The Witch of the Hills

by J M Fraser

  Rebecca detected a hint of roses in the musty air. Prolonged absence from the waking world had sharpened her senses. And why not indulge them? She returned to the window. Those pink and blue wildflowers out there would add just the right dash of color to her parlor. She’d find a vase and—

  The air turned sharply colder.

  Abigail.

  Not the indulgence she had in mind.

  “Hello, Rebecca.” The imp’s voice came from behind, cutting into the silence like nails on a chalkboard. “Shouldn’t you be hanging yourself by now?”

  Mean. Always so mean. “Come to visit me, have you?”

  “I’ve come to tell you I met Brian on the road.”

  “You bothered Brian?” Rebecca spun around to deal yet again with a scraggly-haired nuisance, now shaped to look…sixteen? Same as Rebecca, not counting time spent in places where a girl didn’t age. Why the same?

  To break through Brian’s defenses and torture him with pranks, obviously.

  The imp flashed the menacing grin of a most unfriendly girl. Older in appearance now, but no less a worry than the twelve-year-old version who’d started the troubles in Salem.

  Yet Abigail had inadvertently provided confirmation just now. Brian was coming.

  “You look happy to see me, Rebecca. I like that smile.”

  “Please. If you liked anything about me, we’d have found enough common ground to be friends by now.”

  A chilly breeze provided confirmation. The atmosphere had always been a slave to Abigail’s moods. “I discouraged Brian from meeting you,” she said.

  “What?” Restraint is best. Restraint is best. Restraint is— Rebecca went for Abigail’s hair. Thick, curly, easy to grab and pull. She closed her hand around…nothing.

  Had Abigail slipped away? The icy air lingered. “Henry will never love you, Abigail.”

  Heavy silence met her comment. The stifling quiet choked her with guilt. She shouldn’t have been unkind. “I’m sorry for saying that. Perhaps he’ll come around.”

  Abigail reappeared, hands on hips, any hurt hidden behind scolding eyes. “What he ever saw in you is beyond me, Rebecca. An Irish girl living in Salem? You were ridiculous.”

  “Half-Irish. I passed for English stock, just like anyone else.”

  “With red hair?”

  Rebecca turned her back on the imp. Shadows out the window, stretching to midafternoon length, sent queasy anticipation fluttering through her stomach. Her champion would soon arrive. Wouldn’t he? “Abigail, you delight in pranks, not heartbreak, don’t you?”

  “Do you mean, did I really chase Brian away?”

  Rebecca held her breath.

  The air warmed. The imp must have left…without providing an answer.

  Brian would arrive. Such a bright, sunshiny day could never bring sadness.

  Rebecca headed out the door and nearly toppled over Henry Stoddard. “Oh!” The object of Abigail’s unrequited infatuation sat on the step with an open book in his lap.

  The sorcerer came disguised as an innocent farmer, dressed in overalls with a straw hat covering his dark hair. He might as well have owned the place the way he showed up unannounced and didn’t even bother knocking. His Great Dane panted beside him without showing any inkling he and his master might belong somewhere else, anywhere but at her doorstep.

  First Abigail’s storm clouds and now this misguided genius for trickery. “Behold the rain man.”

  He turned the page without looking up at her. “That’s a relatively modern term, Rebecca.”

  “I try my best to keep up.”

  “Ah, but you jumble the long forgotten with the recently coined.” Henry set the book aside and smiled warmly enough to melt an iceberg. “One could go so far as to call your manner of speaking charming.”

  Rebecca could never fall for his charms, any more than a cat might love a dog. “Your friend came calling just now.”

  “Pest, you mean.”

  Rebecca couldn’t agree more, but hostility toward Abigail had never solved anything. “Henry, do you think if we were extra-special nice to her, she might move on?”

  The sorcerer stood and bowed, sweeping his arm with a flourish. “Try that on me some time.”

  “Be nice to you? We have a history, and not a good one.”

  He settled back down on the step. “Yet here I am, calling on you.”

  “May I ask why? Wherever you go, Abigail follows. And she torments me every chance she gets.”

