Hill Magick

by Julia French

  True led the way into the old-fashioned kitchen. The floor was checkered black and red, and the stove and refrigerator had the rounded contours of the 1950s, but these things weren’t what held her attention. Quite simply, she had never seen so much crammed into so small a space. Mason jars stuffed with bits of vegetable matter and capped with waxed paper and rubber bands lined the back of the counter next to the kitchen window. The kitchen drawers, stuffed to the brims, were barely closed, and curious swatches of cloth and paper stuck out of them like tongues. The cabinet doors were closed, but Rachel had the feeling that there was more clutter lurking behind them. The stove and sink were clear, but the counters were stacked with other items such that it was impossible to tell whether True ever used them for food-related tasks.

  The kitchen table was marginally better. A stack of paraffin blocks half-hidden by a flour-sack dish towel stood next to an empty tin can with a spring clothespin clipped to the top edge. The stub of a blue candle slopped over the mouth of the bottle holding it and the wax had dribbled onto the Formica tabletop. A one-pound coffee can stood half-filled with cornmeal, and a thin layer of the meal dusted the creased pocket calendar next to it. At some time in the past, True had folded the calendar, boasting the name of Atlas Hardware Emporium, open to the current month, and had circled the phases of the moon in red pencil.

  Rachel slid the horse blanket off her shoulders and draped it over the back of a chair, sat down, and tucked her camera case under the table with one foot to keep it out of the way. The handle of the hammer was digging into her side. She was sure now that she wouldn’t need it, but she was embarrassed to hand it back to her host openly. True was busy at the counter chopping up something with a long-bladed kitchen knife, so she slid the hammer out of her waistband and tucked it underneath the dish towel on the table. As True moved away from the counter to put a pan of water on the stove she saw that he had been slicing up a handful of twigs.

  “Is that the headache tea?”

  “Willow works like aspirin, only better.”

  “I’d prefer an aspirin if you have one.”

  “Drugs are poison.” He scooped up the handful of chopped twigs and added it to the pot. “This is better,” he repeated, setting the flame on low.

  “Not every drug is bad. What if you got sick and needed an antibiotic?”

  “I don’t get sick.” He was stirring the twigs and water with a wooden spoon.

  “Never?”

  “It wouldn’t be good for business.”

  “I guess not.” She paused. “You said earlier that dowsing felt like the other stuff. What other stuff did you mean?”

  The wooden spoon faltered a moment, then resumed its slow circling. “There’s nothing wrong with helping folks out, however you can.”

  She waited patiently.

  “I’m a wise man.”

  Immediately she thought of Christmas. “A wise man,” she repeated, not understanding him.

  “A conjure man, a witch, a kenner, whatever you want to call it.” His voice had a faint edge. “If you’re going to preach at me, save your breath. I don’t take well to preaching.”

  A witch? Rachel caught herself just in time to keep from laughing out loud. She had begun to feel that there was much about True that commanded respect and even liking-but this? Was he trying to frighten her? However, she could see that he was absolutely serious. Maybe it was safer to play along.

  True took the spoon out of the pot, dribbled some of the infusion onto his finger and tasted it. “It’s ready.”

  Willow tea wasn’t too bad, she decided. The scent reminded her of freshly mown grass. She cradled the warm mug in her hands and sipped the hot liquid slowly.

  “You’re wet through.” True handed her a faded blue bath towel. “Are you cold?”

  “I’m all right.” The throbbing in her head was beginning to die down. She put the mug down, wrapped the towel around her legs, and squeezed the ditchwater out of her pants, then ran a hand over the denim. The cloth was damp, but no longer squishy. “So you heal people and you dowse for lost items. What else do you do?”

  “Sometimes people come by for charms. I sell a lot of those.”

  “Good luck charms?”

  “Money, love, health, long life, protection from evil. Charms are easy to do.” He drew up a chair opposite hers and draped a casual leg over it. “Dowsing and the other things, those are harder.”

  “What other things?” she asked again, and True’s peculiar eyes bored into hers.

  “You don’t believe me. If you believed, you wouldn’t have acted so casual about the charms and the dowsing. You want to ask me what other things I do? Well, I’ll tell you. Sometimes I take curses off. Other times I put them on. Now you tell me something—why do you want to know so much? Are you going back to the city and laugh at me with your friends?”

  “No! I just wanted to know. I didn’t mean to pry. I’ll be going now. Thank you for the tea.”

  She started to rise. True reached out with a long arm and pushed her back down into her seat. With his other hand he produced a small pocket mirror and thrust it in front of her nose. “Look in it,” he ordered. Too startled to resist, she obeyed. What she saw was her reflection outlined by a blazing aurora of seething, swirling colors. Blue and yellow danced around in tandem, and as she watched, a streak of pure white shot upward from the top of her head into space. The colors blended and marbled and separated, and changed and blended again. Awed by the living kaleidoscope, she forgot to be afraid.

  The pressure on her shoulder relaxed as he took his hand away. “My sincere apologies to you, Mrs. Rachel Jeffries. I hope I didn’t scare you. The last person who asked so many questions wanted to slap me in jail for pretending to be a doctor. This mirror reflects what kind of person you are deep inside, and I had to make sure.”

