The Hex Witch of Seldom (22 page)

It didn't, or there wasn't.

It surprised Chantilly not at all to find a horse waiting at the doorstep. She scarcely glanced at Shane, but looked around anxiously for the Yankees. And there wasn't time for Bobbi to do or say anything, even if she had known what to do or say, for with a whooping siren and a scream of tires a police car pulled in at the gate. Bobbi was more or less expecting that, but she was not expecting Samuel Bissel to get out of it.

“Yonder's my horse,” he told the township sheriff lumbering out from behind the steering wheel.

“It's the Yankees, Mom! On the horse, quick!” Bobbi gave her mother a boost. Chantilly went up with a coquettish little scream and a flutter of her full skirt. With an odd, slow-motion clarity, as if she would remember them forever, Bobbi noted her mother's bare feet nudging out from underneath her emerald-green hem, small and soft as a child's.

“Stop where you are!” the officer ordered.

“Go, Shane!” Bobbi yelled. The pow-wow staff in her hand blazed with white light, and under her hand the wood writhed; Kabilde was rousing. The sheriff stood frozen and staring at it; Shane could have walked right past him and he would not have moved. But Bissel moved. Bobbi saw the Amishman reach with a callused hand, pull his hammer out from under his black, buttonless coat, and she braced herself. Probably he would knock her out. But by then Shane and Chantilly could be long gone—

Shane was standing right by her.

“Shane! Get a move on! Kabilde can hold them a few minutes.”

Bissel swung his hammer, and darts of fire flew up from it. Bobbi felt the blow, but something powerful in her hand, and something hot and fierce in her heart, kept her from being too much staggered by it. For a second her vision went black, but then she could see again. Kabilde's white-hot fire did not blind her. She could see the sheriff's head turn on his beard. She could see the sheriff's head turn on his short neck as he looked at the Amishman, aghast. She could see Chantilly sitting rapt on the black horse's back, something wild and yearning showing in her dark eyes as she watched the flare of cannon and mortar. She could see the blue blaze of Shane's eyes turn nearly as white as the flame of her staff.

And in the strobe-white light of those eyes she saw the face of Shane, the man, as she had seen it once before at a desperately hard time. Shane could speak to her without Kabilde's aid at these times of worst need.… Something in the set of his mouth like anger, but not anger, exactly. Through a sort of drumbeat noise in her ears she heard him say, “I'm not the sort of man who leaves my friends in a fight. Get on me.”

“You can't carry us both!” she protested. She saw only Shane, not Samuel Bissel, but red fire must have flown again. She felt the hammer strike. It hurt. She thought she would fall.

“I'm the one to say what I can't do. Get on!”

The fierceness of the dark rider's voice gave her strength. She stumbled up the cottage steps and vaulted onto him, behind her mother. Then Shane galloped, with Bobbi bouncing on his rump and Chantilly swaying like a willow in front of her—sometime, somehow, Bobbi noted with surprise, Chantilly had learned how to ride. And the snake, bigger than a cobra, rearing over them both and hissing and spitting wildfire at Bissel as they galloped past. And the white fire blazing and clashing with the red. And all the orderlies at the doors, and all the crazies looking out of windows, laughing or shouting or screaming. And the cop staring as if he was going to faint, never even reaching for his gun.

Shane galloped out the gate and down the paved road. When he found a narrower, dirt road he turned onto it. The white fire of the walking stick dimmed and went dark, but Shane kept galloping. Bobbi felt his ribs straining, heard his breath coming hard. There was nowhere to go but the dirt roads, where police cars could still follow. She knew he couldn't take to the farm lanes and jump the fences, not with her sitting on his hindquarters.

“Shane,” she said, “stop.”

He kept going at a stubborn, plunging gallop.

“You hot dog,” she complained, “stop a minute, would you? I want to see something.”

He slowed to a jarring trot, then stopped, his sides heaving. Bobbi slipped down and walked around in front of him, where she stood with the walking stick.

“I am not getting on you again,” she told him. “Take my mother and go. I'll take care of myself. Kabilde will help me find you once the cops give up.”

Shane gave her a glare, tossed his head and pawed. Even the carved snake on the staff, which had settled back to its usual size and place, moved to look at her. Feeling the movement, she looked down at it.

