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!
“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 licker. 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 favoured 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 witchcraft.
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.
“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.
