If Lizbet had sought her own grave, she could have found no place more like it.
“That’s better,” the earth witch’s voice said in the darkness. “There’s no place like home, I always say.” Lizbet felt the earth witch’s threadlike fingertip wrap around her nose and tweak it. “Are you a corpse yet?”
“No,” Lizbet said. “I don’t think. Not quite, anyway.”
“Work on it,” the earth witch said. Her laughter cackled in the darkness. “Better be a corpse when I come back, sweetie, or there’ll be trouble!”
Chapter 20
Exhausted, in pain all over, entombed in cold subterranean darkness with nothing better to do, Lizbet curled up on the muddy floor and slept.
She woke to thready fingers wrapping around her arms and shaking her rudely.
“Aw, rats, she’s still alive,” a creaky voice said.
Lizbet yawned. She was undoubtedly alive. In fact, to her surprise, she didn’t feel that bad. She filled her lungs and swiveled her arms around. No pain. No pain from the wounds made by sticks and stones in the whirlwind. Even in her shoulder, where Maglet’s oar had struck her, the pain was gone.
Another voice said, “She’ll die of starvation and thirst soon, anyway. I say leave her.”
Lizbet did not feel hungry or thirsty though.
“I’m starved,” a third voice whined. “Can’t we start eating her now?”
“No,” said another voice.
“No,” said another.
“It’s against the rules,” said another.
There were an awful lot of different voices. “Who are you all?” Lizbet asked.
“Matilda!”
“Bertha!”
“Hildegarde!”
“Viola!”
“Winifred!”
“Lucille!”
And on, and on, for a minute or longer.
“There are so many of you,” Lizbet said.
“It’s boring under the earth,” the voice who had called herself Bertha said. “So we make more of us for conversation.”
“But then there are so many of us,” Winifred complained, “there aren’t enough corpses to go around. Are you sure you aren’t a corpse yet? It’s been hours.”
“How many hours?” Lizbet asked.
“Ten!”
“One!”
“Fifty!”
“Eleventy-sevenths!”
Lizbet guessed that when you lived beneath the earth, without sun or moon, day or night, precision in measuring the passage of time was not of great concern. “Actually,” she said, “I think I’m feeling a little better.”
“Awww!”
“Shucks!”
“Curse the luck!”
“Look,” Lizbet said, “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you put me back on top of the earth again? That way, the Pope of Storms could finish killing me with his whirlwind, and I’d be a nice fresh corpse for you to eat.” She hoped the Pope of Storms had given up and gone away by this time, but if the earth witches weren’t good with time, maybe they wouldn’t think of that.
“We don’t like fresh corpses. We like corpses all rotted and maggoty,” Hildegarde’s voice said.
“Don’t be picky, dear,” Winifred reprimanded her.
“There’s something funny going on,” Bertha said. “Still, it’s true you’re not becoming a corpse very fast just sitting around down here.”
Bertha’s hard roots wrapped around Lizbet. Scrabbling sounds in the darkness. Clods of dirt rained upon her. In the grasp of the witch, Lizbet flew upward. My goodness, she thought, the earth witches dig fast.
Moments later, they burst through into blinding sunlight. Lizbet was roughly thrust up out the earth, to tumble onto mud and wet grass. “And don’t come back ’til you’re dead!” Bertha said. She dived back into the earth, which closed around her, and was gone.
It was broad day, under fair skies. Not too much time could have gone by while Lizbet was underground. A day at most. The earth was still wet. The dirt road was half muddy puddles. The land had been scoured by the whirlwind. Downed trees and broken branches lay everywhere.
Lizbet herself was all mud from her toes to her waist. She undid her boots, removed her stockings, and stepped into a puddle to wash off. Just sinking her feet into the cold squishy mud at the bottom felt so good that she didn’t wash, but stood there for minutes, enjoying it.
Wait. Strix had warned her about her wooden witch legs. About putting down roots. Still, it felt soooo good . . .
