The Vine Witch

by Smith, Luanne G.

  “That’s impossible.”

  A wave of dizziness swept over Elena as logic and reason struggled to make sense of the time gap. If the witch’s claim were true, she would have to be nearly three hundred years old. And yet looking at the shrunken, grotesque figure Gerda had become, Elena could almost believe it was true.

  “It wasn’t all mortals, despite what you were taught.” The witch took the femur of a small animal from her pocket and set the bone on the southern point of the star. “Do you remember the frailty you felt when you woke from your curse? The feeling that your head was filled with a thousand bees and your skin had turned colder than an eel fished out of black water?” She nodded, seeing Elena understood. “They hunted witches then, but it was like wolves chasing after deer. The strong got away while only the weak and old were taken. Hex-weak. Feebleminded. Those of us who fell behind were just as pathetically vulnerable as nonmagic folk. And just as susceptible to pain.”

  “Was there no mercy to be found?”

  The witch reached in her other pocket and brought out a black feather, which she placed on the southeastern point of the star. “Mercy? There was precious little of that to be scraped off the floor of the drudenhaus. No one left that place under their own power. Including me.” She gave the feather a turn so it sat horizontal on an east-west axis. “They had a room, built two stories high, made of stacked white stones. There was a window at the top where thin northern daylight grazed the ceiling.” The witch cast her eye on the medieval winepress. “It had a windlass with a rope attached to a beam and pulley in the high ceiling. The rope wriggled down from on high to a reddish-brown stain on the stone floor. The smell of copper, salt, and piss was so strong it embedded itself in the walls, the rope, and the clothes of the men who worked in the room.”

  Elena knew what came next. “You wouldn’t confess, so they tortured you.”

  “They confused my silence for the Devil’s obstinacy. They’d already burned off my hair, shredded my clothes, and debated the wickedness of a mole on my left thigh, and still I had not told them what they wanted to hear. So up, up, up I went, hoisted by arms tied behind my back and blocks of wood lashed to my ankles. I swung like that for hours while cloud after cloud passed over the sun and bitter winds howled above the roof. Shadows crept along the walls as the men ate their supper. And then down, down, down I came like an egg cracking on the sidewalk.” Gerda lifted her skirt and tapped her cane against her bent right leg. “They broke this one on the first try. It took two more falls to break the other.”

  Elena closed her eyes against the horrific image in her head. “How did you survive it?” But even as she asked the question, she knew she’d already allowed too much sympathy to enter her heart.

  “They dragged me back to my cell, showed me where they’d inked my mark on a written confession, and told me I would burn in the morning with the other confessed witches.” She shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I closed my eyes, hovering on a wave of agony, and wished for death to take me. But first I begged the All Knowing to smite those men who would set me aflame. After that I drifted in and out of a delirious sleep, stumbling into one nightmare after another. Just before dawn I awoke shivering with fever. I curled up in a pool of my own sweat and urine, listening to the sound of breaking wood as they built the pyre outside my window. I knew I’d be dead within hours. The All Knowing had forsaken me.”

  Elena had been cursed, stripped of her powers, and accused of murder, but she’d never been violated so deeply it left a void empty of hope. “Even in death the All Knowing is watching, ready to reclaim its own,” she said, the words coming out awkward and misshapen in the wake of the witch’s account.

  “And yet where was that benevolent eye when it was my blood staining the tower floor? Was it watching then for one of its own? Or when I begged for justice against my tormentors?”

  “It doesn’t work like that. You know it doesn’t. You can’t make demands.”

  “More’s the pity for you, then.”

  Gerda turned her back to Elena. On the final two points of the star she placed a gold coin and a small bag of mixed herbs. Elena didn’t need to hold the sachet to her nose to know it was filled with ginger, fennel, turmeric, and garlic, medicinals that ebbed the tide of aging.

  The air grew thick with the scent of building magic as the last of the ritual items had been laid out on the stones. The witch reached for her athame. If Elena didn’t keep Gerda grounded in conversation, the witch would speak her blood magic incantation and seal it to the deed. And then what would happen to Jean-Paul?

