An Ignorant Witch

by E M Graham

  “Where is he?”

  “Umm,” she said. “Well, he doesn’t say. Typical Benjy!”

  She flicked through her phone. “But, the weird thing is, he’s not talking like Benjy. These new friends must be a big influence on him.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Just read.” She handed me the phone with his text open.

  These fine ladies and handsome gents request you to join me in their celebration...

  I stared at the words. Handsome gents? Request? This didn’t sound like the Benjy I knew. He tended to communicate in grunts and one syllable words only. I handed the phone back to her with a sinking feeling in my heart. This smelled bad.

  “But they must be good for him, right?” She chattered on, happy for her brother and with all memories of the nightly hauntings forgotten for the moment. “And hey – you can still see the walrus, he’s parked himself on the rocks across Freshwater Bay. Why don’t we take a walk up by Fort Amherst and up the path, and you bring your binoculars. You’ll have a great view of him!”

  “I hate going up there,” I said. It wasn’t just the climb straight up the hill. I’ve already said, there’s a lot of creepy things up on those hills, even though the east end of it over by the ocean, down Fort Amherst way, that’s not so bad.

  “Oh, come on,” she said, stretching out the words. “I really, really want to do this.”

  “Why?”

  “I just do,” she said. “I haven’t been up the hill all summer, what with the extra classes and labs I was taking. I just have the urge, that’s all. We’ll ride our bikes over to the path. It won’t take any time at all.”

  I stopped to think. I hated that hill, but if she just wanted to go to the top, down at the end over the water, that might be alright. As long as I stayed in sight of the ocean, I found, I could handle the stink. I’d read that just as fairies hated iron, they also couldn’t stand to be near salt water. Made sense when you thought about it, for nurses use saline to cleanse wounds. Fairies didn’t like getting cleaned up.

  “Alright,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  It didn’t take us more than fifteen minutes to whiz down Old Topsail Road and past her house and down the three kilometers to the lighthouse. For a skinny girl, Alice could really go when she wanted.

  We parked the bikes next to the breakwater, locking them on to the chain link fence, then turned up the path. She jumped up that route like a mountain goat, leaving me to scramble along below her, stopping every so often to admire the view (i.e. catch my breath). When I finally reached the top, I found her on the edge of a rock face, arms wide open to the ocean, breathing deeply of the glorious salt air.

  “Don’t you just love it up here?” She paused, then looked over to me. “No, you don’t, do you? You never did like it here. Why is that, anyway?”

  “Maybe,” I said, finding a big boulder to sit on, still breathing heavily. “Maybe I hate the friggin’ climb.”

  “Yeah? I think it’s something else.” She was laughing. “I think you’re scared of the fairies!”

  I stopped breathing for a moment. Was she nuts? If any Newfoundlander knew one thing about being in the wilderness, that was to not mention the fae. You were as good as inviting them to take you by saying their name out loud. Even in all the folklore books I’d read, they all stressed that.

  “Shut up, Alice.”

  “Fairies, fairies, Dara’s afraid of the fairies!”

  She laughed again and skipped along a rabbit path which lead to Freshwater Bay on the other side of the hill. “Come on, get the binoculars out! Let’s see where that walrus is.”

  I looked around nervously then followed her.

  We sat near the cliff’s edge, our feet almost dangling over the breakers and boulders far, far below. It sounds more dangerous than it was, honestly. There were lots of little bushes and scrubby trees to hang on to if you thought you were going to fall. But it was a clear day and the rocks were dry, so it really was perfectly safe.

  She concentrated on focusing across the water to the next headland, and then down at the base near the waves where she’d seen the walrus. She searched and searched, but was coming up with nothing.

  “He’s gone,” she said.

  “Maybe he moved further into the bay for shelter?” Despite the fine weather, the waves were rocking pretty high. She turned to the right, intent on inspecting every inch of the coast line.

