The Hex Witch of Seldom (14 page)

Bobbi plaited silver-gray hair in silence.

“But there's more to the Hidden Circle than the Twelve,” Witchie added. “And we're everywhere. We're in all the people who dream, all over the world.”

Bobbi finished the braids, crossed them and coiled them, pinned them in place, and handed Witchie the mirror. “They make a sort of crown,” she said.

Witchie looked and nodded with a wordless grunt of satisfaction. She said, “Makes it a little easier to believe I used to be pretty when I was young.”

Bobbi was feeling somehow better than she had in days. She said, “Tell me about my father.”

“I didn't know your father, Bobbi.”

Bobbi stared. Something had made her think Witchie did.

The old woman said, “I knew of him, was all. I read his poem in the newspaper, and I knew he understood, he was one of the special ones. Then I read a couple of years later where he died.”

Bobbi thought. “He didn't write about you,” she admitted, “but he wrote about your—stick.”

“He understood, is all. You got to keep in mind, Kabilde is as—as various as Shane. Its name means, ‘Cunning Man.' It's been a necromancer, a doctor, a con artist, a—”

Interrupting, Bobbi blurted in horror, “You mean, it has a—a human form, too?”

“Of course. We all do.”

Wild thoughts swooped through Bobbi's mind. If she was looking at Witchie's human form, then what—no. She didn't want to know.

With a soft clop of unshod hooves, Shane came from the parlor through the kitchen and nosed his way out the back door. Bobbi watched after him until the black horse, flanks shining since she had groomed him, disappeared in the woods. Turning her head with difficulty on her stumpy body, Witchie looked after him too.

Witchie said, “The form Shane's in right now, it belongs to him, same as you belong to you. But there's a problem. He's—well, he's stuck.”

“How'd that happen?” Though she had just seen Shane go out, Bobbi kept her voice low, as if the mustang-man still stood in the next room, his foot soaking in a bucket. “How come he's stuck being a horse?”

“I can't tell you. Bobbi, I can tell you my story, or your story, but you'll have to ask Shane to tell you his.”

Bobbi said, “Tell me yours, then. How did you come to be a—a—” Something Yandro in her choked on saying “witch.”

“A pow-wow?” Witchie smiled a dry old smile, wrinkling her face into soft folds. Then the folds smoothed as she eyed Bobbi soberly. “It come to me late in life,” she said. “I think a person has to go through a sort of choice. I was married to Abe Fenstermacher near to forty years, and never had no children, and never did nothing but do for him, and when the black lung took him I figured I might just as well die myself.”

Bobbi was still holding the tortoiseshell comb and oak-backed brush, staring at the old woman, who looked gravely back at her. Witchie nodded. “Them was bad times,” she said. “I near to done something foolish. But I had a choice, you see, and it come to me that I might better live and be myself, my whole self, since I couldn't be the better half of Abe Fenstermacher no more. And then I begun to feel the power.”

“I see,” said Bobbi faintly, though she didn't really, and the word “power” frightened her.

“That was ten years ago,” said Witchie.

Shane nosed open the back door and came in again, looked at Bobbi a moment with his head held high, then went on into the parlor.

Bobbi said awkwardly, “Just ten years? I mean, the stories I heard made it sound like you'd been here a long time.”

“Must have been another hex witch of Seldom,” Witchie said.

It seemed odd that so small a place would have had more than one pow-wow. But Bobbi had had enough talk, and did not pursue it. Turning away, she took the comb and brush and rosewood hand mirror back upstairs to Witchie's bedroom. When she came down, the old woman was sitting in the parlor rocker. And near Witchie's feet, flat on the carpet, lay the walking stick.

Bobbi stopped where she was, staring like a spooked colt at Kabilde, the stick that spoke.

“Step over it,” Witchie told her.

Bobbi gave her a look. “What for?”

“Just do it. You afraid?”

The dare was so blatant that Bobbi continued to balk. “No! But why should I do what you say?”

Witchie harrumphed, but before she could speak Kabilde cut in from its place on the floor. “So the crazy old termagant will let me up, is why.” Its voice was dry, stinging and without texture, like smoke. Nothing about it moved or changed except the tiny mouth of the carved hazelwood snake. “Do what she says, youngster. It won't hurt one way or the other.”

