“What is the first lesson, then?”
Dinner was a trifle late that night, but Eloma had learned her first taste of real magic. Thereafter, she extracted a spell for every darned sock, a lesson in magic theory for every snack. Clean clothing cost a divining spell. Fresh straw in the mattress ticking cost apprentices the loan of their books overnight. A new robe cost the senior apprentice an entire evening of tutoring. One swaggering fellow had threatened to tell the wizard of her deals, but the others had painfully and memorably made clear to him that if Eloma were sent away, they would be back to cleaning their own clothes and eating their own cooking. Despite Eloma’s attempts to teach each one the basics of washing, sewing, and meal preparation, no one was eager to give up her delicious stews and delectable desserts. Her magic skills grew quickly, since she didn’t have to learn to read and write, as the young ones did. The apprentices took pride in the success of their student.
Late one evening, she was studying “The Book of Changing” at the rough wooden table in the kitchen by candleglow. The wizard seldom entered the kitchen, but it was only when everyone had gone to bed that Eloma’s time was truly her own. Shumy, one of the young beginners, entered the kitchen shyly. “Eloma, Ma’am, could you help me with this spell? I’ve been trying to get it right for three days, and His Wisdom will be awful angry if I still haven’t got it tomorrow, but nobody else is awake.”
“Sit down, Shumy, and we’ll look at it together.” The spell was one Eloma had struggled with herself, until she’d finally thought of it in reverse, from the result to the spell, as if it were a garment she wished to copy. Then she had understood that she needed to see the result exactly in her mind, in order to make the gestures match it. She helped Shumy figure that out for herself, and the little girl was able to perform the spell perfectly. She must have told others, for ensuing weeks brought Eloma her own little class of beginners in the kitchen late at night. They came to her for the explanations the wizard was too hurried to give, and the way of seeing that, from his lofty perspective, he didn’t recognize, or no longer knew how to share.
As the months passed, the older students came to Eloma as well. Her eagerness to learn had put her ahead of them in many areas. But still she craved more knowledge.
* * * *
The senior apprentice shook his head. “I can’t think of anything else to teach you, Ma’am, to pay for a tonic for my mother’s cough. I’ve taught you everything I know.”
“I’ll make the tonic for your mother all the same, Teddeth. Perhaps you will think of a suitable payment later.” Teddeth watched as she set about mixing the proper herbs and boiling the water to steep them.
“Ma’am,” he offered, “Perhaps you should ask His Wisdom to give you the examination for Journey Sorcerer. I’ve taught you everything I know, and I’m to take the test next week.”
Eloma was surprised to hear this, thinking always that she must still be among the lowliest students, for every time she learned some new magic, she saw how much more there must be to discover. She said nothing as she puttered about, finishing the potion and capping the vial, but as she handed it to him she said, “I think you have paid me full value for this tonic, Teddeth. Good health to your mother, and good luck to you on your examination.”
He grinned. “To you as well, Ma’am.”
* * * *
Eloma waited. When Teddeth’s voice resounded with joy as he received the Journey Robe of fine blue silk from Bartholliver, she smiled. That evening, after the celebration was over and the wizard and his apprentices had gone to bed, Eloma offered Teddeth the last piece of blueberry cake she had made in honor of his new robe. Smiling, he accepted, saying, “What do you want to know?”
“What was the test like, if it isn’t a secret?”
“No secret. Every test is different. The Master Wizard is free to make the test easy or hard, but mostly, they always make it hard. They don’t want unqualified sorcerers in the trade, making us all look bad. The Journey Robe test usually includes seven problems: Making Fire and Unmaking of Fire, Matter In Motion, a Gateway spell of some sort, Scrying, Casting an Illusion, and Levitation.”
“Self-levitation?”
“No, no. That’s too hard for the Journey test. Self-levitation is in the test for the Master’s Black Robe. Levitation of any inanimate object is enough for the Journey examination.”
