by Josh Kent
May was smiling as she remembered and giggled a little at Benjamin’s beaming face.
“What’s funny?” her pa suddenly asked her.
“I don’t know exactly,” May said. And she didn’t.
Then a man with a rifle was standing there on the steps of the church. She had seen him before at her pa’s. His name she couldn’t remember. But she remembered him being one of them men that drank and played cards and went home and didn’t talk much.
“There’s a witch,” the man said. “The preacher’s daughter seen her and she’s in town. She’s down with the doctor is what she said. She says that Falk brought the witch down into town just an hour ago or so and that he’s fixing to turn her loose on what’s left of the good folk of Sparrow. How can we stand for that? Marbo? You hear?”
Huck was standing there and he was listening, but this didn’t make any sense. There were too many superstitions in this town, but this man was standing there with a rifle and Huck looked at May and then back at the man. “I hear.”
May felt cold and she moved away from the man with the gun. Falk? A witch? It couldn’t be right.
“What? You say that Falk brought the witch to town?” Benjamin Straddler asked the man.
“That’s what Merla Mosely said, said she saw him come in here about an hour ago, that they must’ve been up, way up in the woods and come down near the hollow where the doctor’s house is. I knew that doctor was no good. Well, I knew that outlander was no good, but I knew that that doctor was no good. I won’t be a bit surprised to find out that that magician boy Simon ain’t somehow wrapped up into all this with them either.”
Then Ruth Mosely and John Mosely were coming up the path with Merla Mosely and her ma, Aline. Aline had a bruise on her face from where Ruth had smacked her last night. They were walking fast.
“Get the rest!” Ruth started shouting. “Get everybody! We’ve got a big problem!”
“Where’s the preacher?” Benjamin asked Huck.
Ruth moved up the steps and didn’t look at Benjamin or Huck or May and neither did John Mosely; they just went on by and went inside the church and so did Aline Mosely and Merla Mosely.
“Now what are we going to do?” they heard Ruth saying inside the church. “Well! Get in here!” she shouted now to the three who were standing outside. “This involves you too! Get in here!”
There were more people coming now, many of them May didn’t recognize, but some she did. Some people were people whom she had only seen in the church and some people were ones whom no one really ever saw ever. But somehow, Ruth Mosely had drawn them all together here, and May could guess pretty easily that it was on account of Merla Mosely’s report that Jim Falk had brought a witch to town.
Simon stumbled again and leaned against the cold tree in front of him. The morning light in his eyes only brightened the pain that ran hot and deep in his stomach. The doctor’s bullet was in there somewhere. He was thirsty and his mind was cursing the doctor for not killing him.
It was hard for Simon to move his body at all without screaming. Now and again he would look up and see that he’d moved ahead or in some direction and that he was in a different place from where he was before. He found himself thinking only half-thoughts and seeing pictures of things that weren’t there—his mother, strange animals—his memory was full of flashing holes.
He leaned on the cold tree and moved his other hand up to touch the sticky hair and the burning stripe of open skin that the doctor’s second bullet made. The blood there was crisp and frozen, but at his belly it dribbled and sopped. He thought he could hear faint voices and the movement of feet crunching in the grass. Was that his own voice? His feet?
He staggered onward into the cold, white morning.
Then, with shaking legs, he was crossing over a frozen stream and then up a hard, little hill. Against a tree, he sat on the little knob of grass there at the top. Under him, down his sides, the hot blood was feeding the frosted ground.
He couldn’t believe he was even alive. He raised up his hands in front of him to see if they were really his. The long, delicate fingers, so able to be quick and conceal and turn a card, now they were stained red and flopped toward him. His hands already looked dead. There wasn’t even enough strength in them now to shake, and before his eyes, against the icy background of the woods, those hands looked unfamiliar to him, fake, like a bad trick. A shiver poured through his chest and legs that turned hot quick and then back to shivers. This happened over and over again, and soon he had forgotten what cold and hot were at all. He just felt warm and numb and sick and his thoughts raced away into the frozen sky.
It was then that he saw the shadow move suddenly from his right. A dark, hooded figure. He was sure he’d seen Death coming.
The figure leaned over him and whispered something. Whether it was to Simon, he could not tell, he could not even be afraid. He was too drained. His eyes rolled toward the spot where the figure’s face should be under the hood, but there was only a flat darkness there. Many times in his life he had wondered what the end would be like.
“Who . . . who . . . who . . .” Simon managed to croak with cracked lips.
The dark figure in the hooded cloak knelt down now beside him and a little glass bottle came up to Simon’s lips and he sucked at the lip not caring if it was poison or water. A taste like metal and a flood of relief came spreading through his veins. The nausea left him and the pain came back, quick and twisting into his stomach. He could hear again the wind through the bare trees and the rustling of the figure beside him. His ears were burning with cold. His vision sharpened and he saw the withered and strong, brown hands of this stranger working at Simon’s naked belly, pressing something dark against the wound.
The pain of the sudden pressure was too much and he went out.
Simon woke up in a warm tent. There was a little fire somewhere near him and he could feel someone close by.
