“The wicked witch.”
“A false impression. Witchcraft is—well, you’ll see when you get to know us better.” His voice had taken on an edge of conviction. In many ways Robin was certainly a boy, but his love for what he believed was a mature emotion.
“Amanda!” It was Constance, calling from the edge of the herb garden.
Robin’s eyes narrowed. “She musn’t see me. Run, run to the top of the hummock! Wave to her, tell her you’re on your way.”
As Mandy found footing in the snow she heard his voice behind her, a barely audible whisper: “Blessed be, my love, blessed, blessed be!”
Blessed be? The witches’ greeting and good-bye. Mandy had read of it in Margaret Murray’s famous book, The Witch Cult in Western Europe. Nobody interested in fairy tales could escape without reading Murray.
She remembered her own dreams of being burned… and of being in a cage—awful dreams. She shuddered and went on.
Constance stood like a fur-wrapped stick a hundred yards behind. “Please hurry,” she cried. “Plea-ase!
The Leannan doesn’t wait for anybody very long!” Her voice was snatched by the wind and carried off among the rattling trees.
Far ahead of her she saw Tom jumping through the snow. She looked past him, to the dark tremendous mountain.
And she found that she was at least as curious as she was uneasy. She wanted to see the fairy. Oh, if there were such beings. A nonhuman intelligence sharing the earth with man. It was so enormous a thought that she couldn’t even begin to play out its implications, so she simply filed it in a comer of her mind to deal with later.
From where she was now she could see a few curls of smoke off in the direction of the village. It was interesting to imagine life there, wearing homespun and using candles within hiking distance of modem America. There was undeniable appeal in the idea of reacquiring ancient ways. The witch rituals, for example, were so very old and strange that they had been ultimately terrifying to the superstitious medieval world. Now anthropologists understood them as a remnant of human prehistory. The Old Religion, the way of the earth. Wasn’t “witch” an early English word for wise, or had that theory been discredited?
Crossing toward the tumbled, frowning face of the mountain, she heard off in the direction of the village a girl singing in a clear voice.
“Lost on gray hills, in autumn’s dread splendor,
The wandering one, wandering one
Will the moon ever find her?”
The lilting, sweet-haunted song did not fade until Mandy was battling her way up Stone Mountain.
The more she committed herself to it, the more brutal the climb seemed to become. The “track” was a miserable affair, twisting and turning, as often as not blocked by fallen stones or an outgrowth of brambles. But for the glowing snow there was little light, and would be no more unless the sun broke through the clouds that were coming down from the north.
As Mandy struggled along, her feet grew cold despite the thick woolen socks and the good boots. Time and again she slipped on an icy spot or was deceived by the snow into stepping into a hole. She had been climbing what seemed to be an hour when the incline finally grew less steep., She stopped to look for the rowan bush.
Everything was a jumble. She couldn’t possibly tell one plant from another. She turned around and found that she hadn’t come more than two hundred feet. She was just now getting level with the roof of the distant house, which stood on its dark hill among its trees, seeming most forlorn and distant at this empty hour.
The wind belled her cloak and made her remember the world within that curtained bed. And Robin. “I love you,” he had said. How could he love somebody he didn’t know?
She wiped the snow from her eyebrows and continued on.
Now the wind whispered, now it howled through the shaking trees. A fine hiss of snow made its way deep into her hood and reminded her painfully of her ears. She pulled the silken ribbon together. The track was now a mayhem of sharp rocks. To make any progress at all she had to crawl.
Paradoxically that very fact made her go on. The harder it became to climb it, the more she responded to the challenge of the mountain. She had not been given gloves, and her hands soon smarted from the cold and the stones. Her sketch-book, stuffed in her waist, jabbed her breastbone with first one comer and then the other.
If she had any sense, she would find some overhang, cuddle up under it, and make a few sketches of the Fairy Queen from imagination. Surely that was all Constance really intended. There could not be a Paleolithic species still surviving in these hills. And even if there were, they would be dirty, miserable, and scarce. Savages had none of the awesome beauty Constance had attributed to the Leannan. Savages living on a mountainside as rough as this would be little better than animals themselves.
