The Witch of the Hills

by J M Fraser

  Gabriella seized her wrist.

  That mere touch sapped what little strength Rebecca possessed after her harsh journey through the nightmares, but she rallied herself by embracing a boiling sense of outrage. “Why would an angel need to grab someone and force—”

  “You’ve had no assistance during your years since Salem, have you, Rebecca?”

  “I’ve asked for none.”

  “Have you been a good witch? One who follows the code in all matters?” Something resembling kindness gleamed out of the darkness in Gabriella’s eyes.

  “I’m not sure.” Tears warmed Rebecca’s cheeks, bringing the taste of salt to her lips. “I’ve tried so very hard, but—”

  “Let’s just say for now you’ve done well enough to earn a bit of knowledge.” Gabriella levitated, floating off the stool to hover above her…and disappeared.

  Rebecca’s wrist throbbed. She looked at the welt. Would an angel do this? What is she?

  The door at the end of the study banged open. The troll lumbered in, holding an oversized, leather-bound book with outstretched arms, as if it were the Holy Grail. The goblins closest to the monster shrank back, and so did she. But the troll was at her side in an instant, slamming the book onto her table in a thundering cloud of dust. He muttered something in his odd dialect and stalked away.

  Silence gave way to the resumed arguments between patrons and goblins elsewhere in the room. No books were ever provided without a fuss.

  But she’d gotten hers. She eased back onto the stool and eyed the prize.

  Rebecca needed both hands to turn the massive pages of a volume covering the entire table. As torches dimmed and shadows lengthened, she skimmed through the illustrated passages, searching from chapter to chapter for some mention of the unusual enlightening rod. Did Aislinn truly create the ribbon? And how had it fallen into Brian’s hands?

  Near the end of the book, a sketch depicted the white-haired prophet handing a ribbon to a young boy. She took a deep breath and studied the Ogham caption beneath.

  The witch bestowed an enlightening rod upon her grandson. “Find Brian in the distant future and pass this rod’s wisdom on to him.”

  Aislinn considered her grandson unworthy of such a task, given the lad’s dark nature. Yet she had no better choice. Henry harbored more than a witch’s blood in his veins. He carried the blood of a sorcerer. As such, the lad would live many centuries, long enough to find the chosen one. Thus, the greatest of all witches trusted fate to decide whether or not he would carry out her wish.

  Connecting the dots took no great leap.

  Henry Stoddard.

  The conniving sorcerer had been Aislinn’s grandson all along. He must have passed the rod on to Brian, having identified him as the chosen one.

  What had Henry told her on the rock, just before Thanksgiving? I’ve taken a special interest in him.

  Rebecca shook her head. Over the years, she’d thought Henry a scoundrel, a meddler, a cad. But he showed himself to be a possible ally that night in the cemetery, and this book confirmed that he was.

  Chapter 38

  The moon and stars beamed their light from the sky, down through the window, and into the cabin. Rebecca basked in the glow of constellations large and small, many with names, some with legends. Could the heavens have blessed the world with a finer show than this?

  Yet certain stars forsook the order to veer out on their own.

  Renegades. Mavericks.

  A shadow of worry dampened her mood. She’d seen darkness in Gabriella’s eyes earlier today. And she’d endured pain. The welt left by the angel’s harsh grip couldn’t be ignored.

  Have I been wrong about her nature all this time?

  She needed to reexamine her first and only other meeting with Gabriella, the day she thought she’d been visited by an angel. Back when she was an impressionable child.

  Only by dreaming could she chip away centuries of rust, peel back the deceptions, and study the event with wiser eyes.

  She turned to her mirror. “Hypnotize me.”

  The glass shimmered.

  * * *

  Rebecca paced the cabin floor, pressing hands over ears to mute the terrible sound echoing in her head. Two days earlier, an innocent woman’s desperate screams of denial had gone unheeded by the angry Puritans. The gallows floor fell from beneath Bridget Bishop’s feet, snapping her neck with an audible crack.

  Rebecca had watched. And heard.

  And cried.

  Somehow, her harmless spell on Abigail and Betty ignited a firestorm.

