Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful (43 page)

She wasn’t merely pretty. She had a face and form that would stop any man dead in his tracks. Ceren was now the reflection of the girl in the pond.

Didn’t I tell you?
The Girl sounded a bit smug.
You know what life was like for me. What it can be for you. All you need do is take what you want.

Ceren nodded. “You’re beyond beautiful. Was that why that man drowned you in the pond?”

She felt the laughter. She wondered if she was the one laughing, but the reflection looking back at her was sad and solemn. Her own reflection, somewhere hidden beneath a borrowed skin.
So you’ve seen that as well. Some men will destroy what they cannot possess, and I chose poorly. What of it? Neither Kinan nor his brothers are like that.

“I know.”

All you need do is show yourself to him as you are now, and he is yours.

Ceren shook her head. “No. I show your face to him and he is yours.”

A frown now showing in the mirror that was none of Ceren.
It is the same thing, and he is your heart’s desire!

“No. I merely want him. I even think I like him. If there’s more to the matter, then time alone will tell. You never understood my heart’s desire. Maybe because it took me so long to understand it myself.” She tapped the back of her neck three times. “Off with ye, done with ye!”

The skin split as it must, but it did not release her quickly or easily. The Girl was fighting her. Ceren thought she understood why. She pulled off one arm like a too-tight glove and then another, but the torso refused to budge.

“Does the servant question the mistress? Let me go.”

You can’t do it without me, without us! You’re ugly, you’re worthless . . .

“Let me go,” Ceren said calmly. “Or I’ll cut you off.” And just to show that she was serious, Ceren went to her herb box and took out the bronze razor. She had already started a new cut down the side when the skin finally relented. In a thrice Ceren had the Girl wrapped carefully back on her shelf.

The voice was still there, taunting her.
You’ll be back. You need me to gain your heart’s desire. If it’s not Kinan, then another! You’re plain at best, hideous at worst. You’ll never achieve it on your own.

Ceren almost giggled. “I didn’t understand. All this time I thought the skins were tools and we the purpose. Now I know it’s the other way around. I am the instrument, just as Gran was before me. You, the Oaf, the Tinker, the Soldier . . . You who died ages ago, and yet still live through us. You are the purpose. We serve you.”

You still do. And will.

“Why?”

Because only we can give you what you want.

Ceren shook her head. “You still don’t understand. You already have, at least in part.”

What are you talking about?

“I’ve always felt like one living in a borrowed house, with borrowed strengths, borrowed skills, but I thought it was because of Gran. It wasn’t. It was because of
you.
”

Fool! The raiders will return or bandits or village boys too drunk to know who they’re forcing! You will fall in love. A heavy tree will fall. You can’t do this on your own. You need us.

“No,” Ceren said. “I need to find out what belongs to me and what does not. You gave me that last part, but now I have to find the rest. That is my true heart’s desire.”

Ceren left the storeroom and latched it behind her. Then, upon consideration, she slowly and painfully pushed her Gran’s heavy worktable to block the door.

Setting fire to her Gran’s cottage was the easy part. Watching it burn was harder. Listening to the four voices screaming in her head was hardest of all, but she bore it. She heard the pounding from inside as the flames rose, tried not to think of what supposedly had no volition, no independent action, and yet still pounded against a blocked door. Ceren led her sheep and her goat to a grassy spot a safe distance away, where they grazed in apparent indifference as the cottage and pen alike burned.

Her Gran had never taught Ceren any prayers. She tried to imagine what a prayer must be like, and she said that one as the voices in her head rose into a combined scream of anguish that she could not shut out.

“Go to your rest, and take your memories with you.”

She didn’t think the prayer would work. Some of the memories were hers now, and she knew that was never going to change. She wasn’t sure she wanted it to.

The roof finally collapsed, and just for a moment Ceren thought she saw four columns of ash and smoke rise separately from the fire to spiral away into the sky before all blended in flame and smoke as the embers rained down.

Kinan found her sitting there, on the stump, as the cottage smoldered. He looked a little pale, but he came down the path at a trot and was only a little out breath when he reached her. “We saw the smoke. Ceren, are you all right?”

