by Andre Norton
Holly put on her robe over her sweater and jeans. She had to roll up the sweater arms and pin them, so they would not show beneath the flowing sleeves of the robe. She had combed her hair out earlier, now all she had to add were the big earrings and the necklaces. But she decided on the final touches of making her lips very red with a lipstick Mom had thrown away and adding some blue dotted lines like tattooing on her forehead and cheeks. The figure that gazed back at her from the mirror was certainly very unlike Holly Wade, whether she was a true African princess or not.
It took both girls to fasten Crock into his square helmet. Then he complained that he could not see, except straight ahead. That was all he needed, Holly told him firmly, as they set out toward the maze.
This time Tomkit went with them. He was very much interested in Judy’s tail, making jumps at it now and then. But, as they came closer to the maze wall, he left off playing to trot ahead with a purposeful air, as if he realized exactly where they were going and why.
Holly knew that the mass of the entwined brush was ahead of them, but she was afraid to look up. What if there were no cats waiting there to watch them, but rather those monsters which had guarded the way she had urged upon them? Also both girls had discovered they had to suit their pace to Crock’s, his robot costume making any walk over rough ground a clumsy one.
At last, almost defiantly, Holly looked up. She knew a vast relief. Though the cats of brush did not look green as they had the first time the children had come this way, yet they were unmistakably cats and not long-nosed and threatening monsters. This was Tamar’s maze, not Hagar’s.
Now time was pressing, they must go as quickly as they could. Tomkit had already flashed ahead into the first of the tunnels. Judy, her cat costume looking somehow even more real (as if she were a giant-sized Tomkit), was behind. Then Crock creaked on, and Holly brought up the rear, ready to help if her brother’s awkward costume caught on any projections of bush.
As they went the walls did not grow greener, nor the air warmer, as had happened the other time. It must be October in the maze instead of summer. Those smaller flowers and bushes, the plants which had given off such a sweet smell when they trod on the old stones of the walk, were withered, with only a stalk here or there to mark where a heavy growth had been.
There were none of the evil-looking toadstools, nor gray ghost plants, which had made the widdershins way so threatening and horrible.
“Can’t you hurry, Crock?” Holly almost trod on his heels.
“Listen here, I’m going as fast as I can.” His exasperated voice sounded hollowly from inside the robot head. “This suit isn’t made for running.”
Holly tried to curb her impatience. If they were not back when the Hawkinses came—what then? Judy was already out of sight. But they had only to remember to take each turn on the right. Just the same, it seemed to Holly that they went on for hours before they did come out at last, to see the house and the garden.
That was also withered and frost-touched, but the pool in its center was clear. And the beds had been worked, ready for a new planting. While there were a number of plants which still showed sturdily and had a touch of green. About the beehives there was no sign of life, and they were trussed in straw. The house itself had a snug, ready-for-the-winter look about it.
Though the door was shut, smoke came from the chimney. Judy was already speeding to the door. Who stood beyond: Tamar—or Hagar? Now that she had reached this point, Holly was afraid again to prove herself right—or wrong!
As she steered Crock through the herb garden, Judy reached up a paw-mittened hand to hammer on that door with a confidence Holly was certainly very far from feeling. However, when the door did open in answer to her knock, it was Tamar who faced them.
She wore a red-brown dress the color of an autumn leaf. Around her shoulders was a cloak of the same color, as if she were about to go out. Sighting them, she stood still in amazement. Suddenly Holly realized that, of course, Tamar had not expected them in costume, if she had looked for them at all. Judy and Crock had masks on, but perhaps Tamar would know her.
“Tamar!” Judy cried that aloud, as Tomkit gave a loud wail. While Holly pushed past Crock—
“Tamar, it’s us! Judy, Crock, Holly”—with a stabbing finger she named them all. “Truly it is!”
Then Tamar smiled. “So do I see the truth beneath the disguise. Come thee in! Blessed be, blessed be!”
