Equal Rites

mountain ranges are bouncing up and down like organ-stops while continents zip backwards and forwards in general high spirits, crashing into each other from the sheer joy of momentum and getting their rocks off. It is going to be quite some time before stone notices its disfiguring little skin disease and starts to scratch, which is just as well.

The rocks from which Unseen University was built, however, have been absorbing magic for several thousand years and all that random power has had to go somewhere.

The University has, in fact, developed a personality.

Granny could sense it like a big and quite friendly animal, just waiting to roll over on its roof and have its floor scratched. It was paying no attention to her, however. It was watching Esk.

Granny found the child by following the threads of the University’s attention and watched in fascination as the scenes unfolded in the Great Hall…

“—in there?”

The voice came from a long way away.

“Mmph?”

“Aye said, what do you see in there?” repeated Mrs Whitlow.

“Eh?”

“Aye said, what do—”

“Oh.” Granny reeled her mind in, quite confused. The trouble with Borrowing another mind was, you always felt out of place when you got back to your own body, and Granny was the first person ever to read the mind of a building. Now she was feeling big and gritty and full of passages.

“Are you all right?”

Granny nodded, and opened her windows. She extended her east and west wings and tried to concentrate on the tiny cup held in her pillars.

Fortunately Mrs Whitlow put her plaster complexion and stony silence down to occult powers at work, while Granny found that a brief exposure to the vast silicon memory of the University had quite stimulated her imagination.

In a voice like a draughty corridor, which made the housekeeper very impressed, she wove a future full of keen young men fighting for Mrs Whitlow’s ample favours. She also spoke very quickly, because what she had seen in the Great Hall made her anxious to go around to the main gates again.

“There is another thing,” she added.

“Yes? Yes?”

“I see you hiring a new servant—you do hire the servants here, don’t you? Right—and this one is a young girl, very economical, very good worker, can turn her hand to anything.”

“What about her, then?” said Mrs Whitlow, already savouring Granny’s surprisingly graphic descriptions of her future and drunk with curiosity.

“The spirits are a little unclear on this point,” said Granny, “But it is very important that you hire her.”

“No problem there,” said Mrs Whitlow, “can’t keep servants here, you know, not for long. It’s all the magic. It leaks down here, you know. Especially from the library, where they keep all them magical books. Two of the top floor maids walked out yesterday, actually, they said they were fed up going to bed not knowing what shape they would wake up in the morning. The senior wizards turn them back, you know. But it’s not the same.”

“Yes, well, the spirits say this young lady won’t be any trouble as far as that is concerned,” said Granny grimly.

“If she can sweep and scrub she’s welcome, Aye’m sure,” said Mrs Whitlow, looking puzzled.

“She even brings her own broom. According to the spirits, that is.”

“How very helpful. When is this young lady going to arrive?”

“Oh, soon, soon—that’s what the spirits say.”

A faint suspicion clouded the housekeeper’s face. “This isn’t the sort of thing spirits normally say. Where do they say that, exactly?”

“Here,” said Granny. “Look, the little cluster of tea-leaves between the sugar and this crack here. Am I right?”

Their eyes met. Mrs Whitlow might have had her weakness but she was quite tough enough to rule the below-stairs world of the University. However, Granny could outstare a snake; after a few seconds the housekeeper’s eyes began to water.

“Yes, Aye expect you are,” she said meekly, and fished a handkerchief from the recesses of her bosom.

“Well then,” said Granny, sitting back and replacing the teacup in its saucer.

“There are plenty of opportunities here for a young woman willing to work hard,” said Mrs Whitlow. “Aye myself started as a maid, you know.”

“We all do,” said Granny vaguely. “And now I must be going.” She stood up and reached for her hat.

“But—”

“Must hurry. Urgent appointment,” said Granny over her shoulder as she hurried down the steps.

“There’s a bundle of old clothes—”

Granny paused, her instincts battling for mastery.

“Any black velvet?”

“Yes, and some silk.”

Granny wasn’t sure she approved of silk, she’d heard it came out of a caterpillar’s bottom, but black velvet had a powerful attraction. Loyalty won.

“Put it on one side, I may call again,” she shouted, and ran down the corridor.

Cooks and scullery maids darted for cover as the old woman pounded along the slippery flagstones, leapt up the stairs to the courtyard and skidded out into the lane, her shawl flying out behind her and her boots striking sparks from the cobbles. Once out into the open she hitched up her skirts and broke into a full gallop, turning the corner into the main square in a screeching two-boot drift that left a long white scratch across the stones.

She was just in time to see Esk come running through the gates, in tears.

* * *

“The magic just wouldn’t work! I could feel it there but it just wouldn’t come out!”

“Perhaps you were trying too hard,” said Granny. “Magic’s like fishing. Jumping around and splashing never caught any fish, you have to bide quiet and let it happen natural.”

“And then everyone laughed at me! Someone even gave me a sweet!”

“You got some profit out of the day, then,” said Granny.

“Granny!” said Esk accusingly.

“Well, what did you expect?” she asked. “At least they only laughed at you. Laughter don’t hurt. You walked up to chief wizard and showed off in front of everyone and only got laughed at? You’re doing well, you are. Have you eaten the sweet?”

Esk scowled. “Yes.”

“What kind was it?”

“Toffee.”

“Can’t abide toffee.”

“Huh,” said Esk, “I suppose you want me to get peppermint next time?”

“Don’t you sarky me, young-fellow-me-lass. Nothing wrong with peppermint. Pass me that bowl.”

Another advantage of city life, Granny had discovered, was glassware. Some of her more complicated potions required apparatus which either had to be bought from the dwarves at extortionate rates or, if ordered from the nearest human glassblower, arrived in straw and, usually, pieces. She had tried blowing her own and the effort always made her cough, which produced some very funny results. But the city’s thriving alchemy profession meant that there were whole shops full of glass for the buying, and a witch could always arrange bargain prices.

She watched carefully as yellow steam surged along a twisty maze of tubing and eventually condensed as one large, sticky droplet. She caught it neatly on the end of a glass spoon and very carefully tipped it into a tiny glass phial.

Esk watched her through her tears.

“What’s that?” she asked.