Equal Rites

leaned over the side of the boat and tapped on the water.
    “Ice,” she said. The boat was motionless in an ocean of ice. It creaked ominously.
    Cutangle nodded slowly.
    “It makes sense,” he said. “If they are…where we think they are, then it’s very cold. As cold as the night between the stars, it is said. So the staff feels it too.”
    “Right,” said Granny, and stepped out of the boat. “All we have to do is find the middle of the ice and there’s the staff, right?”
    “I knew you were going to say that. Can I at least put my boots on?”
    They wandered across the frozen waves, with Cutangle stopping occasionally to try and sense the exact location of the staff. His robes were freezing on him. His teeth chattered.
    “Aren’t you cold?” he said to Granny, whose dress fairly crackled as she walked.
    “I’m cold,” she conceded, “I just ain’t shivering.”
    “We used to have winters like this when I was a lad,” said Cutangle, blowing on his fingers. “It doesn’t snow in Ankh, hardly.”
    “Really,” said Granny, peering ahead through the freezing fog.
    “There was snow on the tops of the mountains all year round, I recall. Oh, you don’t get temperatures like you did when I was a boy.
    “At least, until now,” he added, stamping his feet on the ice. It creaked menacingly, reminding him that it was all that lay between him and the bottom of the sea. He stamped again, as softly as possible.
    “What mountains were these?” asked Granny.
    “Oh, the Ramtops. Up toward the Hub, in fact. Place called Brass Neck.”
    Granny’s lips moved. “Cutangle, Cutangle,” she said softly. “Any relation to old Acktur Cutangle? Used to live in a big old house under Leaping Mountain, had a lot of sons.”
    “My father. How on Disc d’you know that?”
    “I was raised up there,” said Granny, resisting the temptation merely to smile knowingly. “Next valley. Bad Ass. I remember your mother. Nice woman, kept brown and white chickens, I used to go up there to buy eggs for me mam. That was before I was called to witching, of course.”
    “I don’t remember you,” said Cutangle. “Of course, it was a long time ago. There was always a lot of children around our house.” He sighed. “I suppose it’s possible I pulled your hair once. It was the sort of thing I used to do.”
    “Maybe. I remember a fat little boy. Rather unpleasant.”
    “That might have been me. I seem to recall a rather bossy girl, but it was a long time ago. A long time ago.”
    “I didn’t have white hair in those days,” said Granny.
    “Everything was a different color in those days.”
    “That’s true.”
    “It didn’t rain so much in the summer time.”
    “The sunsets were redder.”
    “There were more old people. The world was full of them,” said the wizard.
    “Yes, I know. And now it’s full of young people. Funny, really. I mean, you’d expect it to be the other way round.”
    “They even had a better kind of air. It was easier to breathe,” said Cutangle. They stamped on through the swirling snow, considering the curious ways of time and Nature.
    “Ever been home again?” said Granny.
    Cutangle shrugged. “When my father died. It’s odd, I’ve never said this to anyone, but—well, there were my brothers, because I am an eighth son of course, and they had children and even grandchildren, and not one of them can hardly write his name. I could have bought the whole village. And they treated me like a king, but—I mean, I’ve been to places and seen things that would curdle their minds, I’ve faced down creatures wilder than their nightmares, I know secrets that are known to a very few—”
    “You felt left out,” said Granny. “There’s nothing strange in that. It happens to all of us. It was our choice.”
    “Wizards should never go home,” said Cutangle.
    “I don’t think they can go home,” agreed Granny. “You can’t cross the same river twice, I always say.”
    Cutangle gave this some thought.
    “I think you’re wrong there,” he said. “I must have crossed the same river, oh, thousands of times.”
    “Ah, but it wasn’t the same river.”
    “It wasn’t?”
    “No.”
    Cutangle shrugged. “It looked like the same bloody river.”
    “No need to take that tone,” said Granny. “I don’t see why I should listen to that sort of language from a wizard who can’t even answer letters!”
    Cutangle was silent for a moment, except for the castanet chatter of his