It turned out that they were in a spur valley overlooking a drop of several hundred feet on to sharp black rocks.

“Very well, then,” she conceded, “but you’re to fly slowly, d’you understand? And no going high.”

In fact, because she was slightly more experienced and perhaps because the staff was taking more care, too, the ride back was almost sedate. Granny was almost persuaded that, given time, she could come to merely dislike flying, instead of loathing it. What it needed was some way of stopping yourself from having to look at the ground.

The eagle sprawled on the rag rug in front of the empty hearth. It had drunk some water, over which Granny had mumbled a few of the charms she normally said to impress patients, but you never knew, there might be some power in them, and it had also gulped a few strips of raw meat.

What it had not done was display the least sign of intelligence.

She wondered whether she had the right bird. She risked another pecking and stared hard into its evil orange eyes, and tried to convince herself that way down in their depths, almost beyond sight, was a strange little flicker.

She probed around inside its head. The eagle mind was still there right enough, vivid and sharp, but there was something else. Mind, of course, has no colour, but nevertheless the strands of the eagle’s mind seemed to be purple. Around them and tangled among them were faint strands of silver.

Esk had learned too late that mind shapes body, that Borrowing is one thing but that the dream of truly taking on another form had its built-in penalty.

Granny sat and rocked. She was at a loss, she knew that. Unravelling the tangled minds was beyond her power, beyond any power in the Ramtops, beyond even

There was no sound, but maybe there was a change in the texture of the air. She looked up at the staff, which had been suffered to come back into the cottage.

“No,” she said firmly.

Then she thought: whose benefit did I say that for? Mine? There’s power there, but it’s not my kind of power.

There isn’t any other kind around, though. And even now I may be too late.

I might never have been early enough.

She reached out again into the bird’s head to calm its fears and dispel its panic. It allowed her to pick it up and sat awkwardly on her wrist, its talons gripping tight enough to draw blood.

Granny took the staff and made her way upstairs, to where Esk lay on the narrow bed in the low bedroom with its ancient contoured ceiling.

She made the bird perch on the bedrail and turned her attention to the staff. Once more the carvings shifted under her glare, never quite revealing their true form.

Granny was no stranger to the uses of power, but she knew she relied on gentle pressure subtly to steer the tide of things. She didn’t put it like that, of course—she would have said that there was always a lever if you knew where to look. The power in the staff was harsh, fierce, the raw stuff of magic distilled out of the forces that powered the universe itself.

There would be a price. And Granny knew enough about wizardry to be certain that it would be a high one. But if you were worried about the price, then why were you in the shop?

She cleared her throat, and wondered what the hell she was supposed to do next. Perhaps if she

The power hit her like a half-brick. She could feel it take her and lift her so that she was amazed to look down and see her feet still firmly on the floorboards. She tried to take a step forward and magical discharges crackled in the air around her. She reached out to steady herself against the wall and the ancient wooden beam under her hand stirred and started to sprout leaves. A cyclone of magic swirled around the room, picking up dust and briefly giving it some very disturbing shapes; the jug and basin on the washstand, with the particularly fetching rosebud pattern, broke into fragments. Under the bed the third member of the traditional china trio turned into something horrible and slunk away.

Granny opened her mouth to swear and thought better of it when her words blossomed out into rainbow-edged clouds.

She looked down at Esk and the eagle, which seemed oblivious to all this, and tried to concentrate. She let herself slide inside its head and again she could see the strands of mind, the silver threads bound so closely around the purple that they took on the same shape. But now she could see where the strands ended, and where a judicious tug or push would begin to unravel them. It was so obvious she heard herself laugh, and the sound curved away in shades of orange and red and vanished into the ceiling.

Time passed. Even with the power throbbing through hey head it was a painfully hard task, like threading a needle by moonlight, but eventually she had a handful of silver. In the slow, heavy world in which she now appeared to be she took the hank and threw it slowly towards Esk. It became a cloud, swirled like a whirlpool, and vanished.

She was aware of a shrill chittering noise, and shadows on the edge of sight. Well, it happened to everyone sooner or later. They had come, drawn as always by a discharge of magic. You just had to learn to ignore them.

