Half-Witch

by John Schoffstall

  Toadwipe’s voice, farther away: “Hey, lookit all these sharp things. We could have fun torturing sinners. Who do you want to torture? I got some ideas.”

  The door opened wide. “Toadwipe is sobering up already and getting rowdy,” Strix said. “We need to ditch him. There you are! What’s taking you so . . . Oh. Goblins.”

  The goblin constable’s eyes popped open, rolled around, then focused on the girls.

  Strix put her hands on her hips. “Sure are a lot of goblins. Really big goblins. You know, I think we should be going.”

  “Sally toot!” the goblin constable exclaimed. “Dumpty winkle snool?” He jumped to his feet, his chair clattering over behind him. He yelled, “Ap! Jeek! Zoop!” All around, goblins began to stir and open their eyes. One by one, they tumbled off one another and pulled themselves to their feet.

  “I was just, um, borrowing,” Lizbet began. The ring of keys was suddenly very heavy in her hand. She tossed the keys onto the table with a clatter. “It’s okay, it looks like our problem’s solved, so we’ll just be taking our leave, you can all get back to whatever you were doing, like sleeping . . .” She edged backwards toward the door.

  “Nabby! Stabby! SPLAT!” the goblin constable yelled, pointing at Lizbet. However the words translated, their meaning was clear. The awakening goblins smacked their lips and flexed their stubby fingers. They got to their feet and waddled in Lizbet’s direction. They snapped their jaws and growled deep in their throats.

  Lizbet reached the doorway. She braced her feet wide and thrust out the knife, point first in front of her. “Strix!” she called over her shoulder. “Run! I’ll hold them off!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Strix said over Lizbet’s shoulder. “You can’t fight a roomful of goblins.” She took Lizbet’s free hand in hers. “I’ll knit us into the shadows.”

  Strix faded away, but only halfway. Unlike the time in Abalia-Under-the-Hill, Strix didn’t disappear completely. She remained a transparent, ghostly figure. “Strix,” Lizbet said urgently, “I can still see you. Sort of. It’s not working.”

  “That’s impossible,” Strix said. “I’m doing it right.” Strix pulled her backward, down the hall. The goblins waddled after them.

  Somewhere high above, a bell began clanging thunderously.

  In the front room, Toadwipe was taking practice swings with a cat-o’-nine-tails. “Salutations!” he said. Toadwipe could see them? Toadwipe’s eyes lighted on the troop of goblins pushing down the hallway. “Uh-oh. Company coming. Good luck, best regards, look me up sometime.” He dropped his cat-o’-nine-tails and leaped into the air, coming down in a swan dive. Lizbet braced herself for the crash as he hit the floor. Instead, the wooden boards cracked and split noisily, a dark hole yawned open, and Toadwipe vanished into it. The floorboards snapped shut behind him.

  “Off to Hell,” Strix whispered in Lizbet’s ear. “Good riddance.”

  The goblins were almost on top of them. “Grappy spool!” one yelled almost in Lizbet’s face.

  Lizbet shrank away. She said, “Strix, I think he can see us.”

  “He can’t see us. I don’t think . . .”

  The goblin’s fist hit the side of Lizbet’s head and knocked her off her feet.

  As the goblin bent to seize her, Strix’s boot caught its immense round stomach. It stumbled backward, gasping for air.

  Dazed, Lizbet clambered to her feet. The knife had fallen out of her hand. “They can see us!” she gasped to Strix.

  “Just run, then!” Strix yelled.

  Together they piled through the door and down the steps. Goblins waddled behind.

  Out of the doors of every building on the square came goblins. Big, man-sized goblins, bigger than Lizbet or Strix. Above, the bell continued to clang. Hundreds, thousands of goblins must have been snoozing in the cool darkness of their back rooms during the day. Now they were awake. And angry.

  Lizbet scanned the square. They were surrounded by goblins. Scores of goblins continued to pour from the buildings. They ringed the square, and the ring was closing. “What do we do?” she yelled to Strix.

  “Run!” Strix pulled her toward the center of the square.

  “Where? There’s nowhere to go!”

  “I don’t . . . Wait. I know. Down!”

  Down?

