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Terry David John Pratchett. Equal Rites
The Discworld Series - 3
?Equal Rites?: Sagebrush Education Resources; New York; 2000
ISBN 0613278089
бООПФБГЙС
In Equal Rites, a dying wizard tries to pass on his powers to an eighth
son of an eighth son, who is just at that moment being born. The fact that
the son is actually a daughter is discovered just a little too late?
Equal Rites
by Terry Pratchett
Thanks to Neil Gaiman, who loaned us the last surviving copy of the
Liber Paginarum Fulvarum, and a big hallo to all the kids at the H.P.
Lovecraft Holiday Fun Club.
I would like it to be clearly understood that this book is not wacky.
Only dumb redheads in fifties' sitcoms are wacky.
No, it's not zany, either.
This is a story about magic and where it goes and perhaps more
importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesn't pretend to
answer all or any of these questions.
It may, however, help to explain why Gandalf never got married and why
Merlin was a man. Because this is also a story about sex, although probably
not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense unless
the characters get totally beyond the author's control. They might.
However, it is primarily a story about a world. Here it comes now.
Watch closely, the special effects are quite expensive.
A bass note sounds. It is a deep, vibrating chord that hints that the
brass section may break in at any moment with a fanfare for the cosmos,
because the scene is the blackness of deep space with a few stars glittering
like the dandruff on the shoulders of God.
Then it comes into view overhead, bigger than the biggest, most
unpleasantly armed starcruiser in the imagination of a three-ring
film-maker: a turtle, ten thousand miles long. It is Great A'Tuin, one of
the rare astrochelonians from a universe where things are less as they are
and more like people imagine them to be, and it carries on its meteor-pocked
shell four giant elephants who bear on their enormous shoulders the great
round wheel of the Discworld.
As the viewpoint swings around, the whole of the world can be seen by
the light of its tiny orbiting sun. There are continents, archipelagos,
seas, deserts, mountain ranges and even a tiny central ice cap. The
inhabitants of this place, it is obvious, won't have any truck with global
theories. Their world, bounded by an encircling ocean that falls forever
into space in one long waterfall, is as round and flat as a geological
pizza, although without the anchovies.
A world like that, which exists only because the gods enjoy a joke,
must be a place where magic can survive. And sex too, of course.
He came walking through the thunderstorm and you could tell he was a
wizard, partly because of the long cloak and careen staff but mainly because
the raindrops were stopping several feet from his head, and steaming.
It was good thunderstorm country, up here in the Ramtop Mountains, a
country of jagged peaks, dense forests and little river valleys so deep the
daylight had no sooner reached the bottom than it was time to leave again.
Ragged wisps of cloud clung to the lesser peaks below the mountain trail
along which the wizard slithered and slid. A few slot-eyed goats watched him
with mild interest. It doesn't take a lot to interest goats.
Sometimes he would stop and throw his heavy staff into the air. It
always came down pointing the same way and the wizard would sigh, pick it
up, and continue his squelchy progress.
The storm walked around the hills on legs of lightning, shouting and
grumbling.
The wizard disappeared around the bend in the track and the goats went
back to their damp grazing.
Until something else caused them to look up. They stiffened, their eyes
widening, their nostrils flaring.
This was strange, because there was nothing on the path. But the goats
still watched it pass by until it was out of sight.
There was a village tucked in a narrow valley between steep woods. It
wasn't a large village, and wouldn't have shown up on a map of the
mountains. It barely showed up on a map of the village.
It was, in fact, one of those places that exist merely so that people
can have come from them. The universe is littered with them: hidden
villages, windswept little towns under wide skies, isolated cabins on chilly
mountains, whose only mark on history is to be the incredibly ordinary place
where something extraordinary started to happen. Often there is no more than
a little plaque to reveal that, against all ecological probability, someone
very famous was born halfway up a wall.
Mist curled between the houses as the wizard crossed a narrow bridge
over the swollen stream and made his way to the village smithy, although the
two facts had nothing to do with one another. The mist would have curled
anyway: it was experienced mist and had got curling down to a fine art.
The smithy was fairly crowded, of course. A smithy is one place where
you can depend on finding a good fire and someone to talk to. Several
villagers were lounging in the warm shadows but, as the wizard approached,
they sat up expectantly and tried to look intelligent, generally with
indifferent success.
The smith didn't feel the need to be quite so subservient. He nodded at
the wizard, but it was a greeting between equals, or at least between equals
as far as the smith was concerned. After all, any halfway competent
blacksmith has more than a nodding acquaintance with magic, or at least
likes to think he has.
The wizard bowed. A white cat that had been sleeping by the furnace
woke up and watched him carefully.
