Half-Witch

by John Schoffstall

  The receiving room was packed with soldiers and officials, but also scores of townspeople. The air smelled of stale human bodies, wood smoke, and cooking grease. Beds had been made on the floor with blankets, and two elegant fireplaces at either end of the room had been pressed into service as cooking fires. Townspeople were taking refuge here from the devils overrunning Abalia.

  At Bellows’s call, six soldiers wearing the Margrave’s orange and blue livery and clanking curiasses separated themselves from the crowd and surrounded Lizbet, Strix, and Fudge. “Escort these three to the Margrave’s office,” Bellows said. “If they do anything suspicious, defenestrate them immediately.”

  They set off up the stairs. “What does ‘defenestrate’ mean?” Lizbet whispered to Fudge.

  “It means to throw someone out of a window,” Fudge said.

  It was almost more than Fudge could bear to pass by four floors jammed with books. At each landing, his nose madly twitching, panting with desire, he tried to squeeze between the guards’ legs and waddle off into the stacks. Lizbet had to run after him and drag him back to the staircase. “Stop it,” she hissed, “or you’ll get defenestrated.”

  “How do you defenestrate someone, anyway?” one of the guards asked another. “Never done that. Do they get a last meal? Do you have to call a priest, so they can get shriv, or shrove, or shrunk, or whaddyacallit?”

  “Nah,” said the other guard. “They don’t get none of that. That’s the beauty of it. You just unlatch a window and chuck ’em out. But there’s an art to it, see. Some windows are better for defenstratin’ than others. Bigger ones are better than smaller ones. It’s best if the window is high up too. Defenestratin’ someone out a ground-floor window is more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “Huh. You know all about this stuff,” said the first guard.

  “I’ve read up on all the important defenestrations,” the second guard said. “The First Defenestration of Prague. The Second Defenestration of Prague. The Defenestration of Lisbon. The Defenestration of Paris. If we have another defenestration”—he glared meaningfully at Fudge—“I’m ready.”

  The Margrave’s doors were open. As they approached, Lizbet saw the Margrave inside seated at his table. Priests in black cassocks and captains and majors in gray wool and gold braid stood around him, arguing. The priests’ voices were thin and high with anxiety. The officers’ voices were low and unhappy. “Devils are a religious problem,” a captain was saying. “The army has no way to fight devils. Why can’t the Church do something?”

  “We pray,” said a priest, “but our prayers are unanswered. We fear that something terrible has happened in Heaven.” He wrung his hands with such nervous energy that Lizbet half believed his fingers would pop off and bounce along the floor.

  “Can’t you just throw holy water on the devils, or something?” one of the captains said.

  A monseigneur shook his head. “There is no holy water,” he said. “It cannot be made. Water remains ordinary water. Communion wafers can longer be consecrated. Babies cannot be baptized. Marriages cannot be solemnized. The sacraments are dead.” His voice was almost a sob. “God has abandoned His Church,” he said.

  One of Lizbet’s guards cleared his throat discreetly. All faces turned toward them. “This here girl,” the guard said. “She says she can get rid of your devils.”

  The Margrave, Lizbet thought, looked even worse than before. His massive face was pallid as suet and seemed almost to be deflating and folding inward. His rich silk and fur robes seemed to be hung on a stick, not a man. His lusterless eyes slowly focused on Lizbet. “What girl? You? Lenz’s daughter? Back again.” He flicked his finger at Fudge. “Who let a goblin in? Get that vermin out of my palace.” Then he noticed Strix. He braced his fists on the table in front of him and laboriously pushed himself erect. “A witch? A witch girl! How dare a witch come into my presence!”

  The conversation was not going as Lizbet liked. “Margrave!” she said. “I have traveled over the Montagnes.”

  “Eh?”

  “I have met the Pope of Storms—”

  Hengest Wolftrow’s mouth was an empty cavern.

  “—and I have taken from his library a book. A book you have been seeking.”

  “Silence! Say no more now.” Wolftrow swung his arm around the room. “The rest of you, leave. Leave!”

