Witchy Eye

by D. J. Butler

  Calvin looked self-conscious and dug faster. “What you laughin’ about?”

  “Calvin Calhoun, you’re an honest man, and no doubt God loves you for it. I only laugh because I haven’t been called ‘lucky’ in a long, long time.” The last of Bill’s laughter gusted out as a heavy sigh. “On the other hand, I must say that I believe you’re right.”

  Cal stopped digging as Bill stood up. The trench was two feet deep.

  “You reckon the women’re all right?” the younger man asked.

  Bill struggled to regain his composure.

  “Believe me,” Bill reassured him, “if anyone had tried to join us on this hill, we’d have heard the sound of Catherine Filmer shooting him by now.” The two men laughed together now, and then Bill looked uneasily at his shovel. “On the other hand,” he said, “I have a hard time imagining that Bayard can possibly have dug this deep. We should rejoin the ladies and discuss how to proceed.”

  * * *

  “I don’t know how to be queen,” Sarah said.

  Cathy sat with the girl on a stone at the top of the slope, watching the road. The horses were hidden in the trees and Cathy had refilled all the waterskins and made sure the Lafitte pistols were loaded and primed before perching in this natural vantage point.

  Sarah had been mostly silent, and Cathy didn’t begrudge her the time with her own thoughts. It seemed to her that they were all in a pivotal moment of their lives, but especially the Appalachee girl, all tangled up in thrones and destiny. When Sarah finally broke her silence, she sounded lonely and afraid.

  “You seem to be doing very well to me.” Cathy answered.

  Having located Bill, she had also burned her bridges pretty thoroughly in New Orleans, and she would have liked nothing better than to leave alone with him, go somewhere quiet and become Mrs. Catherine Lee. Become Mrs. Lee and find my child, she thought, and the stitched leather shoulder bag against her body burned.

  But Bill still thought of himself as married to another woman, and his first loyalty was to this girl-queen. Cathy would stay with him and continue to be patient.

  Patient and calm.

  “Thalanes told me I had to become the one to make all the decisions,” Sarah said, looking down at her feet, “and right or wrong, I’m makin’ ’em. It’s one thing for me to call the shots and have Cal go along—he’s been doin’ that all his life, b’lievin’ I’s his auntie, and besides, he more or less promised the Elector he would—and I don’t rightly know why Sir William follows me, but he does. I guess because he loved my father. But if I’m really gonna go try to convince a bunch of Cahokians I’m their queen, I reckon I’m gonna need a sight more’n an old crown and the claim that I’m Kyres’s daughter. They’re gonna git one look at me and laugh me out of town for the scared little girl I am.”

  Cathy let the cool silence of the oak trees settle on Sarah’s words a while before she said anything.

  “Anybody,” she finally began, “any child of Adam who had suffered what you’ve gone through in the last three weeks would feel tired, frightened, and inadequate, Your Majesty. But if I may be so bold, I would like to offer a small piece of counsel.”

  “Tell me.”

  “When you ride into Cahokia wearing its crown,” Cathy continued, “you ride in as the returning and triumphant queen. No one will know you feel like a scared little girl—though I would have said young woman, rather than girl—unless you tell them. So don’t. Keep your feelings to yourself generally, but always, always keep hidden any feelings you have of weakness or inadequacy.”

  Sarah shot her a curious look.

  “May I offer you further unsolicited advice, Your Majesty?” Cathy asked.

  Sarah nodded.

  “Do nothing unless and until you have to. Say nothing unless and until you must. You keep your hand free thus, you protect your dignity, and you preserve your image as queen. People around you will assume you’re deeply thinking, planning, and waiting for the proper moment. They’ll judge you calculating and wise. Nothing will lower people’s opinion of you so fast as unconsidered speech or rash action.”

  “Do nothing?” Sarah asked.

  Cathy saw that it was not the advice she had been expecting. “Ask questions. Make comments, if they commit you to nothing. Engage, entertain, discuss, flirt. But take no action until you must, and until you’re sure that you’re doing the right thing for the right reason with the right likely consequence. Think of it as taking your time. Cultivate mystery. Master your eyes, Your Majesty, and your hands. They are the parts that will give away your uncertainty. Cool eyes and steady hands will make inaction seem like mastery, rather than hesitation.”

