by Andre Norton
“But they did not get the witch?” Judy persisted.
“Not if that old book has it set down right. Only where could a house an’ a woman jus’ vanish to? That’s the least likely part of the whole story. Seems like old Sexton, he might have had somethin’ to hide—I don’t know. Speakin’ of time, look yonder! This is no day to be dawdling! Your mom will be in on the two o’clock bus, an’ Luther, you’d best take off right now to pick her up.”
“I got all them things for Mr. Correy,” Grandpa said, and he looked a little unhappy. “Won’t be much room in the truck—”
Holly knew what he meant: no room for them. For a moment she was going to protest, to demand that there be room. Then she saw Grandma glance in her direction, and she knew that she could not be so babyish.
“Judy can squeeze in maybe,” she suggested, though she hated to say it. “And Crock can ride in the back—”
“No.” Judy, to Holly’s entire surprise, answered positively. “Mom’ll be tired. If I ride in the truck, I’ll have to sit on her lap. And I don’t want her to have me bump-bumping on her all the way here. We’ll stay.”
Grandma gave a quick smile. “Good enough. An’ you can lend a helpin’ hand right here. This mornin’, I got a real good start made on my statue. Was you to do th’ dishes now—an’ th’ like—I could set my mind to ease at gettin’ on with that.”
So Holly found herself washing dishes with a care she might not have used at home, intent on doing the task so well that Grandma could see a difference. Meanwhile, Grandma put out her broken lady on the table and gave her glasses such an emphatic thump up into place on her nose that Holly believed they would not dare to slide down again, at least for a good long while.
She would have liked to watch Grandma working, but that might be a bother. It sometimes was when one concentrated on a hard job. And, as Judy hung up the last dishtowel, she jerked her head toward the door.
“We’re going out, Grandma,” Holly said.
“All right. Don’t go wandering off—”
Tomkit arose from the piece of rag carpet in front of the wide hearthstone to come with them. As they passed out the door, Holly saw that Judy had the bag Tamar had given to her pressed tightly against her under her arm.
“Grandma said in the fix-it shed,” she said as she went. “That’s over here.”
The fix-it shed was really a part of the barn, added on later, but with no door into the barn at all, only one outside. It smelled of glue, paint, and oil, and the whole of one end was a workbench with rows of tools hung up neatly on the wall over it. There was a half partition made of three old doors fitted together into a wall. Beyond that was Grandma’s wintertime garden. On the floor, on shelves, crowding most of a table, which was another door set on legs, were pots with things growing in them. Small bags, tightly closed, hung on cords all along the walls above the shelves.
Judy dropped on her knees to peer into the darkened cave which existed under the table.
“Pots here, lots of them, and nothing in them,” she announced, and began to pull out those she could reach.
Holly remembered how Mom had planted her African violets when they had to be repotted.
“We don’t have any planting soil like Mom gets,” she objected.
Judy squatted back on her heels. “These are supposed to grow in regular dirt—Dimsdale dirt. We just dig enough to fill the pots. You take that little trowel and that old basket over there.”
There was something about Judy’s calm certainty that this was what must be done which led Holly to take up the trowel and the basket. Surely there was more to planting than just digging up some common old dirt, putting it in pots, and then pushing seeds or roots in to hope those would grow. Only neither she nor Judy knew what that might be.
She did look around outside before she dug. There seemed to be flower beds along the other wall of the barn. And it was there she went to work, taking dirt, not all from one place so a hole would be noticed, but a trowelful here and one there. Three times she filled the basket and lugged it back to Judy, who used the stiff clumps of soil to fill the pots.
As Holly worked she thought about Grandma’s story—of how the Dimsdales had tried to destroy both Tamar and her house. That Tamar was the woman Sexton Dimsdale had called the witch, Holly had no doubt. Only she found it hard to believe that Tamar was really a witch—or that her curse had lain so heavy on the Dimsdales. Witches were a part of fairy stories as far as Holly was concerned.
Of course, their own adventure today—that was not a part of real life, either. Had Tamar and her house gone into some strange turn of time and been there just as they were for all these years and years? But why, then, would Seth Elkins and Patience Dimsdale have been there, too? They were enemies, and Tamar would not have willingly taken them with her.
Suppose—suppose where they had been today was a time before Sexton Dimsdale had done his best to get at the witch. Then, if they could return, warn Tamar—Yes! Holly, stooping a little under the weight of a basket of dark soil, stopped short before the door of the fix-it shed. If they could warn Tamar of what was coming—they must warn her!
In the morning they could try the maze again. No, they could not, either. Mom would be here. Holly pushed open the shed door. They would have to wait, maybe until next week. And the pillow. Judy had slept on the pillow and then had known just how to get into the maze. Maybe that was a necessary part of finding Tamar again. If it was, then this time Holly would sleep on it.
She was determined about that. After all, she was the oldest, she knew what they must do to help Tamar. It was—it was even her duty to see that they got back to Tamar’s house and helped her.
But Holly said nothing of her plan as she helped Judy plant seeds and roots, brought water in a pail to sprinkle over the lumpy earth.
