Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron

by Jonathan Strahan

  As I reached the stream in the gathering dusk, my hart stepped out of the trees, lowered his head, and drank.

  I stood as though I’d been turned to stone, my bucket on my hip. The deer raised his dripping muzzle from the water. The sun set, and the man rose from his crouch and tossed back his tawny hair.

  Next moment, I was across the stream with my arms around him. Under my hands, his back was warm and smooth and hard, his unshaven cheek rough against my face. A pounding shook my body—his heart or mine, or both—and my breath came fast and shallow, as though I’d been running. For a moment, he stood like a tree in my embrace, and then his arms lifted to encircle me, and he was mouthing my ear, my cheek, my lips, and I was mouthing his and we were both breathless and so unsteady that our legs would not hold us upright. We fell to the moss, and what happened there transformed me as utterly as crossing the river to the forbidden Land.

  Later that night, we warmed our cold feet by the fire and ate toasted chestnuts and hearth cakes with honey. My deer-man’s hand was never far from my body, nor my body from his hand. We smiled when our eyes met. And haltingly, shyly, we talked. I told him as much of my history as I knew. It was little enough—that I was born not long after my mother had fled the north, that we had lived together peacefully, that she had died in my fourteenth year, that I had lived now three years alone, that I had never met or spoken to any man or woman apart from her until the day my arrow had felled him and brought twelve hunters to my door.

  “So now you know what there is to know about me,” I said. “I would know as much about you. What is your name? Who are your parents? Are you a shape-shifter by nature, or is it a curse?”

  This made him laugh. “You might call it a curse. He called it an honor, a glory, a test of my spirit and my strength.”

  “He?”

  “Arnulf. My wizard.” That deerlike huff again. “Not so much mine as I was his, though. His candidate. His pupil. His Little King.”

  I had had enough of pretending to understand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, my hart.”

  Something of the deer’s blind panic widened his eyes. “I can’t tell you any more. It’s forbidden.”

  “Who forbids it?” I was losing patience. “Your precious wizard Arnulf? Whom you fear and flee as from a wolf?”

  He turned away from me, head bent. “It’s no use, Mildryth. I cannot be to you what I want to be. I am a fugitive, an outcast, disgraced. The best thing—the only thing—I can do now is run and never look back.”

  I seized the skin draped over his naked shoulders in my fists, brought his fine, high-bridged nose up to mine. “The best thing for whom?” I growled. “Not for me, and not for you, either, whatever you say.” I gave him a shake. “Begin at the beginning.”

  At first he would not tell me. The bear in me wanted to growl and threaten, but deer run from bears. Remembering how my mother would coax me with games to some task I loathed, I kissed him and tumbled with him until I thought he’d forgotten such a person as Arnulf existed. And then, when we lay curled together by the dying fire, I asked him again for his story.

  His name, I learned, was Erdwyn. He was one of a cohort of royal half-brothers begotten by the last king on one of his regular progresses through the Land. It was one of a king’s chief functions, to breed armies for future kings. Another was to lead the sons of past kings into battle, if the need arose. Another was to die, returning his blood and his magic to the Land, that it might be rich and strong. The real rulers of the Land were the wizards, whose council oversaw trade and commerce, cast spells of plenty and healing, and kept the complicated lists of bloodlines that determined which women should come to the king’s tent when a progress brought him to a town.

  Erdwyn had been one of these princelings, born in the foothills of the mountains between his Land and mine. When he was five years old, he’d been sent north, as the law dictated, to the Royal Holt of Karleigh.

  “And what did your mother say to that?” I asked.

  “I don’t remember my mother at all,” he said, and his sweet voice was full of sadness. “All my memories are of training and learning and fighting with my brothers. Until last year.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I was chosen by a wizard to be a Little King.”

  “By Arnulf?”

  “By Arnulf.”

  “And what does it mean, to be a Little King?”

