Young Witches & Warlocks

by Asimov, Isaac

  Jake made a noose out of the clothesline and began to circle it above his head. The ponies snorted and reared suspiciously. Picking the smallest one, the tall man let the noose go, and it settled over the creature’s thick neck.

  The pony’s nostrils flared. It reared and beat the air with its unshod front hooves as the other six broke and scampered to the opposite end of the yard.

  Jake Harrison drew the loop tight and approached the pony, making soothing sounds. It quieted and, as the two men came close, let Jake put his hands on it.

  “Yes, sir,” the stable owner exclaimed, “a real honest-to-Homer Mongolian pony. That long hair is to keep the cold out, up in the mountains of Tibet. Now let’s see if there’s any brand. None on its hide. Let’s see its hoof.”

  The pony let him lift its left forefoot without protest, and Henry, bending close, let out a whoop.

  “Look, Jake!” he yelled. “It’s branded! With my name! These critters are mine!”

  Together they stared. Cut into the hard horn, in neat letters, was HENRY JONES.

  Jake straightened.

  “Yours, all right,” he agreed. “Now, Henry, stop making a mystery and tell me where these animals came from.”

  Henry’s jubilance faded. He shook his head.

  “Honest, Jake, I don’t know. I wish I did. . . . Look out!”

  The tall man leaped back. Between them an eighth pony had appeared, so close that its flanks brushed against them.

  “W-where—” Jake stuttered, backing away toward the door in the fence and fumbling for the catch. “Where—”

  “That’s what I don’t know!” Henry joined him. “That’s what I wish— No, I don’t either! I don’t wish anything at all!”

  The phantom pony that had appeared directly before them, wispy and tenuous as darkish smoke, promptly vanished.

  Henry mopped his face.

  “Did you see what I saw?” he asked; and Jake, swallowing hard, nodded.

  “You st-started to wish for something, and it st-started to appear,” he gobbled, and thrust open the door in the board fence. “Let’s get out o’ here.”

  “When I started to wish— Oh, jiminy crickets!” Henry groaned. “That’s how the others happened. When I wished. Do you suppose— Do you—”

  Pale-faced, they stared at each other. Slowly the stableman nodded.

  “Lord!” the ashen Henry whispered. “I never believed such a thing could happen. I wish now I’d never—”

  This time the words weren’t fully out of his mouth before the ninth pony struck the earth with a sudden plop directly before them.

  It was too much. Henry broke and ran, and Jake followed at his heels. The pony, interestedly, chased them. Its brothers, not to be left behind, streamed through the opening in the fence, whickering gleefully.

  When Henry and Jake brought up, around the corner of the house, they were just in time to look back and see the last of the beasts trotting out into Main Street. Nine wicked whinnies cut through the morning quiet. Nine sets of small hooves pounded.

  “They’re stampeding!” Henry shrilled. “Jake, we got to round ’em up before they do lots of damage. Oh, Jehoshaphat, I wish this hadn’t ever happened!”

  Neighing raucously, the tenth pony kicked up its heels, throwing dirt in their faces, and set off at a gallop after the others.

  III

  About the time Henry Jones was running for Jake Harrison, Luke Hawks was fingering a boy’s woolen suit with lean, predatory digits.

  “This be the cheapest?” he asked, and being assured that it was—all the clerks in Locustville knew better than to show him anything but the least expensive— nodded.

  “I’ll take it,” he said, and grudgingly reached for his hip pocket.

  “Don’t you think the material is kind of thin, Luke?” little Emily Hawks asked, a note of pleading in her voice. “Last winter Billy had colds all the time, and Ned—”

  The man did not bother to answer. With the well-filled wallet in his left hand, he inserted thumb and forefinger and brought out a twenty-dollar bill.

  “Here,” he said. “And I’ve got thirteen dollars forty cents coming.”

  Taking the bill and starting to turn away, the clerk turned abruptly back. Luke Hawks had snatched the money from his hand.

  “Is anything—” he began and stopped. Testily the man was still holding out the note.

  “Take it,” he snapped. “Don’t make me stand here waiting.”