"What is the name of this place, sir?" said the wizard.
The blacksmith shrugged.
"Bad Ass," he said.
"Bad-?"
"Ass," repeated the blacksmith, his tone defying anyone to make
something of it.
The wizard considered this.
"A name with a story behind it," he said at last, "which were
circumstances otherwise I would be pleased to hear. But I would like to
speak to you, smith, about your son."
"Which one?" said the smith, and the hangers-on sniggered. The wizard
smiled.
"You have seven sons, do you not? And you yourself were an eighth son?"
The smith's face stiffened. He turned to the other villagers.
"All right, the rain's stopping," he said. "Piss off, the lot of you.
Me and-" he looked at the wizard with raised eyebrows.
"Drum Billet," said the wizard.
"Me and Mr. Billet have things to talk about." He waved his hammer
vaguely and, one after another, craning over their shoulders in case the
wizard did anything interesting, the audience departed.
The smith drew a couple of stools from under a bench. He took a bottle
out of a cupboard by the water tank and poured a couple of very small
glasses of clear liquid.
The two men sat and watched the rain and the mist rolling over the
bridge. Then the smith said: "I know what son you mean. Old Granny is up
with my wife now. Eighth son of an eighth son, of course. It did cross my
mind but I never gave it much thought, to be honest. Well, well. A wizard in
the family, eh?"
"You catch on very quickly," said Billet. The white cat jumped down
from its perch, sauntered across the floor and vaulted into the wizard's
lap, where it curled up. His thin fingers stroked it absentmindedly.
"Well, well," said the smith again. "A wizard in Bad Ass, eh?"
"Possibly, possibly," said Billet. "Of course, he'll have to go to
University first. He may do very well, of course."
The smith considered the idea from all angles, and decided he liked it
a lot. A thought struck him.
"Hang on," he said. "I'm trying to remember what my father told me. A
wizard who knows he's going to die can sort of pass on his sort of
wizardness to a sort of successor, right?"
"I have never heard it put so succinctly, yes," said the wizard.
"So you're going to sort of die?"
"Oh yes." The cat purred as the fingers tickled it behind the ear.
The smith looked embarrassed. "When?"
The wizard thought for a moment. "In about six minutes' time."
"Oh."
"Don't worry," said the wizard. "I'm quite looking forward to it, to
tell you the truth. I've heard it's quite painless."
The blacksmith considered this. "Who told you?" he said at last.
The wizard pretended not to hear him. He was watching the bridge,
looking for tell-tale turbulence in the mist.
"Look," said the smith. "You'd better tell me how we go about bringing
up a wizard, you see, because there isn't a wizard in these parts and-" .
"It will all sort itself out," said Billet pleasantly. "The magic has
guided me to you and the magic will take care of everything. It usually
does. Did I hear a cry?"
The blacksmith looked at the ceiling. Above the splash of the rain he
could make out the sound of a pair of new lungs at full bore.
The wizard smiled. "Have him brought down here," he said.
The cat sat up and looked interestedly at the forge's wide doorway. As
the smith called excitedly up the stairs it jumped down and padded slowly
across the floor, purring like a bandsaw.
A tall white-haired woman appeared at the bottom of the stairs,
clutching a bundle in a blanket. The smith hurried her over to where the
wizard sat.
"But-"she began.
"This is very important," said the smith importantly. "What do we do
now, sir?"
The wizard held up his staff. It was man-high and nearly as thick as
his wrist, and covered with carvings that seemed to change as the smith
looked at them, exactly as if they didn't want him to see what they were.
"The child must hold it," said Drum Billet. The smith nodded, and
fumbled in the blanket until he located a tiny pink hand. He guided it
gently to the wood. It gripped it tightly.
"But-"said the midwife.
"It's all right, Granny, I know what I'm about. She's a witch, sir,
don't mind her. Right," said the smith. "Now what?"
The wizard was silent.
"What do we don-"the smith began, and stopped. He leaned down to look
at the old wizard's face. Billet was smiling, but it was anyone's guess what
the joke was.
The smith pushed the baby back into the arms of the frantic midwife.
Then, as respectfully as possible, he unpried the thin, pale fingers from
the staff.
It had a strange, greasy feel, like static electricity. The wood itself
was almost black, but the carvings were slightly lighter, and hurt the eyes
if you tried to make out precisely what they were supposed to be.
"Are you pleased with yourself?" said the midwife.
"Eh? Oh. Yes. As a matter of fact, yes. Why?"
She twitched aside a fold of the blanket. The smith looked down, and
swallowed.
"No," he whispered. "He said-"
"And what would he know about it?" sneered Granny.