  Strix stopped at a sewer grate near the square’s center. She crouched and grabbed the bars. “Quick! Help me lift it!”

  Down a sewer?

  But that’s where goblins lived. Or were supposed to. Lizbet’s years of nightmares about falling down into a goblin sewer came back to her in a rush. Terror filled her.

  “I can’t . . . ,” she whispered. “I just can’t.”

  “There’s nowhere else to go,” Strix yelled. “Help me lift the grate!”

  Falling, tumbling helplessly, through uncounted goblins . . .

  “No . . . !” Lizbet wailed.

  “It can’t be any worse than what’s up here!”

  Couldn’t it? But wouldn’t a sewer in a goblin town have even worse goblins in it? The goblins of goblins.

  “Noooooo!”

  “Lizbet! Please!”

  Lizbet stared at Strix. “Please help me,” Strix pleaded. “Please?”

  It may have been the hardest thing Lizbet had ever done: to kneel, grab the sewer grate in her fists, and nod to Strix. Her teeth chattered. When Strix yelled, “One! Two! Three!” Lizbet’s part in heaving up the grate was more moral than physical, but she still yanked as hard as her trembling muscles would allow.

  The sewer grate squealed as metal ground against stone. It tilted up, and fell backward onto the cobbles with a clang. Strix shrieked. An open shaft gaped, its bottom lost in darkness. Metal rungs led downward.

  Lizbet gulped. She had not overcome her fear. She had given in to it, and in despair, accepted whatever was to come. “Strix—”

  Strix knelt by the sewer, her mismatched eyes wide, her mouth open in horror. She gripped her left shoulder with her right fist. “What’s wrong?” Lizbet said.

  Then she saw: Strix’s left arm was gone.

  From just below the shoulder, there was nothing but torn bits of paper and dangling string.

  “My arm,” Strix gasped. “It . . . b-broke. It just came off.”

  The arm lay beneath the overturned grate, the fingers still gripping the metal bars.

  “Strix,” Lizbet said, trying to still her chattering teeth and numb lips, “Strix, we have to go. Down. Now.” The first of the goblins from the constable barracks was almost upon them, waddling so fast it threatened to lose its balance. It waved a spiked hammer with its paw.

  “My arm. I need my arm.”

  “Strix, we can’t wait—”

  “My arm!”

  Strix wouldn’t budge without her arm.

  From all directions, the goblins were closing in.

  Straining and panting, Lizbet dug her fingers beneath the grate. Using her utmost strength, she levered it up enough to grab Strix’s arm from beneath it with her other hand, before she let it drop again.

  “Now go down the sewer! I’ll follow!”

  The look on Strix’s face broke Lizbet’s heart. But there was no time to wait, to talk, to console her. Lizbet pushed Strix toward the edge. “Go down! Please. Now!”

  Rung by rung, Strix clambered down into darkness. As soon as Strix was below the edge, Lizbet followed.

  The goblin with the hammer waddled up and peered over the edge. “Wazoo!” it yelled. “Zaxtax shimmelninny! Blap!” It swung its hammer down into the well, as far as it could reach, hitting the brick wall inches from Lizbet’s head. Shattered bits of brick stung her face.

  “Hurry!” she yelled downward.

  Would the goblins follow them?

  Down into the depths of the sewer shaft they descended.

 
; Chapter 13

  Nightingale,

  Milk pail,

  The Devil lives in Hell.

  Huckleberries,

  Queen Anne cherries,

  Ask him how he fell.

  Peacocks,

  Cigar box,

  A fib he’ll likely tell:

  Chicken bones,

  Kidney stones,

  He tumbled down a well.

  —a rhyme of Strix

  As they climbed downward, the air around Lizbet and Strix became damp, and chilly enough to raise goose bumps on Lizbet’s flesh. Angry goblin faces ringed the shrinking circle of sunlight above. Goblin yells echoed off the wet brick walls. But the goblins didn’t follow the girls down.

  That was good. Unless the goblins weren’t following because they knew something even worse lurked below.

  Lizbet, like Strix, climbed down with one hand. In the other, she gripped Strix’s severed arm. Poor, poor Strix! Strix was made of paper, leaves, strings, fur, and other stuff that just wasn’t very strong. Not as strong as human flesh and bone. Too much strain, and Strix would break.

