by H C Turk
“Dear Alba, I would have your attention but a moment,” she began, speaking rapidly. “I must say that in the years we have known you, though this has been to no great extent considering the area in which you live. Since we have known you, however, we have become quite fond of you, dear. You are such a lovely thing that we wish only the best for you, with your polite and quiet ways, and what is certainly a fine intelligence for a young woman, though you seldom speak. Potential for your becoming an excellent lady is evident in all about you. The difficulty as we see it now, dear child, is that living in the wilderness as though an animal, you will not be able to reach your potential and add to society as a fine lady. With your appearance and modest charm, any city would benefit from your presence—if you were properly reared and made to understand the ways of our modern world.”
“Yes, ma’am; thank you, ma’am,” I answered with a curtsy, averting my eyes. In those early moments, I lacked a definite reply, for I was uncertain of the sinner’s meaning.
“The offer, dear Alba, that I make is for you to live within our town and join a program we have begun for orphaned and other unfortunate girls wherein we make available to them the finest homes of Jonsway, to reside with the finest families with whom they can live and learn to their best potential, learn the morals and manners of God and England. My associates speak with your mother now and apply toward her our wishes that a youth of such potential as yourself will be given to us to rear as one of our own beneath the eyes of God and King William.”
I looked to my mother. Though her voice had been loud, I had only discerned Vidgeon’s incredible speaking. The group surrounding Mother then drew near. And though sinners’ emotive smells differed from witches’, I was sufficiently familiar with the former to judge that these women were expectant. My nature was to consider them inhuman fools for attempting to split a family, but I felt no malice as they approached. Briefly I looked to their faces, then directly to their chests, their layers of clothing, their surface artifice. The generosity of these women described a true concern, but I could give them no thanks, for what they considered an offer to my benefit was in fact a horror.
By my side again, Mother was speaking, her common scent a relief.
“Have you heard, my daughter, these ladies’ wondrous offer? Could any person imagine a more splendid future for a poor but penniless lass than to live with them and become their equal? Surely, Alba, we must consider this offer deeply before deciding.”
Too young was I for Mother’s humor. Though recognizing her facetious air, I lacked the maturity to blithely accept so terrifying an idea. All I could manage was a failed attempt at the social decorum Mother had taught me as I conveyed to these churchwomen the truth.
“I must thank these fine ladies greatly, but I would rather burn in Hell than live without the only person in God’s world I love.”
Though I walked away from this sinning horror, what the value over running when I stopped so near that I heard every word? Mother remained to supply additional polite conversation. The churchwomen, however, lost their graciousness. Mrs. Hughbert no longer appeared kindly. Certain ladies were disappointed, but Sarah Vidgeon was displeased, having found a type of anger available only to sinners, an artificial injustice as dangerous as the sinners’ more direct, material means.
“Then we shall take her, Mrs. Landham. We shall arrange for the custodians to receive your daughter, for no English girl, regardless of impoverished manners, deserves to live in the wilds as though an animal. For the benefit of the child’s own welfare, I will show that even when spurned by the baseborn, I respond with further generosity. Nothing more proper can I do than remove Alba from your inferior custody—and I will do so. There are laws to support me.”
Though smelling of anger, Mother nonetheless retained emotional control. Perhaps this was worse than mere anger. Next she spoke in a voice much too rich for mere sinners, looking toward Lady Vidgeon as though prepared to leap at her. Of course, she was.
“Doubtless, my daughter could be provided with a superior home for improving her station in society, but what could be worse than having her live with a Godless child thief? What could be more damaging than to have her reared by a witch like you?”
Since Mother’s typical visage of impending doom was never manifested, Lady Vidgeon was fully startled when Mother reached out in a lunge to grasp her powdered and patched face with broken fingernails, rough stubs that drew blood.
The entire church body then gathered about the conflicting pair, a variety of cries issuing from the congregation, but not a word for us witches. Not a hand nor order to cease as Mother took my arm and left. Moving quickly through the town, traveling from street to trail to wilderness, Mother held her bloody hand cupped before her like a vessel, but I would not ask her purpose.
“At least we’ve cause now for no longer attending their bleeding church,” she told me, Mother’s scent proving that her disposition had improved.
Once in the shade of an eroded hill that had always seemed a wall separating us from the sinners’ world, Mother turned to me and together we listened. With our feet, we sensed them walking. Distant voices we heard. We smelled the sinners near.
“They are coming, my dear,” she said with a bit of a crafty smile, and touched my face with her bloody hand, applying thickening drops to my forehead and temples, beneath my eyes. “Some difficulty will come from the sinners’ law, since I have damaged one of their finest of mediocre ladies, and I feel it best we not lead them to our home when they come for me. You shall return and wait, using utmost care not to disturb the lady’s portions I have applied to you, which must remain against your skin to work with your smell and oil. With the efforts of your person, we may fully explain our position to Vidgeon and elicit a change within her thinking using the rare powers God has given us.”
