Enter Three Witches (22 page)

“
Crudele
,” Alia pronounced. “Who would think such a sweet man as your father could be so cruel?” Bren shrugged, and she carried on. “But never mind. As you see, I am perfect now.”

“You look great,” Bob said. “Really great. I mean it.”

“Such a beautiful party,” Alia continued, her eyes darting from one group to another. “So many interesting people. Who, I wonder, is that extraordinary blond woman in the blue dress?”

“I don’t know,” Bren said at the same time that Bob said, “Oh, that’s…er, Bren’s mother.”

Alia produced a silvery laugh. “I must meet her and see which one of you is right. Introduce me, Bobby.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Bob said.

“Well then, I must introduce myself, since Ben cannot take me to meet someone he doesn’t know.”

“I didn’t see who you meant,” Bren mumbled, but Alia was already under way, and he could only watch with horrified fascination the impending confrontation. He thought again of going to look for Erika and Louise and Rose. Surely the addition of two more witches to this hellish social brew could not make it any worse. He was prevented from following this impulse by his father, who was clutching his arm. Male solidarity was being called upon, but Bren found it hard to think of any useful contribution he could make. Now he saw that Miranda had stopped abruptly in the middle of some sprightly remark to Behrens and turned to face her rival. Bren suspected that Alia’s presence was no surprise to his mother. She had been biding her time.

“I think you are Miranda West,” said Alia. “Already I am the friend of your adorable son.”

“Oh yes?” Miranda raised her eyebrows in a delicate question mark. “And also, I think, of my adorable husband.”

“But of course. We are—how do you say?—colleagues in the office. I am layout artist, I think is the term. You must pardon my English.”

“Gladly,” said Miranda. “Your English is charming, and ‘layout artist’ is close, but ‘colleague’ falls a bit wide of the mark.”

Bren was now eavesdropping shamelessly as Alia continued as if she had missed the entire innuendo. “But we have so much in common,” she said. “We must become friends.”

“Do you think so?” asked Miranda, fixing the other woman with a bright, blue stare.

“Here it comes,” Bren whispered to his father. “Now we’ll see who’s the better witch.”

“Witch!” Bob said. “But Alia’s not a…Oh, my God, Bren!”

Bren gave him a look that was both pitying and incredulous, put his finger to his lips, and nodded toward the two women, who were metaphorically rolling up their sleeves. Behrens stood in the background with his mouth slightly open. No one had bothered to include him in the introductions.

“Of course,” Alia was saying. “I did admire your work so much. That blood on the little child and the smell from the cauldron—so effective and hard to do, if just a little coarse.”

“Coarse!” cried Miranda. “Of course it was coarse. What did you want? Sweet lavender, rosemary, and thyme?”

“Naturally not,” Alia said in a soothing voice. “I do not criticize. It was truly a marvel. The marching of the trees, too, and the quality of light. Not easy at all. Of course, you had help, but it was most impressive for an amateur.”

“Amateur!” Miranda said furiously, and Bren began to fear that she was losing at least the verbal part of the battle. Any more telling response was cut off by Edward Behrens, who had now revived sufficiently to be both indignant and curious.

“I don’t like to interfere,” he said, “in what is clearly a private dispute. On the other hand…”

“You’re quite right,” Miranda said quickly. “We’re being rude. So boring to listen to people talk shop.”

“Not at all. I found it riveting, but I do think you owe me an explanation, like just what the hell did you do to my play?”

Miranda put her hand on his arm. “Nothing really,” she said. “Just a little thought transference—a little psychic boost here and there. Please don’t be upset.”

“Come to me next time,” Alia suggested. “I will make real bats fly out of your witch’s cauldron.”

“Bats! Who wants bats? All I asked for was a nice, smooth production—not too many missed cues, not too many blown lines—and what did I get? Blood. Smells. People flying. Now you offer me bats, and who are you, by the way?”

“I am one who practices the great art of Wicca,” said Alia grandly. “She, too, could be said to dabble in these things.”

“I’ll give you dabble. Dabble indeed, you cheap, ignorant, Neapolitan fake!” Miranda cried, whirling on Alia.