The house was warm, spicy with smells. Tomkit leaped upon the table to nose into a basin sitting there. Holly was impatient. Tamar must know, understand as soon as possible—
“Tamar—” she began when Judy, fumbling with her cat mask so she could loose it on one side and show her face, interrupted.
“Tamar—Sexton Dimsdale, he is coming with men. They think you’re a witch. They want to burn your house, hurt you! Tamar, you’ve got to get away! It’s Halloween and they came on Halloween—” Judy was close to tears.
Tamar looked from Judy to Crock, and, last of all, to Holly. “A witch—” she repeated slowly.
“It’s Hagar’s fault,” Holly burst out then. “She gave Seth Elkins something to put in the medicine you made for his father. She told Seth it would make his father let them get married. But it was bad. It hurt a dog and Sexton Dimsdale saw that. It’s all in the old book at the library, I read it. Tamar—you have to—”
Now Tamar’s attention was fastened on Holly. “What dost thou know of Hagar?” Her voice was stern, sharp.
Holly flushed. “We came here, we met Hagar. She, she told me I was like her, that I had to help her.” Holly swallowed. Under Tamar’s steady gaze she felt more and more ashamed of admitting just how much she had wanted the witch wishes and had been eager to do as Hagar asked.
“And how wert thou to help her?” Tamar was still stern of face.
“She gave me some seeds and a root—to plant, back there in our own time.”
“And thou did this?”
“Yes. Only—only Judy found they were killing all of Grandma’s plants, and the ones you had given her, too. Judy, she spilled all the pots out and mashed the bad things that grew.”
They all saw and heard Tamar draw a deep breath. Then she took a step forward and her hand cupped Holly’s chin gently, turning up her face. Tamar looked into Holly’s eyes, a long, long look without blinking, a look which seemed to Holly to see all the small meannesses, the rebellion, the cheating, which had brought her once to Hagar.
“Aye, thou hast the gift, child. It be more burden than gift, for it do tempt one into dark ways—even as thou ventured. Be grateful to this sister of thine that she did break the spell laid upon thee. It be hard in this world for those who be akin to the power of magic. Sparingly must they ever use it, and only to another’s good, never their own.
“Hear then the law, little sister: “That thou lovest all things in Nature. That thou shalt suffer no person to be harmed by thy hands or in thy mind. That thou walkest humbly in the ways of men and the ways of the gods. Contentment thou shalt at last learn through suffering, and from long patient years, and from nobility of mind and service. For the wise never grow old—’ ”
“You said part of that once before,” Crock said hollowly from within his helmet. “It sounds like—like something out of a church.”
“Not from a church as thee knows one, little brother,” Tamar replied, “for it is the wisdom of a people worshipping a power older than any church now known. But thee, younger sister,”—she spoke once more directly to Holly—“strive not to reach for that which will lie ahead. In time will it be rightfully revealed to thee. And give thanks to those powers which art of the Right Way, that thou didst not venture so far down the Left that thou couldst not retreat.”
“But Tamar”—Judy slipped her hand out of her mitten, caught the edge of Tamar’s cloak and gave it a tug—”please, you must be getting away. Those men are coming.”
“What say these records of thine own time as to what happened when they did come?�
��
“That—that some demons appeared while you were talking with Sexton Dimsdale, and the men were frightened and ran. When they came back, the house—everything—was gone!” Holly supplied quickly.
“This be indeed Hallowmas, when the worlds of time turn counterwise if the power be great enough,” Tamar said slowly. She was talking more to herself than to them, Holly thought. “Little one,” she said to Judy, “how grow those seeds thou planted?”
“They’re all showing,” Judy said eagerly. “Some are about that high!” She measured a space with her finger.
“There be a binding tie, then!” Again the children did not understand, but Tamar swept back her cloak to free her arms, leaving it lying in heavy folds on her shoulders. She spun away from them to face the table.
The top of that was less cluttered than it had been the last time they had seen it. There were four red candles at the points of a square, and beyond them two black candles. Within the candle square was a wreath made of colored leaves interwoven with some small flowers: goldenrod; that bright purple one Grandma called “ironweed”; and another, rusty red, which she named “devil’s-paintbrush.” In the center of the wreath was a metal bowl in which lay some lumps of brown stuff.
