Water Witch

by Carol Goodman

  “I could just wait until whoever it is goes away,” I said. Renewed knocking suggested that wasn’t going to be a possibility.

  “I think you’d better answer it,” Bill said. “Do you want me to go?”

  “No!” I cried. “I mean … not unless you want to go. Or have to. You probably have other things to do …”

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Let me just see who that is … I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.” I leaned toward him to kiss him, but he placed his hand on my face, his thumb stroking the scratches on my cheekbone. His touch made my entire body tingle. “I’ll be right here,” he said. “Take your time.”

  Despite Bill’s directive to take my time I ran to the door, determined to take care of whoever was there and get back to Bill. If it were Duncan I’d tell him to get lost. There was no good explanation for what he’d done last night. As soon as I saw Liz, Soheila and Ann on the porch, though, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get rid of them easily. They looked grim.

  “Let me guess, another intervention? What have I done wrong this time?”

  “You haven’t done anything wrong,” Liz said twisting her hands nervously. “It’s all my fault …”

  “No, it’s mine,” Ann said, laying a hand on Liz’s arm.

  “We need to talk,” Soheila said. “Can we come in … or …?” She lifted her head and sniffed. The scent of fresh baked cornbread had wafted out from the kitchen, but I had an idea that Soheila was scenting the man who had baked it. “Do you have company?”

  “No … yes … I mean Bill is here … he’s my handyman … “ The minute I said it I could have bit my tongue. I heard a door open and close in the back of the house. Had he heard me? “Come in, I’ll be right back.”

  I ran back to the kitchen and found it empty. A pan of cornbread rested on a folded dishcloth next to a pot of tea all laid out on a tray. There was a note beside it. “It looks like you’re busy and I did have some other things to do. I’ll be back later to check on your basement. Yours, Bill.”

  “Crap, crap, crap,” I muttered as I went back into the library carrying the tray.

  “I can understand why you’re upset,” Liz said, taking the tray from me and placing it on the coffee table. “But first let me tell you the one piece of good news. We were able to confirm that Lovelei is at Lura’s house. We’ve placed a guard around the house so she won’t hurt anybody.”

  “That is good news,” I said, “so why do you all look so grim?”

  Soheila and Liz looked at Ann.

  “Duncan Laird,” Ann said lowering her eyes. “He came to my house the morning after our first circle and told me he wanted me to recommend him as your tutor. Of course I said no, but then he said he had enough Aelvesgold to make Jessica well forever. He told me he didn’t want to hurt you. He said he was the incubus and he only needed some time with you …” She raised bloodshot, hooded eyes to my face and gasped. “Did he do that to you, dear?” She raised a trembling hand to my face.

  “Duncan Laird did this when I used a spell last night to unmask him. Are you really sure that he’s the incubus? I didn’t know incubi had claws.”

  Soheila picked up a book from the coffee table, flipped through it and laid it back down open to a full color insert. The picture that leered up from among the teacups was a reproduction of Fuseli’s Nightmare – a pointy-eared imp with long claws leering evilly as he crouched on the breast of a swooning maiden. Was that the face that would have greeted me if Duncan hadn’t struck me? Was that why he had lashed out – so I wouldn’t see him like that?

  Ann craned her neck to look over at the picture and shuddered. “Is that what they look like in their natural state?”

  “We have no natural state,” Soheila answered. “Incubi and succubi feed on human desire. We take the shapes humans imagine for us. We become their dreams … or their nightmares. I tried to explain that to Angus when he went up against your incubus to destroy him …” Soheila’s eyes glistened when she mentioned Angus’s name.

  “You don’t have to talk about it if it’s too painful,” I told her. It wasn’t just Soheila I wanted to spare; I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how the creature I’d once slept with had killed the man Soheila loved.

  “I think you should know,” Soheila said, wrapping her hands around the mug of tea Liz handed to her. “After Angus saw his sister destroyed by the incubus he spent years studying the lore of the incubus, but in the end it wasn’t the stories about incubi that helped him, it was one of the old Scottish ballads that gave him what he needed.”

  “A Scottish ballad?” I asked, feeling a strange chill. “Was it ‘Tam Lin’?”

