by Josh Woods
Hava stepped through the moist leaves down the slope and thought that she too could catch the faint whiff of wood-smoke. “Then let us go down,” she said. And she led them on.
If she were to find witches by a fire, she hoped that they would think their plans were proceeding without problems. She hoped that they would confuse her with Lenka, or with Seph, and assume that they were about to arrange the hand-off of Shamir. Could their witch-queen, La Voisin, have known any different? In the mirror in Lenka’s basement, La Voisin had only learned that the plans were behind schedule and that Lenka had captured the wrong girl. For all La Voisin knew, things were now sorted out, and Shamir would be delivered soon. So when she would come upon the witches, they would spend time trying to figure out whether Hava was who she was supposed to be, and during their hesitation Hava would attack. She wasn’t sure exactly how, but she would defeat them. She might simply have Moses crush them to death. Hava was only minutes away from her vengeance, and it made her happy.
She and her companions edged their way down the slope, slipping here and there and making more noise than she wished but otherwise having no real trouble. Moses tried to tread lightly and often steadied himself with a hand against the steep ground as he sidestepped down into the valley.
As they descended, the smell of campfire grew sharper, and Hava could hear a running creek when she paused. The sound of the water seemed to echo, as if off of rock walls.
They soon found themselves in a narrow space between two pressing hills, and they waded through the thickness of ferns and briars. They were slow moving, but the wolves seemed to be enjoying the diverse smells along the way. Moses, however, looked grumpy as always.
At least this was not the way one was expected to come, if they were heading toward the right meeting place. That might aid in her enemy’s surprise.
Hava soon saw the creek that she had been hearing, the bottom of the valley, and she saw that the steep mountainsides stopped abruptly in stone walls, leaving a space of clearing along the creek. They emerged from the brambles of the cleft, into that clearing, and then Hava’s breath stopped short.
She saw the bodies of nine women in old dresses laid out along the flat stones of the creek side. Nine chickens clucked and pecked at the soil nearby. A stump fire smoldered in a heap of glowing coals as if it had been burning hot for days, and an iron tripod and chain held a huge pot over it, boiling something odd. A fat-bellied goat stood on a web of tree roots that stretched across the creek, looking nearly as if he were perched in branches, and he was tethered by a simple old rope at his neck to the trunk of the tree.
In the side of the rock wall, in the mountain Hava had been climbing down, the great crack of a cave stretched higher than the doors of a temple, but covering the bulk of its entrance was a great stone wheel.
From the shadows came three witches into the light of the stump-fire.
They said in French, “You come late.”
Hava said to them, “Where is La Voisin?”
“Where do you think she is? Squatting at the foot of a mountain, or upon her throne at the crown of the Hollow? She does not wait on her gifts. A queen’s gifts wait on her.”
“Then call her forth,” Hava said. “For her gift is here. She must face me if she is to receive it.”
The witches laughed, and the sound was unpleasant. “Do not think that your delivery is a ransom, little one. You have nothing to gain here but mercy. Your body became forfeit when you missed the appointed time. Maybe you will be put in a chicken, but we can fetch a pig if La Voisin’s appetite has increased.”
Hava called to her friends behind her in the brush. “Moses, wolves, come forth.”
Moses stepped into the clearing and stood beside Hava, hulking over her like an old monument. The wolf in the skirt came out hunched and snarling. The other wolf trotted out from the brush and barked at the chickens.
Hava expected fear from these three witches, as she had seen fear from the Witches of Endor. But they made little sign that they were worried. Instead, they had a look of interest, like hagglers at a bazaar. Hava wasn’t sure what was on their minds, but she decided to give them a chance to surrender nonetheless. She said, “What you see before you is your doom. Kneel before me now, and you will receive mercy. Stand against me, and you will receive pain and death.”
The witches no longer laughed. “Yes, we have heard that Lenka of Prague has a golem, but we did not expect to see her brandish it in treachery. Surrender your slaves to us as gifts, now, before La Voisin is made aware of this, and such a deal between us will help us forget your insults. We will even speak kindly on your behalf to La Voisin.”
Not only did they lack fear of being destroyed by Hava, but they wanted Moses and the wolves for themselves, not even to give to their queen, but just for their own profit. There would be no dealing with these witches, for they would never take her seriously as a threat until it was too late for them. There was nothing left but to have them crushed to death. Hava said, “Moses, kill all three of them.”
Moses did not move.
The three witches waited.
And Hava waited. Hava looked back up at him to see why he did not obey, to see if maybe he had been bewitched or paralyzed by them somehow.
But he looked down at her with his usual frog-faced frown. He scratched at his engraved neck.
Hava spoke again, “Moses, will you please kill those three witches?”
He said, as if it were obvious, “I cannot kill.”
Hava’s nerves went cold. He was not joking, and he was not uncertain about it. She didn’t know why he couldn’t kill or why he had not mentioned this before or even exactly what he meant. She said, “Why, Moses? It is the time to kill. You must.”
He touched one of the engraved lines of script across his chest and said, “Here. I shall not kill.”
