Jaclyn of the Lantern

by Amy Stilgenbauer

  "He hasn't? Good. I'll be there within the hour."

  Jaclyn wanted to ask what was going on, but before she could do so her mother had hung up. She looked over at Butterscotch who was eying her in what appeared to be a pouty way. "The box?" Jaclyn asked curiously, but if Butterscotch had an answer for her, she did not share it. She merely stood up, paced in a circle, and curled back up again covering her face with her bushy tail.

  6.

  Cerise Mooreland was not a typical man's image of a witch. Her skin was more olive toned than green and completely unblemished. As a teenager, Jaclyn had envied that skin as her own had been riddled with freckles and acne. She had also been jealous of her mother's voluptuous figure, leaf green eyes, and soft hair the color of wheat. She was beautiful in all the ways Jaclyn wanted to be.

  She looked a little more witch-like standing in the doorway, soaked to the bone, with a fiery rage burning behind those green eyes. Jaclyn ushered her in and immediately began searching the linen closet for a towel. "Don't bother, Jaclyn," she said, her words softer, but still quite agitated. "Just get your father."

  "Mother, I..."

  "Evening, Cerise," Jonathan said from the doorway to the guestroom, cutting his daughter off. "What a pleasure."

  "Don't you start with me!" She shouted, stamping toward him with an accusatory finger outstretched. He recoiled before it, obviously worried that she meant to turn him into something unsavory. "We had an agreement!"

  Jaclyn watched the two of them uncertainly, an almost forgotten pit growing in her stomach. It felt like the floor had completely dropped out from under her and she was sinking. She hadn't felt that pit since she was a little girl.

  Her father had come to visit for a whole two weeks and they were carving pumpkins in the kitchen. Carefully, she outlined shapes on the fleshy orange skin of the squash with a pencil and Jonathan cut them out with a vicious looking serrated blade. As they worked, he had begun to tell her the story of his own first jack o'lantern and why he could only visit her at Halloween. He hadn't gotten very far at all when her mother stepped in. The blade had flown out of her father's hand and rested itself at her feet. The look she had given him would have been enough to drain his blood if he had any.

  "You leave her out of that," she had said, threatening with every syllable.

  "I was just telling the girl a story," her father had explained, but Cerise was having none of it.

  It didn't help that Jaclyn then looked up at her mother and innocently added, "It's okay. I know Daddy's a ghost. I always have."

  Cerise hesitated before responding, but ultimately went to Jaclyn and hugged her tightly as if to protect her. From that day forward the jack o'lantern joined the "far too messy" pomegranate as being one of the few things outright banned from the Mooreland household.

  This time was different. Her mother was no longer speaking with warning in her voice. Instead Jaclyn could hear fear, desperation, and what seemed like betrayal. "You told me you would not involve her!" She shouted.

  "Cerise, calm down, you're scaring the girl," Jonathan said, resting a hand on her mother's shoulder. "Why don't you get dried off and..."

  She wrenched away. "I'm scaring her? You're the one who wants to kill her!"

  The pit in Jaclyn's stomach suddenly began to churn. She had no idea what her mother was talking about, but she did not like it one bit. "Kill? Me?" she tried to ask, but though her mouth formed the words she found herself unable to voice them.

  "You've got it wrong, Cerise, as usual" Jonathan protested.

  "Oh, have I?" She rooted around in her purse for a while before taking out a piece of stale bread. She shoved it toward him as if trying to threaten him with it. "Where's the iron, Jack?"

  "I don't know what you're-"

  "Where is the iron?"

  "I don't-"

  "I know you're going to give it to her! I had a vision, Jack. A very clear one." As she shouted, her body began to contort into something more terrifying, something more like one would expect from a witch. The temperature in the room began to drop suddenly.

  "For goodness' sake, Cerise, let me talk!"

  She took a deep breath and stepped back a pace or two, giving him room. "You have three minutes to explain yourself," she said, an evil sort of calm in her voice. Jaclyn had honestly preferred her yelling. It sounded less deadly than she did now.