Granny woke with bright sunlight skewering into her eyes. She was slumped against the door, and her whole body felt as though it had toothache.

She reached out blindly with one hand, found the edge of the washstand, and pulled herself into a sitting position. She was not really surprised to see that the jug and basin looked just the same as they had always done; in fact sheer curiosity overcame her aches and she gave a quick glance under the bed to check that, yes, things were as normal.

The eagle was still hunched on the bedpost. In the bed Esk was asleep, and Granny saw that it was a true sleep and not the stillness of a vacant body.

All she had to do now was hope that Esk wouldn’t wake up with an irresistible urge to pounce on rabbits.

She carried the unresisting bird downstairs and let it free outside the back door. It flew heavily up into the nearest tree, where it settled to rest. It had a feeling it ought to have a grudge against somebody, but for the life of it, it couldn’t remember why.

Esk opened her eyes and stared for a long time at the ceiling. Over the months she had grown familiar with every lump and crack of the plaster, which created a fantastic upside-down landscape that she had peopled with a private and complex civilization.

Her mind thronged with dreams. She pulled an arm out from under the sheets and stared at it, wondering why it wasn’t covered with feathers. It was all very puzzling.

She pushed the covers back, swung her legs to the edge of the bed, spread her wings into the rush of the wind and glided out into the world ….

The thump on the bedroom floor brought Granny scurrying up the stairs, to take her in her arms and hold her tight as the terror hit her. She rocked back and forth on her heels, making meaningless soothing noises.

Esk looked up at her through a mask of horror.

“I could feel myself vanishing!”

“Yes, yes. Better now,” murmured Granny.

“You don’t understand! I couldn’t even remember my name!” Esk shrieked.

“But you can remember now.”

Esk hesitated, checking. “Yes,” she said, “Yes, of course. Now.”

“So no harm done.”

“But—”

Granny sighed. “You have learned something,” she said, and thought it safe to insert a touch of sternness into her voice. “They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not; one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

“But what happened?”

“You thought that Borrowing wasn’t enough. You thought it would be a fine thing to steal another’s body. But you must know that a body is like—like a jelly mould. It sets a shape on its contents, d’you see? You can’t have a girl’s mind in an eagle’s body. Not for long, at any rate.”

“I became an eagle?”

“Yes.”

“Not me at all?”

Granny thought for a while. She always had to pause when conversations with Esk led her beyond the reaches of a decent person’s vocabulary.

“No,” she said at last, “not in the way you mean. Just an eagle with maybe some strange dreams sometimes. Like when you dream you’re flying, perhaps it would remember walking and talking.”

“Urgh.”

“But it’s all over now,” said Granny, treating her to a thin smile. “You’re your true self again and the eagle has got its mind back. It’s sitting in the big beech by the privy; I should like you to put out some food for it.”

Esk sat back on her heels, staring at a point past Granny’s head.

“There were some strange things,” she said conversationally. Granny spun around.

“I meant, in a sort of dream I saw things,” said Esk. The old woman’s shock was so visible that she hesitated, frightened that she had said something wrong.

“What kind of things?” said Granny flatly.

“Sort of big creatures, all sorts of shapes. Just sitting around.”

“Was it dark? I mean, these Things, were they in the dark?”

“There were stars, I think. Granny?”

Granny Weatherwax was staring at the wall.

“Granny?” Esk repeated.

“Mmph? Yes? Oh.” Granny shook herself. “Yes. I see. Now I would like you to go downstairs and get the bacon that is in the pantry and put it out for the bird, do you understand? It would be a good idea to thank it, too. You never know.”

When Esk returned Granny was buttering bread. She pulled her stool up to the table, but the old woman waved the breadknife at her.

“First things first. Stand up. Face me.”

Esk did so, puzzled. Granny stuck the knife in the breadboard and shook her head.

“Drat it,” she said to the world at large. “I don’t know what way they have of it, there should be some kind of ceremony if I know wizards, they always have to complicate things . . . .”

“What do you mean?”

Granny seemed to ignore her, but crossed to the dark corner by the dresser.

“Probably you should have one foot in a bucket of cold porridge and one glove on and all that kind of stuff,” she went on. “I didn’t want to do this, but They’re forcing my hand.”

