Young Witches & Warlocks

by Asimov, Isaac

  “What?” said her mother, in the door.

  Cecy snapped back into attention. It had been a fatal relaxing, a fatal moment of leaving Ann’s body for only an instant. She had heard the distant sound of horses’ hoofs and the rig rambling through moonlit spring country. For a second she thought, I’ll go find Tom and sit in his head and see what it’s like to be in a man of twenty-two on a night like this. And so she had started quickly across a heather field, but now, like a bird to a cage, flew back and rustled and beat about in Ann Leary’s head.

  “Ann!”

  “Tell him to go away!”

  “Ann!” Cecy settled down and spread her thoughts.

  But Ann had the bit in her mouth now, “No, no, I hate him!”

  I shouldn’t have left—even for a moment. Cecy poured her mind into the hands of the young girl, into the heart, into the head, softly, softly. Stand up, she thought.

  Ann stood.

  Put on your coat!

  Ann put on her coat.

  Now, march!

  No! thought Ann Leary.

  March!

  “Ann,” said her mother, “don’t keep Tom waiting another minute. You get on out there now and no nonsense. What’s come over you?”

  “Nothing, Mother. Good night. We’ll be home late.” Ann and Cecy ran together into the spring evening.

  A room full of softly dancing pigeons ruffling their quiet, trailing feathers, a room full of peacocks, a room full of rainbow eyes and lights. And in the center of it, around, around, around, danced Ann Leary.

  “Oh, it is a fine evening,” said Cecy.

  “Oh, it’s a fine evening,” said Ann.

  “You’re odd,” said Tom.

  The music whirled them in dimness, in rivers of song; they floated, they bobbed, they sank down, they arose for air, they gasped, they clutched each other like drowning people and whirled on again, in fan motions, in whispers and sighs, to “Beautiful Ohio.”

  Cecy hummed. Ann’s lips parted and the music came out.

  “Yes, I’m odd,” said Cecy.

  “You’re not the same,” said Tom.

  “No, not tonight.”

  “You’re not the Ann Leary I knew.”

  “No, not at all, at all,” whispered Cecy, miles and miles away. “No, not at all,” said the moved lips.

  “I’ve the funniest feeling,” said Tom.

  “About what?”

  “About you.” He held her back and danced her and looked into her glowing face, watching for something. “Your eyes,” he said, “I can’t figure it.”

  “Do you see me?” asked Cecy.

  “Part of you’s here, Ann, and part of you’s not.” Tom turned her carefully, his face uneasy.

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you come with me?”

  “I didn’t want to come,” said Ann.

  “Why, then?”

  “Something made me.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” Ann’s voice was faintly hysterical.

  “Now, now, hush, hush,” whispered Cecy. “Hush, that’s it. Around, around.”

  They whispered and rustled and rose and fell away in the dark room, with the music moving and turning them.

  “But you did come to the dance,” said Tom.

  “I did,” said Cecy.

  “Here.” And he danced her lightly out an open door and walked her quietly away from the hall and the music and the people.

  They climbed up and sat together in the rig.

  “Ann,” he said, taking her hands, trembling. “Ann.” But the way he said the name it was as if it wasn’t her name. He kept glancing into her pale face, and now her eyes were open again. “I used to love you, you know that,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “But you’ve always been fickle and I didn’t want to be hurt.”

  “It’s just as well, we’re very young,” said Ann.

  “No, I mean to say, I’m sorry,” said Cecy.

  “What do you mean?” Tom dropped her hands and stiffened.

  The night was warm and the smell of the earth shimmered up all about them where they sat, and the fresh trees breathed one leaf against another in a shaking and rustling.

  “I don’t know,” said Ann.

  “Oh, but I know,” said Cecy. “You’re tall and you’re the finest-looking man in all the world. This is a good evening; this is an evening I’ll always remember, being with you.” She put out the alien cold hand to find his reluctant hand again and bring it back, and warm it and hold it very tight.

