Equal Rites

men of Ohulan were right behind Stay Long Ointment but drew the line at flying women). She was distraught.
    “Not so much as a hint of her,” said Granny.
    “Have you been down to the river? She might have fallen in!”
    “Then she’d have just fallen out again. Anyway, she can swim. I think she’s hiding, drat her.”
    “What are we going to do?”
    Granny gave her a withering look. “Hilta Goatfounder, I’m ashamed of you, acting like a cowin. Do I look worried?”
    Hilta peered at her.
    “You do. A bit. Your lips have gone all thin.”
    “I’m just angry, that’s all.”
    “Gypsies always come here for the fair, they might have taken her.”
    Granny was prepared to believe anything about city folk but here she was on firmer ground.
    “Then they’re a lot dafter than I’d give them credit for,” she snapped. “Look, she’s got the staff.”
    “What good would that do?” said Hilta, who was close to tears.
    “I don’t think you’ve understood anything I’ve told you,” said Granny severely. “All we need to do is go back to your place and wait.”
    “What for?”
    “The screams or the bangs or the fireballs or whatever,” Granny said vaguely.
    “That’s heartless!”
    “Oh, I expect they’ve got it coming to them. Come on, you go on ahead and put the kettle on.”
    Hilta gave her a mystified look, then climbed on her broom and rose slowly and erratically into the shadows among the chimneys. If broomsticks were cars, this one would be a split-window Morris Minor.
    Granny watched her go, then stumped along the wet streets after her. She was determined that they wouldn’t get her up in one of those things.

    Esk lay in the big, fluffy and slightly damp sheets of the spare bed in the attic room of the Riddle. She was tired, but couldn’t sleep. The bed was too chilly, for one thing. She wondered uneasily if she dared try to warm it up, but thought better of it. She couldn’t seem to get the hang of fire spells, no matter how carefully she experimented. They either didn’t work at all or worked only too well. The woods around the cottage were becoming treacherous with the holes left by disappearing fireballs; at least, if the wizardry thing didn’t work then Granny said she’d have a fine future as a privy builder or well sinker.
    She turned over and tried to ignore the bed’s faint smell of mushrooms. Then she reached out in the darkness until her hand found the staff, propped against the bedhead. Mrs. Skiller had been quite insistent about taking it downstairs, but Esk had hung on like grim death. It was the only thing in the world she was absolutely certain belonged to her.
    The varnished surface with its strange carvings felt oddly comforting. Esk went to sleep, and dreamed bangles, and strange packages, and mountains. And distant stars above the mountains, and a cold desert where strange creatures lurched across the dry sand and stared at her through insect eyes…
    There was a creak on the stairs. Then another. Then a silence, the sort of choking, furry silence made by someone standing as still as possible.
    The door swung open. Skiller made a blacker shadow against the candlelight on the stairs, and there was a faintly whispered conversation before he tiptoed as silently as he could toward the bedhead. The staff slipped sideways as his first cautious grope dislodged it, but he caught it quickly and let his breath out very slowly.
    So he hardly had enough left to scream with when the staff moved in his hands. He felt the scaliness, the coil and muscle of it…
    Esk sat bolt upright in time to see Skiller roll backward down the steep stairladder, still flailing desperately at something quite invisible that coiled around his arms. There was another scream from below as he landed on his wife.
    The staff clattered to the floor and lay surrounded by a faint octarine glow.
    Esk got out of the bed and padded across the floor. There was a terrible cursing; it sounded unhealthy. She peered around the door and looked down on the face of Mrs. Skiller.
    “Give me that staff!”
    Esk reached down behind her and gripped the polished wood. “No,” she said. “It’s mine.”
    “It’s not the right sort of thing for little girls,” snapped the barman’s wife.
    “It belongs to me,” said Esk, and quietly closed the door. She listened for a moment to the muttering from below and tried to think of what to do next. Turning the couple into something would probably only cause a fuss