“What are you talking about, Granny?”

The old witch yanked the staff out of its shadow and waved it vaguely at Esk.

“Here. It’s yours. Take it. I just hope this is the right thing to do.”

In fact the presentation of a staff to an apprentice wizard is usually a very impressive ceremony, especially if the staff has been inherited from an elder wage; by ancient lore there is a long and frightening ordeal involving masks and hoods and swords and fearful oaths about people’s tongues being cut out and their entrails torn by wild birds and their ashes scattered to the eight winds and so on. After some hours of this sort of thing the apprentice can be admitted to the brotherhood of the Wise and Enlightened.

There is also a long speech. By sheer coincidence Granny got the essence of it in a nutshell.

Esk took the staff and peered at it.

“It’s very nice,” she said uncertainly. “The carvings are pretty. What’s it for?”

“Sit down now. And listen properly for once. On the day you were born …”

“… and that’s the shape of it.”

Esk looked hard at the staff, then at Granny.

“I’ve got to be a wizard?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

“That isn’t really an answer, Granny,” Esk said reproachfully. “Am I or aren’t I?”

“Women can’t be wizards,” said Granny bluntly. “It’s agin nature. You might as well have a female blacksmith.”

“Actually I’ve watched dad at work and I don’t see why—”

“Look,” said Granny hurriedly, “you can’t have a female wizard any more than you can have a male witch, because—”

“I’ve heard of male witches,” said Esk meekly.

“Warlocks!”

“I think so.”

“I mean there’s no male witches, only silly men,” said Granny hotly. “If men were witches, they’d be wizards. It’s all down to—”she tapped her head “—headology. How your mind works. Men’s minds work different from ours, see. Their magic’s all numbers and angles and edges and what the stars are doing, as if that really mattered. It’s all power. It’s all—” Granny paused, and dredged up her favourite word to describe all she despised in wizardry, “—jommetry.”

“That’s all right, then,” said Esk, relieved. “I’ll stay here and learn witchery.”

“Ali,” said Granny gloomily, “that’s all very well for you to say. I don’t think it will be as easy as that.”

“But you said that men can be wizards and women can be witches and it can’t be the other way around.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, then,” said Esk triumphantly, “it’s all solved, isn’t it? I can’t help but be a witch.”

Granny pointed to the staff. Esk shrugged.

“It’s just an old stick.”

Granny shook her head. Esk blinked.

“No?”

“No.”

“And I can’t be a witch?”

“I don’t know what you can be. Hold the staff.”

“What?”

“Hold the staff. Now, I’ve laid the fire in the grate. Light it.”

“The tinderbox is—” Esk began.

“You once told me there were better ways of lighting fires. Show me.”

Granny stood up. In the dimness of the kitchen she seemed to grow until she filled it with shifting, ragged shadows, shot with menace. Her eyes glared down at Esk.

“Show me,” she commanded, and her voice had ice in it.

“But—”said Esk desperately, clutching the heavy staff to her and knocking her stool over in her haste to back away.

“Show me.”

With a scream Esk spun around. Fire flared from her fingertips and arced across the room. The kindling exploded with a force that hurled the furniture around the room and a ball of fierce green light spluttered on the hearth.

Changing patterns sped across it as it spun sizzling on the stones, which cracked and then flowed. The iron fireback resisted bravely for a few seconds before melting like wax; it made a final appearance as a red smear across the fireball and then vanished. A moment later the kettle went the same way.

Just when it seemed that the chimney would follow them the ancient hearthstone gave up, and with a final splutter the fireball sank from view.

The occasional crackle or puff of steam signaled its passage through the earth. Apart from that there was silence, the loud hissing silence that comes after an ear-splattering noise, and after the actinic glare the room seemed pitch dark.

Eventually Granny crawled out from behind the table and crept as closely as she dared to the hole, which was still surrounded by a crust of lava. She jerked back as another cloud of superheated steam mushroomed up.

“They say there’s dwarf mines under the Ramtops,” she said inconsequentially. “My, but them little buggers is in for a surprise.”

She prodded the little puddle of cooling iron where the kettle had been, and added, “Shame about the fireback. It had owls on it, you know.”

