The Witch of the Hills

by J M Fraser

  Brian grinned up at the phooka. “Okay, Abigail, she wins.”

  Abigail stared at him with the look of confusion one might show when digging into the source code of a computer program only to find all zeroes and no ones. As if he’d spoken Greek to her.

  Or Ogham.

  “She wins?” Her voice roared. The ground shook.

  Rebecca gasped.

  Brian gripped her hand tighter and tried to summon the calmest tone he’d ever used. He needed to project great confidence here. “Gabriella wins.”

  Abigail balled her hands into giant fists. “Gabriella doesn’t win. I do!”

  Lightning shot through the sky.

  Brian rose to one knee. Looked her in the eye. “Yeah, well, here’s the thing, Abigail. Destroying every dream in the world was her idea. Not yours. I suppose if you had put your own spin on it, then maybe—”

  “Spin?” The roar of Abigail’s voice spilled him onto his back.

  Brian sat up and took a deep breath. He turned to Rebecca. Drew strength from her misty eyes. Then he locked in on Abigail again. “Yeah. For example, suppose the void swallowed only the good dreams. That could have been your spin. You’d leave nothing but nightmares.”

  Rebecca gasped. “No, Brian. What are you doing?”

  “I’m coaching her.” He stood, took her hand again, and pulled her up beside him while waiting for the phooka to process what he’d said.

  “Only nightmares?” Abigail looked away for the longest time, thinking, pondering. “That would be your spin, wouldn’t it? Maybe I’ll do the opposite.”

  “The opposite? I’m not sure that would work. How about instead—”

  “Silence!” The phooka’s angry roar blew across Brian like a hurricane.

  He held on to Rebecca’s hand to keep her from being swept away.

  “We’ll do this my way.” Abigail faced the void, raised her arms, and twirled them clockwise.

  In an instant, the void turned from black to white. Its freight-train blare calmed to the rippling waters of a creek.

  A swarm of butterflies flew out of it, scattering in all directions.

  And Abigail…

  Disappeared.

  “Yes!” Brian punched the air where she’d been standing. “I tricked her!”

  Rebecca looked around. Worry clouded her face. “This doesn’t feel—”

  A blare drowned her voice, like from a hundred air horns going off all at once.

  Brian swung around and took in the sight of a second massive void. Blazing shards of lightning spat out the sides, igniting patches of grass, exploding bushes into flames, and incinerating even the earth itself—melting the ground into pits of black emptiness wherever they struck.

  The monstrous form of Abigail reappeared, arms spread, menace twisting her features into an ugly snarl. “You took me for a fool!”

  Brian’s vision blurred. A ringing in his ears muted the phooka’s angry voice.

  The ribbon fell from his hand.

  No! He had to be strong here.

  He reached down to grab it and—

  The ribbon began to grow.

  To stretch.

  To reshape itself into…

  A wand?

  Rebecca mouthed words he couldn’t hear. She lifted the wand and repeated whatever it was that she said.

  A violent, hot gust of wind shoved Brian backward. Away from the wand. Away from Rebecca…

  Whose insistent lips moved again, and this time he got it. Hand in hand.

  But her hand might as well have been a thousand miles away. As Brian struggled to approach her, the wind fought back, scorching his face and neck with blazing heat. He gasped but didn’t quit, inching ever forward against the broiling maelstrom until he got close enough to grab Rebecca’s hand where she gripped the wand.

  Their fingers intertwined. Tingly warmth spread through his hand and up his arm.

  A beam of light shot out of the wand toward a point on the ground midway between them and the void. An old woman materialized at that spot—tall, white-robed, wizened face. She stretched her arms toward the twirling hurricane of darkness and heat, her gray hair streaming back, exactly like an image he’d seen…where?

  Blue rays of light shot out of the woman’s fingers, and the void bent inward where struck by them. A Star Wars moment for sure.

  “It’s her!” Rebecca fell to her knees.

  “Her?”

  “Aislinn.”