  “But you escaped,” she said, desperate to keep the bierhexe talking. “How did you get out of your cell with two broken legs? What magic is strong enough to overcome that much pain and suffering? Tell me.”

  The witch cocked her head ever so slightly, as if her ear had been tugged to the left. She looked over her shoulder, the corner of her wrinkled mouth twitching. “There is glorious magic to be found in the darkness,” she said, as if she had the secret tucked safely up her sleeve.

  “Tell me. You said we had more in common than I knew. Is this what you meant?”

  Gerda twisted full around. The smile faded. “So it’s true what they say,” she said under her breath. “At night, all the cats are gray.” She considered Elena for a moment, then nodded. “Very well.”

  The witch tucked her ceremonial knife away. “There is power in dreams. You know this. But the bad ones attract a different energy than the good or the merely odd. That morning I awoke feverish, chilled, my legs broken and swollen. Certain I would die. But then a weight, solid and warm, pressed against me like a dog resting its head against my chest. I opened my eyes, and there it was grazing on the remnants of my nightmares, the smell of brimstone burning my nostrils.”

  A memory flickered to life like a motion picture—a painting of a diminutive demon sitting on the chest of a sleeping woman. Elena had seen it as a child reading at Grand-Mère’s elbow as she flipped through the pages of a spell book. Fear had lodged like a stone in her young throat to know that such a thing existed.

  “A demon revealed itself to you?”

  Gerda’s eyes glittered bright once more in the candlelight. “He never spoke, and yet I knew he had come to save me.”

  Elena’s mind raced ahead, recalling the little she’d dared to learn about the ill-natured creatures. The one thing that let her sleep as a child was the assurance they only showed themselves to a willing heart. “You made a pact? That’s what the blood is for?”

  “They’re quite generous beings,” Gerda explained, taking a deep, shuddering breath before releasing it in a gush, as if exhaling all the pain she’d felt. “But they need a conduit so they can travel from their world and ours. Someone who can straddle both.”

  “A witch who can see in the shadow world between.”

  “They’re more than willing to pay for the journey. They’ll give you anything you desire. Money, sex, immortality.”

  “Freedom?” Elena saw the deflation in the witch’s shoulders before she ignored the question.

  “He showed me how it was possible to escape my prison. All it required was a small gesture to establish trust.” Gerda rubbed her arms as if she shivered inside her skin, remembering. “The midwife in the cell with me was as good as dead already. Once they’d ruined her hands with thumbscrews she confessed to sleeping with the Devil. For hours she knelt, hands pressed palm to palm like two bloated fish, uttering her nonstop apologies to the heavens. It was a mercy, truly, to spare her the fire for such a lie.”

  Elena swayed on her feet and reached for the nearest column to steady herself. “You killed her?”

  “Mmm, yes, but I’d bungled it by strangling her. I was supposed to draw blood. So elementary in demon magic. But I’d had to crawl on my elbows to get to her, and by then I’d forgotten my purpose. He made me go back and do it again.”

  Elena leaned against the column with her hand held over her stomach. She fea
red she would be ill, and the reek of sulfur coming off the barrels was only making the sensation worse. If there were some spell she could speak to obliterate this woman—this lunatic—from the world so she could be free of the stench of her, she would do it. But the source of that magic resided on the other side of a dark line she knew she could not cross. Instead, she swallowed a gulp of air and continued listening to the mad confession, knowing every minute the crone kept talking was another moment Jean-Paul remained alive.

  “He’d been following the Allfather on the Wild Hunt when he sniffed out my fever dreams and dropped from the astral plane to the earthly realm. Once he was satisfied I was in earnest, he anointed me in blood. Then he turned me into a blackbird, tied a small stone around my leg to keep me tethered to him, and whisked me out of the cell. We climbed the stars until we emerged within the astral plane, and there we joined the pack of hunters as they stampeded over the forests, scooping up the spirits of the dead and undead.” Gerda centered her cane before her, gripping it with both hands. “So you see, I owe him for the long life I’ve enjoyed.”