"But he said it would be a son!"
"Doesn't look like a son to me, laddie."
The smith flopped down on his stool, his head in his hands.
"What have I done?" he moaned.
"You've given the world its first female wizard," said the midwife.
"Whosa itsywitsy, den?"
"What?"
"I was talking to the baby."
The white cat purred and arched its back as if it was rubbing up
against the legs of an old friend. Which was odd, because there was no one
there.
"I was foolish," said a voice in tones no mortal could hear. "I assumed
the magic would know what it was doing."
PERHAPS IT DOES.
"If only I could do something . . . ."
THERE IS NO GOING BACK. THERE IS NO GOING BACK, said the deep, heavy
voice like the closing of crypt doors.
The wisp of nothingness that was Drum Billet thought for a while.
"But she's going to have a lot of problems."
THAT'S WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT. SO I'M TOLD. I WOULDN'T KNOW, OF COURSE.
"What about reincarnation?"
Death hesitated.
YOU WOULDN'T LIKE IT, he said. TAKE IT FROM ME.
"I've heard that some people do it all the time."
YOU'VE GOT TO BE TRAINED TO IT. YOU'VE GOT TO START OFF SMALL AND WORK
UP. YOU'VE NO IDEA HOW HORRIBLE IT IS TO BE AN ANT.
"It's bad?"
YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE IT. AND WITH YOUR KARMA AN ANT IS TOO MUCH TO
EXPECT.
The baby had been taken back to its mother and the smith sat
disconsolately watching the rain.
Drum Billet scratched the cat behind its ears and thought about his
life. It had been a long one, that was one of the advantages of being a
wizard, and he'd done a lot of things he hadn't always felt good about. It
was about time that ?.
I HAVEN'T GOT ALL DAY, YOU KNOW, said Death, reproachfully.
The wizard looked down at the cat and realized for the first time how
odd it looked now.
The living often don't appreciate how complicated the world looks when
you are dead, because while death frees the mind from the straitjacket of
three dimensions it also cuts it away from Time, which is only another
dimension. So while the cat that rubbed up against his invisible legs was
undoubtedly the same cat that he had seen a few minutes before, it was also
quite clearly a tiny kitten and a fat, half-blind old moggy and every stage
in between. All at once. Since it had started off small it looked like a
white, catshaped carrot, a description that will have to do until people
invent proper four-dimensional adjectives.
Death's skeletal hand tapped Billet gently on the shoulder.
COME AWAY, MY SON.
"There's nothing I can do?"
LIFE IS FOR THE LIVING. ANYWAY, YOU'VE GIVEN HER YOUR STAFF.
"Yes. There is that."
The midwife's name was Granny Weatherwax. She was a witch. That was
quite acceptable in the Ramtops, and no one had a bad word to say about
witches. At least, not if he wanted to wake up in the morning the same shape
as he went to bed.
The smith was still staring gloomily at the rain when she came back
down the stairs and clapped a warty hand on his shoulder.
He looked up at her.
"What shall I do, Granny?" he said, unable to keep the pleading out of
his voice.
"What have you done with the wizard?"
"I put him out in the fuel store. Was that right?"
"It'll do for now," she said briskly. "And now you must burn the
staff."
They both turned to stare at the heavy staff, which the smith had
propped in the forge's darkest corner. It almost appeared to be looking back
at them.
"But it's magical," he whispered.
"Well?"
"Will it burn?"
"Never knew wood that didn't."
"It doesn't seem right!"
Granny Weatherwax swung shut the big doors and turned to him angrily.
"Now you listen to me, Gordo Smith!" she said. "Female wizards aren't
right either! It's the wrong kind of magic for women, is wizard magic, it's
all books and stars and jommetry. She'd never grasp it. Whoever heard of a
female wizard?"
"There's witches," said the smith uncertainly. "And enchantresses too,
I've heard."
"Witches is a different thing altogether," snapped Granny Weatherwax.
"It's magic out of the ground, not out of the sky, and men never could get
the hang of it. As for enchantresses," she added. "They're no better than
they should be. You take it from me, just burn the staff, bury the body and
don't let on it ever happened."
Smith nodded reluctantly, crossed over to the forge, and pumped the
bellows until the sparks flew. He went back for the staff.
It wouldn't move.
"It won't move!"
Sweat stood out of his brow as he tugged at the wood. It remained
unco-operatively immobile.
"Here, let me try," said Granny, and reached past him. There was a snap
and a smell of scorched tin.
Smith ran across the forge, whimpering slightly, to where Granny had
landed upside down against the opposite wall.
"Are you all right?"
