Equal Rites

determined.
    The landlord of The Fiddler’s Riddle considered himself to be a man of the world, and this was right, because he was too stupid to be really cruel, and too lazy to be really mean and although his body had been around quite a lot his mind had never gone further than the inside of his own head.
    He wasn’t used to being addressed by sticks. Especially when they spoke in a small piping voice, and asked for goat’s milk.
    Cautiously, aware that everyone in the inn was looking at him and grinning, he pulled himself across the bar top until he could see down. Esk stared up at him. Look ’em right in the eye, Granny had always said: focus your power on ’em, stare ’em out, no one can outstare a witch, ’cept a goat, of course.
    The landlord, whose name was Skiller, found himself looking directly down at a small child who seemed to be squinting.
    “What?” he said.
    “Milk,” said the child, still focusing furiously. “You get it out of goats. You know?”
    Skiller sold only beer, which his customers claimed he got out of cats. No self-respecting goat would have endured the smell in The Fiddler’s Riddle.
    “We haven’t got any,” he said. He looked hard at the staff and his eyebrows met conspiratorially over his nose.
    “You could have a look,” said Esk.
    Skiller eased himself back across the bar, partly to avoid the gaze, which was causing his eyes to water in sympathy, and partly because a horrible suspicion was congealing in his mind.
    Even second-rate barmen tend to resonate with the beer they serve, and the vibrations coming from the big barrels behind him no longer had the twang of hop and head. They were broadcasting an altogether more lactic note.
    He turned a tap experimentally, and watched a thin stream of milk curdle in the drip bucket.
    The staff still poked up over the edge of the counter, like a periscope. He could swear that it was staring at him too.
    “Don’t waste it,” said a voice. “You’ll be grateful for it one day.”
    It was the same tone of voice Granny used when Esk was less than enthusiastic about a plateful of nourishing sallet greens, boiled yellow until the last few vitamins gave in, but to Skiller’s hypersensitive ears it wasn’t an injunction but a prediction. He shivered. He didn’t know where he would have to be to make him grateful for a drink of ancient beer and curdled milk. He’d rather be dead first.
    Perhaps he would be dead first.
    He very carefully wiped a nearly clean mug with his thumb and filled it from the tap. He was aware that a large number of his guests were quietly leaving. No one liked magic, especially in the hands of a woman. You never could tell what they might take it into their heads to do next.
    “Your milk,” he said, adding, “Miss.”
    “I’ve got some money,” Esk said. Granny had always told her: always be ready to pay and you won’t have to, people always like you to feel good about them, it’s all headology.
    “No, wouldn’t dream of it,” said Skiller hastily. He leaned over the bar. “If you could see, er, your way clear to turning the rest back, though? Not much call for milk in these parts.”
    He sidled along a little way. Esk had leaned the staff against the bar while she drank her milk, and it was making him uncomfortable.
    Esk looked at him over a mustache of cream.
    “I didn’t turn it into milk, I just knew it would be milk because I wanted milk,” she said. “What did you think it was?”
    “Er. Beer.”
    Esk thought about this. She vaguely remembered trying beer once, and it had tasted sort of secondhand. But she could recall something which everyone in Bad Ass reckoned was much better than beer. It was one of Granny’s most guarded recipes. It was good for you, because there was only fruit in it, plus lots of freezing and boiling and careful testing of little drops with a lighted flame.
    Granny would put a very small spoonful in her milk if it was a really cold night. It had to be a wooden spoon, on account of what it did to metal.
    She concentrated. She could picture the taste in her mind, and with the little skills that she was beginning to accept but couldn’t understand she found she could take the taste apart into little colored shapes…
    Skiller’s thin wife came out of their back room to see why it had all gone so quiet, and he waved her into shocked silence as Esk stood swaying very slightly with her eyes closed and her lips moving.
    …little shapes that you didn’t need