  “Nope. Nope,” Alice chanted after looking at every little cove and nook and cranny. Then she stood up, the better to examine the shore of the cliff we were sitting on.

  “Careful,” I said.

  “It’s no good,” she said. “He’s probably buggered off back to Greenland. Too bad – you might never have another chance to see a walrus here again.”

  She still had the binoculars up to her eyes as she swept back towards where we were sitting.

  “Oh, my, God.”

  “Do you see him?” By now I was leaning back against the sun-warmed rock, enjoying the heat coming off it, and was reluctant to move.

  “No, but... I see something else.”

  I opened an eye. Her attention was caught on something, but she was focused inland. Alice paused and looked up from the binoculars, fixing the location of whatever she’d seen.

  “Come on.” Her voice was terse, and she leapt off the rock headlong into the bushes, not even searching for a path.

  No way I was going to do that, thank you very much. Up here, and on any barrens, it only made sense to stick with the tried and true trails or a person might disappear into a boghole or something equally dangerous. Alice was well aware of the hazards, yet she hared off through the wilderness as if the hounds of hell were on her tail.

  I tried to keep her in sight as I ran along the ocean side path. It wasn’t hard, because I could hear her floundering through the low trees and could catch glimpses of her blue vest.

  Looking up past her, I finally saw what she was headed for. Just beneath a large lichen covered boulder silhouetted against the blue sky on the next hillock over, nestled quietly among the golden dry grass there sat a glint of red. Red, the color of blood. Or the color of a prized pail, the kind that Alice’s Uncle Jerry had brought back from Alberta all those years ago. The Hoskins’s family berry bucket.

  This stunk, and I don’t mean metaphorically.

  6

  IS IT YOURS?” I asked this hoping it wasn’t, but knowing the answer would be positive.

  She nodded.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Benjy would never, never frig off and just leave the bucket here for anyone to take. It’s more than his life is worth.”

  She realized what she’d said and whimpered, clutching her mouth as if to take the words back.

  “Alice, is this near where your family berry patch is?”

  “Sort of,” she said as she surreptitiously glanced to the right, down the hill towards the city. “But I didn’t tell you that, okay?”

  “No problem.” I loved eating berries but hated picking them, so the Hoskins’s family secret was perfectly safe with me.

  “But I got a text from him!”

  “You did,” I agreed. “So he must be alive... somewhere.”

  Things were beginning to click with me. Benjy’s strange description of his new friends in words he would never use in a million years, not even if he went back and finished high school. The red plastic bucket left forgotten to the elements on this hillside. The smell which permeated the whole place and overcame the freshness of the salt air from the ocean not five hundred meters away.

  Could fairies live in such close proximity to salt water? Looked like they could. This made me wonder what else the folklore books had gotten wrong. I needed to warn Alice, but she was already exploring the cleft in the rocks below our feet, the space unseen between the boulders till we climbed right on top of it.

  “Maybe he fell down this hole,” she said, her tone feverish. “Maybe he’s lying down there with a bro
ken leg and he’s... he’s delirious from lack of water or food, that’s why he sent that weird text.”

  “Wait, don’t go there...” Jesus, did she not have any sense at all? She was supposed to be the smart one.

  Alice had already disappeared into the rock.

  “Oh my God, Dara.” I heard her voice faintly as if from a long distance away. “Come down here. It’s absolutely frigging amazing.”

  I had to get her out of there before it was too late. If she saw Benjy and the fairy folk with her human eyes, she might be lost forever, but it meant I had to go into Alt mode in order to be safe, to be able to see through their enchantments. I took a deep breath and plunged after her.

  And oh – it was beautiful. The crevice between the boulders opened up into a large space, as large as a ballroom there beneath the granite of the hill.

  It was bright as sunlight down there from their fairy lights strung up all over the walls. And these weren’t the roughhewn rock walls you might expect in an underground cavern, no, these walls were made of finely shaped stone and wood. The scene before us was a grand celebration, the musicians playing off in the corner and the fine ladies and handsome gents all dancing in the center, their gorgeous gowns competing only with the beauty of the elegant folk.