Mother’s final words meant nothing; I had only heard that she would be taken by sinners.
“I cannot leave you for them, Mother,” I told her with astonished fear. “Should we not move at once toward a new home?”
“Oh, but sinners excel at following,” she replied with a smile. “But worry less than you feel you must, my daughter. Your nature is to kindle desire in men, a force their women recognize first, a power they would have near them as though to gain this desirability. Their offer to rear you as their own is genuine, and though their laws can provide a force to take you from our home, much legal discussion would transpire first. Soon these women will have severe trouble with their husbands in bed, but none will recognize the cause as exposure to me. Immediately, however, the haughty sinner woman will have me make amends for striking her. That my goal was to take her blood now so that later we might take her intentions is a factor beyond her comprehension. Go now, daughter, and wait quietly near our home with hands away from the makings of your face.”
Since youthful or mature I knew that the essence of our lives was to be together, following Mother’s wishes was impossible.
“Please don’t send me away,” I pleaded, my brain and body so weakened I could not move.
“On the contrary, young witch, I send you not away but to our home, where I promise to briefly return. After producing a small show, the pompous sinners will be done with me.”
“Mother, what will they do to you?” I cried out too loudly.
“Talk no more, Alba, for only sinners must speak to some undecided end before acting. I will neither deceive you nor encourage your fear, only ask that you fulfill my wishes.”
The sinners were a stink a glade’s length beyond. Within me was a youthful terror completely convincing of catastrophe, though disasters of later years would prove this trouble minor. Mother next became stern, and ceased her explaining.
“As though sinners, we speak endlessly when heretofore I have told what is best for us both. Move away now, child,” she declared, and turned from me as though I no longer were present.
I waited in a hollow near enough Mother to smell her thinking. Certainly
she sensed my presence. She did not, however, look toward me or order me farther removed as I watched her, watched the constables approach with their three-cornered hats and long staffs, firm men who did not expect my mother to speak first.
“Ah! and you come for this old woman who has only desired to save her family from the ruin of separation!”
Mother was wailing, a sound only sinners produce. She was moaning and bending as though collapse were imminent. Weakly she presented her arms and told the constables to remove her in chains if they must, for God in His wisdom would protect those who love their poor kin more than wealthy strangers.
At first, I could not understand why Mother applied humor in so grave a situation; but the constables were befuddled and unforceful, for they could only say they would bring this Mrs. Landham before the magistrate. They could not say, We will drag ye if need be; or, We’ll not be hearing of your innocence; for Mother accompanied them without urging. And when she was beyond my feel, my senses, I understood another advantage of witches. I became so desolate that I could not move, but since witches cannot weep, there was no washing away the blood at work that would allow us correction, allow me revenge.
• • •
I did not return home, for the cabin was no home without Mother. I remained by that hill. Toward nightfall, I sensed Mother’s return, my relief complete because her approach described her as unharmed: no animals shied from a known creature now damaged, no plant life was improperly stumbled upon by one familiar with woods’ movement now too pained to walk correctly. And though our embracing was excellent, Mother could not provide me with the proper kisses about my face, for my skin was not to be disturbed.
She was wet, sodden in her hair and clothing. Mother explained.
“’Tis no concern. With all my sinner’s lament and mother’s moaning, they found my crime minor, and insisted upon waiting till the morn before leading me to the ducking stool, for such punition is not given by gentlefolk on the Sabbath. With no remorse, they will steal a child, but a moment’s wetting must wait till Monday. But desiring to exit their fair town, I set upon them with such a great cry of my pitiful child’s being left alone in the wilderness that they punished me at once, temporarily rescinding their Christian beliefs either for the child’s best interests or to quiet the mother and be rid of her. Therefore, I am harnessed in a wooden chair hung from a long pole above the deep trough in the town square with a minor audience to view the immersion. A fine douse they provide me, so they believe, and I attempt to agree by acting most frightened before, and afterward I appear fully admonished in their eyes. No doubt, I neglect to inform them that no witch can swim, so she walks along a river’s bottom when a crossing is required. To the end, I’m the humble Christian woman protecting her family, and there’s a pity in the crowd although the women go home and sleep apart from their husbands, and the men drink to excess, then abuse themselves in the shed.”
Mother shook her head in pity of sinners’ ways as we stood before the segregating hill, within the forest’s undergrowth. Then she asked what I was able to feel, and I told her, “Our friends.”
“They will come,” she said quietly, and touched the raw skin about my face where no blood was working. “Bodies and minds together are superior to those alone. All people, witch and sinner, form families on God’s behalf. In their separate worlds, sinners form parliaments and armies, but witches make a gathering without request and without name wherein personalities become additive, where together the power of lives and experience conjoin. Using our bodies and our living knowledge, together we shall apply natural abilities to correct what is most unnatural in our lives: the sinning woman’s threats to steal our only daughter.”
