The Mammoth Book of Sorceror's Tales

by Mike Ashley

  She looked around the stream for a likely spot. The location was a good one, really – in her girlhood, when this little play had been acted out the first time, it had taken place in a dark wood, by a little stream not unlike this one. Her young lover (whose name she’d forgotten long ago – she just thought of him as the First Boy) had faced off against his Rival for her affection while she stood by, watching, horrified . . . and fascinated. They had both stolen their father’s dueling swords, planning to fight for her like grown men. The Rival’s blade had snapped against the Boy’s, breaking in half. The Boy had stabbed the suddenly disarmed Rival in the heart . . . and when she saw the blood, the Girl who would become the witch understood. This murder over a Girl was not an isolated event, it was an ancient thing, enacted time and again in various guises throughout the ages. There had to be power in that, she knew, in that timeless repetition, a power that could be awakened and directed and sealed by the spilling of blood.

  She took the bag from the basket and opened it. She drew out the Boy’s sword and jammed it point-first into the dirt by a tree. It was a dueling épée, old but newly sharpened. It had taken her ages to find a set that looked even close to being right. Then she removed the Rival’s sword, identical to the Boy’s. She took a rasp file from her bag and sat in the dirt with the Rival’s sword across her knees. She filed away at the blade halfway down its length, humming as she did so. Her bike stood nearby, seeming almost wary, standing upright even though the kickstand hadn’t been put down.

  She’d discovered the secret of eternal youth – one of the secrets, anyway; she supposed there must be many ways, for those willing to walk beyond the lighted paths. She survived so long, rejuvenating herself, by staging reenactments of that first fight, when she’d been a young thing in the first bloom of womanhood. She never let her hair turn gray, and in recent decades she rode her bicycle, to make herself seem young. She’d worked with this bicycle for so long that blood and magic had washed over it, making it into something more than a disguise and a conveyance – making it into something alive, something almost like a familiar. She resembled the bicycle, too, dressing to match it, and that further confused the question of her identity. Tomorrow she would drink a potion to loosen her mind, to loosen the threads mooring her spirit to this body. She would put a blue ribbon in her hair, and dress herself to match the new Girl.

  But that was only preliminary business, nothing more than clearing the way. The meat of her magic required other people, young people – and blood. Every few decades she found a new Boy and Girl and Rival, and put this little passion-play into motion. Making sure the Boy and Girl got together, seeing the Rival humiliated, driving him to murder. The Boy would face the Rival, and kill him, while the Girl looked on. When the blood spilled, a sacrifice to ignite the spell, the witch would become the new Girl, sliding easily into the young body, crowding out the resident mind – taking her place in this new variation on the old drama of love and murder. That was the power of imperative resemblance, the magic of recurring situations – she would become young, as she’d been at that first duel. Her old body would be left behind in the woods, and would cause a stir when discovered, but nothing would come of it.

  The witch turned the sword over and rasped at the other side of the blade. She’d have to smear it with dirt so the marks wouldn’t be noticeable. She would have a little trouble in the Girl’s body, of course. She wouldn’t have the girl’s memories, or access to her mind – her mind would go wherever such things went when they were crowded-out, probably nowhere, into oblivion. The witch would have trouble dealing with the Girl’s parents. In the past, she’d had to kill parents, but things were easier in this day and age. Now, she only had to tell someone in authority that her parents touched her inappropriately, that they invited their friends to touch her inappropriately. The witch could press lit cigarettes into her new young thighs, and show the burns to the teachers or the police – that should take care of any disbelief.

  The witch hummed happily as she rasped, moving the file in time to her song. Finally she put the file back in her bag, satisfied. She put the filed sword into the dirt on the other side of the stream, half-hidden by a bush. She thought a duel across the water would be very picturesque. She wondered if the Girl would faint at the first sight of blood. That’s what the last girl had done, and it had made the transition to her mind much easier. No resistance at all, just a simple expulsion.

  The witch climbed onto her bicycle and rode out of the woods, into the dark. Tomorrow she would be young again. It had been too long – it had always been too long.