Hava could not read it. She knew the style of script, the style that dear old Ziggurat had used in her writings, but she could not decipher what it said. No one had ever taught her how to read. If she had learned, she would have known this before it was too late for her. Now she was in trouble. She had revealed her intentions to her enemy and lost all advantage of surprise, and at the same moment she had become disarmed and powerless. She was defeated, and she felt the three witches watching her, probably enjoying this moment, finding it as amusing as a cricket struggling to swim in a creek. It was surely wicked sport for them. Since there was little more for her to do, and likely much more that Moses could not do, she asked him, “What else do the inscriptions say that you cannot do?”
He touched line after line on his chest and arms, moving to each at random. “I shall not carve idols. I shall not steal. I shall not commit adultery. I shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk. I shall not allow the altars, pillars, or sacred poles to stand of the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the—”
Hava stopped him. “That is enough for now. I am sorry I did not ask this sooner.” She patted him on the side of his face. She was going to die a slow and torturous death. She had thought too much of her power and had acted too quickly. She should have thought to prepare, to explore the limits of Moses, of the wolves, even of little Shamir, and she should have made plan after plan before chasing down La Voisin and her witches. She had been too eager, too foolish, too full of vanity. Now she was doomed.
The three witches called to her. “Do you have some other price for your golem and wolves than mercy for yourself?”
Hava realized that they had been patient because they hoped she was thinking over the deal. They could just take Moses and the wolves as slaves after they were done with her, not to mention taking Shamir, Nachash, and the ether of Seph. But maybe they wanted a clear transfer of ownership. Maybe they needed such a thing to have full command over any they would claim as thralls. Hava knew little of these things. She had continued to serve Ziggurat for as long as she had out of thanks and love, and she had gathered her new friends with appreciation and, a
t least to some extent, their own free will. She had figured out how to threaten and how to demand, but she was not exactly sure how to command others against their will, at least not as witches do. Their minds worked differently than hers, or at least the minds of the Malandanti worked differently. In that moment, she tried to think as they thought.
She faced the three witches and said, “You are waiting here for the delivery of Shamir, as appointed, at which time you will call La Voisin to come and take him. Is this right?”
“But you are late,” they said.
“Is La Voisin on her way now? Have you called to her?”
“She waits for her gift to be delivered to her. She is indisposed with other works. Do not think to threaten us with further delay, little one. La Voisin will not punish us three for it. She knows only of your faults, so every hour we waste is another hour blamed on you. We three need not be frightened, but you, young one, you should be sobbing and begging. And giving.”
“If you want to take my friends as slaves for yourselves, without La Voisin knowing of your profits, then why would you not take her prize for yourselves as well? Why not take Shamir for yourselves?” It was a true question. Hava was not sure what their reason was for not turning on their queen and taking power for themselves. It seemed the kind of thing they would do.
One of the three laughed and said, “One does not cross La Voisin. One does not betray her. She is our queen. She is older than we, much older, and she will take the place of one much older than she, much older than all. Soon she will be one of the Three Arch-Witches of the World, and though she might be delayed by frivolities such as yours, she cannot be stopped.”
The other two witches beside that one were silent, nor did they laugh. One of the two looked to the stone wheel covering the cave entrance.
Hava looked at the stone wheel too. And she looked around again, at the bodies of the nine women, at the chickens, at the stump fire, at the old tree, at the tethered goat, whose mouth seemed to hold fire and whose breath was visible steam. She tried to guess why this place would be chosen for the meeting and not the Black Palace, and why it would have been held by these three witches. The nine women could have been the previous guards, probably of the cave entrance, and now they were trapped in the nine chickens. La Voisin wanted something here, something that had to do with using Shamir. She took a guess out loud, trying to sound more confident than she was, “And your queen wants Shamir to break open that cave.”
“What La Voisin wants to do with her gifts is her business, not yours. And do not think to tempt us with stealing from our queen.”
If Hava had been wrong in her guess, they would have mocked her stupidity, which they did not. She said, “Moses, will you please hold out your hand? I want to give you something.”
Moses held out an open palm.
She lifted the necklace over her head, and the tiny globe that held Shamir swayed hanging at the end of it. She set it gently into Moses’ hand, which seemed as big around as a reed-basket. She said, “I want you to hold this safely, but if those witches get close to me, I want you to put it in your mouth, not to crush it but to hold it secure and let no one open your jaws. Then I want you to walk away without stopping, to walk to the sea, and into it, and to the bottom of the sea into the lowest depths, and never come up again, not until the end of the world.”
Moses nodded.
The witches had heard her, as she had hoped. They said, “What are you doing?”
Hava spoke to the wolves. “Do not attack them if they do not act, but if they come for us, or if they try to bewitch you, attack them. Do not go for their throats. Go for their fingers. Gnash them off.”
The wolves bristled and growled. Hava took this as affirmation. She hoped the witches did too.
“Now stay close to me,” she said to Moses and the wolves, and began walking slowly toward the stone wheel.
“What are you doing?” the witches said again. They were less patient now. “We have defeated her nine night hags, so what makes you think you and your rabble of servants will be any match for us?”
Hava figured they meant the nine bodies laid out on the rocks, and the nine chickens. She took another guess and said, “Was La Voisin here to help you defeat all nine of them?” She kept moving toward the stone wheel slowly.
