The Hex Witch of Seldom

by Nancy Springer

  She went outside, squinting in the brighter light of the corral. Grant Yandro was still standing where she had left him.

  “The black devil’s name is Shane,” she told him.

  Pap looked at her oddly. “I see,” he said in a quiet, angry voice. “And when I want him in a stall I’m supposed to just hold the door open and ask him nicely, is that it?”

  Bobbi said wearily, “Probably not. I think he just does it for me because I’m a girl.” She went into the house.

  More often than not, Pap made supper, but since he was busy with his horse Bobbi started some sausage frying on the little bottle-gas stove. While it cooked, she watched the corral out the kitchen window. The sorrel was so worn out it was not hard to catch. Grandpap got his horse by the lead rope and maneuvered the animal to the hitching rail near the barn, where he snubbed the sorrel tightly to the strong post. Then, for an hour, standing on the opposite side of the post and rail, he methodically rubbed and patted the sorrel’s head, first one side and then the other, starting at the cheeks and working his way up to the forehead, ears, poll and upper neck. Each time he moved his hand to a new place the sorrel struggled, wild-eyed. Each time, it found that struggling was of no use and ended it by standing still. Sometimes its ears came forward, its expression curious as well as scared as it listened to the sound of Grandpap’s voice.

  From the darkness of the barn, Bobbi knew, Shane was watching, or at least aware, his blue eyes ablaze with hatred in his black face. True, the sorrel was not being hurt. But it was being forced, pushed, shaped.

  Bobbi sighed and started to mix pancakes.

  It was almost dark before Grant Yandro came in for supper. “You didn’t latch the black horse’s stall,” he told Bobbi as he washed his hands. “He could have come out any time he wanted to.”

  “I know,” she stated.

  Pap stared at her with eyes as hard and gray as the stones long-ago glaciers had left in his horse pasture. But he said nothing more. He sat and ate in silence.

  In spite of his gray hair, Grant Yandro had never seemed old to Bobbi. Stubborn, and set in his ways, but not old. Nor did he seem young. He simply was, like the mountains, and like them he weathered without seeming to change. Though Bobbi knew in her mind that he would someday be gone, in her heart she assumed he would always be there for her, like the hills, when she needed him.

  “I called Doc Boser,” he said after he had eaten for a while. “He’ll be out a week from Monday to cut them mustangs.”

  Grandpap kept speaking, but Bobbi could not at first comprehend what he was saying. She heard only cut, mustangs, and the palms of her hands pressed against the table top to keep her upright; for the first time in her life she felt faint. “Cut” meant geld. Make the studs into geldings. Castrate them.

  “He’ll want to do it in the stalls,” Pap was saying. “We got to get them halter-broke and stall-broke by then.”

  “You can’t geld Shane!” Bobbi burst out.

  She saw her grandfather’s eyes widen in surprise, as well they might. Nearly every year of Bobbi’s life there had been a horse gelded at the Yandro place, and she had never objected before. Nobody with any sense kept a stallion unless they intended to breed it, and had the special stalls and corrals meant for studs. Stallions were considered too unreliable and just plain dangerous to use as pleasure mounts around mares.

  Bobbi knew these things. But—that was all before she knew Shane.…

  Pap sat astonished by her outburst, but, oddly, he did not rear up and roar. Bobbi had spooked him with so many surprises in the past two days that perhaps, like a mustang snubbed to the hitching rail, he was growing tired of struggling. Or perhaps he was learning, out of necessity and quickly. He asked quietly, “Why not?”

  He was really asking. He was really ready to listen. His tone touched Bobbi so that she nearly opened her mouth to tell him. But she couldn’t … how could she share what she had so long kept secret, tell him about the weird things she saw? Her reasons were too strange for words. As crazy as her screwball mother. Suddenly doubt numbed her. Thinking what she did about Shane, was she—was she crazy? Ever since she could remember, ever since the first time she had visited her mother in the awful, screaming, urine-smelling psychiatric ward, she had been afraid of going ga-ga like Chantilly.

