Equal Rites

“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, but the old woman waved the breadknife at her.

“First things first. Stand up. Face me.”

Esk did so, puzzled. Granny stuck the knife in the breadboard and shook her head.

“Drat it,” she said to the world at large. “I don’t know what way they have of it, there should be some kind of ceremony if I know wizards, they always have to complicate things . . . .”

“What do you mean?”

Granny seemed to ignore her, but crossed to the dark corner by the dresser.

“Probably you should have one foot in a bucket of cold porridge and one glove on and all that kind of stuff,” she went on. “I didn’t want to do this, but They’re forcing my hand.”

“What are you talking about, Granny?”

The old witch yanked the staff out of its shadow and waved it vaguely at Esk.

“Here. It’s yours. Take it. I just hope this is the right thing to do.”

In fact the presentation of a staff to an apprentice wizard is usually a very impressive ceremony, especially if the staff has been inherited from an elder wage; by ancient lore there is a long and frightening ordeal involving masks and hoods and swords and fearful oaths about people’s tongues being cut out and their entrails torn by wild birds and their ashes scattered to the eight winds and so on. After some hours of this sort of thing the apprentice can be admitted to the brotherhood of the Wise and Enlightened.

There is also a long speech. By sheer coincidence Granny got the essence of it in a nutshell.

Esk took the staff and peered at it.

“It’s very nice,” she said uncertainly. “The carvings are pretty. What’s it for?”

“Sit down now. And listen properly for once. On the day you were born …”

“… and that’s the shape of it.”

Esk looked hard at the staff, then at Granny.

“I’ve got to be a wizard?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

“That isn’t really an answer, Granny,” Esk said reproachfully. “Am I or aren’t I?”

“Women can’t be wizards,” said Granny bluntly. “It’s agin nature. You might as well have a female blacksmith.”

“Actually I’ve watched dad at work and I don’t see why—”

“Look,” said Granny hurriedly, “you can’t have a female wizard any more than you can have a male witch, because—”

“I’ve heard of male witches,” said Esk meekly.

“Warlocks!”

“I think so.”

“I mean there’s no male witches, only silly men,” said Granny hotly. “If men were witches, they’d be wizards. It’s all down to—”she tapped her head “—headology. How your mind works. Men’s minds work different from ours, see. Their magic’s all numbers and angles and edges and what the stars are doing, as if that really mattered. It’s all power. It’s all—” Granny paused, and dredged up her favourite word to describe all she despised in wizardry, “—jommetry.”

“That’s all right, then,” said Esk, relieved. “I’ll stay here and learn witchery.”

“Ali,” said Granny gloomily, “that’s all very well for you to say. I don’t think it will be as easy as that.”