Equal Rites Part 4

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 b.u.t.terflies 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 rea.s.suring 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 b.u.t.tercup was an insult to a n.o.ble 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 Wrong magic, do you understand? It was never intended for her!" 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 licker. Applejack," said the witch. The smith nodded. Everyone in Bad a.s.s 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 toward spring, Esk spent days at a time with Granny Weatherwax, learning witchcraft.

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 was.h.i.+ng and The Summoning of the Small G.o.ds. 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."