Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  Or was it three days? She'd lost track. It had taken a day for Aunt Alice's message to reach her out in the canyon-lands. Then half a day for the minimum ritual to avoid offense and make it possible for her to come back to her research. Pack the essentials, three-hour drive through shimmering mirages to the airport, check in at the counter for the electronic ticket she'd thought she'd booked on the Internet. Then find out a Bermuda high had locked in storm patterns across the Midwest and canceled half the flights. She ended up about two hundred down on the waiting list. "Lady, you can't get there from here."

  Then she'd waved her magic wand — the famous Haskell platinum Visa card with the bottomless credit limit. She'd had to damn near buy the flaming plane, but a charter company could be bribed to route her up to Idaho and into Canada damn near to Hudson Bay before dumping her in St. John. Then back across the border and smile sweetly at the nice customs man so he'd ignore the strange stuff in her baggage.

  Aunt Alice says "Jump!" you ask "How high?" on the way up. So much for the notion that First People didn't like to hurry.

  So here she was, still with corn pollen smeared on her forehead and Oraibi grit behind her ears, driving through cold pea soup. Fog swirled through the beams of her headlights, a gray blankness bordered by the ghostly white and yellow lines on the asphalt. They were the only proof that there actually was a road out there somewhere. Green numbers glowed on the dashboard, informing her that it was 3:25 in the morning.

  The subtext to that was that she hadn't slept more than four hours a night in the last three days. There'd been an all-night ritual in the kiva and then climbs up three separate sacred mesas under the scorching Arizona sun, puffing and sweating behind the tiny, frail-looking figure of Grandmother Walks-with-the-moon. If you wanted proof that the old ways gave you strength, that gnarled brown chunk of walking mesquite spoke volumes.

  Caroline eased back on the accelerator. If she wrapped this Canadian Plymouth around a tree, she couldn't help a bit with whatever crisis Aunt Alice had cooked up in her crock-pot. The message hadn't said; Aunt Alice had known the words would pass through about five mouths before they reached Caroline's ear, so it had been phrased in innocent-sounding code. But the key words had been "come" and "danger" and "power." And to Aunt Alice, "come" meant "yesterday."

  Finally, a white patch loomed out of the fog and resolved into the sign announcing the Stonefort turn-off. Well, that was a good news/bad news joke. The good news was, she had less than twenty miles to go. The bad news was, now she was leaving Route 1 and the road would go to hell. Sunrise County ranked at the bottom of state highway priorities. No money, few voters — even the tourists rarely drove this far past Bar Harbor and the Boundaries of the Known World.

  She gritted her teeth and aimed her Avis special down the narrow, twisty asphalt. Ghostly trees closed in on either side, and she concentrated on keeping in the middle of the corridor. Trees, rocks, the small bridges over streams — all blurred into a tunnel in the fog of the night and her sleepy brain. She stopped at the first tidewater bridge and rolled down the window, hoping the wet breeze would clear her head. The heavy reek of the mud flats told her the tide was out, and she sucked it in like a cold beer after a long day under the desert sun.

  The smell of home. Arizona had a haunting beauty all its own, but it was too damn dry. Mostly rock and sand and dust. She yawned, rolled up the window, and drove on. Too late in the night to get philosophical.

  A dark lump in the road firmed up and became a porcupine waddling myopically in search of his next pinebark meal. She slammed on the brakes and shook her head as the critter ambled diagonally out of her headlights. Damned animals were sure nothing in the whole wide world could threaten them inside that wall of quills. Sort of the attitude you'd get about the House.

  She blinked, rubbed her neck, and sat for a minute. Highway hypnosis. She hadn't seen another car in half an hour. This section of road didn't even have power lines, much less houses. She flipped the radio on, searching for some heavy metal or even lovesick cowboys singing laments for their lost hound dogs — anything to insult her ears and rile her brain into wakefulness. All she found was talk radio and some NPR thing with new-age saxophones whimpering against the rush of surf. She flipped it off, knuckled her eyes, and headed down the road again.

