"If you just say no," said Pepper, "You can have my Sindy stable set. I've never ever used it," she added, glaring at the other Them and daring them to make a comment.
"You have used it," snapped her sister, "I've seen it and it's all worn out and the bit where you put the hay is broke and‑"
Adam gave a magisterial cough.
"Art thou a witch, viva espana?" he repeated.
The sister took a look at Pepper's face, and decided not to chance it.
"No," she decided.
– – -
It was a very good torture, everyone agreed. The trouble was getting the putative witch off it.
It was a hot afternoon and the Inquisitorial guards felt that they were being put upon.
"Don't see why me and Brother Brian should have to do all the work," said Brother Wensleydale, wiping the sweat off his brow. "I reckon it's about time she got off and we had a go. Benedictine ina decanter."
"Why have we stopped?" demanded the suspect, water pouring out of her shoes.
It had occurred to the Chief Inquisitor during his researches that the British Inquisition was probably not yet ready for the reintroduction of the Iron Maiden and the choke‑pear. But an illustration of a medieval ducking stool suggested that it was tailor‑made for the purpose. All you needed was a pond and some planks and a rope. It was the sort of combination that always attracted the Them, who never had much difficulty in finding all three.
The suspect was now green to the waist.
"It's just like a seesaw," she said. "Whee!"
"I'm going to go home unless I can have a go," muttered Brother Brian. "Don't see why evil witches should have all the fun."
"It's not allowed for inquisitors to be tortured too," said the Chief Inquisitor sternly, but without much real feeling. It was a hot afternoon, the Inquisitorial robes of old sacking were scratchy and smelled of stale barley, and the pond looked astonishingly inviting.
"All right, all right," he said, and turned to the suspect. "You're a witch, all right, don't do it again, and now you get off and let someone else have a turn. Oh lay," he added.
"What happens now?" said Pepper's sister.
Adam hesitated. Setting fire to her would probably cause no end of trouble, he reasoned. Besides, she was too soggy to burn.
He was also distantly aware that at some future point there would be questions asked about muddy shoes and duckweed‑encrusted pink dresses. But that was the future, and it lay at the other end of along warm afternoon that contained planks and ropes and ponds. The future could wait.
– – -
The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do, although Mr. Young had other things on his mind apart from muddy dresses and merely banned Adam from watching television, which meant he had to watch it on the old black and white set in his bedroom.
"I don't see why we should have a hosepipe ban," Adam heard Mr. Young telling Mrs. Young. "I pay my rates like everyone else. The garden looks like the Sahara desert. I'm surprised there was any water left in the pond. I blame it on the lack of nuclear testing, myself. You used to get proper summers when I was a boy. It used to rain all the time."
Now Adam slouched alone along the dusty lane. It was a good slouch. Adam had a way of slouching along that offended all right‑thinking people. It wasn't that he just allowed his body to droop. He could slouch with inflections, and now the set of his shoulders reflected the hurt and bewilderment of those unjustly thwarted in their selfless desire to help their fellow men.
Dust hung heavy on the bushes.
"Serve everyone right if the witches took over the whole country and made everyone eat health food and not go to church and dance around with no clothes on," he said, kicking a stone. He had to admit that, except perhaps for the health food, the prospect wasn't too worrying.
"I bet if they'd jus' let us get started properly we could of found hundreds of witches," he told himself, kicking a stone. "I bet ole Torturemada dint have to give up jus' when he was getting started just because some stupid witch got her dress dirty."
Dog slouched along dutifully behind his Master. This wasn't, insofar as the hell‑hound had any expectations, what he had imagined life would be like in the last days before Armageddon, but despite himself he was beginning to enjoy it.
He heard his Master say: "Bet even the Victorians didn't force people to have to watch black and white television."
Form shapes nature. There are certain ways of behavior appropriate to small scruffy dogs which are in fact welded into the genes. You can't just become small‑dog‑shaped and hope to stay the same person; a certain intrinsic small‑dogness begins to permeate your very Being.
He'd already chased a rat. It had been the most enjoyable experience of his life.
"Serve 'em right if we're all overcome by Evil Forces," his Master grumbled.
And then there were cats, thought Dog. He'd surprised the huge ginger cat from next door and had attempted to reduce it to cowering jelly by means of the usual glowing stare and deep‑throated growl, which had always worked on the damned in the past. This time they earned him a whack on the nose that had made his eyes water. Cats, Dog considered, were clearly a lot tougher than lost souls. He was looking forward to a further cat experiment, which he'd planned would consist of jumping around and yapping excitedly at it. It was a long shot, but it might just work.
"They just better not come running to me when ole Picky is turned into a frog, that's all," muttered Adam.
It was at this point that two facts dawned on him. One was that his disconsolate footsteps had led him past Jasmine Cottage. The other was that someone was crying.
Adam was a soft touch for tears. He hesitated a moment, and then cautiously peered over the hedge.
To Anathema, sitting in a deck chair and halfway through a packet of Kleenex, it looked like the rise of a small, dishevelled sun.