  “And this transformation”—Elena gestured to the witch’s appearance—“is why you need so much blood? You transfuse it inside yourself to replenish your youth?”

  “It only takes a spoonful for the spell.”

  “But all those animals. And Bastien. They’d been drained. Why bleed them out if all you need is a little? Why kill them at all?”

  “My dear, you haven’t been listening. The drops of blood are for me, but the deaths are always for him. Large or small, animal or human, whatever his appetite demands.”

  She followed the direction of the witch’s pointed finger to the top of the medieval winepress. There, hunched over the wheel, half-hidden in shadow, sat an apelike creature covered in coarse hair, with pointed ears and clawlike nails. Golden eyes gleamed in the dark, hungry with curiosity as the being stared down at the sleeping Jean-Paul.

  Gerda’s demon.

  The creature inhaled through its puggish snout as if sniffing at one of Tilda’s pastries. It paid no attention to Elena as it crawled out of its hiding place, following the scent of Jean-Paul’s dreams with its nose. The demon crept with deadly intent, eyes focused on its prey. Not knowing what it might do to satisfy its appetite, she had no choice but to rouse Jean-Paul and shake off the beast. She rubbed the stone in her pocket and uttered the quick rousing spell, delivering him from a sleeping nightmare and into a waking one.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  He’d dreamed he’d been tied to a stake and set on fire for making wine no one would drink. Jean-Paul shook his head to chase off the last threads of the bizarre images, but then panic rose when he remembered it wasn’t all a dream. The press had come lower, squeezing against his chest so he could not take a full breath, and what air he could get reeked of sulfur. He coughed and tugged his wrists against the restraints. His head thrashed to the right, and he saw Elena standing across the room. It hadn’t been an illusion. She shimmered in the candlelight, and it wasn’t just due to the peculiar silver-threaded clothing she wore. Her very skin radiated with energy. His heart nearly broke from the desperation to hold her just once before he died.

  “Run!” he tried to warn her, but his voice came out a hoarse whisper. “It’s her. Gerda is the killer,” he tried again, but she didn’t even turn.

  Instead, she covered her mouth with her sleeve to keep from breathing in the same foul stench he choked on as her eyes tracked some invisible movement. But then something in the room shifted. She raised her arms against a threat he couldn’t yet see, while an ancient woman, bald and toothless, grinned from inside the circle drawn on the floor.

  The black dress with the draping sleeves. The black-and-silver walking cane. It had to be Gerda. Or some corrupted version of her. He tugged again at the leather straps tying him to the press. There was slack building on the right. If he could just gain another inch of space he might slip loose.

  He banged his head against the platform in frustration. When he turned his neck again to find Elena, a fairylike creature caught his eye instead. No, it was a young woman with pale-yellow hair, crouching in the shadows of the cellar stairwell. She, too, was dressed strangely, clad in a harlequin costume with red-and-black diamonds. He craned his neck to see her face. Her eyes were smudged with black kohl, and her cheeks had been rouged like the women he’d seen working the cabaret district in the city. He’d never been a great reader of women’s thoughts, but there was no mistaking the murder in this one’s eye.

  As if sensing his stare, she turned her gaze upon him, held a finger over her lips, and winked. He decided then he must have transcended into hallucination, because there was no other explanation for seeing a harlequin imp toting three glinting axes in her hands while lurking inside a world-class wine cellar. She pointed to the space above the wheel, and he braced himself, certain the press would squeeze the last breath out of him. He looked up to the ceiling to say a prayer to God and instead saw the thing. It watched him from above, drooling and sniffing. Like the gargoyle in the vine row, the brutish beast sat hunched, observing him, nostrils flared. Jean-Paul flinched and tried to shrink beneath the pallet, but there was nowhere to hide. Then the thing twisted its head and shifted its weight to stare at Elena, and he pulled with all his strength against his restraints.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Waking Jean-Paul out of his bad dream had slowed the diminutive devil only a fraction. Once drawn in by the nightmare, its fixation on the flesh seemed to intensify. She stood between the demon and the bierhexe, a hand held up against each as if she could hold back the tide of their intentions.

