We proceeded along the elm-arched street, once completely vaulted by dense foliage, but now showing the ravages of dutch elm disease. I slowed as we came to a large, pale yellow clapboard house with black shutters and white trim.
“That’s where Aunt Bee and Uncle George Proctor used to live.” I said, but Rowan gave no sign she heard me. “Your cousin Ward and his wife live there now.” I tried to think of something that would interest her. “They have a daughter who’s only about a year older than you—and a son in medical school.”
I thought I detected a flicker of interest in the blue eyes half-turned away from me, but her mouth remained set. I stepped on the accelerator again and soon the canopy of elms slid away to reveal a lofty bluff ahead of us, the top momentarily obscured by a towering chimney rock that rose from the slope at the base of the escarpment.
“That’s old Earthmaker’s Tomahawk pointing to the sky,” I explained. “The Indians believe the chimney rock is sacred and—” I paused as the rough outline of a house perched above a limestone outcropping—its great windows flaming in the sunset—hove into view. “There it is! The Phoenix!” I cried.
“It’s funny-looking,” Rowan said. “It sticks out in all directions.”
“It’s a beautiful house!” I protested. “Frank Lloyd Wright designed it to make it look like part of the bluff.”
“Who was he?”
Well, at least my daughter didn’t know everything. “A famous architect who used to live near here. Some people didn’t like him, but Aunt Bo championed him, so when her house burned down he insisted on designing a new one for her. You see, his own home burned several times, so he understood. The two of them had a glorious time planning and arguing, because Aunt Bo could be just as stubborn as he. For instance, she wanted a tower. He told her she’d soon be too old for climbing stairs, which made her all the more determined.
“‘I need a tower,’ she declared, ‘so I can watch over Peacehaven by day and the heavens by night. As for the stairs, I’ll climb them until the day I die.’ And that’s just what she did.”
The Phoenix slid from sight as the road followed a chicken wing pattern up the side of the bluff. I pulled into the driveway of a small white house burrowed into the hillside where a tiny, spare figure with a shock of crew-cut white hair was working away at the woodpile.
“Hi, Darcy!” I called. She dropped her axe and came toward us, wiping her hands on her faded jeans. She was just as I remembered her—the same wrinkled, weather-beaten face, her hair only a little whiter.
“Well, for land’s sakes, if it isn’t the crown princess herself!”
Her grip ground the bones of my hand together. “Good to see you, Darcy,” I said, flexing my hand. “Is Hannah in the house?”
Her mouth drooped. “Hannah died eight years ago. I live here with my husband. He’s inside restoring a melodeon.”
Darcy with a husband? Her relationship with Hannah had been whispered about in town for years. What were the gossips saying now?
“Cariad? What kind of a name is that?” she boomed after I’d introduced my daughters.
“It’s Welsh for ‘love,’” I explained. Naming her Cariad had been my requiem for Owen, her father.
“You wouldn’t be wanting a kitten, would you?”
“How many do you have now?” Darcy and her cats! She hadn’t changed.
“Twenty-nine. I could spare two or three.”
“We’ll have to think about it, Darcy. We’d better get on up to the house now. Dana’s expecting us.”
“I’m not sure a kitten would be good for Cari,” Rowan interjected primly. “They take the breath away from babies.”
Darcy squinted. “You been tellin’ her old wives’ tales, Mitti?”
“No. Where’d you hear that, Rowan?”
Her cobalt eyes widened. “But, Mother, I was sure you—well, maybe it was one of the kids at school. Cats are witch animals, aren’t they?”
“Only on Hallowe’en, dear.”
“What about Midsummer Eve? Don’t witches and cats come out then?”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t even know when Midsummer Eve is,” I confessed.
“It’s tomorrow night,” she said with thirteen-year-old superiority.
I was duly impressed. “How did you know that, darling?”
“Oh, I belonged to a coven at school. We had séances and worked the Ouija board and everything—creepy!”
