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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.
“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.