The Return of the Witch (31 page)

At last we came to a rockier piece of the country than we had crossed so far, where the dunes gave way to a mix of flatter sand and low hills of rubbly, broken rock, all apparently made of the same golden sand as the desert floor. These rocks we had to weave through, and the camels disliked the roughness under their great padding feet, so that our progress was even slower than usual. About mid-morning, we stopped. The leader of the caravan, a vigorous, whip-thin man who wore his Tuareg turban and scarf so that only his eyes were visible, slid down from his camel and beckoned to me. He unwrapped his scarf enough to speak, proud to use his few words of English.

“Here. Is here,” he said.

I looked about me. There appeared to be a whole lot of nothing. I had spent weeks before seeking out someone who knew how to take me to the place where Taklit the Blessed lived. I had been promised passage to the exact spot, but there was nothing here. No oasis, no dwelling of any sort. Nothing.

“Here? Are you sure?”

He nodded slowly and emphatically. “Is here. You be here and she come.”

He pulled on his camel's reins and began to lead it away. The whole train of animals, riders, and followers picked up the crawling pace again.

“Wait! How long … I mean, what if she doesn't come? How will she know I am here?” I called after him, trying but failing to keep the panic out of my voice.

“She know!” he sang back. “She know all things.”

I certainly hoped so.

I found the shady side of a rock that was the size of a house, checked for scorpions, and settled down with my rug and pack to wait. It took a fair amount of willpower not to get up and run after the caravan as the last camel reached the limit of my vision. What if she never came? I was two weeks' walk, at least, from anywhere that could be called a village, and two days from the last well we had passed. I was alone in the Sahara, for pity's sake, what was I thinking? I had no arrangement to meet this woman, and only hearsay information about who she was and where she might be found.
Might
be found. The day grew hotter. I took a long, deep breath; this was no place to fall apart. I drank a third of my water supply, ate some dates, and then tried to relax into my surroundings. I had started to feel less threatened by the desert after about a week of traveling through it. I didn't see why I should lose that confidence, that knowledge, just because I was alone. I was used to being on my own, after all. It was the habit of years.

It was then I heard a voice. A whispering at first, distant and indistinct, but definitely a voice. I tried to pinpoint where it was coming from, but the sound bounced off the rocks, echoing and fading in odd places. I stood up, pushed my hat from my head, and shielded my eyes with my hand as I scanned the area, squinting into the shadows between the stones.

“Hello? Anyone there?” I called out. I tried again using a Berber greeting in the Tamacheq dialect specific to the Tuareg, but still there was no response, only the whispering words that came from nowhere. From no one.

I clambered up a sharp slope of rock and stood at the top, but still I couldn't see anyone, or even a place anyone could be hiding. Instead of feeling unnerved by this disembodied voice, though, I felt hopeful. After all, why wouldn't a fabled and revered witch be able to remain unseen? Why shouldn't she test out a stranger?

“I am seeking Taklit the Blessed,” I stated, loud and clear.

The whispering stopped.

I sensed rather than heard someone approaching and turned to find a figure walking toward me along the top of the rocky ridge. She carried a tall staff, which she stabbed into the gritty ground as she strode toward me. She was wearing the traditional embroidered blouse and wraparound skirt of her tribe but, unusually for a woman, she also wore the turban, though it was wound so that her face was exposed. A hot wind was getting up, making her clothes and the loose end of her headdress billow and flap. On her feet she had fine red leather sandals stitched with gold thread. There was a ring of small bells around her ankle which jingled as she sped sure-footedly over the rocks. She marched right up to me, stopping only when she was close enough to reach out and prod and poke at my clothing with her staff. She sneered at my hat and checked the texture of my hair, and then lifted my lip to look at my teeth. She was examining me as if I were an animal in the market she might consider buying. I submitted to this invasion of my privacy as passively as I could. She circled me, kneading bony fingers into my shoulders and spine, even picking up a foot to study my boots.

