The Witch of the Hills

by J M Fraser

  He followed over beside her. “About marrying a sorcerer?”

  “He’s not a bad man, Brian.” She held up her left hand. A hand with no rings on her fingers. Probably the closest she could come to giving a straight answer. “I chose a more difficult path.”

  Brian wrapped an arm around her waist. “My mom told me the score. You’re stuck in the World of Mortal Dreams or wobbling in and out of it or something. I’ve been busting my butt to figure out how to rescue you.”

  “Rescue me?”

  “Yeah. You know, coins in the jukebox, getting the record to play and play.”

  A slew of emotions paraded across Rebecca’s face. She pursed her lips together and gazed into his eyes long and hard. “You came all the way to Nebraska to rescue me and keep the music going?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What made you think you could possibly find me?”

  “Everything was falling into place.” Brian fought through his pre-Salem, hazy memory and went over the chain of events leading him to come looking for her—the Taj Mahal project with his dad, the family dinner, his mom giving him a hall pass to Nebraska. But wait. Before that. Or during… “I had a vision in my parents’ living room. You called me from inside your mirror.”

  Wide eyes now. “I didn’t give you a vision.”

  “Then who did? Abigail?”

  “Not likely. Sending you to Salem works in our favor. You’re learning things about my past. Abigail would never help us.”

  They stared at each other, then out the window together. The moon and ten thousand stars cast enough dim light to reveal shadowy images of the hills. Rebecca took his hand and squeezed. “You had a vision of me in trouble and went looking for my cabin.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “A white knight would do that.”

  “A confused one. Something doesn’t fit. You already knew me when my car broke down in August, didn’t you?”

  She nodded. “We’d met in Salem, as you now know.”

  “But I wouldn’t have gone to Salem if I hadn’t met you here, first.”

  “It’s a paradox, you mean.”

  “Yeah.” He needed a moment. Weirdness of this magnitude made his ears buzz. Nothing on earth could have looped him and Rebecca together through three centuries. He gazed at the sky and tried to single out the magical star.

  “You’ve got a silly smile on your face, Brian.”

  “I guess I’m buying the prophecy angle now. Do you think Stoddard is in on it? He came up to me outside my parents’ place and hit me up with a riddle.”

  “A what?”

  “When does a cat become like a man?”

  The astonishment in Rebecca’s expression topped the charts. “He asked that?”

  “I’m guessing you know the answer.”

  “It’s a big one, Brian, and I wasn’t expecting his assistance providing clues.”

  “Hey, I need all the help I can get. Your enlightening rod hasn’t been much use with this.”

  “My what?” Astonishment squared. Cubed. He’d hit the flabbergast trifecta. Rebecca seemed ready to keel over.

  The floor threatened to open, spilling them into a pit of snakes, each one a riddle neither of them would know how to solve. “I’m talking about the ribbon you tied around your book of poems.”

  She shook her head. “That ribbon is a common, ordinary thing.”

  “But my mom says it has powers.”

  “Show it to me.”

  Brian went to an end table where he’d left the book, pulled the ribbon out, and brought it over.

  The ribbon fizzed in Rebecca’s hand like fresh soda. “Oh!” She nearly fumbled it to the floor. When she caught it, the crazy thing briefly transformed into a thin green rod, like it had in his mom’s den, but just for a second. She pressed the ribbon into his hand. “Someone must have switched ribbons.”

  “You mean after you left the cabin that night in August?”

  “Or later. When did you first notice anything unusual about it?”

  “About a week later at my aunt’s condo, I guess.” The idea somebody might have broken into the place prickled the hair on the back of his neck.

  But a smile eased its way back onto Rebecca’s face. “An enlightening rod isn’t bestowed lightly. You see? You are special. You’re prophesied.”

  “An old prophesy, huh?”

  She nodded.

  Time to get at the main mystery of the day. “Older than you, Rebecca?”

  She turned to the window. Stared into the darkness.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t run screaming into the night if you say you’re ten thousand years old.”

