Terry David John Pratchett. Equal Rites
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...he blew out the candle and lay back, with the owl perched on herfinger.
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.
"Above the snowline, then," said Granny.
She climbed down, and rammed the staff into a flowerbed. She glared at
it. She had a nasty feeling that it was glaring back.
"Don't think you've won, because you haven't," she snapped. "It's just
that I haven't got the time to mess around. You must know where she is. I
command you to take me to her!"
The staff regarded her woodenly.
"By-" Granny paused, her invocations were a little rusty, "-by stock
and stone I order it!"
Activity, movement, liveliness-all these words would be completely
inaccurate descriptions of the staff's response.
Granny scratched her chin. She remembered the little lesson all
children get taught: what's the magic word?
"Please?" she suggested.
The staff trembled, rose a little way out of the ground, and turned in
the air so that it hung invitingly at waist height.
Granny had heard that broomsticks were once again very much the fashion
among younger witches, but she didn't hold with it. There was no way a body
could look respectable while hurtling through the air aboard a household
implement. Besides, it looked decidedly draughty.
But this was no time for respectability. Pausing only to snatch her hat
from its hook behind the door she scrambled up on to the staff and perched
as best she could, sidesaddle of course, and with her skirts firmly gripped
between her knees.
"Right," she said. "Now wha-aaaaaaaaa-"
Across the forest animals broke and scattered as the shadow passed
overhead, crying and cursing. Granny clung on with whitened knuckles, her
thin legs kicking wildly as, high above the treetops, she learned important
lessons about centres of gravity and air turbulence. The staff shot onwards,
heedless of her yells.
By the time it had come out over the upland meadows she had come to
terms with it somewhat, which meant that she could just about hang on with
knees and hands provided she didn't mind being upside down. Her hat, at
least, was useful, being aerodynamically shaped.
The staff plunged between black cliffs and along high bare valleys
where, it was said, rivers of ice had once flowed in the days of the ice
Giants. The air became thin and sharp in the throat.
They came to an abrupt halt over a snowdrift. Granny fell off, and lay
panting in the snow while she tried to remember why she was going through
all this.
There was a bundle of feathers under an overhang a few feet away. As
Granny approached it a head rose jerkily, and the eagle glared at her with
fierce, frightened eyes. It tried to fly, and toppled over. When she reached
out to touch it, it took a neat triangle of flesh out of her hand.
"I see," said Granny quietly, to no one in particular. She looked
around, and found a boulder of about the right size. She disappeared behind
it for a few seconds, fox the sake of respectability, and reappeared with a
petticoat in her hand. The bird thrashed around, ruining several weeks of
meticulous petitpoint embroidery, but she managed to bundle it up and hold
it so that she could avoid its sporadic lunges.
Granny turned to the staff, which was now upright in the snowdrift.
"I shall walk back," she told it coldly.
It turned out that they were in a spur valley overlooking a drop of
several hundred feet on to sharp black rocks.
"Very well, then," she conceded, "but you're to fly slowly, d'you
understand? And no going high."
In fact, because she was slightly more experienced and perhaps because
the staff was taking more care, too, the ride back was almost sedate. Granny
was almost persuaded that, given time, she could come to merely dislike
flying, instead of loathing it. What it needed was some way of stopping
yourself from having to look at the ground.
The eagle sprawled on the rag rug in front of the empty hearth. It had
drunk some water, over which Granny had mumbled a few of the charms she
normally said to impress patients, but you never knew, there might be some
power in them, and it had also gulped a few strips of raw meat.
What it had not done was display the least sign of intelligence.
She wondered whether she had the right bird. She risked another pecking
and stared hard into its evil orange eyes, and tried to convince herself
that way down in their depths, almost beyond sight, was a strange little
flicker.
She probed around inside its head. The eagle mind was still there right
enough, vivid and sharp, but there was something else. Mind, of course, has
no colour, but nevertheless the strands of the eagle's mind seemed to be
purple. Around them and tangled among them were faint strands of silver.
Esk had learned too late that mind shapes body, that Borrowing is one
thing but that the dream of truly taking on another form had its built-in
penalty.
Granny sat and rocked. She was at a loss, she knew that. Unravelling
the tangled minds was beyond her power, beyond any power in the Ramtops,
beyond even
There was no sound, but maybe there was a change in the texture of the
air. She looked up at the staff, which had been suffered to come back into
the cottage.
"No," she said firmly.
Then she thought: whose benefit did I say that for? Mine? There's power
there, but it's not my kind of power.
There isn't any other kind around, though. And even now I may be too
late.
I might never have been early enough.
She reached out again into the bird's head to calm its fears and dispel
its panic. It allowed her to pick it up and sat awkwardly on her wrist, its
talons gripping tight enough to draw blood.
Granny took the staff and made her way upstairs, to where Esk lay on
the narrow bed in the low bedroom with its ancient contoured ceiling.
She made the bird perch on the bedrail and turned her attention to the
staff. Once more the carvings shifted under her glare, never quite revealing
their true form.
Granny was no stranger to the uses of power, but she knew she relied on
gentle pressure subtly to steer the tide of things. She didn't put it like
that, of course-she would have said that there was always a lever if you
knew where to look. The power in the staff was harsh, fierce, the raw stuff
of magic distilled out of the forces that powered the universe itself.
There would be a price. And Granny knew enough about wizardry to be
certain that it would be a high one. But if you were worried about the
price, then why were you in the shop?
