“I never had a figure to speak of and my teeth take care of themselves,” said Granny. It was true, mores the pity. Granny suffered from robustly healthy teeth, which she considered a big drawback in a witch. She really envied Nanny Annaple, the witch over the mountain, who managed to lose all her teeth by the time she was twenty and had real crone-credibility. It meant you ate a lot of soup, but you also got a lot of respect. And then there was warts. Without any effort Nanny managed to get a face like a sockful of marbles, while Granny had tried every reputable wart-causer and failed to raise even the obligatory nose wart. Some witches had all the luck.
“Mmph?” she said, aware of Mrs Whitlow's fluting.
“Aye said,” said Mrs Whitlow, “that young Eskarina is a real treasure. Quate the little find. She keeps the floors spotless, spotless. No task too big. Aye said to her yesterday, Aye said, that broom of yours might as well have a life of its own, and do you know what she said?”
“I couldn't even venture a guess,” said Granny, weakly.
“She said the dust was afraid of it! Can you imagine?”
“Yes,” said Granny.
Mrs Whitlow pushed her teacup towards her and gave her an embarrassed smile.
Granny sighed inwardly and squinted into the none-too-clean depths of the future. She was definitely beginning to run out of imagination.
y could sense it like a big and quite friendly animal, just waiting to roll over on its roof and have its floor scratched. It was paying no attention to her, however. It was watching Esk.
Granny found the child by following the threads of the University's attention and watched in fascination as the scenes unfolded in the Great Hall ....
“- in there?”
The voice came from a long way away.
“Mmph 7 ”
“Aye said, what do you see in there?” repeated Mrs Whitlow.
“Eh?”
“Aye said, what do -”
“Oh.” Granny reeled her mind in, quite confused. The trouble with Borrowing another mind was, you always felt out of place when you got back to your own body, and Granny was the first person ever to read the mind of a building. Now she was feeling big and gritty and full of passages.
“Are you all right?”
Granny nodded, and opened her windows. She extended her east and west wings and tried to concentrate on the tiny cup held in her pillars.
Fortunately Mrs Whitlow put her plaster complexion and stony silence down to occult powers at work, while Granny found that a brief exposure to the vast silicon memory of the University had quite stimulated her imagination.
In a voice like a draughty corridor, which made the housekeeper very impressed, she wove a future full of keen young men fighting for Mrs Whitlow's ample favours. She also spoke very quickly, because what she had seen in the Great Hall made her anxious to go around to the main gates again.
“There is another thing,” she added.
“Yes? Yes?”
“I see you hiring a new servant - you do hire the servants here, don't you? Right - and this one is a young girl, very economical, very good worker, can turn her hand to anything.”
“What about her, then?” said Mrs Whitlow, already savouring Granny's surprisingly graphic descriptions of her future and drunk with curiosity.
“The spirits are a little unclear on this point,” said Granny, “But it is very important that you hire her.”
“No problem there,” said Mrs Whitlow, “can't keep servants here, you know, not for long. It's all the magic. It leaks down here, you know. Especially from the library, where they keep all them magical books. Two of the top floor maids walked out yesterday, actually, they said they were fed up going to bed not knowing what shape they would wake up in the morning. The senior wizards turn them back, you know. But it's not the same.”
“Yes, well, the spirits say this young lady won't be any trouble as far as that is concerned,” said Granny grimly.
“If she can sweep and scrub she's welcome, Aye'm sure,” said Mrs Whitlow, looking puzzled.
“She even brings her own broom. According to the spirits, that is.”