Equal Rites

now you must burn the staff.”
    They both turned to stare at the heavy staff, which the smith had propped in the forge’s darkest corner. It almost appeared to be looking back at them.
    “But it’s magical,” he whispered.
    “Well?”
    “Will it burn?”
    “Never knew wood that didn’t.”
    “It doesn’t seem right!”
    Granny Weatherwax swung shut the big doors and turned to him angrily.
    “Now you listen to me, Gordo Smith!” she said. “Female wizards aren’t right either! It’s the wrong kind of magic for women, is wizard magic, it’s all books and stars and jommetry. She’d never grasp it. Whoever heard of a female wizard?”
    “There’s witches,” said the smith uncertainly. “And enchantresses too, I’ve heard.”
    “Witches is a different thing altogether,” snapped Granny Weatherwax. “It’s magic out of the ground, not out of the sky, and men never could get the hang of it. As for enchantresses,” she added. “They’re no better than they should be. You take it from me, just burn the staff, bury the body and don’t let on it ever happened.”
    Smith nodded reluctantly, crossed over to the forge, and pumped the bellows until the sparks flew. He went back for the staff.
    It wouldn’t move.
    “It won’t move!”
    Sweat stood out of his brow as he tugged at the wood. It remained uncooperatively immobile.
    “Here, let me try,” said Granny, and reached past him. There was a snap and a smell of scorched tin.
    Smith ran across the forge, whimpering slightly, to where Granny had landed upside down against the opposite wall.
    “Are you all right?”
    She opened two eyes like angry diamonds and said, “I see. That’s the way of it, is it?”
    “The way of what?” said Smith, totally bewildered.
    “Help me up, you fool. And fetch me a chopper.”
    The tone of her voice suggested that it would be a very good idea not to disobey. Smith rummaged desperately among the junk at the back of the forge until he found an old double-headed ax.
    “Right. Now take off your apron.”
    “Why? What do you intend to do?” said the smith, who was beginning to lose his grip on events. Granny gave an exasperated sigh.
    “It’s leather, you idiot. I’m going to wrap it around the handle. It’ll not catch me the same way twice!”
    Smith struggled out of the heavy leather apron and handed it to her very gingerly. She wrapped it around the ax and made one or two passes in the air. Then, a spiderlike figure in the glow of the nearly incandescent furnace, she stalked across the room and with a grunt of triumph and effort brought the heavy blade sweeping down right in the center of the staff.
    There was a click. There was a noise like a partridge. There was a thud.
    There was silence.
    Smith reached up very slowly, without moving his head, and touched the ax blade. It wasn’t on the ax anymore. It had buried itself in the door by his head, taking a tiny nick out of his ear.
    Granny stood looking slightly blurred from hitting an absolutely immovable object, and stared at the stub of wood in her hands.
    “Rrrrightttt,” she stuttered. “Iiiinnn tthhatttt cccasseee—”
    “No,” said Smith firmly, rubbing his ear. “Whatever it is you’re going to suggest, no. Leave it. I’ll pile some stuff around it. No one’ll notice. Leave it. It’s just a stick.”
    “Just a stick?”
    “Have you got any better ideas? Ones that won’t take my head off?”
    She glared at the staff, which appeared not to notice.
    “Not right now,” she admitted. “But you just give me time—”
    “All right, all right. Anyway, I’ve got things to do, wizards to bury, you know how it is.”
    Smith took a spade from beside the back door and hesitated.
    “Granny.”
    “What?”
    “Do you know how wizards like to be buried?”
    “Yes!”
    “Well, how?”
    Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs.
    “Reluctantly.”
    Later, night fell gently as the last of the world’s slow light flowed out of the valley, and a pale, rain-washed moon shone down in a night studded with stars. And in a shadowy orchard behind the forge there was the occasional clink of a spade or a muffled curse.
    In the cradle upstairs the world’s first female wizard dreamed of nothing much.
    The white cat lay half-asleep on its private ledge near the furnace. The only sound in the warm dark forge was the crackle of the coals as they settled down under the ash.
    The staff stood in the corner, where it wanted to be, wrapped in