Witches (25 page)

“Art thou truly well, Ma?” the older girl pressed. Doubt and suspicion again evident. Distrust.

“Thy speech be strange.” In her eyes, Amanda could read much more that was unusual to the girl than just that. Yet the mistrust was stronger. “Thy actions, too.” It was a meek observation.

Amanda knew exactly what the girl was alluding to. Yet she had to pretend she didn’t.

“Yes, I’m well,” Amanda replied, laying the child in her arms back down on the pallet; even then, the tiny fingers sought and found hers, refusing to relinquish her totally.

“I’m just weary.” She wished she knew the older girl’s name. She must find some way to trick it out of one of them eventually.

The girl continued to stare at her with uncertain eyes, but moved away. Again, she seemed to have made a decision and, sitting there still stroking the dozing cat, the girl mused aloud, “What shall we call him? Hath he a name? Look, he hath but one ear. It makes him look so funny.” Amadeus covered his mutilated ear with one of his paws. “We are going to keep him, are we not?”

Amanda was relieved for the change of subject. She was too spent
and still in shock over the day’s discoveries to have
put up any more of a fight. She was tempted to just tell them both the truth and get it over with. Throw herself on their mercy.

She couldn’t. They might think she was insane and shun her completely. Maybe even turn her over to the authorities. She wasn’t sure of the older one yet.

Perhaps, she brooded, she was Rachel after all and her mind had just snapped? The thought frightened her. She—Rachel—was insane. This was how being insane felt.

No. Her other life wasn’t some sick dream.

Not Jake, her home, family and friends. Canaan. The past she remembered so vividly. They weren’t
only figments of her imagination. They existed somewhere ahead in time. So did Amanda Givens...and somehow, she’d find a way back. She frowned and then recalling where she was, she reached out to pet Amadeus, turning a cheerier face to the watching girl. “Yes, Amadeus is staying.”

The girl threw her a quizzical look. “Ama—?”

“Amadeus,” Amanda repeated slowly for her benefit.

“A most uncommon name for a cat, Ma.”

Amanda looked at the cat. “He loves classical music. Amadeus is the middle name of a very famous composer. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.” She paused.

The dark-eyed girl stared at her as if she’d gone mad and again Amanda felt the shakiness of her position. The girl probably didn’t even know what classical music was. Rachel, either.

Mozart, she was sure, hadn’t even been born yet in seventeen hundred. Though the girl wouldn’t know that and Amanda was suddenly too tired to play any more games and tiptoe about. So let the girl think she was mad. Did it really matter?

“Amadeus,” the girl echoed haltingly, “it shall be, Ma. Though, I think One-Ear would be better.” A tiny smile.

Amanda returned the smile. “His name is Amadeus.”

“As you say, Ma.” Accepted with a curt nod of her head, the smile gone, as she went on petting the purring cat.

“There be stew in the kettle,” the girl offered. “And freshly baked bread. Would thou want me to serve it to thee now?”

Amanda couldn’t help herself again and smiled warmly at the eager-to-please face. “Yes, that sounds delicious. I can serve myself. Have you and Lizzy eaten yet?”

Again the girl flashed her a questionable glance.

Now what have I done wrong? Amanda thought, perturbed.

“Nay. Thou knows we wait for thee to eat before Lizzy and I. Remember?” As if she were talking to someone with a simple mind. “I did give Lizzy a wee bit of it earlier because of the fever. I am sorry.” Nervous. Her eyes downcast. As if Lizzy’s condition was a crime. The girl had stood up and was wringing her hands. As if feeding a sick child was a crime, too.

“Then she must have more right away. And afterward, I’ll go into the woods and locate the right medicinal herbs to brew her some special tea to bring down that fever.”

Amanda turned away too quickly to see the look that crossed the girl’s face.

Sooner or later, she thought, she’d search for Rachel’s stash. If Rachel had been half the witch she was reported to have been, then there was bound to be a stockpile of healing herbs somewhere close and Amanda would find it.

