Equal Rites

air between them thickened. But Granny had spent a lifetime bending recalcitrant creatures to her bidding and, while Esk was a surprisingly strong opponent, it was obvious that she would give in before the end of the paragraph.
    “Oh, all right,” she whined. “I don’t know why anyone would bother turning him into a pig when he was doing such a good job of it all by himself.”
    She didn’t know where the magic had come from, but she mentally faced that way and made a suggestion. Gulta reappeared, naked, with an apple in his mouth.
    “Awts aughtning?” he said.
    Granny spun around on Smith.
    “Now will you believe me?” she snapped. “Do you really think she’s supposed to settle down here and forget all about magic? Can you imagine her poor husband if she marries?”
    “But you always said it was impossible for women to be wizards,” said Smith. He was actually rather impressed. Granny Weatherwax had never been known to turn anyone into anything .
    “Never mind that now,” said Granny, calming down a bit. “She needs training. She needs to know how to control. For pity’s sake put some clothes on that child.”
    “Gulta, get dressed and stop grizzling,” said his father, and turned back to Granny.
    “You said there was some sort of teaching place?” he hazarded.
    “The Unseen University, yes. It’s for training wizards.”
    “And you know where it is?”
    “Yes,” lied Granny, whose grasp of geography was slightly worse than her knowledge of subatomic physics.
    Smith looked from her to his daughter, who was sulking.
    “And they’ll make a wizard of her?” he said.
    Granny sighed.
    “I don’t know what they’ll make of her,” she said.

    And so it was that, a week later, Granny locked the cottage door and hung the key on its nail in the privy. The goats had been sent to stay with a sister witch further along the hills, who had also promised to keep an Eye on the cottage. Bad Ass would just have to manage without a witch for a while.
    Granny was vaguely aware that you didn’t find the Unseen University unless it wanted you to, and the only place to start looking was the town of Ohulan Cutash, a sprawl of a hundred or so houses about fifteen miles away. It was where you went to once or twice a year if you were a really cosmopolitan Bad Assian: Granny had only been once before in her entire life and hadn’t approved of it at all. It had smelt all wrong, she’d got lost, and she distrusted city folk with their flashy ways.
    They got a lift on the cart that came out periodically with metal for the smithy. It was gritty, but better than walking, especially since Granny had packed their few possessions in a large sack. She sat on it for safety.
    Esk sat cradling the staff and watching the woods go by. When they were several miles outside the village she said, “I thought you told me plants were different in forn parts.”
    “So they are.”
    “These trees look just the same.”
    Granny regarded them disdainfully.
    “Nothing like as good,” she said.
    In fact she was already feeling slightly panicky. Her promise to accompany Esk to Unseen University had been made without thinking, and Granny, who picked up what little she knew of the rest of the Disc from rumor and the pages of her Almanack , was convinced that they were heading into earthquakes, tidal waves, plagues and massacres, many of them diuerse or even worse. But she was determined to see it through. A witch relied too much on words ever to go back on them.
    She was wearing serviceable black, and concealed about her person were a number of hatpins and a breadknife. She had hidden their small store of money, grudgingly advanced by Smith, in the mysterious strata of her underwear. Her skirt pockets jingled with lucky charms, and a freshly forged horseshoe, always a potent preventative in time of trouble, weighed down her handbag. She felt about as ready as she ever would be to face the world.
    The track wound down between the mountains. For once the sky was clear, the high Ramtops standing out crisp and white like the brides of the sky (with their trousseaux stuffed with thunderstorms) and the many little streams that bordered or crossed the path flowed sluggishly through strands of meadowsweet and go-faster-root.
    By lunchtime they reached the suburb of Ohulan (it was too small to have more than one, which was just an inn and a handful of cottages belonging to people who couldn’t stand the pressures of urban life) and a few