Lizbet forced herself to step out of the puddle. She lifted a foot to examine it. Was that a little white root coming out near the big toe? Or just a corn? She decided it was a corn. The foot still looked pretty normal. Except that it was on the wrong side, of course, because Strix had made it that way.
Strix.
Strix.
Strix had said this. Strix had done that.
Everything reminded her of Strix.
She looked down at herself. Bits of brown paper were still stuck to the front of her dress, and even her forearms. Parts of Strix that had rubbed off on Lizbet as she tried desperately to hold on to her while the Pope of Storms dragged her out of Lizbet’s arms. Lizbet stuck a fist into her pocket and squeezed it around the seashell that had been Strix’s eye.
Burning hot tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She sat down, put her arms around her knees, and cried until her face ached with crying and her chest hurt with sobs.
When she couldn’t cry any longer, Lizbet stood up, wiping her eyes and her nose with her fist. As she stood, a scrap of paper fell off her skirt. She bent and picked it up. Another fell off. They were drying out and coming loose.
She carefully peeled all the bits of paper off herself and stacked them in a little pile. That was all there was left of Strix. Wait, there was another piece of paper in the grass nearby. She added that to the rest, and an old teabag near it. She found a bundle of broken sticks, tightly lashed with twine, that must have been part of Strix’s arm or leg. Spirals of rusty wire clung to the splintered stump of a bush.
Before long, Lizbet was methodically crawling on hands and knees, back and forth through the flattened grass and splintered tree stumps. She moved slowly, her eyes inches from the ground, not wanting to miss the tiniest bit.
Over the course of the day, her pile grew: papers, used teabags, twine, scraps of tawny fur. Delicate curved lunules of isinglass that must have been Strix’s fingernails and toenails.
When she found Strix’s teeth, they proved to be broken bits of straight razor and sharp-edged chunks of milk glass. Although she handled them with care, she still pricked her finger on one. She stuck her finger in her mouth with a peculiar sense of happiness. Oh, Strix, she thought. You were always like that.
By the time darkness fell, Lizbet discovered that she had a considerable pile, and she was still finding pieces. What now? She had been content to collect Strix’s remains just for the comfort of doing it, without thought of what she would do with them.
She forced that problem from her mind. She did not need to think about it yet.
The pieces were light and flimsy, and Lizbet feared a breeze might scatter them. She needed a bag or a sack, but she had none. After a moment’s thought, she removed her dress, unbuttoned it down the back, and laid it on the ground. The serge was double thickness, so she popped a seam on one side, using one of Strix’s teeth to cut the stitches, and unfolded the fabric, making it twice as big as it had been. She piled the pieces of Strix on the remains of her dress and tied the fabric up by four corners, like a beggar’s bindle. The night air was chilly. Lizbet hugged her arms around herself. It was improper to be seen in only undershirt, bloomers, and stockings, but there was no one here to see her and be shocked, and anyway, she had to have something to keep Strix in.
She lay on the ground to
sleep, pulling the bundle of Strix over herself like a comforter. As she had when Strix covered her with her own body on the journey up the Montagnes, Lizbet immediately felt warmer and more secure. Her last thought, as she drifted toward sleep, was that the rustle of the papers and sticks and leaves in the sack was Strix’s voice, talking softly to her, although she could not make out the words.
She awoke at dawn, ravenously hungry, and there was no food to be had. Lizbet sat on the edge of a puddle left by the Pope of Storms and let her bare feet dangle into the cold mud. By the time the sun was halfway up the sky, she was no longer feeling hungry. She pulled up her undershirt and examined her chest, where she had been bleeding from wounds. The bleeding had long since stopped. The wounds were pink, and hurt only a little. They seemed to be healing. Lizbet decided there were definite advantages to being partly composed of vegetable matter and able to take nourishment from the earth like a plant.
But what did it mean that her toes were pebbles, and her toenails playing cards? If she jumped into a brook, could she roll down the streambed to the sea? If she walked into a gambling den, could she beat the cardsharps at their own game? She hadn’t done very well with cigars or alcohol, but perhaps vice required practice.
