith looked at them, exactly as if they didn't want him to see what they were.
"The child must hold it," said Drum Billet. The smith nodded, and fumbled in the blanket until he located a tiny pink hand. He guided it gently to the wood. It gripped it tightly.
"But -"said the midwife.
"It's all right, Granny, I know what I'm about. She's a witch, sir, don't mind her. Right," said the smith. "Now what?"
The wizard was silent.
"What do we don-"the smith began, and stopped. He leaned down to look at the old wizard's face. Billet was smiling, but it was anyone's guess what the joke was.
The smith pushed the baby back into the arms of the frantic midwife. Then, as respectfully as possible, he unpried the thin, pale fingers from the staff.
It had a strange, greasy feel, like static electricity. The wood itself was almost black, but the carvings were slightly lighter, and hurt the eyes if you tried to make out precisely what they were supposed to be.
"Are you pleased with yourself?" said the midwife.
"Eh? Oh. Yes. As a matter of fact, yes. Why?"
She twitched aside a fold of the blanket. The smith looked down, and swallowed.
"No," he whispered. "He said -"
"And what would he know about it?" sneered Granny.
"But he said it would be a son!"
"Doesn't look like a son to me, laddie."
The smith flopped down on his stool, his head in his hands.
"What have I done?" he moaned.
"You've given the world its first female wizard," said the midwife. "Whosa itsywitsy, den?"
"What?"
"I was talking to the baby."
The white cat purred and arched its back as if it was rubbing up against the legs of an old friend. Which was odd, because there was no one there.
"I was foolish," said a voice in tones no mortal could hear. "I assumed the magic would know what it was doing."
PERHAPS IT DOES.
"If only I could do something . . . ."
THERE IS NO GOING BACK. THERE IS NO GOING BACK, said the deep, heavy voice like the closing of crypt doors.
The wisp of nothingness that was Drum Billet thought for a while.
"But she's going to have a lot of problems."
THAT'S WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT. SO I'M TOLD. I WOULDN'T KNOW, OF COURSE.
"What about reincarnation?"
Death hesitated.
YOU WOULDN'T LIKE IT, he said. TAKE IT FROM ME.
"I've heard that some people do it all the time."
YOU'VE GOT TO BE TRAINED TO IT. YOU'VE GOT TO START OFF SMALL AND WORK UP. YOU'VE NO IDEA HOW HORRIBLE IT IS TO BE AN ANT.
"It's bad?"
YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE IT. AND WITH YOUR KARMA AN ANT IS TOO MUCH TO EXPECT.
The baby had been taken back to its mother and the smith sat disconsolately watching the rain.
Drum Billet scratched the cat behind its ears and thought about his life. It had been a long one, that was one of the advantages of being a wizard, and he'd done a lot of things he hadn't always felt good about. It was about time that ....
I HAVEN'T GOT ALL DAY, YOU KNOW, said Death, reproachfully.
The wizard looked down at the cat and realized for the first time how odd it looked now.
The living often don't appreciate how complicated the world looks when you are dead, because while death frees the mind from the straitjacket of three dimensions it also cuts it away from Time, which is only another dimension. So while the cat that rubbed up against his invisible legs was undoubtedly the same cat that he had seen a few minutes before, it was also quite clearly a tiny kitten and a fat, half-blind old moggy and every stage in between. All at once. Since it had started off small it looked like a white, catshaped carrot, a description that will have to do until people invent proper four-dimensional adjectives.
Death's skeletal hand tapped Billet gently on the shoulder.
COME AWAY, MY SON.
"There's nothing I can do?"
LIFE IS FOR THE LIVING. ANYWAY, YOU'VE GIVEN HER YOUR STAFF.
"Yes. There is that."
The midwife's name was Granny Weatherwax. She was a witch. That was quite acceptable in the Ramtops, and no one had a bad word to say about witches. At least, not if he wanted to wake up in the morning the same shape as he went to bed.
The smith was still staring gloomily at the rain when she came back down the stairs and clapped a warty hand on his shoulder.
He looked up at her.
"What shall I do, Granny?" he said, unable to keep the pleading out of his voice.
"What have you done with the wizard?"
"I put him out in the fuel store. Was that right?"
"It'll do for now," she said briskly. "And now you must burn the staff."
They both turned to stare at the heavy staff, which the smith had propped in the forge's darkest corner. It almost appeared to be looking back at them.
"But it's magical," he whispered.
"Well?"
"Will it burn?"
"Never knew wood that didn't."
"It doesn't seem right!"
Granny Weatherwax swung shut the big doors and turned to him angrily.
"Now you listen to me, Gordo Smith!" she said. "Female wizards aren't right either! It's the wrong kind of magic for women, is wizard magic, it's all books and stars and jommetry. She'd never grasp it. Whoever heard of a female wizard?"
"There's witches," said the smith uncertainly. "And enchantresses too, I've heard."
"Witches is a different thing altogether," snapped Granny Weatherwax. "It's magic out of the ground, not out of the sky, and men never could get the hang of it. As for enchantresses," she added. "They're no better than they should be. You take it from me, just burn the staff, bury the body and don't let on it ever happened."
Smith nodded reluctantly, crossed over to the forge, and pumped the bellows until the sparks flew. He went back for the staff.
It wouldn't move.
"It won't move!"
Sweat stood out of his brow as he tugged at the wood. It remained unco-operatively immobile.
"Here, let me try," said Granny, and reached past him. There was a snap and a smell of scorched tin.
Smith ran across the forge, whimpering slightly, to where Granny had landed upside down against the opposite wall.
"Are you all right?"
She opened two eyes like angry diamonds and said, "I see. That's the way of it, is it?"
"The way of what?" said Smith, totally bewildered.
"Help me up, you fool. And fetch me a chopper."
The tone of her voice suggested that it would be a very good idea not to disobey. Smith rummaged desperately among the junk at the back of the forge until he found an old double-headed axe.
"Right. Now take off your apron."
"Why? What do you intend to do?" said the smith, who was beginning to lose his grip on events. Granny gave an exasperated sigh.
"It's leather, you idiot. I'm going to wrap it around the handle. It'll not catch me the same way twice!"
Smith struggled out of the heavy leather apron and handed it to her very gingerly. She wrapped it around the axe and made one or two passes in the air. Then, a spiderlike figure in the glow of the nearly incandescent furnace, she stalked across the room and with a grunt of triumph and effort brought the heavy blade sweeping down right in the center of the staff.
There was a click. There was a noise like a partridge. There was a thud.
There was silence.
Smith reached up very slowly, without moving his head, and touched the axe blade. It wasn't on the axe any more. It had buried itself in the door by his head, taking a tiny nick out of his ear.
Granny stood looking slightly blurred from hitting an absolutely immovable object, and stared at the stub of wood in her hands.
"Rrrrightttt," she stuttered: "Iiiinnn tthhatttt cccasseee -"
"No," said Smith firmly, rubbing his ear. "Whatever it is you're going to suggest, no. Leave it. I'll pile some stuff around it. No one'll notice. Leave it. It's just a stick."
"just a stick?"
"Have you got any better ideas? Ones that won't take my head off?"
She glared at the staff, which appeared not to notice.
"Not right now," she admitted. "But you just give me time -"
"All right, all right. Anyway, I've got things to do, wizards to bury, you know how it is."
Smith took a spade from beside the back door and hesitated.
"Granny."
"What?"
"Do you know how wizards like to be buried?"
"Yes! "
"Well, how?"
Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs.
"Reluctantly."
Later, night fell gently as the last of the world's slow light flowed out of the valley, and a pale, rain-washed moon shone down in a night studded with stars. And in a shadowy orchard behind the forge there was the occasional clink of a spade or a muffled curse.
In the cradle upstairs the world's first female wizard dreamed of nothing much.
The white cat lay half-asleep on its private ledge near the furnace. The only sound in the warm dark forge was the crackle of the coals as they settled down under the ash.
The staff stood in the corner, where it wanted to be, wrapped in shadows that were slightly blacker than shadows normally are.
Time passed, which, basically, is its job.
There was a faint tinkle, and a swish of air. After a while the cat sat up and watched with interest.
Dawn came. Up here in the Ramtops dawn was always impressive, especially when a storm had cleared the air. The valley occupied by Bad Ass overlooked a panorama of lesser mountains and foothills, coloured purple and orange in the early morning light that flowed gently over them (because light travels at a dilatory pace in the Disc's vast magical field) and far off the great plains were still a puddle of shadows. Even further off the sea gave an occasional distant sparkle.
In fact, from here you could see right to the edge of the world.
That wasn't poetic imagery but plain fact, since the world was quite definitely flat and was, furthermore, known to be carried through space on the backs of four elephants that in turn stood on the shell of Great A'Tuin, the Great Sky Turtle.
Back down there in Bad Ass the village is waking up. The smith has just gone into the forge and found it tidier than it has been for the last hundred years, with all the tools back in their right places, the floor swept and a new fire laid in the furnace. He is sitting on the anvil, which has been moved right across the room, and is watching the staff and is trying to think.
Nothing much happened for seven years, except that one of the apple trees in the smithy orchard grew perceptibly taller than the others and was frequently climbed by a small girl with brown hair, a gap in her front teeth, and the sort of features that promised to become, if not beautiful, then at least attractively interesting.
She was named Eskarina, for no particular reason other than that her mother liked the sound of the word, and although Granny Weatherwax kept a careful watch on her she failed to spot any signs of magic whatsoever. It was true that the girl spent more time climbing trees and running around shouting than little girls normally did, but a girl with four older brothers still at home can be excused a lot of things. In fact, the witch began to relax and started to think the magic had not taken hold after all.