Adam doubted that she was a witch. Adam had a very clear mental picture of a witch. The Youngs restricted themselves to the only possible choice amongst the better class of Sunday newspaper, and so a hundred years of enlightened occultism had passed Adam by. She didn't have a hooked nose or warts, and she was young . . . well, quite young. That was good enough for him.
"Hallo," he said, unslouching.
She blew her nose and stared at him.
What was looking over the hedge should be described at this point. What Anathema saw was, she said later, something like a prepubescent Greek god. Or maybe a Biblical illustration, one which showed muscular angels doing some righteous smiting. It was a face that didn't belong in the twentieth century. It was thatched with golden curls which glowed. Michelangelo should have sculpted it.
He probably would not have included the battered sneakers, frayed jeans, or grubby T‑shirt, though.
"Who're you?" she said.
"I'm Adam Young," said Adam. "I live just down the lane."
"Oh. Yes. I've heard of you," said Anathema, dabbing at her eyes. Adam preened.
"Mrs. Henderson said I was to be sure to keep an eye out for you," she went on.
"I'm well known around here," said Adam.
"She said you were born to hang," said Anathema.
Adam grinned. Notoriety wasn't as good as fame, but was heaps better than obscurity.
"She said you were the worst of the lot of Them," said Anathema, looking a little more cheerful. Adam nodded.
"She said, 'You watch out for Them, Miss, they're nothing but a pack of ringleaders. That young Adam's full of the Old Adam,' " she said.
"What've you been cryin' for?" said Adam bluntly.
"Oh? Oh, I've just lost something," said Anathema. "A book."
"I'll help you look for it, if you like," said Adam gallantly. "I know quite a lot about books, actually. I wrote a book once. It was a triffic book. It was nearly eight pages long. It was about this pirate who was a famous detective. And I drew the pictures." And then, in a flash of largess, he added, "If you
like I'll let you read it. I bet it was a lot more excitin' than any book you've lost. 'Specially the bit in the spaceship where the dinosaur comes out and fights with the cowboys. I bet it'd cheer you up, my book. It cheered up Brian no end. He said he'd never been so cheered up."
"Thank you, I'm sure your book is a very good book," she said, endearing herself to Adam forever. "But I don't need you to help look for my book‑I think it's too late now."
She looked thoughtfully at Adam. "I expect you know this area very well?" she said.
"For miles an' miles, " said Adam.
"You haven't seen two men in a big black car?" said Anathema.
"Did they steal it?" said Adam, suddenly full of interest. Foiling a gang of international book thieves would make a rewarding end to the day.
"Not really. Sort of. I mean, they didn't mean to. They were looking for the Manor, but I went up there today and no one knows anything about them. There was some sort of accident or something, I believe."
She stared at Adam. There was something odd about him, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She just had an urgent feeling that he was important and shouldn't be allowed to drift away. Something about him . . .
"What's the book called?" said Adam.
"The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch," said Anathema.
"Which what?"
"No. Witch. Like in Macbeth," said Anathema.
"I saw that," said Adam. "It was really interesting, the way them kings carried on. Gosh. What's nice about 'em?"
"Nice used to mean, well, precise. Or exact." Definitely something strange. A sort of laid‑back intensity. You started to feel that if he was around, then everyone else, even the landscape, was just background.
She'd been here a month. Except for Mrs. Henderson, who in theory looked after the cottage and probably went through her things given half a chance, she hadn't exchanged more than a dozen real words with anyone. She let them think she was an artist. This was the kind of countryside that artists liked.
Actually, it was bloody beautiful. Just around this village it was superb. If Turner and Landseer had met Samuel Palmer in a pub and worked it all out, and then got Stubbs to do the horses, it couldn't have been better.
And that was depressing, because this was where it was going to happen. According to Agnes, anyway. In a book which she, Anathema, had allowed to be lost. She had the file cards, of course, but they just weren't the same.
If Anathema had been in full control of her own mind at that moment‑and no one around Adam was ever in full control of his or her own mind‑she'd have noticed that whenever she tried to think about him beyond a superficial level her thoughts slipped away like a duck off water.
"Wicked!" said Adam, who had been turning over in his mind the implications of a book of nice and accurate prophecies. "It tells you who's going to win the Grand National, does it?"
"No," said Anathema.
"Any spaceships in it?"
"Not many," said Anathema.
"Robots?" said Adam hopefully.
"Sorry."
"Doesn't sound very nice to me, then," said Adam. "Don't see what the future's got in it if there's no robots and spaceships."
About three days, thought Anathema glumly. That's what it's got in it.
"Would you like a lemonade?" she said.
Adam hesitated. Then he decided to take the bull by the horns.
"Look, 'scuse me for askin', if it's not a personal question, but are you a witch?" he said.
Anathema narrowed her eyes. So much for Mrs. Henderson poking around.
"Some people might say so," she said. "Actually, I'm an occultist."
"Oh. Well. That's all right, then," said Adam, cheering up.
She looked him up and down.
"You know what an occultist is, do you?" she said.
"Oh, yes," said Adam confidently.
"Well, so long as you're happier now," said Anathema. "Come on in. I could do with a drink myself. And . . . Adam Young?"