“I see.” She ushered him out of the kitchen, so she could study a bit more. “Thank you, Your Wisdom,” she said with a smile.
The next day, she went to the wizard in his study. “I would like to take the examination for Journey Sorceress, Your Wisdom. I believe I am ready.”
The wizard was too stunned to reply for a moment, and then he burst into laughs that shook his massive oaken workbench and threatened to spill him off his high stool. Expecting his rudeness this time, Eloma merely crossed her arms and tapped her foot until he was done.
“What makes you think you can demand to be tested?” he asked, wiping his eyes on the deep, belled sleeve of his robe.
“I have read the Guild Bylaws. A student may request testing at any time, if he, or she,” she emphasized, “believes she has been unfairly passed over. And I do. I believe you have unfairly neglected my training, and failed to test my knowledge. Now I request examination for my Journey Robe.”
Bartholliver’s mouth opened to laugh again, but the ice-dragon stare Eloma gave him smothered the chuckle in his throat. So certain was he that she knew no magic worth testing, that he sneered at her in contempt. “All right then. You’ll have it immediately. Show me one spell, one single incantation of substance, and I will grant your Journey Robe. Not a card trick, mind you! Not a lovers’ posset! A real spell worthy of a serious sorcerer.”
Just one spell? That didn’t seem like much of a challenge. But Eloma smiled. It was the opportunity she had only received in daydreams. After several perfectly formed hand movements, and an incantation in the ancient language of magic, she crushed a pinch of herbs from her pocket and blew them at Bartholliver himself. She stepped out of the way as he rose from his seat, a shocked expression on his face. When he reached the doorway, she remembered that the Gateway, the coruscating curtain the wizard had erected in place of a door, would not allow her spell to leave the room. Quickly, she chanted the words to collapse the Gateway, so the bespelled wizard could pass through. Knowing it was an important safeguard to protect the students’ projects from escaping, she focussed her strength and erected a new one, in a pattern of white, maroon, and deep green that complemented the room’s furnishings. “Gateway. That’s one,” she said to herself.
She hurried after the wizard, tossing Fire spells to light the candles in the sconces along the hall ahead of him, so he could see his way. Being thrifty as well, she left Snuff spells behind her to put them out. By now the young apprentices had begun to gather behind her. “Two and Three,” was all she said, following Bartholliver silently as he made his way toward the kitchen. In the eating room, a chair had been left out from the table, and with a Gesture and a Word, she spirited it out of the wizard’s path. “Four—Matter in Motion,” she ticked off the problems on her mental list. As Bartholliver entered the kitchen, Eloma made curling gestures with her hands, and the sleeves of his black robe began to roll themselves up for work. He squeezed between two of the youngest students, and plunged his hands into the hot, soapy dishwater. With a look of horror, he lifted a cooking pot from the depths of the sink, and started to scour burned food from its bowl. “What have you done?!” he roared. “What evil spell is this?!”
“No evil,” she said, reassuring the young ones with a smile. “It’s a simple Volition spell. You would have protected against it, if you had any respect for my ability to learn magic.”
“What is this?!” he roared again, as an image began to color the rinse water in his pot.
“Scrying, th
at’s five,” she muttered, before assuring the wizard, “It is merely a Future-vision I cast for you. But I have been considering a third career, that of teaching magic.”
“This can’t be my future! I see a sorceress helping me teach magic to my apprentices!”
“It is one of the real futures that is possible. The choice is still yours to make.” Eloma would not force his hand, but the many grinning faces and eagerly nodding heads of the students assured her that he would have plenty of help making the decision.
“All right, all right! I don’t know how you learned so much, but if you can make me behave as a kitchen drudge, you are certainly a proficient Sorceress. You can have your Journey Robe! You can have anything you want, but break this spell!”