But magic has a habit of lying low, like a rake in the grass.
Winter came round again, and it was a bad one. The clouds hung around the Ramtops like big fat sheep, filling the gulleys with snow and turning the forests into silent, gloomy caverns. The high passes were closed and the caravans wouldn't come again until spring. Bad Ass became a little island of heat and light.
Over breakfast Esk's mother said: "I'm worried about Granny Weatherwax. She hasn't been around lately."
Smith looked at her over his porridge spoon.
"I'm not complaining," he said. "She -"
"She's got a long nose," said Esk.
Her parents glared at her.
"There's no call to make that kind of remark," said her mother sternly.
"But father said she's always poking her -"
"Eskarina!"
"But he said -"
"I said -"
"Yes, but, he did say that she had -"
Smith reached down and slapped her. It wasn't very hard, and he regretted it instantly. The boys got the flat of his hand and occasionally the length of his belt whenever they deserved it. The trouble with his daughter, though, was not ordinary naughtiness but the infuriating way she had of relentlessly pursuing the thread of an argument long after she should have put it down. It always flustered him.
She burst into tears. Smith stood up, angry and embarrassed at himself, and stumped off to the forge.
There was a loud crack, and a thud.
They found him out cold on the floor. Afterwards he always maintained that he'd hit his head on the doorway. Which was odd, because he wasn't very tall and there had always been plenty of room before, but he was certain that whatever happened had nothing to do with the blur of movement from the forge's darkest corner.
Somehow the events set the seal on the day. It became a broken crockery day, a day of people getting under each other's feet and being peevish. Esk's mother dropped a jug that had belonged to her grandmother and a whole box of apples in the loft turned out to be moldy. In the forge the furnace went sullen and refused to draw. Jaims, the oldest son, slipped on the packed ice in the road and hurt his arm. The white cat, or possibly one of its descendants, since the cats led a private and complicated life of their own in the hayloft next to the forge, went and climbed up the chimney in the scullery and refused to come down. Even the sky pressed in like an old mattress, and the air felt stuffy, despite the snow.
Frayed nerves and boredom and bad temper made the air hum like thunderstorm weather.
"Right! That's it. That's just about enough!" shouted Esk's mother. "Cern, you and Gulta and Esk can go and see how Granny is and -where's Esk?"
The two youngest boys looked up from where they were halfheartedly fighting under the table.
"She went out to the orchard," said Gulta. "Again."
"Go and fetch her in, then, and be off."
"But it's cold!"
"It's going to snow again!"
"It's only a mile and the road is clear enough and who was so keen to be out in it when we had the first snowfall? Go on with you, and don't come back till you're in a better temper."
They found Esk sitting in a fork of the big apple tree. The boys didn't like the tree much. For one thing, it was so covered in mistletoe that it looked green even in midwinter, its fruit was small and went from stomach-twisting sourness to wasp-filled rottenness overnight, and although it looked easy enough to climb it had a habit of breaking twigs and dislodging feet at inconvenient moments. Cern once swore that a branch had twisted just to spill him off. But it tolerated Esk, who used to go and sit in it if she was annoyed or fed up or just wanted to be by herself, and the boys sensed that every brother's right to gently torture his sister ended at the foot of its trunk. So they threw a snowball at her. It missed.
"We're going to see old Weatherwax."
"But you don't have to come."
"Because you'll just slow us down and probably cry anyway."
Esk looked down at them solemnly. She didn't cry a lot, it never seemed to achieve much.
"If you don't want me to come then I'll come," she said. This sort of thing passes for logic among siblings.
"Oh, we want you to come," said Gulta quickly.
"Very pleased to hear it," said Esk, dropping on to the packed snow.
They had a basket containing smoked sausages, preserved eggs and - because their mother was prudent as well as generous - a large jar of peach preserve that no one in the family liked very much. She still made it every year when the little wild peaches were ripe, anyway.
The people of Bad Ass had learned to live with the long winter snows and the roads out of the village were lined with boards to reduce drifting and, more important, stop travellers from straying. If they lived locally it wouldn't matter too much if they did, because an unsung genius on the village council several generations previously had come up with the idea of carving markers in every tenth tree in the forest around the village, out to a distance of nearly two miles. It had taken ages, and re-cutting markers was always a job for any man with spare time, but in winters where a blizzard could lose a man within yards of his home many a life had been saved by the pattern of notches found by probing fingers under the clinging snow.
It was snowing again when they left the road and started up the track where, in summer, the witch's house nestled in a riot of raspberry thickets and weird witch-growth.
"No footprints," said Cern.
"Except for foxes," said Gulta. "They say she can turn herself into a fox. Or anything. A bird, even. Anything. That's how she always knows what's going on."
They looked around cautiously. A scruffy crow was indeed watching them from a distant tree stump.
"They say there's a whole family over Crack Peak way that can turn themselves into wolves," said Gulta, who wasn't one to leave a promising subject, "because one night someone shot a wolf and next day their auntie was limping with an arrow wound in her leg, and ....
"I don't think people can turn themselves into animals," said Esk, slowly.
"Oh yes, Miss Clever?"
"Granny is quite big. If she turned herself into a fox what would happen to all the bits that wouldn't fit?"
"She'd just magic them away," said Cern.
"I don't think magic works like that," said Esk. "You can't just make things happen, there's a sort of - like a seesaw thing, if you push one end down, the other end goes up . . . ." Her voice trailed off.
They gave her a look.
"I can't see Granny on a seesaw," said Gulta. Cern giggled.
"No, I mean every time something happens, something else has to happen too - I think," said Esk uncertainly, picking her way around a deeper than usual snowdrift. "Only in the . . . opposite direction."
"That's silly," said Gulta, "because, look, you remember when that fair came last summer and there was a wizard with it and he made all those birds and things appear out of nothing? I mean it just happened, he just said these words and waved his hands, and it just happened. There weren't any seesaws."
"There was a swing," said Cern. "And a thing where you had to throw things at things to win things."
"And you didn't hit anything, Gul."
"Nor did you, you said the things were stuck to the things so you couldn't knock them off, you said . . . ."
Their conversation wandered away like a couple of puppies. Esk listened with half an ear. I know what I mean, she told herself. Magic's easy, you just find the place where everything is balanced and push. Anyone could do it. There's nothing magical about it. All the funny words and waving the hands is just . . . it's only for....
She stopped, surprised at herself. She knew what she meant. The idea was right up there in the front of her mind. But she didn't know how to say it in words, even to herself.
It was a horrible feeling to find things in your head and not know how they fitted. It....
"Come on, we'll be all day."
She shook her head and hurried after her brothers.
The witch's cottage consisted of so many extensions and lean-tos that it was difficult to see what the original building had looked like, or even if there had ever been one. In the summer it was surrounded by dense beds of what Granny loosely called "the Herbs" - strange plants, hairy or squat or twining, with curious flowers or vivid fruits or unpleasantly bulging pods. Only Granny knew what they were all for, and any woodpigeon hungry enough to attack them generally emerged giggling to itself and bumping into things (or, sometimes, never emerged at all.
Now everything was deep under the snow. A forlorn windsock flapped against its pole. Granny didn't hold with flying but some of her friends still used broomsticks.
"It looks deserted," said Cem.
"No smoke," said Gulta.
The windows look like eyes, thought Esk, but kept it to herself.
"It's only Granny's house," she said. "There's nothing wrong."
The cottage radiated emptiness. They could feel it. The windows did look like eyes, black and menacing against the snow. And no one in the Ramtops let their fire go out in the winter, as a matter of pride.
Esk wanted to say "Let's go home," but she knew that if she did the boys would run for it. Instead she said, "Mother says there's a key on a nail in the privy," and that was nearly as bad. Even an ordinary unknown privy held minor terrors like wasps' nests, large spiders, mysterious rustling things in the roof and, one very bad winter, a small hibernating bear that caused acute constipation in the family until it was persuaded to bed down in the haybam. A witch's privy could contain anything.
"I'll go and look, shall I?" she added.
"If you like," said Gulta airily, almost successfully concealing his relief.
In fact, when she managed to get the door open against the piled snow, it was neat and clean and contained nothing more sinister than an old almanac, or more precisely about half an old almanac, carefully hung on a nail. Granny had a philosophical objection to reading, but she'd be the last to say that books, especially books with nice thin pages, didn't have their uses.
The key shared a ledge by the door with a chrysalis and the stump of a candle. Esk took it gingerly, trying not to disturb the chrysalis, and hurried back to the boys.
It was no use trying the front door. Front doors in Bad Ass were used only by brides and corpses, and Granny had always avoided becoming either. Around the back the snow was piled in front of the door and no one had broken the ice on the water butt.
The light was starting to pour out of the sky by the time they dug through to the door and managed to persuade the key to turn.
Inside, the big kitchen was dark and chilly and smelled only of snow. It was always dark, but they were used to seeing a big fire in the wide chimney and smelling the thick fumes of whatever it was she was boiling up this time, which sometimes gave you a headache or made you see things.
They wandered around uncertainly, calling, until Esk decided they couldn't put off going upstairs any longer. The clonk of the thumb-latch on the door to the cramped staircase sounded a lot louder than it ought to.
Granny was on the bed, with her arms tightly folded across her chest. The tiny window had blown open. Fine snow had blown in across the floor and over the bed.
Esk stared at the patchwork quilt under the old woman, because there were times when a little detail could expand and fill the whole world. She barely heard Cern start to cry: she remembered lien father, strangely enough, making the quilt two winters before when the snow was almost as bad and there wasn't much to do in the forge, and how he'd used all kinds of rags that had found their way to Bad Ass from every part of the world, like silk, dilemma leather, water cotton and tharga wool and, of course, since he wasn't much good at sewing either, the result was a rather strange lumpy thing more like a flat tortoise than a quilt, and her mother had generously decided to give it to Granny last Hogswatchnight, and ....
