During the ensuing days, I fulfilled the penalties of urban civilization and at night, I feared to dream. I ordered out for Chinese cuisine each evening and each evening dropped cash into the hands of a bemused delivery boy, who eyed my careworn presence at the Broughton door with marked suspicion.
After four days, I finally shaved off the bristle on my face, which seemed to lighten my mood and the delivery boy’s apprehension.
I stared at the piano, from across the parlor room, on one particular evening and fought an urge to allow my hands to touch the keys. I was grateful when the telephone rang and heard Alan Hughes’ voice on the other end of the line.
“Broughton, where did you come across this extraordinary specimen?”
“In Maine.”
“And it was the only one you found?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we’ve got to find another. Send some people there. The enzymes present in this plant are incredible. It contains antibodies within a bonding agent that could potentially prevent or even arrest postoperative infection. Of course, I will need to study it further, but with only one sample, it becomes problematic. You’re absolutely certain this is the only specimen you were able to retrieve?”
“The only one, yes.”
“What were the growing conditions?”
“A mossy undergrowth.”
“What were you doing in Maine anyway? I thought you talked last March about the Smokey Mountains or some other God forsaken place?”
“Change of plans,” I told him. “It was all quite happenstance, as I explained the other day. The stem fluid appeared to bond to a scrape on my hand, prompting me to get your opinion. I don’t know what else to tell you right now.”
“Well, there has to be others. This can’t just be some anomaly. There weren’t any seedpods in this sample. Are you going back there anytime soon?”
“Not for awhile,” I explained. “I’m returning overseas early next week.”
“I can send some people, maybe, if you could give the location. Hell, I’ll go myself.”
“Hold off on that,” I advised, perhaps too quickly. “I will get in touch with some friends and ask them to keep an eye for any further growth. We don’t need to go on a chase until we have a better idea on the location and quantity.”
“Let me know immediately when you hear anything.”
“I will.”
I hung up the receiver, knowing I would never have the answer for him. What I wanted was the authentication of the plant’s properties, outside any analysis of my own and through an act of artifice, I now had it. Reaching over, I reviewed the printout of extensive lab tests taken the week before. The results were all negative. There was no substance to find. If my experience on Porringer had been chemically induced, the traces had already filtered through.
The pain in my rib had been caused by a hairline fracture, the bruising worse than the injury. The area remained tender, of which I was promptly reminded while taking down a cache of notebooks from the top shelf in the study. I spread the books on the big oak desk, turned on the green shaded lamp and read through the notes, page by intricate page. The background metric of rhythmic ticking from the wall clock pendulum chimed each hour, one by painstaking one.
At the 2:00 AM chime, I found the yellowing page of an unsent correspondence, pressed inside a brittle envelope:
My Dear Friend,
After considering the information contained in Corporal Andrew Selby’s diary, dated the 12th of September, 1863, that so clearly matched my own encounter, I made the discovery of another incident from England in 1580, France in 1656 and Holland in 1732. On a visit to Regensburg, in 1954, I found yet another occurrence had been documented as recent as 1942 and as far back as 1412, at a remote hamlet near the edge of the Bavarian Forest. Each of these tales centered on a strangely pale young woman and the miraculous healing of a mortal wound.
On further study, at the library in Florence, I uncovered 15th Century documents recording what was then regarded as The Evangeline Heresy: a healing tome reputed to be used by particular women healers, condemned as Evangeline Witches during the Inquisitions scattered between the 14th and 16th Centuries. Where the term, Evangeline, originated was never entirely clear, but neither herbal nor reputed witch who utilized one was ever found, and the ensuing centuries made myth of both.
As God as my witness, I believe it to be no myth and that I have committed an unforgivable trespass in sacrificing the unborn of my first son to save my own miserable life.
I separated the notebook with the hidden envelope from the others.
Your grandaddy promised the witch something...
It was through the exchange of blood, by happenstance or purpose, I knew this now, that the women could find what they needed. It was no coincidence that Aaron knew I would be at the conference in Chicago. Being half in love with Ana, himself, he would do anything she required of him.
To have stayed beyond my initial intention, even at my own peril, was simply out of morbid curiosity.
Curiosity killed the cat, Wort Doctor...
Yes, Ana, I know.
But I could not know I would come to care as deeply for you as I do...even now.
She knows about you. She knows all about you.
Yes, Ana, you do.
On the following Monday, I took a cab to the airport. On the flight over the Atlantic, I could not expel the haunt of something vital to my existence having been entirely dismantled.
And I missed her with an ache that felt like a split in the very center of the soul.