  Rocko woke up Saturday morning after a round of awful dreams, in which he’d tried to stab a boy by a stream while a dark-haired girl looked on, wide-eyed and helpless. He’d felt strong in the dream, like a conqueror . . . but the next thing he knew he was dying, his blood running into the water.

  He woke, shivering.

  His parents weren’t awake yet. Good. He slipped into the kitchen and ate a cold biscuit out of the fridge. Then he dressed, thinking about Cory, about finding the right time to strike.

  When he went out the side door, he found the witch’s bicycle leaning against his house. He approached it warily, but it seemed harmless and inert. He touched the curved handlebars. Just metal. He looked around for the witch, and didn’t see her anywhere.

  “You know the way to his house?” Rocko asked.

  The bike just sat there.

  Rocko took the handlebars and moved the bicycle into the yard. He climbed on and started pedaling the heavy bicycle, wondering how he would know which way to go.

  The handlebars tugged under his hands, toward the left, and Rocko went with them. Like the planchette on a ouija board, he thought, moving under my fingers.

  For some reason, even though he was not the type of boy to sing aloud, he found himself shouting the half-remembered words to “Love Me Tender” as he pedaled.

  After about a mile, the bike started pedaling itself.

  Cory walked to Heather’s house with his notebook under his arm, thinking about his dream last night. He found Heather in her front yard, smacking balls with her hockey stick, driving them into one of those portable netted goals. She wore jeans and an untucked blue shirt. Her hair was mussed, and her face was red from exertion. She was altogether beautiful.

  “Want to take a few swings?” she asked, seeing him.

  “Maybe later.”

  “Any time. Want to head for the stream?” She picked up her bookbag from where it rested by a flowerbed.

  “Sure.”

  “Mom said she’ll make lunch for us. She wants to meet you.”

  That both pleased him and made him nervous. “You told her about me?”

  She laughed. “I had to tell her something when I went to your house. She made me braid my hair, remember?”

  “Right, right.” They ambled into the woods. She swung her hockey stick at pine cones.

  “Did you have any—”

  “–—weird dreams last night?” she finished. “Yeah. No witch, though, just watching a couple of kids I’d never seen before try to kill each other.”

  “I dreamed I stabbed somebody. There was a girl there, too . . . and she came over and stared down at the kid’s blood while it ran into the water. She hardly seemed to notice me, even though I tried to get her attention.”

  “That’s so messed up,” she said. “Very weird.”

  “I saw something yesterday . . .”

  “What?”

  “I thought . . . I thought I saw that woman’s bicycle in the woods. Not her, just the bike, with no one riding it. But that’s crazy. Right?”

  “I don’t know. I just wish the dreams would stop. If it keeps up, I’ll be afraid to go to sleep.”

  They got to the stream and started talking about their project, both of them glad to have something besides bad dreams to pay attention to.

  The bicycle took Rocko into a subdivision after about an hour and a half of riding. He hoped th
e bicycle would be around to take him back, because he didn’t remember the way. “That sword better be here,” he said to the bicycle when it began slowly coasting toward the woods at the end of the subdivision. “Not to mention that dogshit Cory.”

  The bicycle did not respond, but a short distance into the woods, it stopped moving, and started to fall over. Rocko stepped off and stood still, listening. He heard water, and, maybe, voices. Did Cory have friends? It didn’t seem possible. But if he did . . . well, Rocko would do what he had to when the opportunity presented itself, as opportunities invariably did.

  He crept through the woods, toward the voices . . . and saw Cory and Heather, right across a stream.

  Heather, Shit. He hadn’t expected her to be here. Still . . . maybe it was a good thing. Cory had surely told Heather how he’d made a fool of him, driven off his friends and left him face-down in a shit-filled toilet bowl. They’d probably laughed about it, when it should have been Cory she laughed at.

  Well, he’d show her now, wouldn’t he? Show her that he couldn’t be messed with that way, not without consequences. She’d see.

  He glanced around.

  And right there, driven point-first into the soil, was the sword. He pulled it out and held it. It felt good in his hand – it felt natural.

  No feelings, he reminded himself. Just do what needs to be done. He started across the creek.

  “Did you hear something?” Cory asked.