“Don’t try to move.” The voice was hoarse and muffled, somehow far away.
His head, he could feel, was wrapped tightly with something that burned and itched and felt oily. The figure was suddenly over top of him, adjusting him roughly, fidgeting with his wrapped-up head.
Simon rolled his eyes around to take in the tent. It was made of animal skin and it was square, like one of the homes of the River People. One wall he could see looked to be made entirely of blackish mud and rocks. At the same time he smelled it, he saw a mangy-looking dog asleep on its side on the dirt floor. It was speckled with patches of bare skin, but it had bulging, coiled, almost cat-looking muscles. But it was a dog. It smelled like a dog. Was it a wolf?
The figure dropped Simon’s head back down and moved away to sit on a stone by the fire. The wolf sprung up and meandered to the figure’s side. Its big, pointed head had powerful jaws and bright silver eyes. It dropped and resumed its splayed position with a huff on the dirt floor beside its master.
The figure looked nothing more than a tall pile of dark rags beside the animal. Then, a hoarse voice from the rags, “There were two men who came looking for you.”
“Who are you?” Simon asked.
“What do you think they’ll do if they find you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think they’ll kill you? Give you a trial maybe? Force you to say things that aren’t true like they’re doing in the North? They think you’re in with the Evil One. What will they do when they open your book and see what’s written in there?”
“You don’t frighten me.”
“I shouldn’t. I am not the one you should be afraid of. You should only fear those who have powers to destroy both soul and body. Besides, I’m only here to help.”
“Why?”
“Because you were dying there by that tree and I found you.”
Simon was exhausted suddenly from talking. He took a deep breath that sent bolts of pain into his sides. Then he slept again and dreamed troubled dreams of being a boy in a cage surroun
ded by monster men.
Hattie stepped back from the drawing and turned in a little circle and looked at it again. He figured it might have disappeared if he looked away; or maybe if he looked away, when he looked back there would be some other picture there. Some other drawing that didn’t have all those specifics in it, something that a boy should draw, but not this thing. But there it was, in curved and even elegant lines—a monster crouching over a heap of twisted and torn meat and bones that was once a horse. It was looking up right at Hattie, eyes wide in surprise as if Samuel had caught it there and frozen it somehow in that instant looking at him, pieces and parts of horse dangling and dribbling from the side of its weird mouth. Hattie looked closer at the drawing. Samuel drew the skin there with wrinkles all through it, wrinkles and pocks and scabs and cracks, so many lines. And worms or tubes like long leaches grabbed from inside its mouth, burrowing into the horse’s hide.
The arms and legs looked like a man’s, but they had been stretched long and they bent differently against the normal way and wherever they seemed to need to as if there were no bones in them at all. The face was what really got to him. It was not just one face, but looked to be the faces of many different animals and men all patchworked and layered and fitted somehow over a wedge-shaped skull that ended in that weird maw of broken, angular teeth. That mouth was ready to take whatever shape was necessary to fit whatever prey inside, pulled and bitten by the long, dark worms that twisted this way and that from the open mouth.
On its back were long, pointed quills that ended in what appeared to be little pointed hands or in some places like a bug’s pincers. And its eyes were wide and empty and, more than menacing, they looked themselves to be frightened and pitiful like the eyes of someone in hopeless anguish.
Samuel sat over in the corner of the room now, rocking in place and humming to himself. Hattie didn’t know what to do and he was tired of that feeling. He was tired of not knowing what to do. He was tired of thinking of leaving Sparrow altogether, but where would he go? This was his father’s house and his father’s house before him. Where would a Jones go, but Sparrow?
Hattie picked up the drawing and walked over to Samuel.
“Samuel,” Hattie said and knelt down beside the boy, putting the drawing near his round, plain face. “Samuel, where did you see this?”
“No,” Samuel answered, looking at Hattie with a sideways glance.
“Where did you see this?”
“No.”
Hattie sighed and sat down on the floor. He looked at the picture and showed it again to Samuel.
“Horse,” Samuel said.
“Right,” Hattie said, and pointed to the mound of meat and bones. “Horse.”
“No,” Samuel said and shook his head and then extended a finger and put it on the thing’s ugly face in the drawing. “Horse.”
Hattie stood and rolled up the drawing and started getting things ready to go up to the church with the rest of them.
Tracks from every which way could be seen leading right up to the church. Hattie walked up the steps holding Samuel’s hand.
They could hear the crowd that was gathered inside and when they got in the door they saw it was full of folk, full of folk from the whole of Sparrow. May and Huck were there, but many others were there too, many folk who were hardly seen or heard from, the ones who lived up on the ridge had even come in, the Osloes, Arnots, and the Dankirk brothers, Martha Mofat and her blind sister Annabelle. Clive Skiles, who used to help Bill Hill make wagon wheels, was holding a rifle. Marty Billowait was holding a rifle. John Bandy was holding a rifle.
Hattie felt like taking Samuel right back out the way he’d come in. But there was just enough room in the way back at the edge of the pew for Hattie and Samuel to squeeze in and kind of hide. The murmurs and whispers of the crowd grew clear and turned into understandable words like “up north,” and “witch,” and “snow spell.”