  “How did you know?” Soheila asked, clearly surprised.

  “My parents told me the story when I was little …” I stopped, trying to recall something on the edge of my memory. Some other time when I’d heard the ballad recently, but the thin filament of memory had already slipped away.

  I continued. “I thought about the story last night. How Jennet has to hold onto Tam Lin while he becomes a snake, a lion, and a burning brand and how that was what I’d have to do … only I didn’t. I let go.” I heard my voice wobble on the last words. Liz patted my arm and Ann took out a tissue from her purse and handed it to me.

  “How could you help but let go when he lashed out at you? That’s what Angus discovered. He believed that if he tracked the incubus down to where he had been created and waited for him on Halloween night, as Jennet does, he could turn him into a human being and then kill him. But when he grabbed hold of him he became the one thing that Angus couldn’t fight – his sister, Katy.”

  “Oh,” I said, “that must have been awful.”

  “It was. He was so shocked that he let her go – and then the incubus became a horrible beast with claws that struck him down. Angus lived through the attack and came back to me, but he was already dying from the poison. I tried to save him, but I couldn’t.” Soheila touched the marks on my face. “But I don’t sense any poison in you.”

  “There was,” I said, blushing as I remembered how Bill had rubbed my skin to release the poison. How had he known how to do that? “But it passed out of my system.”

  “You were lucky,” Soheila said. “Angus died within a month and in great pain. But the fact remains that he attacked you.”

  “And,” Liz added in a despairing wail, “all this time we thought Duncan Laird was helping you gain power he’s probably been draining you. You haven’t gotten rid of your wards, have you?”

  “Not completely,” I admitted, feeling the coils lash inside me at the question. “But they’ve been loosened. I think they’re almost gone. And,” I added, remembering the footnote I’d read in Wheelock last night, “I think I’ve found a way to keep the Grove from closing the door.”

  “Good,” Liz said. “We may need it. The Grove and IMP have announced a schedule change. The meeting is today.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “TODAY?” I CRIED, touching the marks on my face. “But we need more time!” I still had to read the spell in Wheelock and I needed time for the loosened wards inside me to dissolve.

  “Well, we don’t have it,” Liz said briskly, glancing at her watch. “I should be there already. Ann and I will go ahead and let Soheila help you with those scratches. You can’t go looking like that.”

  Liz got to her feet and smoothed her skirt. I noticed now that she was dressed in her best tweed Chanel suit, ready to face her opponents in pearls and vintage couture. “This schedule change is meant to unnerve us. We mustn’t let it.”

  Liz and Ann went on ahead while Soheila stayed behind to help me apply make-up over the marks on my face. She used a touch of Aelvesgold and said a spell that she told me her sisters used to cover wrinkles. “Better than Botox,” she assured me.

  I dressed carefully in my best interview suit. For luck, I pinned on a brooch my father had given me. It was fashioned out of two interlocking hearts – a Scottish design called
a Luckenbooth brooch. Downstairs I tossed Wheelock in my leather briefcase. When Soheila gave me a look I told her about the footnote.

  “If the icon has a door on it, that means only a doorkeeper can read the spell,” she said. “Be careful, though. Those correlative spells can be very dangerous.”

  So everyone kept telling me.

  We walked together to Beckwith Hall on the campus where the meeting was being held. It had stopped raining. The day had turned muggy and hot, the air holding a sultry threat of another downpour.

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” I said as we walked. “If Duncan is really the incubus why don’t I feel more attracted to him? Whenever he tried to kiss me, I pushed him away.”

  “Hm.” Soheila tilted her head and looked at me, then touched her hand to my arm. “Maybe it’s the wards that are keeping him away.”

  “They didn’t the first time,” I argued, “with Liam.”

  Soheila shrugged and hugged her arms around herself. “Maybe you are becoming stronger. A very strong human can resist the pull of an incubus.”

  I told her then about the dreams.

  “Oh,” she said. “But still, you resisted him in the flesh and …” She slanted her eyes toward me and the corner of her mouth tugged into a half smile. “You slept with someone else, didn’t you? That fellow Bill?”

  I blushed, but there was no point lying to Soheila. “Yes. It sort of just happened. He was there after I was attacked and was so sweet.”