“Kabilde,” she appealed, “would you tell him he can't get anywhere, carrying all of us?”

The snake did not speak. But the globe of the handle glowed smoke white, and a face appeared in it Bobbi blinked, then smiled. It was Witchie.

“So there you are,” she grumped. “About time you thought of me.” Though in fact Kabilde had thought of her, not Bobbi or Shane.

Bobbi couldn't tell where Witchie was, but she could see the old woman hadn't rested much. Her triple chin showed red creases instead of cornstarch. Her braids looked frazzled.

“You've got Scarlett? Then head for the Hub,” she told them. “We'll settle Bissel's hash once and for all.”

“We got cops after us,” Bobbi said. For the past few moments she had been aware of sirens in the distance.

Witchie seemed not to hear either Bobbi or the sirens. “Head for the Hub,” she repeated. “Shane knows where it is.”

“But Shane can't carry double! And don't let him tell you he can,” Bobbi added as the black mustang started to toss his head and paw again.

Siren whoopings suddenly grew louder. The police had turned onto the dirt road. This time Witchie heard them. “Holy gee, girl!” she snapped. “I want my staff back. Get a move on!”

“But
how
?”

Shane had his own ideas. He butted Bobbi hard with his head, sending her staggering forward. From the walking stick's globe, Witchie glared at her.

“Don't you have the brains you were born with? Use Kabilde.” The old woman turned her back and stumped off into the mist. Bobbi was left staring at the dimming staff in her hand.

“Melly,” her mother inquired blandly from Shane's back, “who was that?”

A white haze had appeared in the air off to the left. “Bobbi,” it importuned her mind.

The flashing lights had come in sight down the dirt road. Shane's blue eyes were blazing.

With an effort Bobbi ignored all of them. “Kabilde,” she demanded of the walking stick, “What the hell was she talking about? Can I ride you?”

And in its glassy-smooth voice, without hurry, the walking stick began to chant.

“With a heart of furious fancies

Whereof I am commander,

With a burning spear

And a horse of air,

To the wilderness I wander.”

The sheriff's car was pulling to a stop a few paces away. But Bobbi scarcely noticed, her attention entirely taken up by the strangeness happening under her. With a thunder sound, air was moving, it was solid, she was straddling it as if riding a wild stallion, and it was carrying her—up, away, onward, at speed—and in her hand Kabilde flamed, a leaf-shaped flare of fire at its head, a burning spear—and she knew then that thunder was the galloping hooves of the storm horse of heaven, and lightning a blazing spear, and she was riding a horse of air, and she knew she was as crazy as her mother.

Beneath her she saw Chantilly riding a black mustang at a dead run across the fields, saw Shane leaping the barbed-wire fences as if they were cobwebs, saw her mother's slim body whipping with the rhythm of the gallop, the long, dark tangle of hair snaking on air, sensed rather than heard Chantilly's soprano laugh. She did not bother to look back for the cops. They would be staring the way she was, and very nearly as scared. Shane and the ground were—below her, entirely too far below—

She grabbed at a mane of air, felt it under her hand even though she could not see it, clutched it. “Down!” she pleaded to whatever was listening. “The cops will see me up here,” she added. “Spot me from all over the county.” Her voice was shaking.

Low-pitched laughter answered her, and in the confusion of her mind she did not know whose laughter, her father's, Kabilde's, thunder laughter … Nor did she much care. “Worried about the police, Bobbi?” a voice mocked, and she did not know whose voice, or from where, or care. All the strange things that had been happening to her, all the business of the Hidden Circle, all the ways of magic and of form beyond form had spun into a muddle for her, and she felt far too tired of it all to sort it out. All she wanted was solid footing again. But—

The weird steed carrying her, whatever it was, started swooping downward at a terrifying pitch and speed, as if it would crash into the ground.

“Not so fast!” she yelled.

“Never satisfied.” The cool, taunting voice, she suddenly knew, was Kabilde's, and in that moment she no longer felt afraid, but profoundly angry. She glared at the pow-wow staff in her hand, focusing her anger at it as she had once focused her whole attention on Witchie's back door. “Ow,” said Kabilde. Its voice revealed no more feeling than it ever showed, but Bobbi felt her insubstantial mount slow and upright and steady itself, so that she drifted down by easy stages until her mount of air was galloping nearly on ground, beside Shane. And Kabilde's blaze of white fire quieted.