  “I don’t—” Heather began.

  The next things happened very fast.

  Rocko came out of the bushes on the far side of the stream, holding something long in his right hand – was it a sword? He wasn’t scowling, or cursing, or smiling, just hurrying toward the stream with a fixed, intent expression on his face. Cory instinctively stepped between Rocko and Heather.

  “Are you crazy?” Heather shouted, falling back. Cory didn’t know which of them she was talking to.

  Cory retreated too, banging his elbow on a tree. He glanced that way – and saw a sword, driven point-down into the dirt by the tree trunk.

  What he had to do seemed obvious. He’d done it last night in his dream, hadn’t he?

  He pulled the sword out of the dirt and held it before him. He’d never held a sword before, but he knew how; it felt like second nature.

  Rocko stood on the other side of the stream. “This is for my humiliation,” he said. He nodded toward Heather. “And for the Girl.”

  “You can’t have her,” Cory said, not sure where the words came from. “You’ll have to come through me.”

  “So be it,” Rocko said, and jumped across the stream. Cory waited in en garde position, his mind curiously blank. These events seemed to have little to do with him – they were almost formalities, somehow, but essential nonetheless.

  Rocko raised his sword, and his face finally betrayed expression – a snarl of total, concentrated rage.

  Then Heather hit Rocko with her hockey stick, snapping his sword and driving the broken pieces into his chest. A look of comical surprise crossed Rocko’s face, and he looked toward Heather. She hit him in the side of the head with the flat of the stick, and he stiffened, then stumbled backwards and fell in the stream, still holding the hilt of his sword.

  “Jesus,” Heather said, breathing hard.

  Then, off in the bushes, the witch screamed.

  What had the Girl done? Her place was to stand to one side and watch the bloodshed, not intercede! The witch had loosened the moorings of her mind, dressed in jeans and a blue shirt to match the Girl, put a ribbon in her hair. She was ready to become the Girl, waiting only for the Boy to spill the Rival’s blood and ignite the spell – and that had been ruined!

  She ran out of the woods where she’d been watching. “Bitch!” she yelled. “You little whore, you little interfering whore!”

  It might not be too late. If she could make the Rival bleed, maybe this tableau was still close enough to the original – the imperative resemblance hadn’t totally broken down. She was too far away, though, she’d never get to him and kill him in time, especially with the Girl still standing there, fierce as an Amazon, her hockey stick in hand.

  But her bicycle – it was closer.

  Rocko sat up, groggily, and saw the witch coming, screaming. He looked at the shattered remnant of sword in his hand, and suddenly understood the essentials, if not the particulars, of the situation.

  The witch had set him up. She’d meant for him to die here, and had given him a useless sword. She’d probably been behind Cory’s impossible feat of strength and speed in the bathroom, too.

  He would kill her. He struggled to his feet.

  Then he saw the bicycle bearing down on him, and froze, pithed by fear.

  The bicycle came out of the trees, lumbering slowly at first but then building speed. Rocko stared at the witch’s bicycle as it raced toward him. Heather held her hockey stick across her chest, but she was looking at the witch, who was dressed like Heather and grinning horribly.

  The riderless bicycle was going to pass by Cory. He saw its ram’s-horn handlebars, only they’d twisted, so their points aimed forward, like bull’s horns. They would gore Rocko easily, and his blood would pool in the stream . . .

  In one smooth motion, with thoughtless ease, Cory tossed his sword point-first toward the bicycle as it passed him. His sword flew neatly into the spokes on the back tire. The rotation of the wheel slammed the sword against the frame, binding the spokes and making it impossible for the wheel to turn. The bicycle slalomed, and the witch screamed again. The bike skidded for several feet before it fell, then slid into the stream, stopping by Rocko’s feet.

  Rocko looked down at it, then at the witch, who stood clutching her hair and shouting incomprehensibly.

  Rocko grinned. He reached down and snatched the sword from the bike’s spokes. The bicycle’s wheels spun, but it couldn’t seem to right itself. Cory cursed softly. Rocko was going to come after him, and this time he didn’t have a weapon of his own. He couldn’t run, either, not if that meant leaving Heather to Rocko’s mercy, and to the witch.