  Her father reached into his pocket and pulled out a small rectangular box. It had been wrapped in orange tissue paper and tied up with a black and purple bow. Jaclyn stared at it a moment, part of her assuming that this box was meant to be her Halloween present. Could it be that this small thing was what they were fighting over? "I wasn't sure if I was going to give it to her or not," he admitted reluctantly.

  Cerise's eyes flashed. "You weren't sure if you were going to give it her?"

  There was no question of who "her" referred to. Jaclyn knew this immediately. She swallowed hard and stepped into the fray: something she hadn't done since the jack o'lanterns. "What is going on?" She demanded, attempting to stare down her parents.

  Both of them looked to her with abashed expressions. It was clear they had forgotten she was there.

  "It's not important," her father began.

  "It's very important," her mother corrected.

  "You're the one who never wanted her to know about it," her father threw back.

  "Until she was ready! And since you're about to give her the damn iron..." The argument had begun again in full force.

  "Stop it!" Jaclyn shouted again. "You both just showed up out of the blue; I think I deserve a decent explanation."

  Her parents looked at one another and Jaclyn could read the looks on their faces. They seemed to simultaneously decide that now was the time.

  "You know what you are," her mother began gently. It was the same instructional-yet-kind sort of tone she had used with Jaclyn during her spell training while she was growing up.

  Jaclyn nodded. She repeated the litany of definitions her mother had used to describe their place in the world. "A strega. An outsider. A witch."

  Cerise nodded slowly. "And me?"

  "The same," Jaclyn replied. She felt absurdly childish. She was twenty-three years old and here she was reciting basics with her mother.

  "And your father?"

  Jaclyn glanced at Jonathan. Facts got a touch more murky in that department. "A doomed soul," she said quietly. Her stomach filled with an intense guilt-related nausea at the look of sincere pain that suddenly clouded her father's face.

  Cerise nodded. "And do you know how he got that way?"

  Jaclyn stared at him a moment. She had to admit that she did not. "No one would ever tell me."

  7.

  Roscommon - Ireland, 1400s

  The surly bartender eyed Jack Laindeir angrily. "Pay up or get out," he said in a growling bear-like voice.

  Jack smirked, finding the voice perfectly suited to the man covered from head to toe in muscle and hair. The way the candlelight dimly flickered off his body made it hard to tell that he wasn't a bear after all. "I'll pay, I'll pay. Soon as I get my whiskey."

  "You don't get whiskey," the bartender growled. "You have to pay."

  "You know I'm good for it," Jack touched his hand to his heart as though he were swearing an oath and flashed a bright, disarming smile. He had always counted on that certain charm to get him what he wanted. Usually it worked. It got him food without working for it and women without wooing them, but apparently it wasn't enough to get him whiskey without paying for it.

  "I know you're no good for it, Drunk Jack. Now pay up." The bartender slammed a heavy fist on the counter. Jack instinctively moved back, recoiling from the violence of the action, and took a tumble off the stool. Several other villagers saw and laughed.

  Pride bruised, Jack stood up and brushed off his breeches. "I'm afraid I don't have anything to pay you with just now," he said, trying not to sound like a man who had just fallen from his barstool.

&
nbsp; "Then get out of my feckin' bar," the bartender snarled. Somewhere in the room, a villager whooped, eager for a fight.

  Jack was clever enough to know when he should leave a situation. He was quick, but he was far from strong. Avoiding physical confrontation, especially with someone so much larger than him, was a very important part of his survival plan. He started for the door.

  "I'll cover his tab," said a voice from the shadows. When Jack turned his attention in that direction, he saw a hooded man stepping toward him. He walked lightly, but with a pronounced limp. Jack could not see his face. The hood that covered it was too dark.

  "He drinks a lot and pays for nothing," the bartender said to the hooded man, a scoff on his lips. "You'd be wasting a lot of coin."

  "I wouldn't be wasting a thing," the hooded man replied smoothly.

  Jack felt a shudder run through him. Though he couldn't see the man's face, he could tell he was being examined. "Buy us both a drink?" he asked. He meant the words to sound teasing, but the jest fell flat.

