The Witch Doctor

by Christopher Stasheff

  The huge horse tripped. It tumbled. It hit the ground hard and rolled. The knight bellowed in alarm, and just managed to kick free at the last instant.

  I stared.

  So did his men.

  Then somebody hissed, "Zabreur!" and the knight began to kick his arms and legs—he was on his back, trying to turn over.

  But he was out of action long enough for me to make some headway against his men. I turned to them, advancing; if I tried to run, it would restore their self-confidence.

  But that was very thoroughly shot. They moaned and backed off fast, then turned, stumbling, and started to run.

  I stared, thunderstruck. They couldn't be that scared, just because the horse had hit a gopher hole and tripped! Okay, so it was a lucky coincidence that I had just finished yelling something, but that shouldn't have scared them that much.

  The knight didn't think so, either. "Hans! Klaus! You worthless, good-for-nothing blobs of dog meat! Come back here and aid me, or I'll..." Then he caught sight of me limping toward him, frowning, curious, and I guess I must have looked pretty bad, being mussed up with my shirt torn and all, because he moaned and made some sort of sign. "You cannot prevail! My master is an Earl of Evil!"

  Some force staggered me, making my head ring. He must have thrown something I hadn't seen. Anger surged, and my instinct sent me to kick his head in—but prudence took over at the last second, pointing out that I should get as far away from him as possible, and not add homicide to any other charges the local authorities might dream up against me. This was especially true because he obviously was one of the local authorities. I had laid off smoking grass for similar reasons, and it had apparently paid off, since I hadn't been arrested. I slowed and nodded. "Right. I love you, too, sweetheart. Remind me to return the hospitality some day." Then I turned and went away, walking fast—or as fast as I could; I seemed to have developed a limp.

  I glanced back a couple of times, but no one was showing any great interest in following me. That made me curious after a while, so I shinnied up a tree until I had a line of sight back to the little forest we'd been near. I was on the other side of that woods now, but I could see the knight and his boys trudging off toward the castle way up high across the valley. That was both good and bad—good, because it meant I had some time to find a hiding place, or get farther away; bad, because it meant they'd apparently decided I was too much to handle and were going back for reinforcements.

  Of course, they could just be cutting their losses. Maybe they were planning not to mention me to anybody again, but somehow, I doubted that. Might have had something to do with that word somebody'd hissed when the knight went down—"Zabreur." My German was a little rusty, and that probably wasn't real German, anyway, but didn't the word mean "male witch"?

  Possible.

  I shinnied back down, turning thoughtful. Chambray and blue jeans probably looked like luxury fabrics, to them—now that I thought about it, their cloth had looked pretty much homemade. And my styles were certainly odd, by their standards. The belt and boots alone would be enough to mark me as above peasant rank, and weird—tooled leather with a huge metal buckle, and high heels. No, from their point of view, I was familiar enough to be real, odd enough to be special.

  I set off uphill again, deciding I'd better stay alert. The "magician" pose was a good idea; it could help protect me, and I sure didn't have anything else to do the job. Well, no, I had a large clasp knife in my pocket—I like 'em big enough so that "jackknife" seems like an understatement. I decided I'd better use it to help me make something better in the way of a weapon. I stopped off at the next woodlot, hunted around, and found a fallen branch that was still pretty solid. I whittled away twigs as I walked and, pretty soon, I had a serviceable staff. I'd hung around with some SCA guys and learned a little about quarterstaves from them, but I'd learned a bit more from my sensei. I wasn't an expert, mind you, but I was capable, and it was better than nothing.

  I looked around me then, finally letting the scenery sink in, instead of just taking a quick glance to know which way to go. There were rugged mountains in the distance, big hills nearby, with sheep grazing on the slopes and every more-or-less horizontal spot taken up by grain. I couldn't have told you one cereal from another unless it came in a box, but this stuff looked too hairy to be wheat.

  Finally, it hit: I wasn't in the Midwest any more. In fact, I doubted I was even in America, and judging from what I'd seen of the locals, I wasn't even in the twentieth century.

