Hexenhaus

by Nikki McWatters

  I have just bought a loaf of spelt bread from Paddy the baker when I walk outside into the glare of the day, right into the path of Annabel Hooper. In something of a strange ambush, Emily is coming down the street from the other direction and we all land together on the footpath in an awkward scrum.

  I try not to look at Mrs Hooper. She frightens me. I move around her and only accidentally lock eyes with her. She glares at me, which is hard to ignore. She has a pinched face, like a sack that’s been tied up at the lips, lips that hide a well-oiled tongue that slips effortlessly over a good gossip. Her eyes are round black currants. She has pop-up cheekbones, a little feline nose and her mouse-fur-brown hair is moulded into some kind of war-era curled bob.

  Emily has stopped and is looking at us, from one face to another.

  ‘Hey, Paise,’ she calls and grabs my elbow, steering me away, speaking far too loudly and melodramatically. ‘I wish I’d brought a jumper. It’s freezing, huh?’

  It’s a still, brisk, cold Saturday morning. I look up at the cloudless blue blanket of sky and watch a procession of galahs sweeping across it.

  ‘Well, that was awkward!’ Emily says as we walk along the low wooden bridge over the train tracks. We patter past the hotel, eerily silent at this time of the morning, north along Erith Street and cross at the top bridge before heading back toward my place. We have just done a massive detour around town to get away from Mrs Hooper.

  At home Mum is still in bed although I know she is probably not asleep. She has black rings around her eyes and has complained to me almost every morning about how little sleep she is getting.

  Em and I share a breakfast of toast and jam and Weetbix. My mother joins us in the kitchen. In the space of a few weeks she has become smaller, lighter. She is not eating properly and looks as thin as a broom handle. I sit in front of my bowl of cereal watching the dust motes stirring the sunlight that streams through the kitchen window over the sink. I scrape my spoon around the bowl one final time to round up the last milky grains and then let it clatter to the bottom of the plate.

  After breakfast Mum comes to the table carrying a heavy wooden box. I look up at her. ‘Emily and I are going to cram for the history exam this morning,’ I say.

  ‘Before you girls begin, I want to have a word with you, Paisley,’ Mum says with uncharacteristic seriousness. ‘Do you mind waiting for Paise in her bedroom, Emily?’

  Now I am really intrigued. Emily looks from Mum to me, grins, swings a plait over her shoulder and goes to my room. I don’t doubt for a second that she’s pressed up against my closed door listening to every word.

  Mum sits at the table with the mystery box and sighs, looking at me intently.

  ‘What?’ I give a nervous laugh. ‘You’re freaking me out.’

  She slowly, almost ritualistically, opens the clasp on the box and lifts the lid, taking out a small parcel wrapped in fine woollen fabric. She places the parcel on the table in front of her.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask in a whisper, sensing that this is something momentous.

  ‘It’s the family book,’ she says softly.

  I feel my face begin to tingle at the curiousness of it all.

  She begins to lovingly unwrap the woollen fabric and reveals a leather-bound book. It must be the oldest-looking book I’ve ever seen.

  ‘What is this?’ I say breathlessly.

  ‘This is the Systir Saga, the book of your sisters.’

  I give an incredulous little snort. This is some witchy sisterhood thing, I think.

  ‘Paisley, this is your direct maternal bloodline running back to the Goddess. I was going to give it to you when you had your first daughter, but I’ve been so proud of how you are dealing with all this that I wanted to share it with you now.’

  She passes it across the table to me. I hold my breath as I open the strange, heavy, oily pages. The ink looks reddish brown, almost like blood. I see careful scrawls of names and places. The last name in the book is mine.

  Paisley Muller-McLeod – Katoomba.

  Before me there is my mother’s name.

  Kirsten Jane McLeod – Gosford.

  And before her name, my maternal grandmother’s.

  Fiona McKechnie – Edinburgh.