Child’s play, I told myself—but more than ever I felt my decision to move out here had been right. “If you’re talking about that high-powered club that was always asking for assessments, I’m not sorry you’re out of it. You never mentioned witchcraft.”
“It was a secret. We signed in blood and they put a curse on you if you told. But now I don’t belong anymore, it doesn’t matter.”
“Rowan, I don’t think I like the idea of you fooling around with such things,” I reproved her.
“I thought you didn’t believe in ‘such things.’”
“I don’t, but—”
“Anyway, we weren’t real witches,” she assured me. “They’re bad. The only people we ever cursed were our teachers.”
“That was bad, too,” I said sternly. “Besides, you shouldn’t keep secrets from me.”
“I keep secrets from you all the time, Mother.” She averted her eyes as she shifted the baby in her arms.
Darcy intervened. “I used to belong to a secret spy organization when I was her age,” she said. “And if cats are witches’ familiars, then I know what that makes me—twenty-nine times over!” She chuckled. “I s’pose it’s the witch blood in me.”
Rowan leaned forward, almost crushing Cariad, who whimpered in her sleep. “You have witch blood?”
“Yep! Like most people here. ’Ceptin’ you, Mitti.”
“I hope you won’t hold that against me,” I laughed.
“Never have, have I?” she snorted. “Though there’s some as does, I expect—especially lately. Too bad you’re related only by marriage. You don’t have any Salem blood at all.”
“Witch blood, you mean,” I teased.
“Martyr’s blood,” she corrected me stiffly.
“I was only using your term, Darcy.”
“It’s all right for me to joke about it—I’ve got witch blood from both sides. But it wouldn’t be smart for you to. Understand what I mean?”
I nodded, a ripple of apprehension at the back of my mind.
“You make me wonder if I’ll ever be accepted.”
“Sure you will—if you respect the rules. And I’ll help you, Mitti, all I can. But don’t ask me to come to the party.”
“Party!”
“Well, not really—more of a welcoming by relatives and friends. They’re all coming up to the Phoenix tomorrow night.” She ran her lean, brown-patched hand over the white hairs on her chin. “You know me—never did like to dress up, and I refuse to be part of a snooping bee. There’s a lot I’d like to say, but I guess I’d better not. Come back and meet Marion when you have time.”
“Marion?” Then I remembered. “Your husband? What’s your last name now, Darcy?”
“Zagrodnik.” Her eyes twinkled. “Try to wrap these Anglo-Saxon tongues here around that one! But at least Marion is spelled with an ‘o.’”
“She’s gross!” Rowan observed as we continued up the side of the bluff. “I thought she was a man.”
“Sometimes I think she thinks so, too. But don’t be so critical of the natives, young lady. That won’t make you popular.”
After a moment she asked in a small, stifled voice, “Do we have to live here, Mother?”
“You’ll grow to love it!” I tried to sound convincing. “We’ll go canoeing and we’ll—”
A loud
barking broke into my sentence. Heralding our approach was a majestic golden retriever, which stood at the entrance to the vast turn-around that separated the two houses on the top of the bluff. One was the Phoenix—so newly mine—and the other, a smaller building, was the oldest house in Peacehaven, once Joshua Martin’s home. This, the lawyer had written, Aunt Bo had willed to Dana. Two more dissimilar structures could hardly be found, I reflected, glancing from the free-form, contemporary lines of the Phoenix to the austere brown gables.
“Freya! Quiet!” A tall, statuesque woman with gray braids hanging almost to her waist came limping across the gravel to greet us. This must be Dana, I thought, noting how the sinking sun gilded her high cheekbones and made dark hollows of her eyes.
“Down, Freya!” the woman commanded.
“She’s all right,” I replied, letting the dog sniff my hands. “She’s beautiful! She’s going to have pups, isn’t she?” I straightened up and extended my hand. “You’re Dana! Aunt Bo wrote so much about you.”
