Young Witches & Warlocks

by Asimov, Isaac

  And, too, that Netty Peters’ tongue really would be hinged in the middle and wag at both ends, and Mrs. Benson have two faces, and Mrs. Norton swell up and blow around like a balloon.

  And that Miss Wilson would really be as pretty as a picture, and you could truly hear silver bells when Miss Avery talked.

  That had been his wish.

  But now, wide-awake and staring out the window at a sky all red because the sun had set, he couldn’t quite remember it, try as he would. . . .

  * * *

  Crouched in her darkened room, Minerva Benson felt the back of her head for the hundredth time. First with shuddering horror, then with hope, then with incredulous relief. The dreadful face was gone now.

  But she would remember it, and be haunted by it forever in her dreams.

  Netty Peters stared at herself in her mirror, her eyes wide and frightened. Slowly she took her hands from her throat. The queer fluttering was gone. She could talk again without that terrible voice interrupting.

  But always after, when she began to speak, she would stop abruptly for fear it might sound again, in the middle of a sentence.

  “I’ve decided, Luke,” Mrs. Luke Hawks said with decision, “that we’ll have the house painted and put in a new furnace. Then I’m going to take the children off on a little vacation.

  “No, don’t say anything! Remember, the money is in my name now, and I can spend it all, if I’ve a mind to. I can take it and go away to California, or anyplace.

  “And no matter what you say or do, I’m not going to give it back!”

  * * *

  Jacob Earl uttered a groan. The last gold ingot had just vanished from the floor of his library.

  John Wiggins turned. The tiny clink-clink that had sounded all afternoon had ceased. The little god still grinned, but the coins were no longer coming from his mouth.

  “He’s quit,” the little man announced to the flushed and radiant Alice Wilson. “But we don’t care. Look how much money came out of him. Why, there must be fifteen thousand dollars there!

  “Alice, we’ll take a trip around the world. And we’ll take him back to China, where he came from. He deserves a reward.”

  With the red afterglow tinting the little lake beside which he had parked the car, Bill Morrow turned. His arm was already about Janice Avery’s shoulders.

  So it really wasn’t any effort for him to draw her closer and kiss her, firmly, masterfully.

  The door to Danny’s room opened. He heard Dad and Mom come in, and pretended for a minute that he was asleep.

  “He’s been napping all day,” Mom was saying. “He hardly woke up enough to eat breakfast. I guess he must have lain awake last night. But his fever was down, and he didn’t seem restless, so I didn’t call you.”

  “We’ll see how he is now,” Dad’s voice answered; and Danny, who had closed his eyes to try to remember better, opened them again.

  Dad was bending over his bed.

  “How do you feel, son?” he asked.

  “I feel swell,” Danny told him, and struggled to a sitting position. “Look what I found yesterday in my box. What is it, Dad?”

  Doctor Norcross took the piece of ivory Danny held out, and looked at it.

  “I’ll be darned!” he exclaimed to his wife. “Danny’s found the old Chinese talisman Grandfather Jonas brought back on the last voyage of the Yankee Star. He gave it to me thirty years ago. Told me it had belonged to a Chinese magician.

  “Its peculiar power, he said, was that if you held it tight, you could have one wish come true, providing— as the Chinese inscription on the bottom says—your mind was pure, your spirit innocent, and your motive unselfish.

  “I wished on it dozens of times, but nothing ever happened. Guess it was because I was too materialistic and wished for bicycles and things.

  “Here, Danny, you can keep it. But take good care of it. It’s very old; even the man who gave it to Grandfather Jonas didn’t know how old it was.”

  Danny took back the talisman.

  “I made a wish, Dad,” he confessed.

  “So?” Dad grinned. “Did it come true?”

  “I don’t know,” Danny admitted. “I can’t remember what it was.”

  Dad chuckled.

  “Then I guess it didn’t come true,” he remarked. “Never mind; you can make another. And if that one doesn’t happen either, don’t fret. You can keep the talisman and tell people the story. It’s a good story, even if it isn’t so.”

