Hag

by Kathleen Kaufman

  There are stories, secrets, that your great-grandmum and I kept that your mother does not know. If you’re meant to know them, then the dreams will lead you to it; but if not, perhaps it’s better if they are forgotten, Grandmum Muriel had said quietly. Catherine had known better than to press her for details.

  Catherine’s dream journal was nearly full; the images had been coming nightly, and she woke feeling as though she had hardly slept. Mum worried about her and said she was too worked up about this, that she gave it far too much credence and it was going to drive her mad. Examinations were coming up, Mum said with a deep furrow between her eyes. It was Mum’s hope that Catherine would follow in her footsteps, test into the college, study medicine or science. For her part, Catherine liked the quiet life that Grandmum Muriel led. She liked the lotions and oils made from the herb garden in the courtyard. She liked the narrow lane and the tiny shop and never felt so at-home as she did in the little flat overhead. She could sit in the window and watch people walk to and fro, a scene barely changed in a hundred years’ time; it was as though you were in a time warp. “Fit to be torn down” was how Mum described it, but Catherine quietly disagreed. For her, there was no greater place, and she did not need examination scores to run that little shop and live in the spare bedroom with Grandmum Muriel.

  “Almost done,” the woman with the bob cut and deft hands said. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the significance of this to ya? Most of my clients are wanting something a bit showier, if ya know what I mean.”

  Catherine winced as the needle bit and stung and told the woman about the Norse god Ing and the promise of peace and completion.

  “It’s about cycles, and as mad as it sounds, I feel like I’m part of a grand cycle, all the women who came before me, and when I have a daughter of my own, it will all come round to where it began.” Catherine paused. The woman simply nodded in understanding and stayed at her work. She had explained this to Polly the night before when Polly had tried to talk her out of it. Polly was still in the primary school and sure she was to be terribly embarrassed by her sister’s actions.

  “All right,” the woman with the bob cut said with finality. She gave Catherine a lotion in a glass bottle that came from Grandmum Muriel’s shop: comfrey and lavender to combat the inflammation and fight irritation. Catherine smiled; she had made this batch herself, grinding the herbs with a mortar and pestle at the long worktable in the back of the shop.

  She looked at her wrist. The flesh surrounding the mark was red and angry, but Catherine felt an energy run through her veins that she had never felt before. It was a sort of pulse that began in her blood and raced out to her fingers, her toes, and the top of her head. She was not the first to bear this mark, she knew; somewhere the tradition had been lost, and now remembered was not to be forgotten.

  POLLY IS LEAVING FOR the United States. She was barely settled into the Girls’ Academy when she made the declaration. “In love,” she said, to a boy with a ridiculous mustache and a cousin in Colorado, United States. Mum raged about the kitchen and even broke several dinner plates while Dad sat quietly as his face turned varying shades of red and purple. Catherine had moved out of the cottage the year before, secondary school complete; her examination scores had qualified her for university, but to Mum’s dismay, she had declined the opportunity. Grandmum Muriel needed help; she could no longer manage the steps down to the shop on her own, and the daily work and running of the business was getting to be too much. Catherine went to live with her and take over the shelves of lotions and oils. Grandmum Muriel taught her everything about the herbs and roots. She learned how to keep the tiny rows of green leaves healthy and strong, and the courtyard had never looked so vibrant. Mum had resigned herself to her daughter’s choice with surprisingly little fight, as though she had been expecting it all along.

  Polly’s decision, however, was beyond comprehension. Are you pregnant? Dad raged from his chair, his voice ragged and raw. Is that why you have to take off all of a sudden and leave? Polly had stood her ground. She wasn’t pregnant; she was in love and was going to marry the boy with the ridiculous mustache who had been offered a job fixing airplanes at a great air academy in a town on the other side of the world. You can’t stop me, she said defiantly. She was right, and that was that. Catherine had tried to talk to her after the initial row, but there was no sense to be had of it. You’ll thank me one day, she said. You’ll thank me that I’m going; we’ll all be there together and leave this place. She waved her hand at the grey Scottish sky.

