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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 almanac, or more precisely about half an old almanac, 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 around uncertainly, calling, until Esk decided they couldn't put off going upstairs any longer. The clonk of the thumb-latch on the door to the cramped staircase sounded a lot louder than it ought to.
Granny was on the bed, with her arms tightly folded across her chest. The tiny window had blown open. Fine snow had blown in across the floor and over the bed.
Esk stared at the patchwork quilt under the old woman, because there were times when a little detail could expand and fill the whole world. She barely heard Cern start to cry: she remembered lien father, strangely enough, making the quilt two winters before when the snow was almost as bad and there wasn't much to do in the forge, and how he'd used all kinds of rags that had found their way to Bad Ass from every part of the world, like silk, dilemma leather, water cotton and tharga wool and, of course, since he wasn't much good at sewing either, the result was a rather strange lumpy thing more like a flat tortoise than a quilt, and her mother had generously decided to give it to Granny last Hogswatchnight, and ....
“Is she dead?” asked Gulta, as if Esk was an expert in these things.
Esk stared up at Granny Weatherwax. The old woman's face looked thin and grey. Was that how dead people looked? Shouldn't her chest be going up and down?
Gulta pulled himself together.
“We ought to go and get someone and we ought to go now because it will get dark in a minute,” he said flatly. “But Cern will stay here.”
His brother looked at him in horror.
“What for?” he said.
“Someone has got to stay with dead people,” said Gulta. “Remember when old Uncle Derghart died and Father had to go and sit up with all the candles and things all night? Otherwise something nasty comes and takes your soul off to . . . to somewhere,” he ended lamely. “And then people come back and haunt you.”
Cern opened his mouth to start to cry again. Esk said hurriedly, “I'll stay. I don't mind. It's only Granny.”
Gulta looked at her in relief.
“Light some candles or something,” he said. “I think that's what you're supposed to do. And then -”
There was a scratching from the windowsill. A crow had landed, and stood there blinking suspiciously at them. Gulta shouted and threw his hat at it. It flew off with a reproachful caw and he shut the window.
“I've seen it around here before,” he said. “I think Granny feeds it. Fed it,” he corrected himself. “Anyway, we'll be back with people, we'll be hardly any time. Come on, Ce.”
They clattered down the dark stairs. Esk saw them out of the house and bolted the door behind them.
The sun was a red ball above the mountains, and there were already a few early stars out.
d nerves and boredom and bad temper made the air hum like thunderstorm weather.
“Right! That's it. That's just about enough!” shouted Esk's mother. “Cern, you and Gulta and Esk can go and see how Granny is and -where's Esk?”
The two youngest boys looked up from where they were halfheartedly fighting under the table.
“She went out to the orchard,” said Gulta. “Again.”
“Go and fetch her in, then, and be off.”
“But it's cold!”
“It's going to snow again!”
“It's only a mile and the road is clear enough and who was so keen to be out in it when we had the first snowfall? Go on with you, and don't come back till you're in a better temper.”