Tamar stood for a long moment surveying this, her hands resting on her hips. She might have been Grandpa about to reach for the right tool with which to finish a very difficult piece of carpentry.
“Is my power great enough? How may I know? The proof be in the doing. But when it be the hour for the opening of gates, passage thereby can be two ways, from our world out to our world in. If—”
Holly dared to interrupt. “We’ve got to get back—to our own time. They’ll be looking for us—”
But she was already too late.
“Ho, witch! Show thy ugly face!”
The shout from outside startled them all. Judy was closest to the window. She looked out over the high sill, which was at her eye level.
“Men—with torches!” she cried out.
Tamar turned away from the table. “But I am warned,” she said calmly. “Do ye stay hidden. I know not if aught on this side of time can do ye hurt, but that we shall not put to the proof.”
Still calm of manner, she went to the door and opened it, stepping outside, while Holly and Crock crowded beside Judy at the window. Somehow, during the short time they had been within the house, it had grown much darker; it was quite dusk now. Outside, the cruel light of torches made all the frost-killed herb garden plain. Men tramped across its beds, crushing those plants which still showed some life.
Holly shivered. She had never seen such looks on men’s faces. That one who stood a little ahead of the rest, he had a sword in his hand. On the bared blade the firelight ran red.
“What seek ye, neighbors?” Tamar stood there, fronting them. The three at the window could not see her face. But Holly, remembering how the panes of the window could be opened, gave a shove to the nearest so they could hear.
“Thou, witch! Death has been ill-brewed in thy pots, death for our good friend Increase Elkins!”
“Where be Master Elkins, so may he say that to my face, as be a matter of the justice due to all?”
“The Holy Writ gives thee proper justice, witch. Does it not say plainly, ’Suffer not a witch to live’?”
There was a kind of growl from the men standing behind Sexton Dimsdale. Judy cowered down with a little cry and Holly flinched. That sound made her more frightened than she had ever been in her life.
“Thou wishes my land, Master Dimsdale, canst thou deny that before a company who many times over have heard thee say this? How better can thee get it than falsely to accuse a healing woman of witchcraft? Think upon that, thou who follow with those bright torches of thine. Aye, I see thee, Reuben Fenester. How would thy goodwife have fared had I not tended her? And here thou standest also, Micah Hawkins, that did come to me with that evil wound which none could heal. Look at the very hand with which thou now holdest that torch. What thou seest there be a clean scar, be that not so?
“And thou, Rupert Briggs, thou hast a son who lives, and not another child laid in the grave. And thou, thou, thou—” Tamar raised her hand to point at man after man. “All are in my debt for lives saved and hurts healed. Yet now thou followest one who, because he covets that which has been proven truly mine, raises the cry of ’witch.’ Think well on the past, neighbors—”
“Listen not to her!” Sexton Dimsdale’s voice drowned out Tamar’s. “Does not the Devil give those he loves council so that they may twist the thoughts of honest men, even as they twist their bodies with vile poisons? Listen to her, and thou art lost to the Devil’s ways, as she be deep in them! Have ye not all seen that mastiff which died of the potion she gave unto Elkins? Mad it was, and foaming at the muzzle, so I needs must shoot it lest it savage its own master. What if Elkins had drunk the whole of that? Perhaps death would have seemed sweeter to him than life thereafter? Thou knowest the Holy Writ: Can we pray to a just God when a witch dwells in peace among us? What chastening blows may He send upon us for such weak folly?”
There was a sound from the men and they came closer. Holly found she could not look at their faces now. These frightened her so, she was sick. There was a sharp tug at her flowing sleeve—Crock’s hand on it!
He had grabbed hold of Judy’s tail, to pull her, too.
“Come on!” His voice sounded hollow and strange inside the robot head. Holly saw that his eyes were flashed on, burning brightly. “Come on!”
Holly stumbled toward the door. Judy tried to jerk away, but Crock shoved her ahead of him.
