Witches (28 page)

“Now I see that thou art nothing like her. Thou art too kind and gentle hearted. She never cared for Lizzy or me, much less our comfort and welfare. She was a whore, slovenly and hateful. Vengeful. She slept with every man who rode up to the door and had gifts of money to pay her. And she hated
me.” The look on the girl’s face was unreadable, stone, but Amanda guessed it covered a lifetime of hurtful pain. She’d had a lot of practice covering her true feelings.

Amanda, surprised by the girl’s keen insight, what she’d said about the real Rachel, and seeing that she wasn’t going to fool her, sighed softly. She sank back down onto the chair she’d just vacated. The game was up. Time to face the music.

“No, I’m not your mother,” she replied simply, locking eyes with the child. It was a relief to admit it. A relief to say it aloud. To stop pretending. To stop using those damnable “thees” and “thous.”

“I also didn’t ask to be brought here, to be in her image—and I haven’t done anything to hurt her, I swear.”

The girl’s demeanor was apprehensive as she moved away from Amanda a little. “Art thou a demon sent from hell to torment us?” she croaked.

“No, I’m human, as you are.” Amanda smiled gently at the girl and it seemed to reassure her.

“I thought so,” Maggie whispered, under her breath, visibly relaxing again.

“Maggie, you know what your mother is?” Amanda had decided to trust the girl and tell her everything.

“Aye.” Revulsion lay heavy and flat in the girl’s dark eyes. “She be a witch. What others say of her be true, well enough,” Maggie hissed. “She be evil, and hast done many of the crimes she has been accused of.”

“I, too, am a witch. My name is Amanda Givens.”

“Thou art a witch like my mother, then?” The girl’s expression hardened and her eyes grew wide and wary.

“No, not like your mother. I’m a white witch. I don’t worship Satan; my powers come from God.”

“A
good
witch?” Maggie exclaimed, with a quick intake of breath. “I never knew there be such things.”

“There are. Good witches, I mean. I’m one of them.”

Maggie searched Amanda’s face with some confusion. Trying to accept what she was saying, but having a difficult time of it.

“Maggie,” Amanda said, “I’m telling you the truth. I’m no threat to you or your sister. I would never do anything to hurt either one of you. In my time I lived a solitary life, tried to help people if I could without drawing attention to myself.”

“In your time?” Maggie’s voice rose a pitch higher.

Might as well tell her everything
.

“I’m from another time, child. The future. Two thousand and ten. Your mother somehow kidnapped me from my time, my home, and my friends—when I was vulnerable—to take her place…for some reason I can only guess at.”

“Oh, dear God in heaven,” Maggie’s childish voice squeaked as she jumped to her feet, trembling. She crossed herself and backed away, nearer to Lizzy, as if she felt there might be a need to protect her. “Thou art not lying to me, are thee? Not having fun of me?” she asked angrily. “How can this be true?”

“No,” Amanda answered wearily. “I wish it weren’t true. This whole experience has been terrifying for me. Whisked from my time to a time I don’t know.

“It’s been a nightmare, except for meeting you and Lizzy.”
Joshua.
“Because not only am I in someone else’s body in another time, but I’m in a time that is extremely dangerous for witches. Good or bad. I don’t know what’s going to happen, Maggie. I’m without my powers and helpless. I want to go home...but don’t know how.” Amanda stopped, afraid that it was all too much for a girl as young as Maggie to comprehend.

She would understand this. “And I’m frightened,” she murmured weakly.

The empathy on Maggie’s face told Amanda that she’d finally touched the girl, for her expression softened. She didn’t seem afraid anymore, either.

Amanda asked, “What year is this, Maggie?”

“Why ’tis the year sixteen hundred and ninety-four of our Lord.” She scooted over and sat back down.

The Salem witch trials took place in sixteen hundred and ninety-two, Amanda recalled. The witchcraft hysteria would be in full swing. She couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Maggie leaned her head into her hands. “Does thou know where my mother is?”