  “My white knight.” Rebecca fogged the windowpane and made a row of dots with her fingertip. “Suppose you cross a brook by using stepping stones along the way.”

  “Okay.”

  She drew an X off to the side. “Something catches your eye, and you wade a mile upstream to look at it.

  She traced another X back at the dots. “Later, you return to finish your short journey across the water. How far have you traveled?”

  “So you’re saying you waded three hundred years upstream?”

  “Nobody ever ages when in the dream world. Please don’t say I’m old.” Those pale eyes of hers had gone misty.

  “You’re only sixteen, Rebecca. It’s cool.”

  A smile crossed her lips again. “Thank you.”

  “I just don’t know why the math is so goofy. Way back in Salem, you were fourteen.”

  “I get older when I’m in this cabin.”

  “So what are you saying, you’ve only left the dream world a few days each year?”

  He let the question fade into the night. Silence usually meant yes with her. He’d learned another secret. “Same story with Stoddard?”

  She turned to him, did the let me weigh whether I can answer stare, then shook her head. “Some sorcerers live longer than redwood trees.”

  “And you say he’s cool?”

  “Not as cool as you, Brian.”

  A shooting star traced a white line across the sky. They watched it together, holding hands.

  Chapter 29

  Rebecca’s pendulum clock chimed the midnight hour with a dozen hearty bongs. She left the window where she’d been standing and checked the gingerbread cookies.

  Golden brown and giving off the most delightful Christmas aroma.

  She pulled on her cooking mittens, grabbed the tray out of the hearth, and soon nibbled away at a single cookie…only one…or maybe just two. But these were for Brian.

  The third went down in a couple bites.

  Enough! She carried the plate into the bedroom.

  Brian snored away.

  Rebecca held the plate near his nose. Giggled.

  Nothing but snores.

  He had dark shadows beneath his eyes. Who wouldn’t be worn out after dreaming his way three centuries into the past?

  Fine. She’d let him sleep.

  Meanwhile, the cookies, with their bulging candy eyes, extra sugar, and little smiley faces, begged to be eaten.

  Just one more. She took her time with it, making it last.

  Oh, maybe another.

  No. She hurried the survivors to the kitchen table and turned her back on them.

  But you love us, they whispered.

  She needed a diversion.

  Anything.

  A book!

  She went to the bookshelf in her parlor and gazed at a tired collection of novels she’d read over and over again, except for one—Henry Stoddard’s copy of Wuthering Heights. She pulled the book out, basked in its old, leathery scent, and— “Oh!”

  A scribbled-upon piece of paper poked out from within the pages.

  How had she missed this when shelving the book the day he left it behind?

  She couldn’t have missed it. Henry must have slipped the note in the book recently.

  Or Abigail?

  She clenched her fists. A bolted door wouldn’t do any
good against either one of them.

  Rebecca slid the paper out of the book and found it to be a hand-drawn map with notes scribbled in Henry’s script. His series of arrows and prompts traced a convoluted course through the World of Mortal dreams, ending at a graveyard labeled Sacred Heart Cemetery, Kenosha, Wisconsin. He’d marked a plot near the back of the cemetery with an X.

  Buried treasure? An important grave? The pot of gold at the end of a rainbow? Her heart raced. And he’d made the hunt so easy for her! While she couldn’t afford to spend one of her few remaining coins to visit a graveyard in the waking world, this map provided the obvious solution. She could travel to a region within the World of Mortal Dreams, where every location on earth was replicated.

  Still…cemeteries tended to be unlucky places when visited alone. Dark. Threatening. The air thick with foreboding.

  She headed to the bedroom.

  Brian slept with a smile on his lips. His chest slowly rose and fell. He’d wrapped his arms around a pillow as if it were a favorite pet.

  Rebecca tried her best to ignore a twinge of guilt over disturbing the dreams of anyone enjoying so peaceful a rest. White knights must act when called upon.

  She took his hand, closed her eyes, and eased her mind into the pool of calming images needed for crossing from one realm into the other. A dove, puffy clouds, blue sky, an eagle, a crescent moon, a waterfall.

