The Witch Queen

by Jan Siegel

  She said: “How did you recognize me?”

  “I’ve seen you before.” She was the girl in his dream of the city, though older, the girl he had seen waking from oblivion. But there was no sign of the intense, arresting creature he remembered. She was just a classic London type, more woman than girl, discreetly power-suited, elegantly pretty, well-mannered, aloof, so inscrutable that she appeared almost bland.

  She asked: “Where?” and he didn’t know how to answer. He could not tell this cool sophisticate that he had seen her in his dreams. Instead, he was conveniently distracted by a waitress and ordered coffee and whiskey for himself and, at Fern’s request, a gin and tonic for her. Then he adopted boardroom tactics, changing the subject before she had time to repeat her question.

  “It was good of you to come. You said you were busy, so I won’t keep you. If I could just tell you about my sister—”

  “And then what?” Fern knew he had deliberately evaded her earlier question and was beginning to feel uneasy in a totally different way.

  “I don’t know. I was hoping it might strike a chord of some kind. I’m going on instinct here. I don’t have anything else to go on.”

  “I honestly don’t think I’ll be much help. What you need is some kind of support group . . .”

  “No. What I need is someone who’s been there—wherever Dana’s gone. Can’t you just try to talk to me?”

  “All right.” Fern felt cornered. “What exactly happened to your sister?”

  “We had a New Year’s Eve bash at my father’s place in the country. I wasn’t in the room at the time, but I’m told Dana fell and hit her head. Not very hard. The doctors said she shouldn’t even have had concussion. When she passed out—well, I thought it was drink or drugs. She’s had a problem with both. I took her to the hospital, but they said she hadn’t taken anything and her alcohol level was high but not excessive. She just didn’t come around. They couldn’t understand it. They waffled about ‘abnormal reactions,’ that sort of crap, but it was obvious they were stumped. She hasn’t even twitched an eyelid since then. Her pulse is so slow she’s barely alive. I heard it was like that with you.”

  “A little,” Fern acknowledged. “I was very drunk, I blacked out, I stayed out. Then, a week or so later, I came around. That’s really all I can tell you.”

  His eyes looked lighter, she noticed, because of the shadows beneath. “No, it isn’t,” he said. “I know it isn’t. Tell me where you went when you were unconscious.”

  He noted with interest that her expression became, if possible, a shade blander. “Answer my question,” she said.

  “Which question?” he queried unnecessarily.

  “The one you dodged.”

  He paused, thinking it over. “You might not believe me: that’s why I didn’t answer. I saw you in a dream. Twice. Nothing sentimental, don’t get that idea. The second time you were in a hospital bed, regaining consciousness. I only saw you for an instant, but the picture was very sharp. Too sharp for dreaming. You looked . . . intensely alive. More than now.”

  He realized too late that he had been offensive, but her manner merely cooled a little further. She inquired noncommittally: “Do you often have such dreams? Dreams that stay with you?”

  “Occasionally. Did you dream when you were in a coma?”

  “No.” Their drinks arrived, covering a momentary stalemate. When the waitress had retreated, Fern pursued: “You said you dreamed about me twice. What happened in the first one?”

  “It didn’t make sense. There was a city—an ancient city—a bit like Ephesus in Turkey, only not in ruins—and a girl asking me for help. Then it changed suddenly, the way dreams do, and we were in the dark somewhere, and the girl turned into you. She looked much younger—fourteen, fifteen—but it was definitely you. The strange thing . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I recognized you. I mean, the person I was in the dream recognized you. Whoever you were.” When she did not respond, he added: “Do you follow me?”

  “Yes.” Both expression and tone seemed to have passed beyond circumspection into a realm of absolute detachment. She sounded so remote, so blank, he knew that his words had meant something to her. Her drink was untouched, her hand frozen in the act of lifting her glass.

  When he saw that she wasn’t going to elucidate he said: “Your turn.”

  “My . . . turn?”

  “You were going to tell me what happened when you were comatose. If you didn’t dream . . . ?”

