Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful

by Paula Guran

  Again Meg had taken her place, Mors behind her and Kaska’s basket carefully out of the way. Her bouquet centered her table board. But those who came to look over her stock this day did not seem to note it particularly, nor did she all the morning lose any bloom from it for gifting.

  Tod and Tay came by just before the nooning bell and brought her a basket Forina had promised. This time Nid walked behind them, his heavy-horned head swinging from side to side, as if he wished to keep a close eye on all about.

  Just as he stepped up to exchange polite nose taps with Mors, one of the guards halted before Meg’s display. He had the weather-roughened and darkened skin of a man who had spent many years around and about, and there was a small emblem caught fast in the mail shirt he wore that marked his rank.

  “Fair day to you, herbwife.” He studied her, and then his eyes dropped to her wares. “You have Ill-bane, I see.”

  “You see and you wonder, Guard Sergeant? Why?”

  She took up the bundle of leaves. “It stands against evil, does it not—ill of body, ill of mind. What do they say of it? That if those of dark purpose strive to touch it, they are like to find a brand laid across their rash fingers.”

  “You know what they say of you, then?”

  Meg smiled. “They say many things of me, Guard Sergeant Ruddy. It depends upon who says it. I have already been called witch—”

  “And that does not alarm you?”

  “Guard Sergeant Ruddy, when you are summoned to some duty, would any words from those not your officers turn you aside?”

  “Duty—” he repeated. “Herbwife, I tell you that you may well have a right to fear.”

  “Fear and duty often ride comrades. But fear is the shadow and duty the substance. Look you”—she had laid down the bundle of leaves, turned her hand palm-up to show the unmarked flesh, and carried that gesture on so that as his eyes followed they touched the bouquet.

  “Rowan leaf and berry,” he said.

  “Such as grow in hedgerows elsewhere.” Meg pulled out the stem to show a pair of prick-defended leaves, a trefoil of berries.

  Slowly he reached out and took it from her.

  “Watch with care, herbwife.” He did not tuck her gift into full sight as had the others who had taken such, but rather closed his fist tightly upon it and thrust that into his belt pouch.

  Almadis stood by the window. One could catch a small sight of the market square from this vista. But she could not sight Meg’s stall. She was stiff with anger, and yet she must watch her speech. It might be that she was caught at last, yet she could not bring herself to believe that.

  “He rode in,” she tried to keep her words even in tone, not make them such as could be used against her. “And with him he brought heads—heads of men! He would plant those as warnings! Warnings!”

  “Against raiders, outlaws. They only understand such.” That answering voice held weariness. “Their raids grow bolder—oftener. The land we hold, which supplies us with food, with that very robe you are wearing, cannot yield what we need when it is constantly under raid. Now, with the upper snows fast-going, we shall have them down upon us more and more. I know not what presses them these past few seasons, but they have grown bolder and bolder. We lost a farm to fire and sword—Otger collected payment. They deal in blood, thus we must also.”

  Almadis turned. “He is a man of blood,” she said flatly.

  “He holds the peace. You call him man of blood—well, and that he is in another way also. We are of ancient family, daughter—thrown aside though we may be. Rank weds with rank. Otger is the son of a House near equal to our own. Whom you wed will rule here afterward; he must be one born to such heritage. There is no one else.”

  She came to stand before her father where he sat in his high-back chair. And she was suddenly startled, then afraid. Somehow—somehow he had aged—and she had not seen it happening! He had always remained to her, until this hour, the strong leader l’Estal needed. He was old and to the old came death.

  So for the moment she temporized. “Father, grant me a little more time. I cannot find it in me to like Otger—give me a little time.” Her fingers were at her breast pressing against the hidden pendant, caressing the rose which still held both color and fragrance.

  “Where got you that flower, Almadis?” There was a sharpness in his tone now.

  Swiftly she told him of Meg, brought by the Way Wind, and of her stall in the market.

  “I have heard a tale of witchery,” he returned.

  “Witchery? Do some then listen to that mad priest?” Almadis was disturbed. “She came with the Way Wind—from the west—she brings herbs such as we cannot grow—for the soothing of minds and bodies. She is but a girl, hardly more than a child. There is no evil in her!”

