Equal Rites

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 gods lived on a ten-mile high mountain of rock and ice.
    “Gods are all right,” said Granny, as they ate their lunch and looked at the view. “You don’t bother gods, and gods don’t come bothering you.”
    “Do you know many gods?”
    “I’ve seen the thundergods a few times,” said Granny, “and Hoki, of course.”
    “Hoki?”
    Granny chewed a crustless sandwich. “Oh, he’s a nature god,” 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 bloody 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 bumblebees patrolled the thyme clusters. 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 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 Shifting 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 grass behind her. “Bed’s best.”
    “But what is Borrowing?”
    “Lie down and