“No.” Amanda hesitated, unsure how much to actually divulge to the girl. She wouldn’t tell her about Rachel’s legend in her time. The legend of Black or Witch’s Pond: that Rachel was probably murdered for being a witch. Too cruel. Anyway, Amanda herself wasn’t even sure what had really happened. No one knew, except Rachel.

“She’s either in my time, in my body, or she’s in between...waiting.”

“What is she waiting for?”

“I don’t know.”
Waiting for me to die for some reason.
Amanda couldn’t say that to Maggie, either.

“In between?”

How to explain other dimensions or the outer fringes of hell to a child? “Like when you’re dreaming. That kind of in between.”

“She cannot hurt us in our dreams, can she?” Again that fear.

“No. She can’t touch you. You’re in the real world. There’s a wall she can’t come through.” Which was a lie in a way, too. Because Rachel had broken through somehow into her world, her time, and done this. Yet there was no sense in frightening Maggie any more than she was. Amanda was sure that her crime against the coven had somehow aided Rachel’s scheme and created the momentary pathway between the worlds. Rachel had no reason to come back here. Not until what she’d set out to achieve had been accomplished. Whatever that was.

“Are you that afraid of your mother, Maggie?”

The child was humming some tune to herself and playing with Amadeus, who was affectionately bumping against her and actually purring.

“Aye.” The timbre of her voice was uneasy. “She hurts people. Puts curses and hexes on them. She loves to see others suffer. She lays terrible spells upon people who cross her or make her mad. I have seen her do it. She has great power, my mother, and has made many enemies. The whole town despises us. I dare not show my face these days. Anywhere.” The girl was obviously bitter.

“I care not if she
never
comes back,” Maggie spoke harshly, her eyes hard as she glared at Amanda. “I am not like her. Not anything like her!” She was standing again. Shaking.

The last piece of the mystery fell into place. The girl did fear and hate her mother, and what she’d been.

“She is a whore,” she condemned. “She always makes me and Lizzy leave when the men come, so she can be alone with them. Sometimes we even have to sleep outside. It makes little difference be it hot or freezing or raining or snowing. That is why Lizzy is sick now. I hate her!” the girl stated with vicious malice, pounding her hands against her sides.

Amanda walked over and touched the child’s arm soothingly. She wanted to take the girl in her arms and hug her, calm her, but she was afraid she wasn’t ready for that much caring yet. “I’m sorry she was so mean to you and Lizzy. I’d never do that if I were your mother. You don’t deserve to be treated so poorly.”

The girl turned her bright eyes away to hide the sudden tears. Amanda was right; she wasn’t used to kindness, didn’t know how to take it.

The girl sniffled a few seconds later, wiped her hand across her wet face, and asked, “What is your time like?”

“Oh, in many ways very different than yours.” Amanda’s gaze traveled thoughtfully around the simple room and at Lizzy playing noisily in the corner with her familiar. She remembered with longing the electric lights, the gas stove, and the beautiful furnishings of her cabin in the woods. Then her memory recreated the people of Canaan and their cruel treatment of her, her ostracism. Their ugly faces in the light of the blaze that had once been her home and the way they’d chased her through the woods that last night. “And in some ways, very much the same.

“I miss my family...my friends. My life.” Canaan and its people aside. Amanda shook her head and stared moodily into the shadows of the cottage. Outside, the rain continued, the inside of the cottage growing murkier.

Lizzy whimpered because Amadeus had run off somewhere, and Amanda collected her, cradling the child in her lap.

“Thou dost speak strangely,” the child blurted out abruptly. Amanda laughed. Maggie joined in, her laughter sounding rusty from little use, and finally came to sit beside her again at the rickety table.

“What should I call thee?” Maggie inquired shyly then.

“Amanda, if you want.”

Maggie seemed to think about it for a moment and the corners of her lips slid up slightly in what could almost be called a smile. “Perhaps it would be best if I continued to call thee Ma, as before. In case someone should ever be around and I would slip and call you...the other name. It could raise questions.”