  “Yes, sir.” The clerk apologized, and took a firmer hold. But he could not take the bill from Luke Hawks. He pulled. Hawks’ hand jerked forward. Scowling, the lean man drew his hand back. The money came with it.

  “What’s the matter, Luke?” Emily Hawks asked. Her husband favored her with a frown.

  “Some glue on it, or something,” he muttered. “It stuck to my fingers. I’ll get another bill out, young man.

  He put the twenty back into the wallet—where it went easily enough—and drew out two tens. But neither would these leave his hand.

  Luke Hawks was beginning to go a little pale. He transferred the notes to his left hand. But though his left hand could take them from his right, the clerk could take them from neither. Whenever he tugged at it, the money simply would not come loose. It stuck as close to Luke Hawks’ fingers as if it were part of his skin.

  A red flush crept into the man’s cheeks. He could not meet his wife’s gaze. •

  “I—I dunno—” he muttered. “I’ll lay it down. You pick it up.”

  Carefully he laid a ten-dollar bill on the counter, spread his fingers wide, and lifted his hand. To his horror and fright, the bit of green paper came with it, adhering firmly to his fingertips.

  “Luke Hawks,” his wife said sturdily, “it’s a judgment on you. The good Lord has put a curse on your money.”

  “Hush!” Hawks warned. “Netty Peters has come in the store and is looking. She’ll hear you and go gabbing nonsense all—”

  “It is not nonsense!” his wife stated. “It’s truth. Your money will not leave your fingers.”

  Luke Hawks went deathly pale again. With a strangled curse, he snatched out all the money in his wallet and tried to throw it down on the counter. To his intense relief, one folded green slip fluttered down, though the rest remained in his hand.

  “There!” he gasped. “It ain’t so! Boy, how much is that?”

  The clerk reached for the paper.

  “It—it’s a cigar coupon, sir,” he reported, his face wooden.

  Luke Hawks wilted then. He thrust all his money into the ancient pigskin wallet and, being careful his fingers touched only the leather, held it out to his wife.

  “Here!” he directed. “You pay him, Emily.”

  Emily Hawks folded her arms and looked straight into his frightened eyes.

  “Luke Hawks,” she said, in a firm, clear voice that carried through the entire store, “for eight years my life has been made a misery by your mean, grasping ways. Now you can’t spend any of your money. You’ll starve to death before you can even spend a nickel for bread.

  “And I’ve a good mind to let you. If I don’t buy anything for you, you can be sure no one will give it to you. The people of this town would laugh themselves sick seeing you with your hands full of money, begging for a bite to eat. They wouldn’t give it to you either.”

  Luke Hawks knew they wouldn’t. He stared down at his wife, who had never before dared act like this.

  “No,” he protested. “Emily, don’t say that. Here, you take the money. Spend it as you want. Get the things we need. I’ll leave it all to you. You—you can even get the next most expensive clothes for the boys.”

  “You mean you want me to handle the money from now on?” Emily Hawks demanded, and her husband nodded.

  “Yes, Emily,” he gasped. “Take it. Please take it.” His wife took the wallet—which left Luke Hawks’ hands readily enough—and counted the money in it.

  “Five hundred dollars,” she said aloud, t
houghtfully. “Luke, hadn’t you better give me a check for what you’ve got in the bank? If I’m to do all the buying, the money’ll have to be in my hands.”

  “A check!” Luke exclaimed. “That’s it! I don’t need money. I’ll pay by check.”

  “Try it,” Emily invited. “That’s the same as cash, isn’t it?”

  Luke tried it. The check would not leave his fingers either. It only tore to pieces when the clerk tugged at it.

  After that, he capitulated. He took out his book and signed a blank check, which Emily was able to take. She then filled it in for herself for the entire balance in the bank—twenty thousand dollars, Luke Hawks admitted with strangled reluctance.

  After that she tucked the check into the bosom of her dress.

  “Now, Luke,” she suggested, “you might as well go on home. I’ll go to the bank and deposit this to my account. Then I’ll do the rest of the shopping. I won’t need you.”

  “But how’ll you get the things home?” her husband asked weakly.

  Emily Hawks was already almost to the door—out which Netty Peters had just dashed to spread the news through the town. But she paused long enough to turn and smile brightly at her pale and perspiring husband.