  “I couldn’t,” she said slowly. “I wasn’t there. I was—outside my body, outside the world.” She concluded with a furtive smile: “You might not believe me, of course.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Under a tree.”

  “Where? In a wood? A field? What kind of tree?”

  He knew the questions were meaningless, but she answered them. “The only kind of tree—the first tree. The Tree all other trees are trying to be, and failing. No wood, no field. Just Tree. Under the Tree, there was a cave, with three witches. It’s always three, isn’t it? The magic number. I was the third.”

  “Are you a witch?” he asked, unsmiling. She looked very unmagical, with her sleek short hair and svelte besuited figure. But it troubled him that she did not either affirm or deny it. She glanced down at her hand—her left hand—as if it did not belong to her, and remembered her gin and tonic, and sipped it, slowly, as though she were performing an exercise in self-restraint. He had developed similar methods in business, learning to curb his occasional impetuosity, to suppress any inner weakness or self-doubt, to control every nuance of his manner. But she does it naturally, he thought. Without trying.

  “What happened next?” he persisted. “You woke up?”

  She gave a small shake of the head. “I had to find the way back. It was difficult. Dangerous. I had a guide . . . At this party, when your sister passed out, do you remember anything unusual? Or peculiar?” He saw the alteration in her attitude, a new alertness in her looks, and experienced a pang that might have been hope, and might have been fear.

  “There were people taking coke, taking E, taking the latest thing in feel-good designer drugs. They were drinking thirty-year-old Scotch and forty-year-old brandy and absinthe and champagne. Some were discussing literature and French cuisine, religion and sex. Others were talking to the furniture. Many were incapable of talking at all. Nearly everyone was in fancy dress. How unusual do you want?”

  If he was witty, Fern did not laugh. (No sense of humor, he thought.) “Did anyone see . . . a bird, an animal, a phantom? Something unexpected or uncanny?”

  “At least six people saw a headless ghost in the old tower—one or two had a conversation with it—but I understand that’s par for the course. Several of the guests wore animal costumes. I noticed a woman with a bird mask, rather beautiful and predatory, but—no, not that I know of. Nothing real.”

  “What is real,” sighed Fern. It wasn’t a question.

  There was a silence that he felt he should not break. She was looking at him in a way people rarely look at each other in a civilized society, as if she were assessing him, without either animosity or liking, fishing for clues to his character, trying to peer into his very soul. She made no attempt to disguise that look, and he thought it changed her, bringing her closer to his memory of the girl in the dreams. He found himself responding in kind, scanning her face as if it were the estimated output from some new investment project, or a painting he admired that rumor told him might be a fake.

  Eventually she said: “You really believe your sister’s condition isn’t . . . mere oblivion, don’t you? You think she’s somewhere else?”

  “Mm.”

  “And I expect,” she went on, “you sometimes know things without knowing how. You’re very good at second-guessing the market, or whatever it is you do in the City. Your colleagues think it’s sinister; they may suspect you have access to inside information.”

  “I don’t make many mistakes,�
�� he conceded.

  “You have a Gift,” she said lightly—so lightly that he knew the phrase meant more than it said, and he heard the importance of the final word.

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “By whom?” Her tone had sharpened.

  “There was a nurse at the clinic late one night. He was from an agency, filling in for someone who was off sick; he hasn’t been back since. He told me that there are people with certain powers . . . that I might be one of them.”

  He has power, she thought. I can sense it coming off him like static. He has power, and he uses it, but he doesn’t know how. He’s like I was before I learned witchcraft: he’s playing by feel. Only it’s far more dangerous, because he’s desperate, living on the edge. If his control should snap . . .

  She asked: “Does your sister have this Gift?”

  “I don’t think so. Her only real talent is for making a mess of her life.” After a minute, he went on: “I didn’t do enough for her.”

  It was a bald statement of fact, not an apology, but for the first time Fern came close to liking him. “You’re doing something now,” she said. “We’re doing something. At least, we’re going to try.”

