"Help yourself," said the witch brightly. It was her first attempt at pleasantry with him. The result was not likely what she'd intended: he grew wary and on guard. It occurred to Courane that eating a spearmint leaf could well prove fatal, as these various sucroliths might conceivably come under the same prohibition as the gingerbread clapboards of the house's exterior.
Better safe than sorry, Courane told himself. He had vague, schoolboy memories of what had befallen the Greek goddess Persephone. Her annual four-month exile to the underworld had been the penalty for eating seven crummy pomegranate seeds given to her by Hades. Reading that myth in Mrs. Cooper's class had taught Courane that the judges of Hell did not grade on the curve.
The witch seated herself in a deep, dusty old armchair. "You realize this is a no-win situation for me," she said in a weary voice.
"How do you mean?"
"Well, take a look at yourself. You're not what any witch would choose for a victim, are you? Nothing personal, after all, but if I bake you into a pie or shrivel, wither, and blister you beyond recognition, what do I stand to gain?"
She stared through the dismal dimness of her home and sighed. "It's not your fault, I understand that. The days when the fraternal twin children of local woodcutters would pass by to be tempted are long gone. No one appreciates a good gingerbread shingle anymore. I've been thinking of having the house done over, you know. Cover the outside with a good dark chocolate. A forward-looking, progressive idea, I think. Even got estimates from the Godiva people and Frango of Marshall Field's in Chicago." She paused to cackle bitterly. "Maybe some plutocrat witch with a gingerbread town house on Fifth Avenue could afford it, but not I. Now were you a lissome princess with flowers in your hair, or a hero on a great white charger, it would be worthwhile to trot out the complete shadow play of wicked witchery. As it is, you make a rather scanty victim, and I don't feel inspired to give it much more than the bare minimum."
Courane felt several emotions at once, ranging from disbelief to outrage. "Well, pardon me, then, madam," he said. "I apologize for not being a pair of pre-pubic kids lost in the muttering forest. I'm a grown man and you'll just have to deal with it. You can't always get what you want, you know. I'm not overwhelmingly thrilled about being here in the first place, if I may speak freely. After a lifetime of hearing witch stories, I must admit that I'm somewhat disappointed. The terror I might have expected is completely absent. If you don't mind, I have a wrecked car that needs attention. I suppose I'll have to flag down another driver after all. I'd hoped to avoid that."
Courane stood up and took a couple of steps. "Wait," cried the wicked old witch in her hoarse voice. "I said that you'd make an unrewarding victim, but I didn't say that I'd let you walk away scot-free. I can't do that. Tradition, you see. And union rules."
Courane sat down again on the antique davenport. "I'm an unrewarding victim, and you're a pretty poor excuse for a witch. We're made for each other."
"So sad, really," she said. "This is what I've come to."
"This is what I've come to," said Courane. They stared at each other for a while in the growing darkness. The only sounds were the gingerbread and candy fixtures contracting as the heat of the day began to dissipate.
Finally, Courane spoke. "Well, what the hell are you and your gingerbread house doing on the median strip of the Pennsylvania Turnpike?"
"You're bleeding. Did you know your face is bleeding?" asked the witch.
" 'S nothing. Hit a tree."
"Well, let me take care of it." She got slowly and painfully to her feet and crossed the parlor to look closely into Courane's face. She touched him lightly on the neck and shoulders. "Does this hurt?"
"Yes, a little."
The wicked old witch nodded. She began to murmur, almost under her breath. Courane couldn't make out any words. It sounded like a chant. Or a spell—that was it, it was a magical spell. It would either ease his discomfort or turn him into a bewildered amphibian. Or both at once.
"It was several decades ago, before you were born," said the witch, digging into the grimy apron she wore around her waist. She brought out a tin of salve that looked as if she'd bought it outside the courthouse of the Scopes Monkey Trial. "I'd been living in this house for almost a hundred years. At that time, this was a great, lovely, ancient forest. Now hold still."