  Time travel? Space zapping? Impossible! I had to be dreaming.

  But those punches had sure hurt. A dream, this wasn't.

  Hallucination?

  Possible. But if it were, it would've had to have been the most detailed trip I'd ever heard of, and the most enduring. Besides, I had sworn off all chemical experiences years before.

  Flashback?

  Again, possible, though I didn't think I'd taken anywhere near enough drugs, ever, to have caused a spontaneous trip to happen, and certainly not one that lasted this long. Still, it was a possibility. I closed my eyes and willed myself back to my apartment.

  But there were no psychedelic patterns inside my eyelids, only darkness—well, redness; I was standing in sunlight. I groped for my identity symbol, but my hands were empty, except for the staff. In desperation, I put my left hand on my belt buckle and started tracing the patterns of the Native American symbols I could feel there.

  Nothing happened.

  I sighed and gave up, opening my eyes. I was stuck here, wherever "here" was, and I was going to have to live by the local rules, whatever they were. Denial wouldn't help, and it might be a quick road to disaster. Whether that disaster was psychological or physical was kind of a moot point. It would be very unpleasant, either way.

  Unless there was some evidence to the contrary—and I couldn't see any—I had to assume that the knight and his bullyboys were genuine, not modern people putting on some incomprehensible show. Those guys couldn't have been SCA members—they weren't polite, they weren't friendly, and their weapons weren't padded. So, somehow, I'd landed in the middle of some sort of medieval culture, from what I could see of it—and if they thought I was a magician, that could explain a few things.

  I wondered where I was. I couldn't offhand think of any place on Earth that was still living in the Northern European Middle Ages. Okay, there were some isolated islands where the living was still pretty limited—no TV, even—but so far as I knew, they didn't run to knights.

  A medieval fair, being held to attract the tourists? No; you don't beat up on tourists.

  I sighed, deciding that I just didn't have enough information to figure out where I was, how I'd been brought there, or why. I shelved it until I could learn more. There were more immediate problems that needed tending to, such as survival.

  I set off up-slope. A few hundred yards later, I passed a berry bush, and I was amazed to realize I was hungry. I stopped and stepped closer, inspecting the berries carefully, and decided that I couldn't be all that badly off, if I could still want food. I'd tied in with a local back-to-the-basics group for a year or two, going out on field trips into the countryside to learn how to survive in the wild, or at least without grocery stores; I hadn't quit until they started talking about setting up a commune. So I knew which plants were edible and which weren't, and the all-important rule: if you're not sure it's good to eat, don't touch it. But these looked to be perfectly ordinary raspberries, so I took a chance, and a handful. They tasted good, so I took another handful.

  As I was munching, I noticed a very big spiderweb, glowing with the sunlight behind it—in fact, several of them; the neighborhood must have been saturated with flies. The biggest web, though, had an eight-legger the size of a quarter, an exact double for the one that had stung me. Anger rose, and my hand tightened on my staff—but I told myself that it couldn't be the same bug, and I turned away.

  Bad year for spiders, folks.

  The land was still sloping upward. I
decided I must be in the foothills of the mountains I'd seen in the distance. After a little while, I came to a woodlot that went on and on. I stayed on the fringe, just this side of the underbrush, and kept a wary eye on it—for all I knew, a dragon might have come charging out any second. On the other hand, I wanted to be able to duck into it quickly, if Sir Overbearing and his boys decided to come hunting, after all.

  Then, suddenly, the shock hit. I stopped dead still, leaned on my staff, and waited for the feeling of desolation to pass.

  It didn't.

  I lifted my head, looking out over that strange, strange view, and Kullervo's lines from The Kalevala sprang into my mind. I chanted them aloud, hoping the sound would make me feel better:

  "And the friendless one reflected,

  'Wherefore have I been created?

  Who has made me and has doomed me,

  Thus without a sun to wander

  Through the starry wastes forever?'."

