by Jim Butcher
I still held my father’s journal in my left hand, but my right covered my mouth to keep myself from screaming. My sane mind knew it to be only a trick of the light, of the dark. It was the result of bad dreams and just having put my only living relative into the ground. But the primitive brain urged me to cry out with all my ancestors, “Cauld iron!” and run away in terror.
And still the horrid creatures grew until now they towered over me, pushing me back against the windmill, their shadowy fingers grabbing at both ends of my scarf.
“Who are you? What are you?” I mouthed, as the breath was forced from me. Then they pulled and pulled the scarf until they’d choked me into unconsciousness.
~
When I awoke, I was tied to a windmill vane, my hands bound high above me, the ropes too tight and well-knotted for any escape.
“Who are you?” I whispered aloud this time, my voice sounding froglike, raspy, hoarse. “What are you?” Though I feared I knew. “What do you want of me? Why are you here?”
In concert, their voices wailed back. “A wind! A wind!”
And then in horror all that Father had written—about the hands and feet and sex organs of the corpse being cut off and attached to the dead cat—bore down upon me. Were they about to dig poor father’s corpse up? Was I to be the offering? Were we to be combined in some sort of desecration too disgusting to be named? I began to shudder within my bonds, both hot and cold. For a moment I couldn’t breathe again, as if they were tugging on the scarf once more.
Then suddenly, finding some latent courage, I stood tall and screamed at them, “I’m not dead yet!” Not like my father whom they’d frightened into his grave.
They crowded around me, shadow folk with wide white eyes, laughing. “A wind! A wind!”
I kicked out at the closest one, caught my foot in its black cape, but connected with nothing more solid than air. Still, that kick forced them back for a moment.
“Get away from me!” I screamed. But screaming only made my throat ache, for I’d been badly choked just moments earlier. I began to cough and it was as if a nail were being driven through my temples with each spasm.
The shadows crowded forward again, their fingers little breezes running over my face and hair, down my neck, touching my breasts.
I took a deep breath for another scream, another kick. But before I could deliver either, I heard a cry.
“Aroint, witches!”
Suddenly I distinguished the sound of running feet. Straining to see down the dark corridor that was the path to Pittenweem, I leaned against the cords that bound me. It was a voice I did and did not recognize.
The shadow folk turned as one and flowed along the path, hands before them as if they were blindly seeking the interrupter.
“Aroint, I say!”
Now I knew the voice. It was Mrs. Marr, in full cry. But her curse seemed little help and I feared that she, too, would soon be trussed up by my side.
But then, from the east, along the path nearer town, there came another call.
“Janet! Janet!” That voice I recognized at once.
“Alec…” I said between coughs.
The shadows turned from Mrs. Marr and flowed back, surrounding Alec, but he held something up in his hand. A bit of a gleam from a crossbar. His fisherman’s knife.
The shadows fell away from him in confusion.
“Cauld iron!” he cried at them. “Cauld iron!”
So they turned to go back again towards Mrs. Marr, but she reached into her large handbag and pulled out her knitting needles. Holding them before her in the sign of a cross, she echoed Alec’s cry. “Cauld iron.” And then she added, her voice rising as she spoke, “Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reigns.”
I recognized it as part of a psalm, one of the many she’d presumably memorized as a child, but I could not have said which.
Then the two of them advanced on the witches, coming from east and west, forcing the awful crew to shrink down, as if melting, into dark puddocks once again.
Step by careful step, Alec and Mrs. Marr herded the knot of toads off the path and over the cliff’s edge.
Suddenly the clouds parted and a brilliant half moon shone down on us, its glare as strong as the lighthouse on Anster’s pier. I watched as the entire knot of toads slid down the embankment, some falling onto the rocks and some into the water below.
Only when the last puddock was gone, did Alec turn to me. Holding the knife in his teeth, he reached above my head to my bound hands and began to untie the first knot.
