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“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.
y 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.
