Cat Magic (16 page)

The congregation linked arms. Spontaneously and without manipulation they began singing “That Old Rugged Cross,” that old, old song from the past days, his boyhood of sorrow and pain, and all the sorrow and pain of them all, the sweet, decent, good, shamefully bewitched children of the Lord God.

One song followed another into the night. Sometime after twelve a fine mist began to fall. They went to their cars then, with no particular plan to do what they did, to drive the night in procession, flashing their lights and honking their horns, out Bridge Street and past the high brick walls of the Collier estate, until the rain changed to sleet, and the sleet to snow, and with much honking and waving and shouted praises, the congregation returned to their homes.

An hour later Brother Pierce lay sweating on his own bed in the trailer behind the Tabernacle, listening to good old country music all the way from WSB a million miles away in Nashville, sucking a bottle of Black Label, his mind clattering with his success. Just like that his congregation was united behind him once again. United against the witch.

If he could keep this going, he guessed he’d even see a tithe from the likes of Miser Howells. This was real inspiration.

Toward morning he knew he was not going to sleep. He had to point up the seriousness of his new issue. Had to leave a message that people
cared
, that they
hated
, that they were with their good Brother Pierce all the way.

He put a can of gasoline from the toolshed into his car and drove off about two hours before dawn.

Soon he was out on the lonely road near the Collier wall. A huge cat arched its back in his headlights, then darted to the roadside. Brother Pierce stopped his car. He got out. In his left hand he was carrying a whiskey bottle full of gasoline. He lit a rag stuffed in the neck and hurled it against the wall.

The bloom of gasoline fire swelled and jumped madly at the trees. It was not strong enough to do damage, and was not meant to be. What Brother Pierce wanted was for people to see the black scar this would leave on the wall.

Snowflakes whirled among the flames.

It took less than five minutes for the fire to flicker out. But it left a nice, big mark behind.

People would see and it would make them think. Thou shall not suffer a witch to live.

It was just a suggestion.

Mandy awoke to a clink and clatter beyond the curtains of her bed. She had slept so heavily that for a moment she didn’t remember where she was. Then she stuck her head out to a slap of cold air and the sight of Ivy building a fire in the hearth.

“Good morning.” Maybe it was the cold air or the amazing sight of the snow beyond the window, but her grogginess passed at once.

“Oh, hi. I’m sorry, I was trying to keep quiet.”

“I don’t mind. What time is it?” The sky beyond the windows was gray, saying only that the clouds were low and dawn had not yet come.

“Onto six. You’ve another twenty minutes before the bell.” She put a bundle on the chair. “Here are clothes.”

Ivy’s voice was warm, and her eyes when they met Mandy’s were full of friendship. Yesterday the girl had seemed so reserved—and so mean, creating the trouble with the Hobbes edition and all. She had certainly had a change of mood. Mandy remained angry with her over the business with the book. It wasn’t unreasonable, she thought, to want an apology. Ivy cheerfully poked up the fire.

When it blazed she stepped to the center of the room, hands on hips. “How’s your pot?”

“My—oh, I used it, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s what I mean,” Ivy said. She reached under the bed, hauled it out, and glided away with the big blue porcelain pot cradled in her arms. “Breakfast in the kitchen at 6:30,” she called over her shoulder. A moment later Mandy heard her tell Constance that “the lady” was up. How old was Ivy? Seventeen, perhaps. Certainly she was too old to be calling twenty-three-year-old Mandy a “lady.”

It took no small amount of courage to step naked into the freezing-cold room. A curtained bed, she had found, was a most delicious luxury. Maybe the style had been abandoned because it was simply too comfortable. She dashed over to the chair and opened the bundle, finding a bra and panties, and some of the homespun that the others wore, what seemed a shapeless dress that, when she wore it, clung most beautifully.

The cloth was so cold against her skin it made her hop and gasp.

She had just tied the belt when she heard a meow at the window. There stood Tom, pressing against the glass, looking annoyed to be out in the snow.

Down at the village he had seemed dangerous. But now he was a cold old cat, and she couldn’t resist letting him in. When she raised the sash, the burst of freezing air that engulfed her made her squeal.