  Tables laden with food lay off to one side, all manner of old-fashioned food like jelly trifles and great slabs of roast beasts. The mead was flowing, and gentle laughter tinkled over the mesmerizing music. A great chest of gold sat in one corner, overflowing with coins and jewellery, glinting in the soft light.

  And off to the other side – oh dear God. I hoped Alice couldn’t see around that corner, to the large four poster beds where the naked beautiful fairies were taking their pleasure with no shame, for all their world to see. That might be Benjy there, lying amidst the bodies, writhing in ecstasy and getting a lot more action than he ever did in the town below.

  I had to turn it all off and tune into Alt, and quickly. When I opened my eyes again, I took a moment to let them adjust to the new gloom that lay before me, lit only by a few burning pitch torches. Where I had seen tables overflowing with delicious foods, now sat cauldrons bubbling over with the greasy soups of roadkill and weeds that the fae had scavenged, too lazy to hunt for themselves.

  The golden chest was now of moldy wood, yet the gold within still glittered from the light of the rough torches which hissed as moisture dripped from the ceiling. Lichen grew up the damp walls.

  Where musicians had played, there were only ancient beings slaving at the rock, quarrying with picks, crying with despair. They may have been human beings once, but too much time in the land of fae soon broke down any aspect of humanity, turning them into worse than mute animals, tortured as they were.

  The fine folk themselves were revealed for what they really were, horrid little goblin-like creatures, filthy and matted as they nastily poked and teased their slaves, and bade them carry out their most depraved instructions. And where the fine beds with their billowing silk hangings had been were rough straw mattresses, filthy with excrement and worse.

  Benjy lay among them tied and tortured and screaming in pain, though he believed the hurt he felt was pleasure. That was the abominable way of the fae, they could totally manipulate and mess with how humans perceived the world when under their spells. Jesus, what a sight.

  “There’s B...” Alice began, but I shoved my hand over her mouth, and with my other hand dragged her roughly back through the crevice we’d come though. If the fae knew we’d invaded their hall, we’d both be goners. She fought me the whole way.

  Outside, I paused a moment to sit on her chest, preventing her from escaping back down the fairy hole and to her doom. I kept my hand over her mouth while I explained what was what.

  “All that you saw down there was a lie,” I hissed. “It is not pretty, they have enslaved poor souls and used them horribly. We need to get away, and quietly. Believe me on this one, I know what I’m talking about. Got it?”

  Her eyes were huge as she nodded. God bless her, she was smart, after all.

  I removed my hand and helped her up, and led her back on the long path, over to the Freshwater Bay cliffs, then skirting the ocean till we reached the safety of the lighthouse at the bottom. There’s no way I was going to cut through the bush, even if it was the land of Nan Hoskins.

  We climbed through the hole on the wire fence the government had erected, the one to prevent people from getting too close to the crumbling concrete of the World War II bunkers. It was a dangerous place, and not just physically – yet as it was still bright daylight I knew it was safe enough from the trolls who dwelt in those mossy damp places. I just needed to get as close to the clean salt ocean as I could after the experience up the hill.

  “I saw Benjy,” Alice finally said, her back against the lichen covered concrete. “He was... hmm, enjoying himself.”

  “You think you saw him,” I corrected her. “Let me tell you, I could see what they were really doing, and it was very painful.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “How are we going to help him?”

  “I’m not going back down there,” I told her.

  She said nothing, but a teardrop fell onto the rock by my hand. A moment later, it was joined by a second one.

  “Jesus, Alice, you got to be kidding me?”

  “I don’t know anyone else who can help, and we have to get him out of there.”

  Benjy. Handsome Benjy, recipient of my first crush. Shithead Benjy, petty criminal and seller of drugs to kids. Addiction-addled Benjamin Hoskins, beloved brother of my best, my only human, friend. Yes, even his life was worth saving from the fairies, but it wasn’t a job I felt able to do myself.

