The Headless Cupid

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  David was fascinated, and the kids were, too. They sat perfectly still, without so much as twitching, while Amanda went around the cauldron, dropping the strange objects into her magic brew. Finally she stopped and held the box out again with both hands, over the cauldron. In the same singsong voice she used to say the chant, she asked, “Would one of the neophytes stand and approach the sacred fire?”

  Of course, Janie got there first. She bounced to her feet and then took two slow solemn steps to face Amanda across the cauldron.

  “Neophyte Calla,” Amanda chanted. “You may add the next magic ingredient to the cauldron.”

  She held the box down, and Janie raised her arm slowly and stiffly and lowered her hand into the box. She wiggled her fingers for a moment and then raised her hand, holding the squashed lizard with the tips of her fingers. Amanda stepped back and Janie held the lizard over the kettle.

  “Add the ingredient to the cauldron,” Amanda said again.

  But instead Janie started walking around the kettle just as Amanda had been doing. She walked slowly and solemnly with the squashed lizard held at arms length in front of her. She was holding her chin very high and letting her long eyelashes droop mysteriously over her eyes. The second time around the kettle she began to chant. The words weren’t quite the same as the ones in Amanda’s chant, but they were very similar. Right after the chant, Janie added a sway in time to the music. As she walked she swayed, far to one side and then far to the other, waving the squashed lizard in front of her with every sway.

  David glanced at Amanda. She had stepped back out of the way and was just standing there with her hands on her hips. About then Janie began to dance. She made a little tiptoeing run from one end of the room to the other and ended with a graceful leap, twirling the lizard around her head.

  “Stop!” Amanda shrieked, and Janie, who had just started another glide, stopped in mid-leap and stared at Amanda.

  “Neophyte Calla,” Amanda said between clenched teeth. “Put the magic ingredient in the cauldron!”

  Janie sighed, shrugged, dropped the lizard in the pot, and plopped down in her place on the floor.

  After a minute, Amanda sat down on the floor, too. “The next part of the initiation ceremony will be the sacrifice,” she announced.

  “What do we sacrifice?” David asked.

  “The object to be sacrificed must be one of your most treasured possessions. It must be something of great value. Each of you will be excused one at a time to go and find a sacrifice and bring it back. Then the ceremony will begin.”

  Amanda stood by the door while each of the Stanleys went out, one by one, and came back with a sacrifice. David picked out his six bladed jackknife, and it seemed to be the right kind of thing because Amanda nodded when she saw it and put it in the metal box. However Esther got sent back once to change hers and Janie twice. David wondered what they had picked.

  Finally each one’s sacrifice was in the metal box, and Amanda had them all take their places on the floor again and blindfolded them. David’s blindfold was a large silk scarf, and Amanda tied it so tight that it felt as if his eyes were being pushed back into his head. When everyone was blindfolded, Amanda gave each one back his own sacrifice to hold, until the spirits arrived. With her voice coming from her spot in the circle, she explained that she was blindfolding herself and that soon the spirits would arrive to accept the sacrifices. The neophytes, she said, were to hold their offerings up high over their heads, and when they felt something touch their hands they were to drop their offering into the metal box.

  “Who’ll be holding the box?” Janie asked.

  “The spirits,” Amanda said.

  “Where will you be,” Janie asked.

  “Right here on the floor,” Amanda answered. “I’m blindfolded, too.”

  “Oh,” Janie said.

  Except for the wail of the music, the room became very quiet. Behind the tight blindfold David’s eyes were getting more and more uncomfortable. The arm that held his jackknife above his head was getting numb and achy, too. At last something touched his wrist, and he felt the metal box under his hand. As he put the knife into the box, he listened carefully for the sound of feet moving on the carpet in front of him, but he didn’t hear a thing. A minute later, however, he heard a slight sound from where Janie was sitting, on his right.

  Then Janie’s voice whispered, “Do I get it back after the initiation?” There was no answer, and Janie whispered a little louder. “Spirits! Do I get it back?”