"Is she dead?" asked Gulta, as if Esk was an expert in these things.
Esk stared up at Granny Weatherwax. The old woman's face looked thin and grey. Was that how dead people looked? Shouldn't her chest be going up and down?
Gulta pulled himself together.
"We ought to go and get someone and we ought to go now because it will get dark in a minute," he said flatly. "But Cern will stay here."
His brother looked at him in horror.
"What for?" he said.
"Someone has got to stay with dead people," said Gulta. "Remember when old Uncle Derghart died and Father had to go and sit up with all the candles and things all night? Otherwise something nasty comes and takes your soul off to . . . to somewhere," he ended lamely. "And then people come back and haunt you."
Cern opened his mouth to start to cry again. Esk said hurriedly, "I'll stay. I don't mind. It's only Granny."
Gulta looked at her in relief.
"Light some candles or something," he said. "I think that's what you're supposed to do. And then -"
There was a scratching from the windowsill. A crow had landed, and stood there blinking suspiciously at them. Gulta shouted and threw his hat at it. It flew off with a reproachful caw and he shut the window.
"I've seen it around here before," he said. "I think Granny feeds it. Fed it," he corrected himself. "Anyway, we'll be back with people, we'll be hardly any time. Come on, Ce."
They clattered down the dark stairs. Esk saw them out of the house and bolted the door behind them.
The sun was a red ball above the mountains, and there were already a few early stars out.
She wandered around the dark kitchen until she found a scrap of dip candle and a tinderbox. After a great deal of effort she managed to light the candle and stood it on the table, although it didn't really light the room, it simply peopled the darkness with shadows. Then she found Granny's rocking chair by the cold fireplace, and settled down to wait.
Time passed. Nothing happened.
Then there was a tapping at the window. Esk took up the candle stub and peered through the thick round panes.
A beady yellow eye blinked back at her.
The candle guttered, and went out.
She stood stock still, hardly breathing. The tapping started again, and then stopped. There was a short silence, and then the doorlatch rattled.
Something nasty comes, the boys had said.
She felt her way back across the room until she nearly tripped over the rocking chair, and dragged it back and wedged it as best she could in front of the door. The latch gave a final clonk and went silent.
Esk waited, listening until the silence roared in her ears. Then something started to bang against the little window in the scullery, softly but insistently. After a while it stopped. A moment later it started again in the bedroom above her- a faint scrabbling noise, a claw kind of noise.
Esk felt that bravery was called for, but on a night like this bravery lasted only as long as a candle stayed alight. She felt her way back across the dark kitchen, eyes tightly shut, until she reached the door.
There was a thump from the fireplace as a big lump of soot fell down, and when she heard the desperate scratchings coming from the chimney she slipped the bolts, threw open the door and darted out into the night.
The cold struck like a knife. Frost had put a crust on the snow. She didn't care where she was going, but quiet terror gave her a burning determination to get there as fast as she could.
Inside the cottage the crow landed heavily in the fireplace, surrounded by soot and muttering irritably to itself. It hopped into the shadows, and a moment later there was the bang of the latch of the stairway door and the sound of fluttering on the stairs.
Esk reached up as high as she could and felt around the tree for the marker. This time she was lucky, but the pattern of dots and grooves told her she was over a mile from the village and had been running in the wrong direction.
There was a cheese-rind moon and a sprinkling of stars, small and bright and pitiless. The forest around her was a pattern of black shadows and pale snow and, she was aware, not all the shadows were standing still.
Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, because on some nights their howls echoed down from the high Tops, but they seldom came near the village - the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.
But the weather was hard, and this pack was hungry enough to forget all about natural selection.
Esk remembered what all the children were told. Climb a tree. Light a fire. When all else fails, find a stick and at least hurt them. Never try to outrun them.
The tree behind her was a beech, smooth and unclimbable.
Esk watched a long shadow detach itself from a pool of darkness in front of her, and move a little closer. She knelt down, tired, frightened, unable to think, and scrabbled under the burning-cold snow for a stick.
Granny Weatherwax opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling, which was cracked and bulged like a tent.
She concentrated on remembering that she had arms, not wings, and didn't need to hop. It was always wise to lie down for a bit after a borrow, to let one's mind get used to one's body, but she knew she didn't have the time.
"Drat the child," she muttered, and tried to fly on to the bedrail. The crow, who had been through all this dozens of times before and who considered, insofar as birds can consider anything, which is a very short distance indeed, that a steady diet of bacon rinds and choice kitchen scraps and a warm roost for the night was well worth the occasional inconvenience of letting Granny share its head, watched her with mild interest.
Granny found her boots and thumped down the stairs, sternly resisting the urge to glide. The door was wide open and there was already a drift of fine snow on the floor.
"Oh, bugger," she said. She wondered if it was worth trying to find Esk's mind, but human minds were never so sharp and clear as animal minds and anyway the overmind of the forest itself made impromptu searching as hard as listening for a waterfall in a thunderstorm. But even without looking she could feel the packmind of the wolves, a sharp, rank feeling that filled the mouth with the taste of blood.
She could just make out the small footprints in the crust, half filled with fresh snow. Cursing and muttering, Granny Weatherwax pulled her shawl around her and set out.
The white cat awoke from its private ledge in the forge when it heard the sounds coming from the darkest corner. Smith had carefully shut the big doors behind him when he went off with the nearly-hysterical boys, and the cat watched with interest as a thin shadow prodded at the lock and tested the hinges.
The doors were oak, hardened by heat and time, but that didn't prevent them being blown right across the street.
Smith heard a sound in the sky as he hurried along the track. So did Granny. It was a determined whirring sound, like the flight of geese, and the snowclouds boiled and twisted as it passed.
The wolves heard it, too, as it spun low over the treetops and hurtled down into the clearing. But they heard it far too late.
Granny Weatherwax didn't have to follow the footprints now. She aimed herself for the distant flashes of weird light, the strange swishing and thumping, and the howls of pain and terror. A couple of wolves bolted past her with their ears flattened in grim determination to have it away on their paws no matter what stood in their way.
There was the crackle of breaking branches. Something big and heavy landed in a fir tree by Granny and crashed, whimpering, into the snow. Another wolf passed her in a flat trajectory at about head height and bounced off a tree-trunk.
There was silence.
Granny pushed her way between the snow-covered branches.
She could see that the snow was flattened in a white circle. A few wolves lay at its edges, either dead or wisely deciding to make no move.
The staff stood upright in the snow and Granny got the feeling it was turning to face her as she walked carefully past it.
There was also a small heap in the centre of the circle, curled tightly up inside itself. Granny knelt down with some effort and reached out gently.
The staff moved. It was little more than a tremble, but her hand stopped just before it touched Esk's shoulder. Granny glared up at the wooden carvings, and dared it to move again.
The air thickened. Then the staff seemed to back away while not moving, while at the same time something quite indefinable made it absolutely clear to the old witch that as far as the staff was concerned this -wasn't a defeat, it was merely a tactical consideration, and it wouldn't like her to think she had won in any way, because she hadn't.
Esk gave a shudder. Granny patted her vaguely.
"It's me, little one. It's only old Granny."
The hump didn't uncurl.
Granny bit her lip. She was never quite certain about children, thinking of them - when she thought about them at all - as coming somewhere between animals and people. She understood babies. You put milk in one end and kept the other end as clean as possible. Adults were even easier, because they did the feeding and cleaning themselves. But in between was a world of experience that she had never really enquired about. As far as she was aware, you just tried to stop them catching anything fatal and hoped that it would all turn out all right.
Granny, in fact, was at a loss, but she knew she had to do something.
"Didda nasty wolfie fwiten us, den?" she hazarded.
For quite the wrong reasons, this seemed to work. From the depths of the ball a muffled voice said: "I am eight, you know."
"People who are eight don't curl up in the middle of the snow," said Granny, feeling her way through the intricacies of adult-child conversation.
The ball didn't answer.
"I've probably got some milk and biscuits at home," Granny ventured.
There was no perceptible effect.
"Eskarina Smith, if you don't behave this minute I will give you such a smack!"
Esk poked her head out cautiously.
"There's no need to be like that," she said.
When Smith reached the cottage Granny had just arrived, leading Esk by the hand. The boys peered around from behind him.
"Um," said Smith, not quite aware of how to begin a conversation with someone who was supposed to be dead. "They, um, told me you were - ill." He turned and glared at his sons.
"I was just having a rest and I must have dozed off. I sleeps very sound."
"Yes," said Smith, uncertainly. "Well. All's well, then. What's up with Esk? "
"She took a bit of a fright," said Granny, squeezing the girl's hand. "Shadows and whatnot. She needs a good warm. I was going to put her in my bed, she's a bit mazed, if that's all right with you."
Smith wasn't absolutely sure that it was all right with him. But he was quite sure that his wife, like every other woman in the village, held Granny Weatherwax in solemn regard, even in awe, and that if he started to object he would rapidly get out of his depth.
"Fine, fine," he said, "if it's no trouble. I'll send along for her in the morning, shall I?"
"That's right," said Granny. "I'd invite you in, but there's me without a fire -"
"No, no, that's all right," said Smith hurriedly. "I've got my supper waiting. Drying up," he added, looking down at Gulta, who opened his mouth to say something and wisely thought better of it.
When they had gone, with the sound of the two boys' protests ringing out among the trees, Granny opened the door, pushed Esk inside, and bolted it behind them. She took a couple of candles from her store above the dresser and lit them. Then she pulled some old but serviceable wool blankets, still smelling of anti-moth herbs, from an old chest, wrapped Esk in them and sat her in the rocking chair.
