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“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.
o;That's as maybe. It's harder than it seems, is Borrowing, although I'll grant you've got a knack. That's enough for today, bring us in over ourselves and I'll show you how to Return.”
The eagle beat the air over the two recumbent forms and Esk saw, in her mind's eye, two channels open for them. Granny's mindshape vanished.
Now
Granny had been wrong. The eagle mind barely fought, and didn't have time to panic. Esk held it wrapped in her own mind It writhed for an instant, and then melted into leer.
Granny opened her eyes in time to see the bird give a hoarse cry of triumph, curve down low over the grass-grown scree, and skim away down the mountainside. For a moment it was a vanishing dot and then it had gone, leaving only another echoing shriek.
Granny looked down at Esk's silent form. The girl was light enough, but it was a long way home and the afternoon was dwindling.
“Drat,” she said, with no particular emphasis. She stood up, brushed herself down and, with a grunt of effort, hauled Esk's inert body over her shoulder.
High in the crystal sunset air above the mountains the eagle Esk sought more height, drunk with the sheer vitality of flight.
On the way home Granny met a hungry bear. Granny's back was giving her gyp, and she was in no mood to be growled at. She muttered a few words under her breath and the bear, to its brief amazement, walked heavily into a tree and didn't regain consciousness for several hours.
When she reached the cottage Granny put Esk's body to bed and drew up the fire. She brought the goats in and milked them, and finished the chores of the evening.
She made sure all the windows were open and, when it began to grow dark, lit a lantern and put it on the windowsill.
Granny Weatherwax didn't sleep more than a few hours a night, as a rule, and woke again at midnight. The room hadn't changed, although the lantern had its own little solar system of very stupid moths.
When she woke again at dawn the candle had long burned down and Esk was still sleeping the shallow, unwakable sleep of the Borrower.
When she took the goats out to their paddock she looked intently at the sky.
Noon came, and gradually the light drained out of another day. She paced the floor of the kitchen aimlessly. Occasionally she would throw herself into frantic bouts of housework; ancient crusts were unceremoniously dug out of the cracks in the flagstones, and the fireback was scraped free of the winter's soot and blackleaded to within an inch of its life. A nest of mice in the back of the dresser were kindly but firmly ejected into the goatshed.
Sunset came.