Merla Mosely was talking loudly to Clive Skiles that she’d seen the witch at the edge of the wood dancing around a bucket of water before Jim Falk brought her into town. Immediately, heads turned with “whats” and “wheres” and “whens” and “the outlander with her?”
Ruth Mosely stood up from the crowd and walked up to beside the pulpit.
“Merla Mosely!” she shouted. “John!”
Her husband popped up and came to stand beside her, and Merla Mosely walked away from Clive Skiles and came and stood up there with them.
“Quiet!” Ruth shouted, and everybody went quiet. “Merla Mosely’s got something to tell you all. Go ahead, Merla.”
Merla looked around at all the faces. This must be what her pa sees on the days when he gives a lesson. “Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning,” the crowd said together.
“Just tell them!” Ruth whispered harshly at her.
“I saw Jim Falk bringing a witch to town . . .” Merla started to say, but before she could finish there were gasps and loud voices and some people stood up.
“Quiet!” Ruth shouted.
“Quiet!” John Mosely shouted. Everyone quieted down.
“Now go on, Merla,” Ruth said again.
“Just at the edge of the wood they were. I couldn’t really see what they were up to, but the witch seemed to be, well, dancing around a bucket. You know that’s a spell they do to bring on the weather.”
Many people nodded their heads.
“Then he took the witch down to the doctor’s house and that’s where they are right now!”
John spoke up now. “When Falk came to town, all these things started up again. If the snow continues as it is, we may be in a blizzard, but we’re more prepared. Huck Marbo and some of us others have stored up quite a bit—enough to last a while for us all, a few weeks, maybe a month if we ration it out and if everyone is able to follow the rules. Enough time for someone to go up to Hopestill or over to Bowden and come back with more. But for the witch and Jim Falk . . .”
Ruth burst out impatiently, “Falk’s to blame for all this! All of what’s happened here, the chicken man getting killed, Bill Hill! The Starkey house burned down. Falk and the witch! The snow’s coming! The snow is coming! Falk’s brought the witch in here!”
Someone shouted, “Kill the witch! Kill Falk! Kill the outlander!”
May’s eyes looked around at all the people of Sparrow and from up on the ridge and everyone who’d packed themselves up into the church.
The faces were pinched and eyebrows crooked, the mouths were open and twisted or closed and twisted and people were up suddenly on their feet with fists up in the air.
She looked up into her pa’s face, but his eyes were cast down into his lap. They looked closed, but they weren’t; they were looking down into his lap and his hands were there in his lap, clasped together.
“Pa,” she whispered into his neck, “this isn’t right.”
Hattie Jones felt that this was all going in the wrong direction, so he shouted, “Where’s the preacher? Why are we listening to you all anyway?”
Then Ruth snapped, “Silence!”
It was then that the preacher rose up. He had come in during the commotion. Vernon had woken up in his house to find that he was completely alone. Aline was gone, Merla was gone. He immediately ran to his fireplace and made sure his papers were safe in the spot. They were. He figured he should move them soon again, even though Falk was the only other person who knew where they were. He walked outside and noticed the snow coming down, but he noticed something else, too. He noticed that his arm was completely healed. He saw some people heading toward the church.
Now he stood and raised both his arms in the air to still the folks in the church, but now that he’d drawn attention to his arms and hand, many in the crowd took notice that his right hand was inside of a black glove, but his left hand was pink and exposed.
“Now,” Vernon said again, and not being a man who was used to shouting, it was a little cracked in the middle. “Now! Ther
e’s no use in this while the blizzard’s coming! If there is any time we need to all stick together and not go accusing one another and judging one another, now is that time!”
He walked forward and stood down in front with Ruth and John and Merla Mosely all standing behind him.
Vernon looked over at his wife again and saw that not only was she not looking at him, but she was looking away and over at the wall of the little church. He looked over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of his brother’s eyes, to see if there was any help there, but his brother was eagerly leaning his head up against Ruth’s mouth as she, with a cupped hand, whispered and whispered into John’s ear.
He looked at his wife again and now her eyes were open and on him burning and her brows were together. The conversation of the previous evening had shut her heart closed to him and her eyes said loud that he’d betrayed her. He shouldn’t have told her. He was realizing this now. He shouldn’t have said anything. Or at least, he should have said that he didn’t know and that it was a snake probably that bit him was all and that all he remembered was waking up in the doctor’s house and that the outlander had tried to help him but couldn’t or some damned lie. He shouldn’t have told her the truth, but he had.
At the sight of these eyes, Vernon’s own heart burned with a sick and lonely fire. There came over and upon him a dizzying feeling that he’d never had; in his mind he saw a boat on a dim lake of silent, dark water. He looked at his wife and wondered about the truth that he told her the evening before and the truth about the stranger, about the witch, about his healing. Was it only overnight that all this had somehow twisted her against him? He looked at Ruth again. She was looking at him the same way, her white lips pressed together.
“Magic!” the word spit from Aline’s pressed lips, and her right arm extended and at the end of it her hand curled, shaking and a finger pointed at her husband. “Witchcraft!”