From a distance at the edge of my ability to sense, I felt unknown but welcome entities plan to draw near. I mentioned to Mother, “Are not friends approaching I have never met?”
“Correct, and all needed, for the effort must be great. Even as sinners rack themselves to cut forests or break stone, so must we extend our senses to produce a vapor, a fume carried in the air so personal that only the single lady will smell it, a task to stress us as never before. The power of all our past lives and potential futures will be the force to modify God’s elements and gain for us return, return to our state before the lady’s generous thoughts. To do this, child, we will have to remove those thoughts.”
We waited a day. Our most distant friends would not be present till the following afternoon, though the nearest were soon within smell. We waited because the dreaded force of death would be needed, and our fires should burn before evening so that the sinners could not see.
Mother and I were in a strange state, for although not apprehensive, we were uncommonly somber as we ate the mushrooms that kill sinners and drank dark water full of life. We did not, however, visit with the local sisters. All would wait until all were present.
We brought the clay barrel, emptied of rainwater, unused since the time sisters were hunted as though animals for the eating. Unable to recall where exactly on the isle she then had lived, Mother was only certain that she and her friends were saved by a forgetfulness carried in the air that caused the hunters to be lost and finally retire from their search. Only a few sisters burned, she told me, but a price was needed then from us, and one will be extracted now—but what price our soulless lives? Then she showed me her legs. White bones were visible beneath translucent skin, fleshless bones I had never before considered abnormal. I once was taller, she smiled with odd humor, but at least I remain alive.
No further smiling came. On a limb sled, we dragged the waist-high crock all morning, Mother halting now and again to look around and sniff and ponder before deciding the proper way. In folds of our clothing pinned with brambles, we carried rare morsel of dulse and whelk stem properly aged for strong eating. Mother on occasion would toss into the air splines of the cagewood plant, which trap seeds and end forests. Then we read the patterns as the slivers settled.
“North,” Mother said as she viewed the fluttering barbs.
“But all of those are tumbling, Mother,” I mentioned.
“Toward water,” she corrected herself.
“But so many never touched soil,” I ventured.
“Stone and sea,” Mother decided, looking firmly toward me for further interpretations. I agreed with her, however, saying nothing as I attempted to appear innocent, a difficult task for the sex witch even in her youth.
Eventually we determined to progress toward a rocky area near the western sea cliffs, stone ground enclosed on the inland side by the remnants of an ancient mountain collapsed to have formed an overgrown hill of rubble. Here we gathered as one with five sisters, a pair of triptychs to surround the white daughter, the invert child.
Five coarse dresses in a variety of greys and browns, one with a hood, two with full sleeves, a gathered bodice, one shift sewn carefully from seam to seam, perhaps repaired by a sinner. Crones and hags and a cripple: the taller unknown sister, smelling older than any other, a bent hag who dragged her foot and poked the ground with an iron cane, an astonishing material for a witch.
We converged at once. Three of these sisters I knew. Crone Miranda as usual was blinking both eyes as though signaling. Considering speech a sinning disease, hag Esmeralda had vowed to refrain from any utterance while recalling some ancient, silent language forgotten by us witches due to sinners’ exposure. Chloe might have joined her, for this hag’s face was so flat that words could barely be squeezed from her mouth. The fourth I knew not, but her movements seemed stern; while the lame sister looked toward us all with a pleasant visage that would soon be shown not to describe her complete personality.
“Ah, and here’s the spot we drop our crock,” Mother sighed as she placed the barrel in a clearing the lame one had swept smooth with the tail of her dress after shamelessly dropping her iron cane to one side.
“I bid you a moderate journey, Marybelle,” Mother greeted her.
The hag’s reply was to step near
and speak a few soft words unheard by me that made Mother smile. As they spoke, I was pulled aside by Miranda, who near tore my dress with the grasping, her former blinking yet to subside.
“And let us cook this white one, for I am shy a meal,” she growled.
“Yes and yes,” Chloe and her tight mouth agreed.
Although being dragged about so that I could scarcely retain my footing, I summoned enough effort to respond.
“I know not how you could consume me,” I replied to Chloe, “for you’ve barely a mouth. And you, Miss Miranda, could not see where to place me within your face, what with the eye ailment you’ve contracted.”
“Perhaps with no humor what I am saying should be true,” Miranda submitted, “for one who causes such difficulty should be dissolved away,” and she made a dainty gesture with her fingers as though emulating steam.
For a moment, I could not see them, only the truth I had disregarded, that I was the cause of Mother’s trouble in Jonsway, the cause of my own fear, and now the cause of this great effort that might harm us all. I had to respond, but only sinners’ words were available.
“God made me bizarre,” I said quietly, having to blame the Almighty before telling them the truth I felt. “I am so sorry….”