The smith nodded. He didn’t really understand, but he correctly surmised that if he revealed this fact Granny would start going into horrible details.

“She’s strong in her mind and it might take a while,” said Granny. “But sooner or later they’ll challenge her.”

Smith picked up a hammer from his bench, looked at it as though he had never seen it before, and put it down again.

“But,” he said, “if it’s wizard magic she’s got, learning witchery won’t be any good, will it? You said they’re different.”

“They’re both magic. If you can’t learn to ride an elephant, you can at least learn to ride a horse.”

“What’s an elephant?”

“A kind of badger,” said Granny. She hadn’t maintained forest credibility for forty years by ever admitting ignorance.

The blacksmith sighed. He knew he was beaten. His wife had made it clear that she favored the idea and, now that he came to think about it, there were some advantages. After all, Granny wouldn’t last forever, and being father to the area’s only witch might not be too bad, at that.

“All right,” he said.

And so, as the winter turned and started the long, reluctant climb towards spring, Esk spent days at a time with Granny Weatherwax, learning witch craft.

It seemed to consist mainly of things to remember.

The lessons were quite practical. There was cleaning the kitchen table and Basic Herbalism. There was mucking out the goats and The Uses of Fungi. There was doing the washing and The Summoning of the Small Gods. And there was always tending the big copper still in the scullery and The Theory and Practice of Distillation. By the time the warm Rim winds were blowing, and the snow remained only as little streaks of slush on the Hub side of trees, Esk knew how to prepare a range of ointments, several medicinal brandies, a score of special infusions, and a number of mysterious potions that Granny said she might learn the use of in good time.

What she hadn’t done was any magic at all.

“All in good time,” repeated Granny vaguely.

“But I’m supposed to be a witch!”

“You’re not a witch yet. Name me three herbs good for the bowels.”

Esk put her hands behind her back, closed her eyes, and said: “The flowering tops of Greater Peahane, the root pith of Old Man’s Trousers, the stems of the Bloodwater Lily, the seedcases of—”

“All right. Where may water gherkins be found?”

“Peat bogs and stagnant pools, from the months of—”

“Good. You’re learning.”

“But it’s not magic!”

Granny sat down at the kitchen table.

“Most magic isn’t,” she said. “It’s just knowing the right herbs, and learning to watch the weather, and finding out the ways of animals. And the ways of people, too.”

“That’s all it is!” said Esk, horrified.

“All? It’s a pretty big all,” said Granny, “But no, it isn’t all. There’s other stuff.”

“Can’t you teach me?”

“All in good time. There’s no call to go showing yourself yet.”

“Showing myself? Who to?”

Granny’s eyes darted towards the shadows in the corners of the room.

“Never you mind.”

Then even the last lingering tails of snow had gone and the spring gales roared around the mountains. The air in the forest began to smell of leaf mould and turpentine. A few early flowers braved the night frosts, and the bees started to fly.

“Now bees,” said Granny Weatherwax, “is real magic.”

She carefully lifted the lid of the first hive.

“Your bees,” she went on, “is your mead, your wax, your bee gum, your honey. A wonderful thing is your bee. Ruled by a queen, too,” she added, with a touch of approval.

“Don’t they sting you?” said Esk, standing back a little. Bees boiled out of the comb and overflowed the rough wooden sides of the box.

“Hardly ever,” said Granny. “You wanted magic. Watch.”

She put a hand into the struggling mass of insects and made a shrill, faint piping noise at the back of her throat. There was a movement in the mass, and a large bee, longer and fatter than the others, crawled on to her hand. A few workers followed it, stroking it and generally ministering to it.

“How did you do that?” said Esk.

“Ah,” said Granny, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yes. I would. That’s why I asked, Granny,” said Esk, severely.

“Do you think I used magic?”

Esk looked down at the queen bee. She looked up at the witch. “No,” she said, “I think you just know a lot about bees.”

Granny grinned.

“Exactly correct. That’s one form of magic, of course.”

“What, just knowing things?”

“Knowing things that other people don’t know,” said Granny. She carefully dropped the queen back among her subjects and closed the lid of the hive.

“And I think it’s time you learned a few secrets,” she added.

At last, thought Esk.

“But first, we must pay our respects to the Hive,” said Granny. She managed to sound the capital H.

Without thinking, Esk bobbed a curtsey.

Granny’s hand clipped the back of her head.

“Bow, I told you,” she said, without rancor. “Witches bow.” She demonstrated.

“But why?” complained Esk.

“Because witches have got to be different, and that’s part of the secret,” said Granny.

They sat on a bleached bench in front of the rimward wall of the cottage. In front of them the Herbs were already a foot high, a sinister collection of pale green leaves.

“Right,” said Granny, settling herself down. “You know the hat on the hook by the door? Go and fetch it.”

Esk obediently went inside and unhooked Granny’s hat. It was tall, pointed and, of course, black.

Granny turned it over in her hands and regarded it carefully.

“Inside this hat,” she said solemnly, “is one of the secrets of witchcraft. If you cannot tell me what it is, then I might as well teach you no more, because once you learn the secret of the hat there is no going back. Tell me what you know about the hat.”

“Can I hold it?”

“Be my guest.”

Esk peered inside the hat. There was some wire stiffening to give it a shape, and a couple of hatpins. That was all.

There was nothing particularly strange about it, except that no one in the village had one like it. But that didn’t make it magical. Esk bit her lip; she had a vision of herself being sent home in disgrace.

It didn’t feel strange, and there were no hidden pockets. It was just a typical witch’s hat. Granny always wore it when she went into the village, but in the forest she just wore a leather hood.

She tried to recall the bits of lessons that Granny grudgingly doled out. It isn’t what you know, it’s what other people don’t know. Magic can be something right in the wrong place, or something wrong in the right place. It can be --

Granny always wore it to the village. And the big black cloak, which certainly wasn’t magical, because for most of the winter it had been a goat blanket and Granny washed it in the spring.

Esk began to feel the shape of the answer and she didn’t like it much. It was like a lot of Granny’s answers. Just a word trick. She just said things you knew all the time, but in a different way so they sounded important.

“I think I know,” she said at last.

“Out with it, then.”

“It’s in sort of two parts.”

“Well?”

“It’s a witch’s hat because you wear it. But you’re a witch because you wear the hat. Um.”

“So—”prompted Granny.

“So people see you coming in the hat and the cloak and they know you’re a witch and that’s why your magic works?” said Esk.

“That’s right,” said Granny. “It’s called headology.” She tapped her silver hair, which was drawn into a tight bun that could crack rocks.

“But it’s not real!” Esk protested. “That’s not magic, it’s it’s—”

“Listen,” said Granny, “If you give someone a bottle of red jollop for their wind it may work, right, but if you want it to work for sure then you let their mind make it work for them. Tell ’em it’s moonbeams bottled in fairy wine or something. Mumble over it a bit. It’s the same with cursing.”