She got down on her knees, to an accompaniment of clicks and grunts, and started to lay the fire. It was a complicated business involving dry fungus punk, wood shavings, bits of split twig and much puffing and swearing.
Esk said: "You don't have to do it like that, Granny."
Granny stiffened, and looked at the fireback. It was a rather nice one Smith had cast for her, years ago, with an owl-and-bat motif. Currently, though, she wasn't interested in the design.
"Oh yes?" she said, her voice dead-level. "You know of a better way, do you?"
"You could magic it alight."
Granny paid great attention to arranging bits of twig on the reluctant flames.
"How would I do that, pray?" she said, apparently addressing her remarks to the fireback.
"Er," said Esk, "I . . . I can't remember. But you must know anyway, don't you? Everyone knows you can do magic."
"There's magic," said Granny, "and then again, there's magic. The important thing, my girl, is to know what magic is for and what it isn't for. And you can take it from me, it was never intended for lighting fires, you can be absolutely certain of that. If the Creator had meant us to use magic for lighting fires, then he wouldn't have given us - er, matches."
"But could you light a fire with magic?" said Esk, as Granny slung an ancient black kettle on its hook. "I mean, if you wanted to. If it was allowed."
"Maybe," said Granny, who couldn't: fire had no mind, it wasn't alive, and they were two of the three reasons.
"You could light it much better."
"If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly," said Granny, fleeing into aphorisms, the last refuge of an adult under siege.
"Yes, but -"
"But me no buts."
Granny rummaged in a dark wooden box on the dresser. She prided herself on her unrivalled knowledge of the properties of Ramtops herbage - none knew better than she the many uses of Earwort, Maiden's Wish and Love-Lies-Oozing - but there were times when she had to resort to her small stock of jealously traded and carefully hoarded medicines from Forn Parts (which as far as she was concerned was anywhere further than a day's journey) to achieve the desired effect.
She shredded some dry red leaves into a mug, topped it up with honey and hot water from the kettle, and pushed it into Esk's hands. Then she put a large round stone under the grate later on, wrapped in a scrap of blanket, it would make a bedwarmer and, with a stern injunction to the girl not to stir from the chair, went out into the scullery.
Esk drummed her heels on the chair legs and sipped the drink. It had a strange, peppery taste. She wondered what it was. She'd tasted Granny's brews before, of course, with a greater or lesser amount of honey in them depending on whether she thought you were making too much of a fuss, and Esk knew that she was famous throughout the mountains for special potions for illnesses that her mother - and some young women too, once in a while -just hinted at with raised eyebrows and lowered voices ....
When Granny came back she was asleep. She didn't remember being put to bed, or Granny bolting the windows.
Granny Weatherwax went back downstairs and pulled her rocking chair closer to the fire.
There was something there, she told herself, lurking away in the child's mind. She didn't like to think about what it was, but she remembered what had happened to the wolves. And all that about lighting fires with magic. Wizards did that, it was one of the first things they learned.
Granny sighed. There was only one way to be sure, and she was getting rather old for this sort of thing.
She picked up the candle and went out through the scullery into the lean-to that housed her goats. They watched her without fear, each sitting in its pen like a furry blob, three mouths working rhythmically on the day's hay. The air smelled warm and slightly flatulent.
Up in the rafters was a small owl, one of a number of creatures who found that living with Granny was worth the occasional inconvenience. It came to her hand at a word, and she stroked its bullet head thoughtfully as she looked for somewhere comfortable to lie. A pile of hay it would have to be.
She blew out the candle and lay back, with the owl perched on her finger.
The goats chewed, burped and swallowed their way through their cozy night. They made the only sound in the building.
Granny's body stilled. The owl felt her enter its mind, and graciously made room. Granny knew she would regret this, Borrowing twice in one day would leave her good for nothing in the morning, and with a terrible desire to eat mice. Of course, when she was younger she thought nothing of it, running with the stags, hunting with the foxes, learning the strange dark ways of the moles, hardly spending a night in her own body. But it was getting harder now, especially coming back. Maybe the time would come when she couldn't get back, maybe the body back home would be so much dead flesh, and maybe that wouldn't be such a bad way of it, at that.
This was the sort of thing wizards could never know. If it occurred to them to enter a creature's mind they'd do it like a thief, not out of wickedness but because it simply wouldn't occur to them to do it any other way, the daft buggers. And what good would it do to take over an owl's body? You couldn't fly, you needed to spend a lifetime learning. But the gentle way was to ride in its mind, steering it as gently as a breeze stirs a leaf.
The owl stirred, fluttered up on to the little windowsill, and glided silently into the night.
The clouds had cleared and the thin moon made the mountains gleam. Granny peered out through owl eyes as she sped silently between the ranks of trees. This was the only way to travel, once a body had the way of it! She liked Borrowing birds best of all, using them to explore the high, hidden valleys where no one went, the secret lakes between black cliffs, the tiny walled fields on the scraps of flat ground, tucked on the sheer rock faces, that were the property of hidden and secretive beings. Once she had ridden with the geese that passed over the mountains every spring and autumn, and had got the shock of her life when she nearly went beyond range of returning.
The owl broke out of the forest and skimmed across the rooftops of the village, alighting in a shower of snow on the biggest apple tree in Smith's orchard. It was heavy with mistletoe.
She knew she was right as soon as her claws touched the bark. The tree resented her, she could feel it trying to push her away.
I'm not going, she thought.
In the silence of the night the tree said, Bully me, then, just because I'm a tree. Typical woman.
At least you're useful now, thought Granny. Better a tree than a wizard, eh?
It's not such a bad life, thought the tree. Sun. Fresh air. Time to think. Bees, too, in the spring.
There was something lascivious about the way the tree said "bees" that quite put Granny, who had several hives, off the idea of honey. It was like being reminded that eggs were unborn chickens.
I've come about the girl, Esk, she hissed.
A promising child, thought the tree, I'm watching her with interest. She likes apples, too.
You beast, said Granny, shocked.
What did I say? Pardon me for not breathing, I'm sure.
Granny sidled closer to the trunk.
You must let her go, she thought. The magic is starting to come through.
Already? I'm impressed, said the tree.
It's the wrong sort of magic!, screeched Granny. It's wizard magic, not women's magic! She doesn't know what it is yet, but it killed a dozen wolves tonight!
Great! said the tree. Granny hooted with rage.
Great? Supposing she had been arguing with her brothers, and lost her temper, eh?
The tree shrugged. Snowflakes cascaded from its branches.
Then you must train her, it said.
Train? What do I know from training wizards!
Then send her to university.
She's female!, hooted Granny, bouncing up and down on her branch.
Well? Who says women can't be wizards?
Granny hesitated. The tree might as well have asked why fish couldn't be birds. She drew a deep breath, and started to speak. And stopped. She knew a cutting, incisive, withering and above all a self-evident answer existed. It was just that, to her extreme annoyance, she couldn't quite bring it to mind.
Women have never been wizards. It's against nature. You might as well say that witches can be men.
If you define a witch as one who worships the pancreative urge, that is, venerates the basic - the tree began, and continued for several minutes. Granny Weatherwax listened in impatient annoyance to phrases like Mother Goddesses and primitive moon worship and told herself that she was well aware of what being a witch was all about, it was about herbs and curses and flying around of nights and generally keeping on the right side of tradition, and it certainly didn't involve mixing with goddesses, mothers or otherwise, who apparently got up to some very questionable tricks. And when the tree started talking about dancing naked she tried not to listen, because although she was aware that somewhere under her complicated strata of vests and petticoats there was some skin, that didn't mean to say she approved of it.
The tree finished its monologue.
Granny waited until she was quite sure that it wasn't going to add anything, and said, That's witchcraft, is it?
Its theoretical basis, yes.
You wizards certainly get some funny ideas.
The tree said, Not a wizard anymore, just a tree.
Granny ruffled her feathers.
Well, just you listen to me, Mr. so-called Theoretical Basis Tree, if women were meant to be wizards they'd be able to grow long white beards and she is not going to be a wizard, is that quite clear, wizardry is not the way to use magic, do you hear, it's nothing but lights and fire and meddling with power and she'll be having no part of it and good night to you.
The owl swooped away from the branch. It was only because it would interfere with the flying that Granny wasn't shaking with rage. Wizards! They talked too much and pinned spells down in books like butterflies but, worst of all, they thought theirs was the only magic worth practicing.
Granny was absolutely certain of one thing. Women had never been wizards, and they weren't about to start now.
She arrived back at the cottage in the pale shank of the night. Her body, at least, was rested after its slumber in the hay, and Granny had hoped to spend a few hours in the rocking chair, putting her thoughts in order. This was the time, when night wasn't quite over but day hadn't quite begun, when thoughts stood out bright and clear and without disguise. She....
The staff was leaning against the wall, by the dresser.
Granny stood quite still.
"I see", she said at last. "So that's the way of it, is it? In my own house, too?"
Moving very slowly, she walked over to the inglenook, threw a couple of split logs on to the embers of the fire, and pumped the bellows until the flames roared up the chimney.
When she was satisfied she turned, muttered a few precautionary protective spells under her breath, and grabbed the staff. It didn't resist; she nearly fell over. But now she had it in her hands, and felt the tingle of it, the distinctive thunderstorm crackle of the magic in it, and she laughed.
It was as simple as this, then. There was no fight in it now.
Calling down a curse upon wizards and all their works she raised the staff above her head and brought it down with a clang across the firedogs, over the hottest part of the fire.
Esk screamed. The sound bounced down through the bedroom floorboards and scythed through the dark cottage.
