by Неизвестный
“I'm sorry, Steven.”
He drank deeply of his wine. “What's in this mull, anyway?”
“Stool of toad, leg of worm.”
“Thank you. I'll have to write that down. There was more than a procession out there last night. There's a big burned place on the wall about a hundred yards from the gate, back toward town.”
Constance's eyes narrowed. “A burned place?”
“The grass is scorched, the wall is covered with soot, and the overhanging branches are blackened. Somebody's awful mad at you, Connie.”
Constance's eyes twinkled. “Pierce, of course.”
“Probably. But you've got plenty of enemies besides him. Could be some husband whose wife has moved to your village. Could be a whole group of 'em.”
“There are only two families affected by the village in that way. And one of the husbands is about to come around. The other is too obsessed with his work to bother about us.”
“Then blame Brother Pierce. From what I hear he's out to cauterize this place to a cinder. Burn out the witch infection.” He coughed. “This wine is loosening up my chest as well as my tongue. Your darned snowstorm gave me a cold, dear!”
“We don't affect the weather. That's just a superstition.”
Steven answered with a deeper hack.
“Ivy, what do you think your father's cough needs?”
“Well, it's bronchial, a lot of loose phlegm. Not very serious. I'd say onion broth.”
“Very good. But why are you sure it isn't serious?”
“There's no rasp in it, so not much inflammation, and none of the thickness associated with pneumonia. And it doesn't have the crack of a tumor cough.”
“See there, Steven. Your daughter is possibly going to be a quite competent herbat doctor. Ivy, give him the recipe.”
“Cut up six small white onions and boil them in a cup of honey. Boil them down for two hours. Strain out the liquid and take it hot, in small doses. You'll cough a lot at first—”
“I'm sure.”
“Then it'll stop, Dad. Your cough'H be cured.”
“I'll use up my Robitussin first, baby. I love you dearly, but I don't think Mom's gonna let me boil down onions in the kitchen.”
Ivy went and sat on the arm of his chair. She stroked what he had left of hair. Robin, sitting on the floor before him, took his mug and refilled it from the pitcher they had left by the fire. Mandy was for a moment conscious of the depth of the love that flowed between this man and his two children. He looked again at Constance. “Please tell me you're at least going to be careful.”
“Tonight is a bad night for us to be careful.”
There was that suggestion of danger again.
“Don't go down in the town.”
“We go wherever our ritual leads. The essence of the hunt is danger.”
“You've said that! Now, look, if you're going to be crazy, at least do me one smali favor. Tetl Sheriff Williams your plan.”
“I did that, of course.” She laughed. “I even had to pay a hoof tax of fifteen cents.”
“I'm glad he knows. I don't want the poor guy to get a heart attack.”
“Johnny Williams is a good man, Sleven. We used to dance together out at Rollo's Road House.”
“You remember that? When did that place close down—during the war?”
“Before the war. The reason I remember is that Johnny reminds me every time I see him ” There had come into Constance's face a fey expression. To say she had once been a coquette would not be accurate. She still was one.
On the distance came the single boom of a gong. “The moon hangs two fingers over the mountain,” Constance said. “We have a lot to do before midnight.”
He slapped his palm against his head. “I'm telling you half of this town is up in arms, Connie, and you propose to go thundering through its streets on horseback at midnight? You must be mad!”
“Half the town may be up in arms, but the other half is mine.”
“Not half, dear. Perhaps a fourth.”
“Many of the others are friends.”
“Oh, come on. You act like you haven't heard what I said. You make a spectacle of yourself and you're going to lose the friends you do have.”
Mandy saw something fierce in the look Steven gave Constance, something he himself might not even have been aware of. The gong boomed again.
“I gather that means I have to go.”
“That's what it means, Steven.”
He got up. “Thanks a heap for the wine. And don't say I didn't warn you if you have trouble tonight.” He tromped out, his children trailing behind him. “Your mother sends her love. Her apples are ripe, and she says to tell you she's going to have thirty bushels. All grown without spells.”
“That's what she thinks,” Ivy said. “I first spelled the orchard on Beltane Day.”
“I'll tell her that. I'm sure she'll throw away her fertilizer.” “I wish she would. She doesn't need it. It shocks her trees. They're getting old before their time.”
“We've got a good harvest, too,” Robin added. “Pumpkins and corn and squash and wheat and oats. And an incredible blackberry crop. We're going to be making the herbal stuff again.”
There was an awkwardness now between the three of them. “It'll be a good harvest, then,” Steven said.
“The best,” his son said. A pause grew, spread into a silence.
“Your sisters miss you.” Steven paused at the door. He opened his arms to his son and daughter. “You know,” An instant later he was off into the night. Soon the calls of the ravens began again, diminishing with him as he departed. “Hey! Lay off that hat! I'm outa bread!”
Then he was gone.
Ivy went about with her taper, and soon the house shone with the deep light of the candles. Mandy saw Robin hurrying through the kitchen. The slam of the door made her gasp. She was alert with anticipation. She understood that she was at the center of this ritual. Naturally she was apprehensive. She told herself that was all it was—apprehension. She would not admit to deep fear, the curdling terror that comes when one faces a true unknown.