The Paleolithic was thousands of years ago. Beyond memory. Beyond time. The whole notion was ridiculous.
And yet, Constance and Robin had both been so serious. Her whole life was dreams and visions and longing for miracles. Now she might be close to one—just might be. She struggled on. The wind roared without ceasing, like some immense tide restless in the rocks. Constance Collier had neglected to mention another little matter of some importance: the rowan must be on the very brow of the mountain, that dark, bare spine that got covered with deadly ice in the winter.
When she did come to the top, it happened so abruptly that she at first did not understand where she was. She almost staggered out onto a menacing slickness of ice as smooth as glass. She lurched and slid, then toppled amid her flapping, flopping cloak. Her sketchbook bent completely in two. She felt her pencils scattering out of her pockets.
Scuttling about, she retrieved them.
When she raised her head, she was frozen, but not by cold. This was a place of wonder. She could see to the north the long brow of the mountain, its gnarled trees huddling against it like warped children. The west wrinkled off forever. Beyond the Peconics were the Endless Mountains and he haze the northwestern fastness of Pennsylvania.
This was the border of one of the continent’s last empty corners. Below lay Maywell in its shield of snow, the steeple of the Episcopal Church marking the dead center of the town. She could see The Lanes and almost make out Uncle George’s house. The college’s black buildings squatted beyond the diagonal line of the Morris Stage Road. Directly below was the Collier estate. Huddling almost invisibly at the very foot of the mountain, the witch village blended so perfectly with the landscape that even looking at it she wasn’t completely sure it was there. After some time she counted twenty cottages, ten on each side of the central path. Foundations and walls for twelve more were in the process of being laid. The round building dominated the village. Occasionally a figure huddled from one door to another. Among the snowy hummocks tiny human dots raced about—the children of the village were out with sleds.
So very hidden, so secret, was the witch village. Through all of her growing up in the town, she had heard of only one incident of townspeople meeting villagers on their own ground—and those kids hadn’t seen the village itself. Now she was seeing the whole estate, village and all, and it was lovely.
It did not prove nearly as hard as she had expected to find the rowan. An imposing bush, it stood easily ten feet high, its northern side angled from the wind, the rest of it rich with berries, a gay-painted creature in this impossibly hostile place.
The rowan was so very alive that Mandy loved it immediately. It stood fast in its bed of ice and stones.
But it was also a great, gangling adolescent of a thing. When the wind made it gyrate, she wanted to laugh.
She made her way around it, touching twigs and berries as she went. Somehow she kept expecting to see Tom, but he wasn’t about. Naturally not. There was a cat who liked a fireplace. A romp along the lower reaches of the mountain had been quite enough for him.
She found the round stone Constance had described. It was perhaps eight feet in diameter and two thick, standing at a slight angle
on the surface of the mountain. It was black basalt, completely out of place in this granite geology. The surface was carved over every inch, but time and wind had worked it, too, so only the presence of the etching could be detected, not its content.
Basalt is a hard stone. Mandy ran her hand along the ice-crusted edge. The thing must be very old. What tremendous effort it must have been to bring it here, for it was certainly an import.
Just as she had been told to do, Mandy went to the center of the stone and sat down. She folded her cloak under her and sat cross-legged, so that she made a sort of a tent and was at the same time insulated from the icy rock. She faced southeast, away from the wind. This cloak had been exactly the right garment for what she was expected to do, which was sit and wait… and wonder how crazy she was to have come here.
Some adventure to get this cold. Not to mention thirsty and hungry. An image of those delicious unfinished pancakes came to mind. She saw the dark-flecked surface of them, the slightly crumbly interior, the amber glow of the syrup oozing along the plate. The memory confirmed the fact that she had very quickly ceased to enjoy this. She was up here alone and this was a damned cold place and she was freezing.