Granny was old and tired and not entirely clear about things after a long day, but to survive as a witch requires an ability to jump to very large conclusions and as she stared at the staff in the flames and heard the scream her hands were already reaching for the big black kettle. She upended it over the fire, dragged the staff out of the cloud of steam, and ran upstairs, dreading what she might see.
Esk was sitting up in the narrow bed, unsinged but shrieking. Granny took the child in her arms and tried to comfort her; she wasn't sure how one went about it, but a distracted patting on the back and vague reassuring noises seemed to work, and the screams became wails and, eventually, sobs. Here and there Granny could pick out words like "fire" and "hot", and her mouth set in a thin, bitter line.
Finally she settled the child down, tucked her in, and crept quietly down stairs.
The staff was back against the wall. She was not surprised to see that the fire hadn't marked it at all.
Granny turned her rocking chair to face it, and sat down with her chin in her hand and an expression of grim determination.
Presently the chair began to rock, of its own accord. It was the only sound in a silence that thickened and spread and filled the room like a terrible dark fog.
Next morning, before Esk got up, Granny hid the staff in the thatch, well out of harm's way.
Esk ate her breakfast and drank a pint of goat's milk without the least sign of the events of the last twenty-four hours. It was the first time she had been inside Granny's cottage for more than a brief visit, and while the old woman washed the dishes and milked the goats she made the most of her implied license to explore.
She found that life in the cottage wasn't entirely straightforward. There was the matter of the goats' names, for example.
"But they've got to have names!" she said. "Everything's got a name."
Granny looked at her around the pear-shaped flanks of the head nanny, while the milk squirted into the low pail.
"I daresay they've got names in Goat," she said vaguely. "What do they want names in Human for?"
"Well," said Esk, and stopped. She thought for a bit. "How do you make them do what you want, then?"
"They just do, and when they want me they holler."
Esk gravely gave the head goat a wisp of hay. Granny watched her thoughtfully. Goats did have names for themselves, she well knew: there was "goat who is my kid", "goat who is my mother", "goat who is herd leader", and half a dozen other names not least of which was "goat who is this goat". They had a complicated herd system and four stomachs and a digestive system that sounded very busy on still nights, and Granny had always felt that calling all this names like Buttercup was an insult to a noble animal.
"Esk? " she said, making up her mind.
"Yes?"
"What would you like to be when you grow up?"
Esk looked blank. "Don't know."
"Well," said Granny, her hands still milking, "what do you think you will do when you are grown up?"
"Don't know. Get married, I suppose."
"Do you want to?"
Esk's lips started to shape themselves around the D, but she caught Granny's eye and stopped, and thought.
"All the grown ups I know are married," she said at last, and thought some more. "Except you," she added, cautiously.
"That's true," said Granny.
"Didn't you want to get married?"
It was Granny's turn to think.
"Never got around to it," she said at last. "Too many other things to do, you see."
"Father says you're a witch," said Esk, chancing her arm.
"I am that."
Esk nodded. In the Ramtops witches were accorded a status similar to that which other cultures gave to nuns, or tax collectors, or cesspit cleaners. That is to say, they were respected, sometimes admired, generally applauded for doing a job which logically had to be-done, but people never felt quite comfortable in the same room with them.
Granny said, "Would you like to learn the witching?"
"Magic, you mean?" asked Esk, her eyes lighting up.
"Yes, magic. But not firework magic. Real magic."
"Can you fly?"
"There's better things than flying."
"And I can learn them?"
"If your parents say yes."
Esk sighed. "My father won't."
"Then I shall have a word with him," said Granny.
"Now you just listen to me, Gordo Smith!"
Smith backed away across his forge, hands half-raised to ward off the old woman's fury. She advanced on him, one finger stabbing the air righteously.
"I brought you into the world, you stupid man, and you've got no more sense in you now than you had then -"
"But -" Smith tried, dodging around the anvil.
"The magic's found her! Wizard magic! Wrong magic, do you understand? It was never intended for her!"
"Yes, but -"
"Have you any idea of what it can do?"
Smith sagged. "No."
Granny paused, and deflated a little.
"No," she repeated, more softly. "No, you wouldn't."
She sat down on the anvil and tried to think calm thoughts.
"Look. Magic has a sort of - life of its own. That doesn't matter, because - anyway, you see, wizard magic -" she looked up at his big, blank expression and tried again. "Well, you know cider?"
Smith nodded. He felt he was on firmer ground here, but he wasn't certain of where it was going to lead.
"And then there's the ticker. Applejack," said the witch. The smith nodded. Everyone in Bad Ass made applejack in the winter, by leaving cider tubs outside overnight and taking out the ice until a tiny core of alcohol was left.
"Well, you can drink lots of cider and you just feel better and that's it, isn't it?"
The smith nodded again.
"But applejack, you drink that in little mugs and you don't drink a lot and you don't drink it often, because it goes right to your head?"
The smith nodded again and, aware that he wasn't making a major contribution to the dialogue, added, "That's right."
"That's the difference," said Granny.
"The difference from what?"
Granny sighed. "The difference between witch magic and wizard magic," she said. "And it's found her, and if she doesn't control it, then there are those who will control her. Magic can be a sort of door, and there are unpleasant things on the other side. Do you understand?"
The smith nodded. He didn't really understand, but he correctly surmised that if he revealed this fact Granny would start going into horrible details.
"She's strong in her mind and it might take a while," said Granny. "But sooner or later they'll challenge her."
Smith picked up a hammer from his bench, looked at it as though he had never seen it before, and put it down again.
"But," he said, "if it's wizard magic she's got, learning witchery won't be any good, will it? You said they're different."
"They're both magic. If you can't learn to ride an elephant, you can at least learn to ride a horse."
"What's an elephant?"
"A kind of badger," said Granny. She hadn't maintained forest credibility for forty years by ever admitting ignorance.
The blacksmith sighed. He knew he was beaten. His wife had made it clear that she favored the idea and, now that he came to think about it, there were some advantages. After all, Granny wouldn't last forever, and being father to the area's only witch might not be too bad, at that.
"All right," he said.
And so, as the winter turned and started the long, reluctant climb towards spring, Esk spent days at a time with Granny Weatherwax, learning witch craft.
It seemed to consist mainly of things to remember.
The lessons were quite practical. There was cleaning the kitchen table and Basic Herbalism. There was mucking out the goats and The Uses of Fungi. There was doing the washing and The Summoning of the Small Gods. And there was always tending the big copper still in the scullery and The Theory and Practice of Distillation. By the time the warm Rim winds were blowing, and the snow remained only as little streaks of slush on the Hub side of trees, Esk knew how to prepare a range of ointments, several medicinal brandies, a score of special infusions, and a number of mysterious potions that Granny said she might learn the use of in good time.
What she hadn't done was any magic at all.
"All in good time," repeated Granny vaguely.
"But I'm supposed to be a witch!"
"You're not a witch yet. Name me three herbs good for the bowels."
Esk put her hands behind her back, closed her eyes, and said: "The flowering tops of Greater Peahane, the root pith of Old Man's Trousers, the stems of the Bloodwater Lily, the seedcases of -"
"All right. Where may water gherkins be found?"
"Peat bogs and stagnant pools, from the months of -"
"Good. You're learning."
"But it's not magic!"
Granny sat down at the kitchen table.
"Most magic isn't," she said. "It's just knowing the right herbs, and learning to watch the weather, and finding out the ways of animals. And the ways of people, too."
"That's all it is!" said Esk, horrified.
"All? It's a pretty big all," said Granny, "But no, it isn't all. There's other stuff."
"Can't you teach me?"
"All in good time. There's no call to go showing yourself yet."
"Showing myself? Who to?"
Granny's eyes darted towards the shadows in the corners of the room.
"Never you mind."
Then even the last lingering tails of snow had gone and the spring gales roared around the mountains. The air in the forest began to smell of leaf mould and turpentine. A few early flowers braved the night frosts, and the bees started to fly.
"Now bees," said Granny Weatherwax, "is real magic."
She carefully lifted the lid of the first hive.
"Your bees," she went on, "is your mead, your wax, your bee gum, your honey. A wonderful thing is your bee. Ruled by a queen, too," she added, with a touch of approval.
"Don't they sting you?" said Esk, standing back a little. Bees boiled out of the comb and overflowed the rough wooden sides of the box.
"Hardly ever," said Granny. "You wanted magic. Watch."
She put a hand into the struggling mass of insects and made a shrill, faint piping noise at the back of her throat. There was a movement in the mass, and a large bee, longer and fatter than the others, crawled on to her hand. A few workers followed it, stroking it and generally ministering to it.
"How did you do that?" said Esk.
"Ah," said Granny, "Wouldn't you like to know?"
"Yes. I would. That's why I asked, Granny," said Esk, severely.
"Do you think I used magic?"
Esk looked down at the queen bee. She looked up at the witch. "No," she said, "I think you just know a lot about bees."
Granny grinned.
"Exactly correct. That's one form of magic, of course."
"What, just knowing things?"
"Knowing things that other people don't know," said Granny. She carefully dropped the queen back among her subjects and closed the lid of the hive.
"And I think it's time you learned a few secrets," she added.
At last, thought Esk.
"But first, we must pay our respects to the Hive," said Granny. She managed to sound the capital H.
Without thinking, Esk bobbed a curtsey.
Granny's hand clipped the back of her head.
"Bow, I told you," she said, without rancor. "Witches bow." She demonstrated.
"But why?" complained Esk.
"Because witches have got to be different, and that's part of the secret," said Granny.
They sat on a bleached bench in front of the rimward wall of the cottage. In front of them the Herbs were already a foot high, a sinister collection of pale green leaves.