“Open the door!” hissed Crock. “We’re going out!”
Out there—? Crock must be crazy. Tamar had told them to stay under cover. Those men—they would catch them—
“Get going!” Crock sounded so fierce this time, Holly did stumble forward to put her hands on the door. “Now listen,” his voice boomed on, “when Holly gets that door open, we go out. We yell like crazy—just yell! Understand!”
It was only then that Holly did. Costumed as they were, coming out yelling—the demons! Were they the demons who had frightened off the attack on Tamar? But that had happened long ago—Holly’s head was full of mixed-up thoughts which she had no time to straighten out.
Instead, she gave a quick pull to the door, bringing it widely open. Following Crock’s orders she leaped forward, voicing the best scream she could summon. There was an echoing bellow, which issued from Crock as he moved more stiffly and slowly toward Tamar. Judy gave a wild yowl not unlike that which Tomkit could utter, but in greater volume.
For a long moment the men stared at the three weird apparitions. Holly was jumping up and down, throwing her arms wide in the air, screeching in rough imitation of an African witch doctor she had seen on TV in a travel program. Crock marched with the stiffness of the robot he hoped to resemble, still bellowing. Judy, as if all her fear had left her, leapt back and forth, her clawed paw-mittens outstretched as if to reach Sexton Dimsdale.
But Master Dimsdale was retreating. Behind him there was a flurry as men broke, turned, and ran, throwing their torches from them. Sexton Dimsdale shouted after them. But, before Crock’s steady advance, he retreated until he, too, ran.
“Get those torches!” Crock yelled. “Throw dirt on them. They’ll start a fire!”
For the next few moments Holly and Judy were busy—Crock, clumsy in his stiff suit, being able to give little help. When they were sure that the last smoldering spark was out, they went back to the house.
Tamar was inside, but with her—Holly shrank back. She wanted to turn and run, but she felt that if she did, she would indeed be lost.
Hagar stood on the other side of the table, smiling and nodding. “Thus it shall be, Sister!”
“Shall it?” Tamar asked. “Thou hast foreseen this then, and what else?”
“That Sexton Dimsdale shall pray to his God until his knees are raw from the kneeling, but my curse shall not
pass from him. And that I, dear sister, shall walk the halls of time to a better day, one more fitting to my purposes. Then I, and not thou, shalt be Lady of the Power. And I shall use it, Sister; ah, how I shall use it!”
“Thou hast seen much—”
“Seen much, and done much, Sister. She who takes the power with a steady hand and a strong purpose (and thou art not such a one) can be Queen and ruler! Mine the kingdom to come!” Hagar’s green eyes glowed as if small fires were set in them. “Aye, I have brought thee to this—for it be power linked which will take me where I would be: thy power linked with mine. Thou wilt use the spell of time-warp because thou must or die. Then thou wilt live in thy own forgotten pocket of time. Aye, there thou shalt have thy peace. Since we are blood kin, that I must allow. But I shall be free, and Dimsdale shall continue cursed. For until the maze of time which be now our cage be utterly destroyed, I shall have only half life.”
“Thou art very sure of thy power to bespeak me so,” Tamar said slowly.
“Has not the Left Path always proved to have more force than the Right in the ways of mankind? There be a vast ocean of darkness in their world, for those born of Adam incline to fear and dark by their very nature. Upon their fears can we draw. Hecate of Hell be always the victor in set battle—”
“Believe thee as thou wilt, still thou hast broken the Law. And I fear me thou wilt find that no small thing to be easily forgot.”
“The Law? There be more than one law, Sister. And this be Hallowmas when the dead be free to walk again with kin and friend, when the Left waxes the greater. Yet it be also the time we both must use our skill or perish utterly from the malice of those who understand nothing.”
Slowly, reluctantly, Tamar inclined her head. “So mote it be.”
Hagar laughed. “How thou dost hate to say that, Sister. But thou hast been so simple of wit. I have foreseen this hour, I have built well toward it—” She darted a glance at Holly, and the girl realized that Hagar knew she had been there all the time.