  I read over the names, turning the pages backward. They become fainter. Some are almost unintelligible. They fan out into branches, some stopping altogether. It looks like a full board of Scrabble. All these strange women’s names and foreign places. It takes my breath away. It is a journey of my DNA and I find myself crying, tears running down my cheeks at the enormity of what my mother has shared with me. It just hits me like a bus. I’ve been holding in my emotions for the last fortnight and they just erupt all over my face.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ I say. ‘This is priceless. The most amazing thing I have ever seen.’

  ‘Look after it.’ She smiles. ‘There are so many forgotten stories in there, stories that are attached to those names.’

  I feel a wave of excitement, a thrill. This book must contain hundreds of adventures and as many tragedies, none of which we will never know.

  ‘They are your witchy ancestors,’ Mum says.

  ‘Well my female ancestors.’ I smile.

  ‘Remember, Paise,’ Mum smiles back, ‘a witch is just a woman who is—’

  ‘I know … I know … wise, intuitive, trusting, compassionate and honourable.’

  She looks at me through her red-rimmed eyes and takes both of my hands in hers. ‘Through all of this ordeal with the Hoopers, darling, we must never stop trying to be all of those things.’

  My whole life I have run from Mum’s Wiccan beliefs, tolerating them but being kind of embarrassed by them, too. No one will ever convince me that a rock or a crystal can take away grief, or that the stars can tell me who I will marry. I firmly believe in science and logic. But right now, looking at this book that is made up of my mother and me and all the mothers that came before us, I know what she means when she speaks of the witch in every woman. I go to her and lean down to take her in my arms.

  ‘I love you, Mum. It will all be okay. We have each other. I’ll always be here for you. You’ve made me feel … just a little bit … like a witch now. And it feels kind of nice.’

  The following Monday morning, Ben Digby bustles straight up to me at the bus stop and I feel my skin prickle.

  ‘Isaiah Hooper’s gone missing,’ he says, panting with the thrill of this information. ‘He wasn’t in his bed this morning and his mum’s gone spare. Constable Amy was around all the local boys’ places this morning asking if we’d seen or heard from him.’

  I snatch a look at Emily as she fumbles for her bus pass, her lips pressed together in a straight line.

  ‘Shit.’ I frown and I wonder whether the town’s going to blame this on Mum, too.

  VERONICA

  BAMBERG, FRANCONIA, 1628

  Christoff was none improved by the time Rudi made snuffling noises at the door. I let him in quickly and frowned as he left melted snow paw prints across the floor to the hearth where he dropped with a satisfied snort. He smelled of dank wet fur and dirt. I pressed some more tea toward Christoff’s lips and sang to him, the same soft lullabies that my mutti had sung to Hans and me. I felt the tears come and thought of my mother, so beautiful, so regal, so gone. She was tall and blonde and had fine features. At night she often played a lute and sang and her voice was like the tinkle of wind chimes. She had exchanged words with the neighbour after a carpet that was drying on a fence went missing. In the following round up of witches, the third or fourth for the year, the neighbour’s wife was taken away and within days of her torture she had named my mother as an accomplice. My mother went to her death without revealing any names or accusing any other soul. They tortured the life out of her and I heard it said that she was more dead than alive when they had taken her to the gallows.

  My vo
ice filled the cottage and I looked up to see that Hans had woken and was sitting on the top stair listening, his own grief rolling over his ruddy cheeks. I motioned for him to join me.

  ‘I am going to Ebrach to find someone who I believe Christoff needs,’ I told him. ‘I will wait until just before sun up and make the journey alone. If I make haste I can bring the girl back by sundown. Frau Berchta says it is an easy half-day walk.’

  Hans looked frightened. ‘You will go into the woods in the dark?’ he said, drawing his little brows together to form a furrow between his eyes.

  ‘It will only be the last fading gloom of night,’ I told him. ‘I believe his heart needs this tonic. A girl called Susanna. I must find her. Ebrach is not a big village and I will ask around after Christoff Kilian’s kin. His poor mother should come also.’

  ‘Is he going to die?’ Hans asked in a small voice.