She patted her singed hair gingerly with a shaking hand. “I think this calls for a nice cup of, a nice cup of cold water.”

Esk sat looking in wonder at her hand.

“That was real magic.” she said at last, “And I did it.”

“One type of real magic,” corrected Granny. “Don’t forget that. And you don’t want to do that all the time, neither. If it’s in you, you’ve got to learn to control it.”

“Can you teach me?”

“Me? No!”

“How can I learn if no one will teach me?”

“You’ve got to go where they can. Wizard school.”

“But you said—”

Granny paused in the act of filling a jug from the water bucket.

“Yes, yes,” she snapped, “Never mind what I said, or common sense or anything. Sometimes you just have to go the way things take you, and I reckon you’re going to wizard school one way or the other.”

Esk considered this.

“You mean it’s my destiny?” she said at last.

Granny shrugged. “Something like that. Probably. Who knows? ”

That night, long after Esk had been sent to bed, Granny put on her hat, lit a fresh candle, cleared the table, and pulled a small wooden box from its secret hiding place in the dresser. It contained a bottle of ink, an elderly quill pen, and a few sheets of paper.

Granny was not entirely happy when faced with the world of letters. Her eyes protruded, her tongue stuck out, small beads of sweat formed on her forehead, but the pen scratched its way across the page to the accompaniment of the occasional quiet “drat” or “bugger the thing.”

The letter read as follows, although this version lacks the candlewax, blots, crossings-out and damp patches of the original.

Granny held it up to the candlelight and considered it critically. It was a good letter. She had got “diuerse” out of the Almanack, which she read every night. It was always predicting “diuerse plagues” and “diuerse ill-fortune". Granny wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but it was a damn good word all the same.

Next morning Granny took some pains over her dress, selecting a black dress with a frog and bat motif, a big velvet cloak, or at least a cloak made of the sort of stuff velvet looks like after thirty years of heavy wear, and the pointed hat of office which was crucified with hatpins.

Their first call was to the stonemason, to order a replacement hearthstone. Then they called on the smith.

It was a long and stormy meeting. Esk wandered out into the orchard and climbed up to her old place in the apple tree while from the house came her father’s shouts, her mother’s wails and long silent pauses which meant that Granny Weatherwax was speaking softly in what Esk thought of as her “just so” voice. The old woman had a flat, measured way of speaking sometimes. It was the kind of voice the Creator had probably used. Whether there was magic in it, or just headology, it ruled out any possibility of argument. It made it clear that whatever it was talking about was exactly how things should be.

The breeze shook the tree gently. Esk sat on a branch idly swinging her legs.

She thought about wizards. They didn’t often come to Bad Ass, but there were a fair number of stories about them. They were wise, she recalled, and usually very old and they did powerful, complex and mysterious magics and almost all of them had beards. They were also, without exception, men.

She was on firmer ground with witches, because she’d trailed off with Granny to visit a couple of villages’ witches further along the hills, and anyway witches figured largely in Ramtop folklore. Witches were cunning, she recalled, and usually very old, or at least they tried to look old, and they did slightly suspicious, homely and organic magics and some of them had beards. They were also, without exception, women.

There was some fundamental problem in all that which she couldn’t quite resolve. Why wouldn’t….

Cern and Gulta hurtled down the path and came to a pushing, shoving halt under the tree. They peered up at their sister with a mixture of fascination and scorn. Witches and wizards were objects of awe, but sisters weren’t. Somehow, knowing your own sister was learning to be a witch sort of devalued the whole profession.

“You can’t really do spells,” said Cern. “Can you?”

“Course you can’t,” said Gulta. “What’s this stick?”

Esk had left the staff leaning against the tree. Cern prodded it cautiously.

“I don’t want you to touch it,” said Esk hurriedly. “Please. It’s mine.”

Cern normally had all the sensitivity of a ballbearing, but his hand stopped in mid-prod, much to his surprise.

“I didn’t want to anyway,” he muttered to hide his confusion. “It’s only an old stick.”

“Is it true you can do spells?” asked Gulta. “We heard Granny say you could.”

“We listened at the door,” added Cern.