"Right," said Granny, settling herself down. "You know the hat on the hook by the door? Go and fetch it."
Esk obediently went inside and unhooked Granny's hat. It was tall, pointed and, of course, black.
Granny turned it over in her hands and regarded it carefully.
"Inside this hat," she said solemnly, "is one of the secrets of witchcraft. If you cannot tell me what it is, then I might as well teach you no more, because once you learn the secret of the hat there is no going back. Tell me what you know about the hat."
"Can I hold it?"
"Be my guest."
Esk peered inside the hat. There was some wire stiffening to give it a shape, and a couple of hatpins. That was all.
There was nothing particularly strange about it, except that no one in the village had one like it. But that didn't make it magical. Esk bit her lip; she had a vision of herself being sent home in disgrace.
It didn't feel strange, and there were no hidden pockets. It was just a typical witch's hat. Granny always wore it when she went into the village, but in the forest she just wore a leather hood.
She tried to recall the bits of lessons that Granny grudgingly doled out. It isn't what you know, it's what other people don't know. Magic can be something right in the wrong place, or something wrong in the right place. It can be
Granny always wore it to the village. And the big black cloak, which certainly wasn't magical, because for most of the winter it had been a goat blanket and Granny washed it in the spring.
Esk began to feel the shape of the answer and she didn't like it much. It was like a lot of Granny's answers. Just a word trick. She just said things you knew all the time, but in a different way so they sounded important.
"I think I know," she said at last.
"Out with it, then."
"It's in sort of two parts."
"Well?"
"It's a witch's hat because you wear it. But you're a witch because you wear the hat. Um."
"So -"prompted Granny.
"So people see you coming in the hat and the cloak and they know you're a witch and that's why your magic works?" said Esk.
"That's right," said Granny. "It's called headology." She tapped her silver hair, which was drawn into a tight bun that could crack rocks.
"But it's not real!" Esk protested. "That's not magic, it's it's -"
"Listen," said Granny, "If you give someone a bottle of red jollop for their wind it may work, right, but if you want it to work for sure then you let their mind make it work for them. Tell 'em it's moonbeams bottled in fairy wine or something. Mumble over it a bit. It's the same with cursing."
"Cursing?" said Esk, weakly.
"Aye, cursing, my girl, and no need to look so shocked! You'll curse, when the need comes. When you're alone, and there's no help to hand, and -"
She hesitated and, uncomfortably aware of Esk's questioning eyes, finished lamely: "- and people aren't showing respect. Make it loud, make it complicated, make it long, and make it up if you have to, but it'll work all right. Next day, when they hit their thumb or they fall off a ladder or their dog drops dead, they'll remember you. They'll behave better next time."
"But it still doesn't seem like magic," said Esk, scuffing the dust with her feet.
"I saved a man's life once," said Granny. "Special medicine, twice a day. Boiled water with a bit of berry juice in it. Told him I'd bought it from the dwarves. That's the biggest part of doct'rin, really. Most people'll get over most things if they put their minds to it, you just have to give them an interest."
She patted Esk's hand as nicely as possible. "You're a bit young for this," she said, "but as you grow older you'll find most people don't set foot outside their own heads much. You too," she added gnomically.
"I don't understand."
"I'd be very surprised if you did," said Granny briskly, "but you can tell me five herbs suitable for dry coughs."
Spring began to unfold in earnest. Granny started taking Esk on long walks that took all day, to hidden ponds or high on to the mountain scree to collect rare plants. Esk enjoyed that, high on the hills where the sun beat down strongly but the air was nevertheless freezing cold. Plants grew thickly and hugged the ground. From some of the highest peaks she could see all the way to the Rim Ocean that ran around the edge of the world; in the other direction the Ramtops marched into the distance, wrapped in eternal winter. They went all the way to the hub of the world where, it was generally agreed, the Gods lived on a ten-mile high mountain of rock and ice.
"Gods are all right," said Granny, as they ate their lunch and looked at the view. "You don't bother gods, and gods don't come bothering you."
"Do you know many gods?"
"I've seen the thundergods a few times," said Granny, "and Hoki, of course."
"Hold? "
Granny chewed a crustless sandwich. "Oh, he's a nature god," she said. "Sometimes he manifests himself as an oak tree, or half a man and half a goat, but mainly I see him in his aspect as a bloody nuisance. You only find him in the deep woods, of course. He plays the flute. Very badly, if you must know."
Esk lay on her stomach and looked out across the lands below while a few hardy, self-employed bumblebees patrolled the thyme clusters. The sun was warm on her back but, up here, there were still drifts of snow on the hubside of rocks.
"Tell me about the lands down there," she said lazily.
Granny peered disapprovingly at ten thousand miles of landscape.
"They're just other places," she said. "Just like here, only different."
"Are there cities and things?"
"Idaresay."
"Haven't you ever been to look?"
Granny sat back, gingerly arranging her skirt to expose several inches of respectable flannelette to the sun, and let the heat caress her old bones.
"No," she said. "There's quite enough troubles around here without going to look for them in forn parts."
"I dreamed of a city once," said Esk. "It had hundreds of people in it, and there was this building with big gates, and they were magical gates -"
A sound like tearing cloth came from behind her. Granny had fallen asleep.
"Granny! "
"Mhnf?"
Esk thought for a moment. "Are you having a good time?" she said artfully.
"Mnph."
"You said you'd show me some real magic, all in good time," said Esk, "and this is a good time."
"Mnph."
Granny Weatherwax opened her eyes and looked straight up at the sky; it was darker up here, more purple than blue. She thought: why not? She's a quick learner. She knows more herblore than I do. At her age old Gammer Tumult had me Borrowing and Shifting and Sending all the hours of the day. Maybe I'm being too cautious.
"Just a bit?" pleaded Esk.
Granny turned it over in her mind. She couldn't think of any more excuses. I'm surely going to regret this, she told herself, displaying considerable foresight.
"All right," she said shortly.
"Real magic?" said Esk. "Not more herbs or headology?"
"Real magic, as you call it, yes."
"A spell?"
"No. A Borrowing."
Esk's face was a picture of expectation. She looked more alive, it seemed to Granny, than she had ever been before.
Granny looked over the valleys stretching out before them until she found what she was after. A grey eagle was circling lazily over a distant blue-hazed patch of forest. Its mind was currently at ease. It would do nicely.
She Called it gently, and it began to circle towards them.
"The first thing to remember about Borrowing is that you must be comfortable and somewhere safe," she said, smoothing out the grass behind her. "Bed's best."
"But what is Borrowing?"
"Lie down and hold my hand. Do you see the eagle up there?"
Esk squinted into the dark, hot sky.
There were . . . two doll figures on the grass below as she pivoted on the wind ....
She could feel the whip and wire of the air through her feathers. Because the eagle was not hunting, but simply enjoying the feel of the sun on its wings, the land below was a mere unimportant shape. But the air, the air was a complex, changing three-dimensional thing, an interlocked pattern of spirals and curves that stretched away into the distance, a switchback of currents built around thermal pillars. She . . .
. . . felt a gentle pressure restraining her.
"The next thing to remember, " said Granny's voice, very close, "is not to upset the owner. If you let it know you're there it'll either fight you or panic, and you won't stand a chance either way. It's had a lifetime of being an eagle, and you haven't."
Esk said nothing.
"You're not frightened, are you?" said Granny. "It can take you that way the first time, and -"
"I'm not frightened," said Esk, and "How do I control it?"
"You don't. Not yet. Anyway, controlling a truly wild creature isn't easily learned. You have to - sort of suggest to it that it might feel inclined to do things. With a tame animal, of course, it's all different. But you can't make any creature do anything that is totally against its nature. Now try and find the eagle's mind."
Esk could sense Granny as a diffuse silver cloud at the back of her own mind. After some searching she found the eagle. She almost missed it. Its mind was small, sharp and purple, like an arrowhead. It was concentrating entirely on flying, and took no notice of her.
"Good," said Granny approvingly. "We're not going to go far. If you want to make it turn, you must -"
"Yes, yes," said Esk. She flexed her fingers, wherever they were, and the bird leaned against the air and turned.
"Very good," said Granny, taken aback. "How did you do that?"
"I - don't know. It just seemed obvious."
"Hmph." Granny gently tested the tiny eagle mind. It was still totally oblivious of its passengers. She was genuinely impressed, a very rare occurrence.
They floated over the mountain, while Esk excitedly explored the eagle's senses. Granny's voice droned through her consciousness, giving instructions and guidance and warnings. She listened with half an ear. It sounded far too complicated. Why couldn't she take over the eagle's mind? It wouldn't hurt it.
She could see how to do it, it was just a knack, like snapping your fingers - which in fact she had never managed to achieve - and then she'd be able to experience flying for real, not at second hand.
Then she could
"Don't," said Granny calmly. "No good will come of it."
"What?"
"Do you really think you're the first, my girl? Do you think we haven't all thought what a fine thing it would be, to take on another body and tread the wind or breathe the water? And do you really think it would be as easy as that?"
Esk glowered at her.
"No need to look like that," said Granny. "You'll thank me one day. Don't you start playing around before you know what you're about, eh? Before you get up to tricks you've got to learn what to do if things go wrong. Don't try to walk before you can run."
"I can feel how to do it, Granny."
"That's as maybe. It's harder than it seems, is Borrowing, although I'll grant you've got a knack. That's enough for today, bring us in over ourselves and I'll show you how to Return."
The eagle beat the air over the two recumbent forms and Esk saw, in her mind's eye, two channels open for them. Granny's mindshape vanished.
Now
Granny had been wrong. The eagle mind barely fought, and didn't have time to panic. Esk held it wrapped in her own mind It writhed for an instant, and then melted into leer.