“Where are you going to put them?” she asked at last, surveying the row of pots. “Grandma’s surely going to see them and ask questions if you leave them out here.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking about that. So we put them in back along the shelves, in and out so the ones Grandma has already there will be all around them. Like this.” Judy picked up the nearest pot, moved two with a luxuriant green growth on one shelf, slipped hers in behind, and used the two others as a screen.
“That’s neat!” Holly agreed, and went to work in the same fashion.
When they had finished, the pots were certainly so well mixed in with Grandma’s that you would not have known they had been added unless you were told—or so Holly hoped.
She and Judy swept up the spilled dirt, wiped off the trowel, and returned the basket to its place. The green fresh smell in here reminded Holly of the maze with the sunlit garden beyond.
She was trying to recall all the details of that when Judy spoke: “Where do you suppose Tamar and the house went, Holly, when those bad men came to hurt her? Was—was she really a witch who could fly off and take her house with her?”
“That’s only a fairy tale, Judy—you’re getting old for them. I don’t know where Tamar went.”
“Maybe she hid in time.”
Holly was startled. “What do you mean?”
“It’s something like Grandpa was saying about how time is so different. When I have a toothache, like I did last winter when we couldn’t get Dr. Williams for two whole days, then it seemed the pain just went on for ever and ever. And that last day Daddy was with us when we went to the zoo and had dinner—that day went so fast it never seemed to be real after, more like I dreamed it. I always thought time meant clocks, seeing the hands go around to tell you to do this or that before it was too late. But now I wonder what time really is. Maybe you could pick out some happy day, if you knew just how to do it, and just stay in that day for always and always—”
Judy gazed at Holly as if she wanted to be reassured that this idea, fantastic as a fairy tale, might indeed come true.
When Holly did not answer, Judy continued: “Men fly up and walk on the moon, wh
ile we can sit here right in our own houses and watch them do it. I’ll bet in the old days people would have thought that was real magic or a fairy story and could never come true. But maybe in the olden days people like Tamar had their way of knowing about other things—like hiding in time. I want to be sure Tamar is safe, Holly, I want to!”
“So do I. Maybe we can, later,” Holly was beginning, when they heard a loud honk of a horn.
“Mom!” Judy slammed out of the door, ran toward the drive on the other side of the barn-house. And Holly, all her ideas about another trip into the maze forgotten for the moment, sped after her.
Mom came out of the cab of the truck as if she could hardly wait for it to come to a stop, and opened her arms wide so somehow Judy and Holly reached her together and were tangled up in one big hug. Mom was back—that was all that mattered now, and all else was forgotten. This slice of time they must make last as long as possible.
6
Witches and Curses
Now it happened, as Grandpa had pointed out, that this good time went so fast it was over before the Wades really enjoyed it. When they saw Mom back on the bus late Sunday afternoon, it seemed she had hardly had a chance to say hello before she was saying good-bye again, waving through the window as the bus drew away from them.
Ahead was not one long week but four before she would be here again, because she had promised to take extra duty so she could get off three days at Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving seemed so distant now that it might well be a whole year away.
When the girls were back in their room, Holly remembered one thing—the pillow. But they could not—she could not—try sleeping on that tonight, not with tomorrow a school day. However, she could make sure it was safe for when she might use it.
“What did you do with the pillow, Judy?”
Judy was rubbing Tomkit under the chin in a way he particularly enjoyed. His eyes were nearly closed as he purred loudly. She did not even look up as she answered, “It’s in the box, my box of cloth pieces, in the wardrobe.”
Holly wanted to make sure of that. With Mom gone, she was thinking about Tamar, about how they had to get back and warn her. She sighed; there was no use trying—not until Friday night. And, like Thanksgiving, that seemed a very long time away.
Monday this week was special. Holly’s class was scheduled to go to the library. Mrs. Finch had announced “special projects.” In spite of her carefully preserved determination not to be noticed, Holly discovered that “special projects” might be exciting. Sussex was going to have a birthday in the coming spring, a three-hundred-year-old birthday. Now “special projects” meant that one chose a subject concerning the town history, to make a booklet from what facts one found out. Or else one could make something with one’s hands to show what the people who had founded Sussex had had in their homes, or worn, or known.
Today’s visit to the library was to start the special-project program because the library itself was in a very old house, one of the oldest still standing in the town. There was a museum there, too, full of things from the earlier days.
“You all can see what references are available,” Mrs. Finch said. “Then, after we return you will make your choice of subject, handing it in on a written slip with your name and grade.”
Holly looked carefully at the library as they came along the leaf-strewn walk toward it. It was a lot larger than Tamar’s house, but the chimney was also in the middle, and the windows were as high in the walls. Only these walls were of brick, and the roof was covered with slates, not mossy green shingles.
Mrs. Finch lined up the children before they went in and pointed out the brick, which had been made in a clay pit once down by the river. Then she explained to them about the windows. “They once were all small diamond-shaped panes set in lead,” she said.
Unconsciously Holly nodded, comparing what she saw now with Tamar’s house.
“But during the Revolution,” Mrs. Finch continued, “that lead was used to make bullets. So for a while people went back to using windows of oiled deerhide shaved thin. After the war these larger pieces of glass were brought in.
