Hill Magick

by Julia French

  “The designs are my own, one of a kind. You’ll never see another person wearing the same buttons as you,” the old man stated proudly. “They’re made with love.”

  With Geller’s closing words Rachel’s fifth interview for Robert’s Ramblings was a wrap. The art of interviewing was getting easier for her, and she had discovered that she enjoyed talking with people and listening to their stories. Every person in the world must have at least one interesting thing about them, she thought as she gathered her notes. Almost anybody could be interesting—for instance, True Gannett.

  She wasn’t being unfaithful to Mark. Her growing rapport with True was the natural result of two lonely people without close friends, but almost certainly Mark wouldn’t see it that way. How Mark would react if he learned about her job was nothing compared to what he might do if he found out about her lessons with True. Would he hit her again, harder this time? How far would he go?

  As she came up to the rusty van she noticed a scruffy black bird perched above the driver’s side door. How could it be? She was eight miles from home, but it was clearly the same bird, for when it cocked its head she could see the deformity on the side of its beak. The idea of her alley raven following her for eight miles made her uneasy. She made a nervous shooing motion at it with her notebook, but instead of taking off the bird stretched out its feathery neck and cawed at her urgently until she could almost imagine it was talking to her.

  “I don’t have any food for you. Beat it.” She made another shooing motion but the raven stood its ground until she started wrestling with the door handle. Just as she got the door open it took wing, sailing upward in a casual spiral until it was out of sight. As she drove she kept looking in the sky for any sign of the bird and when she reached home she practically ran through the alley into the house, but the bird didn’t reappear. Perhaps it would be wise to avoid the raven for a while, for her relationship with the bird was getting too close for comfort.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Three weeks ago Rachel hadn’t known the difference between camphor and chamomile, but now she could recite twenty of the most important healing herbs and their uses. True was pleased with her progress, but her dismissive attitude toward the subject of magick hadn’t changed one jot. In order to heal a patient, sometimes supernatural intervention was necessary, and she would never be a real healer unless she could accept ideas that lay outside her normal pattern of thinking. Today True planned to fix that problem.

  True had two other reasons for persuading Rachel to believe in his magick, only one of which he was consciously aware. In the cases of the starving waitress and the man with the thorns, their innocence had proven to be no barrier against harm. Active protective measures were necessary, and the sooner Rachel came to terms with the supernatural, the more willing she might be to accept any magickal protection that he could give her. The other reason, carefully hidden from his conscious self, was that in rejecting his magick Rachel was rejecting an important part of himself. Conscious or unconscious, however, any reasons for her resistance wouldn’t matter after today, for this afternoon he would convince her that magick was not just folklore but a real working force, purely for her own benefit of course.

  Rachel came through the door, her hair sparkling with melting snowflakes.

  “Winter’s almost here,” she announced, disengaging herself from her mittens.

  “We had another hard frost last night,” he agreed, taking her coat. “Is that monster out there still running?”

  The Behemoth had become a running joke between them. “Yes, my van is running just fine, thank you.”

  He felt her hands. They were chilled through. “The heater doesn’t work, does it?”

  “Heat seems to be a luxury. At least it starts in the morning.”

  She followed him into the living room, where the fireplace bathed the room in cozy light.

  “Old timers used to take warm coals from the fireplace and put them in metal pans by their feet to warm them up in bed,” he told her. “Want to take a mitten full of coals with you when you leave?”

  “Oh, no thanks.”

  “How’s your plant doing?”

  “The leaves are coming out now. Pretty soon I’ll be able to put your—theory—to the test. What’s that?” Rachel indicated the leather string around his neck. Somehow the tiny pouch hanging from it had escaped the confines of his flannel shirt and was dangling in plain sight. As embarrassed as if she had caught him in his underwear, True dropped the amulet back inside his shirt and buttoned it higher on his chest.

  “Dried sage and skullcap,” he told her, unable to think of anything better. What the minute pouch actually contained was a clot of his own blood and a guard hair from a male timber wolf. This very personal kind of protection was supposed to be kept secret, and Rachel didn’t need to know anything more.

  “Tea or coffee?” he asked to get her mind off what she had seen.

  “Coffee, please. Are you okay, True?”

  He knew she meant the sage and skullcap. “I’ve been tired lately. It’s the weather.”

  “I thought sage and skullcap was for mental problems.”

  “Sometimes.”

  Standing in the kitchen pouring coffee, True knew that he was doing the right thing. He could no longer deny that he was engaged in a war with the pale man, and to wait even one more day could put Rachel in deadly danger. The big brass Army men at the Pentagon had a saying for things and people during a battle that got in the way of the primary target: collateral damage.

  He carried the mug into the living room, and Rachel took it and wrapped her hands around it to warm them.

  “What are we going to do today?”

  “A magick trick. Close your eyes.” He went to the overflowing bookcase against the wall, and from behind one of the volumes he extracted a tarnished silver ring and a threaded sewing needle stuck onto a smudged white index card. Moving very quietly so she wouldn’t hear, he tucked the ring under a corner of the worn carpet where he was standing. Then he recrossed the room and stuck the threaded needle in the arm of the sofa next to her.