Eloma waved her hands in a cut-off movement, speaking the last words of the spell in reverse order, and it was broken. While the wizard reached for a rag to dry his hands, she concentrated and waved her hands up and down herself, whispering an Illusion spell, and smiled as her robe appeared to change from Apprentice Green to Journey Blue. “Six. Illusion.” She muttered some more and gathered all her power for one last problem on the examination she had set for herself. When Bartholliver turned to face her, his mouth gaped with shock as he saw that her eyes were level with his. He stared mutely at the hand-span of empty space between her feet and the floor. After a moment, the redness of his face showed both anger and embarrassment. Eloma was satisfied that the wizard recognized how much he had underestimated her.
When he looked her in the eye, though, his face expressed the respect due a new member of his Guild. He conceded her victory with a tip of his head. “A new-won Journey Sorcerer, or Sorceress, is permitted to ask one boon of her former Master.”
“Ah, then, I would dearly like for someone else to cook dinner. Magic can be even more tiring than housekeeping, I think.” She settled gently to the floor.
Bartholliver nodded in tactfully silent agreement, as he scanned the room, reckoning the students’ cooking skills. “I shall take you out to the tavern for dinner.” With a grimace that showed the pain to his purse, he added, “We’ll all go.”
While smiling agreement, Eloma had to shake her head in bafflement. There was still so much to teach him.
SALEM’S CHILDREN, by Mary Leader
Originally published in 1979.
DEDICATION
To Leslie Cross, my friend and mentor, who was “Wes” in TRIAD and who, before his death in 1977, gave me criticism and encouragement which helped shape SALEM’S CHILDREN, and to Robert and Beryl Graves and to my mother, whose dearest dream was for me to become an author, and through whom I am descended from the Stoughtons.
Chapter One
An insistent ringing shattered my slumber. Wildly, unable to orient myself, I groped in the dark until my lingers closed over the smooth plastic.
“Submit—Submit, do you hear me?” came the whisper. “I know you’re there, Submit. We hate you—we hate you…”
The words trailed off into faint breathing at the other end of the line, then a click and the line went dead.
“Kid stuff!” I muttered, trying to resettle my weary body into the sagging, alien mattress—but the last dregs of slumber had drained away and reality crowded in on me. This was Aunt Bo’s great bed, arced between twin walls of intricately carved walnut. It may have conformed to her more ample contours, but to me it was a torture rack. Only exhaustion—on this, my first night in the house Aunt Bo had unexpectedly willed me—had granted me any sleep at all, and I found myself devoutly praying for an early arrival of the van from New York with my own furnishings. I’d had misgivings about occupying Aunt Bo’s room—at least so soon—but Dana, the half-Indian woman who had been Aunt Bo’s companion during the last few years of her life, had already installed my things, and I’d been too tired to protest.
Folding myself into the fetal position proved no answer; I immediately slid down into the center of the bed, my knees pressing against my chin. In desperation, I piled the pillows high against the ornate headboard, sat up, and switched on the light. Laid across the cedar chest was a down comforter. I folded it tightly and slid it under my legs. This helped, but still I didn’t sleep. Somewhere out there in the dark was someone who knew me and didn’t want me there—someone who knew the name I seldom used, who was perhaps voicing Peacehaven’s real feelings about me.
But that was being morbid. I rose and tiptoed into the room where my two daughters lay sleeping: Cariad in her crib and Rowan in the big bed, relaxed and rosy in the soft glow of the nightlight. Dana had bundled them into bed as soon as she’d given us a light supper, and they’d fallen asleep with hardly a murmur, tired out from the long drive from New York.
* * * *
It was a quiet, unheralded entry we’d made that afternoon into Peacehaven, here in the southwest corner of Wisconsin. The town had seemed empty as we drove along the main street, but that was natural since it was the dinner hour. I tried to point out old landmarks to Rowan, but many no longer existed.
“There—over there!” I exclaimed, pointing to a red brick building with large plate glass windows. “That’s where your great-grandfather’s general store used to be. Looks like it’s a teen shop now.”
How had I once thought it so large and imposing?
