The Witch of the Hills

by J M Fraser

  He cleared some chunks of shoulder gravel away from the tires and tried again. “Mmmfff.”

  Two sparkly things blinked and fluttered past his eyes. Overcharged electricity from another approaching shadow-storm? He couldn’t tell. The sky above was clear blue, but the surrounding hills shortened the horizon quite a bit. The ground did seem somewhat shaded though. Maybe—

  The road shimmered in concentric circles, like ripples in a pool. He lost his balance and reeled forward, slapping his hands on the car trunk to break his fall.

  Screeching birds racing skyward from the scrubby fields shook him out of the initial daze. Stinging palms, racing heart, and rapid breathing welcomed him back to earth. And the car’s metal trembled beneath his palms.

  No, the other way around. His fried nerves made his hands buzzy.

  He shifted upright. Opened and closed his fists. Earthquake? No. Far weirder than that. Whatever just happened had been visual, not physical. He was pretty sure he hadn’t felt the ground shake at all, only seen it. Yet the asphalt pavement, flat a minute earlier, now sloped sharply toward the shoulder.

  Brian squared his shoulders. He was not going to let panic take over. Move the car and flag down a driver. Then head somewhere, anywhere, that didn’t make his skin crawl. That was the plan. Use logic, leverage, science, and whatever the hell else he’d need to get the job done.

  He squatted and studied the slope the way he might have lined up a putt for mini golf. As far as he could judge, his car was positioned to drag to the right if shoved forward, rolling down the incline onto the shoulder. Perfect.

  He got back up and pushed again. Hard.

  Unlike the world at large lately, the car followed the basic rules of physics, shifting down the incline as he shoved, and curving off the road. He leaned against the trunk and looked down at his asphalt putting green. It had gone flat again.

  This had to be some sort of optical illusion.

  Time to grasp at straws. The impossible eclipse and shifting road must have been proof he was asleep, dreaming in a nice, warm bed somewhere. Best way to get back where he belonged? He shut his eyes.

  A warm breeze ruffled his hair. The land carried the damp earthy smell a passing shower might leave. Real. Very undreamlike.

  Birds sang. Grasshoppers chirped. Louder. And louder. The sound roared like an engine.

  He opened his eyes and waved both arms at the approaching car. “Wait!”

  The driver sped by, spitting loose gravel in his wake.

  Swell.

  A punch line from the classic Young Frankenstein popped into his head. Could be worse. Could be raining!

  No.

  Nothing could be worse than this.

  “Try lifting your hood again. That’s the universal symbol for drivers in distress, isn’t it?”

  Brian spun around. Blinked.

  The prairie gods sent a pretty girl to the rescue?

  The best kind of pretty, too. Unconventional. Red hair brushed to a shine, freckles on her cheeks, and a long, washed-out blue dress all said farm girl. But her bright turquoise scarf made a cool hand-me-down meets The Gap fashion statement.

  Wait.

  He’d met her before. Once he got past the dizzying scarf, she looked just like…

  No way.

  The castaway girl in his nightmares had escaped the waves, the noose, and the glowing-eyed man to grin at him, right there in the wilderness.

  Earth to Brian. She was a dream. This girl is real.

  He tried to unfreeze his hanging-open mouth enough to smile back.

  “Do you need help?” The girl spoke in a breathless accent. Something like…a brogue? The cherry on top of a chocolate sundae. Clearly, he’d won the cosmic lottery.

  But he wasn’t big on looking for help from anyone but himself. Never had been. “No, I’ve got this.”

  “You’ve got a broken car by the looks of it, and I’ve got a place down there.” She pointed toward a bluff standing taller than the others.

  Okay, so maybe he could use a little help. He held up his phone. “This doesn’t work.”

  “Why would it?”

  “Exactly. Do you have a landline at your place?”

  She stared at him as if he’d asked the question in Greek. What was it about people who lived in Nebraska? Finally, “I could never let a stranger in my home.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s easy. I’m Brian.” He held out his hand. “See? I’m not a stranger anymore. Strange maybe, but not er.” He was babbling. Unexpected help. Cute girl. Mostly the girl. Yeah, babbling.