  It worked. Just the sound of a human voice helped, even if it was my own—and the feeling of kinship, the knowledge that somebody else had felt this way before, somewhere, somewhen, and that a lot of other people had to have felt the same way, too, to keep that verse alive down the centuries. I wasn't a total oddball, and I wasn't completely alone. Culture can be a great consolation.

  Consolation enough to put some spirit back into me. I straightened up, squaring my shoulders, and set off again.

  Light blossomed—an actinic, piercing light that seemed to lance through my eyes.

  I fell back, raising a forearm to protect them. Panic surged through me; the only thing I'd ever heard of that made sudden light like that was a bomb.

  But there was no explosion. Instead, I seemed to hear, very faintly, the sound of a chiming gong—but it could have been imagination.

  In fact, it had to be—and so did the strange, vague, anthropomorphic shape at the center of that light burst, where the glare was strongest. As I watched, it coalesced, becoming clearer and more humanlike.

  Then I caught my breath. It had turned into the shape of a young man, swallowing up all the light so that it still shone faintly, even though I could see through him. Just barely.

  He wore a glowing robe, and there was a shimmering behind him, a suggestion of huge folded wings—and his face was very severe.

  No. It couldn't be. An angel?

  "I am even so," the being responded, "and the one who hath known thee even since the day of thy birth, Saul."

  Well. That brought me back to my senses, a little. "If you've known me that long," I said, "how come I've never seen you before?"

  "In that dull world to which thou wert born, naught of the spirit can be seen, save to those few souls that do glow with goodness. Here, though, the world of the spirit is open to men, if they do but seek."

  "World?" I frowned. "You mean I'm in a totally different world from the one I've lived in all my life?" Somehow, that didn't seem like news.

  "Even so," the angel agreed, but he was still frowning.

  Then the other part of his message registered. "But," I said, "I'm not particularly interested in the world of the spirit."

  "How little thou dost know thyself, Saul! And how greatly dost thou seek to hide thine own nature from thyself. Thou hast ever been preoccupied with the things of the spirit, and 'tis even thy aching search for truth that hath led thee away from the churches of men."

  I just stood there for a second while that sank in. Then I said, "I thought you boys were supposed to think the churches had a monopoly on truth."

  "The religions they serve have truth within them, and therefore do the churches, also—yet the folk who constitute each church are but human, and as fallible as any among thee. How intolerant art thou, to excuse thine own failings and condemn them for theirs!"

  I lifted my head in indignation. "I haven't condemned anybody!"

  "Hast thou not turned from them because thou hast judged them to be hypocrites? Yet surely thou must needs see that their faith is a striving after perfection."

  I nodded, not following.

  "Therefore, if they do strive for perfection, they cannot already have attained it."

  "Now, wait a minute!" I held up a hand, seeing where he was going.

  "Thou hast learned it," he said, nodding. "If they are not perfect, thou canst not blame them for their imperfections."

  "But I haven't judged anybody!"

  "Hast thou not but now judged even thy Creator? Hast thou not blamed Him for creating thee doomed to loneliness?"

  "Oh," I said. "That's what brought you here."

  "Even so," the angel confirmed. "In this world—nay, this universe—prayers are answered more obviously than in thine own, and verses are prayers, or petitions to the Adversary."

  Suddenly, I was very glad I hadn't sung "Sympathy for the Devil."

  Then the rest of what he'd said sank in. I frowned. "What do you mean, 'this universe'?"

  "Hast thou not perceived it with thy vaunted reason?" he taunted. "Thou art no longer in the universe of thy birth. Thou hast been transported to another, in which magic rules, and physics is superstition."

  I stared.

  "Yet the God of All is the One God here, as well as in thy home," the angel said inexorably, "and of all the universes that be; for 'tis He who made them, and doth maintain them by the force of His will. It is this mighty and majestic God whom thou dost blame for thine own failings!"