She cleared her throat, and wondered what the hell she was supposed to
do next. Perhaps if she
The power hit her like a half-brick. She could feel it take her and
lift her so that she was amazed to look down and see her feet still firmly
on the floorboards. She tried to take a step forward and magical discharges
crackled in the air around her. She reached out to steady herself against
the wall and the ancient wooden beam under her hand stirred and started to
sprout leaves. A cyclone of magic swirled around the room, picking up dust
and briefly giving it some very disturbing shapes; the jug and basin on the
washstand, with the particularly fetching rosebud pattern, broke into
fragments. Under the bed the third member of the traditional china trio
turned into something horrible and slunk away.
Granny opened her mouth to swear and thought better of it when her
words blossomed out into rainbow-edged clouds.
She looked down at Esk and the eagle, which seemed oblivious to all
this, and tried to concentrate. She let herself slide inside its head and
again she could see the strands of mind, the silver threads bound so closely
around the purple that they took on the same shape. But now she could see
where the strands ended, and where a judicious tug or push would begin to
unravel them. It was so obvious she heard herself laugh, and the sound
curved away in shades of orange and red and vanished into the ceiling.
Time passed. Even with the power throbbing through hey head it was a
painfully hard task, like threading a needle by moonlight, but eventually
she had a handful of silver. In the slow, heavy world in which she now
appeared to be she took the hank and threw it slowly towards Esk. It became
a cloud, swirled like a whirlpool, and vanished.
She was aware of a shrill chittering noise, and shadows on the edge of
sight. Well, it happened to everyone sooner or later. They had come, drawn
as always by a discharge of magic. You just had to learn to ignore them.
Granny woke with bright sunlight skewering into her eyes. She was
slumped against the door, and her whole body felt as though it had
toothache.
She reached out blindly with one hand, found the edge of the washstand,
and pulled herself into a sitting position. She was not really surprised to
see that the jug and basin looked just the same as they had always done; in
fact sheer curiosity overcame her aches and she gave a quick glance under
the bed to check that, yes, things were as normal.
The eagle was still hunched on the bedpost. In the bed Esk was asleep,
and Granny saw that it was a true sleep and not the stillness of a vacant
body.
All she had to do now was hope that Esk wouldn't wake up with an
irresistible urge to pounce on rabbits.
She carried the unresisting bird downstairs and let it free outside the
back door. It flew heavily up into the nearest tree, where it settled to
rest. It had a feeling it ought to have a grudge against somebody, but for
the life of it, it couldn't remember why.
Esk opened her eyes and stared for a long time at the ceiling. Over the
months she had grown familiar with every lump and crack of the plaster,
which created a fantastic upside-down landscape that she had peopled with a
private and complex civilization.
Her mind thronged with dreams. She pulled an arm out from under the
sheets and stared at it, wondering why it wasn't covered with feathers. It
was all very puzzling.
She pushed the covers back, swung her legs to the edge of the bed,
spread her wings into the rush of the wind and glided out into the world ?.
The thump on the bedroom floor brought Granny scurrying up the stairs,
to take her in her arms and hold her tight as the terror hit her. She rocked
back and forth on her heels, making meaningless soothing noises.
Esk looked up at her through a mask of horror.
"I could feel myself vanishing!"
"Yes, yes. Better now," murmured Granny.
"You don't understand! I couldn't even remember my name!" Esk shrieked.
"But you can remember now."
Esk hesitated, checking. "Yes," she said, "Yes, of course. Now."
"So no harm done."
"But-"
Granny sighed. "You have learned something," she said, and thought it
safe to insert a touch of sternness into her voice. "They say a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not; one half so bad as a lot of
ignorance."
"But what happened?"
"You thought that Borrowing wasn't enough. You thought it would be a
fine thing to steal another's body. But you must know that a body is
like-like a jelly mould. It sets a shape on its contents, d'you see? You
can't have a girl's mind in an eagle's body. Not for long, at any rate."
"I became an eagle?"
"Yes."
"Not me at all?"
Granny thought for a while. She always had to pause when conversations
with Esk led her beyond the reaches of a decent person's vocabulary.
"No," she said at last, "not in the way you mean. Just an eagle with
maybe some strange dreams sometimes. Like when you dream you're flying,
perhaps it would remember walking and talking."
"Urgh."
"But it's all over now," said Granny, treating her to a thin smile.
"You're your true self again and the eagle has got its mind back. It's
sitting in the big beech by the privy; I should like you to put out some
food for it."
Esk sat back on her heels, staring at a point past Granny's head.
"There were some strange things," she said conversationally. Granny
spun around.
"I meant, in a sort of dream I saw things," said Esk. The old woman's
shock was so visible that she hesitated, frightened that she had said
something wrong.
"What kind of things?" said Granny flatly.
"Sort of big creatures, all sorts of shapes. Just sitting around."
"Was it dark? I mean, these Things, were they in the dark?"
"There were stars, I think. Granny?"
Granny Weatherwax was staring at the wall.
"Granny?" Esk repeated.
"Mmph? Yes? Oh." Granny shook herself. "Yes. I see. Now I would like
you to go downstairs and get the bacon that is in the pantry and put it out
for the bird, do you understand? It would be a good idea to thank it, too.
You never know."
When Esk returned Granny was buttering bread. She pulled her stool up
to the table, bu...