Behrens stepped deftly between the two witches, who seemed about to carry their quarrel into the realm of hair pulling or possibly something worse. “You two beauties can fight it out later,” he said firmly. “I just want to be quite clear about one thing. You’re trying to tell me that one of you bewitched my production of
Macbeth
and the other one thinks she could have done it better. Is that right?”

“That’s right,” Alia said.

“Something like that,” said Miranda.

“I don’t believe it.”

Miranda laughed. “Well, you can’t have it both ways, dear Bear. Either you saw what you thought you saw, or you didn’t. Make up your mind.”

“I didn’t,” Behrens said. “I am a scientist first and a stage director second. I am suffering from nervous exhaustion at the moment, but that will pass with the help of a few more drinks. It’s been a pleasure meeting both of you, but I am going to leave you now to your curious grievances. Good night.”

Miranda watched, smiling a little ruefully, as the director made a dignified but hasty retreat to the punch bowl. “Such a nice man,” she said, “and he wouldn’t have had a clue if a certain mean and jealous person hadn’t come along to disillusion him.”

“The day will never come that I will be jealous of you,” Alia snapped. “You are small tomatoes.”

“Potatoes,” Miranda said, “but don’t worry, my dear. Your English will improve, if you can keep your health.”

Alia’s eyes bulged. “Ah, so it was you! Fiend of the devil, beware! You will not sleep another night without pain. Your teeth will fall out. Your hair will be gray.”

“Hey, Bren,” Bob said. “Do you think I am really witch-prone? I mean, do you think I have to have a witch?”

Bren nodded emphatically. “You’re doomed,” he said. “It’s obviously a fatal attraction. All you can do is decide which witch. There must be a better way to say that.”

“I know which,” Bob declared in a loud voice, “and I’m going to get her out of here before one of them witches the other into extinction.”

“Be careful,” Bren cried, as his father stepped resolutely between Alia and Miranda.

Miranda greeted his sudden appearance with relief. “Oh, Bob,” she said, “I’ve been dying to talk to you. How did you like the play? Didn’t Bren do a wonderful job with the lights?”

Alia, who now found herself looking at Bob’s back, made a little circling maneuver, which he, as if he had eyes in the back of his head, immediately countered, so that she remained shut out of the conversation. She stepped back a pace and stood staring at her former lover and his wife. Her face had turned white, and her hands were clenched at her sides.

“The play was terrific,” Bob said, “and so were you—meddling as usual, but making quite a job of it this time. I have to hand it to you, and you look spectacular. Let’s blow this boring party and go out somewhere.”

Bren saw joy leap in his mother’s eyes—saw that they shone with a fire brighter than any magic spell could light. “We could go to Arcadia,” she said. “We haven’t been there in years. They should have music tonight, and if they don’t, we’ll have a drink by the fire and go on somewhere else.”

“We’ll go to Arcadia,” said Bob, “and then maybe we’ll just go home.”

Miranda reached out almost shyly and touched his face. “Home,” she said. “Why didn’t I think of that? What a lovely idea, Bob.”

She seemed to have forgotten Alia, and this, thought Bren, was unwise in the extreme. For Alia, he now realized, was not to be trifled with. She was a woman scorned and a thwarted witch. She was furious, and she was dangerous.

At the instant that these thoughts flashed through his mind, while Bob and Miranda still gazed into each other’s eyes, he saw Alia turn with a swift, serpentine movement and run down the short flight of steps from the stage. At the same moment, Erika, followed by Louise and Rose, emerged from the wings. “Louise,” Bren cried, sprinting past them. “Look after Mom for a minute. I think she’s lost her powers, and she’s going to need them.”

Bren reached the center aisle of the theater in time to see Alia moving swiftly out the back door. It never occurred to him that she might be leaving the theater. She was bent upon mischief, and she was not going to go home to concoct it, of that he was sure. But where could she have gone? He paused in the empty lobby and gazed around. The ladies’ room? Was she in there, mixing some deadly brew? Not likely, and what good would it do her when neither of the objects of her rage could be persuaded to drink anything she offered? There was only one other place to look, a place as familiar to Bren as his own room. He galloped up the stairs to the balcony and stood breathless outside the door to the light booth. The padlock that Eli had snapped shut after the play was still in place. It was very still, but the atmosphere seemed charged with energy. Below him the stage shimmered with light and activity. Parents and actors clustered around the banquet table. There was Edward Bear, trapped in discourse with the great actor, and there were his mother and father, now holding hands and talking to Louise.