“You said I couldn’t,” said Esk, airily.

“Well, can you or can’t you?” said Gulta, his face reddening.

“Perhaps.”

“You can’t!”

Esk looked down at his face. She loved her brothers, when she reminded herself to, in a dutiful sort of way, although she generally remembered them as a collection of loud noises in trousers. But there was something awfully pig-like and unpleasant about the way Gulta was staring up at her, as though she had personally insulted him.

She felt her body start to tingle, and the world suddenly seemed very sharp and clear.

“I can,” she said.

Gulta looked from her to the staff, and his eyes narrowed. He kicked it viciously.

“Old stick!”

He looked, she thought, exactly like a small angry pig.

Cern’s screams brought Granny and his parents first to the back door and then running down the cinder path.

Esk was perched in the fork of the apple tree, an expression of dreamy contemplation on her face. Cern was hiding behind the tree, his face a mere rim around a red, tonsil-vibrating bawl.

Gulta was sitting rather bewildered in a pile of clothing that no longer fitted him, wrinkling his snout.

Granny strode up to the tree until her hooked nose was level with Esk’s.

“Turning people into pigs is not allowed,” she hissed. “Even brothers.”

“I didn’t do it, it just happened. Anyway, you must admit it’s a better shape for him,” said Esk evenly.

“What’s going on?” said Smith. “Where’s Gulta? What’s this pig doing here?”

“This pig", said Granny Weatherwax, “is your son.”

There was a sigh from Esk’s mother as she collapsed gently backwards, but Smith was slightly less unprepared. He looked sharply from Gulta, who had managed to untangle himself from his clothing and was now rooting enthusiastically among the early windfalls, to his only daughter.

“She did this?”

“Yes. Or it was done through her,” said Granny, looking suspiciously at the staff.

“Oh.” Smith looked at his fifth son. He had to admit that the shape suited him. He reached out without looking and fetched the screaming Cern a thump on the back of his head.

“Can you turn him back again?” he asked. Granny spun around and glared the question at Esk, who shrugged.

“He didn’t believe I could do magic,” she said calmly.

“Yes, well, I think you’ve made the point,” said Granny. “And now you will turn him back, madam. This instant. Do you hear?”

“Don’t want to. He was rude.”

“I see.”

Esk gazed down defiantly. Granny glared up sternly. Their wills clanged like cymbals and the air between them thickened. But Granny had spent a lifetime bending recalcitrant creatures to her bidding and, while Esk was a surprisingly strong opponent, it was obvious that she would give in before the end of the paragraph.

“Oh, all right,” she whined. “I don’t know why anyone would bother turning him into a pig when he was doing such a good job of it all by himself.”

She didn’t know where the magic had come from, but she mentally faced that way and made a suggestion. Gulta reappeared, naked, with an apple in his mouth.

“Awts aughtning?” he said.

Granny spun around on Smith.

“Now will you believe me?” she snapped. “Do you really think she’s supposed to settle down here and forget all about magic? Can you imagine her poor husband if she marries?”

“But you always said it was impossible for women to be wizards,” said Smith. He was actually rather impressed. Granny Weatherwax had never been known to turn anyone into anything.

“Never mind that now,” said Granny, calming down a bit. “She needs training. She needs to know how to control. For pity’s sake put some clothes on that child.”

“Gulta, get dressed and stop grizzling,” said his father, and turned back to Granny.

“You said there was some sort of teaching place?” he hazarded.

“The Unseen University, yes. It’s for training wizards.”

“And you know where it is?”

“Yes,” lied Granny, whose grasp of geography was slightly worse than her knowledge of sub-atomic physics.

Smith looked from her to his daughter, who was sulking.

“And they’ll make a wizard of her?” he said.

Granny sighed.

“I don’t know what they’ll make of her,” she said.

She sealed it with candle-wax and put it on the dresser. She could leave it for the carrier to take when she went into the village tomorrow, to see about a new kettle.

And so it was that, a week later, Granny locked the cottage door and hung the key on its nail in the privy. The goats had been sent to stay with a sister witch further along the hills, who had also promised to keep an Eye on the cottage. Bad Ass would just have to manage without a witch for a while.

