The Witches of Worm

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  “What are you looking at?” Jessica yelled at him sometimes, whirling to face him. “Why do you follow me around and stare at me? Why don’t you go do cat things like chasing your tail?”

  Worm’s eyes would flicker, like light moving through the mossy gold of swamp water, and his ears, turning sideways, would slide farther back on his head.

  “Why don’t you do what people expect of you, like curling up on a cushion and purring at people? That’s what a real cat is supposed to do.”

  Sometimes his whiskers would twitch, and she would seem to hear him answering. “A real cat?” he would say. “Why should I care what a real cat is supposed to do?”

  During the fall months, while Worm was growing up, Mrs. Fortune continued to take a great interest in him and everything he did. From that first night when Jessica brought Worm home to her apartment, Mrs. Fortune went out of her way to question Jessica about him at every opportunity. It began to seem as if she really did have some weird way of knowing what was going on all over the apartment house, because no matter how quickly and quietly Jessica walked through the downstairs hallway, she was almost sure to meet Mrs. Fortune. And once they met, there were always questions. Mrs. Fortune would ask first about Worm, and then about Jessica, herself, and sometimes about Joy. Once she even asked about Brandon.

  “Have you seen Brandon lately?” she asked. “He hasn’t been to see me for quite a while.”

  Jessica happened to know, because she had overheard Joy talking to Mrs. Doyle on the telephone, that Brandon had been sick with the flu. Otherwise she wouldn’t have known anything about him—except that he hadn’t been playing his trumpet lately. But she didn’t tell Mrs. Fortune that. Instead she shrugged and said, “He’s had the flu, I guess.”

  “Ah, I thought it must be something like that.” Mrs. Fortune nodded her shaky old head so that it seemed to be saying yes and no at the same time. “I still bake molasses cookies every Tuesday,” she said. “Brandon usually comes to see me on Tuesdays.”

  Jessica sighed loudly, a bored, impatient sigh. “I don’t fool around with Brandon anymore. I don’t have the time, and besides—he bores me.”

  “Brandon bores you?” Mrs. Fortune said, incredulous. Jessica knew it was a stupid thing to have said. There were other complaints she could have made about Brandon. She could have said he had a lot of strange ideas, or that he had a violent temper, or even that he was a stinking traitor who turned against old friends for no reason—and that would have been the truth. But no one in his right mind would believe that Brandon had ever bored anyone.

  But then, Mrs. Fortune wasn’t in her right mind. At least that’s what a lot of people said. So Jessica only stared at her and said, “Yeah, he bores me!” Then she turned away and walked off, leaving Mrs. Fortune standing there with her silly cats winding around her feet.

  One of the things Mrs. Fortune always said when she met Jessica was that she should bring her cat down for a visit, but Jessica never did. Then one day Worm paid a visit to Mrs. Fortune, or at least to her cats, all by himself.

  It happened when Joy, hurrying out because she was late for work, neglected to close the front door of the apartment. By the time Jessica discovered the slightly open door, Worm was nowhere to be found. She hurried out, searching everywhere, telling herself that Joy had probably done it on purpose because she hated Worm. Jessica searched all three floors, frantically looking in every possible hiding place, when she remembered the cat door and realized that Worm could have gone out into the back yard. She dashed out into the yard and found him there, watching a huddled bunch of Mrs. Fortune’s cats.

  The fence around the back yard of the Regency Apartment House was high and cat-proofed by an inward curved section of chicken wire at the top. Twice every day Mrs. Fortune let her cats out to sun themselves in the yard. Apparently the Fortune cats had been on one of their outings when Worm escaped and found his way out through the cat door. When Jessica arrived, all five of the fat old cats were crowded into a corner of the fence with their long fluffy tails bushed out and their eyes as big and round as nickels. A few feet away Worm sat, a slick and silent statue. His ears were turned sideways and his eyes were as cold and golden as the eyes of a crocodile.