She wondered if he really wanted to know. She wondered if now was the time to find out. “I should ask you the same. You shouldn’t be out of bed,” Ceren said, not looking at him. “My home burned down,” she said, finally stating the obvious. “Such things happen.”

“I’m sorry,” Kinan said. “But I’m glad you’re all right. Have you lost everything?”

She considered the question for a moment. “Once I would have thought so. Now I think I have lost very little.” She looked at him. “I’m going to need a place to stay, but where can I go? I have a goat and a sheep and my medicines . . . I have skills. I’m not ugly, and I’m not useless!” That last part came out in a bit of a rush, and Ceren blinked to keep tears at bay. She only partly succeeded.

Kinan smiled then, though he sounded puzzled. “Who ever said you were?”

Ceren considered that for a moment too. “Nobody.”

Kinan just sighed and held out his hand. “You’ll stay with us, of course. We’ll find room. Let’s go talk to Ma; we’ll come back for your animals later.”

Ceren hesitated. “A witch in your house? What will your father say?”

Kinan didn’t even blink. “My father is a wise man. He may grumble or he may not, but in the end he’ll say what Ma says, and that’s why we’re going to her first. We owe you . . . I owe you.”

Ceren decided she didn’t mind hearing those words so much. Coming from Kinan, they didn’t sound like an accusation. Besides, Ceren understood debts. They could start there; Ceren didn’t mind. Just so long as they could start somewhere. She took Kinan’s offered hand and he helped her to rise.

Kinan then carried Ceren’s medicine box as he escorted her, understanding or not, down the road in search of her heart’s desire.

Dr. Sarah Martin, Cynthia Ward’s modern physician who realizes there is power in old “superstitions,” uses a very ancient form of spellcraft: knots. The tying and untying of knots to either bind or release energy is often found in magic-making. Love spells—some dating back to the ancient Egyptians and Greeks—often involved knots. Some thought pregnancy could be prevented with the tying of magical knots; untying them restored fertility. Sailors, particularly those from Scotland and Scandinavia, believed knots could control the winds. Three magical knots in a rope (or sometime fabric) “tied up” the wind. When the wind was needed, one untied a single knot for a gentle breeze, two for stronger wind, and all three brought on gales.

The Robbery

Cynthia Ward

Sarah Martin unlocked the front door of her tract house and stood staring: the kitchen door had been broken open. She’d been burglarized. Again. A month after she’d bought this house in a “safe suburban neighborhood,” someone had broken in when she’d gone to Chicago for the weekend. They hadn’t taken anything except the coins on her nightstand, but still she had felt furious and violated.

This time Sarah had told no one she was going away except her neighbors, the Armstrongs: a friendly, nervous blond housewife named Trisha and her pompous lawyer husband, Carmichael. They’d known about her previous break-in, and they’d agreed not to tell anyone she was going away. They wouldn’t have told anyone. Except, Sarah suddenly realized, their son.

She’d never met the boy, but when she’d invited the Armstrongs to dinner, Carmichael had boasted at length about his only son, Thomas. About what a great athlete and terrific quarterback, what an over-achieving student and well-behaved Christian his son was. Because Thomas was so good, Carmichael Armstrong had bought his son a Corvette and, if Thomas didn’t get a full scholarship, he would pay his son’s way through college and law school. “I had to drive a dangerous junk car and pay for my education with lousy back-breaking labor,” Carmichael had told Sarah over dinner. “Why should my son suffer through some low-paying menial job when he doesn’t have to?” Sarah had said nothing, though she’d been angry at Carmichael’s scornful dismissal of labor—all her relatives back East worked hard jobs, lobstering, logging, driving trucks, waiting tables, and they deserved respect. Sarah had held her tongue and, remembering the brawny, sullen youth she’d seen working on the sports car in the Armstrongs’ driveway, she had thought that Thomas would benefit enormously from working like every college-bound teenager she’d ever known—including herself.

But they seemed to do things differently in the Midwest. Especially when the kid was the star quarterback of the high school football team.

She’d lived here a year now, and Sarah still couldn’t believe how
big
football was in the Midwest. God, the high school teams played in stadiums of NFL dimensions! Some schools in eastern Maine couldn’t even afford football. The boys played soccer, and often the spectators didn’t have a bench to sit on.