  Probably it wasn’t so. It was certain that the next time Danny wished, nothing happened. Nor any of the times after that. So that by and by he gave up trying.

  He was always a little sorry, though, that he never could remember that first wish, made when he was almost asleep.

  But he never could. Not even later, when he heard people remarking how much marriage had improved Alice Wilson’s appearance and how silvery Mrs. Bob Morrow’s voice was.

  With Four Lean Hounds

  Pat Murphy

  Often we find that what we want in the end is not what we sought at the start.

  * * *

  We start with a thief: slim, wiry girl with ash-gray hair and eyes the color of the winter sky. No one knew how old she was and no one cared. Old enough to beat; just barely old enough to bed.

  Tarsia was running from an angry baker. The loaf tucked under her arm was still warm. She dodged between the stalls of the market, heading for a spot where she knew she could climb the tumble-down wall that ringed the city. From there she could run surefooted across slate roofs, hide among the chimneys. A creature of the wind and sky, she could escape all pursuit.

  She heard the whistle of the guard’s warning and the pounding of his running feet. Ill luck: he was be-72 / tween her and the wall. Behind her, the baker shouted curses. She changed course abruptly, ducking into the mouth of an alley and—too late—realized her mistake.

  The walls were slick stone. Though she climbed like a monkey, she could not scale them. The alley’s far end had been blocked by a new building. A dead end.

  She heard the guard’s whistle echoing down the cold stone walls and remembered the feel of the shackles on her wrist. Her bones ached in memory of the cold jail.

  A jumble of papers that the wind had blown against the alley’s end rustled. A rat peered out at Tarsia— a grizzled old grandfather rat who watched her with an arrogant air of unconcern, then turned tail and darted into a hole that had been hidden in the shadows. It was a dark, dank hole just the width of a small thief’s shoulders.

  Tarsia heard the footsteps at the mouth of the alley and, like a sensible thief with a healthy concern for her skin, she squeezed into the hole. Her shoulders scraped against the damp stone. A creature of rooftops and light, she wiggled down into the darkness.

  On her belly, she groped her way forward, reminding herself that rats were only bats without wings. As a child of the rooftops she knew bats. But she could hear her heart beating in the narrow stone passage and she could not lift her head without bumping it. She inched forward, telling herself that surely the drain let into a larger passage; it could not just get smaller and darker and damper. . . .

  A cold blast of air fanned her face, carrying scents of still water, damp stone, and sewage. At last, she could raise her head. She felt a soft touch on her ankle— a tiny breeze rushing past—with only hint of fur and a long tail.

  She heaved herself out of the drain into a larger space, quick and clumsy in her eagerness to move. She stepped forward in the darkness, stepped into nothing and stumbled, clutching at an edge she could not see, slipping and falling into a moment she did not remember.

  A thunder of wings from the pigeons wheeling overhead, the scent of a charcoal fire—damp, dismal smell in the early morning—drifting from a chimney. The slate roof was cold beneath Tarsia’s bare feet and the wind from the north cut through her thin shirt. In one hand she clutched the damp shirt she had taken from a rooftop clothesline. She was listening.

  She
had heard a sound—not the rattle of the latch of the door to the roof. Not the pigeons. Perhaps only the wind?

  There again: a rumbling like drumbeats and a wild sweet whistling like pipes in a parade. From behind a cloud swept the chariot of the Lady of the Wind. She brought the sunshine with her. She wore a silver crescent moon on her forehead and a golden sun shone on her breast. Ash-gray hair floated behind her like a cape. Four lean hounds—winds of the North, South, East, and West—ran laughing through the sky at her side.

  The Lady looked down at Tarsia with wise eyes, smiled, and held out her hand. Tarsia reached out to touch her.

  Tarsia’s head ached and her feet were cold. She opened her eyes into darkness, leaving behind the bright dream of a memory that had never been. Tarsia had watched the caravan that carried tribute to the Lady leave the city, heading north, but she had never seen the Lady.

  The hand with which Tarsia had clung to the edge was sore and stiff; when she touched it to her lips, it tasted of blood. She lay half in and half out of a cold stream that tugged at her feet as it flowed past.