Bobbi liked the sound of that last even less than she liked stepping over the weird stick. Yet she found herself walking forward. She stepped over the staff squarely, at its middle—pride would not let her do otherwise. And as she passed over it, an odd, dislocated sense washed through her body, something not at all painful yet so uncomfortable that she squeaked and her hands shot up. She could see them for an instant, hovering in front of her face, her hands—but they were not hers. They seemed made of mist, curled and curved and white as crescent moons, and they—they belonged to someone else—

Then she was over Kabilde, and herself again, and furious at Witchie. “What's the big ideal” she demanded, backing away from the staff.

“Just as I thought,” Witchie said as if to Shane or Kabilde or the parlor walls, not reacting to Bobbi's anger. The old woman picked up Kabilde, got up from her rocker with a grunt and crossed the room to replace her walking stick in its urn before she said more. Then she turned and stated, “You're a potent one, youngster. You can do things I can't.”

Bobbi grew more puzzled than angry. Witchie looked very serious, yet she couldn't understand what the old woman was talking about. She said with only a small edge to her voice, “Like what?”

“My golly days, girl!” Witchie shuffled back to her rocker, irritated. “Ain't you noticed you got powers?”

“All I've ever noticed is I got craziness.”

“That's part of it. You stop shrinking back from that, Bobbi, and learn to use it, and you'll be able to do just about anything.”

Shane stood with his foot in its warm bath, listening, and Bobbi felt a sudden tingle of hope. Including—healing Shane's cracked hoof in one moment, as if it had never been hurt? Including—bringing him back to being a man again?

If she could do those things for Shane, it would all be worth it, whatever she had to go through.

“How?” she demanded. “How do I learn to use it?”

Witchie's soft old face moved almost into a smile. She leaned forward in her rocker and started to speak.

The telephone rang.

Shane's head came sharply up from his hay. Bobbi stiffened, staring at the phone. Witchie looked at it as if it were a buzzing, poisonous black insect sitting atop the white lace doily of her drop-leaf table. Then she reached out to answer it.

From where they stood, listening, Shane and Bobbi heard the cicada-noises of the voice on the other end. Then Witchie pointed and rolled her eyes. It was Ethel next door, wanting to know what was wrong at the Fenstermacher place, that the blinds were drawn and yesterday's newspaper still on the front porch, as if no one had been in or out.

“I'm entitled to be sick and lazy!” Witchie complained. “Yes. The grippe. No, I don't want you to pick up my mail. It's never nothing but bills. Just let it set.”

After more of Ethel's shrilling, she grumpily declined all assistance and hung up. Bobbi let out her breath as if she had been holding it. She looked at Witchie, then at Shane; the two of them were staring at each other. But oddly, it was Kabilde who first spoke.

In its glassy-smooth voice, as startling as a snake coming through the parlor, the walking stick said, “Time you three decided what this side of hell you're doing.”

There was a sound like a small explosion, and the smoky-glass handle of the cane started to glow, and Shane the man appeared in it as if on a tiny television screen. “No need for Witchie to do a thing more,” he said. “She done enough.”

“I'll speak for myself,” Witchie snapped at him.

As if he had not heard her Shane said, “I'll be moving on. I'll be out of here before daylight.”

“Where to?” Bobbi protested. “You can't travel on that hoof.”

“I been taking care of myself a long time, Bobbi.”

“Would you have some sense? You got a brand on your neck. Even if you was to get all the way back to Wyoming, anybody who sees that brand knows you belong to the government. They caught you once, they can catch you again, and you'll be gelded for sure next time.”

“The girl's right, Dark Rider.” Witchie's voice sounded oddly gentle, for her, old witch that she was. “There's only one way out that I can see.”

A long pause. Shane, when he spoke, sounded reluctant.

“What way?”

“You know what way, good as I do. Be a man again. Not likely anybody will mess with your balls then.” Witchie was making up for having spoken softly a moment before.

“Just my heart,” said Shane. “And my soul. And my mind, and my life.”

“Who would do that?” Bobbi demanded. The horse looked sidelong at her. When the small Shane in Kabilde's crystal did not answer her, she insisted, “They'll be looking for a black mustang, not a man. Who would mess with you?”