  The floor vibrated.

  A smile, butterflies, cupcakes.

  The walls hummed.

  Fireflies.

  The cabin spun like a top, careened against a barrier, bounced twice, wobbled, and righted itself.

  “Open your eyes, Brian.”

  He did…and smiled at her. He glanced around. “What are we doing here?”

  “I’m not entirely sure.” She led him through the wrought-iron gateway of a country cemetery. They walked past row upon tidy row of headstones, the snow squeaking beneath their feet as it does on the coldest days.

  A wooden fence blocked their way, but she climbed over a low section and beckoned for Brian to follow. Together, they stepped into a neglected section of the graveyard. The wind rustled through a cluster of trees, scattering dead leaves across the frozen ground and up against some of the cracked stones. She wrapped her arms around herself.

  If he was as cold, he hid it well. Always the white knight.

  Time had weathered many of the markers smooth. Others displayed no more than a few legible words of their epitaphs. Any indication visitors bothered to brave the cold and approach these desolate plots had been swept away by wind and snow, except in one case where a bouquet of roses provided a burst of color beside a gray stone.

  Rebecca bent to a flower so deeply purple it could have passed for black. I have a name for this rose, Stoddard had said weeks earlier. Rebecca.

  “Hello again, little friend.” She pulled the flower out of the clay vase holding it. The fragrance intoxicated her, just as it had outside Henry’s castle, and the prick of a thorn against her thumb brought no more pain than the kiss of a hummingbird.

  Brian brushed snow from the gravestone. “Sarah Chance. But I can’t make out the dates?”

  The name took a long moment to register—Henry’s Salem-era wife. “Oh my. He’s been visiting her grave all this time?”

  “Who was she?”

  Rebecca studied the name of an old friend from a long-ago time. A heroine. “She was a princess in someone else’s fairy tale.”

  A dog’s distant bark cut through the crisp air.

  What now, confront Henry and ask why he discreetly invited her to intrude on his homage to the centuries-ago love of his life? No. Sorcerers lived for their riddles. He’d left a book behind. He’d later hidden a note in it. This was not a game of direct confrontation.

  “We should hide.” She grabbed Brian’s hand and ran with him to a nearby clump of trees, glancing behind when they reached the sanctuary and erasing their footprints with a wave of her arm. A thrill tickled her tummy. Rebecca lived for riddles, too.

  The incessant barking grew louder until Stoddard brought his dog around a hill and approached the grave.

  Brian shifted in front of her like the bravest of knights. “What’s he doing here, Rebecca?”

  “Shh. I love you,” she whispered. She’d make him a nice breakfast in the morning for protecting her in the face of perceived danger. She’d coddle him.

  Stoddard and his panting dog fogged the icy air with their breath.

  Rebecca watched and waited.

  Soon, the sorcerer motioned to the roses at the gravestone. They burst into flames, burned quickly, and disappeared, leaving a puff of green smoke in their wake. He pulled a fresh bouquet from within his coat and placed it in the vase.

  He turned and fixed his gaze in their direction, staring right at them for a moment, before shifting ninety degrees to the left and pointing toward a low hill in the distance.

  But Rebecca couldn’t see anything of interest that way.

  Henry led his dog away. Message delivered, or so it would seem.

  Brian stepped out of their hiding place.

  “Not yet.” She tugged his hand and brought him back into the trees.

  A minute or two passed.

  The neigh of a horse cut through the icy silence, and a black filly appeared at the top of the rise. The horse trotted to the grave, stopped, and kicked backward, shattering the vase of flowers. The filly snorted angry steam out of its nostrils as it turned its attention to the gravestone, perhaps considering whether a harder kick might shatter that, as well.

  Dark fog appeared at the rise and poured downhill, painting everything in its path an inky black.

  The void.

  Rebecca shrank deeper into the trees, pulling Brian along.