  Confused, the prelates and officers babbled complaints and milled about, but Wolftrow would hear none of it. Pushing them and shoving with a sudden energy that Lizbet would not have thought him capable of, he herded them before him, forced them through the exit, and slammed the doors behind them. “The book,” he said, panting, leaning his back against the closed doors. “You have it? Give it to me, now.”

  This was the difficult part. Because exchanging the Margrave’s book for her father’s freedom had all been Lizbet’s idea to begin with. She had not actually made a deal with the Margrave.

  But she had bargained with witches. Could she bargain with the Margrave?

  With trembling hands, Wolftrow fumbled among the vials and caskets on his desk. He popped two of the white pills of Spes into his mouth, and a stick dipped into a jar of tarry black Ira. With a tiny silver spoon, like a doll’s spoon, he placed on his tongue a single drop of clear liquid. Lizbet shivered as she got a whiff of its scent: Timor. Fear.

  “In return for getting your soul book back, I’d like you to free my father,” Lizbet said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “I did a good deed for you, and in return, I’d like you to do a good deed for me.”

  Wolftrow’s face, no longer pale, was flushed with blood. He seemed inches taller than he had been moments ago. “I do not dicker like a common tradesman,” he said. “You are lowborn, and a child, sprung from a family of criminals.” Lizbet flushed. “How dare you make demands on me?” Wolftrow said. His voice rumbled with the assurance of a man accustomed to having his will done without question. “If you have something of mine, yield it to me now, and receive such mercy as I see fit to bestow.”

  Lizbet hesitated, but Strix said curtly, “No deal, no book. Lizbet, let’s go. Maybe Hengest will be more interested tomorrow. Or maybe we could sell the book and bribe your father’s gaoler with the gold.” She put her hand to the doorknob.

  With a curse, Wolftrow seized Strix. His immense hand nearly fit around Strix’s waist. Ignoring her struggles and yells, he bore her to the window in a few huge strides, threw it open, and defenestrated Strix.

  Lizbet cried in terror. She rushed to the window and leaned out.

  But she didn’t see what she had feared: Strix’s broken body on the ground, six stories below. Instead, Strix had twisted herself up so that one hand grasped an ankle, and the other arm and leg were entwined together, with the effect that as she fell, her free limbs whirled rapidly about her trunk.

  Like a winged maple seed, Strix spun slowly to the ground.

  She landed lightly on one foot and untangled herself. She looked up and waved.

  “I thought you didn’t know how to fly,” Lizbet yelled.

  “That wasn’t flying, that was falling,” Strix yelled back.

  Lizbet turned on Wolftrow. “You threw my friend out the window!”

  “No one has the right to hate witches more than I,” Wolftrow said. “No one has suffered more at their hands.”

  “But Strix is a good witch! Well, sort of good, that is. In her own way. Or, actually, not good, but also not evil. Or, sort of good, and sort of evil, but mostly stuff that I can’t figure out whether it’s good or evil . . .” Strix was too much trouble to explain to a stranger. “But you didn’t have to throw her out the window!”

  Wolftrow stood in front of Lizbet, looking down at her. He grasped her shoulders with both hands and, steadying himself on her as if she were a cane or a crutch, slowly lowered himself to kneel on one knee. It was like a mountain lying down.

&n
bsp; Lizbet stared into his eyes. “You cannot imagine,” he said, “what it is like to have one’s soul torn from one’s flesh.”

  “Actually, I sort of can,” Lizbet said. “It nearly happened to me. Strix saved me.”

  “A witch saved you . . . ?”

  “She lost her arm for me. Then she lost her life. But I put her together again.”

  “You claim you crossed the Montagnes du Monde,” Wolftrow said. “And you burgled the lair of the Pope of Storms? And returned? Impossible.” He shook his head. “But—the Pope of Storms. How do you know that name? No one but myself has heard that name, on this side of the Montagnes.”

  “We did cross the Montagnes, like I said,” Lizbet insisted. “Strix and me. We followed the road that you built.”

  “The road. Yes! Yes, we did build a road. It was a terrible ordeal. Tens of thousands died.” To Lizbet’s astonishment, Wolftrow’s eyes brightened. Shimmering tears welled up, but did not fall. “So you found our path. And you followed it through the Montagnes?” His grip on her shoulders tightened. “Tell me more. Tell me what happened.”