  Polly and the boy with the ridiculous mustache were married that June and sailed for the United States the following week. Mum and Grandmum Muriel made a cake with chocolate frosting, and the neighbors came to share a glass of brandy and congratulate the new couple, toasting them in the sprawling garden of the Girls’ Academy. It was a small affair, and Catherine felt her heart breaking the entire time. The baby who had been born in a caul, far on the other side of death and brought back to life by her mother’s ancient words, was leaving them all. Polly had never had any interest in the herbs or plants, nor did she have the dreams that still followed Catherine or the ability to move objects with the simple swish of her hand or a concentrated stare. She was outrageously ordinary, and in many ways Catherine envied her mundanity. She was moving on to live an ordinary life with a man who would take an ordinary job. They would live next to other ordinary people who would never whisper about her family or cross themselves when they walked past. Glasgow is a superstitious town, Mum had always told her. Industry and hard work had left people to suspect anything that was different; so it had been so many years ago when Many-Greats Grandmum Moira first lived in her grand house, and so it was now.

  Catherine had learned to better hide her abilities. Grandmum Muriel taught her to breathe deep and focus her energy. She taught her to read the runes and songs that would soothe the fussiest baby or calm the angriest adult. She taught her the magic of herbs and plants and everything she had been taught by her mum, Great-Grandmum Catriona, for whom Catherine had been named. She taught her granddaughter how to listen to the voices of the dead and how to summon spirits. And she asked her every morning, while Catherine made her a cup of thick, black tea, about her dreams: Had she dreamt of the rowan tree outside of town? Grandmum Muriel would ask. Catherine had not and knew that the ancient tree for which Mum was named held a secret that, if meant for her to know, would reveal itself in time.

  Polly wrote letters full of ordinary news. They had moved into a little house in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They had a yard and a ginger cat named Penelope. She volunteered at the church, and her new husband worked alongside his cousin at an air yard learning how to repair planes to be used in the American Air Force. Polly made dishes for potluck suppers and hosted teas for the other ladies in the neighborhood. She wrote to Catherine that she was trying to rid herself of her Scottish accent and be more American. Catherine sat in her room in the flat over the shop on High Street and felt her heart drop a bit. Polly was forgetting everything about where she had come from.

  The shop was entirely Catherine’s now. Grandmum Muriel preferred to sit in her rocking chair at the window and watch the people go to and fro in the lane. Catherine worried about her at times but knew that she was neither ill nor unhappy. She was content to rest now that it was clear her work was to be carried on. She had done the same for her mother, Great-Grandmum Catriona, until she had passed peacefully in the night and the shop had become hers. Now, Catherine would take over when Grandmum Muriel crossed to the next world. Her work complete, Catherine knew she was waiting for the drop of ink to saturate the cloth. When it touched the square on which she existed, she would close her eyes and move to the next world.

  THE FIRST NIGHT IN the great house, Alice could feel the energy swirling. The paint was fresh, the walls newly patched, and the floor polished to a high shine. The chandelier in the dining room had been replaced, and the furniture was tasteful and simple, much of it donations from t
he Historical Society that was delighted that the old manor was being revived. Coira had immediately walked every inch of the house and chosen her room. Mum had gotten a curious expression on her face, and later she told Alice that the little room in the back overlooking the grounds had been, according to what she knew of the house’s history, the secondary parlor where Moira Blair used to hold her séances back in the day. It wasn’t the largest room by far, and Alice had asked Coira if she was sure. The little girl had nodded, satisfied.

  On that first night, Alice could not sleep. She rose from her bed, missing the warm weight of her daughter sleeping next to her. She rose and walked downstairs and stood in the newly revived kitchen. New stove, new cooler, new sink and counter; it looked like a magazine spread. She poured herself a glass of milk and sat at the little wooden table, moved over from the cottage. Alice wondered how long this could last, this fairy-tale life. Paul’s pension from the Air Force helped, and they had the funds that had been collected from the boarding house, but Alice knew she could not pretend that it would last forever. Money, as it had frequently done, worked its way into a pit of worry in her stomach. Coira would need to start primary school soon; how would she manage? She was an odd child, growing odder by the day. And Mum. The women in her family enjoyed great old age, but Mum was sleeping more and more, moving less, and starting to get lost staring into space. How long would she be with them? And how would Alice handle the loss? Paul’s death had been a combination of shock and inevitability; Mum’s would tear her heart out.