~*~
Chapter XXVII
Look to see them rare, in the haunts of dryads, salamanders
and shades; sad beasts of the forest and sighing mermaids.
In shifting shadow, be the Evangeline ways.
~Robert Edevane, Cleric, England 1432~
Prague, Czech Republic
September 1998
In the middle of a vast room stands a grand piano. Although I have reclaimed the Chopin Nocturnes and Etudes from the final hours of childhood, I find they remain a melancholy sound, and I turn to Liszt and Saint-Saëns, despite the pretty Yiva’s pleas for the former pieces.
The tall windows of the apartment are typical of rooms in the buildings of Prague, and open to overlook narrow, cobblestone streets where potted geraniums grow opulent along sunlit balconies. On evenings, when I am alone, I imagine Ana might hear the soothing compositions of Chopin concertos and the others. For a moment, I envision her absorbing the notes on a pristine forest morning, draped in an embroidered Spanish shawl, sent via Aaron Westmore; the only gift she has accepted, from the funds and parcels I have offered repeatedly, and which have been repeatedly returned.
I imagine, as well, the daughter conceived between us on that midsummer’s night: a daughter now born and carried in her mother’s arms. In my sleeping hours, I see she is pleased over the birth of such a vibrant child.
I drink the scotch and water contemplatively, only vaguely aware of ice clanging in the glass. The gloaming stretch of early evening light, over the magnificent spires and gabled rooftops of the ancient city, is a study in contrasts. I feel the tender rhythm of Yiva’s tender breathing as she rests her chin on my shoulder from behind.
She is a beautiful woman, Yiva, tall and doe-eyed, with deep brunette curls that touch just below the curvature of her gently rounded breasts. She delights in wearing my cotton shirts that oversize her frame, but complains I call out in the deep hours of the night, only to awaken with a dark and cloistered despondency.
But she forgives me this transgression, this lovely Yiva, met so serendipitously at a sidewalk café on a fading October’s evening. More attentive than conversational, more companionable than committed and more alluring than loved, her very presence has served as a balm to my unspoken distractions; if not, with equal attendance, my reason. I have watched her slender pirouettes in arabesque and graceful port de bras, within the cylinders of sunlight flooding through th
e windows, and her concentration feels strangely comforting.
Yiva takes my hand from where she sits behind on the piano bench, and exposes the slight scarring on my wrist.
For a moment, I breathe in, once again, the scent of fern and rose.
For a moment, I am filled with dread and longing.
I watch Yiva’s thumbnail cut a line across the scar, oozing the warmth of fluid from my vein.
I hear the rushing rise of pressure inside my ears, even as I passively observe the droplets of life’s vital fluid splat against the polished cherry wood of the bench.
“Yiva…” I gasp, any reaction to retract my hand rendered incapable by stalled memory.
“Our darling Ethan” Yiva sighs, her voice succinct, yet so very soft, like a feather lightly falling.
I feel the fragrant brush of her breath against my ear.
“We can smell your blood mingling with one of our own a thousand miles off,” Yiva whispers, sweeping her finger across the wound, tasting the blood against her tongue. “One of the seven sisters has loved and you have loved in return. It is why you yet live.”
I watch the webbing slide from beneath her fingernails, closing the wound with an sticky weave. She unties the white silk scarf from her hair and winds it tenderly around my wrist.
“We will look after you,” she promises and rests her head on my shoulder. “I, and my sisters, will be the ones to embrace you; to keep you ever and always from harm, wheresoever you may be.”
I allow an ice cube, coated with scotch, to slowly dissolve on my tongue and soothe the constriction in my throat. It is a macabre ritual we play, Yiva and I. A reminder, perhaps, that I might consider myself more fortunate than the dusty old Fitch, with the unceasingly faithful Dulcy forever at his side.
Perhaps I am but equally cursed, in my appointed guardian.
One day, she will want a child of her own. On that day, I suspect she will cut deeper and leave me bleeding on the floor; or, another will come and the ritual will begin again. Meanwhile, she is known discreetly as Svatý sestra: the holy sister, who tends the forgotten, in less visible corners of the city.
The sun sets lower and carries with it my silences.
There is a boundless perspective to this earth. There is perspective of man, of woman, of child. There is perspective of flora and of fauna, of wind and of water. There is even perspective of our gods, who, in sleep, like death, reveal our desire and in our waking play with our illusion. These things continue to whisper in my dreams and determine each moment in the threaded hours of living. They were revealed in the hills of East Tennessee, when in search of an old man's holy sprite, I came to cherish one woman.
She was not just my Ana.
She was my gardenia.
FINI
The Honey Witch (A Tale of Supernatural Suspense) Page 21