  Because she was curious, Jessica decided not to interfere, at least for a moment. She watched, wondering what all those cats—any one of whom outweighed Worm by twice at least—were so desperately afraid of, when close behind her a voice like a creaky hinge said, “Well, well, children. I see you have a visitor.”

  At the sound of Mrs. Fortune’s voice, Worm stood, and with a slash of his tail, moved away to the other side of the yard. The other cats came out of the corner with a rush and wound themselves around Mrs. Fortune’s feet, yowling up at her in pitiful complaining voices. While she made comforting noises at her crying cats, she kept her eyes on Worm as he paced deliberately away to the farthest fence. Finally she said, “You must have given him very good care, Jessica. He is large for his age. What is his name?”

  Mrs. Fortune had asked before about his name, and Jessica had said he didn’t have one. But now she said, “His name is Worm.”

  Mrs. Fortune’s cats all had fancy and dignified names, like Lucasta and Ophelia and Simeon; but she didn’t seem as surprised as Jessica expected about Worm’s name. Her smile never unwrinkled and her head went on nodding and shaking at the same time. “Worm,” she said. “Ah, yes. His name is Worm.”

  “My mother named him, actually,” Jessica went on. “She said he looked like one when I first found him.”

  “Ah, yes, he was quite strange. Quite an unusual kitten.”

  “He’s still unusual,” Jessica said.

  “Unusual? In what way is he unusual?”

  “Well, for one thing, why are your cats afraid of him? They’re all a lot bigger than he is.”

  Mrs. Fortune laughed fondly. “Well, I’m afraid my poor kitties are just too old to face new things easily. Even half-grown kittens. They’ve led a very sheltered existence.”

  Although Jessica had often argued with Joy, insisting that Worm was a perfectly normal cat, she suddenly realized that she had known all along he was not. And now it made her angry that Mrs. Fortune would not admit it. “How about the way he looks?” she insisted angrily. “He doesn’t look like any cat I’ve ever seen before.”

  “He is rather different looking. The shading and ears are like a rare breed I saw a few times, years ago, at cat shows, Abyssinians, I believe they were called. They’re supposed to be descended from the cats of ancient Egypt, if I remember correctly.”

  Jessica might have had more to say about Worm, but by then the five old cats were yelling so loudly it was difficult to make herself heard. As soon as Mrs. Fortune turned toward the apartment house, they hushed and trotted ahead of her to the back door. After they were gone, Jessica picked up Worm and carried him back to the third floor.

  As she stepped inside her apartment, Worm twisted out of her arms and dashed across the room to the window that looked down into the back yard. Leaping up to the windowsill, he stared down. Coming up behind him, Jessica could see that he was staring at the corner where he had held the Fortune cats prisoner. The end of his tail twitched spasmodically.

  “There’s no use watching for them,” Jessica said. “They won’t be out today anymore. They’re probably so frightened they won’t come out again for a week.”

  Worm’s whiskers flickered, and Jessica thought he was saying, “They should be frightened.”

  A short time later, when Jessica was ready to leave for school, Worm was still sitting in the window, staring down at the corner of the yard.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Jessica asked. “Why do you hate them so much?”

  Worm ignored her completely. Not even an ear moved in her direction as he continued to watch for the white cats.

  “Look at me!” Jessica demanded with no result. Then she jumped at him suddenly, clapping her hands and making a loud noise.

 
“Ssssst!” she went, almost in his ear.

  His reaction was not at all what she had expected. She had only meant to scare him to make him notice her, but instead of jumping and running away, he whirled to face her, and Jessica caught her breath in surprise—almost fear.

  He looked so incredibly evil. His large pointed ears were twisted outward and shifted back on the sides of his head until they formed a horned crescent—like the horns of a devil. The long tufts of pale hair at their tips quivered in the light like thin blades of electric fire, and the pupils of his mossy golden eyes had narrowed to slits of darkness.

  Jessica’s breath escaped in a soft round “Oh” of surprise. “You really look like a devil,” she said. A shiver prickled down her back as something vaguely frightening flickered and then died like a dark flame in a corner of her mind.