She opened two eyes like angry diamonds and said, "I see. That's the
way of it, is it?"
"The way of what?" said Smith, totally bewildered.
"Help me up, you fool. And fetch me a chopper."
The tone of her voice suggested that it would be a very good idea not
to disobey. Smith rummaged desperately among the junk at the back of the
forge until he found an old double-headed axe.
"Right. Now take off your apron."
"Why? What do you intend to do?" said the smith, who was beginning to
lose his grip on events. Granny gave an exasperated sigh.
"It's leather, you idiot. I'm going to wrap it around the handle. It'll
not catch me the same way twice!"
Smith struggled out of the heavy leather apron and handed it to her
very gingerly. She wrapped it around the axe and made one or two passes in
the air. Then, a spiderlike figure in the glow of the nearly incandescent
furnace, she stalked across the room and with a grunt of triumph and effort
brought the heavy blade sweeping down right in the center of the staff.
There was a click. There was a noise like a partridge. There was a
thud.
There was silence.
Smith reached up very slowly, without moving his head, and touched the
axe blade. It wasn't on the axe any more. It had buried itself in the door
by his head, taking a tiny nick out of his ear.
Granny stood looking slightly blurred from hitting an absolutely
immovable object, and stared at the stub of wood in her hands.
"Rrrrightttt," she stuttered: "Iiiinnn tthhatttt cccasseee-"
"No," said Smith firmly, rubbing his ear. "Whatever it is you're going
to suggest, no. Leave it. I'll pile some stuff around it. No one'll notice.
Leave it. It's just a stick."
"Just a stick?"
"Have you got any better ideas? Ones that won't take my head off?"
She glared at the staff, which appeared not to notice.
"Not right now," she admitted. "But you just give me time-"
"All right, all right. Anyway, I've got things to do, wizards to bury,
you know how it is."
Smith took a spade from beside the back door and hesitated.
"Granny."
"What?"
"Do you know how wizards like to be buried?"
"Yes! "
"Well, how?"
Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs.
"Reluctantly."
Later, night fell gently as the last of the world's slow light flowed
out of the valley, and a pale, rain-washed moon shone down in a night
studded with stars. And in a shadowy orchard behind the forge there was the
occasional clink of a spade or a muffled curse.
In the cradle upstairs the world's first female wizard dreamed of
nothing much.
The white cat lay half-asleep on its private ledge near the furnace.
The only sound in the warm dark forge was the crackle of the coals as they
settled down under the ash.
The staff stood in the corner, where it wanted to be, wrapped in
shadows that were slightly blacker than shadows normally are.
Time passed, which, basically, is its job.
There was a faint tinkle, and a swish of air. After a while the cat sat
up and watched with interest.
Dawn came. Up here in the Ramtops dawn was always impressive,
especially when a storm had cleared the air. The valley occupied by Bad Ass
overlooked a panorama of lesser mountains and foothills, coloured purple and
orange in the early morning light that flowed gently over them (because
light travels at a dilatory pace in the Disc's vast magical field) and far
off the great plains were still a puddle of shadows. Even further off the
sea gave an occasional distant sparkle.
In fact, from here you could see right to the edge of the world.
That wasn't poetic imagery but plain fact, since the world was quite
definitely flat and was, furthermore, known to be carried through space on
the backs of four elephants that in turn stood on the shell of Great A'Tuin,
the Great Sky Turtle.
Back down there in Bad Ass the village is waking up. The smith has just
gone into the forge and found it tidier than it has been for the last
hundred years, with all the tools back in their right places, the floor
swept and a new fire laid in the furnace. He is sitting on the anvil, which
has been moved right across the room, and is watching the staff and is
trying to think.
Nothing much happened for seven years, except that one of the apple
trees in the smithy orchard grew perceptibly taller than the others and was
frequently climbed by a small girl with brown hair, a gap in her front
teeth, and the sort of features that promised to become, if not beautiful,
then at least attractively interesting.
She was named Eskarina, for no particular reason other than that her
mother liked the sound of the word, and although Granny Weatherwax kept a
careful watch on her she failed to spot any signs of magic whatsoever. It
was true that the girl spent more time climbing trees and running around
shouting than little girls normally did, but a girl with four older brothers
still at home can be excused a lot of things. In fact, the witch began to
relax and started to think the magic had not taken hold after all.
But magic has a habit of lying low, like a rake in the grass.
Winter came round again, and it was a bad one. The clouds hung around
the Ramtops like big fat sheep, filling the gulleys with snow and turning
the forests into silent, gloomy caverns. The high passes were closed and the
caravans wouldn't come again until spring. Bad Ass became a little island of
heat and light.