  Sarah gazed out over the oak forest below. “I’m told my father was a good king, a warrior brave and true, and loved by his people. I wish I had those gifts.”

  “What makes you believe you don’t?” Cathy asked. “Do you really think Calvin Calhoun ever followed you just because he thought you were his aunt, or because he promised his grandfather? Do you believe Sir William would have given you his loyalty, whatever his feelings for your father, if he found you inconstant, a coward, or a fool? What do you think I’m doing here, Your Majesty?”

  The implication of this last question was mildly dishonest, but it was true that Cathy found the girl impressive and compelling, and thought she would someday be as good a queen as anyone else could.

  “You’re very kind,” Sarah answered, looking down at her feet, “too kind. You attribute to me the virtues of others.”

  “That’s exactly what it is to be queen.” Cathy paused to let her words sink in. “You have many gifts from your father, Sarah Elytharias Penn. I’m sure you have more gifts from him than you know.”

  Sarah thought quietly, fidgeting with the satchel that hung on her shoulder, and eventually smiled. “I’m glad to have you with me, Catherine Filmer.”

  “The pleasure’s mine, Your Majesty.” Cathy smiled. “I grew tired of New Orleans in any case, and without Sir William, I believe I would have found it completely intolerable.”

  With a slow swish of legs cutting through tall grass, the two men rejoined them.

  “The regalia?” Sarah asked.

  After a moment’s wait, Bill spoke up. “They’re not there, Your Majesty. I believe we’ve dug as deep as Bayard possibly could have buried anything, and we’ve seen no sign.”

  * * *

  As they walked back along the bluff to the Serpent’s eye, Sarah pondered. She thought of the acorn in her satchel, anointed with her father’s blood and blessed with his final breath. The acorn was her father’s gift. It was a witness and a wanderer, it had given Sarah life and traveled the land with her, and now she’d brought it back, carrying it in her eyesocket itself, on her body, and in her pouch of magical spell components, to where it had participated in the terrible events of fifteen years earlier.

  Sarah took the eyepatch from her head and the acorn from her satchel. It lay in her palm and she gazed on it as she walked, seeing it gleam blue, a color similar to that of her own aura. Acorns and other plants didn’t generally have a blue aura, so the light of this acorn must be her father’s own light.

  Would his regalia be similarly imbued with his aura? Or would they have their own, being things of power, things handed down and wielded by great thaumaturges since time immemorial?

  She closed her fingers around the acorn and left the patch off her eye. The Serpent Mound thundered and crackled an electric blue beside her, so vivid and alive that she half-expected it to move. On impulse, she stepped up onto the Serpent’s back. She could feel its power thrum though her feet, tight and tingling like a ley line.

  And the Serpent welcomed her.

  No one spoke, and Sarah walked all along the length of the Serpent to its head. Again she looked at the triangular head with the ring in its prongs. Was it a great serpent’s head, with its single eye showing? Was it a serpent—a woman—swallowing an acorn? Was it rather a serpent, a woman, ejecting that acorn from
her eye socket?

  Her whole life seemed carved into the earth atop this ancient bluff, and Sarah suddenly felt tiny and thoroughly known to the universe.

  She stepped to the top of the ring—the acorn eye of the Serpent, beside the downturned flaps of turf and piles of excavated soil. The hole was an open wound in the Serpent’s eye. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and then she looked down into the earth.

  And saw them.

  “They’re here,” she announced.

  Calvin and Sir William scrambled to pick up their shovels again and joined her, dropping into the depression. “Where should we oughtta dig?” Cal asked, and Sarah pointed to the center of the ring, where she could clearly see, blazing through the dark dirt like a bonfire shining through smoke, the glorious blue light of a crown and orb, and a bright green brilliance in the shape of a sword.

  “Old Bayard must have dug deeper than I’d given him credit,” Sir William said as they attacked the earth with their shovels.

  “Or dirt might a filled in these fifteen years,” Cal suggested.