  Lizbet told her story, leaving out Fudge for the moment. When she was done, Wolftrow said, “None but I knew of these things. Can it be true? You have been over the Montagnes. You have walked in my footsteps. In the goblin village. In the sewers. In the halls of the Pope of Storms. A child! A girl. Astonishing. To succeed where all before you have failed. You have heart. You have courage. You are a heroic girl indeed, Lizbet Lenz.”

  No one had ever called Lizbet “heroic” before. In fact, very few nice things had been said about her by anyone since the awful day her father was imprisoned. Her life had been one fight after another.

  She blushed. To hear such a compliment from the Margrave was overwhelming. “Thank you,” she said. “Strix helped. A lot.”

  “‘Strix’? An evil name. The witch-child?”

  Lizbet nodded. “She’s the one you threw out the window.”

  “You have magic to control her, then? To bend her infernal nature to your will?”

  “I wouldn’t call her nature infernal, exactly,” Lizbet said. “Although she can be frustrating, at times. And I didn’t control her with magic. I taught her how to be friends.”

  “How Machiavellian of you. Lizbet—”

  “‘Machia—’ What?”

  “—Lizbet, you are a remarkable young woman. A promising young woman.”

  The door creaked open a few inches. The ghostly form of Strix slipped through. This time she had knit herself into the shadows. She waved at Lizbet and stuck out her tongue. Lizbet resisted the urge to wave back. A soldier opened the door wider and peered around, before shaking his head and closing the door again.

  “So the remnant of my army still waits for me, over the Montagnes?” Wolftrow said. “They are still faithful. I am moved.”

  Lizbet frowned. “They thought you would come back for them. You told them you were going back over the Montagnes for help.”

  “I went in the other direction,” Wolftrow said. “I went seeking magic. Magic enough to remake the world. We didn’t cross the Montagnes to retreat in despair. The tens of thousands who died in the mountains didn’t die for that. We crossed to make the two worlds one.

  “Child, do you know where the Montagnes came from? Do you know why the world on the other side is all magic and witches and goblins?” Lizbet shook her head. “Few know this. Long ago, a thousand years and more, a dark planet filled with magic came hurtling from the outer voids, beyond the battlements of Heaven. It smashed through Heaven itself. It smashed through the crystalline spheres that hold the heavenly bodies in place as they rotate around the Earth. It passed through the sphere of fixed stars, and the spheres of Saturn, and Jove, and Mars, and the Sun, and crashed into the Earth itself.

  “Our globe is now a world of two halves. That terrible collision raised the peaks of the Montagnes du Monde. When we cross the Montagnes, we cross into another world.”

  “The hole in the sky!” Lizbet exclaimed. “At the top of the Montagnes, I saw a hole in the sky.”

  “That is where the dark planet burst through the sphere of the Moon,” Wolftrow said.

  “The earth witches didn’t know our side of the world even existed,” Lizbet said, “even though they said they explored the whole world, digging underground. But they must have done it before their world crashed into ours.”

  “I crossed the Montagnes to subdue that dark planet and bring it under human rule and God’s law,” Wolftrow said. He gripped Lizbet’s shoulders more fiercely. His gaze was hypnotic. His voice was filled with restless energy. “Lizbet, I need your help in this task. If you have the book that holds my soul, give it to me now.”

  “My father . . .”

  “I will do the right thing by your father. Do you have my book, or is this all a ruse?”

  “I have it.”

  Wolftrow released Lizbet’s shoulders. He rose. His gaze locked with hers. “Then I command you, yield it to me now!”

  Margrave Wolftrow’s command was not the same as Mrs. Woodcot’s. It was just a word. It had no more force than Lizbet chose to give it.

  But Lizbet had no rebellion in her soul. The Great Chain of Being was as real to Lizbet as the sun and the sky: a magnificent, overarching truth that sustained the world. If the Margrave gave an order, Lizbet must obey.

  “Your book is here,” she said. “Fudge?” She looked around. “Fudge, where are you?”

  While Lizbet and Wolftrow were talking, Fudge had seated himself in a corner with his unabridged dictionary, happily snuffling in line after line. “‘Abat-jour,’” he said happily. “‘Noun. A device designed to reflect light from a window downward. Also: a skylight.’” Strix, still knit into the shadows, flipped the dictionary cover closed and shoved Fudge toward the Margrave.

