The Brixen Witch (4 page)

“I saw a purple crocus pushing up through a patch of snow.” She poked his shoulder. “The first blossom of spring.”

Rudi yawned. “That’s nice, Oma. Why are you telling me this?”

“Because here it is springtime, and you’ve been thrashing about in your bed nearly every night since the first winter storm,” she told him. “It’s a good thing your parents sleep like rocks. They’d think you more than half mad, the way you carry on.”

Rudi cleared his throat. “How do I carry on, exactly?”

Oma rocked in her chair and studied the rafters. “Let’s see … you mutter such things as
Go away
and
No no no
and
Take it!
Sometimes you mumble on about witches and smiting and such … and sometimes you just say
Ah-yeeeeeeeeee!
”

“Oh,” said Rudi in a small voice. He reached for the steaming kettle, hoping that its weight would still the tremor in his hands. “I’ll make the tea.”

Oma cocked her head in the direction of the Berg. “Wasn’t it just before the first snows of winter that you went on your … excursion?”

Rudi pretended to think about it, but then he sighed and nodded.

Oma nodded too. “So. Winter has come and gone, and here it is springtime. I think you’d better tell me what happened on the mountain that day.”

Rudi shook his head. “It’s bad luck to talk of such things. You said so.”

“I’d say your luck is already bad,” said Oma. “Perhaps it’s time you sought the counsel of someone older and wiser than yourself. Someone with experience and knowledge of such things as witches.”

“Do you know someone like that?” said Rudi hopefully.

Oma tapped him on the head. “Is it your luck that’s bad, or just your sense? I’m talking about my own self here.”

A familiar prickly notion tickled the edges of Rudi’s mind: Whether she wanted to talk about it or not, Oma
knew
things.

Now she squinted at him. “A person doesn’t live in Brixen for seventy-some years without learning a thing or two about this and that. You learn where the elderberries grow fattest, and when to pick them. You come to know each cow by the feel of her udder. And sooner or later, you’re bound to cross paths with the witch.”

Rudi stared at his grandmother. “Do you mean—”

“Then there is her servant,” Oma continued. “He’s been known to show his face in Brixen from time to time.”

“His face?” Rudi gulped. “What does the witch’s servant look like?”

“I haven’t seen him for many a long year, thank the saints for small blessings. But such a sight I could never forget. Beneath his cloak he wears a patchwork shirt, stitched together from scraps left behind by the poor souls who wander too far up the mountain, catching their clothing on the rocks. His hair is like a thistle burr. His teeth are sharp as saw blades, and his eyes are black as a moonless night. The cold of the Berg is always upon him. His touch is like ice, and simply walking near him sends a chill through your body.”

Rudi shivered.

Oma shook a finger at him. “Precisely. Now then, perhaps you’d better tell me your story. But first, where is that tea you promised me? I’m parched.”

Rudi poured the boiling water into the teapot with leaves of dried chamomile and nettle. Then he told Oma everything that had happened on the mountain that day, when he’d tried to return the coin but lost it instead. “The coin was well and truly buried. I could no longer hear it singing, and so I supposed no one else could either. Though truthfully, I didn’t stay to listen. It was such a relief to be rid of it.”

Oma rocked and nodded. “And how long did that relief last?”

Rudi groaned. “There has been only torment ever since. Every day I feel something watching me. Every night I dream of a face in the window, and it’s the face you described. The witch’s servant. He has followed me here. He wants his coin, but I don’t have it anymore. It’s lost.”

The fire crackled in the grate and cast long shadows across Oma’s wrinkled face. She rocked forward in her chair and warmed her hands. “Do you know where the coin is buried, more or less?”

“More or less,” answered Rudi.

“Then it’s not lost, strictly speaking. And it’s not
his
coin. It belongs to the Brixen Witch. So long as that coin is unaccounted for, your nights will
be sleepless.” She filled two mugs with tea and handed one to Rudi. “You still have a problem. But you can solve it once the mountain paths are clear of snow.”

Rudi nodded eagerly. “How much longer before the paths are clear, do you think?” He gulped his tea in an effort to calm his queasy stomach, but he only managed to scald his throat.

“The animals are always the first to know. When goats from Klausen wander down from the high meadow looking for spring grass, you’ll know the way is passable.” Oma sipped her tea and rocked in her chair. “Goat bells. Listen for the goat bells.”

AND SO THE crocuses bloomed in Brixen, and then the Lenten roses. Day by day the sun reached higher in the sky, and little by little the snows melted. Meanwhile, Rudi carved a new walking stick, and he tended his father’s cows, and he peered up toward the high meadow, waiting for the day he could climb the Berg and release himself from torment.

For his torment continued, especially at night, when he had nothing to keep himself busy. If his nights weren’t altogether sleepless, they were fitful and restless, and full of odd dreams.

Then, early one morning, when the valley was awash in fragrant greens and yellows and pinks, Rudi awoke to the sound of goat bells.

He sprang out of bed, every muscle surging with
an energy he had not felt in months. He marveled at how lively he felt, simply from the thought of finding the coin and being rid of the curse.

But then Rudi stopped, and he realized another reason for his vigor.

For the first time since October, he had slept soundly all night.

