Equal Rites Read online

Page 9

  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 o
ut 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.