The Witches’ Kitchen

by Cecelia Holland

  “I don’t know,” Conn said.

  His father was staring straight across the fire at Euan; Ulf, in his place on the far side of Corban from the boys, was looking from one to the other, his face washed blank of expression by the firelight.

  Euan said, “Eric Bloodaxe the hero of Christian Jorvik. That is as true as what you are doing here.”

  “We have made a life here, fit and good,” Corban said.

  Euan’s voice rose, edged with impatience. “What kind of a life is it, living alone like this, as if you were Adam and Eve in the first days of the world? You belong in Jorvik. What will happen to your children? Who will they marry? How will they live, here, with no one else around?”

  Conn’s warm merriment faded. He thought it very hard of Euan to be judging them like this. He glanced around at the rapt faces of the onlookers, all cranked up tight as a windlass with this wrangling. Raef dug his elbow into his side again.

  Corban said, “If you came here to talk me into going back to Jorvik, and fighting there again, you came a long way for nothing, Euan. I will not go back. What we did there was grim and low and hard. I see no reason to repeat it. I owe a blood debt for it that weighs on me, and I will not add to it. But tell me more about Bloodaxe’s heirs, and his wife. What of Gunnhild, and the Ericssons? Has she made one King of Norway yet?”

  Then all around the circle the taut attention eased, as men laughed and sat back and made small jokes. The cup went back to Ulf, who filled it again.

  “Harald Ericsson is King of Norway,” Ulf said. “There being a great abundance now of kings called Harald, we call him Grayfur, because he traded once in squirrel pelts—that’s another story. But he and Gudrod are the last of them—of Eric’s sons with Gunnhild. The rest are dead Gimle and Sigurd and the rest, fighting to become king, or stay so.”

  Benna said quietly, beside Corban, “I wonder if she is happy now.” She leaned against Corban, her arm curling around his. The cup was traveling slowly around the circle; Conn watched it, licking his lips.

  “Hear this,” Ulf said, suddenly, “which will make you laugh. Harald Grayfur is a Christian.”

  “What?” Corban said.

  “As I said. They all became Christian, one after another. Gunnhild raged, but they cast her off and went on alone, and she sits in some tower somewhere in Denmark and broods on it, they say. An old woman already.” Ulf shrugged. “She was a beauty, once.”

  Benna said, under her breath, “She is a beauty still, I suspect, old or no.” She had Miru and Aelfu beside her. “I shall take my babies to bed.”

  “I’ll help you.” Arre rose to her feet. All around the fire, the men stirred.

  Conn staggered up onto his feet, alarmed; he could see everybody was going off to bed, the stories over. “No, don’t—” he began, and his legs wobbled and he sat down hard on the ground, his head swimming. All around him a roar of laughter broke out. He struggled to sit up, but it came to him that it would be just as easy to sleep here, and he found himself lying down already, and shut his eyes and waited for the world to come to rest under him.

  C H A P T E R F I V E

  When Miska left Tisconum’s country he went off into the west, through the hilly woodlands. He saw the smokes of other villages but avoided them. He ate what he found on his way, but the way was much easier, since now he was only retracing the path he had made coming out. He forded the broad river, brown and slow in its summery progress, and wound his way through the folds of the hills, until he came to hills he knew, and then out onto the little plain along the river where his people lived.

  He stopped on first seeing, his heart gladdened. His hand went to the sack of charms around his neck. A surge of gratitude warmed him. His grandmother had sustained him, and brought him home alive. Burns-His-Feet on a whim had sent him off to die or fail, but he had done the task, and now he was home, which was the best reward.

  The plain lay between low tree-covered hills. Already yellow in the summer heat, the grass spread off in a broad swath toward the river, and down there, along the western bank, stood the fortress of the Wolf People.

  A stout fence surrounded it. In their long wanderings, the Wolf People had learned the value of strong walls. When they first came here, there were no other people living here, but others did live over the horizon, and so they made the fence strong and high. Now, throughout this country, everybody else feared the Wolves, everybody else knew not to cross their paths, and nobody else came willingly near their fortress.