  There was no other sound, and after what seemed a very long while Amanda’s voice came from her side of the circle. “The sacrifice is over. The neophytes may remove their blindfolds.”

  When David got his blindfold off, he couldn’t see anything for a few seconds because his eyes had been so squashed, but as soon as his sight returned, the first thing he noticed was the metal box sitting on the floor near the cauldron. It was empty.

  “The sacrifices have been accepted,” Amanda said. “That means you have all been accepted into the world of the occult. We are now ready for the anointing.”

  The anointing was the last part of the initiation ceremony and the shortest. It consisted of each one of the neophytes approaching the cauldron where Amanda waited, holding a thin white bone that looked as if it might at one time have been a part of a turkey’s leg. In front of the cauldron, they knelt and Amanda dipped the bone into the kettle and then touched it to their foreheads and the palms of their hands. That was all there was to it.

  David felt vaguely disappointed. During the anointing he tried to get back into the spirit of the occasion, but he wasn’t able to. He tried to recapture the excited trancelike feeling that he’d experienced earlier in the ceremony—but it wouldn’t come back. While Amanda chanted solemnly and touched the white bone to his face and hands the only sensation he got was a slightly gaggy feeling, because the steam from the cauldron was coming up right in his face and it really smelled like the devil.

  As they were getting ready to leave the room, Amanda said, “Well, you’re all wizards now and members of the occult world. But you still have a lot of things to learn yet, of course. You all have to decide what you’d like to study next.”

  “I’d like to learn about seances and summoning spirits,” David said.

  “No,” Esther said. “Let’s learn about making rabbits, first.”

  “Can I get my ring back now, Amanda?” Janie asked. It took a minute for Janie’s question to register with David, but when it did he grabbed her hand. Sure enough, the real pearl and fire opal ring that had been their mother’s, and that Janie had been wearing as a part of her ceremonial robes, was missing.

  “Did you use Mom’s ring as a sacrifice?” David demanded, and when Janie nodded, he grabbed her and shook her. “You can’t do that. It was Mom’s, and you can’t give it away. You were supposed to keep it to remember her by when you’re grown up. I only let you wear it for the ceremony because you promised to take good care of it.”

  David was really angry at Janie, and she knew it because, for once instead of arguing, she only stared at him with tears filling up her eyes.

  “But I couldn’t find anything else that was all right,” she said finally. “But I’ll get it back. I’ll get it back again.”

  David turned to Amanda. “She has to have the ring back,” he said. “It was Mom’s. She wasn’t really supposed to have it until she was older and could take better care of it. I shouldn’t have even let her wear it.”

  But Amanda only looked at David with stony eyes. “I can’t give it back,” she said. “She sacrificed it. It belongs to the spirits now.”

  “Look, Amanda,” David said, “I’m not kidding—”

  Before he could say any more, Amanda whirled on him in a screaming explosion. “What do you mean—kidding?” she shrieked. “Do you think I’ve just been kidding about the supernatural? If that’s what you think, you can just get out of here. Get out!”

  Afterwards David wasn’t
sure whether Amanda had really pushed anybody physically, or only with her voice, but in a second or two all the Stanleys were in the hall.

  “Look, Amanda,” David said, “I didn’t mean—”

  “Yeah, well, what did you mean? What did you mean?”

  “He just meant I can’t give my mother’s ring away,” Janie said in a quavering voice. “I have to get it back. I just have to.”

  Amanda stared from one of them to the other breathing hard. “Well,” she said finally, “well—”

  But just then Blair came out of Amanda’s room. David was surprised because he was sure Blair had been pushed out with the rest of them. But apparently he’d gone back in while they were busy talking. Everyone was surprised to see Blair coming through the door, but they were even more surprised when they saw what was in his outstretched hand. It was the pearl and opal ring.

  Esther squealed with excitement, and everyone else gasped. Janie grabbed the ring away from Blair and put it on. Amanda was looking at Blair with such angry eyes that David started to step in between them.

