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“Except for foxes,” said Gulta. “They say she can turn herself into a fox. Or anything. A bird, even. Anything. That's how she always knows what's going on.”
They looked around cautiously. A scruffy crow was indeed watching them from a distant tree stump.
“They say there's a whole family over Crack Peak way that can turn themselves into wolves,” said Gulta, who wasn't one to leave a promising subject, "because one night someone shot a wolf and next day their auntie was limping with an arrow wound in her leg, and ....
“I don't think people can turn themselves into animals,” said Esk, slowly.
“Oh yes, Miss Clever?”
“Granny is quite big. If she turned herself into a fox what would happen to all the bits that wouldn't fit?”
“She'd just magic them away,” said Cern.
“I don't think magic works like that,” said Esk. “You can't just make things happen, there's a sort of - like a seesaw thing, if you push one end down, the other end goes up . . . .” Her voice trailed off.
They gave her a look.
“I can't see Granny on a seesaw,” said Gulta. Cern giggled.
“No, I mean 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 woodpigeon 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 Cem.
“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 haybam. 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.