  She could not go back, only forward. She felt her way slowly, always keeping her hand on the wall and always sniffing the air in hopes of scenting dust and horses—city smells. She heard a rumbling sound ahead that reminded her of cartwheels on cobblestones, and she quickened her pace.

  The tunnel opened into a cavern—a natural formation in the rock of the Earth. Patches of fungus on the walls glowed golden, casting a light dimmer than that of the moon.

  The giant who lay in the center of the cavern was snoring with a rumbling like cartwheels. He slept in a cradle of rock, molded around him, it seemed, by the movements of his body. The air that blew past the giant, coming from the darkness beyond, carried the scents of grass and of freedom.

  A giant blocked her way and she was only a small thief. She had never stolen from the house of the wizard or the stall of the herb-seller. She knew only the small spells that helped her break the protection of a household.

  The giant had an enormous face—broad and earthcolored. He shifted in his sleep and Tarsia saw the chain on his ankle, bound to a bolt in the floor. The links were as thick as her leg; the rusted lock, the size of her head. She wondered who had imprisoned him and what he had done to deserve it. She tried to estimate the length of the chain and judged it long enough to allow him to catch anyone trying to sneak past.

  The shifting breeze ruffled his hair and the rumbling stopped. Nostrils flared as he sampled the air. “I smell you,” he said slowly. “I know your scent, witch. What do you want with me now?” He spoke as if he knew her.

  Tarsia did not move. One hand rested on the rock wall; one hand uselessly clutched her knife. The giant’s eyes searched the shadows and found her.

  “Ah,” he said. “The same eyes, the same hair, the same scent—not the witch, but the witch’s daughter.” He grinned and Tarsia did not like the look in his eyes. “You were a long time in coming.”

  “I’m no one’s daughter,” she said. Giants and witches— she had no place in this. Her mother? She had no mother. “I’m just a poor thief from the city. And I want to get back.”

  “You can’t get past me unless you free me, witch’s daughter,” he said.

  “Free you?” She shook her head in disbelief. “How? Break the chain?”

  The giant scowled. “A drop of your blood on the lock will free me. You must know that.” His voice was unbelieving. “How can you hope to win your mother’s throne when you don’t even know ...”

  “Who is my mother?” she interrupted, her voice brittle.

  “You don’t know.” He grinned and his voice took on the sly tone she had heard from the strong men who did not often have to be clever. “Free me and I’ll tell you.” He pulled his legs under him into an awkward crouch, his head bumping the cavern’s ceiling. “Just one drop of blood and I’ll let you go past. Even if the blood does not free me, I’ll let you go.”

  “Even if it does not free you?” she asked warily.

  “You doubt yourself so much?” He shrugged. “Even so.”

  She stepped forward, wary and ready to dart back to the passage. With her eyes on the crouching giant she nicked the scrape on her hand so that the blood flowed fresh and a drop fell onto the rusted lock. She backed away. The giant’s eyes were fixed on the lock and on the smoke that rose from the lock, swirling around the chain.

  She reached the far side of the cavern while the giant watched the lock, and from that safety she called out sharply, “Who is the witch who bound you here, giant? Keep your part of the bargain. Who . . . ?”

  “There!” the giant said. With a triumphant movement, the giant tugged the chain and the lock fell free.

  “Who is the witch?” Tarsia called again.

  “Thank you for your help, witch’s daughter.” He stepped past her, into the darkness where the ceiling rose higher. “I will go now to play a part in bringing the prophecies to pass.”

  “But who is my mother?” she shouted. “You said you would tell me.”

  He grinned back over his shoulder. “Who would be strong enough to chain a son of the Earth? No one but the Lady of the Wind.” He stepped away into the darkness.

  “What?” Tarsia shouted in disbelief, but her voice echoed back to her. She could hear the giant striding away in the darkness and her mind was filled with the thunder of wings, with the baying of four lean hounds. She ran after the giant, knowing that she could not catch him but running in spite of that knowledge. The scent of fresh air and growing things grew stronger as she ran. “Wait,” she called, but the giant was gone.