There must be a simple reason, Rudi told himself. Perhaps he had finally learned to ignore the prickly feeling that he was being watched. Perhaps the hard work that came with the spring—the milking, and the cheese making, and clearing of the land for sowing—brought such a pleasant exhaustion that even nightmares could not penetrate it. Perhaps the witch’s servant had been listening for goat bells too. Perhaps, at last, he recovered the infernal treasure from beneath the rubble on the mountain, and had returned it to its owner in her dim and dreary cave.

Or perhaps by now the witch had simply given up.

“She will never give up,” remarked Oma. “The witch must have found the coin herself—or her servant did. At any rate, it seems she has her treasure back. That can be the only reason your nightmares have stopped.”

The reason did not much matter to Rudi. He felt only relief and peace. Finally, he could enjoy the blessed pleasure of his daily life.

Rudi loved working on his father’s farm. He loved the smell of the thawing earth, the sprouting grass, and the newborn calves. He loved the squish of mud under his boots, and the warm sun on his neck, and the sound of his mother’s voice calling him to dinner as the light faded and cast the shadow of the Berg upon the farm.

And in the warm evenings, Rudi loved to wander with his family toward the village square to join the nightly gathering. Here was where the townspeople of Brixen exchanged news, shared a bit of tobacco, and watched the children grow.

This night was no different, and for that, Rudi was happily grateful.

The miller’s newborn son was to be named Steffan, and he would be christened in two weeks’ time. Mama chimed in with the other matrons, offering to weave white ribbons to decorate the church.

Old Mistress Gerta had not risen from bed in a week, and her daughter—Not-So-Old Mistress Gerta—fretted that the next time the sun shone down upon her mother, it would be while being carried to the churchyard. Oma promised to visit in the morning and talk some sense into the old woman. Rudi knew that if any life remained in Old Mistress Gerta, she’d use it to get out of bed and venture outdoors just to escape Oma’s pestering.
Which, he supposed, was the whole point.

The price of coal had gone up again, as had the price of beer. What was the world coming to, Papa complained, if even the brewer-monks at the Abbey of St. Adolphus tried to wring the townspeople dry? Otto the baker pointed out that the monks must pay more for their coal as well, and so of course they must charge more for their beer. As night follows day. Papa grumbled and chewed on the stem of his pipe.

Rudi followed only bits and pieces of each conversation. They all took place at the same time, as the villagers of Brixen perched on the benches and strolled the cobbles of the town square. Meanwhile, children of all sizes yelled and chased and scurried everywhere: between the benches, around the old ladies, along the top of the churchyard wall. No one took much notice, except for the occasional distracted scolding when things got too boisterous. At such times, the nearest adult would scold whatever child needed it, and that child would obey until he was out of earshot, at which point the next adult would assume the watchful duties. No one paid attention to whose child was whose. Every child was a child of Brixen, and that was enough.

Rudi sought out the far corner of the fountain, where the boys always gathered to trade rocks
from their collections, or to thumb-wrestle, or to brag of accomplishments real and imagined.

“The lynx was
this big,”
declared Nicolas, spreading his arms wide. “It hissed at me, but I chased it from the chicken coop.”

Konrad snorted. “My grandfather says no one’s seen a lynx near Brixen since he was our age. Are you sure it wasn’t a barn cat?”

At this the boys tumbled over each other in laughter—all but Nicolas, who turned red in the face. Upon noticing Rudi, he changed the subject. “Are you coming with us tonight to Johanna’s house? We’re going to compliment her mother’s strudel, but really it’s so Konrad can show Johanna his muscles. Such as they are.”

Now it was Konrad’s turn to blush red, and Rudi laughed along with the rest of them, relieved and thankful that life had returned to the way it should be.

And so it continued until dusk, when the smallest children were carried home on their fathers’ shoulders or in their mothers’ arms. The middlesize children escorted their grandparents, slowing their pace to match that of their elders. The ones nearly grown, if they had not found someone’s hand to hold, hung back in bunches to snicker in envy at the hand holders. Husbands and wives strolled with their arms entwined. And so tonight, like
every warm night of spring, the village of Brixen went home to bed.

But something about this night was different after all.

As dusk fell and the first lanterns were placed in windows, a scream rose from somewhere in the square.

The villagers stopped as one, and turned, straining to see who had made the noise, and why.

“Susanna Louisa, what’s wrong?” said her mother.

“I saw something!” said Susanna Louisa, the tanner’s daughter. She was eight years old and a skittish child, but Rudi liked her.

“Your eyes are working, then,” said her father, and he scooped her up, but Susanna Louisa twisted herself in his arms and pointed toward the cobblestones.

“There!” she squealed.

Rudi squinted in the direction the girl was pointing, but he saw only shadows. He strained harder and waited to see if any of the shadows moved.

One did.

“It’s just a rat,” declared Nicolas. “Do you want me to catch it?”

“Is it
this big
?” asked Konrad. He spread his arms wide, and dodged the flying fist of Nicolas just in time.

“I don’t like rats,” Rudi heard Susanna Louisa saying as her father carted her homeward.

“No one does, my little blossom,” sang her father. “They won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”

Nervous and relieved laughter filtered through the night air as the villagers dispersed into the lanes and alleys surrounding the square.

But from somewhere behind him, Rudi overheard one of his neighbors.

“Won’t bother you,
eh?” muttered the man to his companion. “Perhaps not, but I don’t like it. ’Tis bad luck to see a rat in the shadow of the churchyard wall. Mark my words, nothing good can come of that.”