  “Daughter, we are a people shunned, broken from our roots. There is shame, pain, anger eating at many of us. Such feelings are not easily put aside. And in some they take another form, seeking one upon whom blame may be thrown, one who may be made, after a fashion, to pay for all that which has caused us ill. Eyes have seen, ears have heard, lips reported—there are those who cry, witchery, yes. And very quickly such rumors can turn to action. This Meg may be a harmless trader—she may be the cause of an uprising. There is the ancient law for the westerners, one which we seldom invoke but which I turn to now—not only for the sake of town peace but for her safety also. This is the third day in the market—by sundown—”

  Almadis swallowed back the protest she would have cried out. That her father spoke so seriously meant that indeed there might be forces brewing who might take fire in l’Estal. But on sudden impulse, she did say:

  “Let me be the one to tell her so. I would not have her think that I have been unmindful of her gift.” Once more she touched the rose.

  “So be it. Also let it be that you think carefully on what else I have said to you. Time does not wait. I would have matters settled for your own good and for my duty.”

  So once more Almadis went down to the market and with her, without her asking, but rather as if they understood her unhappiness about this matter, there came Osono and Urgell. She noted in surprise that the bard had his harp case riding on his shoulder, as if he were on the way to some feast, and that Urgell went full armed.

  It was midday, and Almadis looked about her somewhat puzzled for the usual crowd of those in the market, whether they came to buy and sell, or merely to spend time, was a small one. The man whose stall had neighbored Meg’s was gone, and there were other empty spaces. Also there was a strange feeling which she could not quite put name to.

  Ruddy, the guard sergeant, backed by two of his men, were pacing slowly along the rows of stalls. Now Urgell came a step forward so that he was at Almadis’s right hand. His head was up, and he glanced right and left. Osono shifted the harp case a little, pulling loose his cloak so that the girl caught sight of his weapon, a span of tempered blade between a dagger and a sword in length.

  If there had been a falling away of the crowd, that was not so apparent about the stall where Meg was busied as she had been since she first came into l’Estal. But those who had drifted toward her were a very mixed lot. Almadis recognized the tall bulk of the smith, and near shoulder to him was Tatwin, the scholar, his arm about the shoulders of a slight girl whose pale face suggested illness not yet past, while by her skirts trotted a small shaggy dog with purpose which seemed even more sustained than that of the two it accompanied.

  There was also, somewhat to Almadis’s surprise, Forina of the inn, and behind her wide bulk of body came Tod and Tay, once more grasping the horns of Nid with the suggestion about them that they were not going to lose touch with that four-footed warrior.

  Others, too, a shambling-footed laborer from the farmlands, with one hand to the rope halter of a drooping-headed horse that might have drawn far too many carts or plows through weary seasons.

  Just as they gathered, so did others in the marketplace draw apart. That feeling of menace which had been but
a faint touch when Almadis trod out on this cobbled square grew.

  There was movement in the alleyways, the streets, which led into that square. Others were appearing there who did not venture out into the sunlight.

  Urgell’s hand was at sword hilt. Almadis quickened pace to reach Meg’s stall.

  “Go! Oh, go quickly!” she burst out. “I do not know what comes, but there is evil rising here. Go while you can!”

  Meg had not spread out her bundles of herbs. Now she looked to the Castellan’s daughter and nodded. She picked up her staff and set to the crown of it the bouquet of flowers. The twins suddenly loosed their hold on Nid and pushed behind the board of the stall, shifting the panniers to Mors’s back. Meg stooped and caught up the basket in which Kaska rode, settled it firmly within her arm crook.

  “Witch—get the witch!” The scream arose from one of the alley mouths.

  In a moment, Vill was beside Urgell, and Almadis saw that he carried with him his great hammer. Osono had shifted his harp well back on his shoulder to give him room for weapon play. There were others, too, who moved to join that line between Meg and the sulkers in the streets and alleys.

  “To the gate,” Almadis said. “If you bide with me, they will not dare to touch you!” She hoped that was true. But to make sure that these who threatened knew who and what she was and the protection she could offer, she pushed back her cloak hood that her face might be readily seen.