  “Where did you get that?” Amanda said, and there wasn’t a bit of her usual cool in her voice.

  “There,” Blair said, pointing, “behind the curtain.”

  “You were peeking.”

  “No,” Blair said. “I didn’t peek.”

  “Oh yeah! How did you find it then?”

  Blair’s lips moved, but no sound came out.

  “Something told him,” Esther said. “Something tells Blair lots of things.”

  “You’re lying,” Amanda yelled at Blair. She turned to David. “That crazy kid is lying.”

  David felt his face getting hot, and he knew he was going to stutter, but he didn’t care. Blair was different, but he wasn’t crazy and Amanda couldn’t say he was.

  “Sh-sh-shut up!” he yelled at Amanda, and grabbing Blair’s arm and Esther’s shoulder he marched them down the hall to his room. Behind him he heard Amanda slam her door so hard the whole house seemed to shake.

  At first, for quite a while, David was just angry, but when he began to cool off he began to feel very disappointed. He’d been so sure that something—well, different—was going to happen. He really hadn’t realized how much he’d been counting on it. He still didn’t know exactly what he’d expected, but he did know it hadn’t happened.

  Of course there had been the spirits who came to take the sacrifices—at least, according to Amanda, there had been spirits. But whatever had held the metal box, David knew it hadn’t been what he’d been hoping for.

  Sometime later, when David got around to wondering why his premonition had fizzled, he had an uncomfortable thought. It occurred to him that it was probably his own fault—his and the kids. Because, on the whole, it was pretty obvious that none of the Stanleys had much talent for the kind of magic Amanda was trying to do.

  Chapter Twelve

  AS USUAL, DAVID DIDN’T HAVE THE SLIGHTEST IDEA ABOUT WHAT TO EXPECT next from Amanda. By the next day he wasn’t angry any longer, himself—he didn’t really think Amanda had meant what she said about Blair. But he didn’t have a clue as to how Amanda was feeling.

  He needn’t have worried. The next morning Amanda was the friendliest he’d ever seen her. She even knocked on the door of David and Blair’s room and came in and talked to them, and she’d certainly never done that before.

  First she looked at the books in David’s bookcase, and then she said hello to Blair, who was just waking up. Then, while David was getting out some clothes for Blair, Amanda sat down on the foot of the bed and said, “Well, we better get started on making plans for the seance.”

  “The seance?” David said, surprised. “Well, okay. I thought that maybe after what happened yesterday and—”

  Amanda shrugged. She turned her eyes slowly to David’s and held them there—blank and cool. “What happened?” she said, and the way she said it meant that it was ridiculous to even mention it. Then she started telling David and Blair about some seances she had attended, and one in particular that Leah and some of her friends had arranged. During that seance they had summoned the spirit of a girl who had died in the room where the seance was being held, many years before. She was telling how the girl’s voice had come from a white mist in the corner of the room, when Molly called to say that breakfast was ready.

  At breakfast Dad reminded everyone that he was leaving the next day on the three-week field trip, and that they had all promised to be responsible and civilized while he was gone. While Dad was talking, David was wondering what Dad would think about the seance they were planning. It wasn’t that he thought he ought to get permission. He had just never discussed seances with Dad, and he was curious about what Dad would say. He wondered what he’d say about trying to talk to someone who was dead. David really thought about bringing the subject up, but somehow he never got around to it.

  So the next morning Dad packed his gear and left, and for a couple of days things went quite smoothly. Molly painted a lot of the time, and David and Amanda did a lot of talking and reading about seances. Then on about the third day, the electrical system of Westerly House, which had always been a little tricky, really started to fall apart.

  First, sparks started flying every time the living room switch was turned on, and then Molly noticed that when she plugged in the iron, the TV turned into nothing but static. Molly was pretty calm about the whole thing, until she got a shock from the kitchen faucet; then she began to get really nervous. When David heard her talking to the real estate man on the telephone, she sounded a little bit hysterical.