It was time to face facts: Lizbet was a witch. Or, half a witch, anyway. And not just in her legs. The witchy legs Strix had given her weren’t staying put. Their influence was seeping into the rest of her. Making animals out of straw that moved as if they were alive that was something only a witch could do, Strix said. Yet, Lizbet had done it. Only people from the trans-Montagne world could see you if you were knit into the shadows, Fudge said. Yet Lizbet had been able to see Strix.
But only partly. Lizbet was still not entirely a witch. Instead, like the world itself, she was half witch and half human, with the two halves slowly melting into each other.
She crawled on hands and knees across the ground all day long, finding parts of Strix in the grass and between the stones. At intervals she would have to cry. She stopped until the tears passed. Then she started again.
Sometime after midday, she spotted something colorful wedged in the branches of a bush that had been snapped by the wind. When she freed it, it proved to be a vessel of exquisite workmanship. It was the size of Lizbet’s fist. It was crafted of hedgehog quills, nettles, broken brown bottle glass, and black briar root. In it were strings and gobbets of stuff: red, green, yellow, blue, all moving and twisting restlessly. Vices and virtues of the sort Strix had harvested from the Outlaw.
Lizbet realized she was holding Strix’s heart.
That night, she crawled under the sack of Strix’s parts and fell asleep beneath the stars, Strix’s heart under her arm.
The next day passed the same, and the days after that. The amount of Strix Lizbet had collected grew large, and heavy, and filled the remains of the dress like a taut ball. It was too heavy to sleep under anymore, and almost too heavy to carry.
One day Lizbet heard footsteps. She looked up and saw a squat muddy figure waddling towards her. “Fudge?”
“Lizbet, may you be lucky at dice, and your womb ever fruitful!”
“Thanks, I guess,” Lizbet said. “I’m glad you’re alive. Where have you been?”
“I got caught by the wind,” Fudge said. “And I rolled, and rolled and rolled, and rolled, and rolled—”
“I see.”
“—and rolled, and rolled and rolled, and rolled—”
“Yes, yes, I get it.”
“—and rolled, and rolled, and—what’s this?” He stooped and picked something from the ground. “It’s a piece of paper.”
Lizbet held out her hand. “Fudge, I’m looking for those. It’s all that’s left of Strix.”
“It has words on it,” Fudge said. He took a long, snorting breath through his nose. His voice became dreamy. “Mmm, they smell delicious . . .”
Lizbet leaped to her feet, charged at Fudge, bowled him over, and straddled his round belly. She pried the piece of paper from his paw.
“Thievery!” Fudge cried, banging his feet and fists on the ground. “Robbery! Brigandage! Finders keepers! Salvage rights! Possession is nine-tenths of the law!”
“Think of it as kidnapping and rescue,” Lizbet said. “You tried to kidnap Strix, and I rescued her.”
“I suppose our dispute could be construed according to that theory,” Fudge said. “Now please get off? I can’t breathe.”
Lizbet made no move to comply. “Fudge,” she said, fixing him with her gaze and wagging her finger at him, “hear me, and hear me good. If you inhale so much as one iota of Strix, one comma, one period, one jot or tittle, I will rip you open from nose to toes to get her back.”
The violence of her words, and the feelings from which they sprang, shocked and surprised her. Had she really said that?
“And I mean it!” she added. So she must have.
Fudge nodded miserably. Lizbet climbed off him. Fudge rolled to his feet. Brushing twigs and dirt off his generous hindquarters, he said, “So when are we going to Abalia? Where there’s a huge, delicious library? You promised.”
When were they going? Was Lizbet going home at all? She still had to free her father, but how was she to get over the Montagnes du Monde with no witch horse, carrying a fifty-pound bag of Strix? And what was she going to do with Strix when she got there?
Strix deserved a proper Christian burial. In Lizbet’s view, that was the bare minimum that a well-lived life was owed at its end. Although, she reflected, Strix would have hated a Christian burial.
Whatever did one do with the remains of a witch? A witch would know, like Mrs. Woodcot. But Strix had said she couldn’t ever go back to Mrs. Woodcot. Strix had betrayed Mrs. Woodcot by being a friend to Lizbet. Lizbet had taught Strix friendship. Lizbet was responsible for Strix’s fate.