  The hooded man laughed; it was a hollow, cold laugh that made the hair on Jack's neck prickle. "Why not? Join me at my table."

  His voice made Jack feel queasy. He reached into his pocket and felt the bar of cold iron he kept there. It made him feel safer as he walked toward the hooded man's table.

  At first the man said nothing; he simply sipped his whiskey into his faceless void. Jack watched curiously as he drank his own glass. He wanted to ask the man who he was, but something stayed his questions.

  "Do you know who I am?" The man asked after he had finished his drink. Jack shook his head, so the man went on. "Perhaps you drink too much."

  Jack look puzzled. "Excuse me?"

  "Or maybe that turnip farmer you stole from has come to seek revenge."

  "I was hungry," Jack protested. He was pretty sure no one knew about that. "My own crops...there-there was a blight."

  "Perhaps you should have left the others their share."

  Now Jack was starting to get nervous. He eyed the hooded man warily. Suddenly, the realization hit him. "You're death," he said to the man matter-of-factly.

  The hooded figured nodded. "We must be away. Pay the good man."

  "I don't have any-" but before he could protest any further the figure was gone. All that remained was a solid gold coin in Jack's hand. He waited until the bartender was distracted, pocketed the coin, and slipped out the door.

  *

  The air was still clinging to the warmth of summer, but the wind was brisk as Jack snuck out of the pub and into the night. He liked this sort of weather best. Summer was too hot for all the work one had to do and winter too cold for a man currently lacking in stable shelter. Autumn was best. And the fields were full of spare food as well.

  He knew it was supposedly meant to placate the puca and other hungry little harvest faeries the fisherwives talked about, but if they were real, they had blighted his own crops one year past. He certainly didn't feel that he owed them anything.

  Nor did he care about the dead. Death himself had come to tell him his time was near, but where had he gone? What did it matter?

  Jack walked up to a house that had set a fine platter of greens outside their door for the dead who might come calling on that Samhain night and was about to help himself when he remembered the coin. He could go to a tavern - a different one, of course - and have a real meal. He might even be able to get a bed for the night if he haggled right. The thought of a soft straw bed and a woolen blanket was such a luxury that he set out straight away.

  At the outskirts of town, he found an inn. It looked like the right sort of traveler's place. Not the sort where he usually stayed. He wasn't sure how far one gold coin would get him, but his mouth watered at the image of a roasted pig above the inn's wooden sign.

  The innkeeper was a beautiful raven haired women and Jack was even more inclined to the place at the sight of her. He swaggered toward her and set the coin on the counter. "Can I get a room for the night?"

  Instead of giggling flirtatiously as Jack had hoped, she merely wrinkled her brow and frowned at him. "You expect to pay me with this?" She held up a stick, which had appeared where Jack's gold coin had been.

  "What sort of sorcery are you playing at?" He shouted angrily.

  Her frown deepened. "Now you're trying to accuse me of something, are you? I'll have you by the throat long before you'll have me, you vagrant."

  Jack began to root around in his pockets. There was no gold coin, only a bar of cold iron like there always was. Quickly he turned to make a break for the door. She threw the stick after him as he fled.

  Outside, the realization of what had happened hit him with violent terror. Almost without realizing what he was doing, he took the iron from his pocket and crouched by the stick. As it began to assume its form as Death, Jack slipped the iron into its cloak pocket.

  He waited, daring the figure to move though he knew it had been immobilized. Apparently, the fisherwives were right about one thing: it was worth the effort to carry cold iron.

  "I'll let you go," he said, boldly pacing around the hooded figure. "On one condition."

  Though unable to move, Death still managed to speak with Jack. In his head he heard the smooth voice saying. "Of course. Your move."

  "You can never take my soul," Jack replied, a wicked smirk growing upon his face. He had always thought himself clever, but this time he knew he had outdone himself.

  "Done," the smooth voice said again in his head.

