The Return of the Witch

by Paula Brackston

  “But it is the sun, the Sacred Sun, that is at the heart of every Tuareg witch. We do not fear its heat; we crave it. It does not burn us; it feeds us. Our souls delight in its rays; our minds are lit by its glow. The Deserts of the Dead create and destroy, and the sun is the greatest part of that creation and destruction. If a witch chooses the way of the Sacred Sun she must trust its power. She must believe. She must give herself, must submit freely and totally. Only then will she be blessed with its strength. Its magic.”

  As I watched she reached forward and slowly and calmly pushed her hand into the fire. I cried out in alarm and, as a reflex, moved to stop her, but she held up her other hand. I looked more closely. Now I could see that she was not affected by the heat of the flames, and that the fire did not consume her flesh. She appeared totally relaxed and completely without pain. She withdrew her hand and let me examine it. There was not a mark on her. Not so much as an inch of blistered skin.

  “How…?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “A witch need never ask how,” she said. “The ‘how’ is always magic. Better ask ‘which magic’ or ‘from where?’ for these are the questions that will lead you to understanding.”

  “And this…” I gestured at her hand, at the fire, “this is Tuareg magic?”

  “This is magic from the Sacred Sun. It cares not if the witch be Tuareg, only that she be worthy.”

  “And how do you know if you are worthy?”

  She shrugged and leaned back on her elbows, tired of talking now. “If you are, the Sacred Sun will bless you with its power.”

  “And if you are not?”

  Taklit picked up a small piece of flatbread that was on the cooling skillet beside her. It was soggy with dipping oil. She lobbed it into the flames, where it flared up, crackling and spitting, burning brightly for a few intense seconds, before crumbling to ash, indistinguishable from the rest of the fire.

  The next day she insisted we walk west, deeper into the desert than I had been since I arrived. There was not so much as a breeze to take the sting out of the fierce sun, so that within an hour of walking at Taklit’s pace I was beginning to wilt. I paused to drink from my water bottle, leaning heavily on my staff. I could happily have downed the whole lot, but as I had no idea how long we would be out, or how far we were going, I had to ration my supply. We marched on. And on. The sun was at its highest when Taklit finally decided we had reached where we needed to be. There were a few rocks, but otherwise nothing but sand.

  “Why here?” I asked, sinking to my knees. “Why have we come here?”

  Taklit, who looked like she could walk as many miles again before she even broke a sweat, lifted her staff to indicate the vastness around us. “Is a good place,” is all she had to say. She settled herself, cross-legged, not in the tempting shade of a rock pile, but out in the blast of heat that the midday sun was now inflicting upon us. I sat beside her.

  “What can you hear?” she asked me.

  I listened. Without a wind, such an expanse of desert, such a stretch of emptiness, had little to offer by way of sounds. There were not even any vultures that day.

  I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said. “I can’t hear anything.”

  She snorted. “You are listening as a child listens! Waiting for sounds to fall upon your ears. You are a witch. Listen like a witch!”

  I tried again. She was right, of course. I was being passive, and I wasn’t properly working with my witch senses. Truth was, the heat, dear Goddess that heat, it reduced me to just so much body and breath and thirst. It seemed to sap me of any strength. Of any magic. How could Taklit be so sustained by it, while it had just the opposite effect on me? I remembered how Ulvi, back in the fabulous freeze of Siberia, had needed to cajole me into embracing the icy waters and the magic they held. I had hesitated then, but Lake Kurkip had transformed me. I had to trust Taklit now. I had to tune myself in to whatever it was that was here. Because it was powerful, I knew that.

  And so I listened as a witch, actively, alert, seeking hidden noises and vibrations that might have been noises. I began to detect tiny sounds.

  “I can hear a scratching … it’s really faint, but yes, from somewhere near…”

  Taklit nodded. “A beetle, just there, beneath the sand. He is rubbing his legs to make this sound. What else?”

  “A thudding. Very indistinct. Could it be footsteps, a long way off, perhaps?”

  “Is a mouse,” she told me. “He is behind that rock there.” She pointed with her staff.

  “I can hear his tiny footsteps?”

  “No, you hear the beating of his heart.”