  “How did you make the colors change like that? Is there some kind of special coating on the glass?”

  “It belonged to my great grandfather,” he replied, as if it explained everything. “Evil never shines blue or white.”

  Before she could ask anything more, he plucked the mirror from her grasp. On impulse she reached out for his hand with the mirror and turned the glass until it reflected his own face. As it had with her own reflection, the colors swirled around in synchronized motion. True’s halo was a mixture of blue, green, and white. The colors twisted and danced around each other in ethereal wisps like phantoms, and a thin thread of clear red spun itself out into the swirling cloud. Abruptly True took his hand out of hers and set the glass face-down on the table.

  “What does red mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is red a bad thing?”

  “No.” Shortly. “Now it’s your turn to answer a question of mine. What are you doing out here? I know you’re not just passing through to Yarwich.”

  She remembered her lie, and was ashamed. “I work for the Yarwich Regular Chronicle. I was on my way to do an interview, but I don’t know how I’m going to get home now, much less to an interview.”

  “I never heard of that paper.”

  “It’s not very large.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Mostly local news, some national news, sports, and articles on interesting places and people. Have you heard of Jake Q. Jensen?”

  True jumped as though she had stuck a pin in him. “Jake the Fake?”

  “What do you mean, fake?”

  “The man’s a born liar, everybody knows that! If you write about him you’d make yourself out to be a fool and he’ll be laughing up his sleeve how the big city reporter got taken in.”

  Her first interview, and she’d picked a dud. “I can’t go home without a story.”

  “Then I’m sorry for you, Mrs. Jeffries.”

  “You say Jake is a fake and I belie
ve you, but I can’t go back empty-handed. My deadline is tomorrow. Do you think it might be possible…could I interview you?”

  “No.”

  She hadn’t expected his blunt refusal. “Why not?”

  “If people saw me in the newspaper it would look like I’m trying to be famous. Nobody would trust me anymore, and if people don’t trust me they won’t come to me with their troubles, and then I can’t help them.”

  Desperate times called for desperate measures. She decided to tell him the entire truth. “I don’t really work for the Regular Chronicle, but the editor told me that if I write a good story by Friday he’ll give me the job. I really need this. Please, True, could you help me?”

  “If you’re feeling better, I’ll drive you to Maddington. The garage there can loan you a car to get home.”

  “It’s not a large newspaper,” she repeated. “Nobody out here will see it.”

  “No,” True repeated, and her face grew warm with anger. Her future hinged upon the success of Robert’s Ramblings, and it wasn’t right that one pigheaded stranger had the power to take it away. In her mind’s eye she saw herself five years from now, one baby in diapers and a second on the way, her face and perhaps her body bearing the signs of Mark’s disapproval, no family or friends to help her, no way to get out, trapped forever and ever, amen. She bent down, snatched the strap of her camera case from the floor and stood up. “Fine. That’s just fine with me, Mister Gannett. I’ll be leaving now. Jake Jensen’s house isn’t far from here. You can drop me off there.”

  “But you’ll be writing lies. Don’t you care?”

  Rachel knew he was right but it was the last straw, and the insulting words poured out of her in a torrent. “What do you care about what I write? How do I know you aren’t a liar yourself? You’re the one making a fool out of me if you expect me to believe your ignorant superstitions. Who ever heard of a man witch, anyway? If you were hoping for some kind of reward for rescuing me, you’re in for a big disappointment. If you hadn’t come along I would have gotten out of that car myself. I wish I’d never met you. Go to hell!” Having run out of words, she glared at him as hatefully as she could manage.

  True searched her furious, despairing eyes, and the irritation went out of his own. “Damn, woman!”

  Her mouth opened, but all she managed was a breathless “Huh.”

  “You sure can dish it out,” he said admiringly. “I never heard so many mean and hurtful things since I ran over Bobby Hastings’ rooster seventeen years ago. It was his favorite rooster, too.”

  For some reason this seemed mildly amusing to her. “Was it?”

  “It surely was. I didn’t see it sitting under the truck and I ran clean over it. Bobby went into mourning. He wore a black band on his arm for a whole month, and he wanted me to pay for all the eggs his rooster would’ve laid if I hadn’t squashed it.”

  “Roosters don’t lay eggs.”

  “This one did. That’s what made it special.” A glint came into his eyes.

  “Did you pay for the eggs?” she asked, playing along.

  “I was keeping pigs at the time, and I told him I’d give him my sow’s next litter as payment.”

  “Did you?”

  “I did.” A corner of his mouth twitched.

  “Was Bobby still mad at you?”

  “No, he was happy with what I gave him. Last I heard, those little piglets were laying eggs like crazy.”

  Rachel laughed at the homespun humor and felt better. “I’m sorry, Mister Gannett. True. I didn’t mean—” she stopped, realizing that she had in fact meant some of what she’d said. “I’m glad you came along when you did. You saved my life.”

  “Your guardian angel went and got me in time to save you.” The way he said it, Rachel wasn’t sure it was a joke. “You’re wrong about man witches and I can prove it,” he continued. “ You’re the one who’s superstitious, not me. You live in Yarwich, or you work there anyhow. How many times have you seen something strange that you couldn’t explain no matter how hard you tried?”