Amanda looked at the child. If she wanted to pretend she was her mother, then so be it. It couldn’t harm anyone. Amanda might be here for a while. A long while. She thought again how clever Maggie was for as young as she was. A woman in a child’s body.

“Tell me about your time,” the girl requested again. Amanda had the feeling that Maggie still didn’t believe she was from the future but was humoring her.

Amanda did. About who Amadeus was. About her time and her life, her family, and everything that had occurred to her right before she was swept into the past. What it was to be a white witch in the twentieth-first century. Just leaving out the things that might scare the girl too much or things Amanda believed she didn’t need to know, or wouldn’t understand. After all, Maggie was only a child.

Outside, the rain had turned into a mild storm, sifting through the trees and drumming harder against the house. The temperature had fallen farther. Amanda and Maggie built up the fire together and Maggie kept asking questions about the future.

As the time went by, Maggie became spellbound with the stories Amanda was telling and ceased the questions, content just to listen as Amanda sat at the table, working on their new dresses, and talking.

Later over supper of homemade succotash and more strips of the bacon Joshua had brought them, Amanda inquired about Rachel’s store of medicinal herbs.

“Tomorrow, if it stops raining, I will show thee the root cellar,” Maggie said. “It is where my mother keeps all her witchery things. Herbs and medicines. These
things
in bottles.” She shuddered. “And her book of spells.”

“Her book of spells?”

“Aye, a small book covered in black leather where I think she keeps record of all her black magic, though she never let me near it.” Maggie’s voice was uneasy. “As well a record as she could keep, she could write very little. ’Twould be our death sentence if anyone ever found it here, so she kept it hidden well. Perhaps it might help thee?”

“I don’t see how it could. Rachel’s magic and mine are very different.” As different as black and white. Then Amanda thought about it some more. Maybe it could help her. Give her more insight into the woman who had turned her life upside down. “It wouldn’t hurt to have a look at it.”

They finished supper, discussing the Canaan of sixteen ninety-four, and then Amanda’s plans for the next few days: about cutting down most of Rachel’s dresses for the girls, cleaning and fixing up the cottage, and bartering away Rachel’s jewelry and some of her fancier clothes for food and things they’d need.

Maggie at first seemed astounded that she would do all that for them, but Amanda finally convinced her.

“There be so much Lizzy needs. More blankets. Warmer clothes. Though her fever and cough seem much better today,” Maggie said.

“Both of you need things.”

“All of us need things.” Maggie grinned at her then like the child she was.

“Maybe even a few real toys for Lizzy.” Amanda was looking at the raggedy cloth doll with button eyes. “And something special for you, Maggie. What would you like?”

“Nothing,” the girl answered flatly, as if she’d never given any thought to it, and her mind was already busy on one of their other problems. “We could trade for what we need in the marketplace on Saturday. Once a week, merchants and the local farmers come into town to sell their livestock, vegetables, and wares. If they do not stone us the moment we set foot in town.” The girl’s grin had vanished, a frown taking its place on her plain face. “My mother is not liked much.”

“Well, we’ll have to see, won’t we?” Amanda finished hopefully.

The girl merely shrugged her shoulders.

The next morning when the sun glowered bright overhead, she followed Maggie behind the cottage, about sixty yards into the forest, and down some dirt steps into a dark, cool root cellar full of canned fruits and vegetables. She had the egg basket hanging on one arm.

“I canned all the fruit and vegetables myself,” Maggie stated proudly. Amanda had already guessed that.

Far in the back behind a false wall, Maggie showed her where there were shelves full of dried herbs in messy piles strewn everywhere
and stuff in small wooden bowls or bottles, all unlabeled.

Rachel hadn’t been organized at all.

Amanda shoved the basket back on her arm and lit a candle, swiping at spider webs. She studied what she found as Maggie lingered on the other side of the false door, refusing adamantly to come in any farther.