  I smiled. The idea of being able to pick up a mouse’s heartbeat delighted me, though it also gave me a pang of homesickness for Aloysius back in England.

  “Listen more,” Taklit insisted. “What more can you hear?”

  I tried again, but now the sounds I had tuned in to felt loud inside my head, so that it was harder to detect anything else. I closed my eyes in an effort to focus better. After awhile I thought I could hear a distant wind, though I could not feel it. And then I realized it was voices, whispers. I could clearly hear words, in different languages, some of which I could understand, all talking over one another, growing stronger as I listened. “I can hear voices!” I opened my eyes, eager to share my excitement with Taklit, but she had gone. I blinked, staring dumbly at the place where only moments ago she had been sitting. I had not felt her move nor heard a sound as she left. I looked about me. I could see for miles in every direction, but there was no sign of Taklit. She had simply vanished. I stood up, taking my hat off and dropping it to the ground so that I could run my fingers through my damp, tangled hair. Was she merely playing tricks on me again, or had she truly abandoned me all the way out there?

  And now the voices grew louder. They began to clamor for my attention, some of them even calling out my name. Or rather my names. I heard “Tegan” and “Clever Witch” and “Tegan Hedfan” and “Balik Kiis”. How could they know? Who were they, that they knew so many different versions of me? They knew about my time on the Welsh island when the old man had renamed me Tegan Who Flies. They knew about my coming out of the Siberian lake as Fish Girl. They knew of me there and in that place, with Taklit. But was it they or was it me? Was it all just in my head, my imagination, my overheated brain playing games with me? I put my hat back on and drank a few more sips of water, saving the last precious swallows. It was hours since I had eaten, and I felt light-headed. I had to get out of the sun. I moved over to the shade of a rock. There was just enough room to keep from the full glare of the sun’s rays if I pressed my back against it, but as I did so two scorpions scuttled out of a crevice. I swore at them, staggering back out into the heat. I waited to see how many were hiding in the rock, but there seemed to be only those two. Gingerly, I flicked them away with my staff and then crouched back in the meager bit of shade, keeping a careful watch for any scorpions trying to return.

  The voices grew louder, and then I recognized one of them as Taklit.

  “To become a witch of the Sacred Sun you must believe, you must trust, you must submit.”

  “Taklit? Taklit, where are you?”

  “We are all in the Deserts of the Dead.”

  “Thanks for the cheerful thought,” I muttered. I knew how she worked—she was testing me. No way was she going to give me any real help now. Whatever she had planned, whatever she had in store for me, I was on my own with it.

  Suddenly I heard a rattling, scurrying sound, growing quickly louder. At first I couldn’t work out where it was coming from or what I was hearing, but then I saw it. I saw them. Hundreds of them. Pale pink scorpions, just like the two I had evicted from the rock, their tails arched over their backs, pincers held high, pouring over the low dune in front of me, and all heading in my direction. Fast. I leapt to my feet, and turned to scramble up onto the rock, but the swarm moved with supernatural speed, and before I could go anywhere they were running over my boots. I jumped and st
amped, trying to step out of the ceaseless flow of the things, but there were too many of them. I felt some start to run up my legs, some beneath my skirt. I whipped off my hat and beat at them, forgetting everything I had ever known about not provoking them into stinging. All I could think of was to get them off me. I thrashed so wildly that I dropped my hat, and it quickly disappeared beneath a sea of scorpions.

  “No!” I yelled, as much at Taklit, and at myself, as at the creatures. “This is not real. These are not real. They can’t be! Get away! Ugh!” I pounded at them with my stick, crushing one or two, which crunched in a way that felt very real indeed. So did the ones who had made it to my shirt and were running up my back. I was trapped against the rock. I could not beat them all off. Not that way. I stopped flailing at them and kept still, fighting the urge to scream and run. I steadied my breathing. I considered trying to fly, to rise up and escape from the vile things, but there were too many clinging to me now; they would simply come with me. And if they were real, if they could sting me, I knew my ability to fly would fail me. No, I had to think of something else. It took all my willpower to keep still, even as one enormous scorpion started to burrow through my hair. What else could I do? I called on the Goddess for protection, praying to her for her strength, for her courage. She might not be able to rid me of the things, but she could support me while I found a way. If there had been a well close by I would have jumped in it. Balik Kiis could have stayed underwater a lot longer than those poisonous arachnids.