  “It’s good you’ve moved on to someone else. It means you’re breaking the hold the incubus had on you. It’s better this way. There’s no future in a relationship between a human and one of his kind.”

  I had a feeling we weren’t talking about me anymore. “Frank would miss you if you went, Soheila. We all would, but Frank most of all.”

  Soheila nodded, her face a mask of pain. “I’d miss him, too,” she admitted. “But it’s because of him I must go. If I were trapped here without access to Aelvesgold eventually I would be driven to feed on humans. If I ever hurt him …” She shivered despite the warmth of the day. “I’d never forgive myself.”

  She forced a grim smile and squeezed my arm. As she turned to continue walking I wondered if that’s how Duncan had felt after he struck me – and if that’s why he’d run away.

  We found a small gathering outside the lecture hall. The only sign indicating the event read, “Symposium on the Dialogue of Discourse Determined by the Debatable Dexterity of Dynamic Dissent.” No doubt it was boring and intimidating (not to mention alliterative) enough to drive away any lay people. Caspar van der Aart from Earth Sciences was talking to Joan Ryan from Chemistry, and also some people from town – Dory Browne and two of her cousins and the guy who ran the Greek restaurant, whom I always suspected might be a satyr. I noticed a number of the witches from the circle – Moondance and Leon Botwin and Tara Cohen-Miller – talking among themselves. When they saw us they stopped talking abruptly, as if they’d been talking about us. Moondance, wearing a t-shirt that read “I Believe in Fairies,” approached us.

  “We heard the meeting had been moved up and wanted to show our support, but they’re not letting us in. They say it’s a private meeting. I say if this meeting is going to determine the fate of our friends and neighbors we should be allowed to attend.”

  “I agree completely,” I said, glad for once to be on the right side of her belligerence. “Let’s see what we can do.”

  One of Adelaide’s blond minions was stationed just inside the door to the lecture hall. Soheila strode toward him, but the second her toe crossed the threshold she shrieked and fell to the floor. I knelt quickly beside her to see what was wrong … and recoiled in shock. Her arm was spidered with a pattern like tree branches. As I watched they broke through her skin and wrapped themselves around her slender forearm and wrist, growing thicker and rougher. Bark formed over their surface and leaves sprouted. A tree branch was growing out of Soheila’s arm. I reached forward and touched it gingerly. Soheila winced.

  “My God, that’s horrible. How can we get rid of it?” I looked up at the impassive face of the fair-haired man.

  “The branch will recede in a few minutes as long as she doesn’t commit anymore infractions,” he said.

  “She only tried to walk through a door – a door on our campus! She works here, for heaven’s sake! This is outrageous!”

  “We sent an email out this morning specifying that no demons would be allowed in the meeting, unless specifically called for. We can’t have them influencing the proceedings.”

  “And yet the proceedings will decide our fate,” a gruff voice called out from the circle of onlookers. Recognizing it, I got up from Soheila’s side and eagerly peered through the crowd as it parted to let one large, flannel-shirted man through.

  “Brock!” I cried, so glad to see him up and looking well I threw my arms around him. A red welt appeared on his face, always a sign he was embarrassed. I unwound my arms from around him and stepped back. Brock gave me a wistful smile, but when he raised his head to look at the fair-haired guard, an ugly red stain spread across his face and his brows knitted together. “My family has lived in Fairwick for over a hundred years. You can’t force us to leave.”

  “No one is being forced to do anything.”

  The soft, but precise voice came from behind the blond man. I saw the smooth silver chignon first and then smelled Chanel Number Five, a scent that always sent a chill down my spine.

  “Adelaide,” I said, greeting my grandmother by her first name, mostly because I knew it would annoy her. “Why can’t Brock and Soheila attend the meeting? Brock’s family has watched over the woods and protected Fairwick for over a century. Soheila teaches here. It’s hardly fair to exclude them from a meeting deciding their fate.”

  “We’ve provided a video simulcast,” Adelaide said, pointing to two flat screen TVs mounted on the lobby walls. “You are all welcome to stay out here and listen. But we can’t have any demons that are capable of magically influencing the proceedings inside. It’s a simple precaution.”

