Equal Rites

It went on for a long time. It was one of the most unpleasant sounds Esk had ever heard.

She woke up shivering. It was long after midnight and the stars looked damp and chilly; the air was full of the busy silence of the night, which is created by hundreds of small furry things treading very carefully in the hope of finding dinner while avoiding being the main course.

A crescent moon was setting and a thin grey glow towards the rim of the world suggested that, against all probability, another day was on the cards.

Someone had wrapped Esk in a blanket.

“I know you’re awake,” said the voice of Granny Weatherwax. “You could make yourself useful and light a fire. There’s damn all wood in these parts.”

Esk sat up, and clutched at the juniper bush. She felt light enough to float away.

“Fire?” she muttered.

“Yes. You know. Pointing the finger and whoosh,” said Granny sourly. She was sitting on a rock, trying to find a position that didn’t upset her arthritis.

“I—I don’t think I can.”

“You tell me?” said Granny cryptically.

The old witch leaned forward and put her hand on Esk’s forehead; it was like being caressed by a sock full of warm dice.

“You’re running a bit of a temperature,” she added. “Too much hot sun and cold ground. That’s forn parts for you.”

Esk let herself slump forward until her head lay in Granny’s lap, with its familiar smells of camphor, mixed herbs and a trace of goat. Granny patted her in what she hoped was a soothing way.

After a while Esk said, in a low voice, “They’re not going to allow me into the University. A wizard told me, and I dreamed about it, and it was one of those true dreams. You know, like you told me, a maty-thing.”

“Metterfor,” said Granny calmly.

“One of them.”

“Did you think it would be easy?” asked Granny. “Did you think you’d walk into their gates waving your staff? Here I am, I want to be a wizard, thank you very much?”

“He told me there’s no women allowed in the University!”

“He’s wrong.”

“No, I could tell he was telling the truth. You know, Granny, you can tell how—”

“Foolish child. All you could tell was that he thought he was telling the truth. The world isn’t always as people see it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Esk.

“You’ll learn,” said Granny. “Now tell me. This dream. They wouldn’t let you into their university, right?”

“Yes, and they laughed!”

“And then you tried to burn down the doors?”

Esk turned her head in Granny’s lap and opened a suspicious eye.

“How did you know?”

Granny smiled, but as a lizard would smile.

“I was miles away,” she said. “I was bending my mind towards you, and suddenly you seemed to be everywhere. You shone out like a beacon, so you did. As for the fire—look around.”

In the halflight of dawn the plateau was a mass of baked clay. In front of Esk the cliff was glassy and must have flowed like tar under the onslaught; there were great gashes across it which had dripped molten rock and slag. When Esk listened she could hear the faint “pink, pink” of cooling rock.

“Oh,” she said, “did I do that?”

“So it would appear,” said Granny.

“But I was asleep! I was only dreaming!”

“It’s the magic,” said Granny. “It’s trying to find a way out. The witch magic and the wizard magic are, I don’t know, sort of feeding off each other. I think.”

Esk bit her lip.

“What can I do?” she asked. “I dream of all sorts of things!”

“Well, for a start we’re going straight to the University,” decided Granny. “They must be used to apprentices not being able to control magic and having hot dreams, else the place would have burned down years ago.”

She glanced towards the Rim, and then down at the broomstick beside her.

We will pass over the running up and down, the tightening of the broomstick’s bindings, the muttered curses against dwarves, the brief moments of hope as the magic flickered fitfully, the horrible black feelings as it died, the tightening of the bindings again, the running again, the sudden catching of the spell, the scrambling aboard, the yelling, the takeoff ….

Esk clung to Granny with one hand and held her staff in the other as they, frankly, pottered along a few hundred feet above the ground. A few birds flew alongside them, interested in this new flying tree.

“Bugger off!” screamed Granny, taking off her hat and flapping it.

“We’re not going very fast, Granny,” said Esk meekly.

“We’re going quite fast enough for me!”

Esk looked around. Behind them the Rim was a blaze of gold, barred with cloud.

“I think we ought to go lower, Granny,” she said urgently. “You said the broomstick won’t fly in sunlight.” She glanced down at the landscape below them. It looked sharp and inhospitable. It also looked expectant.

“I know what I’m doing, Miss,” snapped Granny, gripping the broomstick hard and trying to make herself as light as possible.

It has already been revealed that light on the Discworld travels slowly, the result of its passage through the Disc’s vast and ancient magical field.