  Henry took up his book again and paged through it, as if searching for a suitable response. “I’ve arrived to help you on this momentous day.”

  “The prophecy doesn’t mention a sorcerer providing assistance.” Go it alone. Not only her mother but any witch would be mouthing those words at the moment.

  More page flipping, a pause, and Stoddard grinned at his dog. “Hear that, Shorty? A great prophet forgot to add my name to the words she carved into stone. What’s this world coming to?” But when he returned his gaze to Rebecca, he turned somber, without a hint of ridicule in his expression. “The days of following some old hag’s misguided message to the letter are long gone, dear girl.”

  “Please don’t mock my religion, Henry.”

  “Perish the thought, young lady. I’m merely an old fool arriving on your doorstep to provide some assistance. Prophecies never come with user’s manuals.”

  She knew that all too well. She’d already started improvising, bending time to string acquaintances together—Brian, Hal—but hopefully not fitting square pegs into round holes. Still, a lifetime of warnings from her mother and other witches to never trust sorcerers died hard. And Henry had tripped her up in the past. “This prophecy is clear. You are not in it.”

  “Foretelling or not, what makes you think a single white knight remains in the world, Rebecca? Have you looked around lately?”

  “My ability to travel is somewhat limited, but I know the world hasn’t come this far to end in darkness.”

  “Then do something about your worries. They’re spilling onto your sleeves.”

  No, they weren’t. She had no worries. Rebecca pulled her hands apart. She hadn’t been wringing them.

  Henry returned to his book, turned another page, moved his lips as he read. He seemed to forget her, until, “What are your plans for your visitor?”

  “This and that.”

  He shot a sharp glance at her. “Give me a hint.”

  They stared at each other forever and a day. Rebecca tried to hold out, but Henry wore her down. “I’ll court him,” she said.

  “The old way?”

  “Where I come from, courting wasn’t the old way.”

  The sorcerer guffawed. “It is in the twenty-first century! Riddles, half-truths, misdirection, and peek-a-boo. That’s about the size of it, eh? It’s a wonder any of you old-school witches could keep a young man from running for the hills halfway through the process.”

  Rebecca shifted a hand to her mouth but stopped herself before chewing yet another nail to the quick. She had prophecy on her side, and the happy endings of every romance novel she’d ever read. She’d court Brian, he’d follow her clues and learn his destiny, and everything would fall into place. Imp or no imp. Sorcerer or no sorcerer. She bit into the nail.

  “Come along, Shorty.” Henry got off the step and headed away, the dog at his heels. But he paused and glanced over his shoulder before he’d reached the nearest hill. “Do chase those worries out the kitchen window,” he called. “Things will go best if you seem somewhat in control when you meet the boy.”

  The sorcerer and his dog disappeared. Good riddance.

  He’d left his novel on the stair. Wuthering Heights. The old book had more dog-eared pages than clean ones, and it carried the curl-on-the-couch scent of rainy days. A treasure. For her? “I’ll never understand you,” she whispered.

  She brought the book into the cabin and found a spot for it on her shelf. “The best collections are built from forgotten odds and ends, no
matter the source, Simon.” She scooped the cat into her arms and carried him to the kitchen.

  Simon purred all the way but meowed in annoyance when she set him down to crank the window open.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Don’t any of your worries need chasing?”

  The cat hunkered down on his haunches. He seemed content enough.

  “Very well, then, I have plenty for the both of us.” She cupped her hands and held them six inches from her face, as was the custom for speaking one’s worries and casting them away.

  “What if Hal grows confused by the modern-day world and points Brian in the wrong direction?

  “And if he does arrive…no, not if. When Brian arrives, Abigail will torment us with her pranks. She could ruin everything.”

  She hesitated, but she couldn’t leave unspoken the most haunting worry of all. “Will Brian love me? He touched my heart when we met so long ago, but what if…maybe…oh, suppose I’m wrong about my role in this.” She shuddered.