Sarah Martin realized she was still standing in her doorway, staring into space. Shaking off her stunned reverie, she reached down and picked up the rope that had lain alongside the inner sill of her front door. The rope was slightly longer than the doorsill, and tied along its length in four complex knots. Sarah stepped into the house, closed the door, and untied every knot in the rope. She went to each window, removing the ropes from their sills and undoing their knots. Then she went to the half-open kitchen door that opened into her tiny back yard. The doorjamb had been splintered by blows to the latch and deadbolt. Hammered open by someone strong, just like last time. Sarah looked down. The knotted rope had been slightly disturbed. She picked up the rope but did not touch the four knots.

The utility drawer was open and in disarray, but nothing appeared to be missing. Sarah dropped the lengths of rope in the drawer.
Had it worked?

She called the police.

While moving through the house she’d noticed that she hadn’t lost any big-ticket items; she still had the stereo, the TV and VCR, the CDs and videocassettes, the computer and printer. When she hung up the phone, she checked her medicine cabinet and her yanked-open closets and drawers. The thief had gone through her jewelry box but taken nothing—had busted open her strongbox but ignored her stock certificate for the private medical clinic where she worked; however, he had taken the silver dollar her father had given to her before he’d died.

Sarah’s fists clenched with rage.

He’d gone through her underwear drawer. He hadn’t done anything except search for money, but she still couldn’t bear the knowledge that he’d fingered her panties and bras. She emptied the drawer in the laundry basket.

Two officers and one detective arrived in response to her call. The uniforms dusted for fingerprints. The plainclothesman asked questions and Sarah answered.

Then she said, “Detective Adams, can I tell you something in private?”

“Pete,” he said. “Sure.”

She stepped into her home office and Pete Adams followed. She closed the door and spoke softly: “I’ve only been gone two nights. And I’m a doctor, so I keep weird hours. Someone who knows my movements did this. It was a neighborhood kid.”

“Definitely,” Adams said. “This has all the earmarks of a juvenile perpetrator. Ninety percent of these crude B-and-Es are committed by kids looking for money.”

“I’ll bet,” Sarah said. “Pete, I know my neighbors’ son broke in here.”

“He’s under eighteen?” Adams asked. Sarah nodded. “A juvenile. If he has a record, we can bring him in.”

“
What?
” Sarah cried. “Under those conditions, no juvenile thief could
get
a record!”

“I’m sorry, I was unclear. If we lift fingerprints that match a convicted juvenile’s prints, we can make an arrest. But we can’t go and fingerprint a juvenile without a record purely on your say-so. We’ll question your neighbors—if someone else witnessed the crime and recognized the perpetrator, or gives a description matching your neighbor’s kid, then we can bring him in. But a hunch isn’t enough, Dr. Martin.”

“Christ,” Sarah said. “I
know
it’s the son of my neighbors across the street. I asked them to keep an eye on my place and not to tell anyone I was gone. I know their son did it. I know he did
both
break-ins here. The thief is Thomas Armstrong.”

“Thomas Armstrong!” Adams exclaimed. “The star quarterback of the Lincolnville Eagles. Ma’am, no one will believe the biggest celebrity in town broke into your place.”

Sarah’s eyes narrowed and her mouth opened.

“Oh, I believe you, Dr. Martin,” Adams said. “Thomas is a spoiled, swell-headed brat. I think he’s broken into some other houses on this street. But you keep your suspicion to yourself. Telling anyone else won’t do anything but make you enemies. Anyway, it is possible Thomas didn’t break into your house this time. Yesterday he woke up in such terrible pain he could hardly move. His parents took him to the hospital. He’s developed such a bad case of arthritis the doctors can’t
believe
it. They can’t do anything except give him tests and pills and a wheelchair. They can’t even figure out how it developed so fast.”

“My God,” Sarah said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

“No? And you’re a GP. Jesus!”

When the police left, Sarah went across the street. Carmichael Armstrong was at the law office where he was a junior partner, but his wife, Trisha, was home, taking care of their son. Sarah told Trisha how sorry she was to hear about Thomas’s illness, and asked if she could speak to him; she was a general practitioner, maybe she could think of something that might help. It was a long shot, but surely worth trying. . . .