  I thought of what Taklit had said, what she had told me, what she had tried to teach me.

  You must believe. You must trust. You must submit.

  She was living proof of the magic of the Sacred Sun, but how could I trust it? She was born to it, a child of the desert. What was I doing there, with my pink peeling skin, my body beaten by the heat, my mind scorched by the sun? How could I be sure it would work for me? What if it didn’t? At that moment I felt a searing pain in my left calf and I knew I’d been stung. I swiped the scorpion off with my stick, holding my breath against the pain, wondering how long I’d got before the venom worked into my system and made me badly ill. Now I really had no other option. Carefully, but with determination, and as calmly as I could, I stepped out of the shade of the rock and walked out onto the open sand. I stood beneath the full glare of the sun, with the scorpions still warming around me, still wriggling over me. I held out my arms. I could already feel the toxins from the sting spreading up my leg, traveling in my bloodstream, beginning to break down my body’s defenses. If this didn’t work, I was dead.

  Believe. Trust. Submit.

  Weren’t those the same things the old man on the island had told me? Believe in the magic. Believe in yourself. And the same things that Ulvi had told me? Trust the power of the magic. Trust your own power, too. And now Taklit was telling me to humble myself; to submit.

  I opened my eyes. I could not look at the blinding sun, so I set my gaze upon the shimmering horizon, watching it dance through the waves of heat that rose from the baking sands. I slowed my own heartbeat, in part to slow the progress of the poison through my system, but also to make my whole being receptive to whatever there was to receive from that fearsome, powerful place. I summoned my own magic, to stave off the effects of the sting, and to send out a prayer to the Sacred Sun.

  “Help a lowly witch, follower of Taklit the Blessed, Greatest Witch Living. I am a seeker of magic, a keeper of the faiths of the Goddess and the Shamans, hedgewitch, student, now child of the Desserts of the Dead. Please, shield me from harm. Grant me your favor. Hear my voice. Fill me with your fierce magic.”

  The voices that had begun as whispers were a cacophony now, all chattering and yelling to the staccato accompaniment of the scuttling scorpions. It was altogether a terrible noise. My eyes were so sore and yet I seemed unable to shut them, so that all I could see was a whiteness, as if they could no longer make sense of anything. My thoughts were being warped by the heat, my body was succumbing to the venom. I would not be able to stand for much longer. It was strange to realize, with a sort of fatalistic detachment, that I might well die there, hundreds of miles from anyone, sent into a delirium by the sting, and finished off by the punishing effects of the sun. Was this the quest that would kill me? After all my travels, after all I had seen and learned and experienced? It was then I remembered something else Taklit had said, back when I had first met her and she had agreed to teach me.

  Clever Witch must listen and must watch until her ears are stopped up with what she hears, and her eyes are burned by the sights she has seen.

  I began to sway. Waves of pain and nausea threatened to topple me and send me crashing to the ground, into the seething mass of scorpions that surrounded me. I had the sensation that I was falling backward, tipping, tumbling. But the thud into the ground never came. I did not land with a sickening crunch on all those repulsive things that waited for me. I did not slip into the beckoning blackness of the toxins in my blood. Instead I seemed to float, suspended.

  I felt a tremendous heat surge through my body, and I knew it wasn’t the poison of the sting. This was something different; a supernatural heat. It became so intense I thought it would finish me. Just as I was on the point of blacking out I heard a whooshing sound, and then smelled burning. The scuttling and scratching of the scorpions stopped, replaced by crackling and popping. I forced myself to focus, and saw that the ground above which I was suspended was a mass of flames. The scorpions were burning! The heat from the magical fire rose upward, the flames licking me, and yet I did not burn. I wasn’t so much as singed by the fire.