  "But I wasn't talking about the Judaeo-Christian Creator," I objected. "I was reciting a quotation from the Finnish national epic! If you want to look for the 'creator' I was talking about, go look among the gods of the Finns! Besides, I didn't even make a statement! I just asked a question!"

  The angel waved the objection away with an impatient gesture. " 'Tis immaterial. Thou art in a universe in which the only true Creator is Jehovah, and thou must needs align thyself either with God, or with the Devil."

  "Are you trying to say God didn't make me to be lonely?"

  "Nay, nor to wander. If thou dost lack friends and home, that is the consequence of thine own deeds and choices. If thou dost not wish it so, thou canst choose otherwise."

  I frowned. "Choose to go back to my own world?"

  "Even that, though thou shalt have to seek the means, and labor long and hard to earn or learn the way. Yet I spoke more of thy grieving for friends and place."

  "I've been looking for friends all my life!"

  "They have been there," the angel said inexorably. "Thou hadst but to live as they did, to learn their ways and follow them."

  "Wait a minute! You're saying that if I wanted to be part of a group, I had to do as everybody in that group did?"

  "Thou hadst need to abide by their rules," the angel said. "There are many such that I have rejoiced to see thee turn away from—yet there were others who were good folk, whose customs thou didst disdain."

  I remembered the kids in grade school, who thought fighting and sports were everything. "Damn right!"

  The angel's face flared in wrath. I shrank back. "Uh, sorry, there. Darn right."

  He diminished to a slow burn.

  I collected the pieces of my wits and said, "They were so phony! And their standards were, too! Thinking that how well you could hit a ball really mattered!"

  "It did," the angel said, "to them."

  "Not to me! Reading books counted! Knowledge counted!"

  "Thus thy books meant more to thee than friendship. Thou hadst made thy choice; thou hadst small room to rail 'gainst God."

  "Oh, yes I did! I should've been able to have friends and books, other kids who liked to read, liked to learn! Then I would have been part of a group! We might even have learned how to play baseball together!"

  "Dost thou not wish to be rare?"

  "No!" I exploded, and was shocked to hear myself say it—but I'd worked up too much momentum to be able to stop. "I'd love to be normal! To have friends! To be a social animal! And I tried! I did learn their ways, at least a little bit,
but it was too late! I couldn't acquire the instinct! And they knew I was faking!"

  "Yet nonetheless would have given thee toleration, if thou hadst continued to strive."

  "To try to be something I wasn't? To be a phony? I thought you guys were supposed to value truth!"

  "As indeed we do," the angel returned, "and I rejoice that thou hast chosen the more truthful way. Yet 'twas thy choice, not God's doing."

  "Sure, but look what He gave me to choose from!" I drew a deep breath and reined myself in. Harmony, balance; center yourself... "I thought having more brains was supposed to give you a big boost toward Heaven."

  "Nay," the angel returned. "Heaven is open to all, to the lame as well as the nimble, and to the moron as well as the genius. 'Tis the soul that is of concern to God, not the mind."

  I stared, shocked.

  Then I said, "But I thought people with better minds had a better chance of coming closer to the truth! And that's God, isn't it?"

  "That is an aspect of God," the angel said, "or a description of it. 'Tis no more the whole of Him than is His omnipotence. Oh, a man of greater intellect can come to a fuller and more complete knowledge of God, if he doth strive lifelong—yet his way is more torturous, for his mind can see more obstacles to faith in God than can the man of less nimble wits."

  "But the smarter man can do more holy works!"

  "Not 'more,' " the angel corrected me, "only ones that others cannot see. Yet his temptations to error are greater, for if he does not apprehend the truth in an instant, he is like to say it doth not exist, and turn away."

  "So," I said slowly, "that's why the student went to the rabbi and said, 'Teach me the whole of the law while I stand on one foot.' "

  "That is an allegory," the angel agreed. "Yet if thy mind is the means of coming closer to God in the end, it hath also its own forms of obligation."

  I turned wary. When someone says obligation, they're trying to get you to do something you don't want to do. "Such as?"