A wind started to shake the vanes and for a second I was lifted off my feet as the mill tried to grind, though it had not done so for a century.
“Stop!” Mrs. Marr’s voice held a note of desperation.
Alec turned. “Would ye leave her tied, woman? What if those shades come back again. I told ye what the witches had done before. It was all in the his journals.”
“No, Alec,” I cried, hating myself for trusting the old ways, but changed beyond caring. “They’re elfknots. Don’t untie them. Don’t!” I shrank away from his touch.
“Aye,” Mrs. Marr said, coming over and laying light fingers on Alec’s arm. “The lass is still of St Monans though she talks like a Sassanach.” She laughed. “It’s no the drink and the carousing that brings the wind. That’s just for fun. Nor the corpse and the cat. That’s just for show. My man told me. It’s the knots, he says.”
“The knot of toads?” Alec asked hoarsely.
The wind was still blowing and it took Alec’s hard arms around me to anchor me fast or I would have gone right around, spinning with the vanes.
Mrs. Marr came close till they were eye to eye. “The knots in the rope, lad,” she said. “One brings a wind, two bring a gale, and the third…” She shook her head. “Ye dinna want to know about the third.”
“But—” Alec began.
“Och, but me know buts, my lad. Cut between,” Mrs. Marr said. “Just dinna untie them or King George’s yacht at South Queensferry will go down in a squall, with the king and queen aboard, and we’ll all be to blame.”
He nodded and slashed the ropes with his knife, between the knots, freeing my hands. Then he lifted me down. I tried to take it all in: his arms, his breath on my cheek, the smell of him so close. I tried to understand what had happened here in the gloaming. I tried until I started to sob and he began stroking my hair, whispering, “There, lass, it’s over. It’s over.”
“Not until we’ve had some tea and burned those journals,” Mrs. Marr said. “I told ye we should have done it before.”
“And I told ye,” he retorted, “that they are invaluable to historians.”
“Burn them,” I croaked, knowing at last that the invitation in Latin they contained was what had called the witches back. Knowing that my speaking the words aloud had brought them to our house again. Knowing that the witches were Father’s “visitants” who had, in the end, frightened him to death. “Burn them. No historian worth his salt would touch them.”
Alec laughed bitterly. “I would.” He set me on my feet and walked away down the path toward town.
“Now ye’ve done it,” Mrs. Marr told me. “Ye never were a lass to watch what ye say. Ye’ve injured his pride and broken his heart.”
“But…” We were walking back along the path, her hand on my arm, leading me on. The wind had died and the sky was alert with stars. “But he’s not an historian.”
“Ye foolish lass, yon lad’s nae fisherman, for all he dresses like one. He’s a lecturer in history at the University, in St Andrews,” she said. “And the two of ye the glory of this village. Yer father and his father always talking about the pair of ye. Hoping to see ye married one day, when pride didna keep the two of ye apart. Scheming they were.”
I could hardly take this in. Drawing my arm from her, I looked to see if she was making a joke. Though in all the years I’d known her, I’d never heard h
er laugh.
She glared ahead at the darkened path. “Yer father kept yer room the way it was when ye were a child, though I tried to make him see the foolishness of it. He said that someday yer own child would be glad of it.”
“My father—”
“But then he went all queer in the head after Alec’s father died. I think he believed that by uncovering all he could about the old witches, he might help Alec in his research. To bring ye together. though what he really fetched was too terrible to contemplate.”
“Which do you think came first?” I asked slowly. “Father’s summoning the witches, or the shadows sensing an opportunity?”
She gave a bob of her head to show she was thinking, then said at last, “Dinna mess with witches and weather, my man says…”
“Your man?” She’d said it before, but I thought she’d meant her dead husband. “Weren’t you… I mean, I thought you were in love with my father.”
She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to me. The half moon lit her face. “Yer father?” She stopped, considered, then began again. “Yer father had a heart only for two women in his life, yer mother and ye, Janet, though he had a hard time showing it.