Over breakfast Esk's mother said: "I'm worried about Granny Weatherwax.
She hasn't been around lately."
Smith looked at her over his porridge spoon.
"I'm not complaining," he said. "She-"
"She's got a long nose," said Esk.
Her parents glared at her.
"There's no call to make that kind of remark," said her mother sternly.
"But father said she's always poking her-"
"Eskarina!"
"But he said-"
"I said-"
"Yes, but, he did say that she had-"
Smith reached down and slapped her. It wasn't very hard, and he
regretted it instantly. The boys got the flat of his hand and occasionally
the length of his belt whenever they deserved it. The trouble with his
daughter, though, was not ordinary naughtiness but the infuriating way she
had of relentlessly pursuing the thread of an argument long after she should
have put it down. It always flustered him.
She burst into tears. Smith stood up, angry and embarrassed at himself,
and stumped off to the forge.
There was a loud crack, and a thud.
They found him out cold on the floor. Afterwards he always maintained
that he'd hit his head on the doorway. Which was odd, because he wasn't very
tall and there had always been plenty of room before, but he was certain
that whatever happened had nothing to do with the blur of movement from the
forge's darkest corner.
Somehow the events set the seal on the day. It became a broken crockery
day, a day of people getting under each other's feet and being peevish.
Esk's mother dropped a jug that had belonged to her grandmother and a whole
box of apples in the loft turned out to be moldy. In the forge the furnace
went sullen and refused to draw. Jaims, the oldest son, slipped on the
packed ice in the road and hurt his arm. The white cat, or possibly one of
its descendants, since the cats led a private and complicated life of their
own in the hayloft next to the forge, went and climbed up the chimney in the
scullery and refused to come down. Even the sky pressed in like an old
mattress, and the air felt stuffy, despite the snow.
Frayed nerves and boredom and bad temper made the air hum like
thunderstorm weather.
"Right! That's it. That's just about enough!" shouted Esk's mother.
"Cern, you and Gulta and Esk can go and see how Granny is and -where's Esk?"
The two youngest boys looked up from where they were halfheartedly
fighting under the table.
"She went out to the orchard," said Gulta. "Again."
"Go and fetch her in, then, and be off."
"But it's cold!"
"It's going to snow again!"
"It's only a mile and the road is clear enough and who was so keen to
be out in it when we had the first snowfall? Go on with you, and don't come
back till you're in a better temper."
They found Esk sitting in a fork of the big apple tree. The boys didn't
like the tree much. For one thing, it was so covered in mistletoe that it
looked green even in midwinter, its fruit was small and went from
stomach-twisting sourness to wasp-filled rottenness overnight, and although
it looked easy enough to climb it had a habit of breaking twigs and
dislodging feet at inconvenient moments. Cern once swore that a branch had
twisted just to spill him off. But it tolerated Esk, who used to go and sit
in it if she was annoyed or fed up or just wanted to be by herself, and the
boys sensed that every brother's right to gently torture his sister ended at
the foot of its trunk. So they threw a snowball at her. It missed.
"We're going to see old Weatherwax."
"But you don't have to come."
"Because you'll just slow us down and probably cry anyway."
Esk looked down at them solemnly. She didn't cry a lot, it never seemed
to achieve much.
"If you don't want me to come then I'll come," she said. This sort of
thing passes for logic among siblings.
"Oh, we want you to come," said Gulta quickly.
"Very pleased to hear it," said Esk, dropping on to the packed snow.
They had a basket containing smoked sausages, preserved eggs
and-because their mother was prudent as well as generous-a large jar of
peach preserve that no one in the family liked very much. She still made it
every year when the little wild peaches were ripe, anyway.
The people of Bad Ass had learned to live with the long winter snows
and the roads out of the village were lined with boards to reduce drifting
and, more important, stop travellers from straying. If they lived locally it
wouldn't matter too much if they did, because an unsung genius on the
village council several generations previously had come up with the idea of
carving markers in every tenth tree in the forest around the village, out to
a distance of nearly two miles. It had taken ages, and re-cutting markers
was always a job for any man with spare time, but in winters where a
blizzard could lose a man within yards of his home many a life had been
saved by the pattern of notches found by probing fingers under the clinging
snow.
It was snowing again when they left the road and started up the track
where, in summer, the witch's house nestled in a riot of raspberry thickets
and weird witch-growth.
"No footprints," said Cern.
"Except for foxes," said Gulta. "They say she can turn herself into a
fox. Or anything. A bird, even. Anything. That's how she always knows what's
going on."
They looked around cautiously. A scruffy crow was indeed watching them
from a distant tree stump.
