Equal Rites Part 5

"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 said Granny, "But no, it isn't all 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 toward 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 mold 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 ma.s.s of insects and made a shrill, faint piping noise at the back of her throat. There was a movement in the ma.s.s, 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 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? 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 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. 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 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." 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 G.o.ds lived on a ten-mile high mountain of rock and ice.

"G.o.ds are all right," said Granny, as they ate their lunch and looked at the view. "You don't bother G.o.ds, and G.o.ds don't come bothering you."

"Do you know many G.o.ds?"

"I've seen the thunderG.o.ds a few times," said Granny, "and Hoki, of course."

"Hoki?"

Granny chewed a crustless sandwich. "Oh, he's a nature G.o.d," 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.u.mblebees patrolled the thyme cl.u.s.ters. 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?"

"I daresay."

"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 is a good time." 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 s.h.i.+fting 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 gray 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 toward them.

"The first thing to remember about Borrowing is that you must be comfortable and somewhere safe," she said, smoothing out the gra.s.s behind her. "Bed's best."