  “You just can’t,” she said to her grandfather, but all the fight had gone out of her.

  “No reason?”

  “Shane’s …” But he would know she had gone off the deep end like her mother if she told him. And, anyway, how could she feel so sure? She faltered, “Shane’s … different.”

  Grandpap said, “I can see you and that horse got something special.”

  It was a struggle for him to say it, she could see that, after he had been so set against her getting the black mustang. But fair was fair, and Grant Yandro was always fair. He added, “You planning to breed him, maybe?”

  Pap was really trying to understand. Bobbi felt her eyes prickle with hidden tears.

  “No,” she said, “I wasn’t planning on it.” She had to be at least that honest with him. He was trying to be honest with her.

  “I was going to say, ain’t nobody going to breed to him, not with those walleyes. He’s a real nice horse,” Grandpap added hastily, “aside from that. Real light on the forehand for the way he’s built. Moves nice.” There was a grudging but genuine admiration in the old man’s voice. He was recalling the way Shane had dodged his rope. “Faster on his feet than any horse I ever seen.”

  Moves like a cat burgler, Bobbi thought. Or a gunfighter with Indian blood. Or a drunken gypsy, for the gypsies only danced better and with greater splendor and defiance as they became drunk. Or a swordsman—no, a Jedi knight.

  “Flashy. Good flex to his neck.” Grandpap was still trying to be nice, but then the horseman in him took over. “It’s plenty muscled up, Bobbi, maybe even a little too thick. You ought to get him cut if you’re planning to show him. He might make you a real good barrel racer, quick as he is.”

  “I ain’t thinking about things like that,” Bobbi said.

  For the first time her grandfather’s voice rose. “Well, you ought to be! What the devil are you thinking about?”

  Castration. Done at the proper time, it let a male horse’s bones grow longer, his neck grow more supple and graceful, more yielding to the rider’s pressure on the bit. And made him more docile, and let him share the same pasture with the mares. But what would it do to—a man?

  That was crazy. Bobbi felt the craziness of it twitch at her face.

  “What ails you, girl?” Grandpap asked impatiently.

  There was no proper answer Bobbi could give. “It just don’t feel right!” she burst out, and she lunged up from the table and blundered out into the springtime night, up the dark mountainside, staying away from the corral where the weird black horse might make pictures in his eyes for her, leaving Pap to clear off the supper dishes.

  Chapter Four

  The next day Bobbi’s grandfather told her, much too patiently, as if speaking to someone whose mental balance he held in doubt, that he would not have a stallion on his farm with his horses. There would be no more arguing with him, Bobbi knew, patience or no patience. Shane must be gelded.

  Bobbi spent the next week floundering in a mental whirlpool she could not seem to escape.

  If Shane was just a horse, then it was reasonable and customary that he should be gelded. And it was crazy to think that Shane was anything other than a horse. And no matter what she had seen and what she knew, she did not want to be crazy. Grandpap would get a court order and have her put away like her mother. She had to make sure nobody ever knew she had thought crazy thoughts. Shane had to be just a horse.

  And yet, there was the form beyond the form.…

  She had seen it only once, at the wild horse distribution center, and she did not want to see it again. She looked at Shane as little as she could, and when she did look, she made sure she saw black hooves, black h
ide, a tail swishing flies. A horse. A mustang. She made her eyes tell her mind that Shane was a mustang, and she would not allow words to the protesting part inside her that was going crazy. Grandpap was right. Of course the horse had to be gelded. She did not want to go against Grandpap. She had no good reason to go against Grandpap. He was right, and she knew it.

  Why, then, did she feel so wrong?

  Grant Yandro watched her as if waiting for the next shoe to drop. There was nothing he could put his finger on about her—maybe she was a little too quiet, but a person is entitled to be quiet—there was nothing, really, but just a feeling he had, that she was not done surprising him. She wasn’t spending much time with her horse, he noted. “When are you going to halter-break that Shane?” he asked her cautiously over Monday morning’s breakfast.

  “What does it matter,” Bobbi said right back, “as long as he’ll go in the stall for me?” He could tell she had the answer ready. She had been giving it some thought.