And…” she laughed, “he was no a bonnie man.”
I thought of him lying in his bed, his great prow of a nose dominating his face. No, he was not a bonnie man.
“Och, lass, I had promised yer mother on her deathbed to take care of him, and how could I go back on such a promise? I didna feel free to marry as long as he remained alive. Now my Pittenweem man and I have set a date, and it will be soon. We’ve wasted enough time already.”
I had been wrong, so wrong, and in so many ways I could hardly comprehend them all. And didn’t I understand about wasted time. But at least I could make one thing right again.
“I’ll go after Alec, I’ll…”
Mrs. Marr clapped her hands. “Then run, lass, run like the wind.”
And untying the knot around my own pride, I ran.
THE ADVENTURES OF LIGHTNING MERRIEMOUSE-JONES
~
by Nancy & Belle Holder
Editor’s Note: Just as a sumptuous banquet is topped off with a light dessert, we finish this literary feast with a whimsical tale that is a cross between Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Richard Peck’s Secrets at Sea.
To begin at the beginning:
That would be instructive, but rather dull; and so we will tell you, Gentle Reader, that the intrepid Miss Merriemouse-Jones was born in 1880, a wee pup to parents who had no idea that she was destined for greatness. Protective and loving, they encouraged her to find her happiness in the environs of home—running the squeaky wheel in the nursery cage, gnawing upon whatever might sharpen her pearlescent teeth, and wrinkling her tiny pink nose most adorably when vexed.
During her girlhood, Lightning was seldom vexed. She lived agreeably in her parents’ well-appointed and fashionable abode, a hole in the wall located in the chamber of the human daughter of the house, one Maria Louisa Summerfield, whose mother was a tempestuous Spanish painter of some repute, and whose father owned a bank.
However, our story has little to do with the Summerfields, save that they shared living accommodations with the mice, and that it was Maria Louisa who named our heroine. Maria Louisa insisted that the tiny creature should be called Lightning because she was born during a terrible thunderstorm, although Mr. Summerfield argued for Snow. But Maria Louisa declared that she had already named the new kitten Snow, which she had most certainly not done, but such was the nature of the little girl. For since she had not thought to name the infant mouseling Snow, no one else should be able to do so, either.
However, such were the Summerfields that they were content to allow mice to live in their home untrapped and untroubled, and for the parents of Snow to blithely ignore them, as the cats were so coddled and cosseted they would never dream of chasing after anything, much less their fur-clad neighbors.
Lightning she was, then, and Lightning was indeed as white as snow and together with her comely nose and delicate whiskers, she grew to become such a lovely young mousie maiden that suitors scrabbled from thicket and village to the Merriemouse-Jones residence in hopes of winning her hand.
Upon learning that she was expected to accept one of these suitors in marriage, Lightning became quite vexed indeed. But no amount of adorable nose-wrinkling could deter her parents’ insistence that she choose the best of the lot, marry him, and bear his pups.
“It is the way of things, darling,” Lightning’s mother explained. “Your father and I long to see you settled, so that we will know you’re taken care of in our dotage.”
Settled was not a word Lightning appreciated. Taken care of were three more. The suitors who came to call upon her, bearing bits of cheese, corn, and pastry, were none to her liking. One was a mousy gray, one allowed as how he lived among the tracings of a coal mine, and one was actually a bow-legged rat.
However, we have promised not to dwell upon the circumstances of Lightning’s life prior to the adventure we wish to recount; let us move forward, then, with the comment that it is well-documented that when Maria Louisa eloped with her second cousin, Juan Eldorado Adelante-Paz, Lightning hopped into the pocket of Miss Summerfield’s traveling coat, and so was present during the untimely sinking of their frigate, El Queso.
It is also known that the errant lovers, Juan and Maria Louisa, were rescued by some Basques, and decamped to Catalonia. But the fate of Lightning was unknown for nearly a year, and her parents sorely grieved the loss of their enchanting and much-beloved daughter.