Granny opened her eyes in time to see the bird give a hoarse cry of triumph, curve down low over the grass-grown scree, and skim away down the mountainside. For a moment it was a vanishing dot and then it had gone, leaving only another echoing shriek.
Granny looked down at Esk's silent form. The girl was light enough, but it was a long way home and the afternoon was dwindling.
"Drat," she said, with no particular emphasis. She stood up, brushed herself down and, with a grunt of effort, hauled Esk's inert body over her shoulder.
High in the crystal sunset air above the mountains the eagle Esk sought more height, drunk with the sheer vitality of flight.
On the way home Granny met a hungry bear. Granny's back was giving her gyp, and she was in no mood to be growled at. She muttered a few words under her breath and the bear, to its brief amazement, walked heavily into a tree and didn't regain consciousness for several hours.
When she reached the cottage Granny put Esk's body to bed and drew up the fire. She brought the goats in and milked them, and finished the chores of the evening.
She made sure all the windows were open and, when it began to grow dark, lit a lantern and put it on the windowsill.
Granny Weatherwax didn't sleep more than a few hours a night, as a rule, and woke again at midnight. The room hadn't changed, although the lantern had its own little solar system of very stupid moths.
When she woke again at dawn the candle had long burned down and Esk was still sleeping the shallow, unwakable sleep of the Borrower.
When she took the goats out to their paddock she looked intently at the sky.
Noon came, and gradually the light drained out of another day. She paced the floor of the kitchen aimlessly. Occasionally she would throw herself into frantic bouts of housework; ancient crusts were unceremoniously dug out of the cracks in the flagstones, and the fireback was scraped free of the winter's soot and blackleaded to within an inch of its life. A nest of mice in the back of the dresser were kindly but firmly ejected into the goatshed.
Sunset came.
The light of the Discworld was old and slow and heavy. From the cottage door Granny watched as it drained off the mountains, flowing in golden rivers through the forest. Here and there it pooled in hollows until it faded and vanished.
She drummed her fingers sharply on the doorpost, humming a small and bitter little tune.
Dawn came, and the cottage was empty except for Esk's body, silent and unmoving on the bed.
But as the golden light flowed slowly across the Discworld like the first freshing of the tide over mudflats the eagle circled higher into the dome of heaven, beating the air down with slow and powerful wingbeats.
The whole of the world was spread out beneath Esk - all the continents, all the islands, all the rivers and especially the great ring of the Rim Ocean.
There was nothing else up here, not even sound.
Esk gloried in the feel of it, willing her flagging muscles into greater effort. But something was wrong. Her thoughts seemed to be chasing around beyond her control, and disappearing. Pain and exhilaration and weariness poured into her mind, but it was as if other things were spilling out at the same time. Memories dwindled away on the wind. As fast as she could latch on to a thought it evaporated, leaving nothing behind.
She was losing chunks of herself, and she couldn't remember. what she was losing. She panicked, burrowing back to the things she was sure of ....
I am Esk, and I have stolen the body of an eagle and the feel of
wind in feathers, the hunger, the search of the not-sky
below ....
She tried again. I am Esk and seeking the windpath, the pain of muscle, the cut of the air, the cold of it ....
I am Esk high over air-damp-wet-white, above everything, the sky is thin ....
I am I am.
Granny was in the garden, among the beehives, the early morning wind whipping at her skirts. She went from hive to hive, tapping on their roofs. Then, in the thickets of borage and beebalm that she had planted around them, she stood with her arms outstretched in front of her and sang something in tones so high that no normal person could have heard them.
But a roar went up from the hives, and then the air was suddenly thick with the heavy, big-eyed, deep-voiced shapes of drone bees. They circled over her head, adding their own bass humming to her chant.
Then they were gone, soaring into the growing light over the clearing and streaming away over the trees.
It is well known- at least, it is well known to witches - that all colonies of bees are, as it were, just one part of the creature called the Swarm, in the same way that individual bees are component cells of the hivemind. Granny didn't mingle her thoughts with the bees very often, partly because insect minds were strange, alien things that tasted of tin, but mostly because she suspected that the Swarm was a good deal more intelligent than she was.
She knew that the drones would soon reach the wild bee colonies in the deep forest, and within hours every corner of the mountain meadows would be under very close scrutiny indeed. All she could do was wait.
At noon the drones returned, and Granny read in the sharp acid thoughts of the hivemind that there was no sign of Esk.
She went back into the cool of the cottage and sat down in the rocking chair, staring at the doorway.
She knew what the next step was. She hated the very idea of it. But she fetched a short ladder, climbed up creakily on to the roof, and pulled the staff from its hiding place in the thatch.
It was icy cold. It steamed.
"Above the snowline, then," said Granny.
She climbed down, and rammed the staff into a flowerbed. She glared at it. She had a nasty feeling that it was glaring back.
"Don't think you've won, because you haven't," she snapped. "It's just that I haven't got the time to mess around. You must know where she is. I command you to take me to her!"
The staff regarded her woodenly.
"By -" Granny paused, her invocations were a little rusty, "- by stock and stone I order it!"
Activity, movement, liveliness - all these words would be completely inaccurate descriptions of the staff's response.
Granny scratched her chin. She remembered the little lesson all children get taught: what's the magic word?
"Please?" she suggested.
The staff trembled, rose a little way out of the ground, and turned in the air so that it hung invitingly at waist height.
Granny had heard that broomsticks were once again very much the fashion among younger witches, but she didn't hold with it. There was no way a body could look respectable while hurtling through the air aboard a household implement. Besides, it looked decidedly draughty.
But this was no time for respectability. Pausing only to snatch her hat from its hook behind the door she scrambled up on to the staff and perched as best she could, sidesaddle of course, and with her skirts firmly gripped between her knees.
"Right," she said. "Now wha-aaaaaaaaa -"
Across the forest animals broke and scattered as the shadow passed overhead, crying and cursing. Granny clung on with whitened knuckles, her thin legs kicking wildly as, high above the treetops, she learned important lessons about centres of gravity and air turbulence. The staff shot onwards, heedless of her yells.
By the time it had come out over the upland meadows she had come to terms with it somewhat, which meant that she could just about hang on with knees and hands provided she didn't mind being upside down. Her hat, at least, was useful, being aerodynamically shaped.
The staff plunged between black cliffs and along high bare valleys where, it was said, rivers of ice had once flowed in the days of the ice Giants. The air became thin and sharp in the throat.
They came to an abrupt halt over a snowdrift. Granny fell off, and lay panting in the snow while she tried to remember why she was going through all this.
There was a bundle of feathers under an overhang a few feet away. As Granny approached it a head rose jerkily, and the eagle glared at her with fierce, frightened eyes. It tried to fly, and toppled over. When she reached out to touch it, it took a neat triangle of flesh out of her hand.
"I see," said Granny quietly, to no one in particular. She looked around, and found a boulder of about the right size. She disappeared behind it for a few seconds, fox the sake of respectability, and reappeared with a petticoat in her hand. The bird thrashed around, ruining several weeks of meticulous petitpoint embroidery, but she managed to bundle it up and hold it so that she could avoid its sporadic lunges.
Granny turned to the staff, which was now upright in the snowdrift.
"I shall walk back," she told it coldly.
It turned out that they were in a spur valley overlooking a drop of several hundred feet on to sharp black rocks.
"Very well, then," she conceded, "but you're to fly slowly, d'you understand? And no going high."
In fact, because she was slightly more experienced and perhaps because the staff was taking more care, too, the ride back was almost sedate. Granny was almost persuaded that, given time, she could come to merely dislike flying, instead of loathing it. What it needed was some way of stopping yourself from having to look at the ground.
The eagle sprawled on the rag rug in front of the empty hearth. It had drunk some water, over which Granny had mumbled a few of the charms she normally said to impress patients, but you never knew, there might be some power in them, and it had also gulped a few strips of raw meat.
What it had not done was display the least sign of intelligence.
She wondered whether she had the right bird. She risked another pecking and stared hard into its evil orange eyes, and tried to convince herself that way down in their depths, almost beyond sight, was a strange little flicker.
She probed around inside its head. The eagle mind was still there right enough, vivid and sharp, but there was something else. Mind, of course, has no colour, but nevertheless the strands of the eagle's mind seemed to be purple. Around them and tangled among them were faint strands of silver.
Esk had learned too late that mind shapes body, that Borrowing is one thing but that the dream of truly taking on another form had its built-in penalty.
Granny sat and rocked. She was at a loss, she knew that. Unravelling the tangled minds was beyond her power, beyond any power in the Ramtops, beyond even
There was no sound, but maybe there was a change in the texture of the air. She looked up at the staff, which had been suffered to come back into the cottage.
"No," she said firmly.
Then she thought: whose benefit did I say that for? Mine? There's power there, but it's not my kind of power.
There isn't any other kind around, though. And even now I may be too late.
I might never have been early enough.
She reached out again into the bird's head to calm its fears and dispel its panic. It allowed her to pick it up and sat awkwardly on her wrist, its talons gripping tight enough to draw blood.
Granny took the staff and made her way upstairs, to where Esk lay on the narrow bed in the low bedroom with its ancient contoured ceiling.
She made the bird perch on the bedrail and turned her attention to the staff. Once more the carvings shifted under her glare, never quite revealing their true form.
Granny was no stranger to the uses of power, but she knew she relied on gentle pressure subtly to steer the tide of things. She didn't put it like that, of course - she would have said that there was always a lever if you knew where to look. The power in the staff was harsh, fierce, the raw stuff of magic distilled out of the forces that powered the universe itself.
There would be a price. And Granny knew enough about wizardry to be certain that it would be a high one. But if you were worried about the price, then why were you in the shop?