  Wow. Brian recognized her from Rebecca’s coin. That crazy enlightening rod was more than anyone thought. He and Rebecca were gripping an actual portal to the centuries-old mystic who foresaw this mess.

  Obi Wan Aislinn?

  The white-haired prophet continued sending rays of light into the void, but she shifted her focus to Rebecca. Something passed between them. An unspoken message Rebecca acknowledged with a misty-eyed nod of the head.

  Next, the ancient witch looked into Brian’s eyes.

  Although he didn’t hear a message in his head, his arms reacted as if they did, lifting and pointing at the void, his right arm bringing Rebecca’s left up by the hand. In a moment, rays of power came out of him, too, tingling their way from his elbows to his fingertips until they exploded into green bursts of light.

  Brian wavered for a moment, and the rays shooting out of his hands diminished.

  The void bulged in his direction.

  “No way!” He refocused and sent it bending backward.

  So this is what a sorcerer can do? The electricity of this moment, this awakening of awesome power, sent him staggering backward a step. He’d inherited whatever this was from a long line of witches, from Henry Stoddard, and ultimately, from this old woman who’d found a way to travel over a dozen centuries forward in time.

  And together, he and Rebecca were living out a prophecy.

  The void diminished and Abigail shrank as well, from a towering monster to something less menacing, then smaller, and smaller still. “You can’t!” She stomped a foot like the harmless, whiney little nothing she’d always been.

  In an instant, the void, Aislinn, and Abigail disappeared as if they’d never existed.

  The extraordinary calm of a sunshiny day swooped in to fill the gap. No churning tornado of evil, no lightning, no rays shooting out of his fingertips…just the chirping of birds and the ripple of a faint breeze across unsinged grass.

  Dizziness forced Brian down to one knee, but nothing could diminish the thrill still racing his heart into overdrive. “I think we won this time!”

  Rebecca just stared at the tranquil scene, no doubt completely mystified by his sudden show of force.

  Brian had to explain, but he hardly understood a fraction of this. Where to start? Henry. Aislinn. His ancestors. “Rebecca, I…uh.”

  But she turned and limped away before he could get out another word.

  Brian hurried after her.

  Rebecca didn’t slow, or even turn to look at him until he finally caught up and sat with her on a log by a stream.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Everything.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  He shifted closer. Moved his hand to her chin. “But we defeated the void, didn’t we?”

  She shrugged. “You heard Aislinn. Good always attracts evil.”

  “I didn’t hear anything.” Yet Brian had seen the look passing from Aislinn to Rebecca, and he certainly wasn’t a stranger to mind melds these days. “What did she say?”

  “Good always attracts evil. If Abigail and the void don’t return, something worse will come along, sooner or later. And I’m to watch for it during the two long centuries stretching out before me.”

  Rebecca’s sad, weary eyes burst Brian’s bubble. He’d wanted to be her champion from the moment he first met her. Now he’d done this awesome thing…somehow…and yet…

  Rebecca looked down at her shoes. “I’ve got two hundred years left to serve, Brian.”

  “But the coven who sentenced you…they’
re all dead by now, aren’t they?”

  “That doesn’t release a pure witch from her vows of obedience.” Rebecca’s voice cracked. “I can only visit you one more time, Brian, and then I’ll be gone.”

  “No,” he said. “Let’s talk this through. I’ve got this power now. I’m sure we can—”

  Poof. Brian stood on the sidewalk outside his aunt’s condo again. He’d lost the thread of the dream he’d entered.

  And he’d lost Rebecca.

  Forever?

  Chapter 47

  Rebecca traveled back in time to her earliest days in Nebraska. Thanks to Brian, her simple cabin and its occupant were no longer in danger, no longer threatened, a dream to linger forever. But her heart ached nonetheless. She’d soon lose him.

  She settled onto the top step of the porch, beside her mother. Neither said a word.

  Her mother set her knitting aside and gazed out at the hills. The black hooped dress and white bonnet she wore stirred centuries-old memories—of banishment and exile, angry witches, scheming phookas, a cabin in a strange new land, and a quest to find a fearless young man who, in the seventeenth-century era of this dream, hadn’t been born yet. Brian hadn’t yet found this cabin or listened to the “Vagrant” poem or kissed Rebecca for the very first time.