“I didn’t know little towns had parking meters,” Rowan said.
“Where? I don’t see any.”
“There!” she pointed.
“That?” I began to laugh. “That’s the old hitching post your great-grandfather had in front of his store. All the merchants used to have them, but I see the others have been taken down.”
Rowan sat quietly, holding the baby in her lap as I chattered on, trying to re-create the Peacehaven that had once charmed me.
“I’ll just drive around the corner and show you the Congregational Church where your grandparents were married. Your great-grandmother donated the pipe organ in memory of—It’s gone!” I exclaimed, staring down a street that dead-ended at a broad expanse of water. “I never thought the river would get this far!”
I drove slowly past the wrought iron gate and a length of the iron fence that had once surrounded the graveyard. These, and a buckled section of cement walk on a collapsing bank gave a brief amen to what had once been Peacehaven’s leading church. Someone had planted pretty blue morning glories along the fence, as though to give the cemetery one final, everblooming bouquet. Farther down the riverbank a small boy fished from a toppled tombstone.
I tried to explain that the river had been shifting its channel for over a century, gradually inundating the town, but my daughter was unaffected by the loss. “What are those funny little islands out in the river?”
“Sandbars. They appear and disappear. We used to go out there in canoes and have picnics.” Until that was spoiled for me, I remembered, gripping the wheel tightly.
“Weren’t you afraid they’d sink while you were on them?”
“It doesn’t happen that quickly. People sometimes camp there all night.” I turned back toward the main street.
“What’s that?” Rowan pointed to a stone monument in the square. “It looks like an upside down ‘L.’”
“It’s supposed to look like a gallows.”
She was puzzled. “I thought they burned the witches.”
“They didn’t burn them, they hanged them.”
“Here?”
“Oh, not here,” I said hurriedly, “in Salem in—uh—1692,” reading the date off the base of the monument. “About a century and a half later, Joshua Martin, Aunt Bo’s great-grandfather, led a group of descendants of so-called witches out here to Peacehaven. Joshua’s ancestress, Susanna Martin, was one of those hanged. He founded Peacehaven as a memorial to the victims of the witchcraft trials. They used to make a big thing of it, but it’s more a town legend now—and a
badge of distinction, I suppose.”
“If Aunt Bo was descended from a witch, then we must be, too,” she reflected, a note of pride in her voice.
“Sorry, Rowan. We can’t claim it; we aren’t related on that side.”
“Oh.” Obvious disappointment.
The sun was already descending in the west and I knew we should be getting on, but I was enjoying just sitting here and chatting with my daughter—a rare occurrence these days.
“Do you think there are any witches here now?”
“No, of course not! There’s no such thing,” I laughed. “They even sell broomsticks here without anyone getting nervous.”
“There are witchcraft shops in New York,” she said skeptically.
“That’s different. That’s business.”
“What did the Salem witches do that was so bad?” she asked after a pause.
“Oh,” I hesitated, trying to remember. “People imagined they did everything from souring milk to murdering babies.”
Rowan studied the monument. The stone noose was attached to the granite gallows by a massive wrought-iron ring.
“I’ll bet that noose would swing,” she speculated. “Let’s try it.”
“We’ll do it another day—Dana’s expecting us for supper.” I sighed. “It’s not going to be the same without Aunt Bo. I wish you could have known her, Rowan.”
But my daughter had lapsed into one of her too-frequent silences. She shifted Cariad in her arms and nuzzled her gently. I turned the car up a street leading to the bluff road, feeling pangs of guilt as we flashed by the homes of Peacehaven. I hadn’t visited Aunt Bo since before my marriage, and yet she had willed most of her property to me, a half-niece, instead of her full niece and nephew. I could see her now: tall, heavily built, her dark gray-streaked hair swept into a French twist, color high and eyes alight whenever the conversation got around to politics or social conditions, her acousticon—she never could get the hang of a hearing aid—pushed forward to catch her listener’s replies.
The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users Page 7