  She shrugged and tried a scornful laugh. “But all you are really, is just some weird breed of cat. Mrs. Fortune said an Abyssinian, or something.”

  Worm’s answer echoed strangely in her head, but she had imagined his responses for so long that she was almost out the door before the difference registered in her mind. Then she stopped as if she had been snapped up at the end of a rope.

  “Mrs. Fortune knows more than she tells,” Worm had said, and Jessica had not known that he was going to say it.

  “He said that. He really said that. It wasn’t me,” she whispered.

  She turned slowly, with dread and anticipation, and went back into the room.

  Chapter Five

  WORM WAS STILL ON THE WINDOWSILL—BUT LYING now, with his front paws curled inward and his tail neatly coiled around him. He looked up at Jessica as she came toward him and yawned, showing a curl of pink tongue between sharp white teeth. When she squatted in front of him, staring intently, he simply stared back through sleepy hooded eyes.

  “What did you say—about Mrs. Fortune?” Jessica asked. The only response was a sudden sharp twitch of the very tip of the soot-gray tail. She asked the question again, and then again louder, but Worm just watched her in sulky silence. Finally, she almost shouted into his ear, “What did you say? I know you said it!”

  He got up slowly, then, and jumped down from the window. Jessica followed him into the kitchen. He went directly to his food dish, sniffed it, and looked up at Jessica expectantly. It was a very ordinary catlike thing to do, as if he’d decided not to give away his secret after all. She watched him, crouching over his raw liver and growling softly to himself, until it was very late and she had to run all the way to school.

  From time to time during her classes, Jessica found her thoughts going back to Worm and what she had heard him say. Sometimes she was sure he had said it, and other times she wasn’t. She had been imagining conversations between them for so long that it seemed likely she had only imagined again—automatically, without knowing she was doing it. Yet this had been different. This time the words had not come from anything that was already in her mind. They had come from someplace else—but from where, and how?

  She tried to remember exactly how it had happened. Had she been looking directly at Worm when she heard it? She thought she had been and his narrow cat face had not moved in any way, except for the flow of green-gold light in his strange angry eyes. Then how had she heard it? With her ears? She didn’t think so. It was more as if the words had suddenly happened, inside her head. And yet she could almost remember the sound of the voice—hollow and throbbing like a distant howl. The sound came and went in her head all day, interrupting other voices, making her pay even less attention than usual to her teachers. It wasn’t until she was on her way home that something happened important enough to make her forget about Worm entirely, at least for a little while.

  She was passing the drugstore on Spencer Street when the door swung open and Diane and Brenda rushed out, giggling and chattering. They almost bumped into Jessica before they saw her.

  “Oh, hi, Jessica,” Diane said with phony enthusiasm.

  Brenda said hello, too, but much more coolly. For a long time Jessica didn’t say anything at all, while Diane fidgeted, smiling stupidly and stammering beginnings of things that she couldn’t finish.

  Finally Jessica said, “Big surprise. I thought you walked home on Grant Street now.”

  “Well I do, usually. Because of my mother. That is, my mother said I had to because the traffic is better. I mean it’s worse on Spencer, and that little kid got hit here last year and everything. But we came this way today because Brenda had to get something at the drugstore.”

  Jessica looked at Diane, letting her see that she didn’t believe that stuff about her mother. If Diane walked home on Grant now, it was because Jessica always walked up Spencer. And if Diane was embarrassed to see Jessica since she’d dropped her for a fat slob with a swimming pool, she ought to say so and not make up stupid lies about it.

  “Look, Diane,” Jessica said. “I know why you don’t walk home on Spencer anymore, and it doesn’t make any difference to me. So you don’t have to make up lies about it.”

  Diane’s face crumpled completely. She had never been much good in an argument, at least not when anyone was really angry. “It’s not a lie,” she said. There was a jerkiness to her voice, as if she were starting to cry. “My mother did say I couldn’t walk home on Spencer anymore. She drove past one day when I was outside of Dino’s, and she got mad and said I was to stay off Spencer and if I didn’t I’d be kept at home for a month.”