  They dug another foot, and then another, and then a third, piling the dirt about them in the depression.

  “You sure you can see ’em, Sarah?” Cal asked.

  She nodded, and they dug more.

  Sarah focused her vision on the aural regalia as Cal and Sir William dug. The regalia never moved or disappeared, but at every new shovelful of earth dragged out of the pit, the crown, orb, and sword seemed to be just one more shovelful away, just out of reach.

  “Stop,” she finally told them, and they did, straightening their backs and setting shovels aside. They were dirty and sweat-streaked, standing in the pit up to their shoulders, and both men looked as if they were fighting to keep doubt from their faces.

  Sarah considered. There was magic here. Someone or something was protecting the regalia. Who?

  Bayard? That seemed impossible on its face.

  The Serpent? Was the Serpent somehow, for some reason, keeping the Cahokian regalia hidden in the grip of its jaws? But she had felt it welcome her, and if it welcomed her, why would it not give her what was, after all, supposed to be her own?

  Was it perhaps her father who was protecting the regalia? Had he in his dying moments sealed them into the earth for safekeeping? Bayard had stolen them and buried them, but maybe her father saw the burial, or knew it had happened, and acted to keep Bayard from ever enjoying the fruits of his theft. But why would he want to keep his regalia from her?

  Or had he locked them away, and given her a key?

  She opened her fist and looked again at the acorn, and at the regalia. The blue of the acorn and the blue of the crown and orb were exactly identical—the three auras might have belonged to one body.

  “We’re going about it the wrong way,” she said. “I know what to do now. Please replace the dirt.”

  She would not have begrudged resistance by either man, but was pleased when they only nodded, clambered out of the hole, and began shoveling dirt back into it. Within a few minutes, they had filled the pit, leaving the turves where they lay.

  “I think you’d best step back,” Sarah suggested.

  They did so, and she entered the depression.

  The acorn pulsed in her palm, winking blue light at her. The crown and orb pulsed at the same moment, and then pulsed again, and then the three objects began to beat together like a single, three-part heart. She knelt, scooped aside a handful of cool, loose earth from the refilled pit, kissed the acorn, and laid it in the ground.

  “I need a knife.” She had Father Chigozie’s silver letter opener in her belt, but didn’t want to risk it interfering with the magic she hoped was about to happen. When Cal handed her the hunter’s knife from his boot, she gave him the silver blade in return. “Step out of the ring,” she ordered her companions, and they complied.

  With a swift motion, she cut the palm of her hand.

  Bright red blood welled up and she let it flow, warm and sticky, down onto the acorn. With the same bleeding hand, she pulled dirt over the acorn and patted it down, then laid her hand on the earth over the acorn, palm down and gently pressing.

  She thought of her father dying, his murderer fleeing, his regalia hidden, delivered unwittingly into the custody of the great Serpent, his blood sent to her, sent to become her, in the little acorn of the red oak tree. She willed her blood back to her father now, she willed him a message of gratitude, and she willed the Serpent to open its jaws and deliver to her what was hers.

  “Arborem crescere facio.” Strength flowed from her into the acorn.

  Shoots leapt from the rich earth under her hand, rising skyward between her fingers. The shoots swelled, quickly gaining finger-thickness themselves, then the thickness of Sarah’s wrist. She stumbled to her feet and backward to avoid the sapling that strained and wrestled as it broke from the soil.

  The air crackled with power and the ground hummed; some of the energy came from her, and she felt her limbs grow weak. She scrambled up to the top of the ring, suddenly fearing the drain on her might be too much. She turned to look again at the sapling, and it was a tree ten feet tall and as big around as her leg.

  Branches arched up and out from its trees, sprouting before her eyes into a treetop even as the trunk continued to expand and to shoot up. Soon it was as thick as both her legs, and then as big around as her waist, then bigger. Bark coagulated like a gray scab, roughened, swirled into knots and bumps under Sarah’s gaze. Buds popped into view all along the tree’s branches, buds that extended and unfurled like green banners into scallop-edged leaves.

  It was an oak tree, of course.