  “I’ll have the man at the garage drive me out with them,” she answered. “In the car I’m going to buy after I leave the bank, Luke.”

  IV

  Miss Wilson looked up from her sewing at the sound of galloping hooves in the street outside her tiny shop.

  She was just in time to see a small swift figure race by. Then, before she could wonder what it was, she caught sight of herself in the big mirror customers used when trying on the dresses she made.

  Her whole name was Alice Wilson. But it was years since anyone had called her by her first name. She was thirty-three, as small and plain as a church mouse—

  But she wasn’t! Miss Wilson stared open-mouthed at her reflection. She—she wasn’t mouselike any longer. She was—yes, really—almost pretty!

  A length of dress goods forgotten in one hand, a needle suspended in midair in the other, Alice Wilson stared at the woman in the glass. A small woman, with a smiling, pink and white face, over which a stray lock of golden hair had fallen from the piled-up mass of curls on the top of her head—curls that gave out a soft and shining light.

  The woman in the mirror had soft, warm red lips and blue eyes of sky-azure clearness and depth. Alice Wilson stared, and smiled in sheer delight. The image smiled back.

  Wonderingly, Alice touched her face with her fingers. What had happened? What kind of a trick were her eyes playing on her? How—

  The clatter of hurrying footsteps made her jump. Netty Peters, her sharp face alight with excitement, her head thrust forward on her skinny neck like a running chicken’s, ran in. Miss Wilson’s dressmaking shop, the closest place to the Fair-Square store, was her first stop on her tour to spread the news of Luke Hawks’ curse.

  “Miss Wilson,” she gobbled breathlessly, “what do you think—”

  “She thinks you’ve come to spread some scandal or other, that’s what she thinks,” a shrill, file-like voice interrupted.

  The voice seemed to come from her own mouth. Netty Peters glared.

  “Miss Wilson,” she snapped, “if you think ventriloquism is funny when I’m trying to tell you—just like you’re going to tell everybody else!” the second voice broke in, and Netty Peters felt faint. The words had come from her own mouth!

  She put her hands to her throat; and because her mind was blank with fright, her tongue went busily ahead with what she had planned to say.

  “I saw Luke Hawks—just like you see everything”—that was the shrill, second voice, alternating with her own normal one—“in the Fair-Square store and they—were minding their own business, something you might do—and they were buying clothes for their poor starved children whom they treat so shamefully—trust you to get that in!—when Mr. Hawks tried to pay the clerk—and you were watching to see how much they spent—the money wouldn’t leave his fingers—did you ever think how many people would be happy if sometimes the words wouldn’t leave your throat?”

  The town gossip ceased. Her words had become all jumbled together, making no sense, like two voices trying to shout each other down. There was a strange fluttering in her throat. As if she were talking with two tongues at the same time. . . .

  Miss Wilson was staring at her strangely, and Netty Peters saw for the first time the odd radiance in Miss Wilson’s hair, the new sweetness in her features.

  Incoherent words gurgled in the older woman’s throat. Terror glazed her eyes. She turned, and with a queer sobbing wail, fled.

  Alice Wilson was still looking after her in bewilderment when another figure momentarily darkened the doorway. It was Mr. Wiggins, who owned the unprofitable bookstore on the other side of her dressmaking establishment.

  Ordinarily Mr. Wiggins was a shy, pale-faced man, his thirty-eight years showing in the stoop of his shoulders, his eyes squinting behind thick glasses. He often smiled, but it was the small, hopeful smile of a man who didn’t dare not to smile for fear he might lose heart altogether.

  But today, this day of strange happenings, Mr. Wiggins was standing erect. His hair was rumpled, his glasses were awry, and his eyes blazed with excitement.

  “Miss Wilson!” he cried. “The most amazing thing has happened! I had to tell somebody. I hope you don’t mind my bursting in to tell you. ”

  Alice Wilson stared at him, and instantly forgot about the strange thing that had happened to her.

  “Oh, no,” she answered. “Of course I don’t. I—I’m glad!”

  Outside there were more sounds of galloping hooves, shrill squeals, and men’s voices shouting.