  Those were enough worries. Try chasing too many, and they come back all the quicker. She blew on her hands until her troubles floated out the window toward the hills, little bubbles glittering like sparklers, then popping as loud as firecrackers until they all disappeared. She headed out of the cabin.

  She walked through the hills with concerns still heavy on her mind. Abigail, misinterpreted prophecies, a hanging. Then, five furlongs out, an old piece of torn fabric caught in a bush reminded her. If what she planned left a mark on her neck, she’d need to hide it.

  She ran back to fetch her scarf and then resumed her journey along the old footpath with as brisk a pace as she could manage without getting a stitch in her side. But when she reached the tree, her twenty-furlong marker, a little blue car already approached on the county road.

  Brian! Her heart pounded. She was about to miss him by half a mile. If she didn’t do something, he’d drive right past the place she hoped they’d meet. She needed to improvise and keep him occupied until she got there.

  Rebecca focused on the horizon and found a spot of gray where one puffy cloud cast its shadow on another in an otherwise clear blue sky. She stared at that point until it stretched into a line, then a rectangle, wider and wider, casting its pall toward the approaching car. Shadows and illusions. What more fitting way to burst into Brian’s life? With luck, her magic would distract him for a while.

  So much for fun and games. She shifted her gaze to the oak tree until a thick limb grew a rope. Strands of twine twisted together, stretching downward until her creation stopped ten feet off the ground. A noose shaped itself.

  She swallowed. Straying beyond twenty furlongs required a great sacrifice. A ritual hanging as part of a bargain struck long ago. Having done this once before and come out unscathed made the act no less dreadful.

  She’d choke and writhe.

  She’d experience terrible visions.

  Surely Abigail hid somewhere watching.

  And laughing.

  Rebecca levitated, floating high enough to fit the noose around her neck. She dropped to spend a symbolic life.

  She gagged.

  Blackness.

  She floated.

  Rebecca opened her eyes and beheld unfamiliar trappings, deep inside the World of Mortal Dreams. No longer constrained by waking boundaries, she ignored the rope and flew high above the landscape to get her bearings.

  Down below, time had lurched backward. Long before such a thing as a blue car. Or a paved road. Judging by the pristine landscape, she might have drifted all the way to the pioneering days when she and her mum were just getting started in Nebraska. Had she fallen into one of her mum’s old dreams?

  Could be. Dreams live on for centuries. Well beyond the era the dreamer might have walked the earth.

  But, in this case, a dark void extinguished half of the hilly landscape.

  She swallowed a sob. Her mum’s dreams were disintegrating. The World of Mortal Dreams had begun a slow decay into a checkerboard of good places and bad, wonder and emptiness, just as prophesied. The fantasyland visited at night by every man, woman, and child might eventually disappear altogether.

  And then what? Nothing good.

  The rope returned and tightened around her neck. She choked but fought to keep her eyes open as the scene beneath her changed.

  A group of people dressed in tatters staggered about like zombies, with outstretched arms and vacant stares. No, not zombies. Refugees. A sprawling city, modern, futuristic, cast angry flames into a midnight sky.

  She wasn’t in Nebraska anymore. This city was on a coast.

  And it was on fire. Almost consumed.

  Precognition?

  Or a warning of what might be?

  Having read A Christmas Carol, she latched onto the hope the future had some malleability. Like a baking dough yet to be shaped.

  She’d do everything in her powers to help Brian find his destiny. The waking world hinged on his ability to stop the void from swallowing its secret cousin. Otherwise, without the nourishment provided by the World of Mortal Dreams, everyone’s spirit would shrivel and die.

  Enough.

  The rope evaporated, and her feet touched the ground.

  Rebecca fastened the scarf to hide her throat. The lynching self-illusion had been so intense she’d surely marked her own skin.

  With the stench of smoke clinging to her, she hurried toward the road. How would she ever convince Brian to join her quest? Riddles, illusions, and dreams could only take a girl so far, but the Witches Code was explicit about how courting should be conducted.

  She should have cast more worries out the window.