  “Open your eyes, Rachel. I’ve lost my ring. It’s in this room somewhere, and I’d like you to help me find it.”

  She started to get off the sofa, but he motioned her to stay.

  “Not like that. I’ll show you a better way.” He held up the needle and thread. “Hold the knot end, so the needle points down.”

  She took it in her hand. The needle hung motionless from the thread in her fingers.

  “My ring is made of silver, with the sun, the moon, and a star carved on it. Picture it in your mind. Hold the needle up so it’s not touching anything.” She had let her arm with the needle droop.

  “Where did you wear your ring, True? Did you go into town today, or into the woods?”

  “Do this first, ask me later,” he told her. “Watch the needle.”

  Following his instructions, she watched the needle at the end of the thread in her fingers, and after a moment the sliver of metal started to tremble. Her eyebrows contracted in puzzlement.

  “True, I’m not moving it, I promise.”

  “Let the needle do what it wants.”

  The trembling progressed to a quiver and then the needle started to sway. It swung back and forth from left to right rhythmically, like a pulse. Rachel’s arm started to droop again.

  “Don’t put it down. Let it move.”

  The needle was beating time. The arcs grew stronger with every passing second. Her eyes were riveted upon the flashing steel.

  “Look, it’s going in a circle now.”

  “That’s good, that’s good…”

  “I swear I’m not moving it.”

  “I know, I believe you,” he said, trying to soothe her. So much depended upon her reaction to this. “It’s all righ
t.”

  “Why is it doing that?” she repeated half-hysterically, and he laid a calming hand on her arm.

  “I’ll show you. Stand up, Rachel, and keep hold of the thread.”

  She got to her feet. “Look, it’s…I don’t know what it’s doing.” The needle had stopped circling but instead of coming to rest, against gravity, against logic and reason, it had frozen in midair.

  “Don’t be scared. Which way is the needle pointing?”

  An invisible force was holding the needle at a sharp angle, pointing toward the corner of the rug where True had hidden the ring.

  “The needle and thread is showing you where to look.” He knew he was pushing her and he pitied her distress, but he needed her to understand, not tomorrow, not next week, but today. “Follow where the needle shows you.” He extracted the thread from her limp fingers. “Go where it tells you to go.”

  Breathing heavily, she walked in the direction the needle had indicated. She looked as though she was ready to cry, or scream.

  “Look by your feet, under the rug.”

  Timidly Rachel picked up a corner of the rug to see, then sat down where she was with a hand over her eyes. Her other hand was closed tightly around something. He went over to her, eased her fingers open, and removed the missing ring.

  “I see you’ve found my ring. Thank you,” he said, and she sat very still. Wisely, he said nothing more, and after a few minutes, she broke the silence.

  “It’s a magic trick, like on stage. You said so yourself.”

  “Doing the pendulum isn’t a trick. You saw it move in your hand.”

  “What do you want me to say, that I believe in magic now? I must have moved my hand unconsciously. There’s no other explanation.”

  “How could you make the needle point to where the ring was when you didn’t know yourself?”

  “You did something to the needle, magnetized it. Or it’s a coincidence that the ring happened to be there in that spot, or there’s another explanation, I don’t know. I do know it isn’t magic, at least not the kind you’re trying to teach me.”

  He hadn’t gotten through to her at all. Putting the sharp sting of his disappointment aside, True reached into his pocket. “You helped me today, Rachel, and I’d like to give you a gift.” And he held out to her the gift that his great grandfather had given him years before.

  She took the disk and chain from him and examined it. The disk was worn almost blank on one side, and only a few valleys and lines were left of the original inscription. On the other side was an emblem almost obscured by tarnish. “An eye!”

  “Just like the one on a dollar bill.”

  The edge of the disk was razor-thin. “It’s very old.”

  “Nigh onto a hundred years.” Or even two hundred. True’s great-grandfather had been over ninety years old when he passed it to True, and in turn his own great grandfather had gotten it from his great-grandfather. “The eye stays forever open, to see evil coming.” He braced himself for her reaction, but she simply looped the chain around her neck.

  “Thank you, True.”

  “Don’t polish it or clean it in any way. Promise me you’ll wear it all the time.” He doubted that she would, but wearing it some of the time was better than none at all.

  True escorted her to her can, and as she drove away a furtive movement at the corner of his eye drew his attention. A large, scruffy raven was perched on the overhanging limb of one of the sugar maples at the edge of the clearing.

  Something about the bird didn’t sit well with him. He didn’t like the too-intelligent way it watched Rachel’s departure or the kink in its beak that made it look like it was sneering, and something about the bird’s swaggering stance seemed to mock him. He didn’t believe in harming living things needlessly, but the uneasy feeling in his gut was strong enough to make him bend down and pick up a stone. The raven saw the stone in his hand, turned its back on him, and lifted its tail in contempt.

  Provoked beyond reason, True aimed and fired in one smooth, powerful motion. The stone struck the tree just below the raven’s perch. Chips of bark flew from the trunk, and the bird leaped into the air with a strangled caw, spattering white fecal matter onto the ground below. Flailing the air, the panicked bird wheeled around and took off down the drive as fast as it could fly. True didn’t like that it was going in the same direction as Rachel, but sight of that raven had given him a bad feeling, and his reaction had been purely instinctive.

