Equal Rites Read online

Page 6

  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.