"They say there's a whole family over Crack Peak way that can turn
themselves into wolves," said Gulta, who wasn't one to leave a promising
subject, "because one night someone shot a wolf and next day their auntie
was limping with an arrow wound in her leg, and ?.
"I don't think people can turn themselves into animals," said Esk,
slowly.
"Oh yes, Miss Clever?"
"Granny is quite big. If she turned herself into a fox what would
happen to all the bits that wouldn't fit?"
"She'd just magic them away," said Cern.
"I don't think magic works like that," said Esk. "You can't just make
things happen, there's a sort of-like a seesaw thing, if you push one end
down, the other end goes up . . . ." Her voice trailed off.
They gave her a look.
"I can't see Granny on a seesaw," said Gulta. Cern giggled.
"No, I mean every time something happens, something else has to happen
too-I think," said Esk uncertainly, picking her way around a deeper than
usual snowdrift. "Only in the . . . opposite direction."
"That's silly," said Gulta, "because, look, you remember when that fair
came last summer and there was a wizard with it and he made all those birds
and things appear out of nothing? I mean it just happened, he just said
these words and waved his hands, and it just happened. There weren't any
seesaws."
"There was a swing," said Cern. "And a thing where you had to throw
things at things to win things."
"And you didn't hit anything, Gul."
"Nor did you, you said the things were stuck to the things so you
couldn't knock them off, you said . . . ."
Their conversation wandered away like a couple of puppies. Esk listened
with half an ear. I know what I mean, she told herself. Magic's easy, you
just find the place where everything is balanced and push. Anyone could do
it. There's nothing magical about it. All the funny words and waving the
hands is just . . . it's only for?.
She stopped, surprised at herself. She knew what she meant. The idea
was right up there in the front of her mind. But she didn't know how to say
it in words, even to herself.
It was a horrible feeling to find things in your head and not know how
they fitted. It?.
"Come on, we'll be all day."
She shook her head and hurried after her brothers.
The witch's cottage consisted of so many extensions and lean-tos that
it was difficult to see what the original building had looked like, or even
if there had ever been one. In the summer it was surrounded by dense beds of
what Granny loosely called "the Herbs"-strange plants, hairy or squat or
twining, with curious flowers or vivid fruits or unpleasantly bulging pods.
Only Granny knew what they were all for, and any woodpigeon hungry enough to
attack them generally emerged giggling to itself and bumping into things
(or, sometimes, never emerged at all.
Now everything was deep under the snow. A forlorn windsock flapped
against its pole. Granny didn't hold with flying but some of her friends
still used broomsticks.
"It looks deserted," said Cem.
"No smoke," said Gulta.
The windows look like eyes, thought Esk, but kept it to herself.
"It's only Granny's house," she said. "There's nothing wrong."
The cottage radiated emptiness. They could feel it. The windows did
look like eyes, black and menacing against the snow. And no one in the
Ramtops let their fire go out in the winter, as a matter of pride.
Esk wanted to say "Let's go home," but she knew that if she did the
boys would run for it. Instead she said, "Mother says there's a key on a
nail in the privy," and that was nearly as bad. Even an ordinary unknown
privy held minor terrors like wasps' nests, large spiders, mysterious
rustling things in the roof and, one very bad winter, a small hibernating
bear that caused acute constipation in the family until it was persuaded to
bed down in the haybam. A witch's privy could contain anything.
"I'll go and look, shall I?" she added.
"If you like," said Gulta airily, almost successfully concealing his
relief.
In fact, when she managed to get the door open against the piled snow,
it was neat and clean and contained nothing more sinister than an old
almanac, or more precisely about half an old almanac, carefully hung on a
nail. Granny had a philosophical objection to reading, but she'd be the last
to say that books, especially books with nice thin pages, didn't have their
uses.
The key shared a ledge by the door with a chrysalis and the stump of a
candle. Esk took it gingerly, trying not to disturb the chrysalis, and
hurried back to the boys.
It was no use trying the front door. Front doors in Bad Ass were used
only by brides and corpses, and Granny had always avoided becoming either.
Around the back the snow was piled in front of the door and no one had
broken the ice on the water butt.
The light was starting to pour out of the sky by the time they dug
through to the door and managed to persuade the key to turn.
Inside, the big kitchen was dark and chilly and smelled only of snow.
It was always dark, but they were used to seeing a big fire in the wide
chimney and smelling the thick fumes of whatever it was she was boiling up
this time, which sometimes gave you a headache or made you see things.
They wandered around uncertainly, calling, until Esk decided they
couldn't put off going upstairs any longer. The clonk of the thumb-latch on
the door to the cramped staircase sounded a lot louder than it ought to.