“Come in here, you! Hurry up!”

The cat rushed past her and in an instant was curled up in front of the fireplace.

“You’re a weird one, kitty-cat. How’d you get out here in the first place? Did you follow me?”

The cat stared at her. She wanted to stroke him but thought better of it.

“If you ever want a kiss,” she said softly, “you know who loves you.” She puckered up and went “mmmmm,” but the cool seriousness of the cat’s gaze silenced her.

This was unexpected. Could an animal see into a human sou!?

Nervously she returned to her preparations. She had to break the ice on her pitcher to wash. The soap was homemade and smelled powerfully of peppermint. It smelled, as a matter of fact, very much like Constance Collier, like Ivy, like Robin. It smelled like this house. And it wasn’t only mint, was it? There was in it a hint of some more exotic herb.

After her wash she dragged on her muddy shoes and wished she had some heavier ones, and also a good jacket or sweater.

And she wished Tom would stop that staring! Could there be laughter in a cat’s eyes? Either he loved her or he disdained her. Or worse, both. Even though she was dressed, she still felt naked.

It took the faint tapping of flakes at her window to draw her mind away from him. October 19 and already it was snowing. If such weather held, this was going to be a long, cold winter. She peered through the hazy glass. What magic she saw, me world transformed to philosophical purity, silent but for the hiss of snow against snow and the rattling of bare limbs.

As the sky lightened she saw that the snow had touched me autumn colors of the trees with white. The perfection of the colors together, the pillowy razor of white, the staring reds, the oranges and browns, went to the center of her, for the scene the snow had created was truly a wonder of nature.

When Constance came along, swathed in a huge woolen robe, nothing but a face in the dark folds, Mandy was still motionless before the window. “I know,” Constance said, touching her shoulder with long, light ringers. “You’ll need the clothes we got you. Why didn’t Ivy—” She went to the door. “Ivy?”

Louder: “Ivy!”

From downstairs: “I’m in the kitchen, Connie.”

“We need Amanda’s warm things. She’s practically naked, the poor girl.” She turned around. “Ivy’s quite new to big-house responsibilities. But she has a good heart. A very good heart.”

Her footsteps sounded on the stairs. A few moments later she appeared with another stack of clothes topped by a pair of stout hiking boots. “I’m sorry, Mandy. I completely forgot the rest—the important stuff, too. I think it’s too cold for me today.” She looked down at Mandy’s feet. “What’s your shoe size?”

“Seven and a half.”

“Hiking boots have to be a little bigger to make room for the socks. I think I guessed right, though.”

“I’m glad you thought of them at all.”

“You need good shoes. You must learn every inch of this estate as if it were your own,” Constance said.

There was a beautiful hand-knit wool sweater of rich, iridescent brown, and beneath it something huge and dark and gray. Mandy put on the sweater and unfolded the mysterious garment.

It was a hooded, ankle-length cloak made of the tightest homespun she had ever seen. Down the front were monogrammed a five-pointed star, a triangle, a sickle moon, and two other, more obscure symbols.

It was tied about the neck with a red silk ribbon.

“This is wonderful.”

“You like it?”

She swept it across her shoulders and tied the ribbon. Ivy raised the hood. The cloak was heavy and warm and altogether magnificent. “Oh, Constance, I love it. Really love it!”

“It took half a year to make. The weavers started in April, We made it just for you.”

Mandy looked at her. What she had just said didn’t make sense.

“I’ve been watching you ever since you were a girl,”

Constance added. “And when I saw your work in Charles Bell’s book, I knew it was time for you to come to me.” She smiled. “Change your domes and come down to breakfast. We’re wasting time.”

The table, when Mandy arrived, was spread with a redchecked oilcloth. A fire roared in the huge old stove and the windows ran with condensation. Mandy sat down to a plate of pancakes and syrup. There was a side dish of blackberries and a pitcher of fresh cream. Tea of an herb unknown to her completed the meal. “Everything you’re eating came from this estate. It can feed you four seasons of the year. And if you like homespun it can clothe you, too.”