  “Call that thing off,” she yelled, ignoring Jean-Paul’s hoarse warning. She hoped he was strong enough to bear the weight of the press a little longer.

  Gerda removed her ceremonial knife and waved it over the tasting cup on the ground. “You wanted to spill Bastien’s blood in the road the day you two met again,” she said. “Your will to murder vibrated in your heart so loud it drummed along the ground until I couldn’t help but tap my toe beneath my skirt to the rhythm.”

  Elena recoiled at hearing the truth come from such a foul mouth. Meanwhile the demon trained its golden eyes on her as if assessing before returning its attention to the prey on the press.

  “I knew then you’d be the one to take the fall for me. After all, there’s only so long one can get away with killing people’s pets before the blame piles up. Toss in a mortal and it’s definitely time to move on. But then you escaped. And I secretly hoped you might aspire to be more than a country vine witch. I can teach you the spell for immortality. Here. Now. If you desire it.”

  “And be chained to a devil for eternity?” Behind her the demon unfurled its tail and crawled headfirst down the side of the wheel and onto the pallet above Jean-Paul.

  “Come, be my sister. Let me show you how. You have the talent; I can see that you do.”

  Anger and repulsion churned until Elena could no longer suppress her hatred. “Sister? You’re a murderer. A bloodthirsty killer. A . . . a . . .”

  “I was going to say nasty old bag of crone bones.” Yvette stepped into the candlelight. “I can’t believe you just left me there.”

  “Yvette, no! Go back outside!” Could the girl do nothing she was told to do?

  In her hands were three axes from the cooper’s shop, two in the left and one in the right balanced perfectly by its wooden handle. The first left her grip with such ferocity it made a whirring noise in the air. When the blade landed it hit with a hard thud, cleaving the tasting cup at Gerda’s feet in two and sending wine and blood splashing across the witch’s skirt.

  “Sorry, old habits.” Yvette cocked her arm again. “We’re taught to just miss our targets in the carnival, you know.”

  She tossed off a second ax just as violently. It struck with exact precision, the blade slicing through the end of Gerda’s foot before she could hobble out of the way. The old witch let out a cry to rival a bans
hee. She twisted her body, tugging her deformed foot free of her shoe, leaving a bloody trail behind.

  Yvette cocked her arm. “The next one goes between your eyes if you don’t call off that beastie of yours.”

  Gerda hissed and raised a knobby arm to signal the demon. “Kill them!”

  The demon pricked its ears and curled its lip. Defying gravity, it leaped from the winepress to the ceiling, where it crawled bat-like along the stone arch above Yvette’s head. Too late she ran for cover behind a wine barrel. The demon pounced, landing on her shoulders. It clamped its teeth on her throwing arm and yanked, dragging her into the open. She released the remaining ax in a painful spasm, and it scuttled across the flagstones.

  Yvette’s scream awakened an animalistic fear in Elena that begged her to run, but she held firm, even as Gerda slunk off down a shadowed passageway deep in the cellar. She could not abandon the young woman to that thing. Feet planted, she rubbed her palms together as vigorously as she could until a blue vein of electricity arced in her hands. Infused with the energy of her anger, the lightning bolt shot out at the beast, striking it in the spine. The demon arched its back and grinned as its hair singed and smoked. It released an ungodly howl of laughter that pierced the ear. Cunning Yvette didn’t waste the distraction. She grabbed her silver hairpin and stabbed the creature in the torso. The fiend squealed as if amused by the fight in its prey and then flung her against the wall with one hand. She crumpled like a soggy playing card, a streak of blood trailing from her nose.

  The demon drew back its lips, revealing a pair of canine teeth, as it skulked toward Elena. Across the room Jean-Paul groaned as if in agony. From the corner of her eye she saw him pull one hand free from its restraint. She stepped to her left to keep the devil focused on her. If she could lead it far enough away, Jean-Paul might have a chance to free himself. She didn’t dare speak but held eye contact with the beast, luring it toward her. Back, she must lead it back. Her foot nudged the cooper’s ax on the flagstones. The bloody shoe lay nearby. The beast hissed and crept closer.