Lizzy piped up, “Maggie, can I eat now? I am so hungry.” She started to cough and the older girl bent down to comfort and hush her.

Maggie. The older girl’s name was Maggie.

“Aye, Lizzy, we shall eat now. I will bring thee some right away. Hold the cat so he will not be lonely and I will fetch supper.” Love and devotion softened Maggie’s voice.

“Tea, too, Maggie?” Lizzy begged. Still hacking and sniffling.

“Aye, perhaps tea, too.” Maggie hesitated, sliding another wary look toward Amanda, who nodded.

“Plenty of it,” Amanda agreed.

Lizzy giggled happily between coughs and snuggled the sleeping cat so tightly that Amanda was sure he’d wake up and tug himself free. He didn’t; he kept sleeping in the girl’s arms like a baby.

He reminded her how tired she was herself. She trudged over to Rachel’s stuffed mattress, settled down on it, and leaned back with a sigh. She’d rest just a moment, he told herself. Just a moment.

Maggie was scrutinizing her, but Amanda didn’t care anymore. She felt curiously at home with them. Safe. It was the nightmare outside the door that scared the hell out of her.

“Shall I help you dish it out, Maggie?” Amanda asked sleepily.

Maggie was already at the fireplace, hovering over the kettle, dishing out stew onto what looked like handmade wooden trenchers. Her back instantly went stiff, but she continued her task. “Nay, Ma. Thou need not help me.”

Though half asleep, Amanda still heard the girl’s angry grumbling under her breath. “And why is tonight any different than any other night?”

Maggie brought Amanda a steaming plate of stew with a huge hunk of crusty bread and a mug of hot tea. “Thank you.”

The girl nodded and went to feed her younger sister. Both ate from the same plate.

She had placed a small plate of the stew on the floor for Amadeus, and he was awake and happily slurping it up, purring loudly.

Amanda gobbled down the food in minutes, surprised at how hungry she’d still been.

“The stew was delicious. What was in it?” Amanda asked the girl, her eyes heavy as she set the empty plate on the floor beside her. So tired she could hardly think straight any longer. The world was turning all fuzzy.

“Vegetables from our garden. Rabbit. One I caught this morning out in the woods, Ma. I watched the trap carefully just as thee bade me to.”

“Any more?”

“None, Ma. I am sorry.” There was that damn fear in her voice again. She held out their unfinished plate “Here, have the rest of ours. We are not that hungry.’

Lizzy whimpered, but didn’t say a word.

Amanda met the girl’s eyes and it fell into place. The girls
were
terrified of their mother, Rachel. Terrified.

Amanda wondered again what Rachel had done to make them so.

“No, on second thought, I’m not that hungry, after all. That stew really filled me up. Go ahead and eat yours.” There was a certainty in her tone that wouldn’t let them contradict her.

Maggie’s face was indecipherable, but Lizzy clutched at the plate as if she were ravenous, as her older sister hurriedly spooned the rest of the stew into her mouth.

Amanda had stretched out on the bed and couldn’t stop yawning. The food and tea were warm in her stomach and consciousness was slipping away. Amanda’s eyes drifted shut.

She slept.

When she awoke, she sat up slowly, her thoughts muddled and her heart racing as her eyes roamed around her. A crude cottage, a low flickering candle, and two small human lumps sleeping on the mattresses across the room from her.

Damn, it hadn’t all been a dream.

Another woman’s bed; another woman’s children. Another woman’s life.

For a moment, she let the horror of her situation and what it meant overwhelm her. Then, with a strangled sigh, she lay back down and stared into the darkness at nothing. Her battered body aching. Thinking furiously. Trying to figure out what she should do.

Perhaps, if she was truly and irrevocably ensnared in this treacherous time, she should run as far away as she could. Escape. This was where Rachel’s murderers lived. This was where Rachel would meet her fate.

The question was: could she find a way to change history, and escape Rachel’s grisly death...if Rachel’s fate was to be murdered at all. She couldn’t be sure of that, really. Which one was it to be? Stay or flee? Her eyes rested on the sleeping children’s forms.