  Rocko lifted the sword and shouted. His face held plenty of expression, now – fury, and delight.

  He didn’t run for Cory. He ran past Heather, straight for the witch. She hardly seemed to see him – just stared at Heather, and pulled on her hair, and wept.

  Rocko plunged the sword into the witch’s stomach, driving it in to the hilt, then put his hand on her chest and shoved. The witch fell over backward, her body sliding off the blade. Rocko lifted the sword high, then drove it down into her throat.

  He left it there, sticking up, not unlike the way Cory had found it, sticking up from the ground. Rocko looked at Cory and Heather, his eyes glazed, breathing heavily.

  “Don’t come near us,” Heather said, moving close to Cory, clutching her stick.

  “Shit,” Rocko said, his voice thick. “I’m not messing with either of you. I took care of what I needed to do.” He frowned. “Almost, anyway.” He approached, and Heather stepped in front of Cory – protecting him, as he’d moved to protect her.

  Rocko didn’t come much closer to him, though. He veered back toward the stream, and the bicycle. “This thing. I don’t know how it works . . . but it’s got a mind of its own. It might even have her mind.” He looked at Heather. “Get that stick over here, and smash this thing up, would you? I’ll get a rock.”

  “He’s right,” Cory said. “I don’t know what happened, but . . . the bicycle is part of it. We have to break it.”

  “Don’t mess with us,” Heather said. “Don’t mess with Cory.”

  Rocko shrugged. “He proved he was worth something. He saved my life.” He flashed a sick grin at Cory. “If Heather hadn’t ambushed me, though, and if I hadn’t been stuck with a second-rate sword, I’d have finished you.”

  “We’ve seen what you can do,” Heather said, looking at the witch’s body, then away.

  Rocko looked at the witch’s body and nodded. “Yeah. I
crossed a boundary there, didn’t I? I wonder what my psychiatrist will say when I tell her I killed her because she was a witch?”

  Cory and Heather didn’t say anything. They just went to work on the bike with the stick and some rocks, shattering its headlamp first, then pounding its wheel hubs into shapelessness Rocko bashed at the seat until it came off. Halfway through their destruction they heard shouting and footsteps.

  “Who—” Cory said, alarmed.

  “Grown-ups,” Rocko grunted. “Those builders of boundaries. They heard all the screaming, probably. Let’s finish this before they get here.”

  They worked faster, and when they finished, the bicycle was just bits of junk glittering in the stream.

  “So much for the micro-ecology,” Heather said. “The water will probably be poisoned forever.”

  A woman came into the clearing, followed by another woman and a man. “Heather!” the first woman shouted. “What—” She saw the witch’s body. “Oh my God!” she cried, covering her mouth with both hands.

  “I killed her,” Rocko said, stepping forward. He looked over his shoulder at Cory, then favored Heather with a smile. He turned back to the grown-ups. “I killed her because she was a witch.”

  The adults looked at one another.

  Heather grasped Cory’s hand, hard. He squeezed hers just as tightly. This was going to be a long afternoon, and long days ahead . . . but maybe, on the other side of it, he would still be able to hold Heather’s hand.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  I often think, why should children get all the best books. I’m not sure that many adults are adventurous enough to see what children are reading. Maybe the Harry Potter books are changing that, but I think adults need to check out the children’s section in the bookshop a little more often. They will then discover the brilliance of Diana Wynne Jones, because her books deal with adult themes and will be enjoyed by all ages. Her first book appeared in 1973, Wilkins’ Tooth, followed rapidly by the brilliantly funny The Ogre Downstairs (1974), Eight Days of Luke (1975) and Cart & Cwidder (1975), the first book of hers that I discovered and the first of her series set in the world of Dalemark. With Charmed Life (1977) she began her other popular series featuring Chrestomanci. Imagine if magic worked, someone would have to regulate it to make sure it does not get out of hand. In many countries that means bureaucracy. That’s the fun of the Chrestomanci series. Chrestomanci (pronounced Krest-oh-Man-See) is the most powerful of all enchanters set in place by the government to control the use of magic. But, of course, it’s never that simple.