  Rebecca broke into sobs.

  Her mother settled a comforting hand over hers, still saying nothing.

  Her mother always put up a brave front, but the woman’s weary eyes revealed the pain of exile from their home in Salem. They’d both made great sacrifices. Voluntary sacrifices. Neither had been forced to follow the wishes of their coven.

  But pure witches always obeyed.

  “I only have one visit remaining, Mum.”

  “Make it a joyful one,” her mother said. “Call on him Christmas Eve.”

  Chapter 48

  Brian brushed snow from Sarah Chance’s gravestone and sat on it to wait as long as the waiting might take. He’d learned so many secrets during these past few months—about ancestors and prophecies, phookas and sorcerers. But the question of how to keep Rebecca in his waking life came with no ready answers.

  So…maybe a sorcerer would have an elusive one. Somebody who actually knew how to use his powers without the aid of an enlightening rod and an ancient, time-traveling witch.

  He tightened his jacket and let the slow minutes pass, puffing clouds of warm breath into cold winter air.

  A horse neighed somewhere behind him. Brian swung around and found himself face-to-face with Henry Stoddard.

  The sorcerer chuckled. “Don’t tell me a savior is afraid of farm animals. Abigail is long gone, son.”

  Henry Stoddard could have passed for an undertaker. The sorcerer wore a bowler on his dark head of hair and a black cape over his shoulders. He stood as tall as ever, and intimidation would have been child’s play for him. All he had to do was frown.

  But he extended a hand instead. “Call me Henry.”

  Brian met the sorcerer’s probing gaze and tried to match his crushing handshake. “I’m Brian.”

  “Tracked me down, did you?”

  “I figured I’d give this cemetery a whirl.”

  Stoddard nodded toward the grave. “You picked a special moment. My Sarah passed away on this date, back in 1756.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Rumor has it that almost everyone from that era is dead by now. Rebecca’s mother passed away the same day as Sarah, you know.”

  Brian caught his breath. He pictured the genealogy chart Kara had shown him. The lines connecting the boxes shimmered off the computer screen to stretch through time and space, Henry with him, and now, the sorcerer’s late wife with Rebecca’s mother. “That must have been a hard day for both of you.”

  “Tough on Rebecca. She was left all alone.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t want her to be alone anymore.”

  The sorcerer gazed up at the clear blue sky. A V formation of geese passed close enough to run its shadow across the grave. “That girl has always chosen a solitary path. She never wanted help from anyone until you came along.”

  “But you helped anyway, didn’t you, Henry? What if I’d ignored your welcome-to-Sidney billboard and gassed up at the next exit?”

  Still staring at the sky, the sorcerer lifted an arm. Clouds appeared out of nowhere and gathered into a swirl. Just as they began dipping toward the ground, he dropped his arm.

  The storm evaporated in an instant, as if it had never been there.

  Brian tried to hold steady against a wave of dizziness.

  “You can’t imagine the illusions I can conjure,” the sorcerer said. “I would have reshaped Nebraska into a funnel and poured you out the spout in a northerly direction if I had to.”

  “Great. Can you point Rebecca in my direction now?”

  “No.” Henry scuffed an arrow across the snow with his shoe, leading away from the grave, toward the field where a harmless horse still grazed. “You’re the one who needs pointing, boy. You’ve got my blood in you, don’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  “Then you’ll live for centuries. Wait her out.”

  “Two hundred years?” Brian’s head throbbed. “Come on. I need your help now. Throw me a bone.”

  “A bone?”

  “Anything. How about another riddle?”

  “Oh, I do love those.” Henry looked past Brian for a long moment. He stroked his chin. “Okay, here’s a good one. Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Let’s keep in touch now that you know where to find me.”

  A cloud of snow lifted from the ground, circling the sorcerer and masking him from view. The snow thinned and settled onto the grave.