  He followed the deep-worn dusty path across the plain. At first shaggy woods buffalo had trampled through this meadowland, but the Wolf People had hunted them all off. The grass grew tall and strong. Along the margin of the plain, birds chattered and fluttered in the brush below the first trees. The webs of spiders hung in the brambly bushes sprouting up along the path. The tracks of small creatures dotted the thick dust under Miska’s feet. By some raccoon scats, a side trail tunneled off into the high grass.

  Halfway out across the plain, he crossed into the gardens of his people, the path running through a gap in a low fence of brush. Off on either side, the women stooped and straightened and stooped like birds over the green plants. He thought of what he would say tonight at the evening gathering and drew in a deep, sharp breath; they would think better of him, those women, when they knew what he had done.

  Now beyond the line of the fence he could see the roofpoles of the longhouses, the brushy peaks of the lodges. The thousand other times he had seen these things, had walked home toward this close horizon of fence and roofs, rushed up from memory. Surely this was a blessed place, the center of the world. He thought a short prayer of thanks, that he had done the task demanded of him, and that he had come home.

  He came to the gate, standing open; Hasei was the guard, leaning up against the wall, his eyes closed. Miska went in past him and into the village.

  It was midday. The women were in the fields, the men at their business; the village seemed deserted. He went in past the Big Longhouse, its open door empty as an old man’s mouth, and the potters’ oven, mud-plastered, to the lodge near the fence where he lived with some other young men.

  This lodge was empty, too. Usually at midday in the summer the men and boys went down to the river to cool off and cajole the women into feeding them. Probably also many had gone off to hunt, or raid other people’s hunting. The lodge was dim and stuffy and smelled of rotten food. Robes, clothes, bits of food, and the pieces of a broken bow littered the floor. Someone had been trying to make a bowstring and left a snarl of hemp strands on the floor. Before he left he had rolled up his things in a robe and stuffed them in under the edge of the wall, and they were still there, crammed in between the wooden foot-planks of the wall. He shook the robe out, kicked aside the litter, and laid out his bed, to show he was back.

  Reverently he took the bag of charms from around his neck and shook it out onto the robe. His grandmother’s fingerbone, small and brittle and white, he took up and kissed, and put back in the bag; he always carried that. The feathers, the clear stone, and the wolf’s tooth he gathered into a scrap of hide and tucked into the crevice below the wall, where he kept other things. They belonged to the place he had just come from; he would save them for the right moment.

  That left only the little white stone he had picked up on the shore of the bay, back there, where the woman of the woods had stood. He took it, wondering what to do with it; idly he tossed it up into the air.

  It fell back into his palm; it struck his hand with such a force and weight that it threw him entirely down, flat on the ground. Astonished, he lay there a moment, his cheek pressed to the fur of the robe. The stone lay in his outstretched palm, light as a bean. He drew it closer and saw only a small white pebble, rough-edged. He put it into the bag and hung the bag around his neck again.

  “You.”

  He jumped. Jerking around, he saw Lasicka, the sachem’s younger nephew, staring at him from the doorway.

  “Yes.” Miska
stood up, stooping a little under the low beams of the lodge. “I am back now. I meant to come to Burns-His-Feet, as soon as—”

  “You’re back.” Lasicka’s mouth twisted. “What did you do, go off into the woods a while, until we’d think you’d really left? Who helped you? Somebody must have brought you food.”

  “No!” Miska threw his head back, angry, and cracked it on the beam. The lodge swayed. “I did go! I went all the way to the world-water. I—”

  “You’re lying. Come on, my uncle wants you, and you’d better think of a good story, Miska, sneaking back in like this.”

  “But I did go,” Miska said. He followed Lasicka out of the lodge and down through the village. He wished he had brought the medicine bundle he had made, the things he had brought back with him, as proof. At once he saw what they would make of that. Lasicka led him in past the Gathering House and down to the river.

