Equal Rites Part 2

"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 s...o...b..ll 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 pa.s.ses 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 a.s.s 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 travelers 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 wood-pigeon hungry enough to attack them generally emerged giggling to itself and b.u.mping 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 Cern.

"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 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. 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 haybarn. A witch's privy could contain anything 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 almanack, or more precisely about half an old almanack, 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 a.s.s 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 b.u.t.t.

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 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. 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 her 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 a.s.s 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 gray. 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 sc.r.a.p 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 pa.s.sed. 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 door-latch 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 sc.r.a.ps 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, b.u.g.g.e.r," 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.