  Henry Stoddard had disappeared.

  A shiny speck rose up, catching and reflecting sunlight in brief flashes. One burst. Then another. One more and…

  Bingo.

  Brian’s heart pounded. He knew how to keep Rebecca in his life. The answer had been within his reach from the moment he first met her.

  Chapter 49

  Early afternoon on Christmas Eve, sparkly things suddenly glittered out the window like windblown confetti. Brian grabbed his jacket and hurried onto his parents’ front porch. He shaded his eyes against the glare of the snow, looking right…then left.

  Nothing.

  But he’d seen dozens of them.

  Hundreds.

  Portals.

  He headed down the stairs, glanced up and down the sidewalk, checked behind the house. A swinging motion from the neighboring yard caught his eye—a rope and noose, clinging to the limb of a sturdy oak tree. He swallowed.

  “Brian.”

  He turned.

  And there she stood.

  Rebecca would have been the perfect image for one of those Currier and Ives paintings his mom liked hanging on the walls for the holidays. Light snow dusted her hair, her red cape, and the tumble of colorful Christmas presents balanced in her arms.

  The sudden sight of her was so overwhelming he couldn’t even choke out her name. He hugged her instead. Long and hard. The perfect moment to freeze time. But the world kept spinning, and when they stepped apart, a tear trickled down her cheek.

  He took her hand. Led her to the porch out front. Sat on the steps with her. “Weren’t you holding presents just before we hugged?”

  Rebecca managed a giggle despite the sadness in her eyes. “Maybe they’re hiding under your tree.”

  “Next to the stuff we bought you?”

  “You bought something for me? Do tell!”

  “I’ve got something better to tell you. We’ll be seeing a lot more of each other.”

  “No, we won’t.” Her lower lip trembled.

  He smiled. Squeezed her hand. “Here’s the thing. If I can’t rescue you, there’s another answer.”

  “Such as?” Her voice had fallen to a whisper.

  Snow began falling in perfect little flakes, float
ing in the breeze, tumbling, rising again, and turning silver. He snatched at one and closed his hand around it. “I know what this is now.”

  Rebecca’s eyes widened. “Tell me what you know.”

  “My sister told me these things follow witches and sorcerers like pets. I have a little of both in me, so they’re mine, right?”

  Rebecca gave him a hard look. He could almost picture the gears turning in her head…and jamming. “You do have a witch’s blood in your veins. I’ll grant you that.”

  Brian savored the moment. After all of the bombshells dropped on him, he finally had one of his own to deliver. “Henry Stoddard married Sarah Chance in 1693 after what I can only imagine was a deeply twisted courtship for the poor guy, judging from my personal experience with witches.”

  She poked his arm. “Why are we exploring colonial history, funny man?”

  “Because they had a daughter named Agnes, who married somebody named Tom Johnson. They had two girls, one of whom later had a kid named Alice. And Alice had a girl named Beth. See where this is heading?”

  Rebecca stared out at the street for a long moment. “You’re describing a matriarchal line. No surprise, since Sarah was a witch.”

  “Yeah, we’re talking three centuries of falling dominoes. Girl, girl, girl, girl, girl, and more girls…until… Bingo! A guy named Brian comes along. Henry Stoddard is my ancestor, Rebecca. I’m part witch, part sorcerer.”

  She didn’t speak. Just stared with an open mouth he absolutely had to kiss.

  So he did. He closed his eyes, met her lips, and flew to the moon. The g-forces almost buckled his knees. An epic takeoff, two perfect orbits, and a fiery reentry.

  She mumbled something over the roar in his ears as they glided back onto the tarmac.

  “Hmm?”

  Rebecca eased her mouth away but kept her hands nestled warmly against his cheeks. “Brian, please don’t tell me I’m kissing a Stoddard.”

  “Get used to it.”

  They went at it again, and the entire world became Rebecca for a heaven-bound, time-warping cruise, until the sound of a car pulling into the driveway jarred him back to earth once more. Doors opened and closed. His family piled out of their SUV.