  As he walked toward the house he spied something metallic on the ground—Rachel’s amulet. The chain had broken and neither of them had noticed it fall. He could wait until next week to give it to her again when she came for another lesson, but the idea of leaving her without protection for so long bothered him. In a half hour Burt Weber was coming for another dose of gout medicine. After that was done, True would drive straight to Yarwich and make sure Rachel got her charm. It wouldn’t go over well with her husband if he came to the door and announced that he was dropping off a mystical amulet of protection, so he would have to think of some other reason for his visit.

  On the way there True told himself he was in no way jealous, merely curious, but it would be interesting to put a face to the shadowy figure that was Rachel’s husband.

  * * * *

  A tall, gypsy-looking stranger stood in the doorway. He was thin almost to the point of malnutrition, and his weird blue eyes looked to Mark as though they were calculating how much of a handout he could cadge. Mark felt a flash of anger at the vagabond for interrupting his after-dinner nap, and he braced his foot against the inside of the door in case the raggedy character tried to force his way inside.

  “Is Mrs. Jeffries at home?” he heard the gypsy ask, and his mouth set in a hard line. Rachel might be a soft touch for a sob story, but he wasn’t.

  “Mrs. Jeffries is out,” curtly.

  It had taken Rachel more than six years to learn what sort of man Mark Jeffries really was. It took True roughly fifteen seconds. At the sound of Mark’s voice he knew immediately that Rachel’s husband was a man who needed to have his own way, no matter the price to others. Over Mark’s shoulder True saw Rachel’s purse on the hall table-so her husband was a liar as well as a bully. He was probably a coward, too. Most bullies were.

  “When Mrs. Jeffries comes home, please give her this.” True held up a white envelope. It was sealed, but the disk of the amulet made a visible imprint in the paper.

  Mark took the envelope and thumbed the imprint. “We’ll see. How do you know my wife?”

  Rachel hadn’t told her husband about the lessons! After a brief moment of shock True realized why-because a man like Mark, a man with no awareness of any other voice except his own misery and pain, would imagine wrongdoing in anything no matter how innocent. If Rachel were to inform Mark of her lessons, True had no doubt that Mark would hear something quite different than her real words, and take it out on her. He recollected the shadow he’d felt upon Rachel when they had met. Was Mark acting out his fear and pain upon her now? True’s hand hurt. Unconsciously he had knotted his fist into a hard ball. He took a slow, deep breath and flexed his fingers open. This wasn’t the time or the place.

  “It’s a necklace, Mister Jeffries,” he answered as meekly as he could. “Mrs. Jeffries forgot to take it with her yesterday.” By leaving out any more information, he hoped that Mark would fill in the details for himself, and he wasn’t disappointed.

  “Jesus Christ! I told her to give up those damn flea markets. That woman spends money like water, but that’s a woman for you, right?” He looked over at True to see if he shared the joke.

  True ignored the insult to Rachel and forced himself to smile. “Mrs. Jeffries said the necklace reminded her of her aunt,” he said, hoping the lie might increase Rachel’s chances of actually receiving the necklace, for he trusted her husband as far as he co
uld toss a full-grown oak tree. He also hoped that Rachel had an aunt.

  Evidently she did, for Mark accepted it without question. He gripped the envelope too tightly. “Oh, I’ll see she gets it. Did she pay you?”

  “It’s paid in full.”

  “With the housekeeping money, I suppose. Thank you for bringing it by.” Without another word, Mark shut the door in True’s face, and the breeze from the door stirred his hair.

  True stood motionless on the porch, struggling with temptation. Just a little spell, enough to take this bullying man down a peg…but in the end he stepped off the porch, leaving the humiliation spell unsaid. For all he knew, Rachel loved her domineering husband and wouldn’t take kindly to his interference. If, however, he were to cross paths with Mark Jeffries at some future date when Rachel wasn’t around, he would take it as a sign to teach Mark a lesson that he wouldn’t soon forget.

  Chapter Twenty

  In spite of his irritation Mark had given her the amulet-thrown it at her feet, in fact, and when she’d bent down to pick it up, he had met her descending face with his fist. Then he had “come back to himself,” as she had come to think of these episodes, as though the blow had discharged some kind of negative energy inside him.

  He was so very sorry. He was under a lot of pressure at work and he was feeling the strain. He would never raise a hand to her again as long as he lived. They could use some time away from everything, a second honeymoon. They could go anywhere she wanted to go. She was his soul mate. He loved her more than anything in the world. All he wanted was to make her happy and he would do anything to see her smile. As soon as Rachel could break away from the meaningless babble, she fled to the bedroom.

  It had been both kind and perceptive of True to keep her secret, and she vowed she would never let him know that he had been the cause of Mark’s second attack upon her. The all-seeing eye carved on the disk; could it see the evil that had taken up residence in her husband’s body? Even if it did, however, there was precious little the bit of old silver could do about it. Despite that, the gift was comforting. It was a symbol to her that she had at least one friend in the world.