Courane tried to keep from flinching as the witch applied a thin layer of salve to his cuts and bruises. He was amazed when the pain vanished almost as soon as her fingers touched him. "So you had this gingerbread house here even before, say, the Civil War?"
The witch nodded. "I gave some thought to being a station along the route of the Underground Railway. As a political statement, it wouldn't have given me any personal difficulty. However, I was a great deal younger then, and a great deal more wicked. I was more active in union business, and I was informed that what I was considering was unwitchlike. So I just came back to the house and followed the course of history from my lonely outpost in the woods. Take off your shirt."
Courane did as he was told, and she applied the salve to his neck, shoulders, and back. The whiplash pain went away immediately. "I wish I could help you somehow," he said softly.
The witch replaced the lid on the salve and dropped the tin back into her apron. "Well," she said thoughtfully, "what do you do for a living?"
"I sell aluminum siding," he said.
"Uh huh. Aluminum siding on a gingerbread house. Just what I need."
"I'm sorry," said Courane. He'd rarely felt so useless.
"So, some years ago the state decides it's going to build a great highway linking the New York State Thruway to the Ohio Turnpike. It meant blasting tunnels through mountains and cutting down huge swaths of virgin woodland. Used to be a magic forest around here, with all kinds of supernatural critters about, elves and trolls and whatnot. And the humans lived in their frail little cabins and respected us. Not the state of Pennsylvania, though. All they cared about in Harrisburg was the highway. My friends moved away, but I couldn't. I had too much invested in gingerbread. I was stuck. They ripped down the trees to the left of me for the westbound lanes and the trees to the right of me for eastbound traffic. As luck would have it, they never even discovered that I was here."
"I feel great," said Courane wonderingly. "How can a topical salve cure bone and muscle injuries?"
"It's a secret combination of seventeen herbs and spices," said the witch. "Anyway, this median strip is all that remains of that magic forest. And me. I'm still here."
Courane wore a thoughtful expression as he put his shirt back on. He didn't like the sticky feeling of the shirt on his back. It reminded him of when he was a kid, when his mother used to smear Vicks VapoRub on his chest, and then he'd have to wear his flannel pajamas over it.
"Ever thought of leaving?" he asked.
"Leaving?" said the witch. She sounded shocked. "Leave my gingerbread house? Leave the forest?"
Courane shrugged. "You said yourself nobody passes by much anymore. When was the last time you baked someone in a pie? Or ground somebody's bones to make your bread?"
"That's giants," she said, drawing herself up haughtily. "There are clear rules about that sort of thing. Why, if the WSFA ever found out that I'd ground somebody's bones to make my bread, the word would get out, and I'd have to deal with the giants' union, too. Not me, sir. I'm an honest witch, I am."
"And lonely, too."
She looked at him for several seconds before she replied. "And lonely. And exhausted. And not particularly wicked anymore, if the truth be known." There was a long silence again. It had become dark in the parlor. "I suppose I could consider moving, if I had somewhere to go," she said at last.
"I'll tell you what," said Courane. "I'm heading east. I was going to New York City, but I could make a little detour. To the Jersey Shore. You'd love the Jersey Shore. It's mile after mile of boardwalk and beach, and mile after mile of concession stands and pin- ball arcades and all kinds of things like that. I was thin
king—"
"I could open up a little business," said the witch, testing out the idea.
"I was thinking you could open up a little business, right there on the boardwalk in Asbury Park."
"Madame Mimi's Tarot Den," she said, a little excitement in her voice. "Fortunes told, palms read, that sort of thing. And if blond brother and sister twins happen by, why, I could just pop them into my oven, just for old times' sake, and—"
"I'm not sure about that last part," said Courane. "But I don't think you'd have a problem opening a fortune-telling booth on the boardwalk. I think you'd be a big hit. And the change would do wonders for you."
"Could do with a change," she said. "And I could always come back to the gingerbread house whenever I wanted. It would be safe. I mean, you're the first person who's happened by in ages. I don't need much time to pack. How long will it take us to get to Asbury Park?"