  She looked into his eyes: smile met smile. There had been few smiles throughout the meeting and these were understated, hers close-lipped, his tight-lipped, curiously similar. Something passed between them in that moment, something slight and intangible, connecting them.

  Fern said: “There’s a lot here I don’t understand. Most of it, to be frank. It could be that your sister’s spirit was taken because of you, or even instead of you, but I’ve no idea by whom.” The one who stole my spirit is dead, she thought, but there’s a new witch at large in the world, according to the goblins. I must learn more from Mabb. “I have to make some inquiries.”

  “Whom do you ask,” he said skeptically, “about something like this? A medium?”

  “A medium is just a middleman,” Fern said. “Or middlewoman. I don’t need one. I’d like to visit your sister, if I may. I don’t suppose it will tell me anything, but I want to see her.”

  “I’ll arrange it.” Suddenly, he gave her a full smile, gentling the tautness of his face. She noticed that there was a single broken tooth in his lower jaw, a relic perhaps of some childhood accident. He obviously hadn’t cared enough to have it capped, and that tiny act of indifference made her warm to him another degree or two.

  He said: “I knew you’d help.” He didn’t thank her.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Fern responded. She didn’t promise.

  Fern went home by tube, so absorbed in her own thoughts that she almost missed her stop. When she got back to the flat she made preparations diligently, her mind elsewhere. She set out bottles, glasses, candles. Knowing she had left it too late, she tried to call Will, but on his home number she got a machine and his mobile phone was switched off. But she did get through to Gaynor.

  “What are you doing tonight?”

  “I’ve already done it,” Gaynor said. “I went to a dreary film at an arts cinema with Hugh, I think because he hoped it would impress me, and then he told me that Vanessa doesn’t understand him, and then I declined to have sex with him again—I mean, I declined again, not that I had sex with him before—and now he says I don’t understand him either, but—”

  “Why should you want to?” said Fern. “Forget about Hugh; this is important. Can you come around? I’m expecting a visit from royalty and I think I’d like someone else here. It saves explaining afterward.”

  There was a short pause. “Did you say royalty?”

  “Not that kind. Mabb, the goblin queen. Skuldunder dropped in the other night and I asked him to arrange it. I wasn’t going to tell you about it—”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t want you involved,” Fern temporized. “After last time . . .”

  “Look, I was scared last time, and I’ll probably be scared again, especially if there are bats. I scare easily. But it doesn’t matter. I’m your best friend. We’re supposed to be a team.”

  “Are we?”

  “Yes, of course. You, me, and . . . and Will.”

  “Some team,” said Fern. “Two members don’t even speak to each other. The Lone Pine Five had better look out.”

  “Do you want me to come around or not?” Gaynor interjected.

  “Yes, I do. Something’s happening, and I need to talk it over. You’re nearer than Ragginbone—”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “—and you don’t wear a smelly coat. Come around now?”

  Gaynor came. Fern had already made coffee, and they sat down amid a scattering of candles while she described her meeting with Lucas Walgrim and the information she had received from Skuldunder.

  “You think there’s a connection?” Gaynor asked.

  “Maybe. In magic, there are no coincidences. It’s very difficult for someone to separate another human soul from its body. I’ve been doing some reading in the last couple of years—Ragginbone gave me a load of stuff—and even the spells for it are obscure. It takes a lot of power. The Old Spirit can do it, but he’s not human, and he has to have the consent of his victim. He seems to be able to bend the rules sometimes; after all, I didn’t actually consent the night I was taken, but I had called him, and I was unconscious, and vulnerable. But when Morgus sent the owl for me I should have been able to return to myself instead of being wrenched into another dimension. She took you once, too, remember? Only you were the wrong person so she sent you back again. Apparently, she used to collect souls. She would seal them in djinn bottles or inanimate objects—”

  “Gin bottles?” Gaynor queried.