  ‘Not if I can help it.’ I smiled. ‘You stay and talk to him, even when he doesn’t seem to know your voice, and give him plenty of this brew. Hold it to his lips and tell Frau Berchta when she rises that I have gone to find Christoff the one thing that might save him.’

  I went to the cold larder and brought back a pot of milk, which I told Hans to drink when the sun had come up. Then I went to look in the wooden chest upstairs to find the sturdy boots that had belonged to the child living in the attic before us. I took a heavy woollen hooded cloak, a deep burgundy colour, and dressed myself well, adding fur-lined gloves.

  As soon as I could see the black night drift higher into a shallow grey, I kissed my brother and held him tight.

  ‘You take good care of him. I will come back to you soon, Hans. I promise.’

  ‘With faith there is love, with love there is peace, with peace there is blessing, with blessing there is God, with God there is no need,’ Han’s replied.

  I felt my heart roll over with grief. My brother had remembered the blessing my father always gave anyone who went on a journey. He was a devout man and it broke me that he had gone from this world so shamefully. His letter to me, penned through such pain and with the knowledge that he was soon to be set on fire, had been so desperate to let me know that he was innocent of the charges.

  ‘Mutti and Papa will watch over me.’ I smiled and held him tightly, kissing his head and patting his back. ‘Do not let the fire go out.’

  I left the cottage when Rudi stretched his legs and lifted his haunches, shaking and padding to the door for release. Outside a mottled-brown squirrel was bravely chiselling his two little teeth into a mouldy ear of corn and stopped still, watching as Rudi padded past, without any obvious fear. He went back to his early morning meal, ignoring me. I pulled the door behind me and looked out at the pale snow that lay like a shroud over the meadow.

  I gave a little shudder, thinking of the other creatures that were still roaming and foraging through the thick woods and forest that carpeted the hills and valleys all the way to Ebrach.

  I knew the way because Christoff had shown me the path and taken me a little ways down it once to show me where the last of the strawberries grew. He had cleared the path from town himself, with his father, when just a boy. He had told me that Frau Berchta had been renowned for her healing skills and the path had been well-trodden for years until the witch-hunts began in earnest and then people had become afraid that the wise woman would be targeted and they did not want to be burned by association. But all protected her and no one would ever reveal a word of her or her whereabouts.

  As I stood there, watching the sun rise from a faintly rosy sky, I noted that the moon was chasing a streak of clouds up to the north. It would be a bright day of sunshine that would melt the snow to sludge in a day or two. In the new light the snow blazed a rich orange.

  I set off. I wandered carefully into the crush of trees and trod the path which felt narrower because the ice and snow had caused the tree limbs to droop under their weight. The light was a patchy black-green with shards of gold filtering through the canopy.

  I had brought some bread and cheese for the journey and would stop for water when I found a stream, or drink melted snow from leaves if I had to. I would arrive in town at around midday.

  I heard a nearby honk of ducks and stuck to the path, making good strong steps toward my destination.

  The hours were long but there was much to enjoy in the woods. I spied a mole nibbling on frozen seeds and rabbits leaping about in the snow, leaving pits jabbed down by their little paws. By a small brook bubbling with beads of ice I came across a pair of herons gobbling up cold tadpoles and watched the snow-laced water tumble over the sturdy backs of tortoises braving the cold.

  I knew I was nearing town when my feet ached and the wildlife began to thin to the occasional wren or woodchuck. I smelled Ebrach before I saw it. I had been sheltered by the woods for so long that I had forgotten that a town could be so pungent, rich with the aroma, scent and stench of people and their refuse.

  I hit a wide road and tramped down a steep hill into the valley that harboured the town. The ground underfoot was soft and spongy and not as hard and ice-solid as on the path. I walked beside the road, my sack over my shoulder, lighter after I had eaten my cheese and bread. The first time I heard a human sound I shivered with terror. I had become so much like a hermit out in the clearing in the woods and the idea of strangers and noise and marketplaces now frightened me. A mule and cart passed down the centre of the stony road and the driver took a pipe from his mouth and raised his hand at me with a wide, hollow smile.