If she ran away, she’d have to abandon them.

Through the cloth-covered windows, she watched a large shadowy moon ride the velvet skies and she mulled over her dilemma.

She missed Jane and Ernie. Missed Jessie and her family, and yes, even Rebecca. Had Jonny made it? Was he still alive? She also worried about how Mabel would get along without her. Approximately three hundred years from now.

Amanda rose from her bed and stepped outside into the moonlight. She traveled a little ways into the woods and relieved herself. She recalled the herbs she was going to look for to help bring down Lizzy’s fever and in the bright moonlight, they weren’t that hard to find. She had excellent night vision and knew the herbs well. She gratefully closed her left hand around them. She’d brew the tea first thing in the morning. It was more important to allow the child to sleep the night through. Tomorrow or the next day she’d find that cache of medicinal herbs she knew Rachel must have hidden somewhere. Maggie might know where.

She came across a small pond glimmering in the moonlight not far from the house and with a groan of pleasure, stripped her clothes off and waded in to rinse the filth from her body. The bath and the cool water did wonders, she almost felt human again.

Then she went back to sit in front of the cottage in the dark and let her hair dry in the cool breezes. Amadeus popped up at her side, but she’d suspected he’d been following her since she’d left the cottage. She’d heard him cavorting in the weeds as she’d been bathing.

“Still watching over me, huh?” She chuckled. “Can’t break the old habit. Even if my powers are gone and technically I’m no longer a witch.”

The cat meowed and rubbed against her. Amanda did miss talking to him.

“What am I going to do now, old buddy?” she asked him softly. “In this terrible time?”

He meowed again and jumped into her lap.

For some reason, she couldn’t get that man off her mind, either. Joshua, he’d said his name was. Joshua Graham. He’d been so familiar somehow and she hoped she’d see him again. Soon. She’d felt so drawn to him.

She studied the bright moon and listened to the familiar noises of the woods around her, trying to collect the rest of her scattered thoughts. Where was Rachel?

In her
time causing trouble? It was also possible she was in one of the other in-between worlds, waiting until Amanda was dead and she could take her place without challenge.

Amanda had no way of knowing, as she had no way of knowing what tomorrow would bring.

The day’s vicious heat was finally gone. It was cool and tranquil and Amanda was enjoying it. The solitude. The woods felt like the woods she knew back home. That hadn’t changed. Nature rarely did. The leaves of the night woods rustled and whispered secrets she still couldn’t understand.

Being a witch, she imagined she was probably accepting this whole thing a hell of a lot better than a normal person would. She’d seen some bizarre things in her life, that was for sure. This was a shock, but then she’d had other shocks nearly as bad—and, after all, she had
broken the witches’ law.

Her powers were gone. She pined for them, felt positively lost and vulnerable without them.

The bottom-line truth was that without them, she had no protection in this world. She was at its mercy.

After a while, she found her bed again and slept fitfully, her sleep full of her old lost life and her crime...and the nightmare that she’d stepped into unwillingly.

The mysterious Rachel was in her dreams, too. Laughing at her. Maliciously telling her how her powers were greater than Amanda’s and how she’d won.

That she was living in Amanda’s body in the present, weaving black magic with which to torment her friends and family. Living Amanda’s life as she left Amanda to perish in her old one. That Amanda would die soon.

Nightmares all.

Chapter Seven

The next time Amanda opened her eyes, it was day, though in the cavern-like twilight of the cottage it was hard to tell.

She was still in the seventeenth century.

Real soon, if I remain here,
I’m going
to redo those windows so I can open them in good weather. Let the sun in.

She got up from the lumpy mattress, rested for the first time in days, stretched, and tiptoed over to gaze down on the two girls. Both were sleeping peacefully and curled up in each other’s arms like kittens. It touched something tender deep inside her, made her feel like she’d never felt. If she was here to stay, these would be her children. For the rest of her life. It was a sobering thought. Rachel had done a lot of harm and she would have quite some damage to undo.