At last she came to stand in front of me, fixing me with her mesmerizing green eyes. She was several inches taller than me, and looked impressively strong and powerful. She brimmed with a tangible magic energy, and seemed completely unaffected by the sizzling heat of the sun. I felt tired, hot, and sweaty. I had never felt less like a witch in my life.

“Skinny!” she declared. “And short. Some strength, but…”

I made a polite bow, as I had been advised to do. “I am honored to meet you, Taklit the Blessed,” I said. The traditional greeting would have me ask after her own health and that of her family, as well as enquiring how her work went. But Taklit lived the life of a solitary, had no family, and it would be improper to ask about her magic when we had only just met.

“You are a witch,” she said. It was a statement, not a question. Maybe my guide was right. Maybe she did know all things.

“I am humbled in the presence of one such as yourself,” I replied. I had been practicing the courtesies of the region and had been advised that these things could not be overdone.

Taklit accepted the compliment, but wasn't going to play the game by returning it.

“You have some … herbal witchery,” she said with a dismissive flick of her hand.

“I was taught the skills of a hedge witch, if that's what you mean.”

“You also have trickery,” she said, not bothering to look at me as she spoke, but gazing out across the desert instead. “You can move objects from place to place. And such like and so forth.”

“I can if I need to, though I wouldn't call it ‘trickery'…”

She gave a snort, like a camel clearing its nose of sand. “Tricks to snare fools, like the
jinn
who lies in wait for the lonely traveler.”

Her attitude was beginning to get to me.

“I can fly sometimes,” I said with a nonchalant shrug. Taklit found my trump card less than impressive.

“Ha! Icarus flew too close to the sun. Look what happened to him.”

“I don't need wings made of wax.”

“The sun is melting you even now, even here,” she pointed out.

“I need shade. And more water, that's all.”

“Why don't you magic some up, if you are such a clever, skinny little witch?”

“Do you instantly take against all your visitors, or is it just me?”

“You chose to come here.”

“Your reputation reaches a long way.”

“Did they tell you Taklit the Blessed is the Greatest Witch Living?”

“They might have. They might also have told me you are a bad-tempered, mean-spirited bully who enjoys making people suffer when she could be helping them.”

This made her scream with laughter. Her whole body rocked with it, and the raucous sound rattled around us, ricocheting off rocks and echoing far across the sprawling sands.

“So why has the clever witch journeyed across the Deserts of the Dead to find Taklit the Blessed? If your magic is so good, why do you need my help?”

“My purpose is to learn from the best, from the most gifted, from the most powerful. You were top of my list.”

“And why should I share my great knowledge with
you
?” she asked with a curl of her lip that told me exactly what she thought of me so far.

“Well, I had hoped you would because it would be a good thing to do. A caring, generous act. An honoring of your gifts, to pass them on to another who would respect and revere them. But now that I've met you I reckon my best hope is that you won't be able to resist showing off.”

This caused another bout of energetic laughter, full of ear-splitting shrieks and whoops as she whipped her staff through the air. When at last she stopped she said, “Perhaps you are different. Yes, Taklit the Blessed will teach you,” she decided, adding the warning, “Remember it was what you wished.” And then she strode away across the rocks without so much as a word of invitation or encouragement. I scurried after her. I hadn't traveled all that way to be laughed at and then abandoned. Taklit seemed to dance over the uneven ground effortlessly. I followed her down to the flat sand, jogging to keep up with her long, fluid strides. She started barking instructions and conditions without once pausing to look at me or waiting for any sort of response.

“You must do as you are instructed, and
all
that you are instructed. No questions unless I allow. No arguments. Taklit the Blessed will not lower herself to argue. The Clever Witch must listen and must watch until her ears are stopped up with what she hears, and her eyes are burned by the sights she has seen. She must not whine, not cry, not plead. She must do all, if she wants to learn.”

She stopped so abruptly that I nearly ran into her. I was sweating horribly, and more than a little out of breath. My pack straps were rubbing into my shoulders and I had a terrible thirst. She peered down at me.