  There in the shade of a huge old tree Burns-His-Feet and some of the other men were lying on the ground eating nuts. Burns-His-Feet was Miska’s father’s father’s younger brother, he had been sachem of the Wolves since just after they came to this place. He was a big square man, his chest striped with ridged scars, his arms and throat mottled like snakeskin with tattoos. One of his knees hurt him, and he always sat with that leg stretched out straight. In his hands the nuts cracked like little heads.

  He said, “Miska! What are you doing back here—I told you go to find those strangers, off on the salt shore.”

  “I did,” Miska said.

  Burns-His-Feet blinked at him, and then gave a harrumph of a laugh; immediately all the men behind him began to laugh, too. “Then where are they?” Burns-His-Feet said.

  “What?” Miska gulped, feeling stupid. “You said nothing about bringing them. I could not have brought them. There are too many.”

  “You’re lying,” Burns-His-Feet said. “You never even saw them.” He crooked a finger at Miska. “Come to the tree this evening and I’ll decide there how to punish you for coming back when I sent you off.”

  Miska went hot all over. He put his hand to the amulet bag, his mouth dry and his heart pounding. He thought of showing them the magic stone and shied from that: They would take it away from him, somehow. Burns-His-Feet was watching him steadily, slit-eyed. He said, “Go away.”

  Turning on his heel, Miska walked off.

  His head whirled. He went back through the village, hearing their laughter behind him. The delight at being home had gone cold in his belly. It was well past noon now, and the women had come in from the fields; they passed him, talking together in their little groups, and he could not lift his eyes and look at them. He crept back to his lodge and went to sleep, and did not dream.

  Burns-His-Feet ate little, although the meat was good. The chatter around him annoyed him; he tapped his fingers on his outstretched knee. Most of the people gathered around the fire before him were the women and their children, noisy, disorderly. He missed the respectful silence of his men. He wished he had gone with Anatkwa to hunt. The company of women was lowering. Now some of the younger ones were standing up to dance, and he still had this matter of Miska to deal with.

  He clapped his hands, trying to call up their attention. The two old men dozing beside him straightened abruptly upright, their eyes wide, but the girls were still giggling and watching their feet, swaying in a long row on the far side of the fire. Burns-His-Feet clapped again, and one of the men shouted, and the women, abashed, went to sit down. In among them, Lasicka brought Miska toward the sachem’s place.

  Miska trudged along, his head down, his hair in his face. Burns-His-Feet felt a surge of anger. He had always hated this hostile, sullen boy; he had thought to have gotten rid of him the last time they argued, but now here he was back again.

  “Very well, Miska,” he said, before the young man had even stopped walking toward him. “Are you still going to lie and say you went all the way to the salt sea?”

  “I did do it,” Miska said, between his teeth. Through the shag of his hair Burns-His-Feet could see his eyes glitter, like something caged. “You told me to find the white strangers, and I did.”

  Burns-His-Feet leapt up. Everybody was watching now, he saw. He swelled his voice to a roar. “Bah. You say you went all the way to the land’s end?” Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “I did,” Miska said. “They live on an island there. Not in the world-water, in a kind of lake of it. You said I should find Tisconum—”

  Burns-His-Feet twitched. Tisconum was a great sachem, who led the councils all over the east country. “How did you? A green fool like you! Anatkwa himself said it was impossible.”

  “My grandmother showed me the way,” Miska said, and bit his lips.

  Burns-His-Feet roared, “Your grandmother! Dead three winters now! You cannot even tell good lies, boy!”

  Burns-His-Feet laughed. Around him the men were laughing, also, their voices off-key. They all remembered Miska’s grandmother, although they wished they didn’t. The women, though, had now turned solemn. They sat in their circles, like little knots, and their eyes were fixed on Miska, hanging his head, his face dark with anger.

  “How do we deal with a liar and a worthless boy?” Burns-His- Feet cried. “I say we drive you out of the village with stones!”

  “No,” Miska cried. “This is my home—you can’t do that. Where would I go?”