  “There are—were—twelve of us.” The words came haltingly. “I suppose the rest are dead by now—all but one. We lived in the Wizard’s Holt, learning the magics of war and increase, of the hunt and of the field. It was very wonderful: sacred and terrible.” He shrugged. “I cannot speak of it—I have no words. Anyway, that lasted until a month or so ago, when the old king, Anselm, gave his blood to the Land.”

  He fell silent. I stroked his hair, my hand catching on the twigs tied into it. “And Arnulf turned you into a deer?”

  “It is the ordeal of kingship. The wizards work transformation on the Little Kings, turning us into deer and releasing us into the forest.” He moved restlessly in my arms. “What happens then, I cannot say. Deer do not think as men think, and I was half crazed with magic besides. But I was told that he who is able, by strength of will and the Land’s magic, to return to the Holt as a man is the true king.”

  I lay in the dark, listening to his breathing, knowing the story was not yet done. “What becomes of the other Little Kings?” I asked gently.

  “Their blood and magic return to the Land,” he said. “Only the true king can be allowed to live.”

  “And you?”

  “I ran away. Whether as king or as deer, I knew I must die before my time, and I did not want to die. And Arnulf—well, I hated him.” It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him why, but there was that in his voice that made me tighten my arms around him and hold my peace.

  He sighed. “I don’t remember how or when I crossed the river, but I will never forget how I felt when I found myself a man again. I thought I was free—free of Arnulf’s spells, the sacrifices and duties of kingship, the threat of death. Then morning came, and I was a deer again. That night was worst of all, for I knew then how far I was from freedom.” He wound his hands in my hair and kissed my mouth. “Until I met you, and found how sweet it was to be bound to one who loves you.”

  That night I dreamed of a strange bear running through the forest. I knew, as one knows things in dreams, that this bear was searching for me, and when he found me, he would kill me if he could. He was bigger than I, and older, but not so fast. He stumbled as he ran, as though he were wounded, though I saw no blood on his fur. Closer and closer he came, until I could smell the spoiled-meat stench of his breath. Roaring with fury at his trespass, I reared up on my back legs and charged.

  And woke. It was dawn; my head was pillowed on warm, living hide, and a deer’s frightened heart thuttered under my ear.

  As I lifted my head, my hart sprang to his feet, forelegs braced, nostrils and eyes wide.

  “I know,” I said. “But he is not in his Land. He is in mine, fed with my monthly blood, obedient to my magic. This is a fight I can win.”

  My deer huffed and tossed his horns, bringing bundles of drying herbs down from the rafters. Rising, I put on tunic and leggings, opened the door, and stepped outside just as twelve familiar huntsmen entered my glade.

  Between one breath and the next, they had unslung their bows, whisked arrows from their quivers, and drawn their bowstrings to their ears. My stag belled a challenge; the bear within me stirred and growled.

  A man pushed through the wall of hunters, a tall man, barrel-chested and bearded, a bearskin draped around his shoulders.

  “Go away out of this, you fools!” he cried. “This is wizard’s business!”

  The hunters melted into the forest.

  It was Arnulf, of course. I knew the scent of him from my dream, as he must have known mine. Even as a man, he was more than half bear. He glared at my stag from und
er his bristling brows. “I am ashamed,” he growled in a voice like summer thunder, “to find any Little King of mine hiding behind the skirts of a Southron hedge-witch.”

  My deer tossed his head, lifted his forefoot, and pawed the ground angrily.

  Arnulf laughed. “You know it’s futile to challenge me, Erdwyn.

  You learned that even before you learned that witches are an abomination and must be killed. But come, let us not threaten and bluster at one another. Today is a day of great rejoicing. Your brother the Little King Gertwyn returned two days ago to the Wizard’s Holt. He’ll be crowned at the full of the moon. In honor of our new king, I am willing to be generous. Return to the Land with me, give up your blood as you are bound to do, and I will spare the witch’s life.”

  I listened to this speech with rising anger. “He doesn’t want to come with you,” I said. “He’s not ready to die, and I don’t see why he should have to, just because you say so.”

  Arnulf’s beard writhed. “Silence, witch!” he snarled, his eyes fixed steadily on my deer. “Do not meddle with magics you do not understand.”