She cleared her throat, and wondered what the hell she was supposed to do next. Perhaps if she
The power hit her like a half-brick. She could feel it take her and lift her so that she was amazed to look down and see her feet still firmly on the floorboards. She tried to take a step forward and magical discharges crackled in the air around her. She reached out to steady herself against the wall and the ancient wooden beam under her hand stirred and started to sprout leaves. A cyclone of magic swirled around the room, picking up dust and briefly giving it some very disturbing shapes; the jug and basin on the washstand, with the particularly fetching rosebud pattern, broke into fragments. Under the bed the third member of the traditional china trio turned into something horrible and slunk away.
Granny opened her mouth to swear and thought better of it when her words blossomed out into rainbow-edged clouds.
She looked down at Esk and the eagle, which seemed oblivious to all this, and tried to concentrate. She let herself slide inside its head and again she could see the strands of mind, the silver threads bound so closely around the purple that they took on the same shape. But now she could see where the strands ended, and where a judicious tug or push would begin to unravel them. It was so obvious she heard herself laugh, and the sound curved away in shades of orange and red and vanished into the ceiling.
Time passed. Even with the power throbbing through hey head it was a painfully hard task, like threading a needle by moonlight, but eventually she had a handful of silver. In the slow, heavy world in which she now appeared to be she took the hank and threw it slowly towards Esk. It became a cloud, swirled like a whirlpool, and vanished.
She was aware of a shrill chittering noise, and shadows on the edge of sight. Well, it happened to everyone sooner or later. They had come, drawn as always by a discharge of magic. You just had to learn to ignore them.
Granny woke with bright sunlight skewering into her eyes. She was slumped against the door, and her whole body felt as though it had toothache.
She reached out blindly with one hand, found the edge of the washstand, and pulled herself into a sitting position. She was not really surprised to see that the jug and basin looked just the same as they had always done; in fact sheer curiosity overcame her aches and she gave a quick glance under the bed to check that, yes, things were as normal.
The eagle was still hunched on the bedpost. In the bed Esk was asleep, and Granny saw that it was a true sleep and not the stillness of a vacant body.
All she had to do now was hope that Esk wouldn't wake up with an irresistible urge to pounce on rabbits.
She carried the unresisting bird downstairs and let it free outside the back door. It flew heavily up into the nearest tree, where it settled to rest. It had a feeling it ought to have a grudge against somebody, but for the life of it, it couldn't remember why.
Esk opened her eyes and stared for a long time at the ceiling. Over the months she had grown familiar with every lump and crack of the plaster, which created a fantastic upside-down landscape that she had peopled with a private and complex civilization.
Her mind thronged with dreams. She pulled an arm out from under the sheets and stared at it, wondering why it wasn't covered with feathers. It was all very puzzling.
She pushed the covers back, swung her legs to the edge of the bed, spread her wings into the rush of the wind and glided out into the world ....
The thump on the bedroom floor brought Granny scurrying up the stairs, to take her in her arms and hold her tight as the terror hit her. She rocked back and forth on her heels, making meaningless soothing noises.
Esk looked up at her through a mask of horror.
"I could feel myself vanishing!"
"Yes, yes. Better now," murmured Granny.
"You don't understand! I couldn't even remember my name!" Esk shrieked.
"But you can remember now."
Esk hesitated, checking. "Yes," she said, "Yes, of course. Now."
"So no harm done."
"But -"
Granny sighed. "You have learned something," she said, and thought it safe to insert a touch of sternness into her voice. "They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not; one half so bad as a lot of ignorance."
"But what happened?"
"You thought that Borrowing wasn't enough. You thought it would be a fine thing to steal another's body. But you must know that a body is like - like a jelly mould. It sets a shape on its contents, d'you see? You can't have a girl's mind in an eagle's body. Not for long, at any rate."
"I became an eagle?"
"Yes."
"Not meat all?"
Granny thought for a while. She always had to pause when conversations with Esk led her beyond the reaches of a decent person's vocabulary.
"No," she said at last, "not in the way you mean. Just an eagle with maybe some strange dreams sometimes. Like when you dream you're flying, perhaps it would remember walking and talking."
"Urgh."
"But it's all over now," said Granny, treating her to a thin smile. "You're your true self again and the eagle has got its mind back. It's sitting in the big beech by the privy; I should like you to put out some food for it."
Esk sat back on her heels, staring at a point past Granny's head.
"There were some strange things," she said conversationally. Granny spun around.
"I meant, in a sort of dream I saw things," said Esk. The old woman's shock was so visible that she hesitated, frightened that she had said something wrong.
"What kind of things?" said Granny flatly.
"Sort of big creatures, all sorts of shapes. Just sitting around."
"Was it dark? I mean, these Things, were they in the dark?"
"There were stars, I think. Granny?"
Granny Weatherwax was staring at the wall.
"Granny?" Esk repeated.
"Mmph? Yes? Oh." Granny shook herself. "Yes. I see. Now I would like you to go downstairs and get the bacon that is in the pantry and put it out for the bird, do you understand? It would be a good idea to thank it, too. You never know."
When Esk returned Granny was buttering bread. She pulled her stool up to the table, but the old woman waved the breadknife at her.
"First things first. Stand up. Face me."
Esk did so, puzzled. Granny stuck the knife in the breadboard and shook her head.
"Drat it," she said to the world at large. "I don't know what way they have of it, there should be some kind of ceremony if I know wizards, they always have to complicate things . . . ."
"What do you mean?"
Granny seemed to ignore her, but crossed to the dark corner by the dresser.
"Probably you should have one foot in a bucket of cold porridge and one glove on and all that kind of stuff," she went on. "I didn't want to do this, but They're forcing my hand."
"What are you talking about, Granny?"
The old witch yanked the staff out of its shadow and waved it vaguely at Esk.
"Here. It's yours. Take it. I just hope this is the right thing to do."
In fact the presentation of a staff to an apprentice wizard is usually a very impressive ceremony, especially if the staff has been inherited from an elder wage; by ancient lore there is a long and frightening ordeal involving masks and hoods and swords and fearful oaths about people's tongues being cut out and their entrails torn by wild birds and their ashes scattered to the eight winds and so on. After some hours of this sort of thing the apprentice can be admitted to the brotherhood of the Wise and Enlightened.
There is also a long speech. By sheer coincidence Granny got the essence of it in a nutshell.
Esk took the staff and peered at it.
"It's very nice," she said uncertainly. "The carvings are pretty. What's it for?"
"Sit down now. And listen properly for once. On the day you were born . . . ."
". . . and that's the shape of it."
Esk looked hard at the staff, then at Granny.
"I've got to be a wizard?"
"Yes. No. I don't know."
"That isn't really an answer, Granny," Esk said reproachfully. "Am I or aren't I?"
"Women can't be wizards," said Granny bluntly. "It's agin nature. You might as well have a female blacksmith."
"Actually I've watched dad at work and I don't see why -"
"Look," said Granny hurriedly, "you can't have a female wizard any more than you can have a male witch, because -"
"I've heard of male witches," said Esk meekly.
"Warlocks!"
"I think so."
"I mean there's no male witches, only silly men," said Granny hotly. "If men were witches, they'd be wizards. It's all down to -"she tapped her head "- headology. How your mind works. Men's minds work different from ours, see. Their magic's all numbers and angles and edges and what the stars are doing, as if that really mattered. It's all power. It's all -" Granny paused, and dredged up her favourite word to describe all she despised in wizardry, "- jommetry."
"That's all right, then," said Esk, relieved. "I'll stay here and learn witchery."
"Ali," said Granny gloomily, "that's all very well for you to say. I don't think it will be as easy as that."
"But you said that men can be wizards and women can be witches and it can't be the other way around."
"That's right."
"Well, then," said Esk triumphantly, "it's all solved, isn't it? I can't help but be a witch."
Granny pointed to the staff. Esk shrugged.
"It's just an old stick."
Granny shook her head. Esk blinked.
"No?"
"No."
"And I can't be a witch?"
"I don't know what you can be. Hold the staff."
"What?"
"Hold the staff. Now, I've laid the fire in the grate. Light it."
"The tinderbox is -" Esk began.
"You once told me there were better ways of lighting fires. Show me."
Granny stood up. In the dimness of the kitchen she seemed to grow until she filled it with shifting, ragged shadows, shot with menace. Her eyes glared down at Esk.
"Show me," she commanded, and her voice had ice in it.
"But -"said Esk desperately, clutching the heavy staff to her and knocking her stool over in her haste to back away.
"Showme."
With a scream Esk spun around. Fire flared from her fingertips and arced across the room. The kindling exploded with a force that hurled the furniture around the room and a ball of fierce green light spluttered on the hearth.
Changing patterns sped across it as it spun sizzling on the stones, which cracked and then flowed. The iron fireback resisted bravely for a few seconds before melting like wax; it made a final appearance as a red smear across the fireball and then vanished. A moment later the kettle went the same way.
Just when it seemed that the chimney would follow them the ancient hearthstone gave up, and with a final splutter the fireball sank from view.
The occasional crackle or puff of steam signaled its passage through the earth. Apart from that there was silence, the loud hissing silence that comes after an ear-splattering noise, and after the actinic glare the room seemed pitch dark.
Eventually Granny crawled out from behind the table and crept as closely as she dared to the hole, which was still surrounded by a crust of lava. She jerked back as another cloud of superheated steam mushroomed up.
"They say there's dwarf mines under the Ramtops," she said inconsequentially. "My, but them little buggers is in for a surprise."
She prodded the little puddle of cooling iron where the kettle had been, and added, "Shame about the fireback. It had owls on it, you know."