Hammer of Witches

by Shana Mlawski

  I shrugged, and the girl glided onto my barrel. “I’m sorry, Bal,” she said more quietly, “but you don’t have time to waste! The Malleus Maleficarum is here, and they’re coming after you whether you like it or not. You have to learn how to defend yourself against them! Or would you rather die?”

  It’s funny to say so, but I didn’t know how to answer that question. Would I rather die than go against my religion? Yes, I decided. Yes, of course I’d rather die! I would be a martyr like Jeanne d’Arc, like Saint Stephen — hell, like Jesus Christ himself! I would . . .

  I would . . .

  I sighed. Who was I kidding? “All right. What do I have to do?”

  Jinniyah crossed her legs in front of her, grinning one of her lupine grins. “Well, first you need to think of a story.”

  A story. For some reason, the first one that popped into my head was a fairy tale my aunt had told me when I was young. “There’s always the story of the unicorn, I guess.”

  “Ooh, what’s that?”

  “A kind of white horse with a horn growing on its head.”

  “Like a karkadann,” Jinniyah said. “It has a horn on its head too. But it’s not a horse — more like a mix between a lion and a rhinoceros. And also it eats people!”

  As usual, she sounded a little too excited when she said that. I made a face and went on, “The unicorn doesn’t do that. And it only lets girls ride it for some reason.”

  “Same as the karkadann! Only A’isha, the prettiest and purest of the Prophet’s wives, was able to charm the karkadann with a magic flute. Then she was able to ride it over the countryside and all the way to India!”

  I raised my eyebrows. Maybe my unicorn and her karkadann weren’t that different after all. “Actually, summoning a unicorn is probably a bad idea.” Leaving my bowl of lentils on my barrel, I stood and knocked on the hold’s nearest wall. “There isn’t much room in here. Not enough for a horse, anyway.”

  “Then make something smaller. There are other stories out there, you know.”

  True. I lifted my eyes up at the ceiling, rifling through the mess of stories Diego had deposited in my head over the course of my lifetime. Hmm. The golem was too big, and so was the Behemoth. The hameh was much smaller — only the size of a hawk or eagle. But the thought of it made me shiver against my will and think of Moors and revenge, all the aspects of Amir al-Katib I didn’t want to consider.

  So I said, “I guess there’s always Titivillus.”

  Jinniyah sat up straighter at the word. “What’s that?”

  “He’s an imp who makes you mess up when you’re copying down a text.”

  The girl crinkled her nose at the thought. “That’s tricky. What if all the books people read are all messed up? Like the history books! Or the stuff Admiral Colón writes down so the boats go in the right direction?”

  Ready to one-up her I said, “You think that’s bad? Most scribes are clerics. What if Titivillus messed up the Bible?”

  Jinniyah covered her head and ears to block out the idea. “Or the Qur’an! I don’t even want to think about that! Tricky, tricky beast!”

  “You mean like you?”

  “Never!”

  Feeling tricky myself, I paced around the hold. “How about I summon him? Then we’ll see who’s trickier.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to picture an imp causing mayhem in a scribe’s workshop. I rubbed my hands together and said, “Come out, Titivillus.”

  I waited for a moment, and then a moment more. But there was nothing. I opened my eyes.

  “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  Jinniyah flew off her barrel and around me. “How did you do it the first time?”

  Distracted, I combed back my bangs with my fingers. “I was down in the crypt in the monastery. I was thinking about my Uncle Diego. I can’t explain. It was a certain state of mind. I was thinking about the story of the golem, but I wasn’t only thinking about the story. It was like I was thinking about the meaning of it too . . .”

  I wasn’t making any sense, I knew that. Then all at once half-a-dozen thoughts flashed before me:

  Diego telling me about Titivillus for the first time when I accidentally skipped a line in my first transcription.

  Father Joaquin reading his sermon every Sunday from a Bible a tricky demon might have rewritten.

  Colón’s crisp notes on the papers on his desk, written in half-words and knotted sentences that only he could understand.

  How maybe a scribe writing a history about this first voyage around the globe would base it on that jumble of notes.