  “People expect weird things to happen in Yarwich, so they go out of their way to find them.”

  “You looked in that mirror, but you can’t explain it with facts, so you think it’s a trick. Science superstition is just as harmful and ignorant as any other kind, only harder to let go of, because a lot of things in the world do make sense.”

  “Did you coat the mirror with varnish?”

  “The woman who made it dipped it in the water used to wash a dead man’s body.”

  “You let me touch it? Ugh!”

  “Now you’re sorry you asked, but it worked, didn’t it?”

  “Seeing those colors doesn’t prove a thing.”

  “Then I reckon I don’t know enough about science not to believe my own eyes.”

  It was meant to sting, and it did. She didn’t believe in True’s mirror because she couldn’t explain it rationally, but it was unfair of him to drag Yarwich into it, for she had found rational explanations for everything she had experienced. Almost everything. Mostly everything, or some things at any rate, except for the phenomena she couldn’t explain away no matter how hard she tried. Ball lightning could only take her so far. Beyond that point she was on her own, and this was where she always floundered. Were the logical facts she thought she knew interfering with what she could learn?

  “You go on and write about me, then,” she heard him say. “It might open your mind. I’ll teach you what I know. Then you’ll believe.”

  All she wanted was a couple of paragraphs, not a lesson plan.

  “It’s okay if you’re scared,” True went on, misinterpreting her hesitation. “I was, too, when my great grandfather taught me, but I got used to it.”

  Rachel took a long, slow breath. “I’m not scared, but I think it’s a waste of time. All I need is a little bit about who you are and what you do.” Whether it’s real or imaginary, she could have added, but didn’t.

  Right away she knew she had said the wrong thing. True turned his face away from her and was staring out the kitchen window as though there was something of great interest outside. Their rapport was gone, but what could she do? She didn’t want to take a class in witchcraft.

  He murmured something she didn’t catch.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

  “I’ll do your article anyway, but no pictures. I don’t like pictures.”

  Every question Rachel asked, True answered sincerely, but didn’t elaborate beyond his immediate answers. The minute they were finished he offered her the phone. She placed a call to the car rental company and one to the garage in Maddington to let them know she was coming. If True noticed that she didn’t call her husband as well, he didn’t comment on the omission. In Maddington his goodbye was polite and distant. She thanked him and promised to give him a copy of her article after it was published. Then she got into the loaner car the garage had supplied her, and their meeting was over.

  She tried to cheer herself by thinking of her new job, but she couldn’t persuade herself out of the sinking feeling in her stomach. If only she’d kept her mouth shut and agreed to whatever so-called “lessons” True Gannett had offered her, she might have gotten to know him better. She might have discovered they had interests in common. They might even have become friends, but it was too late. She had refused his offer, finished the interview for her article, and their paths would never cross again.

  As Rachel entered Yarwich her depression deepened. It was a quarter to five, and Mark would be home in forty-five minutes. She had barely time enough to get home, shower, change her clothes, and think of a good reason why supper wasn’t on the table. It would also be good if she could think of a plausible excuse for the prominent lump on her forehead.

  She needn’t have worried about excuses. As she put her hou
se key into the lock the door sprang open. Mark stood there smiling, a tight-lipped, catlike smile.

  “I came home for lunch and you were gone. I missed you, Rachel. Where did you spend your afternoon?”

  Her heart beat faster. “I had some more errands to do—”

  “Omega Car Rental called. I’m so sorry to hear about your accident, dear. Were you hurt?” His voice dripped loving concern, the hush before the storm.

  “I—I bumped my head,” she faltered. She’d encountered his wrath before, but something about this time felt different. “Mark, you never come home for lunch.”

  “I do now.” He opened the door wide for her. “Come in, baby, you look tired.”

  Rachel came inside, because there was nowhere else for her to go. As Mark turned to close the door, she bent down and shoved her camera bag deep under the sofa, hoping his anger had blinded him from noticing what she was carrying.

  “So you had more errands to run.” His smile broadened. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have let you have the car today, instead of your having to rent one.”

  “I—I only remembered after you left.”

  “I see.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “You bought groceries, dropped off the dry cleaning, and did some other errands that you don’t want to tell me about. How else did you spend your time today? Drinking coffee and watching TV? You certainly don’t spend any time cleaning up around here.” He pretended to survey the spotless living room, and an eerie sensation crept up Rachel’s spine. “I don’t suppose you bothered to cook supper tonight, either. Close your mouth, you look like a goldfish gulping for air.”

  “I—” Her throat was dry. Please, God, don’t punish me for this lie or for any of the others I’m going to have to tell. “I went downtown to the bookstore and then I heard that Randall’s Jewelry was having a sale and I went there to look at earrings. I was coming home from there when I had the accident.”

  “Which earrings did you buy? I’d like to see them.”

  “I didn’t find anything I liked.” Sometimes Rachel fantasized that another being was looking through her husband’s eyes, cold and flat and alien. Tonight was one of those times. Mark’s gone, she thought. Who is this man?