“What am I going to do tonight?” she asked Constance.
Her mentor took both of her hands. “You are the huntress, dear.” She wasn't surprised. “I hope you know how to ride bareback.”
“I couldn't possibly! I haven't ridden a horse since I was sixteen.”
“Well, give it a try. You'll have to go sky-clad, too.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“You'll see. Now, come on, the moon doesn't wait.”
The next thing Mandy knew she was following Constance down the path through the herb garden. The idea of hesitating never crossed her mind.
When they reached the village, they slipped between two of the cottages to find the place most wonderfully transformed from Mandy's brief visit when she first entered the estate. There were candles everywhere, making pools of light along the snowy paths, gleaming in the windows of the cottages, in the lanterns before the houses, too. Holly decorated all the doors. “You're to hunt the Holly King tonight, my dear Amanda,” Constance said. “As usual the rules of the game will be simple. Just do your best.”
Here she went again with the vague instructions. Mandy remembered struggling up Stone Mountain, not knowing where the hell she was going. “What if I fall off the horse?” she muttered, knowing there would be no reply.
She was being tested. Very well. She raised her chin.
Fiercely she determined to pass every test they could give her.
Constance stopped in the middle of the village. She looked most wonderful, hooded, her cloak touching the ground. Her face was lit by the candles, and the moon rode high above her. “If at any point you fail, my dear, we burn this village and go home. We quit.”
A stone seemed to knock in her chest. “It's that important? Me?” Now all of her posturing seemed hollow.
“This is your night, my dear You have taken your place with the Leann
an as I took mine fifty years ago. To further prove yourself, you must capture the Holly King and make him your own. It symbolizes your strength. The Holly King is all of us, our covenstead, our way of life. If you want to lead us, you must first catch us.”
Mandy's mind was still battling through the possible meanings of what she had just heard when Constance marched up to the doors of the great round building at the head of the town and threw them open.
The room within was an astonishment of light and odor: it appeared to be a combination bam and ritual chamber. Around the walls were stalls full of horses and cattle and goats. Mandy saw fine mounts, their rumps gleaming, their tails beautifully curried. The smell was not unpleasant, just intensely animal. The stalls, though, formed only the outermost circle. The greater part of the space was taken up by a beaten-earth floor, upon which sat perhaps four dozen people—men, women, and children.
In the center of the circle was Robin, his head crowned by holly, his body gleaming as if it had been waxed. He was, as were they all, quite naked. When he smiled at her, she was glad.
A familiar black tail hung down from a rafter, flicking occasionally.
There was a skiri of bagpipes and a rattle of bones. Six couples came into the circle around Robin. A young woman of perhaps eighteen dashed round and round it with an enormous broadsword, pointing it at the ground. The bagpipes wailed wildly. Mandy thought of all the movies she had ever seen of Scotsmen in war, and knew the sense of this magnificent noise. In hands such as held them now, the pipes were an instrument of courage.
Brother Pierce's face, sharp with hate, seemed to swim before her.
The group in the circle began to dance round their Holly King, clapping and chanting:
“Fire of life,
Pass, pass, pass!
Fire and flame, in Goddess' name,
Pass, pass, pass!
Heart and hand of Holly King,
Pass, pass, pass!”
She understood it all now. They were going to make her ride a horse through a hostile town in the nude, chasing a guy with weeds in his hair.
She was thinking to get out of here when strong hands suddenly grabbed her and whirled her away among swirling chains of people. They snatched at her cloak until it was swept off, then at her jacket, at her blouse, at her jeans. Soon she was naked above the waist. There was so much laughter that the violence of the undressing was almost dispelled. They lifted her at last over their heads, and in passing her from hand to hand finally got the jeans away from her.
She was shrieking from all those unexpected touches when she found herself delivered to the center of the inmost circle and laid at the feet of the Holly King.
Robin's eyes were big with desire. She could see, between his crossed legs, his standing flesh.
Close to him there was a strange smell, like mildew and rancid lard and menthol cough drops. A moment later she knew why. He dipped his fingers in a bowl of thick salve and dropped a huge glob of it on her belly.
“Hey!”
They held her arms above her head, put their hands around her ankles. In their faces was such love, though, she made no attempt to escape them.
When Robin began spreading the salve up and down her stomach, she discovered that the touch of his hands could be pleasant. He spread the slick stink over her whole body, leaving only her private parts untouched. She tingled, grew warm. The sensation was not unlike that of Ben Gay, but deeper and not in the least relaxing. On the contrary, she wanted to run and jump and yell; she fairly could have flown.
The young woman who had wielded the sword came and knelt beside Mandy. “There's a little sting,” she whispered. “Don't mind, it soon ends.” She took some of the salve and nibbed it smartly into Mandy's privates.
A little sting! It was all she could do not to shriek with the agony of it. As if anticipating her problem the bagpipes wailed again and the bones were joined by drums.
No wonder there were legends of witches flying. This salve made her feel as if she were floating. More than floating. If she closed her eyes, she just might sweep up into the rafters with Tom.