  The bear within me stirred angrily. “I understand, wizard, that this is my land, by right of my blood and my mother’s blood, spilled on it at each full moon. If it comes to a fight, I think I will win.”

  Arnulf’s eyes flicked toward me and away again. I had no skill to read his face, but body and smell told me he was afraid. “Witches have no land. You are nothing but an exile, lingering on the borders of power, untrained and half savage.”

  “I am not without power and I am not untrained. I healed your Little King, after all.”

  “Healed?” Arnulf roared. “You’ve done much more than that, witch. You’ve bound him to you, blood and body, as the witch Hild bound King Detlef five hundred years past.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” I asked.

  Arnulf’s face twisted. “A witch is an abomination. That is enough. The wizards give their blood to the Land. As they give the blood of any girl-child born with unnatural powers.” Arnulf drew a knife from his belt, the honed bronze bright and glittering as a sunbeam in his hand. “As your mother’s should have been given. As I will give yours.”

  For the first time he looked full at me, his gaze an almost physical pressure.

  I pulled the bear around me, roaring from a mouth grown wide and full of teeth.

  Arnulf startled, his eyes and mouth rounding. I smelled shock on him and confusion.

  “Stop!” he shouted. “I did not know! I will not harm you, I swear it! See, I throw down my knife!”

  But it was too late. The bear possessed me. I lumbered toward my enemy, grunting my challenge. My stag followed me.

  The hunters Arnulf dismissed had not gone far. In a heartbeat, my deer and I were in a ring of arrows, nocked and ready to fly.

  My bear instincts told me to claw and rend; my human mind told me to surrender. Frustrated beyond endurance, I roared to shake the forest.

  “For the Land’s sake, stay your hands!” Arnulf shouted. “The man who harms her forfeits his life.”

  Then he backed slowly away, his head turned aside, whuffing submissively, acknowledging defeat.

  This abrupt surrender so astonished me that the bear fell from me. My legs buckled; I threw my arms around my deer to hold myself upright.

  “Put down your bows, you fools!” Arnulf cried, and the hunters hesitated, eyeing him as foxes eye a wolf. “Well, what are you waiting for? Make a fire and fetch water and unpack my bag. If I must bargain with a witch, I’d as soon do it over a cup of tea.”

  And so it was, some little time later, that I sat across an open fire from the wizard with my deer at my side, sipping a hot amber brew that made my heart race.

  Very much at his ease Arnulf seemed, for a man sharing a hearth with an abomination. Yet I could smell eagerness on him, like a bear within paw’s reach of a honeycomb, and was afraid. For among the many things my mother had told me was no hint of how to bargain with a wizard.

  Now that he had decided to speak to me, Arnulf was very full of questions. What was my mother’s name, he wanted to know, and where did she come from? Who was her father? Who was mine? Where had she learned her craft and what had become of her? I did not know the answers to these questions, nor would I have answered them if I could. So I only stared at his wagging beard and his bright, deep-set eyes until he fell silent.

  “I see you do not trust me,” he said. “I do not blame you. You are a power in your land as I am in mine, and yet I came to you with threats and arrows and brazen knives. Forgive me, if you can, and hear me, for I offer you a bargain that will benefit both you and me.”

  “I will not forgive you,” I said, “but I will hear you. Hearing is not agreeing, after all.”

  His thick beard bunched over his cheeks. “It is not. Well, then. I promise to take my huntsmen and depart from here in return for this: one thing of my choosing, to be collected by me, in person, from you, at the end of a year and a day.”

  He offered this speech with the air of one bearing an armful of flowers. But even I, untutored as I was, could see the nettle hidden among them. “And what if you should choose the deer, or my life, or perhaps enough blood to satisfy the hunger of your Land?”

  He grinned, and I saw his teeth had been filed into points. “Half savage, perhaps, but not stupid. Will it content you if I swear by the Land that I will not take the deer, or, if you succeed in breaking the enchantment, the man, nor any part of you or him that would threaten your life or your safety?”