  “You’re Brian…?”

  “Danahey.”

  “And I’m Rebecca Church.” She took his hand, shook it, let it go. “A fine Brian you are. I’ve known a few, but I do prefer the dark-haired, handsome type, such as you.”

  Rebecca’s incredible appearance out of nowhere offered the possibility of rescue, the source of a phone, a way to avoid walking at least a dozen miles in the dusk and then darkness to the nearest town. The most important thing though, as he basked in the compliment, wading through the pools of her pale-green, probing eyes, was remembering how to talk.

  Because?

  The dream. How amazing to somehow imagine someone who turned out to be real.

  “I never thought of myself as part of a Brian collection,” he said…and he gave himself a secret high five for a halfway decent comeback.

  “Oh, but you are.” She touched his forearm, and the spark buzzed his tongue, this time in a good way. “Perhaps I’ll cast a shrinking spell on you. I can keep you on my bookshelf and find others.”

  A girl who strung her words together like out of a Dickens novel, and with a sense of humor. Always a plus when dreams came alive. He reached deep in the well to come up with another good line. “Lucky for me only witches can do that.”

  Rebecca looked past him toward the bluff. “If I am a witch, you must hope I’m a good one. I might disappoint you.” Her eyes grew distant.

  “I doubt that.”

  “Time will tell.”

  A cloud drifted across the sun, and a gust of wind set a tumbleweed into motion. It skittered past them and bounded over the road with long legs curled into a ball, like a giant dead spider. Brian would have pulled a hoody over his head if he had one. “Okay, that’s just one more strange thing in a long list of weirdness.”

  She grinned in a sheepish manner as if she’d been the cause of the local insanity. “You mean you saw the shadow?”

  “Uh-huh. What was with that?”

  She swept an arm at their surroundings. “Hot sun, dry air, static electricity, and too many identical round hills. They all combine to trick the mind.”

  “And you choose to live out here?”

  She shrugged. “I’m cabin-sitting for now.”

  “In the middle of a strange kind of nowhere.”

  “I’m used to it. Anyway, I have a cat, and we best go feed him. We wouldn’t want to starve one of his nine lives away.”

  “Good one.”

  Except Rebecca didn’t have the look of someone who’d just cracked a joke. Not much of a smile there. She gave off a funny vibe. As if unsure whether to laugh or cry. Maybe she was in a bigger jam than he was, even without a broken car to worry about. Rebecca wouldn’t have been the first runaway who busted into an abandoned cabin looking for a place to stay. Imagine the sense of desperation. And here he thought he had it bad because some hitchhiker on the highway hated him, and his mom probably wanted to ground him. As if these were big deals. Like they were anything at all.

  “I’ll admit most people think this is the middle of nowhere and speed past,” she said.

  “Almost did, but I think my tank went empty.”

  “Wouldn’t you know one way or the other?”

  “Well, I did fill up in Sidney.”

  Rebecca’s burst of laughter rivaled the best songs in the world. Brian knew he’d be a millionaire if he could bottle the sound. And the twinkle in her eyes? Priceless.


  “Are you sure they didn’t trick you down there?” she asked. “The town has a history of lawlessness.”

  “I think it’s safe to say I got my money’s worth.” A buck ninety-two for gas. What did the old guy do, put a gallon in the tank and fill the rest with air?

  “So now you’ll be walking. With me.” She turned on her heel and headed away, stepping over a section of barbed-wire fence flattened by time.

  Brian hurried to lock the car before she wandered out of sight.

  “One can’t be too careful,” she called. “Car bandits lurk behind every tree.” Her voice trailed into giggles. “Come along now. The real villains come out in force after dark.”

  He rushed after her, got over the fence, caught up. “How far is it?”

  “Twenty-four furlongs.”

  When did that term bite the dust, a century ago? No, he remembered where he’d last heard it. “My dad took my sister and me to the horse races last summer. Ever been?”

  “Can’t say I have.”

  “How far is twenty-four furlongs in miles?”

  She looked down at her hands and wriggled her fingers, one at a time, as if counting the answer out. “Three.”