Courane chewed his lower lip. "There is the matter of the car," he said finally. "It's smashed up against a tree. I don't even know if it can be fixed."
"Don't worry about that," said the witch confidently. "The salve will fix anything. We'll just rub it on the car, and it'll be as good as new."
"Jeez," said Courane, for the first time realizing that he might make it out of this story alive. "I'll be glad to have the company, too."
"Facing the world again is kind of intimidating," she said, "but change means growth, and I think I was just stagnating here. I've got the guts to try it, if you do."
"Just rub the salve on the car then?" he asked. Courane felt through the gloom until he found her in her chair. "How's your night vision? Will you be able to see the car in the darkness?"
The witch cackled. "I won't, but my familiar, Monica, will. Hold out your hand."
Courane extended his hand nervously. He felt the witch put something into it. Whatever it was, it crawled around for a few moments and then jumped away.
"Minor demon, no trouble," said the witch. "Then it's all settled. We should celebrate or something. Come on, have a Collie Bar. It's on the house. No strings."
Courane took the candy bar and began to unwrap it. How odd, he thought. The story was just about finished and he was still a—
Mango Red Goes to War
Sandor Courane was having a prescient dream.
He seemed to be walking through a dense evergreen forest, with sunlight raining down through the heavy boughs; Courane walked through the well-stocked aisles of the forest in wonder. He gazed up and saw small patches of blue sky. He was just noticing the unusual absence of sound in this dream when he looked down and saw something wedged in the roots of the next tree.
Courane knew, even in his dream, that he was probably there to get killed off, because he usually got killed off in his stories. At the moment, though, he didn't see anything threatening except possibly the object tangled in the tree roots. Naturally, he went directly to the object. There was no point in dithering around.
Courane found a Fiesta teapot just like the one his mother had back before the Nazi invasion of Poland. He picked it up: a Mango Red Fiesta teapot made by Homer Laughlin. The cheerful color had become scarce and thus collectible after the red-orange glaze was declared a vital war material in 1943. That was because of its radioactive uranium content. Soon Mango Red was discontinued; it returned in 1959, but the glaze was then depleted of its U-235 isotope and was never the same again. The color was dropped permanently in 1972.
In any event, Courane rubbed the teapot primarily for plot purposes. A genie appeared and offered him a free wish. "Okay," said Courane, "but let me think about it for a moment."
"Sure," said the genie. "I understand that this is a major decision in your life. If you're not very careful, there will be all sorts of fatal ironies to deal with."
Courane rubbed his square but graying jaw. He needed a shave. Toilet articles and bathroom sinks were frequently missing in his dreams. "Don't expect me to make the typical, trite old mistakes that everyone else makes," he said.
The genie sighed, evidently bored already. "I don't believe there are many new ones."
Courane considered his choice seriously. "Okay," he said, "how about eliminating all political corruption throughout the United States on the local, state, and federal levels?"
The genie shook his head ruefully. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Courane. There are some situations beyond even the vast magical powers of a genie. Every month we get a printout of the currently popular but undoable requests. Yours has been hovering around number three for some time now."
"Uh huh," said Courane, disappointed. "So, out of curiosity, what's been at numbers one and two?"
"Well, for some people the common wish is that characters on daytime serials could just behave with the common sense God gave a goose, instead of like high school sophomores. I can't grant that wish because for some reason, just as in the case of political corruption, the conventions of soap opera writing seem to be fundamental to the continuation of human life as we know it.
"For other people, the wish is for Honey Pílar's home phone number. Absolutely impossible, too, forbidden by the highest echelons of the Powers That Be. Anyway, the phone number of the world's most desirable woman is unlisted, and these days we respect the rights of the individual to privacy. Put Miss Pílar out of your mind. It's hopeless, and rightly so."
"Well, thanks anyway," said Courane, turning to walk away through the forest, which had become groves of Spanish-moss-hung cypress trees in a southern swamp.
"Hey, you still have a wish!" called the genie.