No sooner had the thought of leaving crossed her mind than a bird, of all things, fluttered out of the rowan and flapped about her head. It wasn’t in the least afraid. This place must be very little visited. The dusty little sparrow was what city people called a trash bird. First with one bright, blank eye and then the other it looked at her. She had the distinct impression not only that it was a girl bird but that it felt kind of friendly toward her.
If she had brought crumbs she could have fed it, the little thing was so unafraid. She had never fed a wild bird before. “Sweet, sweet,” she said. It flew away.
The next moment a squirrel, its fur rich and gray-black, came ambling along. It stopped at the rowan and ate berries for a time. Then it, too, came over to the rock and looked at the strange creature there.
“Hi,” Mandy said.
The squirrel raised itself up on its haunches and wiggled its nose at her. Then, as abruptly as if it had been called, it jumped and raced away over the edge of the mountain. It had not been gone ten seconds before Mandy felt the pressure of paws on her back. She turned around and startled a raccoon, which tumbled about in the snow, righted itself, mewed at her, and went on with its casual sniffing of her cloak. Then it poked its frigid nose at her hands, smelling them carefully. “Well, I like you, too.”
The sound of her voice made the coon look up at her. It mewed back, the cry so full of question that she ached to answer. But she could only smile, as she did not speak coon.
She began to understand Constance’s sending her here. There might not be any fairies, but it was nevertheless a magical spot and a fine place to let the images flow in her mind. Despite the cold, the ice, despite everything, she could create extraordinary fairies here. There are places of life and places of death. Here on this inhospitable mountain between the sky and the rowan Amanda knew a feeling so strong it shocked her. Especially because it was not an aggressive feeling at all, but one of the peace and rightness of this world. No matter the fate of man, the loss or regaining of the old cup of kindness, peace abides.
A quick, hairy movement beyond the rowan brought her back to the present. She almost screamed when she saw what was there. Surely it couldn’t be. But it was, and it had just noticed her. It moved like a great black furry rock, humping quickly along. There was nothing cute about the bear’s black little eyes or the fog coming from its muzzle. She sat dead still, her attention fixed on the approaching beast.
The closer it got the faster it came. She could hear it breathing now, hear the clatter of its claws on the ice. A terrible, buzzing fear froze her.
When it bellowed she knew it, too, was a female, as the other animals had also been. If each animal could be said to represent an attribute of woman, this bear was the power of her protective instinct. Her greatest and most dangerous power. A she-bear protecting her cubs is the most fearsome of creatures.
Slowly, carefully, Mandy spread her arms, palms open. Why the gesture? She did not know. Now she could smell the bear, a thick odor of rancid fur. Its coat was shiny with secretions. Mandy found herself looking into the animal’s eyes. She saw there a femininity so savage, so full of implacable power, that it drew a choked little sound from her throat. The bear grumbled reply, stared a moment, then became indifferent to her.
It walked on past, crashing off into the fastness of the mountain. Perhaps this bear was without cubs, or they were not nearby.
While it had diverted her attention something else had happened, something which filled her soul with a coldness far greater than that of the wind.
About the rowan there stood six small men in snow-white coats and breeches. On their feet were white pointed shoes, and on their heads close-fitting caps just as Constance had described.
It wasn’t possible. And yet, here they were.
Robin’s warning rushed back into her mind.
She screamed, a single, sharp cry, quickly controlled.
These men had sharp faces with pointed noses and large eyes. Perhaps they looked so different precisely because they were so almost-human. But then one of them licked his lips, and Mandy got a glimpse of tiny teeth more like a rat’s than a man’s.
Together they raised bows, and mounted arrows on them made of twigs. There came then on the air the ringing of small bells and a whisper of tiny feet in the snow.
She appeared from behind the stone, all blond, her hair as soft as elder blow, her eyes startlingly dark brown, her body lightly dressed in the very lace Constance had promised. She was wee, not nearly as large as her six guards. On her head was a garland of rowan, berries and stems and leaves. Seeing such beauty, how ineffable, how frail, how strong, Mandy thought she would simply sink away. By comparison she herself was coarse. All delicacy seemed to have concentrated itself in this single small creature. Around her neck there was drawn a silver chain, and at her throat hung a gleaming sickle of moon.