  This Rebecca was a riot. “You’re a little crazy, aren’t you?”

  “You mean eccentric?” She grinned. “See? Furlong isn’t the only old word I like to use.”

  “That’s cool.” Their hands brushed. Spark would be too mild a word for the charge he received. Shock, maybe. No, more than that. Burst, flare…destiny? He needed to get hold of himself. The other girl was a dream. This one is real. No connection. “So when you aren’t cabin-sitting with your cat, where do you live?”

  “I don’t want to bore you with the details, Brian. Think of me as an Irish gypsy.”

  Fine with him. Connection with the girl in his dream or not, if this eccentric speaker of old words wanted a traveling companion for the next century or two, he was ready to go all in. “I’m Irish, too.”

  Her gleaming eyes took on a hint of emerald. “Aren’t we a pair, then?”

  They continued side by side in silence. Brian opened and closed his hand, still enjoying a slight tingling sensation from when he touched her.

  The sandy hills turned gray, and the sun melted into a golden shadow. He and Rebecca kicked up powdery dust.

  An oak tree came into sight as they rounded a hill. The hulking giant extended leafless arms upward from a gnarled trunk. Its lowest branches, still covered with greenery, almost masked the top of a rope. Brian’s stomach flipped as he followed the thing down, to the rope’s stopping point, some ten feet off the ground, where it ended in a noose. “Look at that!”

  Rebecca muttered Abigail almost quietly enough to miss. She kicked dirt at the oak.

  “Seriously?” Toilet-papering tree branches during Junior/Senior wars was one thing, but whoever did this had gone way over the top. “Friend of yours?”

  “Not hardly.” She crossed her arms and stalked away.

  “Wait, Rebecca.” He caught up with her. “Hey, we all live to be bullied, don’t we? Somebody elbowed me into a pool a couple weeks ago.”

  She looked down at her feet, lower lip trembling, eyes welling. “You…were bullied, Brian?”

  “Who hasn’t been? It’s always a question of toughing it out or kicking some serious butt.”

  “I suppose the consequences can be dire either way,” she said.

  “Exactly.” He flexed his fingers. No more soreness at the knuckles. Punching the guy in retaliation had hurt like hell.

  Rebecca took his hand and gave it a little squeeze. “You’d kick some serious butt to defend me, wouldn’t you?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  “Or we could tough it out,” she said. “Let’s put the tree twenty furlongs behind us.”

  The warm softness of her hand, the fit, the casual way they intertwined their fingers all trumped the fact they’d only just met.

  However far they walked, time passed in an instant. And she hummed all the way. Way too soon, a small cabin came into view. There’d be a phone, then a tow truck, his parents’ wrath when they saw the bill, and that would be the end of it. He took a stab at small talk to stop a stifling sense of closure from choking the air out of his lungs. “What made you wander all the way to the road so late in the day?”

  “I won’t find my destiny sitting alone in a cabin.”

  Destiny. Great minds thought alike. “Were you planning to hitch somewhere?”

  “No, Brian. You’ll never find me with my thumb out. I’m not so needy I’d ever ask for anything.”

  “Then I don’t get it.”

  Rebecca stopped walking. “What are we without our hopes and dreams?”

  “What if we don’t have any?”

  “Then you haven’t been challenged enough.”

  He turned to her without a clue what words of wisdom she could possibly use to stave off his ordinary future. How could he avoid putting on a Clark Kent suit instead of the superhero outfit anyone would want to wear instead?

  “We want those things hardest earned. They’re the very source of our hopes and dreams.” The wistfulness in her voice chased the last of the sunlight behind the hills.

  * * *

  Rebecca rammed her shoulder against the cabin door. “This jams at times.” Abigail!

  Brian came up beside her and grabbed the handle. “Let me try.”

  “Not yet. I just need to kick it right here like this…ungh…and again here…oh!”

  The door flew open. Rebecca’s momentum nearly pitched her to the floor, but Brian caught her arm. She drowned in his eyes as he steadied her. Such a deep blue! She saw great strength in his steady gaze.