  Three roadkill skunks and ten miles later, she passed the town garage ghostly in the murk and sodium-vapor lights. Left turn, right turn, coast down one hill and halfway up another, left turn again, and the fog relented enough to show her Aunt Alice's rose bushes. Gravel crunched under the tires, and Caroline finally set the parking brake. Done. And she was alive. Awake, even. Well, almost.

  The House was still standing. She looked it over in the glare of her headlights. No visible damage. All the shutters were closed, and the kitchen door gave out that "fortress" feeling that said her key was useless. Well, Caroline had slept in a car more than once before. Right now, the idea seemed damned attractive.

  She reached to switch the lights off. A shadow moved, around towards the front of the house. She slipped the brake and backed up slightly, turning, throwing on the high beams. Dixie? It was a low lump, too small for a man, too large for a cat. She thought of raccoons or bear cubs sniffing for garbage.

  The shadow dissolved.

  Seeing things. Sleep deprivation.

  She rolled down the window and sniffed. She wrinkled her nose. Aunt Alice never kept garbage around that long, and something really nasty had burned somewhere upwind. Trouble, right here in River City. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark. Caroline knuckled her eyes again, blinking sleep away.

  "Come" and "danger" and "power."

  She'd left the Glock back in Flagstaff — airlines took a dim view of 9mm semi-autos, and the Canadians were even worse. Still, she had other weapons, ones more fit for a witch's war. She scrounged around in the dusty backpack she'd tossed in the back seat.

  Sage. Finely-powdered ochre, with just enough bear-grease binder to stick to her skin. A shallow pottery bowl decorated with black and vermilion geometry, without the deliberate errors that broke the power and made tourist-ware safe to sell. A small fan of golden eagle feathers for the power of the sky.

  She dabbed ochre on a fingertip and painted herself, working with the rear-view mirror and the dome light of the car. Now lightning zig-zagged down each cheek and the back of each hand. She felt coldness there, and then fire as the symbols pulled power from the air of her land and from the waters deep below. She coated the palms of her hands and then lit a smudge of sage leaves in the bowl.

  Wafting the smoke in front and to each side with the eagle fan, she opened the door and climbed out. She felt the darkness draw back into the night as she chanted quietly, her thoughts switching seamlessly to the guttural syllables of Naskeag.

  Smudge the air in front, to each side, behind. Walk slowly, walk calmly, walk in beauty with the world. A sacred way I walk. A sacred song I sing.

  First the left palm on the left door-post, then the right palm on the right door-post. Clear prints of the sacred ochre. Tell the lodge that I am here, tell the lodge I am a friend. Smudge the sacred smoke to left and right, drive evil from this House.

  A sacred way I walk. A sacred song I sing. Sacred waters give me strength.

  "Wear this sacred pollen in beauty," Grandmother Walks had said. "Wash it into your sacred waters. It will tell them where you have been. It will tell them what you have learned. Our blood speaks to your blood. We are sisters."

  The power of the spring had brought her inside the kiva, brought her inside the sisterhood of the Turtle Clan. Her brown skin hadn't been enough to bridge the gap, climb the walls around the sacred rituals. Grandmother Walks had felt the power of the spring running deep in Naskeag blood. Grandmother Walks had let down the ladder so Naskeag blood could climb up and enter the ancient stone houses, so that Naskeag blood could climb down into the secret heart of the kiva and listen and learn.

  Caroline ignored the shadows within
the darkness, walking down the path to the small backyard pool, the overflow from the spring. She set the smudge bowl between two moss-furred stones on the sunrise side and placed her hands on the damp rock. The spring read the ochre on her hands — read the message older than the Naskeags, reaching back to the Red Paint People before the dawn of time. The spring knew she was here. She bent down and splashed coldness on her face and over her hair, washing Oraibi grit and Oraibi pollen into the waters of her spring. The spring knew where she had been, knew what she had learned, knew the message from the People she had visited.

  She felt the darkness pull back into the gray of first light. The watcher wasn't afraid. It felt puzzled, as if she added a new variable to the equation and forced a change in plans. The darkness was a chess master, mapping out moves five layers deep, and any new piece on the board required study. The darkness could afford to wait and come back a second time or a third for whatever it wanted. It left her with the sense that tonight had been a probe testing the guardians of the House.