“She always wanted us to meet, Mrs. Llewellyn,” she replied formally.
“Please, I want you to call me Mitti,” I said, taking the baby from Rowan so she could climb out. “This is Rowan and the baby is Cariad—Cari for short.” My voice quivered. “I’m not sure I want to go in. I can’t imagine the Phoenix without Aunt Bo.”
“Your aunt will always be here,” she said quietly. “Such a woman never dies. Now, you must come in; I have made supper for you. Let me take the little one.”
I expected Cariad to start screaming, but to my surprise she snuggled up to the woman, and a soft light crept into the blue eyes that were so strange to behold in an Indian face. It seemed a good sign—again, I felt glad of my decision to move here.
Now, I tucked Cari’s plump little arm back under her coverlet and turned to Rowan. Her long silken lashes followed the curve of her cheeks, a shade darker than the gold-red curls sprawled on the pillow. In this moment she was mine—all mine. Impulsively I reached out and stroked the soft contour of her cheek, then quickly drew my hand away as even in her sleep she seemed to shrink from my touch. She turned over on her side, her back to me.
“Daddy…” she breathed.
Chapter Two
Back in my room as I sat down before the marble-topped dressing table, the fragrance of Aunt Bo assailed me—a heavy, woodsy scent of bath powder and cologne. Her toilet articles were still set out: the ornate silver-backed hairbrush, hand mirror and comb, a small cloisonné tray full of hairpins, and a hand painted china hair receiver. Through the hole in the top I could see a wad of fuzzy gray hair combings—the last tangible evidence of Aunt Bo. A board creaked behind me and I stared into the mirror, half expecting to see her there, holding out her acousticon, but there was nothing—only my own tired face superimposed on the room behind me. Still, I couldn’t rid myself of the impression that she was there watching.
I hoped she wouldn’t regret the plan I already had for redecorating this house. In spite of the contemporary architecture, Aunt Bo—Bo for Boadicea—had perversely filled it with Victorian antiques. Those articles that hadn’t been saved when the original house burned, she had faithfully sought to reproduce from antique shops as far away as Milwaukee and Chicago. I heard something rustle on the wallpaper, like silk skirts brushing against it. But if Aunt Bo was there, I welcomed her presence. After that phone call, I was going to need all the support I could get—even from the astral plane. My counterpart in the mirror smiled at my little joke.
Submit! Whoever had called had known my Christian name. My father had been a clergyman, which meant we moved every few years. How I used to dread those first days at a new school while the kids got their mileage out of the new girl with the weird name! How to explain that my mother was fanatic about family genealogy? And that she couldn’t carry her babies full term? The ninth attempt, I was supposed to be the ninth disaster. Mother went into post-partum psychosis and for days walked with her ancestors.
“Submit!” she repeated over and over. “Name her Submit! ‘Submit unto the Lord!’”
I know now that she found the name in one of our family genealogies. My father, thinking to please her, had me christened ‘Submit’ and recorded it before he or anyone else realized I wasn’t going to follow my brothers and sisters into limbo. Mother snapped back to reality the day I was taken out of the incubator and placed in her arms.
“Submit!” she puzzled. “What a peculiar name! Who did that to her?” Then, seeing my father’s face, she realized that he’d done it out of love. She said no more, but did her best to make it up to me by nicknaming me Mitti—and anyone who wants to be my friend had better call me that.
Owen didn’t care though. He had loved to ruffle my feathers by calling me Submit. A Welshman with the Welsh talent for singing, he could also tease so charmingly that one didn’t mind. But no, I told myself as I climbed back into bed. I wouldn’t let the memories invade me—Owen’s meteoric rise as a musical comedy star on Broadway, the inevitable stresses, his resultant addiction to cocaine—psychological, if not physical, but that’s just as bad—the deterioration of our marriage, then death…
I rolled over, trying to find a comfortable spot, but another thought brought me up short: Rowan. She blamed me for Owen’s accident, as if I held the power to project destruction, nor would she let me forget it. Rowan, who was thus named because it rhymed with Owen, and because her hair was the color of the rowan berries that flamed over the hillsides in her father’s native Wales—Rowan was a living reminder of that cold day in Switzerland, when we were told by the police that Owen’s car had been crushed by a van, his body mangled beyond recognition. Rowan had been hysterical. She’d shrieked at the young Swiss officer, who tried to calm her. “You don’t understand! My Daddy’s dead! And Mommy wanted him dead!” Then she broke off into great, wrenching sobs and went limp, dragging his hand with her as she slumped to the ground.