  “There seems to be a herd of wild ponies loose in the town,” Mr. Wiggins told Miss Wilson. “One almost knocked me down, racing along the sidewalk as I was coming here. Miss Wilson, you’ll never believe it, what I was going to tell you. You’ll have to see for yourself. Then you won’t think I’m mad.”

  “Oh, I’d never think that!” Miss Wilson assured him.

  Scarcely hearing her, Mr. Wiggins seized her by the hand and almost dragged her to the door. A flush of warm pleasure rose into Miss Wilson’s cheeks at the touch of his hand.

  A little breathless, she ran beside him, out the shop door, down a dozen yards, and into the gloom of his tiny, unpatronized bookstore.

  On the way, she barely had a glimpse of three or four shaggy ponies snorting and wheeling farther up the street, with Henry Jones and Jake Harrison, assisted by a crowd of laughing men and boys, trying to catch them.

  Then Mr. Wiggins, trembling with excitement, was pushing her down into an old overstuffed chair.

  “Miss Wilson,” he said tensely, “I was sitting right here when in came Jacob Earl, not fifteen minutes ago. You know how he walks—big and pompous, as if he owned the earth. I knew what he wanted. He wanted the thousand dollars I owe him, that I borrowed to buy my stock of books with. And I—I didn’t have it. None of it.

  “You remember when my aunt died last year, she left me that property down by the river that I sold to Jacob Earl for five hundred dollars? He pretended he was just doing me a favor buying it, to help me get started in business.

  “But then high-grade gravel was discovered on the land, and now it’s worth at least fifteen thousand dollars. I learned Earl knew about the gravel all the time. But in spite of that, he wanted the thousand he loaned me.”

  “Yes, oh, yes!” Miss Wilson exclaimed. “He would. But what did you do, Mr. Wiggins?”

  Mr. Wiggins combed back his disheveled hair with his fingers.

  “I told him I didn’t have it. And he took off his glove—his right glove—and told me if I didn’t have it by tomorrow, he’d have to attach all my books and fixtures. And then he put his hand down on top of my little brass Chinese luck piece. And guess what happened!”

  “Oh, I couldn’t!” Miss Wilson whispered. “I never could!”
/>
  “Look!” Mr. Wiggins’ voice trembled. He snatched up a large dust cloth that hid something on the counter just in front of Miss Wilson’s eyes. Underneath the cloth was a squat little Chinese god, about a foot high, sitting with knees crossed and holding a bowl in his lap.

  On his brass countenance was a sly smile, and his mouth was open in a round 0 of great amusement.

  And as Miss Wilson stared at him, a small gold coin popped out of the little god’s mouth and landed with a musical clink in the bowl in his lap!

  Alice Wilson gasped. “Oh, John!” she cried, using Mr. Wiggins’ Christian name for the first time in her life. “Is it—is it money?”

  “Chinese money,” Mr. Wiggins told her. “And the bowl is full of it. A gold coin comes out of his mouth every second. The first one came out right after Mr. Earl put his hand on the god’s head. Look!”

  He scooped up the contents of the bowl and held them out, let them rain into Miss Wilson’s lap. Incredulously she picked one up.

  It was a coin as large perhaps as an American nickel. In the center was punched a square hole. All around the edges were queer Oriental ideographs. And the piece of money was as fresh and new and shiny as if it had just come from the mint.

  “Is it real gold?” she asked tremulously.

  “Twenty carats pure at least!” John Wiggins assured her. “Even if it is Chinese money, the coins must be worth five dollars apiece just for the metal. And look— the bowl is half full again.”

  They stared wide-eyed and breathless at the little grinning god. Every second, as regularly as clockwork, another gold coin popped out of his open mouth.

  “It’s as if—as if he were coining them!” John Wiggins whispered.

  “Oh, it’s wonderful!” Alice Wilson told him, with rapture. “John, I’m so glad! For your sake. Now you can pay off Earl.”

  “In his own coin!” the man chortled. “Because he started it happening, you know, so you could call it his own coin. Perhaps he pressed a secret spring or something that released them from where they were hidden inside the god. I don’t know.