  Feeling pride swell, Jack took the bar of iron from Death's pocket and put it back in his own as a precaution. The hooded figure turned to look at him and though Jack could not see its face, he could have sworn it was smiling. “Don't lose that iron,” He said.

  The words unsettled Jack, but as the figure promptly vanished, he knew that he had won.

  He started back for town, eager to gorge himself on the Samhain dinners meant for those poor souls who hadn't thought to bargain with death, when he heard an angry voice behind him.

  "Are you the one who accused my wife of witchcraft?"

  8.

  "A man's body can still die and leave his soul behind," Jonathan explained to his daughter, who was now coiled on the couch holding her cat tightly in her arms and listening to the tale with fascination. "I wasn't half so smart as I thought I was."

  "Common theme," Cerise said quietly.

  Jonathan looked over at her and smirked. "True enough."

  "I still don't see what any of this has to do with me," Jaclyn said then, adjusting her hold on Butterscotch, who allowed the move without protest.

  "I was twenty-three when this happened," her father explained carefully.

  She nodded, mulling over the thought a moment. "I also have a steady job in a tea shop and I don't go to bars because people annoy me. No offense, daddy, but we're two very different people."

  Jonathan nodded. "Yes, that's certainly true, but..."

  "I also am a witch, so...there's gotta be something to that." Jaclyn looked hesitantly toward her mother, her eyes begging for confirmation.

  Cerise smiled, but said nothing to confirm or deny Jaclyn's statement. "Your father...left out a detail or two."

  Jaclyn looked to him immediately. He was clearly uncomfortable. "Why did mom say you wanted to kill me?" She asked carefully, recalling what she had said during their argument.

  "She has it wrong. I don't want to kill you." His voice was stilted and Jaclyn could tell that he was measuring his words.

  "Don't want to?" Jaclyn began.

  "You see, Cerise, she's a clever girl. Too clever." Jonathan shook his head and began to pace.

  "I never doubted that she was clever."

  Continuing to pace, Jonathan locked his eyes on his daughter. "I don't want any of this to happen. I wasn't going to tell you because I wanted to see if it could be avoided."

  "And yet you were going to give her the iron," Cerise interjected.

  "Stay out of it for five secon
ds," Jonathan snapped.

  Jaclyn watched as her parents stared each other down. For the first time in her life, she began to feel as though it was her fault that her parents' relationship didn't work out. Unlike many children with estranged parents, she had never taken on that burden. She always imagined it had more to do with her father's limited time constraints. Now, however, the idea was beginning to take hold of her. "Why would it happen to me just because it happened to you?"

  "A good question," her father replied. He paced over and took a seat next to his daughter. “I can't say death was terribly happy with me. He's been wanting to get back at me ever since.” He looked at Cerise pointedly. "Then, of course, I had to go and fall for a harvest witch."

  Jaclyn's mother sat down next to her as well and gently touched her hair. "They warned me...but I didn't listen."

  9.

  Holmes County - Ohio, 1978

  A group of boys stood at the entrance to the barn. They were munching on apples surreptitiously stolen from the nearby barrels and snickering to themselves. Cerise knew they were snickering at her and she hated them. She narrowed her eyes in their direction. One of the boys made a face as he bit into a rotten apple and she felt somewhat better.

  The newspaper photographer snapped his fingers. "Look this way, little lady."

  She did not appreciate being called "little lady" either. She sent a withering glare in the photographer's direction and his film canister sprung open. It was almost worth the several extra minutes she had to stand in the pigpen to be able to watch his distress.

  Cerise did not care for pigs. She never had. No one had ever been able to convince her that they were anything more than dirty animals who trod all over her flowerbeds if her brother did not keep a watchful enough eye on them. Still, as the newly named "Harvest Queen" she was expected to pose with them as though they were her favorite of all animals.

  "You'll be salt pork soon enough," she muttered to the nearest pig. She could have sworn she saw it wince at her words.

  She hadn't wanted to be Harvest Queen. She thought it was silly. She didn't mind the county fair when she got to show her baked goods, but riding in a hay wagon and waving at crowds of people did not appeal to her in the slightest.