  Soon, the horse and grave disappeared into the shadow. A moment later, the fog lifted, revealing a girl, not a filly.

  “That’s Abigail,” Brian hissed.

  “Yes.” And now Rebecca knew what the “imp” truly was. “She’s a phooka.”

  “A what?”

  “They’re related to goblins in Irish lore,” she whispered, “only meaner. I didn’t know these shapeshifters even existed!”

  The black fog washed over Abigail again, replacing her with a beautiful, winged faerie with long, golden hair flowing down her shoulders.

  Rebecca caught her breath. Was Abigail a half-breed? Faeries had control over the elements. And over the void? But faeries were supposed to be benevolent, were they not?

  She shuddered. “The combination of a phooka and a dark faerie could have frightening power.”

  “A dark what?” Brian’s grip on Rebecca’s hand tightened.

  In the blink of an eye, faerie became filly. The horse lifted its front legs, whinnied, and galloped away.

  Rebecca’s heart fluttered despite what she’d seen. Henry Stoddard’s motives had always been questionable at best. Yet he’d earlier given Brian a clue for solving one of her riddles, and now… “So, he’s an ally after all.”

  “Who?”

  “Henry. He just revealed the nature of the creature we’re supposed to defeat.”

  Brian walked over to the gravestone. He touched his shoe against a shard of broken vase. Then he bent to a flower, picked it up, and rolled the stem in his fingers. “Why doesn’t he beat her himself?”

  “He can’t.”

  “Or won’t?”

  “Can’t. Sorcerers may be stronger than witches, and they certainly enjoy longer lives, but their powers are no different. We need more than the mere illusions Henry or I might cast to stop a dream-killing void and this…monster.”

  Rebecca’s thoughts went back to Salem and all the torment a seemingly innocent imp had caused once already. A phooka-faerie toying with the void could do worse by ten thousandfold.

  A cold wind chilled her to the bone.

  Chapter 30

  “What art thou gazing at?”

  “’Tis a looking glass!”

 
The voices pulled Brian out of the cemetery and spilled him onto a lumpy mattress. He bolted out of bed, but utter disorientation stopped him cold. He had no idea where he’d awakened, let alone when.

  He squinted into the harsh sunlight pouring through the window. Don’t be Salem on the other side. Don’t be Salem. Don’t be…

  Whew.

  No woods.

  No cabins.

  No gossipy women by the well.

  The bare hills were definitely Nebraskan, and even better, they’d been painted white by an overnight snowstorm.

  High above, an airplane’s contrail nailed the setting as modern day.

  Couldn’t improve on this if he tried, right?

  Oh yeah, baby, maybe he could. The mouth-watering aroma of bacon wafted in from the kitchen. She’d made breakfast.

  “Rebecca?”

  No answer. Only the flat echo of his voice.

  She must have left already. She never stayed for long.

  Bacon or not, her absence turned the air stale. All of a sudden, crawling back into bed had far greater appeal than a single step toward an obviously empty kitchen.

  “’Tis vanity to gaze upon it.”

  Brian caught his breath.

  Her voice. Had to be. But the cabin felt empty. “Rebecca?”

  One of her games? He scrambled into his clothes and went looking for her hiding place. Under the bed, in the closet, in the living area…all deserted. In the kitchen? Nothing. Not even breakfast. But he’d heard her voice. He’d smelled the food.

  Brian stopped and listened hard.

  Nope.

  Back in the living area and time for a reality check. He reached inside his pocket but found the coin to be cold as ice. So he was awake, not dreaming.

  Or am I?

  He pulled the thing out.

  Gold.

  So I’m asleep?

  Last time Saint Brigit got twitchy, he dream-walked into the early colonies. Yet he had his feet planted in the right time and place now—twenty-first-century Nebraska, as far as he could tell.

  Imagined voices or not.

  Bacon, toast, eggs…the aroma of a hot breakfast returned. Brian headed into the kitchen and found the food waiting on a plate for him. Utensils, a napkin, a glass of juice. Right there on a table that had been empty two minutes earlier.