  “But,” said Tom, blinking, “tonight you’re here, you’re there. One minute one way, the next minute another. I wanted to take you to the dance tonight for old times’ sake. I meant nothing by it when I first asked you.

  And then, when we were standing at the well, I knew something had changed, really changed, about you. You were different. There was something new and soft, something ...” He groped for a word. “I don’t know, I can’t say. The way you looked. Something about your voice. And I know I’m in love with you again.”

  “No,” said Cecy. “With me, with me.”

  “And I’m afraid of being in love with you,” he said.

  “You’ll hurt me again.”

  “I might,” said Ann.

  No, no, I’d love you with all my heart! thought Cecy. Ann, say it to him, say it for me. Say you’d love him with all your heart.

  Ann said nothing.

  Tom moved quietly closer and put his hand up to hold her chin. “I’m going away. I’ve got a job a hundred miles from here. Will you miss me?”

  “Yes,” said Ann and Cecy.

  “May I kiss you good-by, then?”

  “Yes,” said Cecy before anyone else could speak.

  He placed his lips to the strange mouth. He kissed the strange mouth and he was trembling.

  Ann sat like a white statue.

  “Ann!” said Cecy. “Move your arms, hold him!” She sat like a carved wooden doll in the moonlight. Again he kissed her lips.

  “I do love you,” whispered Cecy. “I’m here, it’s me you saw in her eyes, it’s me, and I love you if she never will.”

  He moved away and seemed like a man who had run a long distance. He sat beside her. “I don’t know what’s happening. For a moment there ...”

  “Yes?” asked Cecy.

  “For a moment I thought—” He put his hands to his eyes. “Never mind. Shall I take you home now?”

  “Please,” said Ann Leary.

  He clucked to the horse, snapped the reins tiredly, and drove the rig away. They rode in the rustle and slap and motion of the moonlit rig in the still early, only eleven o’clock spring night, with the shining meadows and sweet fields of clover gliding by.

  And Cecy, looking at the fields and meadows, thought, It would be worth it, it would be worth everything to be with him from this night on. And she heard her parents’ voices again, faintly, “Be careful! You wouldn’t want to lose your magical powers, would you— married to a mere mortal? Be careful. You wouldn’t want that.”

  Yes, yes, thought Cecy, even that I’d give up, here and now, if he would have me. I wouldn’t need to roam the spring nights then, I wouldn’t need to live in birds and dogs and cats and foxes, I’d need only to be with him. Only him. Only him.

  The road passed under, whispering.

  “Tom,” said Ann at last.

  “What?” He stared coldly at the road, the horse, the trees, the sky, the stars.

  “If you’re ever, in years to come, at any time, in Green Town, Illinois, a few miles from here, will you do me a favor?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Will you do me the favor of stopping and seeing a friend of mine?” Ann Leary said this haltingly, awkwardly.

  “Why?”

  “She’s a good friend. I’ve told her of you. I’ll give you her address. Just a moment.” When the rig stopped at her farm she drew forth a pencil and paper from her small purse and wrote in the moon
light, pressing the paper to her knee. “There it is. Can you read it?”

  He glanced at the paper and nodded bewilderedly.

  “Cecy Elliott, 12 Willow Street, Green Town, Illinois,” he said.

  “Will you visit her someday?” asked Ann.

  “Someday,” he said.

  “Promise?”

  “What has this to do with us?” he cried savagely. “What do I want with names and papers?” He crumpled the paper into a tight ball and shoved it in his coat.

  “Oh, please promise!” begged Cecy.

  “. . . promise ...” said Ann.

  “All right, all right, now let me be!” he shouted.

  I’m tired, thought Cecy. I can’t stay. I have to go home. I’m weakening. I’ve only the power to stay a few hours out like this in the night, traveling, traveling. But before I go . . .

  “. . . before I go,” said Ann.

  She kissed Tom on the lips.

  “This is me kissing you,” said Cecy.