  But did he have tenacity? She’d be teasing him for the longest time. The courting rules left no room for misinterpretation. Riddles, illusions, and dreams only. So said the Witches Code. Abigail would take delight in her struggles. And do her best to double the challenge.

  Thank you, Henry Stoddard. He’d brought the mean imp to the cabin.

  No matter. She’d prevail. The great prophet Aislinn had written Rebecca when carving her prophecy into stone…the girl who’d court a champion the witches’ way.

  Sadly, the witches’ way meant following their code. Besides, she’d promised her mother to be a pure witch, and pure witches followed that damnable set of rules.

  Enough. Any self-respecting witch should only want a boy so tenacious and loving he’d struggle past her illusions and misdirection, learn the best and worst of her, and still claim her as his bride at the end of it.

  But what if he didn’t? Could her heart take such a blow after she’d waited so long for Brian? Rebecca clenched her fists until her nails bit into the skin. She had no right to let some silly infatuation from centuries ago cloud her thoughts at this critical moment.

  “So about that phone,” he said.

  “Phone?” She drifted in Brian’s gaze like a rudderless boat, despite her need to control the game.

  Chapter 4

  The door swung closed behind them, snuffing the twilight outside to total darkness within the cabin. Brian’s eyes were slow to adjust. He groped the wall for a light switch. “Hey, where’d you go?”

  A giggle. Rushing footsteps. Then, “Welcome to my parlor!” Rebecca struck a match.

  Her face came alive in the shadows. Cute, funny, gorgeous, mischievous, glowing, ridiculous, and definitely in need of an invented word. Fanhauntingtabulous! The world might have turned a little strange, but overall, this version 2.1 upgrade was pretty cool.

  She lit an oil lamp. Unfinished log walls, worn-out furniture, and scuffed slats of a hardwood floor came into view. With the scent of pine needles permeating the air, the only things missing were a rifle rack and a moose’s head over the mantel.

  A black cat crept out of the shadows while Rebecca hustled around the room lighting candles. “Simon will act shy until he knows you.” She settled into an overstuffed chair, and the cat pounced onto he
r lap.

  Man, who wouldn’t kick back and stay a while?

  Somebody with strict parents, that’s who. Somebody with a road trip to finish and college to start. Brian needed to call for the tow truck.

  The impending closure dimmed the candles, closed the walls, and lowered the ceiling. He already missed holding Rebecca’s hand, missed wandering through the endless hills with her, missed whatever Irish ballad she’d been humming outside. And that upgrade of the world? The clunky beta version would soon become his reality again. Yeah, maybe she’d swap email addresses and phone numbers with him before he left, but more likely than not, they’d reached their control-alt-delete.

  Plenty of other fish in the sea, his dad would say.

  Yeah. Uh-huh. About that…

  He backed into the couch across from her. The soft cushions pulled him in as though even the furniture didn’t want to see him track down a wrecker for his car. But he couldn’t torture himself by dragging out the inevitable good-bye. His cell phone still didn’t show any service, so, “Where’s your phone, Rebecca?”

  “I haven’t one.”

  He couldn’t even think about allowing himself to believe he’d heard that right. Of course she had a phone. “Seriously?”

  “Who would I need to call?” Rebecca shooed the cat away, sprang from her chair, and headed into the next room. “Are you hungry? I have bread and cheese.”

  He stared after her. She didn’t have a phone. Duh. How could she have a landline with no electricity?

  The immediate future reshaped itself into a rainbow now that he had an excuse for not hitting the road. Not to mention the fact Rebecca had led him to her cabin with the obvious idea he might stay over.

  But she’s somebody’s daughter, his dad would say.

  Or somebody’s sister. And not the annoyingly older kind, like Kara, either.

  So he hurried after her like…a big brother, maybe…cursing his conscience for killing the party mood. Followed her into a kitchen from a thousand years ago. A big open fireplace filled one wall, with blackened cooking utensils hanging above and on either side of the stonework. Shelves lined the rest of the room, holding spices and preserves in glass jars with hand-scrawled labels and metal mugs and little photos in oval frames. A long wooden table took up most of the floor space. No appliances. No indication electricity had ever been invented.