  “I’ll have to hold him by the halter for the vet.” Grant had arranged for Dr. Boser to come the following Monday while Bobbi was in school. He was old-fashioned enough so that he always did that when he needed to have a horse gelded. Bobbi had seen almost every other kind of vetting, but she had never seen a castration.

  “Can’t you just muscle him for a couple minutes? Won’t Doc give him a sedative right away?”

  “It’s my body you’re talking about here, girl!” Grant studied Bobbi closely, not really angry despite his tone. He knew he could manage the horse in the close confines of the stall. There would be a little excitement—he was almost looking forward to it, especially after the way the horse had made a fool of him. He would not mind putting a twitch on the black mustang’s nose and making the animal stand still. But he couldn’t understand Bobbi. He would have thought, as moony as she had been about her mustang, she would have wanted to prepare Shane and make the operation as easy as she could for him.

  “Are you hoping he’ll get away from me?” he demanded.

  “Not really.”

  That was the truth. Bobbi knew her grandfather, and she knew better than to hope a horse could best him. Or even—something more, in a horse’s body. The thought made her eyes wince and shift, and the way her glance slid away from his convinced her grandfather that he had hit on the truth.

  “Well, he ain’t getting away from me,” he said in a hard voice. And because he felt a dare, he did not order her to gentle the horse. He only told her, “You put that mustang in the stall on Sunday night, and you make sure the door is latched, and you leave him there.”

  Bobbi nodded, got up and went out to tend to her chores. She didn’t look at Shane or speak to him.

  All that week Travis Dodd stopped by the Yandro place morning and evening, before and after school. The struggle inside Bobbi was wearing her out so that she did not have the energy to be rude to him. And because she did not want to be near the black horse for any longer than she had to—because she might see crazy things in those weird blue eyes again, or the mist-thin form hovering like a nimbus around the black shoulders, in the air—because of her problem, she nearly welcomed Travis. She let the neighbor boy help her carry hay and water to the mustangs in the corral. The water had to be hauled from the spring, bucket by bucket, and dumped into the wooden trough. Once the mustangs were tame enough to go out to pasture, they could drink from the run like the other horses, but as long as they stayed in the corral it was Bobbi’s job to provide them with water. With other mustangs in the past she had enjoyed it, pausing between trips to talk to the wild horses, coaxing them to come nearer to her. But as things were with Shane, she hurried through the job as quickly and silently as she could, actually grateful for Travis’s help, though of course she did not tell him so. She was so moody all week long that Travis sensed something wrong, and every day with clumsy questions he asked what it was, though he knew she would not answer.

  Thursday evening, as she was lugging her third bucket of water into the corral, eyes down and fixed on the ground, a pair of dandy-small black hooves invaded her view, and the straight, slim black legs above them, and a broad expanse of chest. Standing square and still as if for a showdown, Shane put himself in her way.

  Bobbi set down her bucket and made her eyes scan slowly upward, up the arrogant arch of the neck to the high head and the gunfighter-hard eyes looking down on her. Shane stood close enough for her to touch, if she had wanted to, which she did not.

  “What do you want?” she asked him.

  Travis, coming into the corral right behind her, shut the gate and set his bucket down by hers. He did not know much about horses, but he knew better than to try to walk through one that looked like Shane.

  “What do you want?” Bobbi asked again as the stallion made no move. Her inner misery gave her voice a peevish tone. She was seeing the form behind the form again, an unnatural, watery thickening in the air above the horse’s withers, and because Travis was there, pride would not let her turn away. She saw—a dim silhouette only, but still clearly enough to make her spine chill, she saw the man’s head and the wide brim of his hat, and his broad shoulders, his hands resting on his hips, his long legs set in a defiant stance, and his booted feet, standing where the horse’s front hooves stood. She blinked, but the man-form would not go away.