  “No,” she was saying, “I don’t think we can wait until someone can come out from the city. The house could catch on fire any moment—if it doesn’t explode first. Isn’t there someone around Steven’s Corners who understands about electricity?”

  After a while she calmed down enough to listen for a minute, and when she finally hung up, she seemed to be feeling better. She looked a little embarrassed when she realized that David was still in the room and had heard her conversation.

  “Oh, David,” she said, “I didn’t know you were here. I hope I didn’t scare you. I’m sure it’s not as serious as I made it sound. It’s just that sneaky invisible things like electricity have always given me the creeps. And wouldn’t you know it would wait until your father left to act up.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “Dad’s pretty good at fixing things like that.”

  “I know he is,” Molly said. “But this just can’t wait for him to get home. Mr. Ballard at the real estate office is going to call an old man who lives down at the Corners. His name is Mr. Golanski, and he’s retired now; but he’s done all kinds of building work, and he should be able to find out what’s gone wrong.”

  Molly was trying to be very relaxed and reassuring; but David could tell she was still worried, because she insisted that all the kids go outside until the repairman got there. The little kids didn’t notice, because they usually played outside anyway, but Amanda, who spent most of her time in her room, was very sarcastic.

  “Wow,” she said to David, loud enough for her mother to hear. “Talk about hitting the panic button over nothing. Fire drill time! Abandon ship!”

  As she went past the living room, Amanda reached inside the door and flipped the switch with a bored expression on her face. This time the crackling noise was louder, sparks flew out, and a curl of black smoke drifted into the room. Molly made a little yelping noise, and even Amanda stopped looking bored and walked a little faster towards the front door.

  The kids were playing in the front yard, and David and Amanda were sitting on the porch steps, when an old wreck of a pickup truck turned into the driveway. The man who got out of the truck had white hair and his skin was wrinkled into deep gullies down his cheeks, but his eyes were dark and bright and he moved in a strong firm way. He took a huge wooden tool chest and a big hammer out of the back of the truck and started towards the front door. Watching him trudging along with his white hai
r bushing around his head and his tools in his hands, David suddenly pictured a whole procession of identical old men marching along a tunnel, singing a deep thundering song.

  “He looks like some kind of troll,” he whispered to Amanda.

  Amanda smiled her downward smile. “Yeah,” she said, “what a face.”

  The old man reached the steps and stood looking at them for a moment without saying anything. He looked from David to Amanda and then back again. Finally he said, “Rom Golanski. Where’s the mischief?”

  The front door opened just then, and Molly came out.

  “Mr. Golanski?” she asked. When the old man nodded slowly, she said, “Oh, I’m so glad to see you, Mr. Golanski. I’m Mrs. Stanley. My husband is away, and the whole house seems to be going to pieces.”

  Molly ushered Mr. Golanski into the house, and David and Amanda could hear her explaining about the problem as she went down the hall. Amanda put her head down on her knees and stayed that way for a long time.

  The morning went by slowly. Mr. Golanski was in and out of the house, tearing wires out of walls and banging and hammering. Molly didn’t shut herself in her studio to paint, so there was no chance to do anything about the seance. Amanda spent most of the morning on the porch swing with a book, and David wandered around doing not much of anything. Finally he asked Mr. Golanski if he could help.

  Mr. Golanski straightened up from where he was pulling a wire through a hole in a baseboard and gave David a long dark look.

  “Help?” he asked.

  “Yes,” David said. “I was wondering if there was anything I could do.”

  “That depends. Yes, I think that depends on what you’ve done already.”

  David wondered if the old man might be a little bit crazy. Or was it just his way of asking if David had had any experience in electrical work? David explained that he hadn’t done much work with electricity, but that he just thought he might help by carrying tools and holding things.

  Mr. Golanski went on staring for a long time before he said, “Yes, I see. I see. Well now, I’m going upstairs next, and you might gather up those tools and that roll of wire near the door and carry them up there.”