  Tom held her off and looked at Ann Leary and looked deep, deep inside. He said nothing, but his face began to relax slowly, very slowly, and the lines vanished away, and his mouth softened from its hardness, and he looked deep again into the moonlit face held here before him.

  Then he put her off the rig and without so much as a good night was driving swiftly down the road.

  Cecy let go.

  Ann Leary, crying out, released from prison, it seemed, raced up the moonlit path to her house and slammed the door.

  Cecy lingered for only a little while. In the eyes of a cricket she saw the spring night world. In the eyes of a frog she sat for a lonely moment by a pool. In the eyes of a night bird she looked down from a tall, moon-haunted elm and saw the light go out in two farmhouses, one here, one a mile away. She thought of herself and her family, and her strange power, and the fact that no one in the family could ever marry any one of the people in this vast world out here beyond the hills.

  “Tom?” Her weakening mind flew in a night bird under the trees and over deep fields of wild mustard. “Have you still got the paper, Tom? Will you come by someday, some year, sometime, to see me? Will you know me then? Will you look in my face and remember then where it was you saw me last and know that you love me as I love you, with all my heart for all time?”

  She paused in the cool night air, a million miles from towns and people, above farms and continents and rivers and hills. “Tom?” Softly.

  Tom was asleep. It was deep night; his clothes were hung on chairs or folded neatly over the end of the bed. And in one silent, carefully upflung hand upon the white pillow, by his head, was a small piece of paper with writing on it. Slowly, slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, his fingers closed down upon and held it tightly. And he did not even stir or notice when a blackbird, faintly, wondrously, beat softly for a moment against the clear moon crystals of the windowpane, then, fluttering quietly, stopped and flew away toward the east, over the sleeping earth.

  Witch Girl

  Elizabeth Coatsworth

  The worst thing that can happen to a witch is to lose her shape.

  * * *

  It was a windy autumn night with clouds blowing across the stars. Slowly and wearily five travelers moved down the moorland road.

  “Aren’t we ever coming to a house, Uncle Philip?” the little girl asked, trying to stifle a sob.

  “Patience, Ann,” said the young man.

  Her father, at the head of the little procession, was leading the old white plow-horse on which his wife rode with the youngest child in her arms. Now, he said bitterly, “The people at the last inn told us that we should come to shelter long before this.”

  Suddenly the little girl came closer to her uncle.

  “What was that?” she asked in terror.

  “It sounded like a dog howling.”

  “Or a wolf,” her father mumbled.

  Philip stooped down and picked up Ann in his arms. “I’ll carry you now.”

  Without halting, they went on, even though the white horse pulled back at the bit and began to sweat and shake.

  Suddenly the horse shied. Out of the shadows a figure appeared, walking toward them. Unnoticed, the moon had risen. Now there was light enough for the travelers to see that the new corner was a young girl in a dark cloak, with dark hair blowing about her face.

  She seemed to be out of breath.

  “We heard you coming,” she said. “My grandmother, my two aunts—we live in a little house, only a mile from here. They are making everything ready for you.”

  “How kind!” the woman on the horse exclaimed. “And for you to have run to meet us, too! What is your name, my dear?”

  The girl hesitated for a moment. “They call me Pretty,” she said.

  “An unusual name,” said the woman, “but it suits you. Do let us go on, John. Poor Whitey is so tired that he shivers all the time.”

  “Walk with us,” said Philip to the girl. “Whitey seems afraid of everything tonight, and you’re a stranger, but if you’re back here he won’t see you.”

  The girl fell into step beside him, and their eyes met in the moonlight.

  “You look tired,” said Pretty. “Let me carry the little girl.”

  “No, I’m all right. Ann’s too heavy for you.”

  The child buried her face in her uncle’s shoulder. She seemed afraid.

  The little boy in his mother’s arms woke with a cry.

  “What’s the matter, darling?”

  “Crows were pecking at my face, Mother.”

  “That was only a bad dream, dear. Soon we are going to be safe in a house,” his mother soothed him. Only she seemed to be entirely unafraid.

  Something passed overhead.

