Equal Rites

minutes later the cart deposited them in the town’s main, indeed its only, square.
    It turned out to be market day.
    Granny Weatherwax stood uncertainly on the cobbles, holding tightly to Esk’s shoulder as the crowd swirled around them. She had heard that lewd things could happen to country women who were freshly arrived in big cities, and she gripped her handbag until her knuckles whitened. If any male stranger had happened to so much as nod at her it would have gone very hard indeed for him.
    Esk’s eyes were sparkling. The square was a jigsaw of noise and color and smell. On one side of it were the temples of the Disc’s more demanding deities, and weird perfumes drifted out to join with the reeks of commerce in a complex ragrug of fragrances. There were stalls filled with enticing curiosities that she itched to investigate.
    Granny let the both of them drift with the crowd. The stalls were puzzling her as well. She peered among them, although never for one minute relaxing her vigilance against pickpockets, earthquakes and traffickers in the erotic, until she spied something vaguely familiar.
    There was a small covered stall, black draped and musty, that had been wedged into a narrow space between two houses. Inconspicuous though it was, it nevertheless seemed to be doing a very busy trade. Its customers were mainly women, of all ages, although she did notice a few men. They all had one thing in common, though. No one approached it directly. They all sort of strolled almost past it, then suddenly ducked under its shady canopy. A moment later and they would be back again, hand just darting away from bag or pocket, competing for the world’s Most Nonchalant Walk title so effectively that a watcher might actually doubt what he or she had just seen.
    It was quite amazing that a stall so many people didn’t know was there should be quite so popular.
    “What’s in there?” said Esk. “What’s everyone buying?”
    “Medicines,” said Granny firmly.
    “There must be a lot of very sick people in towns,” said Esk gravely.
    Inside, the stall was a mass of velvet shadows and the herbal scent was thick enough to bottle. Granny poked a few bundles of dry leaves with an expert finger. Esk pulled away from her and tried to read the scrawled labels on the bottles in front of her. She was expert at most of Granny’s preparations, but she didn’t recognize anything here. The names were quite amusing, like Tiger Oil, Maiden’s Prayer and Husband’s Helper, and one or two of the stoppers smelled like Granny’s scullery after she had done some of her secret distillations.
    A shape moved in the stall’s dim recesses and a brown wrinkled hand slid lightly on to hers.
    “Can I assist you, missy?” said a cracked voice, in tones of syrup of figs, “Is it your fortune you want telling, or is it your future you want changing, maybe?”
    “She’s with me,” snapped Granny, spinning around, “and your eyes are betraying you, Hilta Goatfounder, if you can’t tell her age.”
    The shape in front of Esk bent forward.
    “Esme Weatherwax?” it asked.
    “The very same,” said Granny. “Still selling thunder drops and penny wishes, Hilta? How goes it?”
    “All the better for seeing you,” said the shape. “What brings you down from the mountains, Esme? And this child—your assistant, perhaps?”
    “What’s it you’re selling, please?” asked Esk. The shape laughed.
    “Oh, things to stop things that shouldn’t be and help things that should, love,” it said. “Let me just close up, my dears, and I will be right with you.”
    The shape bustled past Esk in a nasal kaleidoscope of fragrances and buttoned up the curtains at the front of the stall. Then the drapes at the back were thrown up, letting in the afternoon sunlight.
    “Can’t stand the dark and fug myself,” said Hilta Goat founder, “but the customers expect it. You know how it is.”
    “Yes,” Esk nodded sagely. “Headology.”
    Hilta, a small fat woman wearing an enormous hat with fruit on it, glanced from her to Granny and grinned.
    “That’s the way of it,” she agreed. “Will you take some tea?”
    They sat on bales of unknown herbs in the private corner made by the stall between the angled walls of the houses, and drank something fragrant and green out of surprisingly delicate cups. Unlike Granny, who dressed like a very respectable raven, Hilta Goatfounder was all lace and shawls and colors and earrings and so many bangles that