  “Brock’s not a demon!” I said. “He’s a Norse divinity! And Dory!” I cried, pointing at my friend, who was wearing a floral skirt, a yellow sweater set, yellow espadrilles, and carrying a quilted handbag. “She’s a brownie. What could be more harmless than a brownie?”

  Adelaide gave Dory a withering look. “Brownies are one step away from boggarts. Do you know why brownies don’t like to be thanked?” Adelaide asked.

  This was something I’d always wondered about. Dory and her cousin brownies were always doing good deeds, but they hated being thanked for them. “I assume it’s because they’re very modest,” I answered.

  Adelaide laughed. “Shall I tell her?” she asked Dory whose pink cheeks had gone pale.

  “No, let me,” Dory said, turning to me. “Many, many years ago a brownie did a favor for a human being, but the human being didn’t thank him. The brownie got so angry that he … well, he killed him.”

  “And ate him,” Adelaide added.

  “Yes, ate him. The brownies were in danger of being thrown out of this world. In atonement we agreed to do favors and services without benefit of thanks. Every time we’re thanked we lose a step toward that atonement.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to imagine one of the Brownes eating someone. “Well, at least they’re trying to make up for their wrongdoings …” I gave Dory a reassuring look. Brock put his arm around her.

  “We’ll agree to remain peacefully outside if you’ll allow Callie to speak for us,” Brock said.

  He turned to me, his face full of hope and trust. “You’re our only chance, Callie.”

  I looked past Brock and Dory and saw Ike Olsen. He was standing next to the Norns. Skald held up her phone for me to see. The screen was full of the enigmatic lines I’d seen there before when she had consulted my future. They looked more chaotic than ever, but the knot at the center had loosened and was opening like a fern unfurling. M
y wards really were loosening. I felt them letting go with the trust my friends had in me. I felt a few more links dissolve as I turned back to Brock and Dory and told them, “Yes, I will speak for Fairwick.”

  Beckwith Hall was one of the oldest and most elegant classrooms on the campus. A large, handsome rectangular oak table, which had once been in the refectory of a monastery, stood in the middle of the room. One side of the room was taken up by arched windows alternating with niches that held busts of the great philosophers and writers. Today the blinds were drawn over the windows and the busts of Homer, Plato, Sappho, Dante, Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte were invisible in their shadowy niches. A projector shot images onto a screen behind the table and onto the covered windows: images of a sunlit grove surrounded by tall trees accompanied by a soundtrack of rustling leaves, bird song, and the flutter of wings so close that I had to resist the urge to duck as I crossed the room to sit beside Liz.

  She was on the near side of the long table, next to a woman with very short silver hair that stood up in bristly tufts, whom Liz introduced as Loomis Pagan. The pixy Gender Theory professor from Wesleyan, I recalled. I was introduced in turn to Delbert Winters from Harvard, Eleanor Belknap from Vassar, Lydia Markham from Mt. Holyrood and Talbot Greeley from Stanford, who didn’t look like a Cluricaune, whatever one was. All the IMP board members sat on one side of the table. The other side was empty.

  “They wouldn’t let Soheila in,” I whispered to Liz after I’d been introduced to everyone and had taken my seat. “Or Dory or Brock.”

  “I know,” Liz said, clucking her tongue. “They’ve made us weaker by excluding the fey. They even tried to ban Talbot and Loomis, but we objected and got them admitted.”

  “Exclusion is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Loomis Pagan began, but then the entrance of the Grove members silenced her.

  Six figures filed into the room. For a moment they appeared to be wearing hooded robes and beaked masks, but then that illusion faded and I saw they were all wearing somber dark suits. They filed behind the table and each stood for a moment behind a chair. The slide show resolved into a single image of the tree-encircled glade and the light brightened as if the sun had come to stand directly above the open clearing. I looked down at my hands and saw that they were dappled with leaf shadow … and something else. A shadow of wings passed overhead just as the sound of wings on the soundtrack grew louder. I looked around, half expecting some giant bird to come swooping down from the ceiling, but there was nothing except a stirring that seemed to be coming from the shadowy niches – as if the luminaries enclosed in them were trying to get a better view of the proceedings.