  Her own neck would snap just as horribly any day now. The coven queen, who had learned about the spell from Abigail, would surely serve Rebecca up to the magistrate in the hope of protecting the other witches from the rampaging settlers.

  Good. How could she go on living with this guilt?

  Her stomach heaved.

  A sound like wooden wind chimes tinkled from behind. Rebecca swung around. “Who sneaks up on me like a brigand?”

  “My name is Gabriella.” The disembodied voice took on a shape, at first blurry and translucent, then becoming sharper—a girl in a white veiled dress. A halo of light hovered over her head.

  Rebecca dropped to her knees. “An avenging angel you are, come to punish me for casting a spell.”

  “You have not caused these horrors, child.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Do you doubt my word?” Gabriella spread her arms and smiled with bright-eyed sincerity no one could question.

  “No, it’s just that I…” Fleeting hope almost silenced the echo of Bridget Bishop’s broken neck. Rebecca cringed at her own selfishness. Confirmation of her innocence would do nothing to save the dozens of others soon to face the gallows.

  Gabriella’s smile faded. “Perhaps you can join a great battle, one day, Rebecca, and choose which side to save.”

  For an unsettling moment, Rebecca wondered whether a thought had been picked from her brain and expanded upon. She studied the angel’s expression for signs of mischief but found only ambiguity. “What do you mean?”

  “Child, do you know from your studies the Pogrom of a Thousand Tears? Sixteen centuries exactly after that horror, on the twenty-fifth day of August, a lad named Brian will arrive in Sidney, Nebraska. He’ll be a hero. Or a villain. Who can say?”

  Sixteen centuries from an event in the past—Rebecca worked out the sums in her head. “You mean three centuries hence?”

  “Yes, Rebecca. You can only find Brian in the future.”

  Rebecca gasped. “Do you speak of the prophesied Brian?” The lad from tomorrow visited twice but left without a word each time.

  Gabriella’s earthly form began to fade. “You must find your own answers, Rebecca.” The wall behind became visible through her vanishing face.

  “Wait! Where is this land of Sidney? How shall I find passage to such a distant time?”

  “Scheme, Rebecca. Use your wits. Decide who to save and who to destroy.”

  Bang, bang, bang. Someone pounded the door.

  “Go away!” Rebecca shouted.

  The angel disappeared.

  “No, not you, Gabriella. I didn’t mean you.”

  The thumping grew fiercer.

  “Leave me be!”

  Bang. Bang. More thuds…relentless.

  Rebecca sucked in her breath. Had they come for her? Her head throbbed. Her vision swam. So be it. She staggered to the door and opened it.

  Henry Stoddard stood on the doorstep, hat in hand. His white wig tilted to the side of his head, revealing dark curls beneath. He hadn’t shaved. The man reeked of spirits.

  She glared at him in disgust. “You have been drinking, sir.”

  “Aye. And so should thee.” He motioned behind him to a group of women at the well in the village square. “Rumors are beginning to circulate, Rebecca.” He brushed past her into the cabin.

  She followed after him. “You haven’t heard rumors. I’ve already confessed to the coven queen about
the curse I cast.”

  Henry lowered his head. “Nay, Rebecca. ’Twas I who copied thy curse and set these horrors into motion.”

  The weight of his revelation took her breath away. Her agony of guilt had been caused by this man? Even worse, a string of hangings had started and might never end, all because of him? She slapped his face as hard as she could—fiercely enough to bring a sharp sting to her palm.

  Henry took the blow without defending himself. He stood hangdog before her with arms steady at his sides.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Stoddard stepped to the mirror and glared at his own reflection. “Foolish pride? Anger over your rejection of me as suitor? What does it matter? I’ve come to make amends. An angel advised me to help you now, Rebecca.”

  She clasped her hands together so as not to grab the man’s throat and throttle him. “Any counselor of yours would more likely be a demon.”

  “Demon, angel, one is little different than the other.”

  “What? Take your heresy and leave my cabin this moment!”

  “Very well.” Henry marched to the door and grabbed the handle, but he stopped and turned to face her. “Five centuries in the World of Mortal Dreams. A prisoner would ne’er age in such a place. In fact, one might consider the land a portal to the future.”