  Jessica shrugged and smiled in a way that let Diane see what she thought of that story. Brenda was glaring at Jessica furiously. Jessica had heard that redheads had horrible tempers. She wondered if that was what Brenda and Diane saw in each other. It took someone as mousy as Diane to get along with a really bad-tempered person like Brenda, even if she did have a swimming pool.

  Brenda grabbed Diane’s arm and pulled her away. Diane looked back uncertainly and said, “Good-by, Jessica,” but she let herself be led up the sidewalk. As they walked off, Brenda was talking rapidly. Jessica couldn’t hear much of it, but she was sure of one phrase. Brenda had been saying something about a “jealous witch.”

  All the way home those words pounded in Jessica’s ears. “Jealous witch-jealous!” She’d show them she wasn’t jealous of their stupid swimming-pool friendship. She didn’t know how yet, but she’d find a way.

  When she got home, she slammed the door and threw her books down on the coffee table; and it wasn’t until that moment, when Worm slithered out from under the table, that she remembered again about the morning. Then she remembered with shocking force because, once more, Worm’s ears were devil horns and his eyes hooded and evil.

  In the middle of the floor, Worm stopped and sat, facing Jessica. With his long thin body erect and his tail tightly coiled around his haunches, he looked like a cat-god carved from stone. Jessica approached him slowly and sank to the floor in front of him. Sitting cross-legged, she stared back into his crocodile eyes.

  “You look like a devil,” she whispered, and almost immediately a sound stirred and swelled in her head. A strange wavering sound, part yowl and part speech. Each word rose and fell in volume, ending in a trailing wail. “You—look—like—a—jealous—witch,” it said.

  Jessica crossed her arms, pulling against a wild churning of emotions. Anger, surprise, and shock, but most of all an overwhelming rush of fierce and burning excitement—a bitter painful joy.

  “They were lying,” she gasped at last. “I’m not jealous of them. They lied about that. They’re always lying about me. They lie about everything. Like not being allowed to walk on Spencer Street.”

  The sound came again—the words distant and hollow. “Perhaps that wasn’t a lie,” it said.

  Jessica was trembling; she clutched herself harder to hold the trembling deep inside. “Perhaps,” she whispered, because she was beginning to see. Diane had said her mother was angry when she found Diane outside of Dino’s—and suddenly that sounded like the truth.

  Dino’s was a sl
ot-machine place just two doors away from the drugstore. A lot of boys, older boys mostly, were always hanging around there. Diane liked to walk past Dino’s. Even last year in seventh grade, she had liked to. Even then she had been developing a very noticeable figure; and having never been the least bit noticeable before, she was very interested in the way boys were beginning to pay attention. Jessica remembered that now. And she also remembered Diane’s mother. Mrs. Darby was the kind who made Diane polish her white shoes every single morning. She was even fussier about certain other things. The part of the story about Dino’s just could have been the truth.

  Jessica stared at the burning gold of Worm’s eyes and listened—and the howl in her head said, “You could make sure. You could find out if it was a lie.”

  Jessica nodded. She stood up and walked slowly to the telephone. With her hand on the phone, she thought for a long time before she dialed. Then waiting for someone to answer, she made her eyes wide and friendly and pitched her voice to match.

  “Hello,” she said when Diane’s mother came on. “Is Diane there?”

  “No, she isn’t,” Diane’s mother said. “May I take a message?”

  “Well, this is Jessica.”

  “Well, hello, Jessica.” Mrs. Darby sounded surprised. “We haven’t seen you here for quite a while. Where have you been?”

  “Oh, I’ve been very busy lately, Mrs. Darby,” Jessica said.

  “Well, we’ve missed you. Diane is at Brenda’s house this afternoon. Would you like to call her there?”

  “Well, maybe I will. But in case I can’t get her there, could you give her a message?”