  Caroline rocked back on her heels, drawing strength from the icy water dripping down the back of her neck. Now that the House knew she was here, she didn't need a key to get inside. There were ways, open to her and to Aunt Alice but no one else. She sniffed the air again, sitting upwind of the sacred smoke from her bowl. The air told her of rotting garbage, burning meat, a whiff of gunpowder smoke. Aunt Alice didn't like surprises, and she was too damn quick with that old shotgun.

  Caroline yawned deeply, nearly dislocating her jaw. The House would talk to Aunt Alice, come morning. Out beyond the fog, the sky brightened in the east. The party was over for the night. She slopped some of the spring-water into her bowl, mashing the sage ashes into a paste. Suddenly feeling as if her twenty years had been multiplied by ten, she straightened up slowly, joint by joint, sleepwalked back to the car, and painted guardians across each window. Finally, she slumped into the back seat, pulled her sleeping bag over her body, and locked the doors.

  *~*~*

  Something was rapping, tapping, tapping, at her chamber door. Caroline felt like telling Raven to stuff his pallid bust of Pallas where the sun don't shine. Ethnographic nightmares were bad enough without E. A. Poe sticking his thumb into the pie.

  She pried an eye open. A dark shape blurred into focus against light. Face. Too pale for an Indian. Caroline fumbled her hand out to thump against the car window, her skin brown against the glare of early morning fog, at least three shades darker than the face.

  Aunt Alice. Caroline's brain fuzzed, and she blinked repeatedly. Aunt Alice was full-blood, while Caroline was half white-eyes and always had been paler. Dramatic evidence that Indians do tan. Arizona sun contrasted with Maine winter.

  She yawned and fumbled for the door handle, yanked twice, remembered to unlock, and tried again. She unfolded herself from the sleeping bag and a back seat that was too small for a five-eight woman. Drive a car like this, you're better off a midget like Aunt Alice.

  The midget stepped back from the door swing. "Where the hell you been?"

  Typical Aunt Alice. Caroline yawned again. "You want the full list or the summary?"

  Her aunt looked like hell: hair draggling around every which-a-way, raccoon eyes from lack of sleep, a reddish lump on her forehead. So the crisis was real.

  Alice turned away towards the kitchen door. "Forget it. Canadian plates, I can guess enough. You couldn't get a seat. Bet you drove all night, too, and damn near ended up in a ditch."

  Caroline tried to rub some sense into her brain. She grabbed her backpack and suitcase, slammed the trunk, and followed her aunt towards the house. Alice stopped and traced a finger over the red handprints on the door-posts.

  "The house would have preferred sweetgrass."

  "Have to restock; used it all up out on the mesas. Besides, I've mostly been working with sage."

  Alice nodded and stepped into the kitchen. "Go with what you feel comfortable with." She pulled a couple of chairs back, moving quietly, and sagged into one. "Keep the noise down. I've got a couple of guests that didn't get much sleep last night."

  "They're not the only ones." Caroline ducked into the small john off the kitchen. Cars lacked certain basic amenities for an all-night accommodation. When she came back out, feeling pounds lighter and much more comfortable, Alice had brewed a pot of coffee. Boiled coffee, made up on the wood stove, it would be strong enough to stand a spoon up straight. Caroline thought that might serve to keep her eyes open. For a few minutes. She poured a mug and let the heat seep into her hands.

  Her aunt seemed to be studying the mug in her own hands. "I'd hate to put a crimp in your creative solutions to adversity, but you could have waited in that airport for ten-twelve hours and been on the ground in Naskeag Falls yesterday morning. 'More haste, less speed.' Weather changes, you know. Airlines adjust schedules. And then there's Amtrak, or a bus. Think ahead. Think things through."

  Caroline blinked. "I'd have been bored out of my skull."

  "You'd have been here, when I needed you."

  Another typical Aunt Alice bit. She kept nagging about impulsive actions. Caroline changed the subject. "So what hit the fan this time?"

  "Morgans and Pratts at each others' throats."

  "Again? Oh, shit. Why don't you let both sets of idiots kill each other off?"

  "There's some kind of Inca brujo involved, too. It gets complicated. And don't talk about your father like that."