“Do you agree?” she asked.

I swallowed sand and spit, nodding. “I have only one question before we begin.”

“It is not for you to ask questions without Taklit allowing it!” she reminded me.

“Which is why I'm hoping you will allow just this one. Before I agree.” I raised my own itchy eyes to her clear steady ones now. I might be a mess, but I was still a determined mess.

She gave another snort. “It is allowed. One question.”

I took a breath, then asked, “How come you speak such good English?”

She shook her head. “Why do you think we are speaking English?”

“Well, I know I am … and I can understand you, so…”

“So, nothing. Taklit the Blessed, the Greatest Witch Living, does not speak English. Now, come. Clever Witch will light a fire and we shall see if she is clever enough to cook flatbread.”

 

22

That night I was unable to sleep and took myself out in the cool of the dark. Most of the city was slumbering, so that I was able to make my way along the street up across the park to the top of Primrose Hill, scarcely encountering anyone. The hour was so late, in fact, that most of the streetlamps had been extinguished in anticipation of an early summer dawn. The air upon the hill was fresh and reviving. As I stood breathing deeply, a family of foxes trotted by. A mother with her three plump cubs moved on silent paws after a night of foraging, no doubt heading for the safety of their den in some hidden place. One of the cubs came right up to me and sniffed the hem of my skirts. I crouched down and ruffled his fuzzy fur, grateful for the small interaction with the natural world. When I stood up again I noticed that the sky over the city was already beginning to lighten. I closed my eyes, determined to make the most of the sacred nighttime to try to contact my sister witches.

I began by saying a prayer to the Goddess, asking for her strength. I whispered the ancient words that would summon those who followed the ways of witches, by whatever creed or coven, it mattered not their affiliation, only that they recognize one of their kind asking for their help. Soon I could hear answering voices, faint at first, growing clearer and stronger. Shapes started to loom out of the thinning night, swirling about me, glimpses of faces or the shiver that follows such ethereal contact. Some I knew, others were unfamiliar, drawn to me by the depth of my plea, and by the name of Gideon. He was infamous among witches now, not only for his dark deeds on earth, but for successfully escaping his incarceration in the Summerlands. There were many who felt he should be caught and punished, and amid the voices who offered me their support and encouragement I heard anger and more than a little fear, too.

But none could give me answers. Several agreed they had detected Gideon's presence, but confirmed that he was always on the move, never appearing in the same place twice, and not one had any news of Tegan. There was comfort in being in the presence of other witches, however remote they might be, but the overwhelming feeling was one of disappointment verging on despair, for it seemed they could not help me.

Dawn finally lifted the sky above the Thames basin, and there was nothing for it but to return to the house. Erasmus would draw me back to our notes, to the swirling ink loops and arrows that now filled the paper on his desk, determined that connections could be made, conclusions could be drawn, and that there lay the answers. The answers to the endlessly repeated questions: Where was Gideon keeping Tegan, why did he want her, and what did he plan to do with her?

The weather was still hot, even early in the day, so that by the time I rounded the corner into our street once more I was uncomfortably warm beneath my layers of petticoats and my ridiculous corset. How I had suffered the vagaries and whims of fashions through the years! What nonsense it all was, the only common factor seeming to be a determination to objectify and discomfort the women who felt compelled to follow them. But the sight that greeted me distracted me from my own irritation. At the door of Erasmus's home, which was open, there was a gaggle of children. They were pushing and shoving one another in their eagerness to get over the threshold. As I approached I could hear their voices raised in excitement. I recognized one or two as part of the group Lottie had been with. All of the children were shabbily dressed, and very few wore shoes. When the ones on the pavement saw me their eyes widened and they stepped aside to let me in. As I passed, however, I was aware of them pressing close behind me, and felt sticky little hands reach out and touch me. The constant movement of the door was making the shop bell ring ceaselessly, its own loud chimes adding to the level of noise.