“Now, remember this is a library,” she continued as they started in. “You will conduct yourselves with the proper attention—”
Mrs. Finch always spoke that way, with a sharp now-come-to-order note in her voice. And somehow it worked. She was a no-nonsense person and everyone knew it.
To Holly, used to the large city libraries, this was a very small, cramped space. There were only two rooms, the fireplace serving each. Books were packed very tightly together on the shelves. And there was little room left for the benches and chairs which had been brought into the smaller room to seat the class.
On upper shelves and in a little side cubby were other things than books, too. One whole shelf was given to birds’ nests—birds’ nests—each with a white tag on the front. Then there was a picture made of seeds, and some shells, and behind them a row of frames which held what looked to be brownish sheets of paper. There were live plants, too, and a big glass bowl which had tiny growing things in it, as if someone had just scooped up a couple of trowelsful of a very small country and plunked it down in a giant’s fish globe.
Miss Noyes, the librarian, began to talk then, and Holly grew intent. She spoke about their projects and the town birthday. What she said didn’t sound like school history, all dates and far-off happenings—this was about people. As she spoke, Miss Noyes held up a sampler and explained how a girl a lot younger even than Judy had made it, and showed a pistol which had been carried by a soldier who went to Valley Forge, and then a string of beads which was real Indian money—wampum—like in the stories about the Pilgrims. Holly had a feeling that she was being drawn in, made a part of all that had once been. History was a long march of people, some of them far off in the distance, others just a little ahead, but people like herself, and Grandpa, Grandma, Mom—Dad. Suddenly Holly realized history was not just a page in a book, it was people!
Miss Noyes went on to speak of books now. Not the history books one had at school, but books the earlier people had read—and had written!
Again Holly was startled. That old book Miss Noyes was holding up for them all to see, it was written by hand, not printed, and the writing was so old and faint you could hardly see it at all. Was it like the book Grandma had talked about, the one old Miss Elvery had had?
“. . . journal of Seth Elkins,” Miss Noyes continued.
Seth Elkins! The same Seth who had come to see Tamar? Had he put in that book what had happened to Tamar? Dared Holly ask without telling why she wanted to know? But already Miss Noyes had carefully closed the book and fitted it back in a box, and she was speaking about the museum and how they would see a spinning wheel and a flax loom—
To Holly’s disappointment Mrs. Finch beckoned them to follow her, and the class had to file off to the museum. There was plenty there to see, and Holly went slowly. But her mind was only half on what she viewed and on Mrs. Finch’s explanations. Rather, she was thinking of Seth Elkins’s journal. Had Miss Noyes read it all the way through? Could she tell more about what happened at Dimsdale on that Halloween so very long ago? At that instant Holly knew what she was going to take for her project—Dimsdale itself.
Because of that, if Mrs. Finch agreed, she could ask questions. Maybe even learn what was in the journal, and what had happened to Tamar. Of course, she did not dare tell what she knew now. But she could use bits later, as if she had read them, such as the description of Tamar’s house, and the maze, and the herb garden—
She was so lost in her plan that she walked right into a girl a little ahead who had stopped to show a friend a framed sampler hanging on the museum wall.
“See—right there—my name—Rebecca Eames. My grandmother gave that to hang in the museum. ’Cause her great-great—I don’t know how many times back now—made it. And—who do you think you’re shoving?” Becky Eames whirled about toward Holly. “Just ’cause you come from Boston, you thin
k you know everything! Well, you don’t, see. Your great-great-great-grandmother hasn’t got a sampler hanging up here, has she?”
Holly stiffened. Here it came at last, what she had been expecting ever since she had stepped aboard the school bus that first day. Now she would be told she lived in a dump, she was black, all the other things she knew she would have said to her, and about her, sooner or later.
Becky’s friend (it was Martha Torrey, Holly saw, another one of them) pulled at Becky’s sleeve. “Becky! Remember what Mrs. Finch said—”
Holly could guess what that was, and it made her even madder inside. She didn’t need Mrs. Finch to go around warning people not to say this or that because she was black and lived in a dump.
“And just what did Mrs. Finch say?” she demanded fiercely. “Sure I live in a junkyard with the junk! And I’m black, too! You afraid some of that’ll rub off on you? Well, it won’t. I may be black but I’m not dirty, see! And you and your old Mrs. Finch can just mind your own business.”
She turned away as Martha said quickly, “No, Holly, you’ve got it all wrong, truly you—”
Scowling, Holly looked back over her shoulder. “I’ve got it all right. I have had, ever since I came to this stupid old school.”
She hurried on, to stand impatiently at the library door, ready to be gone just as soon as Mrs. Finch started them off. Inside, her anger grew. She had been going to take Dimsdale for her project—now she had a better idea. She was going to write about witches, about how that old Sexton Dimsdale had made trouble because he was greedy and ignorant, and how he got what he deserved. That was going to be her project! She hoped now that the legend was true—that Tamar had been a real witch and had cursed Sexton Dimsdale just as Miss Elvery had said. He deserved it! Everyone in this town should have been cursed—