Suddenly, at the front of the balcony, a tall figure appeared silhouetted against the glittering stage. Bren caught his breath and slid deeper into the shadow of the light booth. Looking down the center aisle to the small open space at the rail, he could just make out the witch’s white circle and triangle drawn in chalk on the dark carpeting. At least this explained Alia’s seemingly magical appearance out of nowhere. She had been down on the floor drawing the patterns that were essential to the practice of witchcraft.

Bren tried to persuade himself that his fears were groundless. He knew too much about such things to suppose that anything of far-reaching power could be accomplished in so improvised a setting. She had no thurible or athamé or wand, and above all, no time in which to summon a powerful spirit to do her bidding. Yet Bren was very much afraid. He watched the red-haired witch, who stood absolutely still within her circle, and his heart beat faster with every second that went by. He felt the strength of her hatred as if it were a palpable thing in the suffocating darkness of the balcony, and he felt the aura of power that gathered around her as she stared down at the scene below.

The stillness was broken by a low muttering as Alia began her spells. (Cabalistic garbage, Bren thought, and found that he was not in the least reassured.) Then suddenly, with a low cry she raised her arm and pointed at the stage, and in her hand was an instrument Bren had seen only once and then in a museum of anthropology. It was a twisted shaft of silvery wood, cut from a root that had grown through the body of a murdered child in its grave, carved with every symbol known to the occult world and ending in an obscene head with glaring eyes. How she had acquired such a thing or where it had been concealed were questions he could not pause to contemplate. It shone now with its own light, and the eyes blazed down through the dark theater to where Miranda stood in thrall to the ordinary magic of love.

Bren leapt like a cat down the short balcony aisle and seized Alia’s arm, twisting it behind her back. He had never done such a thing before and later wondered at his sudden competence. She gave a hoarse cry and writhed free of his grasp, but the staff fell from her hand and lay on the floor, still gleaming faintly with its deathly radiance. Bren kicked it out of the circle and put his foot on it.

Alia stood for a moment staring at him, but he felt the power drain out of her, and his heart slowed. “I curse you till the day you die,” she whispered. “You and your ugly mother and your stupid, stupid father. You will be sorry, Ben. So very very sorry you cannot imagine.”

Bren laughed. “I think you have to get my name right to do a good job of cursing,” he said, “but really, Alia, don’t try anything more. I doubt my mom has retired permanently, and she’s sure to be pleased with this addition to her collection.” He picked up the wand and tossed it casually from hand to hand. Outside the circle of power it had lost its glow, but the sight of it, hideous and lifeless in the grasp of the smiling boy, seemed to terrify Alia. She shrank before his eyes, growing suddenly haggard and old. “You can’t use it,” she said. “It doesn’t belong to you.”

“Nor to you, I guess,” Bren said. “Don’t worry. Mom will probably return it to the place you stole it from, but in the meantime, I would sleep in a circle of protection every night if I were you. That will be a nuisance, but probably well worth the trouble. So,
ciao
, Alia. I’ll be going now.” He backed toward the stairs and then stepped hastily aside as Alia gave a horrible shriek and ran past him. He could hear her feet on the stairs and then the slam of the heavy front door of the theater.

Bren looked toward the stage, where the entire party had gathered on the apron to stare up at the balcony. Slowly and thoughtfully he went down to join them, still holding, now rather gingerly, the revolting object he had wrested from his mother’s rival.

Miranda pulled away from Bob at the sight of her son and the thing that he carried up onto the stage. “Where did you get it?” she cried. “Oh, Bren, put it down. You don’t know what it might do.”

“Don’t I, though?” Bren said. “I know what I have, and it was pointed right at you! But it can’t do anything now, Mom. It’s just an ugly stick—ugly but interesting. I think you should hang on to it for a while just in case and then take it back to the museum.”

“I’ll take it back tomorrow,” Miranda said. “Lou, what do you think? We don’t want it around the house, do we?”

Louise reached out and took the staff from Bren. For a long moment she gazed at it reverently. “I don’t know, babe,” she said. “We could do a whole lot of lovely mischief, you and me. Got to think twice about giving up a thing like this.”