Courane thought again for a moment. "In that case, I'd like to see the Cleveland Indians win the World Series."
The genie's shoulders slumped. "Good grief," he said, defeated. "The Cleveland Indians? Look, I may be magic, but I'm not omnipotent. You leave me no choice. Let me see if I can circumvent the Unshakable and Immutable Laws of Fate and Destiny and get back to you about Honey Pílar's private phone number. I've got a brother-in-law who was a studio engineer on A Life in Lace."
Just then Courane awoke to find himself truly in a cypress swamp, up to his knees in the muddy, stinking water. He had a Mango Red Fiesta teapot in his hands, though, so he rubbed it.
A genie appeared. The genie was huge and black-skinned, looking very much like Rex Ingram in the four-star 1940 remake of The Thief of Bagdad with Sabu. Courane himself was now definitely into middle age, and putting on weight. He wasn't nearly as rugged and heroic as his mental image of himself, which may explain why he turned up dead during the closing credits of so many fantasy and science fiction short stories.
Courane was not handsome—he reminded many people of the good-hearted slob from Brooklyn who was a mandatory cast member in most 1940s World War II movies. The Brooklyn serviceman was usually played by someone like William Bendix, someone who would never make it to the end of the film alive. When you saw William Bendix or Ernest Borgnine (in later years), you knew they'd be swell guys, but they'd generally have to die tragically and you'd find yourself weeping in the dark. William Bendix never got the girl and he never lived through a war movie. Borgnine did better in Marty, but then he became the fall guy of the postwar era.
Anyway, however you imagine Courane, as William Bendix or Ernest Borgnine, he was always the cheerful, doomed schmo who should've been buried beneath the center field grass of Ebbets Field. There would've been a kind of poetic loveliness to that, but such an ending had never been in Courane's cards. Instead, he passed his time waiting for the cold, final finger of mortality to tap him on the shoulder. He had grown wary over the years.
This time was no different; he was suspicious as soon as the genie spoke. "You get three wishes," said the giant phantom genially.
"Three?" said Courane, surprised. "I just dreamed that I only got one."
"Can't help that. Dreams are dreams and this is this. You're a trifle on edge, but you're not panicking under the circumstances. I compliment you on your cool demeanor."
"Oh," said Courane, "I run
into you supernatural critters all the time."
"Uh huh," said the genie. "Now, we have a lot of ground to cover, mainly your three wishes and your ultimate catastrophe, to be exact. So may I suggest we get going?"
"I'm not going to throw up my hands in despair, you know," said Courane bravely. "I've studied and read three-wish stories and the like for decades. I think I've got a great shot at fighting you to a standstill, if not achieving outright victory for myself for the first time in a long while."
"Believe what you choose," said the genie, laughing in his deep, Rex Ingram voice. "All right, what's your first wish?"
"No problem. I'm not going to wish for anything clever, because that's how the greedy characters always got themselves in trouble. Like the guys in the stories by Fredric Brown and John Collier and Roald Dahl. Remember the fool in Threesie,' by Ted Cogswell, who had one wish left and asked for three more wishes, and had to go through the unutterably horrible de-souling machine forever and forever, in an eternally endless loop? Not for me, buddy. I want a winning lottery ticket worth maybe a million dollars. I'll even pay the taxes on it."
"Are you crazy?" cried the genie. "You've got three wishes that you could use for your own, if not worldwide benefit. And all you're asking for is a tedious stack of cash?"
"Money's good," said Courane. "And a lottery ticket will keep the IRS from wondering where it all came from. I won't be suspected of committing a crime, or any of your other possible evil loopholes."
"But it's so banal, so mundane, so trivial!" shouted the genie in disgust. "I haven't had a wish as lame as that in centuries! It's... it's absolutely stupid!"
"Would it be wiser to ask for a beautiful woman instead?"
The genie drew a huge hand over his weary black eyes. "I can't bear dealing with unimaginative, no-brain idiots like you!"
A Thousand Deaths Page 34