  A road through time to Brian? Rebecca backed to a chair and fell into it.

  Stoddard grinned. “Thy coven shall sentence thee for casting a spell.”

  The angel told her to look three centuries in the future, not five. Could she bargain for a shorter sentence? “Who spoke to you of this?”

  “Word is bandied about. ’Tis no matter. I’ll admit my involvement and end this farce.”

  “Nay.” Rebecca barely lifted her voice above the hammer beats of her heart. “Tell nothing of this to anyone.”

  * * *

  Rebecca blinked the dream away, turned from the mirror, and shook her head.

  How could she have failed to recognize the blatant manipulation of an angel who advised her to scheme? As for Henry, the way he’d characterized the proposed sentence as a portal, he might as well have led her into exile by the nose.

  No. Exile had never been the end game. He’d pointed out the path for fulfilling a prophecy.

  From three centuries in the past, the snap of an innocent woman’s neck reverberated in Rebecca’s head, sending a chill down her spine.

  She wrapped her arms around herself. So many deaths caused by a spell. But not Henry’s, despite his admission so many years ago. That rake had always been a trickster, but she’d never found him to be an evil man.

  She hurried into the World of Mortal Dreams.

  * * *

  “Ah, Rebecca!” The sorcerer glanced up from a bush he’d been pruning outside his castle. “For someone who loathes the ground I walk on, you do come to visit quite often.” Eyes crinkling with good humor, he grabbed a pitcher from a workbench. “Care for some lemonade?”

  “No. I have something to say to you.”

  He filled a glass and pushed it into her hands anyway. “Old family recipe…lemons, sugar, water, ice. Can’t beat it.”

  “Henry, I know you didn’t—”

  “From your mouth to God’s ears, Rebecca. You called me Henry, not sir or you. How long has it been since you actually addressed me by name?”

  “Probably never.” She collapsed into one of the wrought-iron chairs scattered about the garden and sipped her drink before he could browbeat her for ignoring his hospitality. “Henry, I see how you got me to where I am. And I realize you’re itching to help convince Brian he’s the chosen one to stand with me against Abigail and the void.”

  “And this is a bad thing?”

  “The prophecy doesn’t mention a sorcerer helping Brian and his pure witch, Rebecca.”

  Stoddard let her words hang in the air. He bent to pick a bouquet of flowers—blue, red, orange, yellow—a hodgepodge having no business growing off the same bush. He arranged them in a vase, one by one. “What gives you reason to think I’d interfere?”

  “I know you.” How to get through to this tinkerer? She tried staring him down, but he only smiled wider. “There’s no call for a sorcerer’s interference. The prophesied Rebecca is foretold to court Brian a witch’s way, with riddles, illusions, and dreams.”

  Henry set the vase aside, picked one last flower—a purple rose—and slid it behind her ear. “How very obedient of you to follow a prophet’s ancient words in meticulous detail. Now tell me the real reason.” The look in his eyes had changed, humor replaced by cold perception.

  She shrank away as if the troll from the Gallery of Secrets had returned to smack a great book against her face. Henry seemed capable of guessing things she didn’t want to admit even to herself. “Tend to your flowers. I shouldn’t have bothered you here.”

  “You’re in love with him, as I told you before. And now you recognize how manipulative love can make someone, don’t you? There’s no place for such a feeling in this game we play.”

  She clenched her eyes shut to stem the tears.

  “You’ve always been in love with him, and you want to know he’s equally drawn to you. If so, he’ll prove his feelings by going out of his way to figure everything out on his own. Otherwise, you’d never be sure whether he joined you in this prophecy quest simply because some old fool of a sorcerer talked him into it.”

  “Wrong, old fool. What good is being in love with someone I can only visit one more time? She snatched the rose from her ear and worried it in her hands. “And yes, I do see how selfish this makes me. The prophecy is real. I’ve had visions. But I may be putting my love for Brian ahead of the goal to help him save mankind.”

  “Rebecca?”