“Rowan, darling!” I knelt beside her and tried to take her in my arms. The Swiss had relinquished his hold and now she flailed at me with her fists.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!”
“Call a doctor, bitte!” I pleaded. “Rowan—sweetheart! Mommy loved Daddy,” I cried, the tears streaming down my face. “You just don’t understand—oh my God, Rowan, how can I make you understand?”
She’d gone suddenly still and cold and white, her eyes glittering. “I don’t believe you,” she breathed. “I hate you, Mother! I hate you!”
* * * *
The phone jangled again, bringing me back to the present. I stared at it, knowing that if the ringing kept up sheer curiosity would force me to answer…
“Submit—Submit—move away—move away—” the caller chanted in her syrupy voice. “We don’t want you here…
Silence now, but she was still there, listening.
“Whoever you are, why don’t you tell it to my face?” I exclaimed angrily, then bit my lip. That was exactly what she wanted—to know she had reached me. I slammed down the receiver, then picked it up again, intending to dial the operator to see what could be done about such calls—but the line was still engaged, only her breathing echoing along the wires. I spun the dial, glorying in the painful static I must be making, but whoever it was hung on until I set the phone back down on the hook.
The ensuing quiet was almost suffocating. Years in New York had made me more attuned to noise than to this stillness. Now, my ears began to pick up little sounds I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise—soft scratchings on the wallpaper, the death rattle of the refrigerator as it concluded its cycle, the warble of an owl abruptly suspended, a soft bleating and the dull clink of a bell rapped on wood—was there a goat in the neighborhood?—and, threading through it all, a low humming sound—almost like a soft chanting.
I settled down into the hostile bed again and sat propped up against the pillows.
There had been something familiar about that voice, but my acquaintanceship was limited, as I’d only spent my summers here. I didn’t really belong—not in the sense the others did. My grandfather had moved to Peacehaven when he bought the town’s general store, and he’d made things right by marrying the granddaughter of Joshua Martin. Aunt Bo and Aunt Bee had been the offspring of that marriage, but my mother came from his second wife, who was not from Peacehaven. Nor was my father, so I was totally an outsider. Aunt Bo, who never married, inherited the bulk of her father’s property, including the Martin holdings—and now in turn had willed most of it to me. The windfall had been welcome, for Owen had left very little. But resentment was natural. Darcy had tagged it right when she had called me the crown princess.
Could it have been Charity Carrier on the phone? Aunt Bee’s oldest child and first in line to inherit, she’d always seemed formidable to me, tiny and doll-like though she was. Tattletale and voice of conscience she’d been to her young brothers, Ward and Gareth. But anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night? Not Charity!
As for Alison, Ward’s wife—out of the question!
There was Darcy, who was distantly related, but she couldn’t whisper if she tried. Besides, Aunt Bo had left her some money and clear title to the house in which she’d formerly been a tenant.
Another face came to mind—Iris. But she’d left town years ago. Iris Faulkner—I could still see her. Peace-haven’s femme fatale. She and her father, the judge, had lived in the big house that straddled a rock islet and the tip of a tiny peninsula jutting out from the town. Some said Iris’ mother drowned in the miniature strait that ran through the basement and that her body floated on down to the Mississippi. Others maintained she’d eloped with a traveling salesman. There was no grave for her in the Peacehaven cemetery.
The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users Page 8