“We do, after all, want to hide from the police now that we're out of their sight,” it said, its voice slick as melting ice.

“Huh,” Bobbi said. “You never used to talk so much.”

Kabilde said, “I'm tired, too.”

She thought about that, and her anger at the powwow stick vanished. “Yes,” she admitted, “I guess you would be.”

Silence for a short while. The field they were crossing was hummocky and riddled with woodchuck holes, not the best place for a gallop. Bobbi hoped Shane was watching his footing. She knew he was, but glanced over anyway. Chantilly met the glance, riding happily, seeming not at all perturbed that Bobbi's horse was invisible to the naked eye. “Watch me take this one, Melly!” she cried as they came up on the next barbed-wire fence. “Tally ho!” as if she were following the hounds instead of being hounded. Her emerald-green skirt billowed out behind her. Chantilly rode astride, her bare feet hugging the horse's barrel, but the form behind the form … For a moment Bobbi watched the young belle with the flat-brimmed riding hat tilted over her green eyes, the fashionable riding habit showing off her seventeen-inch waist, the tiny, polished boots glinting under her skirts as she rode sidesaddle, taking the fence expertly, reins held firmly in soft, gloved hands.…

Shane leaped the fence in a graceful arc. Bobbi's horse went through it. No harm, she reminded herself, but her stomach seemed to have gotten stuck up her throat somewhere, and she could not help imagining she had felt a rusty barb graze her backside.

“Kabilde,” she said wearily when she could speak, “I know you're tired, but you've got to stop that sort of thing.”

The pow-wow staff answered with no change of tone, “I can't keep this up much longer.”

She looked at it curiously. Its globe had gone dull and dark. She said, “You miss Witchie.”

Kabilde did not answer.

Bobbi called, “Shane.”

The mustang-man slowed to a canter, turning his proud, black head to look at her. Then he turned entirely and came to a stop, seeing her pitch off her steed of air and land on her back on the ground. Bobbi rolled with the force of the fall and came to her feet under Shane's nose, holding Kabilde in her hand. Big-eyed, her mother looked down at her. Her mother who was Scarlett O'Hara, riding a horse who was no horse … In that moment Bobbi decided that her life had gotten entirely too complicated. Her father's cloudy presence, at least, she seemed to have left behind. Thank God, or the three highest names, or whatever.

“Why, Melly!” Chantilly exclaimed. “You've lost your horse! Now how are we ever going to run that bad old fox to his den?”

Bobbi said, “Shank's mare.”

Chapter Seventeen

“To the wilderness I wander,” Bobbi muttered. “Huh. Don't I wish.”

In the woods she had felt safe from all the people who were after her, but this farmland was entirely too open. During the past few hours, on their way to the Hub, she and Chantilly and Shane had hidden from the passing police in a huge, old rust-red barn with twelve-pointed hex signs on its peaks and white outlines, devil's doors, witches' windows, painted on its sides. They had followed the course of streambeds, shielded by the brushy banks, wading in the water. They had kept behind the straggles of trees along fencerows. There was nowhere else to hide. Bobbi walked or jogged at Shane's side, carrying Kabilde. Because of her bare feet, Chantilly mostly rode. Chantilly had proved to be remarkably skillful at spotting and evading the “Yankees,” and after a while Bobbi's fear of being captured had settled into a quick-breathing patience. At least in the open farmland she could see where she had come from, where she was going. She didn't feel lost, in the open. A person could feel lost, bewildered, wandering in the wilderness.

Though, in fact, she didn't know where she was going. She was following a black mustang with a gunslinger's soul. She might as well have been in a forest full of ghosts and shadows. An old witch laughing amid the trees. Dragon's roar in the night. White haze in the moonlight. Dancing gypsies. A body, buried deep. Howl of wolves.

The wilderness was in her mind.

“Melly,” her mother complained from Shane's back, “I'm hungry.”

Bobbi was hungry too. “I'm your daughter,” she said.

“Melly, don't we have a bit of pone, or—”