  And how Titivillus could mess up that story too, so that every historian from now until the end of time would make his apprentices memorize things that weren’t true, things that never really happened.

  And then came the thought that unsettled me the most: that everything I’d ever read could have been invented, a demon’s joke — and that I’d never be able to parse out what was true from what wasn’t.

  I opened my eyes. Before them an invisible quill wrote over the air in impossibly dark ink the word TITIVILLUS. We heard a crash like that of glass or ceramic, and Jinniyah and I jumped backward. A black figure about a foot high burst through the lettering and tumbled to the floor near our feet. It scampered up a nearby barrel and cocked its head at us.

  The thing was all points, black and skinny, with white slits for eyes. It looked like it had been made out of the strokes of a brush, each of which tapered off at the ends. Something about the creature recalled my old priest, Father Joaquín, but before I could figure out what it was, the creature came at us with claws outstretched. The motion was so sudden that I ducked, and Jinniyah poofed back into her true genie form before she could help herself.

  Titivillus landed on the floor by our feet and cackled at us.

  “I did it, I guess,” I said, rising from my crouch. Titivillus bared his claws at Jinni, who squeaked and jumped up in the air. “What are you so scared for? He’s kind of cute.”

  “He looks like you,” Jinniyah said as she circled above me. And maybe she was right. Although my first thought had been of my old priest, I saw my own long face mirrored in the Titivillus’s.

  And like Titivillus, I loved to play with words . . .

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Wait here.”

  “With him?” Jinniyah said, scrunching her nose up at Titivillus.

  “I really don’t think he’s going to hurt you. He looks scary, but he’s just a trickster — he only plays with words. Just make sure he doesn’t go upstairs.”

  I climbed up to the main deck and sneaked into Colón’s empty cabin, where I filched one of the millions of papers covering his bed. I folded it so it could fit into the bag on my belt and sneaked back down to the hold before anyone could notice.

  I jumped off the hold’s ladder and knelt so I could flatten the page I had stolen across the floor. From the top of the barrel he was perching on, Titivillus looked at me inquisitively.

  Jinniyah floated down next to me so she could better see my paper. “What are you doing?”

  “Just watch.” I nodded up at Titivillus. “The story says you ruin scribes’ work. Go on. Show us what you can do.”

  Titivillus skittered down his barrel and over to me and Jinni, his sharp fingers ticking against the floor as he went. On all fours he sniffed at the paper with his pointed face, circling the page like a dog searching for a bone. Finally he jumped up, cackled, and clicked one of his fingers against a phrase on the paper. I knelt closer to the page. The imp was pointing at the words ALMIRANTE COLÓN — Admiral Colón. The imp put his hands against the letters and — yes, I’m saying this right — lifted the words off the paper.

  Titivillus mashed the letters together with his angled claws and spread them across the air as if they were a pack of Baba Yaga’s prophetic cards. With a sharp finger he tapped the tip of his chin. Then he thinned the L in COLÓN into an I and dealt the letters, one at a time, in the air before us. Now Jinniyah and I
could see that ALMIRANTE COLÓN had become ALMIRANTE, ICONO.

  “Admiral, icon,’” I read aloud. “That sounds right. When Colón gets back from Cathay, he’ll definitely be an icon. He’ll be rich — probably famous, too.”

  But Titivillus wasn’t finished yet. He reformed the I into an L, re-mashed together the letters of Colón’s name, and replaced them in the air. Before we knew it ALMIRANTE, ICONO had become COLÓN LA MENTIRA.

  “Colón the lie,” I read to Jinniyah, not sure what to make of it. I looked over at the girl and said, “Want to try one?”

  Jinniyah bent closer to the stolen paper. “Hmm. Why don’t we try . . . this one?” She pointed at the words PEDRO TERREROS. Titivillus cackled voicelessly at the choice and juggled the letters of the name. He spread the letters across the air twice. First they read PRESO DE TERROR — “prisoner of fear.” Next they read, PERDERE ROSTRO.

  “‘I will lose a face’?” I read, not understanding.

  Jinniyah pouted. “But that doesn’t make sense!”

  Titivillus just stuck his tongue out at her.

