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She concentrated. She could picture the taste in her mind, and with the little skills that she was beginning to accept but couldn't understand she found she could take the taste apart into little coloured shapes ....
Skiller's thin wife came out of their back room to see why it had all gone so quiet, and he waved her into shocked silence as Esk stood swaying very slightly with her eyes closed and her lips moving .
. . . little shapes that you didn't need went back into the great pool of shapes, and then you found the extra ones you needed and put them together, and then there was a sort of hook thing which meant that they would turn anything suitable into something just like them, and then ....
Skiller turned very carefully and regarded the barrel behind him. The smell of the room had changed, he could feel the pure gold sweating gently out of that ancient woodwork.
With some care he took a small glass from his store under the counter and let a few splashes of the dark golden liquid escape from the tap. He looked at it thoughtfully in the lamplight,
turned the glass around methodically, sniffed it a few times, and tossed its contents back in one swallow.
His face remained unchanged, although his eyes went moist and his throat wobbled somewhat. His wife and Esk watched him as a thin beading of sweat broke out on his forehead. Ten seconds passed, and he was obviously out to break some heroic record. There may have been steam curling out of his ears, but that could have been a rumour. His fingers drummed a strange tattoo on the bartop.
At last he swallowed, appeared to reach a decision, turned solemnly to Esk, and said, “Hwarl,ish finish saaarghs ishghs oorgsh?”
His brow wrinkled as he ran the sentence past his mind again and made a second attempt.
“Aargh argh shaah gok?”
He gave up.
“Bharrgsh nargh!”
His wife snorted and took the glass out of his unprotesting hand. She sniffed it. She looked at the barrels, all ten of them. She met his unsteady eye. In a private paradise for two they soundlessly calculated the selling price of six hundred gallons of triple-distilled white mountain peach brandy and ran out of numbers.
Mrs Skiller was quicker on the uptake than her husband. She bent down and smiled at Esk, who was too tired to squint back. It wasn't a particularly good smile, because Mrs Skiller didn't get much practice.
“How did you get here, little girl?” she said, in a voice that suggested gingerbread cottages and the slamming of big stove doors.
“I got lost from Granny.”
“And where's Granny now, dear? ” Clang went the oven doors again; it was going to be a tough night for all wanderers in metaphorical forests.
“Just somewhere, I expect.”
o;They say it has many doors, but the ones in this world are in the city of Ankh-Morpork,” said Hilta. Granny looked blank. “On the Circle Sea,” Hilta added. Granny's look of polite enquiry persisted. “Five hundred miles away,” said Hilta.
“Oh,” said Granny.
She stood up and brushed an imaginary speck of dust off her dress.
“We'd better be going, then,” she added.
Hilta laughed. Esk quite liked the sound. Granny never laughed, she merely let the corners of her mouth turn up, but Hilta laughed like someone who had thought hard about Life and had seen the joke.
“Start tomorrow, anyway,” she said. “I've got room at home, you can stay with me, and tomorrow you'll have the light.”
“We wouldn't want to presume,” said Granny.
“Nonsense. Why not have a look around while I pack up the stall?”
Ohulan was the market town for a wide sprawling countryside and the market day didn't end at sunset. Instead, torches flared at every booth and stall and light blared forth from the open doorways of the inns. Even the temples put out coloured lamps to attract nocturnal worshippers.
Hilta moved through the crowd like a slim snake through dry grass, her entire stall and stock reduced to a surprisingly small bundle on her back, and her jewellery rattling like a sackful of flamenco dancers. Granny stumped along behind her, her feet aching from the unaccustomed prodding of the cobbles.
And Esk got lost.
It took some effort, but she managed it. It involved ducking between two stalls and then scurrying down a side alley. Granny had warned her at length about the unspeakable things that lurked in cities, which showed that the old woman was lacking in a complete understanding of headology, since Esk was- now determined to see one or two of them for herself.