Mandy instinctively lowered her eyes. It was more bearable this way, just looking at the woman’s feet, no more than two inches long, naked in the snow. Then the feet rose out of her line of sight. She looked up, startled. The girl was floating in the air. Wings flapped and she was gone. A great gray owl hooted from the top of the rowan, its horns darkly silhouetted against the sky. It took flight, racing round and round the rowan. Next hoofs clattered on the stones, and a black mare reared into nothingness, its neighs echoing off to silence.
An ancient woman, drooling, her teeth yellow, one eye put out, her hands fantastic with arthritis, scraped up on a stick. “Oh, my God! Can I help you?”
She held out her hands then and was as suddenly gone, the maiden spinning forth from her flying gray hair. The girl took Mandy’s large hands in her own tiny ones. She was grave now, her eyes limpid—and yet so very aware. They were scary. Her lips parted as if she would speak. Mandy remembered Robin’s warning about the whisper. The girl’s voice was as much the wind’s as her own. “You’re trembling,” she said.
“I’m cold.”
“Come a little way with me.”
Mandy started to stand up, but she was stopped by the astonishing sensation of being enclosed in enormous, invisible hands. Woman’s hands, immense and strong and soft. They drew her close to an invisible breast, clutched her, enfolded her. It was a terrifyingly wrong sensation; there was nobody here, and nobody could ever be so huge. She struggled, she tried to scream, she felt her stomach unmooring with fright.
But she found herself being cuddled in warm perfumed folds that could be felt and smelled and even tasted, so rich they were. All of the tension, the discomfort, the fear in Mandy’s body melted away. Then, just as she was beginning to enjoy herself, she was set down. She wobbled, she cried out, she flailed at the air.
Never had she felt so thoroughly explored, so—somehow—examined. She had the eerie feeling mat whatever h
ad held her had also been in her mind. And was still there, looking and discovering, moving like a strange voice in her thoughts. But it wasn’t ugly at all, it was young and so very, very happy and so glad to meet her. She couldn’t help herself, she burst out laughing.
The lady laughed, too.
“Who are you?” Mandy asked her.
But she was gone, they were all gone, as clouds upon the air.
BOOK TWO:
The Sleeping
Beauty
That such have died enables us
The tranquiller to die:
That such have lived, certificate
For immortality.
—Emily Dickinson
Chapter 11
The tom moved quickly, nervously, through the silent animal room. The terranums were empty, the bloodstained monkey cage was empty. Even though the animals were gone, the room was still full of the ammonia stink of captured things. The tom hated this room, but he hated more the people next door, hated them enough to use them mercilessly. Because of their guilty dislike of themselves, he did not consider Bonnie and Dr. Walker capable of being true witches, and Clark understood enough to take care of himself.
He could feel the faint rush of microwaves from the newly installed motion detector in the center of the room. Such things were not powerful in his world, and they neither surprised nor impressed him. When he wanted Dr. Walker to come in here, he would trip the alarm, but not until then.
Despite his disapproval of her, the tom could not help but feel a little compassion for Bonnie. She was about to suffer a most interesting death.
* * *
George preferred to think of himself and Bonnie as wanderers in a deadly jungle. Somehow Clark was not with them, perhaps because he was so dedicated a technician, too realistic to have a commitment to the romance of the experiment, and no sense of the art of the work.
Unless at least one of them was awake and on guard, they had to assume their experiment would be ruined by Brother Pierce and his fanatics. There were various things George would like to do to Brother Pierce, chief among them being dismemberment. Slow, considered dismemberment, the lifting off of appendages. No. Burn him. Do it with a candle. Or tattoo his crimes on him. People did not understand the politics of pain, how it must settle in the victim and remain there for a time. An image from his dreams, of cat claws, hung a moment in his thoughts. He could light a fire in agony’s tower on behalf of all destroyed things. He raged, and he hurt, and felt a fine rush of guilt: he could have delivered his body to Bonnie’s will just then.
Cat Magic Page 14
