Suffer a Witch (38 page)

Em drew the sea mist into her lungs. Scotland was always good for her soul. She looked down at the five-month-old baby asleep in the baby sling tied tight against her chest. Grinning, she picked up her bag and took a step off the Orkney Ferry and onto Rousay. She moved aside to avoid getting run over by the flow of people. She scanned the crowd waiting for the Ferry passengers. Her father waved from near the back. He jogged to her. When he hugged her, the baby awoke. He opened his dark eyes and looked up at Em. She smiled at him.

“When do the others arrive?” William asked.

“In an hour or so,” Em said looking at the North Sea. “We had to charter a car ferry. They only run in the summer.”

“They brought their vehicles?” William asked with a grin.

“We have infants and pregnant women and such,” Em said. “Renting cars was easier than lugging everything.”

“Of course,” William said. “And this George? Where might he be? Not still afraid of Scotland, is he?”

Em grinned at the menace in her father’s voice.

“He stayed to help the others,” Em said. “He wanted to give us some time.”

Em laughed at her father’s grunt of disapproval.

“I wanted a chance to speak to you before everyone arrived and the celebration began,” Em said.

Her father scanned her face and gave her a bright smile. He took her bag and nodded toward the car park.

“I have many. . . questions,” William said.

“Really?” Em asked. “I wrote everything down!”

“Yes, well. . .” William blushed.

“You didn’t read it,” Em said.

“I did read it,” William said. “Many times. I still have questions.”

“Like what?” Em asked in a frustrated voice.

He nodded to a Range Rover, and she followed him. He opened her door and helped her inside. He took the baby and settled him into a brand-new car seat hooked into the back seat of the vehicle. The boy looked at his grandfather and then fell asleep again.

“Is that a spell?” William asked.

“Because he’s sleeping?” Em asked. William nodded. “No, he’s a very calm baby. Nothing really fazes him. He likes to sleep this time of day. He’ll wake soon enough.”

“He’s very beautiful,” William said.

“He looks like George,” Em said.

“I was going to say that he looks like your mother,” William said with a grin.

Em smiled at him. She settled into her seat. She held her tongue, so that he could ask his questions in his own time. She watched the open fields set against the sparkling North Sea pass by her window. Her father pulled into the driveway of his cottage.

“Bernard Flett?” Em asked.

“He died right after your visit,” William said.

“Demons?” Em asked.

“Probably,” William said. “Would have been damned uncomfortable to move back in with him here. ‘I saw yer heed, sir.’ ‘It was an art installation, Mr. Flett.’ ‘Can’t fool an old aboriginal, William. You magicked it.’ I couldn’t really tell him that my daughter had integrated a demon and caused the return of all of our kind.”

“It’s a lot to take in,” Em said with a grin.

“It’s good to see you, Martha,” William said.

His eyes welled with tears. Rather than express what he was feeling, he jumped out of the truck. He’d retrieved her child from the car seat before she’d managed to unhook her safety belt. He nodded to her and marched into the cabin. She grabbed her bag and followed him. He settled the child into a brand-new bassinette and gestured for Em to have a seat near the fire. She watched the fire and waited while he puttered in the kitchen. He returned with two mugs of tea. She smiled her thanks and took a cup from him. He set his cup down and went to pick up the child.

“Do you mind?” William asked.

“Not at all,” Em said.

“I never thought. . .” William said. “He’s. . ..”

“Yes,” Em said.

“Did you ever talk to my opposite?” William asked to change the subject. “The one who shot you. This Bill Panon?”

“I couldn’t,” Em said. “He hung himself in his cell the very day I was supposed to speak with him.”

“You think the demons did that, too?” William asked.

Em nodded and drank her tea. He squinted and then looked away. He leaned forward to look at the child. Em smiled. Like everyone who’d met the child, her father was clearly in love with her son. It was wonderful to see. After a few moments, he looked up at her.

“Why did you have dried human hands in your freezer?” William asked.

Em grinned. She took another sip of her tea and set it down.

“They were Hands of Glory,” Em said. “The most powerful magical object in the world if taken from a hanging convict, particularly one convicted of witchcraft. I found them when I was cleaning out our basement. I stuck them in the freezer so I’d know where they were if I needed them.”

“It’s very. . . revolting. Primitive,” William sneered. “Whose hands did you have in the freezer? Yours?”

“No,” Em said. “One was George’s. It was taken in Salem, as payment of his debt, while he hanged.”

“And you got it. . .”

“Tortured the executioner to find out where it was,” Em said. “My husband Isaac killed the couple who had demanded George’s hand as payment on the imaginary debt. Isacc loaded them into a wagon to make it look like an unfortunate wagon accident. While he was busy, I spent some time with their daughter.”

“Ann Putnam, Junior?” William asked. “The one who testified against you? Started the whole thing in Salem?”

“She saw her way to tell me where George’s hand was kept,” Em said.

“I bet she did!” William said with a laugh. “What did you do?”

Em grinned but said nothing. William laughed.

“And the other one?” William asked.

“East India Trading Company hanged John Willard as a pirate,” Em said.

“Close your ears, son,” William whispered to the baby. He kissed the baby’s cheek. “Why would they do that?”

“Because John
was
a pirate,” Em said with a grin. “They liked to hang pirates and leave them to rot on the rope. They felt it deterred people from being pirates. You can imagine what happened with John.”

“He’d have awoken and died over and over again,” William said.

