Equal Rites

stuck the knife in the bread-board 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 mage; 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 amp’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 favorite word to describe all she despised in wizardry, “—jommetry.”
    “That’s all right, then,” said Esk, relieved. “I’ll stay here and learn witchery.”
    “Ah,” said Granny gloomily, “that’s all very well for you to say. I don’t think it will be as easy as that.”
    “But you said that men can be wizards and women can be witches and it can’t be the other way around.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Well, then,” said Esk triumphantly, “it’s all solved, isn’t it? I can’t help but be a witch.”
    Granny pointed to the staff. Esk shrugged.
    “It’s just an old stick.”
    Granny shook her head. Esk blinked.
    “No?”
    “No.”
    “And I can’t be a witch?”
    “I don’t know what you can be. Hold the staff.”
    “What?”
    “Hold the staff. Now, I’ve laid the fire in the grate. Light it.”
    “The tinderbox is—” Esk began.
    “You once told me there were better ways of lighting fires. Show me.”
    Granny stood up. In the dimness of the kitchen she seemed to grow until she filled it with shifting, ragged shadows, shot with menace. Her eyes glared down at Esk.
    “Show me,” she commanded, and her voice had ice in it.
    “But—” said Esk desperately, clutching the heavy staff to her and knocking her stool over in her haste to back away.
    “Show me.”
    With a scream Esk spun around. Fire flared from her fingertips and arced across the room. The kindling exploded with a force that hurled the furniture around the room and a ball of fierce green light spluttered on the hearth.
    Changing patterns sped across it as it spun sizzling on the stones, which cracked and then flowed. The iron fireback resisted bravely for a few seconds before melting like wax; it made a final appearance as a red smear across the fireball and then vanished. A moment later the kettle went