  "Old Ben? According to Mom, he can't think straight if there's a woman within three miles. Anyway, he doesn't even know that he is my father."

  "He does now."

  "Why? Ain't that against company policy?"

  "He needed to understand some things." Her lips quirked, and her eyes narrowed. "Besides, I remembered your mother's tastes. And yours."

  "Oh, hell. I don't need that complication. You might as well tell me about it."

  Caroline sipped coffee, letting the heat and the caffeine and the words wash through her, feeling the house adjust to her presence and feed its own peculiar energy to her. The tale seemed to soak in without passing through her ears, in a state of half-drugged hyperawareness like a vision quest.

  Links formed with memories, faces floated past in the shadows of the kitchen — even smells she'd forgotten, of rugosa roses in the garden at Morgan's Castle and playing baby-sitter for two small girls. She blinked and shook her head at the mention of the soul-catcher and the wood stove. She'd never seen that side of Aunt Alice before.

  And that brought the tale up to this morning, plots within plots within plots. "Shit. Peggy and Ellen. What do you want me to do? I'm just the lowly apprentice."

  "Couple of things. You can stand watch, so that I can get some sleep. You can go out and get fresh groceries and call about the phone, while I hold the fort. And you can take notes while I do a Seeing. I need to know just what I'm up against."

  Caroline winced. She stared pointedly at the lump on her aunt's forehead. "You up to that?"

  "This?" Alice traced the spot with one finger. "Damned shotgun kicks like a mule. Caught me off balance and I bumped my head on the wall. And Seeing works better if you're short of sleep. That helps disconnect your back-brain from the Critic and lets your soul slip out through the crack between them."

  "Hey, it's your life." Caroline shrugged. "I could stand inheriting a few million right now. Sell this dump, get me a nice place in Hawaii where I have to climb a mountain if I want to see snow, lie out on the beach all day and ogle the surfer dudes . . . ."

  Her aunt's hand twitched, and Caroline ducked a clout to the ear that never came. Naskeags had great patience with children, but sometimes she pushed the edge a little far. The Haskell money and the House were a tribal trust fund administered by the current Witch, not personal wealth. Caroline had been talking white-man trash, as if she stood apart from the web of clan and kin that bound her to the whole Stonefort Tribe. She finally let the wicked grin escape onto her face.

  Alice looked like she'd bit
ten into a lemon. "I swear, Caroline Haskell, some days I come this close to handing you back to Lainie and telling her to try again. Or maybe I should have taken the turkey-baster route when I was young enough to handle babies. You've got too much Ben Morgan in you to make a decent Witch."

  "Okay, okay, you're fine, I'm fine, no problems. I just don't want to lose my favorite aunt. When do you want to do the dreadful deed?"

  "Your only aunt."

  "Yeah, well that too. I just remember what I felt like after the peyote circle. Dogshit in the hot sun just about covered it."

  "Sounds close. As for when, right now looks good. I don't want Peggy and Ellen watching this."

  She unlocked a cupboard at the end of the kitchen counter and pulled out a lab balance, several jars of powder and liquid, and a leather-bound notebook that had seen better centuries. Caroline could see brown stains on age-yellowed paper, with darker brown ink spider-webbing its way across the pages. Scribbled notes crowded the margins in purple or black — the Haskell Grimoire, three centuries of distilled witchcraft. She felt the House centering itself, ready for any attack, like a kung fu master rising up on the balls of his feet.

  "Five grams of dried Amanita muscaria powder. Ten drops of nightshade extract."

  Short of sleep as she was, Caroline couldn't help herself. "Fillet of a fenny snake, in the cauldron boil and bake."

  Alice looked up from the counter and glared at her. "Shut up, or I'll make you drink this muck."

  "Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog . . . ."

  "Look, Ellen wants to learn this stuff. Do you?"

  "Okay, okay. I'm shutting up now. But why are you going with this cookbook stuff rather than chants and drums and dancing like they do in the kiva?"

  "Because your great-great-great-et cetera-aunt Hepzibah learned it from a European witch, that's why. And don't bother to memorize these proportions. They'd be wrong for your body-weight, anyway. Start at the low end of the scale and work up to an effective dose."