Granny was on the bed, with her arms tightly folded across her chest.
The tiny window had blown open. Fine snow had blown in across the floor and
over the bed.
Esk stared at the patchwork quilt under the old woman, because there
were times when a little detail could expand and fill the whole world. She
barely heard Cern start to cry: she remembered lien father, strangely
enough, making the quilt two winters before when the snow was almost as bad
and there wasn't much to do in the forge, and how he'd used all kinds of
rags that had found their way to Bad Ass from every part of the world, like
silk, dilemma leather, water cotton and tharga wool and, of course, since he
wasn't much good at sewing either, the result was a rather strange lumpy
thing more like a flat tortoise than a quilt, and her mother had generously
decided to give it to Granny last Hogswatchnight, and ?.
"Is she dead?" asked Gulta, as if Esk was an expert in these things.
Esk stared up at Granny Weatherwax. The old woman's face looked thin
and grey. Was that how dead people looked? Shouldn't her chest be going up
and down?
Gulta pulled himself together.
"We ought to go and get someone and we ought to go now because it will
get dark in a minute," he said flatly. "But Cern will stay here."
His brother looked at him in horror.
"What for?" he said.
"Someone has got to stay with dead people," said Gulta. "Remember when
old Uncle Derghart died and Father had to go and sit up with all the candles
and things all night? Otherwise something nasty comes and takes your soul
off to . . . to somewhere," he ended lamely. "And then people come back and
haunt you."
Cern opened his mouth to start to cry again. Esk said hurriedly, "I'll
stay. I don't mind. It's only Granny."
Gulta looked at her in relief.
"Light some candles or something," he said. "I think that's what you're
supposed to do. And then-"
There was a scratching from the windowsill. A crow had landed, and
stood there blinking suspiciously at them. Gulta shouted and threw his hat
at it. It flew off with a reproachful caw and he shut the window.
"I've seen it around here before," he said. "I think Granny feeds it.
Fed it," he corrected himself. "Anyway, we'll be back with people, we'll be
hardly any time. Come on, Ce."
They clattered down the dark stairs. Esk saw them out of the house and
bolted the door behind them.
The sun was a red ball above the mountains, and there were already a
few early stars out.
She wandered around the dark kitchen until she found a scrap of dip
candle and a tinderbox. After a great deal of effort she managed to light
the candle and stood it on the table, although it didn't really light the
room, it simply peopled the darkness with shadows. Then she found Granny's
rocking chair by the cold fireplace, and settled down to wait.
Time passed. Nothing happened.
Then there was a tapping at the window. Esk took up the candle stub and
peered through the thick round panes.
A beady yellow eye blinked back at her.
The candle guttered, and went out.
She stood stock still, hardly breathing. The tapping started again, and
then stopped. There was a short silence, and then the doorlatch rattled.
Something nasty comes, the boys had said.
She felt her way back across the room until she nearly tripped over the
rocking chair, and dragged it back and wedged it as best she could in front
of the door. The latch gave a final clonk and went silent.
Esk waited, listening until the silence roared in her ears. Then
something started to bang against the little window in the scullery, softly
but insistently. After a while it stopped. A moment later it started again
in the bedroom above her- a faint scrabbling noise, a claw kind of noise.
Esk felt that bravery was called for, but on a night like this bravery
lasted only as long as a candle stayed alight. She felt her way back across
the dark kitchen, eyes tightly shut, until she reached the door.
There was a thump from the fireplace as a big lump of soot fell down,
and when she heard the desperate scratchings coming from the chimney she
slipped the bolts, threw open the door and darted out into the night.
The cold struck like a knife. Frost had put a crust on the snow. She
didn't care where she was going, but quiet terror gave her a burning
determination to get there as fast as she could.
Inside the cottage the crow landed heavily in the fireplace, surrounded
by soot and muttering irritably to itself. It hopped into the shadows, and a
moment later there was the bang of the latch of the stairway door and the
sound of fluttering on the stairs.
Esk reached up as high as she could and felt around the tree for the
marker. This time she was lucky, but the pattern of dots and grooves told
her she was over a mile from the village and had been running in the wrong
direction.
There was a cheese-rind moon and a sprinkling of stars, small and
bright and pitiless. The forest around her was a pattern of black shadows
and pale snow and, she was aware, not all the shadows were standing still.
Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, because on some
nights their howls echoed down from the high Tops, but they seldom came near
the village-the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had
survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.
But the weather was hard, and this pack was hungry enough to forget all
about natural selection.
Esk remembered what all the children were told. Climb a tree. Light a
fire. When all else fails, find a stick and at least hurt them. Never try to
outrun them.
