Equal Rites

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 farther than a day’s journey) to achieve the desired effect.

She shredded some dry red leaves into a mug, topped it up with honey and hot water from the kettle, and pushed it into Esk’s hands. Then she put a large round stone under the grate—later on, wrapped in a scrap of blanket, it would make a bedwarmer—and, with a stern injunction to the girl not to stir from the chair, went out into the scullery.

Esk drummed her heels on the chair legs and sipped the drink. It had a strange, peppery taste. She wondered what it was. She’d tasted Granny’s brews before, of course, with a greater or lesser amount of honey in them depending on whether she thought you were making too much of a fuss, and Esk knew that she was famous throughout the mountains for special potions for illnesses that her mother—and some young women too, once in a while—just hinted at with raised eyebrows and lowered voices…

When Granny came back she was asleep. She didn’t remember being put to bed, or Granny bolting the windows.

Granny Weatherwax went back downstairs and pulled her rocking chair closer to the fire.

There was something there, she told herself, lurking away in the child’s mind. She didn’t like to think about what it was, but she remembered what had happened to the wolves. And all that about lighting fires with magic. Wizards did that, it was one of the first things they learned.

Granny sighed. There was only one way to be sure, and she was getting rather old for this sort of thing.

She picked up the candle and went out through the scullery into the lean-to that housed her goats. They watched her without fear, each sitting in its pen like a furry blob, three mouths working rhythmically on the day’s hay. The air smelled warm and slightly flatulent.

Up in the rafters was a small owl, one of a number of creatures who found that living with Granny was worth the occasional inconvenience. It came to her hand at a word, and she stroked its bullet head thoughtfully as she looked for somewhere comfortable to lie. A pile of hay it would have to be.

She blew out the candle and lay back, with the owl perched on her finger.

The goats chewed, burped and swallowed their way through their cosy 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 the University.

She’s female! hooted Granny, bouncing up and down on her branch.