The witches did not answer directly. They said again, “What are you doing?”
“I am going to open this cave myself.”
One of the witches laughed. The other two, again, did not. She said, “You have no spell that can move that golel, little one. And your golem has no power over it, however strong he is. No strength born or made after the Flood can roll it. She has seen to that.”
“I will not roll it,” Hava said. “Shamir will crack it apart for me. And I will take the treasure that La Voisin wants from this cave, where it is hidden from her, as I can tell. If you wish to flee and warn her, I suggest you go now. If you attempt to attack me, you will lose Shamir to the bottom of the sea for all time, and maybe lose your witch-fingers to wolves. If you kneel, and swear yourself to me, and do as I say, you will get to share in the profits that wait in this cave. Either way, you will have failed your queen, and I am offering a better bargain than she will. I think you know that to be true. Especially since she will soon be knocked off her throne. La Voisin may have the power of many years behind her, but I have the future before me. It rolls forward and cannot be stopped. Change is coming for you and for her. Change is here. I am change.”
Hava saw that this disturbed them, as it does any who have gained power, or resources, or years.
One of the three witches hissed at the other two and fled to the outer edge of their camp. She grabbed two small kettles by their handles, and took off into the darkness beyond Hava’s sight. There was the fading sound of splashing in the creek, and the witch was gone. Hava had to assume that she left to fetch La Voisin.
The other two witches waited and watched.
Hava reached the stone wheel—the golel, they called it—and ran her hand on the surface. She expected something rougher, like the feel of Moses, but the golel was smooth. It might indeed be old, but surely not ancient, not so ancient that these witches or La Voisin would be powerless against it. But she did not need to understand why they were unable to move it or break it on their own; she needed only to break it open for herself.
She guided Moses’s upturned palm close to her face and opened the lid to Shamir’s little box. She watched the witches for any sign of attack from them, and her wolves growled for her, and though the witches looked indignant, the flickering firelight making their features grotesque, they made no move. Hava knew that the moment she removed Shamir from Moses’ hand, her threat to make Moses take him to the bottom of the sea would be a less likely contingency, and she had to assume the two witches knew this too, but she hoped that the threat and risk alone would stay them.
Shamir was awake and stirring, not sleepy as he usually was. Hava wondered what had awoken him, or what he sensed about this place. She lifted him softly on the pad of her finger and cooed closely to him, then placed him on the surface of the golel.
She heard the witches gasping at the sight. One said, “You know not what you do, young one. Stop and reconsider. At least place a circle first. You cannot just do this on the bare skin of the world.”
Hava knew that they were right, and that she should not disregard Ashurbanipal’s warning a second time, but her time was short and her need was great, so she yelled in her own language, “Break it, Shamir! Break it!”
The line of light struck.
The thunder knocked Hava into the leaves on the ground. She cracked her elbow against a rock and her arm went numb with pain. That could have been her head. It was foolish to have stood so close. She had known better.
She saw one of her wolves fleeing up the valley into the darkness, yelping. The other wolf in the skirt hunkered behind Moses, who had not bothered to budge.
The two great halves of th
e golel rocked on their rims, and their split diameters smoldered. Flecks of floating dust ignited in blinks like fireflies. The far half of the golel leaned forward, seeming to pause in its sway, and then fell flat on the ground.
The air was suddenly cold. It was the breath from the open mouth of the cave.
Hava posted her good arm and got up to her knees to fully survey the results, and she was knocked back to the ground. Glass from the float shattered under her, and she was cut.
A witch was upon her, sitting on her chest.
The witch screeched and smacked her again and again with one hand, while with the other she sewed Hava’s skin with a needle and thread, in the arm, in the neck, in the ribs. Each pass of the needle froze her body in segments. She was being paralyzed piece by piece. The witch’s weight crushed her lungs. She was helpless.
She looked to Moses for help and saw him put Shamir’s empty globe in his mouth and walk away along the flow of the creek, beginning his long and lonely trek to the bottom of the sea. She called out to him to stop, but she could not even hear her own scream. Neither could she lift her head to see her remaining wolf. She was stung and threaded in the thighs, in the arm, in the cheekbone. She was paralyzed but aware, a waking nightmare.
The witch cursed over her and slapped and sewed and slapped and sewed without end.
Hava began to taste her own blood, but her tongue tingled and went numb too. Seeing all of this happening to herself made it worse. Hava realized that she had been impetuous, that her enemies had been right about her, and that she was now defeated. It was the end. Yet she knew that her suffering at their hands had only just begun.
Chapter 17
“Miss DiFranco, I know you can hear me,” said the bullhorn voice—Mr. Eisenheimer. “And I know you’re wondering if I’m serious. You will hear proof that I am.”
No, she did not wonder whether he was serious. She wondered whether this was the same Mr. Eisenheimer who was holding Jan hostage. Turenbor might have sent another commissioner to find out whether they had delivered the Shamir to the witches as he wanted, which they had. But since this one’s voice sounded so familiar, maybe it was him. She had seen the ghosts of his family, and had heard his gunshot, but she had not looked back to see his body.