  The women were whispering, crowding their heads together, urging one of them up—Epashti, the young medicine woman. She seemed frightened, unwilling to speak, but finally, under the urging of the other women, she stood. “Wait,” she said.

  Burns-His-Feet said, “Do you doubt me? What is this, now?”

  “If he has done what he says, we should know it,” said Epashti, standing among the women, who all murmured and nodded and reached out to touch her, nudging her on, their eyes now steady on Burns-His-Feet, as if all together they could give him commands. Epashti walked up through the seated people and went to Miska.

  She laid her hand on Miska’s shoulder, and he stiffened, straightened, turned his face toward her. She touched his arms, drew his hands forward in her own and turned them over palms up, and leaned toward him and sniffed at him. All the other people stared, silent and rapt.

  Burns-His-Feet clenched his teeth. “What is it? What do you think, Epashti? He’s lying, isn’t he.”

  Epashti stepped back, letting Miska’s hand go. Her face rumpled with doubt. She had been medicine woman only since midsummer when her mother suddenly died; and recently her husband had died, too. She said uncertainly, “I don’t know where he has been.” She spoke to Burns-His-Feet, but her gaze turned to rest on Miska, and her voice strengthened. “It was nowhere any of us has ever gone, though, I’m sure of that. And he smells of salt. I think he tells the truth.”

  A great sigh went up, as if everybody exhaled at once. Miska lifted his head, his eyes shining and his mouth soft. Epashti went back to where she had been sitting, and the women on either side of her swayed and leaned around her, rippling like a pond when a splash of water falls back into it.

  At that Miska collected himself. He stood straighter, his head high, and tossed his hair back. Burns-His-Feet sat down again, stuffing his anger down into his belly. He refused to look at Epashti. But he had to say something.

  “She says you tell the truth, Miska. Maybe I’ve misjudged you. If so, then, tell me what they are, these people.”

  “Their skin is very light,” Miska said. “Their eyes are strange. There are three men, two women. Little children, maybe two.” His voice quickened. “I think they are evil. They have a canoe that flies, with wings. They have hair all over them.”

  Someone stood up, across the fire, and called, “Are they warriors?”

  Miska shrugged. “They live on an island, in a lake of the world-water, as I said. They have no wall around their lodge, but there is no way to get out there.”

  “You could get no boat?” Burns-His-Feet said swiftly. “S
urely Tisconum has boats. Tisconum is a great man, very rich, surely he has boats.”

  “He did not want me to go on the water. He gave me little help,” Miska said. “Someone else in his village told me he talks to one of the white ones—their sachem.” His brow furrowed. “The words don’t fit,” he said.

  Burns-His-Feet grunted at him. “You should have taken a boat out to the island. But I can see you were afraid.”

  At that Miska’s head snapped back; he glared at Burns-His- Feet. “I—”

  Burns-His-Feet held out his hand to stop him. “Tell us no more now. We must think about this. You can stay. You did what I required of you. Sit down among us, you are home now.” He forced a smile onto his face.

  Still high-headed, surly, Miska muttered some thanks, his eyes narrowed. He went off toward the fire, where some of the roast meat and beans remained. As he passed through the gathering, some people leaned toward him and spoke to him, but he was short even with them.

  At least nobody else liked him either. Burns-His-Feet sank down on his cushions, grim; it bothered him he could not get rid of Miska. But this matter of the white people, he thought, was interesting. He shut his eyes, turning it over in his mind.

  In the evening Anatkwa and the other men came home from their hunting.

  Miska with the others ran out to greet them. In through the gates they came, singing and dancing, and carrying among them, slung upside down on poles, the many deer they had killed. The waiting people thundered up a cheer and rushed in to join them, old women and young women with babies in their arms, the children, the men and boys who had not gone on the hunt, all rejoicing. Miska with some others lifted the poles from the hunters’ shoulders and carried the deer on their own backs. In a great mass, all together, they wound through the village, laughing and whooping, and the hunters made little dashes here and there, with their heads down, pretending they were the deer as they were hunted, and then falling down dead on the ground, kicking and rolling their eyes up and sticking out their tongues.