  Lizbet had been in awe of Strix: her witchy skill of making creatures that moved, the way she could knit into the shadows. Her talent of pulling vices and virtues out of a dead body might be icky, but it was more than Lizbet could do. The unexpected revelation that Strix was physically fragile was unnerving. Traveling with Strix had been reassuring, because Lizbet thought, deep down, that Strix was the equal of any crisis.

  But she wasn’t.

  That knowledge made Lizbet cringe with guilt. Because if she had pulled at the grate a little harder, if she had borne her fair share of the effort, if she hadn’t let fear overthrow her, they would have been able to lift the grate together. Instead, Strix lost her arm to save them both.

  Strix, mean and witchy and arrogant Strix, had been a better friend to Lizbet than Lizbet had been to Strix.

  “Strix,” Lizbet said. “Stop for a moment. I’m going to climb over you and go down first.” Being the first into danger was the least Lizbet could do.

  Strix didn’t protest. She didn’t say a word. Lizbet wondered whether she was still shocked by the experience.

  They had gone down a few yards more, Lizbet in the lead, when the wavering light of flames appeared below, and the smell of smoke rose around them. The lights hadn’t been there a moment before. Looking down, Lizbet could see figures standing below, holding torches.

  Lizbet stopped climbing. Fear swallowed her up. Were these the sewer goblins she had dreaded?

  “Get the spears and axes ready!” a man’s voice yelled from below. “Hack ’em to bits as soon as they get close!”

  They didn’t sound like goblins. But they didn’t sound friendly either.

  Daring to descend a rung or two farther, Lizbet finally made out upturned pale faces.

  Human faces.

  “Please don’t hurt us,” she cried. “The goblins are after us!”

  A babble of voices: “It speaks!” “I’ve never heard a goblin talk sense before!” “More torches!”

  The light below became brighter. “It’s not goblins,” said a man’s surprised voice.

  “I think it’s two girls,” said a woman’s voice. “But they’re dressed so strangely.”

  “We’re from over the Montagnes du Monde,” Lizbet called down.

  For a moment, the people at the bottom of the sewer shaft fell silent.

  “Is it General Wolftrow?” another man’s voice yelled up. “Is he here? Has he returned at last?”

  “It’s not the Margrave, it’s just us,” Lizbet called down.

  “He’s a Margrave, now, is he?” a man said. Another laughed bitterly.

  She reached the bottom of the sewer shaft. It was wider than the top. Brick archways led away on all sides. Black water trickled across the center of the floor. Men and women holding torches surrounded her. They were dressed in old-fashioned clothing, the kind Lizbet thought only grandmothers and great-uncles wore, although these people were of all ages. Lizbet used her free hand to help Strix down the last few rungs. Strix half fell, dazed, into Lizbet’s arms. “We’re escaping from the goblins,” Lizbet said. “Can you help us?”

  “Are you really from over the Montagnes?” a man asked. “Can that be true?”

  “What’s wrong with the other girl?” a woman said. “She looks ill. Is she all right?”

  “She’s hurt,” Lizbet said. “It’s her arm.”

  “Poor child,” the woman said. She looked closely at Strix, then drew breath sharply. “Her arm—it’s gone!”

  A gasp of shock and anger from the others. “Damned goblins,” one said. “They’ll pay for this,” another said.

  “Oh, the poor, dear thing,” the woman said. “Well. We must do what can be done.” She was a sturdy dame, with short legs and muscular shoulders. She swept up Strix into her arms, and exclaimed, “Why, your friend’s no heavier than a sack of feathers. She must be all skin and bones.”

  “Actually . . . ,” Lizbet began.

  “Jean! Go run for the barber-surgeon. I’m taking this little angel to the Women’s Commons.” A boy nodded and scampered off. His footsteps echoed off the wet brick walls. “The rest of you men, clear out. Dear,” she to Lizbet, “I’m Kate.”

  “I’m Lizbet,” Lizbet said.

  “Lizbet, come with us.”

  She bustled away down one of the tunnels, Strix limp in her arms. The women and girls from the group followed. Lizbet ran to keep up.

  From one tunnel they passed to another, and another, until Lizbet lost track of where they might be. The lamps that the women carried were the only light, a tiny moving pool of illumination in an underground universe of darkness.