That is, until she managed to smuggle out the following communiqué:
Eeeek! Eeek! Eeekeekeek!
Which, for those not schooled in Received Standard Mouselish, translates:
31 October
Castle Dracurat, Transylvania
Au secours!
I am in great danger. Through circuitous means too complex to describe, I am imprisoned within the walls of the gloomy and foreboding castle of that dread rodent, Count Vlad Dracurat. I fear his plans for me will prove my undoing! I have pressed silver into the hairless palm of a young Gypsy named Marco, who promises to carry this letter to the priest of the nearby village. Alas, Mama! Oh, my poor, darling Papa! I fear you shall not see your Lightning in this life or the next!
At first determined to travel to Castle Dracurat himself, Mr. Merriemouse-Jones was forced by poor health to remain in London. His wife desired to go also, but at length acceded to her husband’s entreaties not to undertake the journey: he could not bear losing both feminine rodentia he loved. Thereupon he hired a private detective who came highly recommended by highly placed persons who banked with him.
The detective’s name was Quincey Dormouse. He was an American from Texas, quite courageous and resourceful; and Mr. Merriemouse-Jones directed that he travel posthaste to Castle Dracurat in the Catpathian Mountains. If their young miss was indeed there, he was to rescue her by any means possible from the paws of the fiendish nobleman.
However, upon arriving in the region, Mr. Dormouse reported back that the castle had been quitted, and locked up. There was no one there, and no evidence left behind to affirm that Lightning had ever been there, either.
However, shortly thereafter, the following page of a waterlogged ship’s long was published in The London Whisker:
3 November
They are coffins. Would that the demon had brought extras for my crew, my poor men who have been nightly drained of their vigor, and have all died! I and I alone remain; I write this with some haste as I hear him coming for me now, he and his unholy mate, she who is a ghastly white possessed of such teeth as would tear this ship apart, had she but the opportunity and leisure to do so. Thus far I have thwarted them both, but now I fear they shall prove my undoing.
Hark! They come, swift and silent as cats!
Onze Vader in de hemel, uw naam worde geheiligd…
As is well known, Capt. Van Rattraap was discovered a
live and unhurt in the wreckage of the Fontina, on the beachhead in the village of Hedgehogs-upon-Trivets, home of the Experimental Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Upon examination, he was determined by the excellent physicians at the asylum to be hopelessly devoid of his wits—that is to say, quite squirrelly. He was admitted into the asylum, and there remains to this day. The bodies of his crew were never found, although their widows and orphans pressed unceasingly for another inquiry to be opened.
However, though not widely known, there was one other survivor, whose presence was not reported by the excellent journalists of the day, in order that her delicate sensibilities might be protected from the glare of public scrutiny. She was discovered in a state of strange delirium, and was transported as well to the Asylum, not as an inmate, but as the private guest of the head of the institution, Sir Frederick Sewerat. Her parents were sent for immediately, and the Merriemouse-Joneses were soon stationed at her bedside. Her mother particularly remarked upon her pallor, for although the fur of the young lady was a snowy white, now her tiny nose, delicate tail, and lacy paws were ivory-complected as well.
Imagine the pitiable condition of Madame Merriemouse-Jones, to have pined so long for the return of her child, only to be confronted with the converse! She demanded vengeance upon the head of the person whom she heaped full blame: Count Dracurat himself!
Though there was no proof that it was of the Count whom Captain van Rattraap spoke, Lightning’s mother produced the letter they had received from her, which, taken together with the captain’s log, had convinced her that her daughter was grievously misused by Count Dracurat—who she claimed had escaped the wreck of the Fontina and was now at large on the village of Hedgehogs-upon-Trivets.
“A monster walks among us!” she concluded.
There were several asides made amongst the constabulary about the hysterical nature of females—none within the earshot of Madame—but she was as intelligent as she was worried, and so quickly deduced that her anxiety was not shared by those who were in a position to do anything about it.