  “Wait, there’s more.” She twisted and turned the rose in her hand, twisted and turned, willing it to somehow hold her tears at bay. “My mother knew I’d be going after Brian. She made me promise on the day she died that everything would be done a witch’s way. I’m doubly selfish, putting all of this ahead of the greater picture.”

  “Rebecca.”

  She had trouble finding her voice anymore. “What?”

  “Do you think you might find a way to regard me as a friend one day?”

  The kindness in Stoddard’s tone unleashed the flood of tears she’d been trying to stave off…followed by great, heaving sobs. What was wrong with her? The prophesied Rebecca had to be stronger than this. “What really happened in Salem, Henry?”

  The sorcerer pulled up a chair facing hers and waited out her cry. When at last her tears eased, he spoke in the same tender voice he’d used before. “Three centuries ago a simple lie seemed the recipe to ease your troubled heart. So I told you that I cursed the girls.”

  “Truly?”

  He nodded. “No more lies. Ask me anything you feel that wretched code of yours would allow, and I’ll answer honestly.”

  “If not you, then who?”

  “The usual suspect.”

  Abigail. Rebecca clenched her fists.

  Henry grimaced. “I thought her an imp, not a phooka, but either way, she was in my charge. It happened on my watch, so I took responsibility for her actions.”

  “You enabled her. Now she runs rampant.” Rebecca slammed her glass down, sloshing lemonade over her hand. She dried it with a napkin, weighing whether to ask anything more. Would he mock her? Speak only in riddles? “I found you and your dog on my doorstep the day Brian arrived from Sidney. How did you know he’d be coming?”

  “The same way you knew. An angel whispered in my ear.”

  “Is Gabriella an angel?”

  Henry stood and paced the garden. Back and forth. Back and forth. The creases in his forehead deepened. The crinkles of humor at his eyes disappeared. “She’s been a meddler whispering in ears for centuries. Henry, travel to Salem, where the witch stock is plentiful. Perhaps one will share your bed.”

  “No.” In all her imagined motives behind Henry’s actions, Rebecca had never
thought… “Gabriella brought you to Salem?”

  “With Abigail and Betty in tow. I doubt that was her first stab at worming her way into this prophecy of yours. You don’t think an ignorant, sixth-century witch could have predicted the future on her own, do you?”

  “Now you’re trampling a sacred legend. If you don’t believe any of this, why did you follow your grandmother’s wish and pass the enlightening rod on to Brian?”

  A rare expression of surprise came over Henry’s face. “Someone’s been boning up on history.” He settled into his chair and stared at his garden with thousand-mile eyes.

  Rebecca waited.

  And waited.

  At last, the sorcerer shrugged. “Regardless of whether my grandmother got the message from a scheming angel, a demon, or a twelve-year-old girl with the cutest little ponytail, everything came true. Floods, famines, wars, genocide…just as predicted. So who was I to deny Aislinn’s wish?”

  “But you’re suggesting this was all Gabriella’s wish, aren’t you, Henry?”

  “Saving the world?” Stoddard laughed. “No. I think that little blonde menace changed her mind.”

  Chapter 39

  Brian cut through the frosty Nebraska countryside at ten over the limit, aiming his car in the general direction of a cabin he didn’t have much hope of finding. He’d been lucky the last time. According to the Witch-of-the-Hills legend, Rebecca’s home was impossible to locate, hidden in a region of shifting landscapes and useless compasses.

  For the millionth time, he glanced down at the snow globe wedged into the console between seats. Ordinary people might have kept an actual GPS there, but Kara’s gift was supposed to be a thousand times better. At the proper time and place, smoke puffing out of Rebecca’s miniature cabin inside the globe would trigger a billowing plume from her real chimney.

  He’d see it from a distance and find her.

  Or so the story went.

  Except the stupid cabin locator conked out when he wasn’t looking, somewhere west of Kearney, Nebraska.

  He’d tested Kara’s magic word earlier without a problem, puffing smoke within the tiny scene at various milestones…the barn with a smiley face painted on its roof early on, the windmill farms a little later, the Missouri river at the halfway point, and the long arch of a frontier museum stretching across the highway just a few hours from the finish line.