  “One more,” I said to the imp, and I mulled over the admiral’s paper. “Here, Titivillus. Do this one.”

  I pointed at the words SANTA MARÍA. The imp galloped over on all fours. This time, he studied the letters much more carefully. At last he picked up the letters and spread them across the air with one hand. The imp looked at me somberly, standing under the words MATARÁN ASÍ.

  “What does it mean?” I asked him. “It says, ‘They will kill this way.’ What does it mean? Who are ‘they’?”

  But Titivillus had no voice to answer. He hid behind one of the hold’s barrels and only peeked out at intervals.

  “I guess we’re done,” I said, puzzling over the words in front of me.

  “See? You did it!” Jinniyah said brightly. “Now you know how to summon creatures.”

  I leaned back against the barrel behind me as the words MATARÁN ASÍ faded from view. “I guess I am getting the hang of this Storytelling business. You have to think differently to do it. Deeper, almost . . .” Then I looked up and snapped, “Hey, stop that!”

  While I was busy talking, Titivillus had made his way back to Colón’s paper and was picking up more words from the page and flinging them in random directions. Splotches of ink were staining the hold’s walls, mislabeling barrels and boxes of supplies.

  “Hey, stop!” I ordered Titivillus. I sprinted across the room to catch him before he caused any more damage. He was too fast. Colón’s paper in hand, he scurried between two barrels and receded into the shadows.

  “Would you come back here?” I lay on the floor to find him, only to see a glob of ink flying at my face. My hand shot up to my cheek, and when I removed it again I found my fingers completely covered in black. Laughing his voiceless laugh, Titivillus scurried up a barrel to admire his handiwork from above.

  “Jinni, how do you get rid of this thing?” I begged, wiping the ink off my face with my sleeve.

  Jinniyah was hovering near the ceiling to avoid being soiled with Titivillus’s inky weaponry. “When Amir was done with a creature, he would always say ‘I release you from my service.’”

  I watched with horror as Titivillus hopped up the ladder rungs and pushed his tiny body against the hatch that led out onto the Santa Marías deck. “I release you from my service!” I cried. “Go back where you came from! Don’t you dare open that door!”

  I was relieved to hear Titivillus make a disappointed squeak. Leaving the hatch closed above him he stuck out his tongue, wrapped his hands around his knees, and vanished. Colón’s paper, now mostly blank, dropped back to the hold’s floor by my feet.

  I flopped down next to it and caught my breath. “Remind me never to summon him again,” I said.

  “You never know, Bal,” Jinni said as she floated down beside me. “Maybe when we find Amir, Titivillus will help you fight that evil power the Baba Yaga told us about!”

  I wiped some more ink off my face and frowned down at my blackened hand. “I think I’ll learn some better stories first.”

  Heretical or not, conjuring Titivillus gave me a sense of power, a sense of pride. Let the Malleus Maleficarum come, I thought. If they called me a sinner, so be it. I felt with every muscle in my body that the Almighty had made me to do this. Why would He make me feel that way if he didn’t want me using magic at all?

  Unless it was some kind of test.

  I ignored the thought and spent every free moment sneaking down to the hold to practice my new skills. First I worked on summoning Titivillus over and over, trying each time to summon him more quickly. When I’d finally gotten the hang of it, I moved on to the story of El Cid, the ever-honorable Castilian hero who brought down entire armies of Moors. But when the summoned man saw me and the color of my skin, he pulled out his sword and honorably swung it at my head. Luckily I was able to send him away before he decapitated me, and I shakily vowed that I would never summon him again.

  About a week into our journey I thought I might try something harder, so when Jinni was busy with her chores I sneaked downstairs to summon a real genie. I’d hoped I could wish our way to the Orient or, even better, wish my aunt and uncle back to life. But when the black spirit of fire finally appeared before me, he crossed his huge arms over his chest and shook his head at each of my wishes. An hour of wishing later, I released the good-for-nothing from my service, and I climbed out of the hold miserably disappointed.

  The next day I tried to summon two creatures at the same time, but this was another power that was beyond my ability. Summoning just one story was difficult enough for me, and keeping two stories in my head at once was, for the moment, impossible.