Shane did not reply. His image in Kabilde's globelike handle clouded and disappeared. The mustang Shane carefully removed his foot from its bath, set the hoof on the towel a moment to dry it, then walked to Witchie with scarcely a limp and looked at her.

“I can only do it if you really want me to,” she told him. “Heart and soul and all.”

He lowered his proud head and let his face rest against the old woman's flat bosom.

“You're stronger than me,” Witchie said to him. “You have to help me. I'll try.” Her hands came up to rest on either side of the long, black head. She closed her eyes. Shane had already closed his. Both of them stood very still for what seemed a considerable time to Bobbi, so long that she wanted to find a chair and sit down, but she did not dare move. She watched intently. Shane and Witchie looked as if they had stopped breathing, but their limbs trembled with tension. And Witchie's hands—when had they started to move? So slow, might have been forever ago. They crept up Shane's smooth cheekbones to his poll, the seat of every proud horse's soul. They met at his forelock, and Witchie's mouth moved, she started to whisper. Shane's ears quivered and lay back against his neck. With an angry swish his tail lashed against his hind legs.

Witchie opened her eyes. “I can't help you unless you want it,” she said in a toneless voice, and she stepped back from Shane and sank down in the ladderback rocker. Shane's head hung low. Bobbi came and laid her hand on the black shoulder.

A knock sounded at the front door.

Bobbi went rigid, feeling Shane jump beneath her hand. But there was nowhere to run to and no place to hide a horse. Witchie bawled out, “Who's there?”

“It's me!” announced the high-pitched voice of the overfriendly neighbor.

“Ethel, I ain't decent!” Witchie yelled. “Or the house, neither!”

“It don't matter! I just want to give you some rice soup!”

“Holy gee, I got to go to the pot again!” bellowed Witchie with convincing desperation. “I got the trots, Ethel. Just leave that there and I'll get it later!” Witchie thumped up the stairs. Bobbi and Shane stood where they were, not daring to move, staring at the glass parlor doorknob. Ethel tried to come in; the knob rattled and moved. But the door was locked. With relief, Bobbi heard Ethel walking down the porch steps—

“Jesus shit!” she swore softly. Ethel was going around back.

Bobbi saw the neighbor's shadow cross the side window and thought wildly. Shane could move out of eyeshot of the back door, but there was no way she could move all the paraphernalia, the hay, the oats, the water bucket, the Epsom salts bath in time. And she would make considerable noise if she tried. And—and there was no time.

Determined to come in and leave her soup on the kitchen table, Ethel was at the back door. It would just have to be locked.

Bobbi stared. Through the parlor archway she could see the kitchen door, its inside knob, the ornate brass dark with age and shiny with wear, and she watched the door, the knob, with widened eyes, picturing the mechanism within her mind, willing it to be locked. The knob stirred. Be locked. Be locked—

It was.

For a while there was silence, and then Bobbi heard Ethel set down her offering of soup on the back steps and go away.

But—that door could not possibly have been locked. It was a wonder it was even latched. Shane had come in from outside, pushing it open with his head. No one had been near it since.

Witchie came down from upstairs. “I told you,” she said mildly to Bobbi, “you put your mind to it, you can do—”

Bobbi felt half panicked, and not only on account of Ethel's persistence. She cut in, “We're leaving. Shane and me got to get out of here as soon as it's dark.”

Shane swung his head and gave her a look as if to say, Speak for yourself. She ignored him.

“I got to fix up his hoof somehow so he can travel,” she went on. “You got any duct tape?”

Of course she did, in the attic. But Witchie shook her head irritably. “That's no good. You go to Samuel Bissel.”

“Who?”

“An old Amish blacksmith, lives not far from here. He's one of the Circle. You'll have to go along with Shane and tell him I sent you. Then he should help you.”

“A horseshoer?” Bobbi was astonished, not because there was a farrier nearby, but because he was—what Witchie said he was.

Witchie grumbled, “My stars, girl. Smiths have had powers since the day metal was born. Don't be afraid of old Bissel, or he'll know it. I'd come with you, but I got to stay home and have the grippe.” Witchie's tone filled with disgust. “Ethel's sure to call again.”