"Yes?"
"You were thinking 'Nothin' wrong with my eyes, they don't need examining,' weren't you?"
"Who, me?" said Adam guiltily.
– – -
Dog was the problem. He wouldn't go in the cottage. He crouched on the doorstep, growling.
"Come on, you silly dog," said Adam. "It's only old Jasmine Cottage." He gave Anathema an embarrassed look. "Normally he does everything I say, right off."
"You can leave him in the garden," said Anathema.
"No," said Adam. "He's got to do what he's tole. I read it in a book. Trainin' is very important. Any dog can be trained, it said. My father said I can only keep him if he's prop'ly trained. Now, Dog. Go inside."
Dog whined and gave him a pleading look. His stubby tail thumped on the floor once or twice.
His Master's voice.
With extreme reluctance, as if making progress in the teeth of a gale, he slunk over the doorstep.
"There," said Adam proudly. "Good boy."
And a little bit more of Hell burned away . . .
Anathema shut the door.
There had always been a horseshoe over the door of Jasmine Cottage, ever since its first tenant centuries before; the Black Death was all the rage at the time and he'd considered that he could use all the protection he could get.
It was corroded and half covered with the paint of centuries. So neither Adam nor Anathema gave it a thought, or noticed how it was now cooling from a white heat.
– – -
Aziraphale's cocoa was stone cold.
The only sound in the room was the occasional turning of a page.
Every now and again there was a rattling at the door when prospective customers of Intimate Books next door mistook the entrance. He ignored it.
Occasionally he would very nearly swear.
– – -
Anathema hadn't really made herself at home in the cottage. Most of her implements were piled up on the table. It looked interesting. It looked, in fact, as though a voodoo priest had just had the run of a scientific equipment store.
"Brilliant!" said Adam, prodding at it. "What's the thing with the three legs?"
"It's a theodolite," said Anathema from the kitchen. "It's for tracking ley‑lines."
"What are they, then?" said Adam.
She told him.
"Cor," he said. "Are they?"
"Yes."
"All over the place?"
"Yes."
"I've never seen 'em. Amazin', there bein' all these invisible lines of force around and me not seeing 'em."
Adam didn't often listen, but he spent the most enthralling twenty minutes of his life, or at least of his life that day. No one in the Young household so much as touched wood or threw salt over their shoulder. The only nod in the direction of the supernatural was a half‑hearted pretense, when Adam had been younger, that Father Christmas came down the chimney.[22]
He'd been starved of anything more occult than a Harvest Festival. Her words poured into his mind like water into a quire of blotting paper.
Dog lay under the table and growled. He was beginning to have serious doubts about himself.
Anathema didn't only believe in ley‑lines, but in seals, whales, bicycles, rain forests, whole grain in loaves, recycled paper, white South Africans out of South Africa, and Americans out of practically everywhere down to and including Long Island. She didn't compartmentalize her beliefs. They were welded into one enormous, seamless belief, compared with which that held by Joan of Arc seemed a mere idle notion. On any scale of mountain moving it shifted at least point five of an alp.[23]
No one had even used the word "environment" in Adam's hearing before. The South American rain forests were a closed book to Adam, and it wasn't even made of recycled paper.
The only time he interrupted her was to agree with her views on nuclear power: "I've been to a nucular power station. It was boring. There was no green smoke and bubbling stuff in tubes
. Shouldn't be allowed, not having proper bubbling stuff when people have come all the way to see it, and having just a lot of men standin' around not even wearin' space suits."
"They do all the bubbling after visitors have gone home," said Anathema grimly.
"Huh," said Adam.
"They should be done away with this minute."
"Serve them right for not bubblin'," said Adam.
Anathema nodded. She was still trying to put her finger on what was so odd about Adam, and then she realized what it was.
He had no aura.
She was quite an expert on auras. She could see them, if she stared hard enough. They were a little glow of light around people's heads, and according to a book she'd read the color told you things about their health and general well‑being. Everyone had one. In mean‑minded, closed‑in people they were a faint, trembling outline, whereas expansive and creative people might have one extending several inches from the body.
She'd never heard of anyone without one, but she couldn't see one around Adam at all. Yet he seemed cheerful, enthusiastic, and as wellbalanced as a gyroscope.
Maybe I'm just tired, she thought.
Anyway, she was pleased and gratified to find such a rewarding student, and even loaned him some copies of New Aquarian Digest, a small magazine edited by a friend of hers.
It changed his life. At least, it changed his life for that day.
To his parents' astonishment he went to bed early, and then lay under the blankets until after midnight with a torch, the magazines, and a bag of lemon drops. The occasional "Brilliant!" emerged from his ferocious‑chewing mouth.
When the batteries ran out he emerged into the darkened room and lay back with his head pillowed in his hands, apparently watching the squadron of X‑wing® fighters that hung from the ceiling. They moved gently in the night breeze.
But Adam wasn't really watching them. He was staring instead into the brightly lit panorama of his own imagination, which was whirling like a fairground.
This wasn't Wensleydale's aunt and a wineglass. This sort of occulting was a lot more interesting.
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