  Shane was forcing her to see him again in the way she had not wanted to see him, as a being with thoughts and will, as a—no. She would not say it. She would not see it. Angrily she jerked her eyes away from the weird manifestation in the air and in the horse itself. She made herself meet Shane’s blue-eyed stare, and she burst out at him, “I offered to take that halter and lead rope off you, you just remember that! Now it’s too late. I’m not allowed.”

  Shane did not move, but the form behind his horse form faded into air. Bobbi stood woodenly, badly shaken, and beside her, Travis laughed his low, nervous laugh. He had seen nothing strange except Bobbi’s behavior. “You talk to that horse like he was people,” he said.

  Of all things, that was the one Bobbi didn’t want to hear. She turned on Travis. “You shut up! What do you know about it?”

  Travis kept his grin, but it twitched. A hurt look narrowed his eyes. Bobbi did not care; she was hurting too much herself to care if she hurt anyone else. But Shane did an odd thing. He reached out with his proud head and tapped Travis on the shoulder. It was not a nose-nudge but a strange gesture Bobbi could not name, a light blow with the bony ridge, wild and friendly and challenging all at once. It was like an athlete’s slap or a knight’s accolade. Travis’s eyes widened, though he did not seem afraid.

  “What did he do that for?” he asked Bobbi.

  “I don’t know,” she told him. Then, because fair was fair, she added, “That’s the first time he’s come up to anybody and touched them.”

  Travis’s face had turned smooth and quiet, the tight, nervous lines gone. “He likes me?”

  “Not exactly,” said Bobbi, but without nastiness. She felt sorry she had snapped at Travis, but mostly she felt tired, and Shane was still in her way. “Move, please,” she requested, and the black horse stepped aside at once and let her carry the water to the trough.

  The rest of the week, as he helped carry water and spread hay, Travis watched Bobbi and Shane with quiet, wondering eyes. Sunday he didn’t come. His parents, passing through on a Sunday walk, told the Yandros he had the flu.

  Sunday night, as darkness was falling, Bobbi went out through the corral to the barn. She walked into the aisle between stalls, blacker than night, and did not turn on a light. She opened her horse’s stall. “Shane,” she called, her voice only a little shaky, “come here, please.”

  He came, but slowly. Something in her voice made him hesitate. But a man of honor had to obey the wishes of a lady, even a lady he detested. He came.

  “I have to ask you to go into the stall, please.”

  The stall was clean enough that she could have slept it in herself; she had seen to that. Ther
e was a bucket of fresh water hanging on the wall, and hay piled in the corner. Not that she expected these things to make any difference to Shane. But they made some small difference to her.

  He went into his prison. He had to, because she asked it of him. All she could see of him was a glimmer of yellow lead rope, dragging in the dirt like a felon’s chains. All he could see of her was a dark, slim shape in the night.

  She closed the stall and latched the door firmly, and imagined that she saw his head lift with uneasy surprise.

  “I have to,” she told him, not trying any longer to keep the tremor out of her voice. “I can’t go against Pap. I got to live with him, and he’s—he’s all—he’s the only one—”

  All the family she had. The only one who—loved her?

  She could not feel love anywhere in the night.

  She left Shane in the stall and went into the cabin. Her grandfather was sitting in front of the TV and did not look up as she passed him on her way to her room.

  Bobbi could not sleep. Early the next morning, Monday morning, she did her chores and left for school without speaking to her grandfather. But he saw her walking down the lane toward the bus stop and called her back.

  He looked hard at her, and she met his stare without expression. He wanted to say something to help, somehow, but it came out sounding as hard as his stone-colored stare.

  “Time you get home,” he told her, “it’ll be done. Now, don’t fuss no more. Pay attention to your teachers.”

  Bobbi nodded and left.

  Three-quarters of the way down the lane she met the vet’s truck rattling up. Doc Boser waved at her. She waved back, turned and watched him drive out of sight up Canadawa Mountain.

  Then she stepped off the lane into the woods, left her schoolbooks and started back up the slope toward home, at a run. She had no plan. In fact, she was trying not to think. There was a knotted feeling in her chest that she did not want to name. She told herself that she was going to watch and see for herself what gelding was like. Then she would know what—what had been done to—