  My stag gave an oddly undeerlike snort. I glanced down at him, surprised, to see his leaf-shaped ears pricked and his gaze fixed on Arnulf.

  “He is bound to us by blood.” Arnulf sounded amused. “Of course he understands us. You may ask his advice, if you wish. Though I should warn you that even when he walks on two legs, he is a better fighter than a strategist.”

  Since I did not know what a strategist was, and since it did not seem fair to take such a decision alone, I stroked my deer’s wiry back and said, “What do you say, my hart? Shall we take this bargain?”

  “Think carefully, Erdwyn,” Arnulf said, “understanding that, if you refuse, there is nothing left for either of you but an early death and scorched land where once a cottage stood. Considering what the Land loses—what I lose—in losing you, I think my offer more than fair.”

  It was not fair by my reckoning, but I thought it was the best we could hope for. My deer must have come to the same conclusion, for he dipped his head twice.

  “We accept your offer,” I said. “Now take your tea and your hunters and go.”

  The moon has grown round and shrunk again six times since that day. I have spent the time in learning to tame and use the magic awakened in me when I crossed the border into my mother’s Land. By my will, my true love is a man again by day as well as by night, and takes his bow to hunt mountain sheep, deer, and rabbits. I do not hunt, for like the moon, I am round and heavy with my growing child. How Arnulf could have seen within me a seed so newly planted, I cannot tell, but we have no doubt, my love and I, that he knew what I carried. It was our child he bargained for, and it is our child he will claim in six months’ time.

  Therefore, we will leave this forest I have bound with my monthly blood and journey to the plains to the south, where men live in cities built of stone and magic is as rare as berries in January. We will find some patch of land there to build our house and raise this child—and the children that follow him—far from the dark magics of the north. I will give my blood to that land as I have given it to my forest, binding it to me and to my sons and daughters after me, passing on my mother’s wisdom and my mother’s stories, teaching them what I learned when I was the witch in the wood.

  WHICH WITCH

  PATRICIA A. MCKILLIP

  LIESL, THAT GRINCH, stole my G string. “Borrowed,” she said. Ha! So I had to limp along on a Spinreel G so old it was liable to snap at any moment with a twang in pure coun
try, while she wailed along like she was summoning the devil to dance, with her long black hair tangling in her bow until it seemed she was pulling the song out of her hair instead of her fiddle.

  Maybe she did. Summon up the devil, I mean, since that night was when Trouble joined the band.

  I know Cawley warned me. I know that. But it had to have been while I was on the floor slithering like the snake in the Garden into my tightest black jeans, or trying to bend over after that to buckle the Mary Jane strap on a seven-inch lollipop-red heel and then zip a black ankle boot on the other foot, or surrounding myself with puddles of sequins, satin, leather, and lace, trying to find just the right top for my mood. Pirate Queen, or Good Fairy/Bad Fairy, or maybe I’d just wear my glasses and my crazy-quilt jacket and Cawley on my shoulder and be Scholar Gypsy.

  Cawley hates being used as an accessory, unless I’m in dire need. Which I wasn’t then. Or at least I didn’t know it. Though I would have if I’d listened to him. But I was on the floor, et cetera, while he was fluttering on his wooden perch trying to take my attention off my clothes. Translating crow requires concentration. I thought he was asking me to open the window so that he could fly out, and I finally did give it a shove up, in the middle of putting on a shirt covered with roses and skulls.

  “There,” I said. “Bye. You know where I’ll be.”

  But he didn’t leave, just kept squawking. Since he had hopped from his perch to the sill, I thought he was talking to his clan, which had covered the tree outside like very dead leaves. They were all chattering, too. Where to go to dinner, or the sun about to go down, or somebody spilled a ginormous order of french fries in the middle of B Street. Something like that.

  So you can’t say I wasn’t warned. I pulled off the shirt, which wasn’t right, then limped in one-shoe-on, one-boot-on mode to the window and pushed it shut behind Cawley. I nearly caught his tail feathers. He whirled in a black blur and could have cracked glass with the word that ripped out of his open beak.