  Placing the cup carefully back in the stainless steel sink, Alice turned off the light and walked from room to room. It was unreal that this was her house now, the place she lived. Her childhood in Glasgow was muddy, the years in the flat over the shop and then later, during the war, in the cottage with Grandmum. She thought of her father; she’d had a dream of him the other night, nothing supernatural, just a string of disconnected memories, her brain sorting out information and trying to put it in the right order. She saw a flash of hazel green eyes and the pair of old work boots he kept by the door. He had been lost in the war, as had most of the fathers and husbands back in those dark days. As Alice stood in the doorway to the study, now furnished with a replica King George IV writing table courtesy of the Historical Society, she wondered what he would have thought about all this.

  She didn’t quite understand why Mum had ever left Scotland. She’d never belonged in America, not really. And Aunt Polly was never quite as fragile as Mum assumed her to be. Tiny, yes, but not fragile, not like Arthur had been. She supposed it had been the war that really drove her to leave. Cathedral Court had been spared the worst of it, and Alice’s memories of the rubble, the smoke, and the ashes were hazy. Aunt Polly had promised that children were playing in the streets, that the world was safe in America. And in some ways she had been right.

  However, as the energy of the house zigged and zagged its way around the newly rebuilt walls in a house that prompted everyone who passed to whisper about spirits and ghouls, Alice knew that no place was ever really safe. Children died in the night, choking on their own lungs; men swallowed bottles of pills and drowned in a tub; and mothers closed their eyes and never woke up. Alice’s paths were hidden from her now; all she could see were the dark wood floors and arched doorways of her many-greats grandmother’s manor. Upstairs, her daughter slept and spoke in riddles, and somewhere a great distance away, in the lowland crags, the Cailleach opened her eyes to stare into the darkness.

  CATHERINE DREAMT OF THE rowan tree on the shortest night of the year as winds whipped up and down High Street and snow covered the cobblestones. The unlucky souls who had left their wash out on the line crossing the narrow lane had lost it to the torrential gusts of winter wind and snow. In her dream it was spring, and the flowers had just begun to poke up from the winter soil. Somewhere a wedding was taking place, and Catherine was glad that it was a clear day. As she looked out over the field, the rowan tree on the edge of the woods glowed with an ethereal light as though it was lit up from within. A ferocious strike of lightning crackled down from the sky, hovering over the woods and locking on its target. Catherine fell back and felt a searing pain run from her heart to the bottom of her feet. The ground around her crackled with electricity, blue currents of light running through the rough grass and winding their way around the dog’s mercury and dandelions. She heard a scream that was far older than the rowan tree or the woods surrounding them. It was a cry that stretched from a great distance and was more ancient than the city ports or the walls of the burg. It was anger and fear and grief of the deepest sort that cannot be expressed through anything other than rage.

  Catherine sat up to see black storm clouds rolling in and covering every inch of light from the sun. It was midnight in an instant. The rowan tree shed its leaves and turned to ash where it stood. The ground shook and trembled. An inhuman cry of rage filled the air, matching the cracks of lightning and the responding rolls of thunder. Catherine shook to see a wave of sorts rising from where the rowan tree had stood. The ground surged and rolled as though a great force was just underneath the topmost layer of soil. In its wake, the field grass and spring flowers withered and turned to ash to match the rowan tree. Catherine rose to her feet as the surge of earth and ash reached where she stood. It moved around her, the scorched soil dying beneath her toes. It traveled rapidly across the field to the city port, and a sickening realization washed over Catherine as she realized what the ash and soil were bringing to the city. She felt her lungs burning with the sickness and saw great clods of blood coughed up from her chest. She felt a fever burning and the terror as all those touched by the illness stared at the midnight sky, waiting for death.