  I had no choice. Much as I hated the thought, I really was going to have to ask Dad for help.

  WHY DIDN’T I PHONE Hugh? He had offered his assistance, after all, and I knew he meant it even though he seemed so pissed at me when he walked away.

  I didn’t contact him because, despite his big words and his claim to education and his assured manner, he was still a half-blood, no better than me.

  This situation called for a real witch, one with the power of mature years and the full blood of the Kin.

  I timed my visit to arrive before his Sunday dinner with my siblings. Dad was a stickler for tradition and once a week they made a habit of having the family meal, with him presiding over the long table and the four kids, probably with their respective boyfriends or girlfriends these days, and that horrible witch Cate at the other end of the table.

  She was such a pretentious bag.

  How do I know so much about them? Well, Dad used to love me, and I was actually a part of his life, back in the early years.

  His was an arranged marriage between powerful houses, as many of the marriages of the Kin are. But somewhere along the line, he met Mom, and he fell in love even though she was just a Normal. I came along, and he loved me too. He didn’t visit often, he couldn’t I guess, but I have enough memories of him before I was ten years old, laughing with Mom on the cut lawn outside our house, and on picnics down at Bowring Park. He would bring Sasha, my half-sister with him sometimes, for she was only a year or so older than me.

  He loved me so damn much, he even brought me to his home some Sundays for the family dinner, which took nerve, though I bet he didn’t tell Cate who I really was. Yet she must have had her suspicions because I remember her sitting at the end of the polished table, fatly pregnant with the last of her whelps and glaring at me over the pudding.

  His kids were okay then too, friendly and accepting like little kids are, and we spent some great afternoons doing cool things with our powers. I was the middle child in the group, which might explain why things became awkward when Cate found out my true identity.

  This was before the fights and arguments began between my parents, and not long after Mom disappeared from my life and Dad turned his back on me. I have always blamed him for her abrupt departure, but thinking back on it, Cate migh
t have had something to do with it. The kids have all hated me since then too. At any rate, I’ve never been given an explanation for it.

  I put on Mom’s old jean jacket and wrapped her long blue floaty scarf around my neck for courage before leaving. Like with her, that indigo blue really brings out the color of my eyes. I rode my bike rather than ask Edna for a drive, for the less she knew, the better. That way she could honestly say she’d forbidden me to go there if anything bad happened.

  I finally pushed myself up Portugal Cove Road to the homestead where it glowed greenly in its enclosed estate right in the middle of the east end of town. It was perfectly situated to lord it over everything close by.

  I paused outside the closed gate and looked up to where the gothic mansion loomed over the city, up on top of its own private hill. Did I really want to do this? The picture of Alice as I’d last seen her, big gray eyes filled with tears, came to my mind. I sighed, and reluctantly started pushing my bike up the lane.

  It had been years since those long-ago visits, but not much seemed to have changed on the estate. More cars in the driveway, and a new pool house and other toys of the rich scattered about. Shouts of laughter came from the direction of the tennis courts – my siblings must be enjoying the last of the Indian summer. I left my beat up old bike behind a shed, taking advantage of the landscaped shrubberies to hide it out of sight, and I tucked my helmet beside it.

  Now, if I knew Dad, he was probably hiding in his study prior to dinner in order to stay out of the family dramas. That’s what I would be doing if I was him. I crept around the side of the house towards the French doors leading to the garden from his nook and peeped through the glass. Yes, there he was, at his desk in front of the computer. I tried the handle, but it was locked.

  Something must have alerted him to my presence, maybe the shifting of the shadows, and he looked up directly into my eyes.

  He hadn’t changed at all, I realized now. I hadn’t noticed the other day when I ran into him downtown. The same touch of light gray at his temples, the strong chin, those dark hazel eyes. He was exactly the same except... he wasn’t looking at me with hate. No trace of the usual dismissiveness, no sneering.