  As I neared the town filled with buildings and a haze of wood-fire smoke hanging like a cloud, I passed another man in a uniform leaning against a dark cart and a thick-legged horse chewing grass by the side of the road. The man had a hat over his forehead and a long moustache that hung from either side of his mouth like waxed ribbons.

  He looked me over, up and down, and flicked a dandelion from his hand where he had been twirling it.

  ‘Where have you come from, Fräulein?’

  He caught me by surprise. My mind, so tranquil from the woods, went empty and I said the first thing that leapt into my head.

  ‘Bamberg.’ I gave an awkward smile.

  He nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘All by yourself, ja?’ he said in a slippery voice.

  ‘I was accompanied by kin for most of the way but they have gone on to Würzburg. I am meeting my husband in Ebrach.’ My face flushed with the lie. I watched him turning my words over, examining them.

  ‘What is your husband’s name, pray tell?’

  ‘Christoff Kilian.’

  ‘And your given name, Frau Kilian?’ he asked.

  ‘Rosa,’ I lied again, giving my mother’s name and it hurt deeply to say it aloud.

  ‘Well, guten tag to you and get some rest when you return to your home, pretty lady.’ He smiled and I walked on stiffly, glad to be rid of him.

  Ebrach was bustling with activity and the colours jarred my eyes. Replacing the golden, green and sky-blue hues of my quiet existence were purples and crimsons and limes and sapphire blues. People shouted and cried out, laughter sounded gaudy and children squealed, screeching over my nerves. Carts rattled along filled to overflowing with produce.

  The marketplace was a chromatic symphony with so much vibrant colour that I was almost overwhelmed and felt giddy from it. I hurried as I knew that Christoff’s life swayed in a balance. Most early winter markets have a sense of frenzy about them, with buyers ferreting about like desperate squirrels collecting the last nuts for the big freeze. This market was no different and it seemed every citizen was there, shouting and waving coins, haggling, and shoving out the competition. Birds perched on eaves, watching for scraps that might fall to the stones so they could swoop down for a piece of sausage or a dropped head of turnip.

  Christoff had told me that his mother’s house sat near the main marketplace so I knew I was close. I
approached a woman selling woven baskets and asked her about the Kilian family house. She appeared to be foreign and did not understand me, speaking back to me in a language I had not heard before. I tried another woman and then another.

  ‘Ja,’ the last one nodded enthusiastically. ‘You will see the tall, narrow white house criss-crossed with wooden beams, topped by a red roof and a tall brick chimney. It is down that street, there, maybe four or five along.

  I thanked her with a smile. But the smile sank from my face as I caught sight, between shuffling bodies, of the uniformed man I had come upon on the open road just outside the town. I saw that he was leering at me. I turned away, wondering if he had followed me. I shrugged off the thought as the marketplace was the throbbing centre of town and every person seemed to be there.

  The house was easy to find and I rapped on the door, nervous, guilt-ridden for bearing such disturbing news of Christoff. I looked up at the rooster weathervane spinning on the roof.

  The door was opened by a tall, broad-shouldered woman standing in the dim entrance hall. She offered a blank expression. I guessed the woman to be about forty, pale and ample. Something about her reminded me of our nurse, Kristina. Her face, the square jaw and the softer, expressive eyes, made me like her instantly. That made it harder for me to introduce myself and deliver my message.

  ‘Frau Kilian?’ I asked and she nodded, frowning and putting her head to one side. ‘I have come from Frau Berchta’s cottage in the woods …’

  Her face broke into a broad smile.

  ‘You must be Veronica,’ she said, tugging at my sleeve, encouraging me inside. ‘Come in. Christoff has told me so much about you.’

  The smell of cooking sat heavily in the air as she led me through to the second room spread with pine-planked floors. We passed an oval mirror and I was tempted to look at my reflection as I had not seen a looking glass since I left Bamberg. My face was rounder and pinker and I looked more like a young woman than a child. My face surprised me being just that little bit less familiar than when I’d last looked at it.