  She woke with a start. The night was clear and her chest was healthy and strong. As she lay in her room next to the window, she looked out at the stars and knew what it was that Grandmum Muriel had kept from her and Mum all this time. She understood the power that had been unleashed on that terrible spring day. A crash from the next room jolted her from her bed. Grandmum Muriel was sitting up, staring at the far wall.

  “I didn’t know how to control it,” Muriel murmured.

  Catherine moved to her and sat on the edge of the narrow bed.

  “She sent it from the lowlands, and I carried it to town. I hated them all. I wanted every last one of them to die, and they did.” Grandmum Muriel’s voice was rhythmic, an intonation. “I don’t remember, child.” She turned and grabbed Catherine’s hands in her own, pushing up her nightgown sleeve to reveal the small tattoo on her left wrist. “I don’t remember what it means, but you must, and you must teach your daughter.”

  Catherine was shaking. So much death, so much pain. She could still feel the burning in her throat as the blood rose from her lungs, choking and drowning her. She felt the weight of the limp bodies of children and the empty rawness of grief that was left after the devastation.

  “I can’t,” she whispered, the words barely audible. “It has to stop.”

  “There’s no end to it, child, until we remember who we are.” Grandmum Muriel locked her gaze on Catherine’s, and with a shudder, fell back on her pillow.

  Catherine sat with her until first light, but the old woman never opened her eyes again. Her breathing became increasingly shallow and finally stopped altogether. Catherine sent for her Mum, and they washed the old woman and dressed her in her finest. She was buried in the family plot in the Necropolis. She lay next to her mother Catriona Blair and her grandmother Moira Blair, and Catherine knew her mother would join them one day, and after them, she herself would rest in the same row. She held her mother’s hand and watched as the townsfolk laid flowers on the grave. Catherine made a decision as she stood in the rough grass with Mum’s hand in hers. She would run the shop, make the lotions and oils, but the rest was to stop. She knew the power it carried and the devastation left in its wake. She was responsible for the souls lost to the rage and anger that night in the field.

  Later, as she sa
t in Mum’s kitchen sipping tea and staring at the wall as well-wishers drank glasses of brandy and shared stories about the old woman, Catherine felt the mark on her left wrist pulse in sympathy. I can’t, she whispered to it. It has to stop; something so much greater than she, and how was she to control it. Grandmum Muriel couldn’t, nor others before her either. The dreams had led her to this, and the only way she knew to combat the weight of the sorrow in her heart was to shut it out entirely. Her life would be ordinary and mundane. She would run the shop, marry a man, have a family, and never again read the rune signs or slam a window shut with a flick of her wrist.

  In her cave, the Cailleach felt a tremor and stirred in her deep sleep. She was so close to awakening, and her dreams were becoming more vibrant. She saw the rowan tree where she had last stretched her powers and knew that her many-times great-granddaughter had finally passed to the next life. She would wait a bit longer, but the time was coming and could not be denied for fear or grief.

  IT WAS RAINING ON the day that the man knocked on the front door of the manor house on Cathedral Court. It had rained through the night, and Alice was happy to see that the new roof was holding strong. Coira sat in the study at the George IV writing table, meticulously drawing with her charcoal pencil set. She looked tiny and ancient in the big leather office chair. Mum was sitting by the window in the new kitchen, absently drinking tea and staring at the rain. They had been talking about how to handle Coira’s primary school. She can wait another year, Mum had said; some children don’t start until they’re seven even. Alice had sighed. It was true, Coira was only five years old, and she wasn’t in any particular hurry to send her off to school every day, but she worried. The little girl was so withdrawn. Wouldn’t the company of other children do her some good? Mum had harrumphed and gone back to her tea and staring at the rain. The truth was that Alice had no idea how Coira would handle school. She had never been out of Alice’s care; her only babysitter had been Miss Lettie back in England. How would her quiet, intense child handle a room full of rowdy kids? But if she didn’t, how much further would she slip into herself?