  “To the gate,” Ruddy appeared with his armsmen, added the authority of his own to the would-be defenders.

  They retreated, all of them, bard, mercenary, smith, sergeant forming a rear guard. Only before the gate there were others—

  A line of men drawn up, men who had been hardened by the riding of the borders, Otger’s chosen. Before them stood the knight-captain himself.

  “My lady,” he said as they halted in confusion. “This is no place for you.”

  Almadis’s hand went to Meg’s arm. “Sir, if you come to give protection, that is well. But this much I shall do for myself, see an innocent woman free of any wrong—”

  “You give me no choice then—” He snapped his fingers, and his men moved in, he a stride ahead plainly aiming to reach Almadis himself.

  “Sir Knight,” Almadis’s hand was on her breast, and under it the moon token was warm. “I come not at your demand or that of any man, thank the Lady, save at a wish which is my own.”

  Otger’s twisted mouth was a grimace of hate, and he lunged.

  Only—

  From the staff Meg held, there blazed a burst of rainbow-hued light. Otger and those with him cried out, raising their hands to their eyes and stumbled back. From behind Almadis and Meg moved Mors and Nid and the ancient horse, whose head was now raised, and those three pushed in among the guard, shouldering aside men who wavered and flailed out blindly.

  Then Almadis was at the gate, and her hands were raised to the bar there. Beside her was the scholar, and with more force than either of them came Forina. So did the barrier to the freedom without fall. And they came out into the crisp wind without the walls, the very momentum of their efforts carrying them into the mouth of the Way Wind road.

  There were cries behind them, and the screeching of voices, harsh and hurting. Almadis looked behind. All their strangely constituted party had won through the gates, the rear guard walking backward. Urgell and Osono had both drawn steel, and the smith held his hammer at ready. There were improvised clubs, a dagger or two, Ruddy’s pike, but none were bloodied. Urgell and Ruddy, the smith beside them, slammed the gates fast.

  Almadis could still hear the shouting of Otger, knew that they had perhaps only moments before they would be overwhelmed by those who were ready for a hunt.

  Meg swung up her staff. There was no wide burst of light this time—rather a ray as straight as a sword blade. It crisscrossed the air before them, leaving behind a shimmer of light the width of the road, near as high as the wall behind them.

  As she lowered her staff, she raised her other hand in salute to that shimmer, as if there waited behind it someone or thing she held in honor.

  Then she spoke, and, though she did not shout, her words cried easily over the clamor behind them.

  “Here is the Gate of Touching. The choice now lies with you all. There will be no hindrance for those going forward. And if you would go back, you shall find those behind will accept you again as you are.

  “Those who come four-footed are comrades—the choice being theirs also. For what lies beyond accepts all life of equal worth. The comradeship of heart is enough.

  “The choice is yours, so mote it be!”

  She stood a little aside to give room, and Tod and Tay, laying hands once more to Nid’s horns, went into the light. Behind them, his hand on the old horse’s neck, the laborer trod, head up and firmly. Almadis stood beside Meg and watched them pass. None of them looked to her or Meg, it was as if they were drawn to something so great they had no longer only any knowledge of themselves, only of it.

  At last there were those of the rear guard. Osono and Vill did not glance toward her. But Urgell, whose sword was once more within its sheath, dropped behind. Somehow her gaze was willed to meet his. The leaf Meg had given him was set in his battered helm as a plume, the plume that a leader might wear to some victory.

  Almadis stirred. She stepped forward, to lay her hand on the one he held out to her as if they would tread some formal pattern which was long woven into being.

  Meg steadied Kaska’s basket on her hip, and looked up to the glimmer as Castellan’s daughter and mercenary disappeared.

  “Is it well-done, Lady?”

  “It is well-done, dear daughter. So mote it be!”

  With staff and basket held steady, Meg went forward, and when she passed the gate of light it vanished. The Way lay open once again to the scouring of the wind.