  “What was that?” Philip asked.

  “Only my—” Pretty broke off. “Only a bird.”

  “It looked very queer and long, almost like a broom.”

  “The moonlight plays strange tricks. It must have been a night heron with a long bill.”

  “Yes,” said Philip. “It must have been a heron.” And they walked on again.

  The woman on the white horse began singing a lullaby, her head bent over the drowsing child. The others walked on in silence. Now and then Whitey snorted, as though still afraid.

  Over the long moor they saw lighted windows, still far off.

  “Now we shall be all right,” said the woman. “How good you have been to help us, Pretty.”

  “I am not good,” said Pretty, twisting her hands.

  “My real name is Pretty Spella, and I am learning to be a witch.” Her eyes looked frightened.

  “A witch!” everyone exclaimed.

  “I’m not much good as a witch,” Pretty confessed. “I don’t like mixing the brews or making spells to hurt people. But they’re raising me to be a witch just the same.”

  “I’m sure you’re a dear, good girl,” said the young woman. “If you’re in trouble, perhaps we can help you.”

  “Oh, thank you,” said Pretty. She hesitated, and then her words came in a breathless rush.

  “I was an orphan and the fat witch called Horrible took me when I was little and has brought me up. She’s good to me in her way, but Hag-Chaser hates me because I won’t pat Hop-in-the-Fire, her toad. She wants to turn me into a toad.”

  “Mercy me!” said the young mother, and Philip exclaimed suddenly, “We’ll take care of you.”

  “At least forewarned is forearmed,” said Ann’s father. “Now this young lady had better tell us what we can do to save ourselves, if she knows.”

  “I know some things about spells, but not everything,” said Pretty, who spoke with more confidence since everyone was acting in such a friendly manner.

  “In the first place, the house you will see isn’t a real house. It’s made from a square of thistles, bewitched. And the three witches won’t look like themselves at all, but like nice country women. Even Grimalkin will have a ribbon around her neck.”

  Pretty went o
n telling all she knew with her face very white and earnest in the moonlight, and her eyes very large and bright, and her hair softer than shadows.

  “Don’t let the children out of your sight for a moment,” Pretty warned them. “Whoever eats a single crumb will be in their power. Remember, neither sip nor sup. But if you don’t stop at the cottage, they’ll send wolves to pursue you, or surround you with fire, or some other awful sorcery. And while you are talking, I will try to find the spell book. It takes different shapes, sometimes large, sometimes small, but it is always oblong. They can’t any of them make spells without it. Our only hope lies in destroying the book, and then they will be powerless, and you can escape.”

  “Yes,” said Philip, “and when we leave, Pretty will come with us. And I am going to marry her.”

  Pretty didn’t say yes, and Pretty didn’t say no, but in the darkness she flushed as red as a rose. But only Philip noticed.

  “We must go on,” said the woman on the horse. “They’ll be waiting. John, take Ann, and let Philip and Pretty lead Whitey. Everything will be all right.”

  They were met at the cottage door by three nice-looking old ladies in fresh dresses of sprigged calico. One old lady was rather fat, and one old lady was rather small, and the third old lady was tall as a maypole. But what of that?

  There was a black cat by the hearth asleep on a cushion, and the brooms in the corner behind the door gave a rattle all by themselves when the strangers came in. But what of that? If the fire seemed to talk to itself, and the teakettle whistled like a blackbird, and a big toad hopped hastily off the step as they approached: these things might happen anywhere.

  Whitey, who appeared too frightened to whinny, was fastened to the hitching post by the door, and the travelers all went into the low room, bright with candles and warm with fire.

  And how the three old ladies welcomed the newcomers! How they helped them off with their cloaks and brought out chairs by the fire for them! How they admired the beautiful children!

  “You must be hungry,” said the fat old lady.

  “Oh, no, thank you. We have eaten,” said the young mother, smiling.

  The little white-haired lady, no larger than a six-year-old child, climbed onto a stool and got a plate heaped with cookies and tarts from the shelf.