Equal Rites

“Really,” said Granny, peering ahead through the freezing fog.

“There was snow on the tops of the mountains all year round, I recall. Oh, you don’t get temperatures like you did when I was a boy.”

“At least, until now,” he added, stamping his feet on the ice. It creaked menacingly, reminding him that it was all that lay between him and the bottom of the sea. He stamped again, as softly as possible.

“What mountains were these?” asked Granny.

“Oh, the Ramtops. Up towards the Hub, in fact. Place called Brass Neck.”

Granny’s lips moved. “Cutangle, Cutangle,” she said softly. “Any relation to old Acktur Cutangle? Used to live in a big old house under Leaping Mountain, had a lot of sons.”

“My father. How on disc d’you know that?”

“I was raised up there,” said Granny, resisting the temptation merely to smile knowingly. “Next valley. Bad Ass. I remember your mother. Nice woman, kept brown and white chickens, I used to go up there to buy eggs for me mam. That was before I was called to witching, of course.”

“I don’t remember you,” said Cutangle. “Of course, it was a long time ago. There was always a lot of children around our house.” He sighed. “I suppose it’s possible I pulled your hair once. It was the sort of thing I used to do.”

“Maybe. I remember a fat little boy. Rather unpleasant.”

“That might have been me. I seem to recall a rather bossy girl, but it was a long time ago. A long time ago.”

“I didn’t have white hair in those days,” said Granny.

“Everything was a different colour in those days.”

“That’s true.”

“It didn’t rain so much in the summer time.”

“The sunsets were redder.”

“There were more old people. The world was full of them,” said the wizard.

“Yes, I know. And now it’s full of young people. Funny, really. I mean, you’d expect it to be the other way round.”

“They even had a better kind of air. It was easier to breathe,” said Cutangle. They stamped on through the swirling snow, considering the curious ways of time and Nature.

“Ever been home again?” said Granny.

Cutangle shrugged. “When my father died. It’s odd, I’ve never said this to anyone, but-well, there were my brothers, because I am an eighth son of course, and they had children and even grandchildren, and not one of them can hardly write his name. I could have bought the whole village. And they treated me like a king, but- I mean, I’ve been to places and seen things that would curdle their minds, I’ve faced down creatures wilder than their nightmares, I know secrets that are known to a very few—”

“You felt left out,” said Granny. “There’s nothing strange in that. It happens to all of us. It was our choice.”

“Wizards should never go home,” said Cutangle.

“I don’t think they can go home,” agreed Granny. “You can’t cross the same river twice, I always say.”

Cutangle gave this some thought.

“I think you’re wrong there,” he said. “I must have crossed the same river, oh, thousands of times.”

“Ah, but it wasn’t the same river.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No.”

Cutangle shrugged. “It looked like the same bloody river.”

“No need to take that tone,” said Granny. “I don’t see why I should listen to that sort of language from a wizard who can’t even answer letters!”

Cutangle was silent for a moment, except for the castanet chatter of his teeth.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, I see. They were from you, were they?”

“That’s right. I signed them on the bottom. It’s supposed to be a sort of clue, isn’t it?”

“All right, all right. I just thought they were a joke, that’s all,” said Cutangle sullenly.

“A joke?”

“We don’t get many applications from women. We don’t get any.”

“I wondered why I didn’t get a reply,” said Granny.

“I threw them away, if you must know.”

“You could at least have—there it is!”

“Where? Where? Oh, there.”

The fog parted and they now saw it clearly—a fountain of snowflakes, a ornamental pillar of frozen air. And below it….

The staff wasn’t locked in ice, but lay peacefully in a seething pool of water.

One of the unusual aspects of a magical universe is the existence of opposites. It has already been remarked that darkness isn’t the opposite of light, it is simply the absence of light. In the same way absolute zero is merely the absence of heat. If you want to know what real cold is, the cold so intense that water can’t even freeze but anti-boils, look no further than this pool.

They looked in silence for some seconds, their bickering forgotten. Then Cutangle said slowly: “If you stick your hand in that, your fingers’ll snap like carrots.”

“Do you think you can lift it out by magic?” said Granny.

Cutangle started to pat his pockets and eventually produced his rollup bag. With expert fingers he shredded the remains of a few dogends into a fresh paper and licked it into shape, without taking his eyes off the staff.

“No,” he said. “but I’ll try anyway.”

He looked longingly at the cigarette and then poked it behind his ear. He extended his hands, fingers splayed, and his lips moved soundlessly as he mumbled a few words of power.