Granny was vaguely aware that you didn’t find the Unseen University unless it wanted you to, and the only place to start looking was the town of Ohulan Cutash, a sprawl of a hundred or so houses about fifteen miles away. It was where you went to once or twice a year if you were a really cosmopolitan Bad Assian: Granny had only been once before in her entire life and hadn’t approved of it at all. It had smelt all wrong, she’d got lost, and she distrusted city folk with their flashy ways.

They got a lift on the cart that came out periodically with metal for the smithy. It was gritty, but better than walking, especially since Granny had packed their few possessions in a large sack. She sat on it for safety.

Esk sat cradling the staff and watching the woods go by. When they were several miles outside the village she said, “I thought you told me plants were different in forn parts.”

“So they are.”

“These trees look just the same.”

Granny regarded them disdainfully.

“Nothing like as good,” she said.

In fact she was already feeling slightly panicky. Her promise to accompany Esk to Unseen University had been made without thinking, and Granny, who picked up what little she knew of the rest of the Disc from rumour and the pages of her Almanack, was convinced that they were heading into earthquakes, tidal waves, plagues and massacres, many of them diverse or even worse. But she was determined to see it through. A witch relied too much on words ever to go back on them.

She was wearing serviceable black, and concealed about her person were a number of hatpins and a breadknife. She had hidden their small store of money, grudgingly advanced by Smith, in the mysterious strata of her underwear. Her skirt pockets jingled with lucky charms, and a freshly-forged horseshoe, always a potent preventative in time of trouble, weighed down her handbag. She felt about as ready as she ever would be to face the world.

The track wound down between the mountains. For once the sky was clear, the high Ramtops standing out crisp and white like the brides of the sky (with their trousseaux stuffed with thunderstorms) and the many little streams that bordered or crossed the path flowed sluggishly through strands of meadowsweet and go-fasterroot.

By lunchtime they reached the suburb of Ohulan (it was too small to have more than one, which was just an inn and a handful of cottages belonging to people who couldn’t stand the pressures of urban life) and a few minutes later the cart deposited them in the town’s main, indeed its only, square.

It turned out to be market day.

Granny Weatherwax stood uncertainly on the cobbles, holding tightly to Esk’s shoulder as the crowd swirled around them. She had heard that lewd things could happen to country women who were freshly arrived in big cities, and she gripped her handbag until her knuckles whitened. If any male stranger had happened to so much as nod at her it would have gone very hard indeed for him.

Esk’s eyes were sparkling. The square was a jigsaw of noise and colour and smell. On one side of it were the temples of the Disc’s more demanding deities, and weird perfumes drifted out to join with the reeks of commerce in a complex ragrug of fragrances. There were stalls filled with enticing curiosities that she itched to investigate.

Granny let the both of them drift with the crowd. The stalls were puzzling her as well. She peered among them, although never for one minute relaxing her vigilance against pickpockets, earthquakes and traffickers in the erotic, until she spied something vaguely familiar.

There was a small covered stall, black draped and musty, that had been wedged into a narrow space between two houses. Inconspicuous though it was, it nevertheless seemed to be doing a very busy trade. Its customers were mainly women, of all ages, although she did notice a few men. They all had one thing in common, though. No one approached it directly. They all sort of strolled almost past it, then suddenly ducked under its shady canopy. A moment later and they would be back again, hand just darting away from bag or pocket, competing for the world’s Most Nonchalant Walk title so effectively that a watcher might actually doubt what he or she had just seen.

It was quite amazing that a stall so many people didn’t know was there should be quite so popular.

“What’s in there?” said Esk. “What’s everyone buying?”

“Medicines,” said Granny firmly.

“There must be a lot of very sick people in towns,” said Esk gravely.

Inside, the stall was a mass of velvet shadows and the herbal scent was thick enough to bottle. Granny poked a few bundles of dry leaves with an expert finger. Esk pulled away from her and tried to read the scrawled labels on the bottles in front of her. She was expert at most of Granny’s preparations, but she didn’t recognise anything here. The names were quite amusing, like Tiger Oil, Maiden’s Prayer and Husband’s Helper, and one or two of the stoppers smelled like Granny’s scullery after she had done some of her secret distillations.