  Chapter 3

  A thin, dark line looming on the horizon hinted at an approaching storm. Brian rounded a curve and lost sight of it. Ghost towns. That’s what he wanted to find, not rain. He crested a rise, came around again, and…the line exploded into an elongated rectangle, blotting out miles of hilly prairie. He hit the brakes.

  The shadow closed the distance to his car with ridiculous speed. Massive weather front? Dust storm? End of days?

  Get real. He’d been watching too many disaster movies. This had to be a solar eclipse. How cool was that?

  Car met shadow. The headlights kicked on, and the dashboard brightened to nighttime mode.

  Brian pulled to the shoulder for a better look. A burst of returning sunlight blinded him as he rolled to a stop. He hurried outside.

  The air had cooled enough for a jacket. From an eclipse? The line where darkness swallowed daylight shrank to the south, fast. Weirdly fast. He whipped his phone out of his pocket, took a couple quick pictures for Facebook, and hit send.

  Nothing happened. The phone didn’t show a single signal bar. And why should it? Nobody would bother to plant a cell tower sixty miles north of the interstate in the loneliest region of an underpopulated state.

  A scary thought emerged, initially as a prickle in the back of his neck before making itself heard in his head. Shouldn’t solar eclipses move from west to east? This one had raced from north to south.

  While a small cosmic ripple such as a blue dandelion or a Friday-night movie without a waiting line might have edged him closer for a better look, this massive, sun-dimming crack in reality had him turning to his car. For all he knew, he might have wandered into an army weapons-testing field.

  Empty hills.

  Sand.

  Weird, racing shadows.

  It all added up to hit the road, Jack.

  He should have listened to the hitchhiker in Wyoming. She warned him to ignore the damn billboard.

  He got back in the car and turned the ignition key. The engine sputtered, belched, shook, and stopped. Three grinding attempts at restarting it failed.

  And still no cell-phone signal.

  This couldn’t be happening. Any help was at least a half-marathon away. He’d passed the tiny town of Angora over a dozen miles back. Alliance lay ahead, but not much closer, according to the road signs. In b
etween, at ground zero for wrong-way eclipses and stalled Kias, irrigated fields had given way to scrubby hills in all directions. A railroad track and an endless line of wind-beaten telephone poles ran along the east side of the road. Barren, sandy mounds lurked to the west. Closer in, on either side, barbed-wire fencing separated the pavement from the wilderness.

  He eased sweaty palms off the steering wheel and tried to think.

  First, the government didn’t test its weapons along backcountry roads. So check that threat off the list.

  And wrong-way shadows? Maybe when the sun and moon were positioned a certain way, eclipses moved in odd directions.

  He had a problem with his car to deal with, nothing more. So his tongue needed to stop buzzing like he’d licked the hot points of a D-cell battery. Panic wouldn’t get him anywhere.

  As for the car, the tank couldn’t have gone empty. He’d just filled up in Sidney an hour ago. Some kind of mechanical problem had to be the culprit.

  He got out and opened the hood. A burst of shimmering heat bathed his face. He turned away, waited for it to dissipate, came back, poked around in there, and knocked a hose loose. Why not make things worse than they already are? He reconnected it, hopefully to the right pipe, and closed the hood before he could do any more damage.

  Nothing to do but wait for help. If not from some random driver, then a patrol car.

  A crow cawed. Gnats swarmed. The sun beat down on his brains. He wiped sweat from his forehead.

  Not a single car or truck came along. Meanwhile, another shadow, this one his own, stretched to cartoonish proportions across the pavement. Unless he managed to stop someone, he’d be stuck there after dark. All night, maybe?

  Without a tent.

  Or food.

  Wi-Fi.

  TV.

  Forget the basic necessities, what sort of critters wandered these hills? Snakes? Wolves? Wild boars?

  His heart thumped in his ears.

  He went back into the car, shifted it to neutral, got back out, and went behind to shove it onto the shoulder. Otherwise somebody would come around the curve and take him out, sooner or later.

  “Mmmfff.” The car wouldn’t budge.

  Kias were light. He’d moved this one before with no problem.