Equal Rites

every time something happens, something else has to happen too—I think,” said Esk uncertainly, picking her way around a deeper than usual snowdrift. “Only in the…opposite direction.”
    “That’s silly,” said Gulta, “because, look, you remember when that fair came last summer and there was a wizard with it and he made all those birds and things appear out of nothing? I mean it just happened, he just said these words and waved his hands, and it just happened. There weren’t any seesaws.”
    “There was a swing,” said Cern. “And a thing where you had to throw things at things to win things.”
    “And you didn’t hit anything, Gul.”
    “Nor did you, you said the things were stuck to the things so you couldn’t knock them off, you said…”
    Their conversation wandered away like a couple of puppies. Esk listened with half an ear. I know what I mean, she told herself. Magic’s easy, you just find the place where everything is balanced and push. Anyone could do it. There’s nothing magical about it. All the funny words and waving the hands is just…it’s only for…
    She stopped, surprised at herself. She knew what she meant. The idea was right up there in the front of her mind. But she didn’t know how to say it in words, even to herself.
    It was a horrible feeling to find things in your head and not know how they fitted. It…
    “Come on, we’ll be all day.”
    She shook her head and hurried after her brothers.
    The witch’s cottage consisted of so many extensions and lean-tos that it was difficult to see what the original building had looked like, or even if there had ever been one. In the summer it was surrounded by dense beds of what Granny loosely called “the Herbs”—strange plants, hairy or squat or twining, with curious flowers or vivid fruits or unpleasantly bulging pods. Only Granny knew what they were all for, and any wood-pigeon hungry enough to attack them generally emerged giggling to itself and bumping into things (or, sometimes, never emerged at all).
    Now everything was deep under the snow. A forlorn windsock flapped against its pole. Granny didn’t hold with flying but some of her friends still used broomsticks.
    “It looks deserted,” said Cern.
    “No smoke,” said Gulta.
    The windows look like eyes, thought Esk, but kept it to herself.
    “It’s only Granny’s house,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong.”
    The cottage radiated emptiness. They could feel it. The windows did look like eyes, black and menacing against the snow. And no one in the Ramtops let their fire go out in the winter, as a matter of pride.
    Esk wanted to say “Let’s go home,” but she knew that if she did the boys would run for it. Instead she said, “Mother says there’s a key on a nail in the privy,” and that was nearly as bad. Even an ordinary unknown privy held minor terrors like wasps’ nests, large spiders, mysterious rustling things in the roof and, one very bad winter, a small hibernating bear that caused acute constipation in the family until it was persuaded to bed down in the haybarn. A witch’s privy could contain anything .
    “I’ll go and look, shall I?” she added.
    “If you like,” said Gulta airily, almost successfully concealing his relief.
    In fact, when she managed to get the door open against the piled snow, it was neat and clean and contained nothing more sinister than an old almanack, or more precisely about half an old almanack, carefully hung on a nail. Granny had a philosophical objection to reading, but she’d be the last to say that books, especially books with nice thin pages, didn’t have their uses.
    The key shared a ledge by the door with a chrysalis and the stump of a candle. Esk took it gingerly, trying not to disturb the chrysalis, and hurried back to the boys.
    It was no use trying the front door. Front doors in Bad Ass were used only by brides and corpses, and Granny had always avoided becoming either. Around the back the snow was piled in front of the door and no one had broken the ice on the water butt.
    The light was starting to pour out of the sky by the time they dug through to the door and managed to persuade the key to turn.
    Inside, the big kitchen was dark and chilly and smelled only of snow. It was always dark, but they were used to seeing a big fire in the wide chimney and smelling the thick fumes of whatever it was she was boiling up this time, which sometimes gave you a headache or made you see things.
    They wandered