  And then it stopped. Suddenly. In a heartbeat. The agony in my leg went away. The blank whiteness of my vision softened until, at last, I could see faint colors again and blurred shapes. And as I studied them, those shapes became clearer. At first they were triangles and circles and flowing patterns of light, but then they grew more solid. I noticed I was standing again, firmly on the ground this time. And the scorpions were gone, and in their place were flowers. Thousands and thousands of flowers. I looked out over the desert and the sand was transformed into an endless garden of the most beautiful blooms, all different colors, all vibrant and healthy, their petals fluttering in the gentlest of cooling breezes. I found I had my staff in my hand again, and it had new engravings. At the bottom were scorpions, up to about halfway, where they changed to flowers which climbed up and then at the top of the staff were twisted flames. I took a deep breath and felt completely well again. I lifted my skirt to examine my leg and found no mark, no evidence of a sting at all.

  I was so astonished, so overwhelmed by the scale of the magic that was taking place around me, that it was awhile before I became aware of a terrible thirst. I needed water. I found my water bottle and was about to gulp down the last of its contents, but it wasn’t nearly enough. I needed more water, much more. Clever Witch might finish what was left and then look for more. A witch who had the power of the Sacred Sun could do better than that.

  “So, what will you do?”

  Taklit’s voice made me jump so violently I dropped the water bottle. She was standing right behind me, though naturally I had neither heard nor seen her get there. She was looking at me in a way I had not seen before. She looked pleased, yes, happy that I had passed a test that she had put me up for. But there was something else. I saw surprise. I saw that she was impressed. More than that. In fact, she seemed amazed.

  I looked at my bottle as the last drops of water were soaked up by the thirsty sand. I needed more than a bottle full. I needed a well. I stared hard at those disappearing droplets. I believed. I trusted. I submitted. I had been saved. Now I would see if I had been truly blessed, as Taklit had once been.

  The air around us fizzed and crackled with energy. The hairs on my arms and neck stood up, and I felt tiny shocks pulse through my fingertips. The ground beneath my feet began to tremble, and then to shake. I could smell something scorching, though it was impossible to tell what. Mercifully,
it wasn’t me! I staggered backward and then, instinctively, raised my staff before bringing it down hard onto the sand. The desert opened. A jagged crack ran from my feet to the discarded bottle, where it dived deep into the sand. With a great rumble a hole appeared, tiny at first, then growing to three strides wide. Lightning cracked around us, dancing off the rocks, and a whirlwind picked up above the hole. It bore down into it, as if tunnelling deeper and deeper into the earth, until it had disappeared completely. There was a moment of silence, an in breath, and then a geyser of water shot up high above our heads, sending an ice-cold shower down upon us. Taklit and I both laughed like madwomen, splashing about in the pools of water that quickly formed. She took me by the shoulders and spoke to me then, water cascading down her face, blurring her features.

  “A witch who has her own well is a child of the desert forever!” she told me.

  “Maybe I’m not Stupid Witch anymore?”

  “No.” She shook her head slowly. “Now you are Tegan the Blessed.”

  I was glad, then, that water from the magic well was still pouring down my face, so that she couldn’t see my tears of joy. “But Taklit the Blessed is still the Greatest Witch Living,” I said.

  “Of course,” she agreed, “for now. And remember, treat the magic of the Sacred Sun with the reverence and respect it deserves. It is a powerful thing, and ill used it will burn you up to a crisp like that!” She snapped her fingers. “Do not run before you have properly learned to walk in the way of a true witch, Tegan the Blessed, or you will not live long enough to see me dead.” She smiled at that, a rare and beautiful thing. “And when that day comes, when Taklit the Blessed, Greatest Witch Living lives no longer, then that title will be yours.”

  24

  By the time we had Nipper properly treated and in a bed upstairs, darkness had fallen. I was in torment. Finding Aloysius felt as if we had found part of Tegan. My first instinct was to rush to the stables, to question the child’s friends, or anyone who knew him, to search the area. But the boy had drifted in and out of consciousness, his injuries threatening to drag him down into a darkness from which he might not emerge. How could I abandon him? What would my mother have done? He slept fitfully, muttering, and whimpering, and nothing I could do appeared to help. I sat at his bedside, mopping his brow with a damp cloth as countless mothers and nurses and nursemaids had done before me, perhaps in that very house. Erasmus came to see how he was faring. He pulled up a chair on the other side of the bed, and we sat watching the frail boy between us fight his dangerous battle.