  Then one day after Storytelling I emerged onto the main deck, only to see Admiral Colón glaring at me from up on the aftcastle. You swore you would not use your powers, his glare seemed to say. I pretended not to see him and ran off with my heart pounding. For the rest of the afternoon I hid down in the hold where I re-swore my old oath: I would not use my magic again until we reached the Indies, not until I was far away from Colón and the Malleus spy.

  Being stuck on a ship without being able to use magic soon became mind-numbing, so I decided to spend my days helping Jinniyah and the other servants with their chores. We made stews, checked knots, caught fish off the side of the boat. The deck was in constant need of sweeping; occasionally we took latitude off the stars. It was a tiring life under the brutal autumn sun, but at least it kept my mind off the Malleus Maleficarum.

  And it wasn’t all sunburns and backbreaking labor. Every night at supper, Jinniyah and I would sit with Antonio de Cuellar and his friends, who were quickly becoming our friends too. We’d laugh together over our hardtack and salted cod, listening to Martín Pinzón argue with Colón in the cabin while Diego Salcedo strummed his guitar.

  Later at night we’d sing bawdy songs and tell stories from home, trying to forget how much we missed Spain and its women. The snub-nosed Pérez would regale us with tales of his crazy wife, and Bartolome spoke in a hushed tone about the girl he wrote letters to while in prison. I, of course, was not one to waste an opportunity to spin my own yarns: “So there was this flower girl, Dirty Mary, that I used to know back in Palos . . .”

  The men listened raptly as I described the girl’s increasingly debauched deeds, and before long they were guffawing and hooting at my descriptions of her. “Oh, I wish I had a girl like her back home,” Antonio said with a far-off look in his eyes. He extended his arm around Jinniyah, and led her around the deck in a kind of two-person jig. “I’d dance with that Dirty Mary until we could barely feel our feet. Then I’d take her home and water her flowers, if you know what I mean!”

  Everyone laughed, and Salcedo strummed his guitar louder, and before long most of the crew had joined in with Antonio’s dance. Even the sailors who were on duty were singing along and clapping their hands like castanets. The only one who wouldn’t join in the fun was Pedro Terreros, but I supp
osed he was too sophisticated to enjoy such a low-class dance.

  Nevertheless I jigged over to Colón’s cabin boy and said, “You don’t have to sit alone all the time, you know. Come join us.” The boy glared at me, scooped up his cat, and strutted away.

  Work, prayers, supper, stories. It was the same, day after scorching day. Then finally one night I realized six weeks had passed, and we’d arrive in the Orient any day now. I found a place on the deck next to the already-snoozing Jinniyah and watched the clouds slide through the misty night above us. For the first time in a month and a half, I felt safe. Soon my new friends and I would arrive in the Indies, and the Malleus spy still hadn’t materialized. Colón, I decided, had been mistaken all along. I pulled my hat over my face and nestled back against the ship’s rail, ready to get a good night’s sleep.

  “Looks like a bird to me.”

  “Probably just a seagull.”

  “Seagull? A harpy, more like.”

  I pushed my hat back on my head and opened my eyes. A group of my crew-mates had gathered not far from me, their necks craned up so they could watch the midnight sky.

  “I’ll get Colón,” Antonio’s friend Pérez said. “He’ll want to write it down in that damn log of his.”

  “Forget Colón. Get Sanchez.” Salcedo brushed his fingers lightly across his guitar strings. “He’ll tell you how much it costs and report it back to the queen.”

  As the sailors around him dissolved into laughter, I shielded my eyes and looked up at the sky. But I could see nothing up there — no bird, no harpy. Just clouds and darkness and a hidden moon.

  Suddenly an awful scream pierced the night. That scream. I bolted to my feet.

  The floor rumbled under my shoes as dozens of sailors stampeded across the deck, shouting.

  “What was that noise?”

  “I told you, it’s a seagull!”

  “A seagull! What kind of seagull sounds like that?”

  Juan de la Cosa barged down the stairs of the aftcastle. “What in heaven’s name is going on here? Why aren’t you at your stations?”