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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?
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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 vil-
lage 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
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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
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