  She staggered. The tree towered above her now, twenty feet tall, thirty feet, and its branches spread wide, casting a pool of shade all over the ring from the center of which it sprouted, as well as the triangular serpent’s head and the semicircle containing the ring. The bright green leaves were incongruous enough in the autumn air, a vivid splash of spring at the top of a hill of autumn, but then blossoms—three barrel-sized blossoms, pale blue and orchid-like, alien to the tree from which they sprang—exploded on limbs high over Sarah’s head, their brilliant blue outdoing even the surprising green of the leaves.

  The tree had stopped growing; its leaves rustled in the breeze. She looked at the tree with her Second Sight and saw, unsurprised, that it had the same aura as the acorn, the same exact hue to its blue glow as the crown’s and orb’s auras she had seen through the earth.

  Sarah’s heart pounded in her chest as she stumbled back down inside the ring. Trembling, she wrapped her arms around the tree. “Father,” she whispered softly into its bark. She held the tree in a tight embrace and felt tears run down her cheeks to water it, feeling, beyond all reason or self-consciousness, that the tree embraced her as well, and kept her from collapsing.

  “Jumpin’ Jerusalem.” Calvin’s mild oath brought her back to herself, and she stepped away from the tree, tottering out of the depression and looking to see what he saw.

  The three great blossoms had opened into long blue flowers. Within their petals, high in the branches of the tree, were nestled the Sevenfold Crown, the Orb of Etyles, and the golden sword of Kyres Elytharias.

  All her strength was gone, but Sarah felt triumphant. She had recovered the regalia of her father’s kingdom.

  As, she knew, her father had intended.

  * * *

  Calvin climbed the tree for her, plucked the regalia from its branches one at a time, and brought the three items back down. She didn’t tell him she felt that her father was somehow inside the tree, but it warmed her heart, as she lay on the triangle of the Serpent’s head, to see Cal climbing among her father’s branches.

  It felt like the symbol of a family scene she would like to have seen, but never would.

  She was exhausted of all her magical power.

  As Cal climbed down to hand her the second of the three items of her inheritance, the Orb of Etyles (the Sevenfold Crown had been first), she touc
hed Thalanes’s moon-shaped brooch experimentally, and found it also inert. She didn’t feel burned, dried out, and sick the way she had casting other large spells, but she felt drained.

  Sarah set aside the crown and orb and sat up in the grass while Cal went shinning his way up the oak tree a third time. She had dealt with the Sorcerer Hooke, at least for the time being. But if Ezekiel Angleton and the Imperial House Light Dragoons came upon her now, she would be defenseless.

  The Serpent glowed and felt like a ley line, blue and sizzling beneath her—could she draw energy from it? She relaxed, closed her eyes, and reached out. She could feel the Serpent’s aura just as she could see it, but when she tried to reach into it and draw from it, she found she couldn’t. When she tried to take the Serpent’s energy, it no longer felt like a ley. It felt like…like…

  It felt like a soul. Like a person.

  She shivered in the excitement of discovery and veiled mystery at the same time. Whatever the Serpent was, it wasn’t a ley line. She didn’t let herself wonder; she urgently needed to refresh her reservoirs.

  How far behind were her enemies?

  The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers flowed beneath her, only a few hundred feet away. She strained her spirit to reach out to the rivers, to dip into their green well of energy and fill the tired, aching void within her.

  Nothing. She was too far and couldn’t reach.

  “Your Majesty!” Sir William’s voice cut into the disappointed fog shrouding her will. “We must flee!”

  Cal dropped to the earth. When he straightened from his landing crouch, he handed her the third and last item of the regalia, a glittering golden-hued sword. She stood, gathering all three objects in her arms as Sir William and Cathy ran around the great ring, waving and shouting.

  “Is it the Blues?” Sarah asked.

  Cathy and Sir William both shook their heads. “The chevalier’s men,” Cathy explained.

  Sir William rushed past Sarah and dragged her along in his wake, back toward to the horses and the slope down. “Two small vessels are moored below, Your Majesty, flying the chevalier’s colors and disembarking gendarmes. If we run, we may yet descend the bluff and escape before they have a chance to organize themselves.”