  They ran up a stone staircase slick with fungus, water rushing down both sides. They descended into a black well on iron steps that creaked alarmingly with each footfall. The women and girls hurried through intersections where a dozen sewer tunnels converged, over chasms bridged by iron grates swaying on iron chains, through cavernous storm sewers as wide as the nave of a cathedral, where they had to hop nimbly over water flowing down the center. Some tunnels stank of decay and filth so that Lizbet could barely catch a breath; others smelt as fresh as rain.

  “The goblins’ sewers are bigger and better than their whole town,” Lizbet exclaimed to Kate, panting as she hurried.

  “Goblins do things upside down, dear,” Kate replied.

  They finally emerged into an arched chamber of stone and tile that Kate said was the Women’s Commons. Flickering candles and oil lamps lit the room dimly. The sound of running water dashing against stone echoed from somewhere near. Curtains partitioned part of chamber into alcoves. Within the alcoves, Lizbet glimpsed beds and trunks. Kate laid Strix gently on one of the beds.

  “At least she’s not bleeding too much,” Kate said.

  “I don’t bleed,” Strix said. Her voice was steady and serene, but terribly quiet. Lizbet wished Strix would say something sarcastic or mean.

  Running footsteps. Jean hurried up, accompanied by a middle-aged round-faced man wearing a floppy black tie and frock coat. The man’s clothes were splattered in blood from collar to knees.

  “Bernard!” Kate said sternly. “You’re a sight. You haven’t been trying to shave customers with a straight razor again, have you?”

  “No, ma’am,” Bernard replied cheerfully. “I drained old Kasper’s wen for him this morning.” He held up one sleeve of his coat. “It ain’t all blood—there’s some pus too.”

  “This girl is hurt, Bernard,” Kate said. “It’s her arm. It’s, oh, it’s come off.” A sob lurked just beneath her words. “Can you do anything for her at all?”

  “Lost an arm . . .” Bernard’s smile faded. “Oh dear, I don’t know—”

  “I have her arm,” Lizbet said
. She held Strix’s arm up.

  A couple of the women gave out little cries. Bernard flinched. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, missy, but I can’t do anything with the arm. Once it’s off, it’s off. An arm can’t properly be put back. The best I can do is to tidy up the amputation. That means cutting and stitching. We’ll dope her up with whiskey first, but there’ll still be screaming and carrying on. Afterwards, she’ll be okay if the gangrene don’t set in. But her poor arm’s lost for good, I’m sorry to say.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Let me reconnoiter a trifle.” From a coat pocket, he produced a pair of silver spectacles with a cracked lens. He bent and peered at the stump of Strix’s arm. “Something’s peculiar here. Did you try to mend this with a paper bandage? Jean, fetch another lamp. I don’t see—”

  He drew back abruptly. He stared at Strix. The corners of his mouth and his eyebrows all pointed toward the center of his face, like an X. “What is all this? This ain’t a natural arm, it’s all papers and leaves and string and whatnot.” He pushed up Strix’s sleeve. “Ain’t artificial too—it’s part and parcel of the girl.” He looked anxiously about the room. “What’s this about? What kind of girl is this?”

  Kate stared at Lizbet. They had been found out. “She’s a witch,” Lizbet said. “She’s not flesh and blood, she’s made of papers and letters and teabags. It’s all perfectly natural. For a witch.”

  Bernard stood. “I don’t know anything about cutting on witches,” he said.

  “Who can help her, then?” Lizbet said. “Is there a witch who could help her?”

  The women murmured and drew away from the bedside. The atmosphere in the room grew noticeably more chilly.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Kate said. “There are certainly no witches here.” She looked at Lizbet sharply. “You wouldn’t be a witch yourself?”

  The other women whispered to each other more loudly. Bernard crossed himself. “Lord save us,” he said.

  “No, I’m not!” Lizbet said. Her voice was high-pitched with anxiety. She advanced on Kate faster than the other woman could back away, grabbed Kate’s hand, and held it to her cheek. “See? Feel how I’m a mortal. I’m warm, and sensible.” She took Kate’s hand and wrapped the fingers around her forearm. “See? See?”