Lizbet squeezed her eyes shut, trying to hold back tears. The black dog of guilt seized her and shook her like a rag.
Lizbet’s need to talk with God was acute. She hadn’t tried the hosts since that time the devils answered from Heaven. She wondered if she could wheedle the devils into letting her have a word with Him. The hosts were still in the pocket of her dress. The dress was pulled tightly around Strix’s remains, but Lizbet, with effort, squeezed her hand into the pocket.
Her fingers touched cold sticky goo. Oh no. Her heart sank. Along with everything else, her dress had been soaked in the storm. The hosts had dissolved into mush.
But when she drew her fingers out, something on them sparkled. Lizbet bent close to look. Red threads, tiny green pearls, and glowing blue-white strands stuck to the tips of her fingers, mixed with the cracker mush. They looked like the material Strix had harvested from the Outlaw’s body, only in tiny amounts.
Of course. When the priest consecrated the host, it became the body of Christ. It would have vices and virtues, like anyone’s body. On the tips of Lizbet’s fingers was the nature of Christ.
Not quite knowing what to do with it, but feeling it would be impious simply to throw it away, Lizbet picked through the mess of soggy crackers and separated the character traits into tiny piles by color. Strix’s cartridge belt, though battered, had survived the storm. Lizbet stowed the tiny samples of Christ’s virtues into empty cartridges. Some she recognized from the Outlaw: iron-gray Courage, the tiny sea-green pearls of Empathy. The glowing blue-white strands were unfamiliar to her though. When Lizbet touched them, she felt a sweet, fleeting pain in her bosom, as if an angel had pierced her with a golden spear.
“I want to go to Abalia!” Fudge whined. “When can we go? I want to go now!”
“So do I, Fudge,” Lizbet said. “But we have to find all of Strix first. I’m not going without her.”
Lizbet had no way to get over the Montagnes. And you couldn’t go around the Montagnes: they circled the world. Could there be a way through the mountains? A cave, or a tunnel, or—
A tunnel?
Lizbet sent Fudge to hunt for the last errant bits of Strix, threatening him again with riot and mayhem if he even thought about snuffling her up. Meanwhile, she made a plan. It was a little tricky. But that was okay. Lizbet felt trickier than she had been before, and was learning to feel all right with it.
She stamped her foot on the ground.
After a moment, she felt a deep rumble beneath her feet. She stamped on the ground again and stepped back. The earth cracked and opened. An earth witch popped halfway out of the hole, squinting her knothole eyes against the daylight. She regarded Lizbet with reproach. “What!” she said. “Still not a corpse?” Lizbet recognized her voice as Matilda’s. She peered up and down at Lizbet. “And looking healthier than ever. You’re good for nothing!”
“What have you got for me, baby?” Lizbet said.
“What have I got for you? Hah!” Matilda put all her six or seven hands on what Lizbet supposed were her hips, but looked more like knotty stumps. “Mortals don’t make demands of the earth witches. The nerve!”
“I hear you steal gold that misers bury in their gardens,” Lizbet said.
“The world is full of tales,” Matilda said airily. “Who knows what is is true?”
“If that tale is true, the earth witches must have gold to spare. I want some. I want you to give me ten thousand gold pieces, be they thalers, francs, lira, pounds, or whatever the coin of these realms might be,” Lizbet said.
Matilda tittered. “Away with you and your delirious fantasy!”
“In return,” Lizbet said, “I shall give you all a present.”
“You owe us a present already,” Matilda said indignantly. “You owe us your own corpse! That was your promise, though now I suspect it was all a trick. I ain’t making any new deals until you deliver your corpse, safe and dead.”
“Suppose I give you two corpses, instead of one?” Lizbet said.
“Wild and nonsensical promises! You can’t even provide one, how can you possibly get two?”
But in her cracked voice, Lizbet heard a note of interest. Of greed. Reason said, ‘No’, but greed said, ‘I want . . .’
Half-Witch Page 22