“They took his hand,” Em said, “and left him to hang. I knew of it immediately, but it took me months to get there. By the time I arrived, he’d been hanging for almost six months.”

“God, how awful,” William said. His hand instinctively went to his throat. “What did you do?”

“I got him down,” Em said. “He found his hand. We may or may not have burned the entire island to the ground. I won’t burden you with that story.”

“You sound quite a bit like a pirate yourself!” William said.

Em grinned. Realizing she was out of tea, she went to the kitchen to make a pot. Still carrying the baby, her father followed her into the kitchen.

“Your wife?” Em asked. “Justine?”

“She’s passed,” William said. “Turns out she had a slow-growing tumor. That’s why she was blind. My efforts to heal her caused the tumor to grow. They couldn’t operate, so we lived out our days here. She’s buried in the back.”

“Near mother?” Em asked.

“Oh, no,” William said. “I didn’t want your mother to know I married again. She could tolerate other women but not another marriage.”

Em chuckled in agreement.

“Do you have other questions?” Em asked.

William nodded. Em poured the hot water into a pot. He gave her the child so that he could carry the tea to the couch near the fire. Em checked her child before sitting down near the fire. William took the baby from her.

“Does my grandson have a name?” William asked.

“I was waiting for you to ask,” Em said with a grin.

“You are your mother’s daughter,” William said with a laugh. “Please introduce us, Em.”

“Nathaniel William Burroughs, meet William Panon,” Em said. “He’s named after George’s father and you, of course. We call him Nate.”

“They’ve landed.” William looked in the direction of the ferry landing.

Em nodded. She could feel that her witches had landed on Rousay.

“I have questions, but I’m not even sure how to form the questions,” William said.

“Just take a stab at it,” Em said.

“Why did you listen to the serpent?” William asked.

“Paul tells the Colossians that ‘all things were created by him.’ God, of course.” Em gave a nod.

“And that means?” William asked. Em grinned.

“If God is in everything, than the serpent is of God,” Em said. “That simple thought is what changed my mind about everything.”

“How so?” William asked.

“If the serpent is of God, then God was in the act of convincing Eve to eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” Em said. “That meant that God wanted humans to be both light and dark.”

“And to have knowledge of Good and Evil,” William said.

“To be capable of choosing for themselves,” Em said.

Em nodded. She poured tea into the mugs. They were silent as they prepared their individual mugs.

“I didn’t see it for a long time,” Em said.

Her father looked up at her intense interest.

“The bible says, ‘Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,’” Em said. “Of course, I’d heard the phrase all of my life. I’d always believed the passage was a mistranslation. It wasn’t actually ‘witch’ but ‘poisoner’ — someone dangerous to the tribes of Israel.”

“The passage was used as the reason to destroy the earth based religions during the Inquisitions,” William said. “Our kind lost a lot of people to that very phrase.”

“Certainly, the very next passage says you should kill anyone making a sacrifice to other Gods,” Em said. “So there’s plenty of reason to believe that the passage was mistranslated.”

“What do you believe now?” William asked.

“I believe the passage is a pointer straight to us,” Em said. “We are not descendants of Adam and Eve.”

“We should not live,” William said.

Em nodded.

“Argos got it wrong,” William said.

“He was five when he ate fruit from the Tree of Life,” Em said. “He lived a long time, but his mind remained very primitive. He was afraid of the demons, so he assumed they were chasing him to do him harm.”

“He knew abominations were dangerous,” William said.

“Because they were both light and dark,” Em said. “Descendants of Adam and Eve.
We
were the true abominations because we were only one side — light or dark — depending on how you think of it. I will tell you that the demon, or dark side, of me was terrified of the witches.”

William nodded.

“How did you survive?” William asked.

“The fire,” Em said. “I set the hands ablaze. I’m told that the fire burned like a pyre. Someone saw it and called Emergency Response. We were taken to the hospital. We stayed about a week. They kept me, Bridget, and Mary Eastey a little longer because we were pregnant.”

“Your dying wish to restore your witches turned the hands into a pyre?” William asked.

Em nodded.

“So you’re still a witch,” William said.

“Aren’t you?” Em asked.

“No,” William said. “I have some senses — intuition — but our family has always been strong in that. You probably would have lost your skill if you hadn’t had the hands.”

“Huh,” Em said. “Maybe. The others still have their powers, too.”

William nodded.

“It’s always possible that yours will come back,” Em said.

“The technology available now is like having magical powers,” William said with a shrug. “I haven’t missed it much.”

Em watched his face. When he looked up at her, they laughed.

“Sure,” Em said, and he smiled. “Maybe it will return.”

“Maybe,” William said. “Do you think the hands did it?”

“Brought us back to life?” Em asked. “I have no idea. Maybe. We were revived at the hospital after they slowly warmed us up. We were frozen.”

She shrugged, and he nodded that there was no way to know.

“How were you restored?” Em asked.

“I’m not sure,” William said. “I found myself wandering the fields of Rousay. Naked, of course. And it was February, no less.”

He grinned, and she smiled.

“I was alone for only a few moments before I came upon the others,” William said. “They were confused and frightened, but. . .”

He gave her a look filled with love.

“Every one of us was restored,” William said. “My parents. Argos. Weni. As always, there were some who preferred to return to their rest, which was taken care of. There are about a hundred of us left. Everyone else. . . Well, we invited you and your witches to Rousay for a celebration of our rebirth.”

“We can all be in the same space and time?” Em asked.