  The air smelled of newly turned earth. She ran toward a bright light—sunlight of late afternoon. She could see the marks left by the giant’s fingers where he had torn the rock aside and pushed his way out. His feet had ripped dark holes in the soft grass and the prints led down the rolling hills to the river that sparkled in the distance. She thought that she could see a splash in the river—tiny and far away—which could have been a giant splashing as he swam.

  Sometimes stumbling, sometimes sliding in the grass, she ran down the hills, following the footprints. Ran until her legs slowed without her willing it. She trudged along the river bank as the shadows grew longer. She was heading north. The mountains lay to the north, and the Lady’s court was in the mountains.

  The light was failing when she stopped to rest. She sat down just for a moment. No more than that. Shivering in the chill twilight, she tumbled into a darkness deeper than the tunnels beneath the city.

  * * *

  A scent of a charcoal fire—damp dismal scent in the early morning—but Tarsia did not stand on the cold slate of the roof. The wind that carried the scent of smoke blew back her hair and the sound of wings was all around her.

  She stood at the Lady’s side in the chariot and the four hounds of the wind ran beside them. Far below, she saw the gray slate rooftop and the fluttering clothes on the line. Far below, the ancient towers of the city, the crumbling walls, the booths and stalls of the marketplace.

  “This is your proper place, my daughter,” the Lady said, her voice as soft as the summer breeze blowing through the towers. “Above the world at my side.” The Lady took Tarsia’s hand and the pain faded away.

  Tarsia heard a rumbling—like the sound of cartwheels on a cobbled street. Far below, she saw the towers shake and a broad, earth-colored face glared up at them. Shaking off the dust of the hole from which he had emerged, the giant climbed to the top of the city wall in a few steps. He seemed larger than he had beneath the earth. He stood on top of the old stone tower and reached toward them. Tarsia cried out— fearful that the giant would catch them and drag them back to the earth. Back down to the smoke and the dust.

  * * *

  The scent of the smoke was real. Tarsia could feel the damp grass of the river bank beneath her, but she was warm. A cloth that smelled faintly of horse lay over her.

  She forced her eyes open. A river bank in early
morning—mist sparkling on the grass, a white horse grazing, smoke drifting from a small fire, a thin, brown-haired man dressed in travel-stained green watching her. “You’re awake,” he said. “How do you feel?”

  Her head ached. She struggled to a sitting position, clutching the green cape that had served as her cover around her. Wary, used to the ways of the city, she mumbled, “I’ll live.”

  He continued watching her. “You’re a long way from anywhere in particular. Where are you going?” His accent matched that of traders from the south who had sometimes visited the city.

  She twisted to look behind her at the hills. She could not see the city, and she wondered how far she had come in the winding tunnels. “I came from the city,” she said. “I’m going away from the city.” More alert now, Tarsia studied the white horse. It looked well-fed. The saddle that lay beside the animal was travel-worn, but she could tell that it was once of first quality. The cloak that covered her was finely woven of soft wool. A lute wrapped in similar cloth leaned against the saddle.

  “I’m a minstrel,” the man said. “I’m traveling north.”

  Tarsia nodded, thinking that when a person volunteered information it was generally false. No minstrel could afford a saddle like that one. She looked up into his brown eyes—noting in passing the gold ring on his hand. She knew she could trust him as a fellow thief. As far as she could trust a thief. She was not sure how far that was, since she had always preferred to work alone.

  “I was planning to head north too,” she said. “If you take me with you, I can help you out. I can build a fire that doesn’t smoke. ...” She looked at the smoldering fire and let her words trail off. She knew she looked small and helpless in the cloak and she hoped that her face was pale and smudged with dirt.

  “I suppose I can’t very well leave you here,” he said, sounding a little annoyed. “I’ll take you as far as the next town.”

  She got to her feet slowly, taking care to appear weak. But she made herself useful—poking the fire so that the sticks flamed. She toasted the bread that the minstrel pulled from his pack and melted cheese upon thick slices.