They got her to her feet and danced her about, clapping, turning, twisting to a new music. The pipes were gone now, replaced by flute and drum and bone, the old instruments of such dances, softer perhaps without the roaring pipes but in their way just as exciting.
“Corn rigs, an' barley rigs,
An' corn rigs are bonnie;
I'll ne'er forget that happy night,
Amang the rigs wi' Mandy!”
Happiness filled Mandy Walker. The hell with her concerns, this was fun. She really danced for the first time in her life, naked and free amid the smells of animals and the sweat of people—and her own phenomenal stench—round and round and round till the rafters garlanded with holly spun and the Holly King on his throne of floor spun, with his smiling lips and dark wonderful eyes, the gleam there so intense it made her burst with laughter.
There was the feeling that she had danced this dance before.
Just then the dance stopped. Annoyance flashed through Mandy. Then she heard what had frozen the others. From far away the long sound of a horn. A hunter's hom.
Constance. She was out there somewhere, calling them to the hunt.
The stillness was only momentary. There followed a great roar of excitement. Mandy found herself astride a huge black horse, a snorting, excited, stamping giant of a stallion.
She was naked. She had only the mane for reins. Then they had drawn her through the doors, so quickly that she almost hit her head.
“I've got to have my cloak!”
Somebody gave the horse a swat and like blazes they were off through the middle of the village, the hoofs of her mount shattering candles as he galloped. In another instant they were out in the night, pounding along, her fingers frantic in his mane, her body slipping and sliding around because of the salve, the horsehair skinning her tegs. And, she felt sure, they were heading toward the bog.
“Whoa! Hey, horse, come on! Oh, stop!” She tugged at the mane. The animal gave a snort and thundered on.
All she could do was clutch and hope. Maybe she would only be knocked out when she fell. Not killed. Please not killed at such a prime moment.
The salve was having a more and more powerful effect on her. For example, she wasn't in the least cold. And she could hardly feel the pain of the horsehair against her thighs. Even while she clutched and cried, the swiftness of the animal's flight began to seem less a terror.
It became exhilarating, scary in the same sense that a roller coaster is scary She put one hand along the beast's pumping neck. It was a lovely creature, this horse.
It snorted.
“Take it easy, horse.”
She felt beneath her its muscles surging, its blood singing in its veins, its sweat mingling with her slickness as they pounded down the night.
She found that she could sit up for a few seconds and, while she did, actually enjoy the wind rushing past her face.
Then she could sit up longer. She could press her knees against the horse's flanks and sit straight.
It was more than good, this ride. She tossed her head and dug in her knees and shrieked out all the joy and wildness and power that had sprung up in her soul. And her mount neighed reply. She heard the maleness in his voice and knew he had responded to something in her own that she had never before known was there. She was a woman upon this creature, no passive cipher but a woman full of strength and pride and beauty.
She felt an intimacy with the animal flesh beneath her so raw that it startled her. He neighed again, a rich, delighted sound, and literally burst forward. They pounded, pounded, pounded, his foam flying back in her face, his smell filling her nostrils when the charged air didn't, pounded and pounded but were not spent, never that, never dred, only growing stronger and stronger together as they hunted down the night itself.
Hunted, yes! She was here to hunt Robin. She tossed her head and screamed again, screamed from the bott
om of her belly to the top of her head, a high, slicing sword of a cry.
Far off she heard the huntsman's hom reply. Far, far off to the north.
She had not even to say whoa this time, nor to touch the mane of her horse. Only transfer the pressure from the knees to the ankles and he dropped back to a trot. Lighter pressure made him walk. Raising her legs altogether made him stop.
The hom pealed out once more. Behind her, wasn't it? Her horse turned his head back, met her eyes in the moonlight with one of his own. He was blowing hard, slick with froth, trembling with eagerness.
This was no ordinary horse. He knew where to go, she felt it. He knew how to find the Holly King. All she had to do was surrender to his simpler, clearer mind and his instincts.
For all she knew no horse was ordinary. Maybe there was no such thing as an ordinary horse or an ordinary ferret or an ordinary duck, for that matter, no more than there were ordinary fairies or ordinary people or ordinary cats.
She gave him knee and they were off again, rushing around the edge of the bog, up through the hummocks with the house gleaming in the distance, farther north in the valley than she had ever been, through acres and acres of fields, some smelling cut and rich with the blood of the land, others still ripening, corn and gram and pumpkins and squash, earth weighted with fruit. She wondered if the snow had destroyed much of the crop.
They trotted down a path between sentinel rows of corn, which clattered with their passing. Now the land began to rise and they went through an orchard, the horse's hoofs crunching the culls and adding cider to the thick, delicious chaos of scents.
“Holly,” she whispered, “King of Holly. . .”
No, still farther north. Low in the sky she saw Polaris, hanging above the dark mystery of the land. That way lay the Holly King.
But how far? They were passing houses now, with electric lights and dogs reduced to hoarse yapping by the bizarre sight and even more fantastic odor of the intruders.
They approached a house lit by candles, which were quickly snuffed out. People came bursting out of the door, running after her, cloaked against the cold, racing up and touching her legs with a slap, then dropping back into the dark.