The tree behind her was a beech, smooth and unclimbable.
Esk watched a long shadow detach itself from a pool of darkness in
front of her, and move a little closer. She knelt down, tired, frightened,
unable to think, and scrabbled under the burning-cold snow for a stick.
Granny Weatherwax opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling, which was
cracked and bulged like a tent.
She concentrated on remembering that she had arms, not wings, and
didn't need to hop. It was always wise to lie down for a bit after a borrow,
to let one's mind get used to one's body, but she knew she didn't have the
time.
"Drat the child," she muttered, and tried to fly on to the bedrail. The
crow, who had been through all this dozens of times before and who
considered, insofar as birds can consider anything, which is a very short
distance indeed, that a steady diet of bacon rinds and choice kitchen scraps
and a warm roost for the night was well worth the occasional inconvenience
of letting Granny share its head, watched her with mild interest.
Granny found her boots and thumped down the stairs, sternly resisting
the urge to glide. The door was wide open and there was already a drift of
fine snow on the floor.
"Oh, bugger," she said. She wondered if it was worth trying to find
Esk's mind, but human minds were never so sharp and clear as animal minds
and anyway the overmind of the forest itself made impromptu searching as
hard as listening for a waterfall in a thunderstorm. But even without
looking she could feel the packmind of the wolves, a sharp, rank feeling
that filled the mouth with the taste of blood.
She could just make out the small footprints in the crust, half filled
with fresh snow. Cursing and muttering, Granny Weatherwax pulled her shawl
around her and set out.
The white cat awoke from its private ledge in the forge when it heard
the sounds coming from the darkest corner. Smith had carefully shut the big
doors behind him when he went off with the nearly-hysterical boys, and the
cat watched with interest as a thin shadow prodded at the lock and tested
the hinges.
The doors were oak, hardened by heat and time, but that didn't prevent
them being blown right across the street.
Smith heard a sound in the sky as he hurried along the track. So did
Granny. It was a determined whirring sound, like the flight of geese, and
the snowclouds boiled and twisted as it passed.
The wolves heard it, too, as it spun low over the treetops and hurtled
down into the clearing. But they heard it far too late.
Granny Weatherwax didn't have to follow the footprints now. She aimed
herself for the distant flashes of weird light, the strange swishing and
thumping, and the howls of pain and terror. A couple of wolves bolted past
her with their ears flattened in grim determination to have it away on their
paws no matter what stood in their way.
There was the crackle of breaking branches. Something big and heavy
landed in a fir tree by Granny and crashed, whimpering, into the snow.
Another wolf passed her in a flat trajectory at about head height and
bounced off a tree-trunk.
There was silence.
Granny pushed her way between the snow-covered branches.
She could see that the snow was flattened in a white circle. A few
wolves lay at its edges, either dead or wisely deciding to make no move.
The staff stood upright in the snow and Granny got the feeling it was
turning to face her as she walked carefully past it.
There was also a small heap in the centre of the circle, curled tightly
up inside itself. Granny knelt down with some effort and reached out gently.
The staff moved. It was little more than a tremble, but her hand
stopped just before it touched Esk's shoulder. Granny glared up at the
wooden carvings, and dared it to move again.
The air thickened. Then the staff seemed to back away while not moving,
while at the same time something quite indefinable made it absolutely clear
to the old witch that as far as the staff was concerned this -wasn't a
defeat, it was merely a tactical consideration, and it wouldn't like her to
think she had won in any way, because she hadn't.
Esk gave a shudder. Granny patted her vaguely.
"It's me, little one. It's only old Granny."
The hump didn't uncurl.
Granny bit her lip. She was never quite certain about children,
thinking of them-when she thought about them at all-as coming somewhere
between animals and people. She understood babies. You put milk in one end
and kept the other end as clean as possible. Adults were even easier,
because they did the feeding and cleaning themselves. But in between was a
world of experience that she had never really enquired about. As far as she
was aware, you just tried to stop them catching anything fatal and hoped
that it would all turn out all right.
Granny, in fact, was at a loss, but she knew she had to do something.
"Didda nasty wolfie fwiten us, den?" she hazarded.
For quite the wrong reasons, this seemed to work. From the depths of
the ball a muffled voice said: "I am eight, you know."
"People who are eight don't curl up in the middle of the snow," said
Granny, feeling her way through the intricacies of adult-child conversation.
The ball didn't answer.
"I've probably got some milk and biscuits at home," Granny ventured.
There was no perceptible effect.
"Eskarina Smith, if you don't behave this minute I will give you such a
smack!"
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.
S...