  Madeleine L’Engle’s witch woman seems to have several familiars: two cats (one black, one white), a leopard, and, most unusually—especially since the story is set in the American Deep South—a camel. The concept of a witch’s familiar depends on one’s idea of witchcraft. To medieval Christians sure witches were the Devil’s minions, the familiar was an imp or low-level demon that assumed the form of an animal (or even a human) and assisted in magic-making. Others consider them spirits or supernatural beings that helped a witch. There is also some English and Scottish folkloric evidence that links fairies with familiars. Familiars are also credited in some lore with supernatural powers of their own—including the ability to take human shape—and provided the witch with companionship. Cats, dogs, toads, mice, and owls were the most common forms for familiars in Western culture. The black cat has become the stereotypical witch’s familiar and, consequently, accrued various superstitions concerning bad luck. Two famous modern feline familiars include Gillian Holroyd’s Siamese cat/familiar Pyewacket in Bell, Book, and Candle (whose name dates back to at least the seventeenth century) and Salem Saberhagen, the talking black cat from the comic book and TV series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.

  Poor Little Saturday

  Madeleine L’Engle

  The witch woman lived in a deserted, boarded-up plantation house, and nobody knew about her but me. Nobody in the nosy little town in south Georgia where I lived when I was a boy knew that if you walked down the dusty main street to where the post office ended it and then turned left and followed that road a piece until you got to the rusty iron gates of the drive to the plantation house, you could find goings-on would make your eyes pop out. It was just luck that I found out. Or maybe it wasn’t luck at all. Maybe the witch woman wanted me to find out because of Alexandra. But now I wish I hadn’t, because the witch woman and Alexandra are gone forever and it’s much worse than if I’d never known them.

  Nobody’d lived in the plantation house since the Civil War when Colonel Londermaine was killed and Alexandra Londermaine, his beautiful young wife, hung herself on the chandelier in the ballroom. A while before I was born some northerner
s bought it, but after a few years they stopped coming and people said it was because the house was haunted. Every few years a gang of boys or men would set out to explore the house but nobody ever found anything, and it was so well boarded up it was hard to force an entrance, so by and by the town lost interest in it. No one climbed the wall and wandered around the grounds except me.

  I used to go there often during the summer because I had bad spells of malaria when sometimes I couldn’t bear to lie on the iron bedstead in my room with the flies buzzing around my face, or out on the hammock on the porch with the screams and laughter of the other kids as they played, torturing my ears. My aching head made it impossible for me to read, and I would drag myself down the road, scuffling my bare, sun-burned toes in the dust, wearing the tattered straw hat that was supposed to protect me from the heat of the sun, shivering and sweating by turns. Sometimes it would seem hours before I got to the iron gates near which the brick wall was lowest. Often I would have to lie panting on the tall, prickly grass for minutes until I gathered strength to scale the wall and drop down on the other side.

  But once inside the grounds it seemed cooler. One funny thing about my chills was that I didn’t seem to shiver nearly as much when I could keep cool as I did at home where even the walls and the floors, if you touched them, were hot. The grounds were filled with live oaks that had grown up unchecked everywhere and afforded an almost continuous green shade. The ground was covered with ferns that were soft and cool to lie on, and when I flung myself down on my back and looked up, the roof of leaves was so thick that sometimes I couldn’t see the sky at all. The sun that managed to filter through lost its bright, pitiless glare and came in soft yellow shafts that didn’t burn you when they touched you.

  One afternoon, a scorcher early in September, which is usually our hottest month (and by then you’re fagged out by the heat, anyhow), I set out for the plantation. The heat lay coiled and shimmering on the road. When you looked at anything through it, it was like looking through a defective pane of glass. The dirt road was so hot that it burned even through my calloused feet, and as I walked clouds of dust rose in front of me and mixed with the shimmying of the heat. I thought I’d never make the plantation. Sweat was running into my eyes, but it was cold sweat, and I was shivering so that my teeth chattered as I walked. When I managed finally to fling myself down on my soft green bed of ferns inside the grounds, I was seized with one of the worst chills I’d ever had in spite of the fact that my mother had given me an extra dose of quinine that morning and some 666 Malaria Medicine to boot. I shut my eyes tight and clutched the ferns with my hands and teeth to wait until the chill had passed, when I heard a soft voice call: