by Kater Cheek
“Sure he did. But Monica didn’t get the publicity he did. Then again, Monica got all the money and he didn’t get a dime, so who’s to say it wasn’t fair in the end?”
“This is Monica Delcourt you’re talking about, right?”
John nodded and set the pen down on the desk. “She was a brilliant fundraiser. The way she saw it, she ran the whole coven, and he was just the figurehead. Guess she got tired of not being boss. Now she runs that school, or whatever she calls it.”
“Inner Sight.”
He nodded and leaned back in his chair. “She called it a coven at first, but it was like one of those churches that has something going on every day of the week except Sunday.
“After a while she found out it was easier to make money teaching mage-craft if you didn’t bother converting your students. That was the other thing they argued about. Fred believed teaching people mage-craft was teaching people to serve the Lord and Lady, and that it was wrong to charge money for it.
“Her take was that if you’re providing a service you deserve to be paid. That was the reason they gave for splitting up. Those who thought you shouldn’t teach witchcraft for free went with Monica. Those who thought teaching witchcraft should be a labor of love stayed with Fred.”
“And who did you choose to side with?”
John evaded my question without even a blink. “They were both wrong, as it turned out. Fred didn’t have time to teach people, and most of those who knew witchcraft well enough to teach it stayed with Monica, or left to start their own groups.
“After Monica left, Sacred Grove didn’t have the organization it needed to keep going. Fred quit as High Priest and decided to run for mayor. That was about a year after the schism, and his popularity was waning, so his run wasn’t successful. He left after that. Moved back east somewhere.”
The door opened and a woman entered. She held a manila folder full of papers in the crook of her arm, and in her hands she balanced steaming paper cups of coffee. Her salt-and-pepper hair was cut short except for one thin braid in the back with beads on the end, and she wore a multicolored sweater and a necklace made of carved stone animals.
“Here’s your coffee, John.”
“Thanks Magda.” He took the cup and sipped it before setting it on the desk. Then he picked up his pen and started to flip it around his finger. “We were just talking about Frederick Edgerson. Care to add anything?”
She looked at me. “Frederick Edgerson? Are you writing a paper about him?” She put her coffee down on the other equally cluttered desk.
“No, I just want to know what kind of a person he was.”
“He was a good person.” She moved some books over, and set them down hard enough to make the coffee spill a little. “And no matter what you think, he didn’t deserve a lick of what that harlot did to him.”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” John quoted, with a shake of his antlered head.
“Which harlot would this be?”
John opened his mouth to answer, but Magda cut him off. “Monica Delcourt.”
“Monica Delcourt? She slept with my uncle?”
“Uncle? You never said he was your uncle.” The pen flipped out of his hand, landing in a cup on the desk.
“Yeah, that’s why I want to know about him. So, they were hooking up?”
John picked up his chair and moved it so he faced me and Magda in a triangle. “See, it’s like this. Frederick and Monica were lovers. It’s not unusual for the High Priest and High Priestess of a coven to be sexually involved, sometimes even married. It’s good for the coven, unless they divorce.”
“They never married, right?” I asked. “Did anyone wonder why?”
John waved a hand. “We were all kind of hippies anyway, so no one bothered asking.”
“They had been handfasted,” Magda said. “That’s why they never married.”
“Handfasted?”
“It’s a Pagan custom, an engagement that lasts a year and a day, something like a trial marriage. The custom is, if you decide to break the binding before the year and a day are up, you are never permitted to handfast or marry that person again.”
“And Uncle Fred and Monica broke the handfast.”
“They couldn’t stand living together. It was an amicable break up, at first anyway. Then Frederick’s grandmother died and he inherited her estate. It wasn’t much, just some property back east and a collection of jewelry, but Monica wanted her hands on it. One of the things she was most interested in was a small jewel from India which had been a betrothal gift to Frederick’s great grandmother.
“The story was, it had magical powers, but could only be used by a woman. Monica thought it should go to her, and she told Frederick she wanted it. He refused to give it to her, said it belonged in his family, and he would give it to his daughter one day. She asked, ‘what daughter?’ And he said the daughter that was in Hazel’s womb.”
“She didn’t know about Hazel,” Magda interrupted again. “Fred and Hazel had been handfasted for two months, and no one told Monica.”
John nodded. “That’s when Monica cursed them.”
“How did she curse him?”
Magda folded her arms, a frown scarring her face. “She told him three times that he would have no daughter. Hazel miscarried, and Fred never had a child.”
“Is that why he left Seabingen? To try to get away from the curse?”
Magda nodded. “She made him leave. She destroyed him. She ruined his coven, she ruined his political ambitions, she ruined his marriage, and then she ran him out of town.”
John shook his head. “I wouldn’t say ruined.”
“You wouldn’t say ruined? I was there! You were there!” Magda slammed her palm on the table. “Do you remember the lies she spread about him?”
“What was this?” I shut the door for privacy.
Magda’s brow furrowed. “She started a smear campaign against him. She told the newspapers lies about money laundering, illegal drugs, sex with minors, anything that would ruin his public image.
“Fred’s public image was everything to him. He spent his life trying to prove Pagans were people too, and Monica shredded it for vengeance.
“No one wanted to be associated with him once Monica started going. His political career didn’t stand a chance, especially when she started donating money to his opponents, money he had helped raise. That was what made him leave.”
“No.” John shook his head. His hands were clasped in front of him, elbows resting on his knees. “He left because he was associated with Paganism, and he couldn’t bear to see his life’s work ruined. What really tore him apart was knowing the name Fredrick Edgerson was harming the Pagan community of Seabingen.
“She stopped the attacks after he left, but there are still far too many people in town who associate his name with the six months of scandal and not the twenty years of selfless devotion.”
Magda finally picked up her coffee for a drink. There was a milky brown ring around its base from all her desk-pounding outbursts.
“I’m changing that, you know,” John said, more to Magda than me. “The memorial service was the first part of it. We’re raising money for a monument in his name.”
“Oh, like an obelisk is going to make up for abandoning him when he needed friends the most?”
“It’s one thing to say that I shouldn’t have abandoned him, but really, Magda, what was I supposed to do? I didn’t have tenure yet. Was I supposed to throw away my career in a futile effort to support Fred’s political aims?”
“It’s the principle of the thing!” Magda pounded the table again, nearly knocking her cup off onto the floor.
John stood up, glaring down at Magda as if he wanted to butt her with his horns. “Someone had to be here to fix things after he left. Did you ever think of that? Someone who had no association with him.
“Just because he married your friend doesn’t mean that he was flawless. He made a mistake, not a huge one, but a
mistake, and it jeopardized all he had worked for.
“I cared more about continuing his life’s work than about protecting his feelings, and you know what? He thanked me for it. Even though everyone called me a coward for not defending him, I defended Paganism by separating myself from the scandal.”
Magda stood and pointed a finger at him, but just as she opened her mouth, she was interrupted by the rushing sound of students in the hallways. “You win for now. I’m late. I’ve got a class to teach.” She gathered up a stack of books and her manila folder in her arms and raced for the door.
John opened the door for her and shut it after she ran down the hall. “Magda likes to be dramatic, but really Fred and I were good friends. I went to visit him a few times in Maine, though he never dared visit me here. I saw him just before he died. He congratulated me on being voted Avatar.”
“You’re an Avatar too? Is that why you have …”
John smiled. He had tricked me into revealing that I could see his antlers. “You have the bindi. Monica would love to know where it is now. I’m certain she still wants it.”
“Maybe enough to kill for it,” I pointed out, leaning back in the chair.
He didn’t deny it.
“You claim that you and my uncle were friends. Are you going to keep this secret?” Or are you going to look out for number one, just like you did thirty years ago?
“You can’t be a Pagan for thirty years without learning a thing or two about discretion,” he said. “I’m still his friend, and I won’t betray his niece.”
“Does he have any other friends in town still?”
“One, that I’m sure of. Fred’s teacher. Her name is Virginia Molnar.” He wrote down an address and handed it to me.
“Thank you.” The slip of paper had an address in Ipswich. I stuffed it in my pocket.
“It was my pleasure.” He looked at his watch and started to gather his books and notes. “I have a class to teach soon too, if you’ll excuse me?”
I nodded and opened the door.
“Miss Edgerson?”
I turned, though it wasn’t my name.
“Be careful to whom you show the bindi. Monica wasn’t the only one who coveted that jewel.”
Chapter Eleven
Elaina was sitting on a sofa, next to a huge stack of boxes, when I pulled up in front of the dorm. She held a lamp in one hand, a suitcase in the other.
She owned a sofa?
“This everything?” I asked sarcastically.
“This is all I have from the dorm room. My mom’s giving me a spare bed and my old dresser, but she’s going to bring it by later. And what’s that on your hands?”
“Henna.” I grabbed a box and started loading the van before the traffic cops accused me of parking without a student permit. Parking was supposedly free before nine a.m. on a Saturday but some of those meter maids had a mean streak. My stuff was already in the back of the van, all two duffel bags full, but there was enough room when we stacked her junk carefully.
Elaina insisted on stopping to buy sushi. I waited in the parking lot, with the engine running, for what felt like an hour. After she ran back to the car with a brown bag clutched in her hand, we drove north to our new home.
The place Elaina had found for us was in northwest Seabingen, almost in Northridge, not far from where Fenwick lived. Ironically, it was cheaper than my apartment in the warehouse district, since we would be sharing.
Compared to the warehouse district this area seemed like Mayberry. It was working class, with young mothers chatting on their porches, bikes on the lawns, and kids playing Frisbee in the street. The streets were shaded by
enormous trees, the asphalt heaving and cracked by their roots.
Our new apartment was the basement of a two-story house. The upper floors were rented to a family, proud owners of the tricycle and plastic slide on the tiny lawn. Between the house and the street was a weedy easement bisected by a ditch. A wide cement slab served as a bridge. Across the bridge, a path led to the side of the house, and our ground level entrance. The house had been built before garages were common, so we had to park on the street.
The easement was the responsibility of the city, which meant that in this neighborhood it seldom got mowed or pruned. In some places the blackberries grew tall and lush enough to entice the neighborhood children to gather fruit, despite their parents’ warnings to stay away from the ditch, but in front of our house the easement had only tall grass and low bushes restricting the view, but not access, to whatever lurked in the dark watery tunnel below.
“Wait here in the van for a few minutes, okay? There’s something I need to do before we go in.” Elaina had removed a tiny Tupperware container from her purse and was smearing her face with green oil. She removed her shoes and socks, stuffed her socks neatly in her shoes and rolled up her pant legs.
Elaina got out of the van and walked to the edge of the ditch. She took a glassine baggie out of her pocket and put a pinch of what appeared to be rock salt in her mouth. After this, she began making small gestures with her fingers and chanting something softly. By the time I got out of the van and slammed the door, Elaina had climbed down into the ditch.
I followed her and peered over the edge. The ditch was about five feet deep and four feet across, with rusty handholds leading down the side, and velvety moss where the sun hit. There hadn’t been much rain that summer, so the ditch only had a shallow stream at the bottom. Chirping frogs and the rush of water echoed in the almost-tunnel under the cement bridge.
Suddenly a pair of webbed hands pulled me completely over the edge. Luck made me fall on my back instead of my head, but the cold water and mud soaked my hair and jacket.
“A fair treat has come to my home! Hee hee! Tasty girl!” The wet voice gloated as whatever-it-was tried to push my face under the water.
I twisted out of its grasp and counter-grabbed its muscled arm. My hand slipped off the slick wet skin, and as it came into the light, I got a good look at the rest of it. The creature looked half-human, half-frog, with webbed feet and hands, huge bulging eyes, and a wet, slightly concave head fringed with greenish skin.
“You want a piece of me?” I snarled. “Come and get it, Froggy.”
“Stop!” Elaina shouted. “Stop it, both of you. This isn’t what I wanted. We came to make a deal with you.” She shook the bag of sushi like a talisman in front of her.
Both the swampy creature and I looked at her as if she was crazy, but the froggy thing recovered first. “Treats you bring? Girl flesh tastes good. I will drown her, and eat tonight!” The frogman stepped toward me, but Elaina stopped it before I could kick it in the head.
“No, she’s with me. Here. Take this. I brought treats for you as part of the deal.” Elaina reached in the bag for the plastic box of sushi, and offered it to the frogman.
The frog thing sniffed, then tore the package open and gobbled the sushi greedily. “Hee hee! Treats you bring! Good treats! Such good delight! Friends! Tell me friend, what is your wish?”
“You must protect us from people who try to cross your stream. Not our friends, just those who mean to harm us.”
“Yesss. No one will hurt my friends. I will drown them. Bad ones sleep in the water.” The frog thing devoured the last of the sushi rolls and let the plastic container float away in the current.
“I want you to seal the oath then,” Elaina said, as she spat into the water. The frogman spat as well, and I followed along. Elaina nodded that we were done, and I skinned my knee in my hurry to get out of the drainage ditch.
“Bring me treats and I kill the bad ones! Treats you bring!” The raspy voice followed us to the van.
“I will, and remember your promise!” Elaina called back.
“What the hell was that thing?” I whispered, shaking and dripping wet.
“It’s a kappa, and you weren’t supposed to see it.” Elaina fished a towel from one of her boxes and handed it to me to dry off.
“How could I not see
it? That thing attacked me!” I whispered loudly.
“The only reason I could see it is because I cast a spell. That’s what the oil and salt were for.” Elaina picked up a box and began to walk to the house, casually, as though there weren’t a monster lurking in the ditch.
“You knew it was there?” I picked up a box and followed her, hesitating at the bridge, then sprinting towards the door.
Elaina put down the box she carried and got out the keys. “Of course I did. That’s why I picked this place. For protection. How can you see it?” she asked.
“I have the sight,” I lied. “And how did you find a place with a kappa?” Were there strange monsters lurking all around the city and I just hadn’t seen them?
“My mom helped me. She wanted me to find a place with a guardian. She worries about me living on my own. She thinks there’s a mugger or rapist around every corner. I found an apartment that had a rusalka living in the river near it, but it wanted a living baby to seal the oath, and I wasn’t willing to pay that price.”
“What’s a rusalka?” Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than the frog thing.
“It’s the spirit of a woman who lost her baby. They wait by the rivers and lakes looking for people to join them in their watery grave.”
“What’d she want with a baby?”
“I don’t know, and frankly, I didn’t want to ask. Kappas are just as good at drowning trespassers as rusalka are, and their loyalty is cheaper. I got kappa-maki sushi because the legends say they like cucumbers, and that kind of roll has cucumbers in it.”
“Whoever heard of a monster that likes sushi?”
“It’s a Japanese monster.”
“If it’s Japanese, why is it here?”
She tsked, like I had said something dumb. “They immigrated, same as everyone.”
Elaina opened the door into a small landing with steps leading into the basement apartment. To the left was the living area, to the right the dining area, behind it lay the kitchen, and beyond that two doors leading to bedrooms. The cheap gray carpet had a faint odor of mildew, and not much light came in through the windows, because of dust and weeds in the light well. It was still better than my old apartment.