  “That’s not a book,” Wolftrow said. His lip curled. “That’s vermin.”

  Fudge put his hands on his roly-poly hips and tilted his neckless head back to survey the Margrave, towering above him. “I may be vermin, but I’m educated vermin,” he said.

  “This is Fudge,” Lizbet said. “He reads books. Well, not ‘reads,’ exactly. More like ‘sniffles.’ He sniffled up the book of your soul. It’s inside him, now.”

  Wolftrow stared down at Fudge with both fury and fear. His breaths came heavily.

  Lizbet thought she’d better hurry. “He can write it out for you, in a new book,” she said quickly. “All we need is blank paper and a pen.” She searched the room. There was a pen and inkwell and a few sheets of stationary on the table where the Margrave had been sitting, among his vials and caskets. She lifted Fudge up, grunting with the effort, and plopped him down in the Margrave’s chair.

  Fudge’s wet snout didn’t even come to the tabletop. Fetching the unabridged dictionary, Lizbet shoved it under Fudge. That was better. “Fudge,” she said, “can you do it?” She dipped the pen in the inkwell and pushed a sheet of stationary toward him. “Can you write out some of the Margrave’s soul book?”

  She held her breath. Fudge had never actually done this, although he said he could.

  Fudge’s pen poised over the paper. He stared upward for a moment and pursed his fleshy lips. Then he put pen to paper and began to write.

  Wolftrow hovered over him. His eyes were wide his mouth gaped open. As soon as Fudge finished the first page, Wolftrow snatched it and held it up, his eyes jerking back and forth over the scrawls. “It’s here,” he breathed. “I’m here. By God. This is me. This is how I was. This is how I am. Old Margaret. Helmuth—how I feared him! Knuth-am-strand. The Gymnasium. Those terrible nights in Marberg forest . . .” He muttered on, a rush of names and events. Lizbet couldn’t make sense of them, but to the Margrave they were like a tonic. The Spes and Ira and Timor had lent him the momentary illusion of humanity. But as he read the words Fudge scribbled down,
Wolftrow became a man in truth. No longer a shock of dark clothes on a stick, but a man of strength and vigor, powerful shoulders, deep chest, incisive gaze. A man who, after years of wandering among shadows, had finally rediscovered who he was, and believed again that he had a mission in the world.

  Wolftrow finished the first page and threw it down. He hungrily read the second, but when he picked up the third—

  “It’s blank,” he said, flipping it over and over. He stared at Fudge. He tilted his head and leaned closer. “What’s this?” A black scrawl of letters was stuck to Fudge’s nostril. Wolftrow reached for it, but Fudge gave a snort, and the line of copy vanished up his nose.

  Wolftrow’s face went livid. He drew his palm back to strike Fudge. Fudge cowered.

  “No!” Lizbet pleaded. “Don’t! He can’t help it.”

  “It’s so delicious!” Fudge said.

  “Don’t hit him,” Lizbet said. Wolftrow, still shaking, hesitated. “Help him,” Lizbet said urgently. “He wants to be good, but he can’t stop himself.”

  After a bit of experimentation, they decided to dispense with tying Fudge to the chair. Instead, Wolftrow called in one of the munifexes, who sat by Fudge’s side as he wrote, rapping Fudge on the nose when the goblin’s will weakened and his snuffly nostrils dipped toward the paper.

  Papers black with scribble accumulated in a pile. Wolftrow pored over them greedily.

  “I told him that if he wrote out your book,” Lizbet said hopefully, “you might let him snuffle up some of your library?”

  “All of it,” Wolftrow said. “Every last word of it he may annihilate. All other books are worthless to me, now that I have the one I need.”

  “And my father?”

  Wolftrow put down the papers. He looked her in the eye. His voice was pained. “Child, I want to release your father, but I cannot. I cannot even go to the Houses of Correction to give the order. You’ve seen how I am a prisoner in my own palace. The streets are ruled by devils. To venture out is to be at their mercy. My city is in the hands of an enemy. You said”—his voice took on a hopeful note—“you said to the guards that you could solve the problem of the devils.”