“The village—”

“It’s an experiment. The villagers are trying to live really close to the land. Everything at the village comes from the surrounding fields and forests. The village lives by the breath of the earth, which is the weather, and the heartbeat of the earth, which is the seasons. And they live close to one another, too, unled except by the necessities that the land imposes.”

“Who are they, Constance? Are they witches, like we thought in the town?”

“Friends. Most of them are from Maywell. Some from farther away. They’re people who want to be reinitiated into personal contact with the earth. The village is an effort to balance old ways with new.” She smiled. “Because we have drifted so far from our relationship with the planet, many people have a tremendous need to rediscover their inner love for her. That’s what the village is about. It is only me first of its kind, I hope and trust.”

Tom came into the room. He stood beside Constance’s chair, looking up at her.

Mandy dug into her pancakes. They were sour and heavy and delicious, made of a rough-ground flour and raised by their own rot, with neither baking powder nor yeast added. With one of those swift, amazing leaps of his, Tom jumped onto the top of Constance’s head. Mandy was so startled she all but threw her fork. But Constance hardly seemed to notice the creature that had draped itself over her scalp like some kind of lunatic far hat with eyes.

The eyes sought Mandy. Didn’t he ever stop staring?

“Amanda, today I want you to begin your work. To try to do something very special and very difficult.”

Constance had leaned forward. Her tone was serious. But she looked—well—fantastically odd with the cat on her head.

“I want you to take your sketchbook and go out onto Stone Mountain and find the
Leannan Sidhe
and draw a picture other.”

Mandy remembered the statue in the maze. “The Fairy Queen—do you mean mere’s a statue of her up there, too?”

“Go across the hummocks to the foot of Stone Mountain. You’ll find a path starting at a grove of birch.

Just a track. It’ll be tricky to negotiate. Climb the mountain until you come to a big rowan bush. Really huge. Do you know what rowan looks like?”

Tom crawled down her shoulder and disappeared under the table.

“To me a bush is a bush, Constance. I have no idea.”

“Look for smooth gray bark, red-orange leaves, and clumps of red berries. You really can’t miss it. It’s the only one like it on the mountain. Just beyond it you’ll find a large round stone mat’s got figures etched into it. But they’re weathered, so you won’t be able to make them out. You sit yourself down on that stone. Sooner or later fairy will come. The Queen is instantly recognizable.”

Surely her leg was being pulled. “You mean—real fairies?”

“I mean real fairies. They’re about three feet tall, very broad-shouldered the men, and they’ll be wearing their whites because of the snow. White breeches and tunics, mottled white caps. And she will be in white, too. A white gown of silken lace. She’s blond, and she’ll have rowan in her hair. You’ll see.”

She was so serious about this that Mandy became embarrassed. Constance Collier must be senile. “You see these fairies?”

“My dear, fairy are quite commonplace in the Peconic Mountains. They live all through this end of Jersey and Pennsylvania. And they are not tinkerbelles and tom-tits, either, they are very real. Don’t look for pixies, look for small, solid beings who are very real. They are as much a part of the planet as people and trees and cats. Much more man we. They’re a Paleolithic survival, dear. The fairy were exterminated in western Europe during the Middle Ages because they’re pagans. They follow the Goddess. This country is so big the fairy never got discovered. Even to this day there are parts of Stone Mountain that man hasn’t explored. And all a fairy needs to hide is a bush not much bigger than a pillow.”

Mandy felt cut adrift from reality. This woman was rational and sane and serious.

“They built the burial mound you drove past coming here. And the hummocks out in the back pasture—those are the remains of a fairy city built before the Iroquois conquered this valley.” She tossed her head. “The same families that built those houses have been up there on roe mountain for thousands of years, waiting for the day when they can come down and reclaim their city.”

“What are they—I mean—what about language? Do they speak English? What should I say? And what if she wants money to sit for me? Tell me what to do.”

“Show the Queen respect. Bear in mind that we have been on this land three hundred years, and the Indians two thousand years. The fairy have been here since before the ice. Think of that. A hundred thousand years, maybe longer. You are on their land, we all are. Their Queen is the highest and most sacred being you will ever see in your life.” She paused. “Of course they may not show her, they’re unpredictable that way.”