  “D-J-I-N-N. The point is, she was very powerful. There is no record of Zohrâne managing spirit-body separation, though the evidence suggests Merlin could, and maybe Medea. It’s impossible to be sure when there’s so little contemporary documentation. Mostly people wrote centuries afterward about what magicians did, basing it on legend and hearsay.”

  “I didn’t know there was anything contemporary to Merlin or Medea,” Gaynor said. Her job was the study and restoration of old books and manuscripts—the older the better—and a glimmer of professional enthusiasm had come into her eye.

  Her friend reverted firmly to the original subject. “As far as I can tell, it takes a special kind of concentration to split someone from their physical body. I couldn’t begin to do it, though I can separate myself—that’s quite simple; many people do it in dreams with no spell involved. You only need to be a little Gifted. The majority of people have some magic in them, even if they never use it. But Morgus’s power was exceptional. It looks as if Dana Walgrim’s spirit was stolen, like mine—only Morgus is dead. So we’re looking for someone with the same kind of power, which is not a nice thought. And Skuldunder has already come to me with a story of a new witch who may be both powerful and evil . . .”

  “Are you sure Morgus is dead?”

  “Of course I am. I saw her burn.” Fern’s expression assumed a certain fixity, concealing unknown emotion. “I killed her.”

  Gaynor knew she was trespassing in private territory. “She deserved it,” she offered, aware it was no consolation.

  “ ‘Many who die deserve life. Can you give it to them?’ “ Fern retorted, quoting Tolkien, and there were sharp edges in her voice. She leaned forward too quickly, reaching for the coffeepot, knocking a candle from its holder and crying out in pain as the flame seared her left hand.

  “Put it under the tap,” said Gaynor, fielding the candle with rather more caution.

  “It doesn’t hurt much.”

  “Yes, but you know it will. Why have you got all these candles? The place looks like a fire hazard.”

  “Atmosphere,” said Fern on her way to the kitchen. “Atmosphere is very important to werefolk. And Mabb is royalty, of a sort. I thought I should make an effort.”

  “You said she would come at midnight,” said Gaynor, glancing at the clock. “She’s late,�
��

  “Of course she is,” Fern responded from the next room, over the sound of the tap running. “Punctuality may be the politeness of kings, but she’s a queen. Ragginbone told me about her. Outside her own kind, her prestige is limited, so she exercises caprice whenever she can. She’s behaving like any Hollywood superstar, keeping the audience waiting.”

  Gaynor was staring fixedly at the curtains over the central window. The unstable candle flames made the shadows move; creases that should have been motionless seemed to twitch into life. She tried to picture a shape or shapes there, developing slowly. She was sure she could see something—the crook of an elbow, the point of an ear—when the smell reached her. It was a smell both animal and vegetable, a rank, hot, stoaty smell mingled with the green stink of an overripe bog. It invaded her nostrils from somewhere just to the left of her chair, making her gorge rise. She gasped: “Fern—!” even as she looked around.

  The goblin was standing barely a yard away. Her appearance was almost as vivid as her odor, the large head swiveling curiously on a worm-supple neck, the stick-thin limbs dressed in some garment made from dying flowers and spidersilk, with a rag of fawn skin over one shoulder. Wings plucked from a swallowtail butterfly fluttered in vain behind her. Another butterfly, in blue and green brilliants, secured the fawn skin; her nails were painted gold; the lids of her slanting eyes were zebra striped in cream and bronze. A crown of leaves, set with the wing cases of beetles, adorned hair as short and colorless as mouse fur, and by way of a scepter she held a peeled switch as tall as herself, topped with a bunch of feathers and the skull of a small bird. Gaynor found herself thinking irresistibly that the queen resembled a nightmare version of a flower fairy who has recently raided a children’s makeup counter. She made a desperate attempt to rearrange her expression into something polite.

  “You must be the witch,” said the goblin, lifting her chin in order to look down her nose. “I honor you with my presence.”

  “Thank you, but . . . I’m not a witch,” Gaynor stammered. “I’m just her friend.”