Half-Witch

by John Schoffstall

  “There is a stranger among us,” he said. His voice was a croak, except where it wheezed. “Lizbet”—he nodded at her—“who comes to us from over the Montagnes.” Tiermann motioned for Lizbet to rise, and bid her to tell her story.

  Lizbet told the assembly the version of her story that she had told Kate. She had to raise her voice so that everyone in the room could hear over the background roar of falling columns of sewage. Her words rang off the dripping stone floor and the great arch of the roof. Every time she spoke Hengest Wolftrow’s name, there were whispers in the room, and sometimes low curses. But there were also sighs.

  “And so,” she finished, “I’m looking for the Margrave’s book, that he lost. Can you help me?” She looked around the room. “Has anyone here heard of it? Have you seen it?”

  Sounds of puzzlement. People whispered to each other, and shook their heads. “I have never heard of such a thing,” Tiermann said. “General Wolftrow is friends with bullets and bayonets, with muskets and mortars. Not with books. He cared little for reading, or writing.”

  “But he buys books from all over the world,” Lizbet said. “He has filled a palace with books.”

  Murmurs from around the room, and a few snorts of disbelief.

  “Why have you brought a witch among us?” a woman’s screechy voice yelled out. It was Maglet. She pointed at Lizbet with a skinny finger. “She has a witch, with a crippled arm. She has it in the Women’s Commons.”

  “We’re traveling together,” Lizbet said. “We’re helping each other. She’s my friend.”

  Again, mutters of disbelief.

  Lizbet returned to the Women’s Commons carefully carrying a plate of rat chowder for Strix. Strix devoured it, but not without complaints.

  “Not gamy enough,” she said around a mouthful of rat. “They should use a wild strain of rat. Needs more salt too. Also, the fungus is wrong.” She gestured in the air with her fork, a gobbet of rat still impaled on its tines. “For proper rat dishes you really need the Purple Turksnose toadstool, grown in a compost of aconite and hellebore.”

  “I’ll run tell the cook right away,” Lizbet said. “I’m sure he’s eager to accommodate your refined palate.”

  Strix stopped eating. “Are you being sarcastic?”

  “Am I? I suppose I am.” Lizbet frowned. “Sarcasm is a venial sin. It’s untruthful and uncharitable. I apologize, Strix.”

  Strix shrugged and speared another hunk of rat. “Better a venial sin than no sin at all.” She popped the rat into her mouth. “Keep working at it.”

  They washed their faces and hands in a basin and undressed down to their undershirts. Kate had assigned them beds side by side, separated only by a muslin curtain. The curtain was crudely printed in pictures of hunks of red meat with the bones sticking out. Lizbet guessed it had been made from cloth stolen from the goblin town.

  The other women and girls who slept in the Women’s Commons avoided Lizbet and Strix, except for curious or worried glances, and spoke only in murmurs. Everyone took to their own bed. Good-nights were exchanged. Before she slipped beneath the sheets, Lizbet surreptitiously removed her wrong-feet-on boots and her socks. Her poor pinched feet felt better immediately.

  The oil lamps were extinguished. The darkness of underground, without even the faintest glimmer, a darkness more perfect and absolute than Lizbet had ever experienced, filled the room like earth being poured into an open grave. In the dark, the water nearby seemed to rumble more loudly, and Lizbet could hear every drop drip from the wet stone walls.

  Lizbet didn’t like this place at all. She didn’t like the wet, the foul sewage smells, the smothering darkness, the suspicious people. She was disappointed that no one had heard of the Margrave’s book. She had no idea where to look next. She began to worry about the dangers of blundering through a world where she didn’t belong, a world, if the old soldier at her dinner table were to be believed, chockablock with goblins and witches.

  Despite these worries, she was exhausted by the day’s events and quickly fell asleep.

  She awoke to flickering light, cold air on her bare feet, and Maglet’s voice, screeching and triumphant: “This one’s a witch too! I knew it! I knew it!”

  Chapter 15

  Lizbet jerked upright in bed, clutching the covers to her breast. Maglet crouched at the foot of the bed. She held a flickering oil lamp in one hand. With the other hand she had pulled the covers off Lizbet’s feet. No longer could it be concealed: illuminated by the lamplight, Lizbet’s feet were obviously on opposite the way they should be.

  Instinctively, Lizbet pulled her feet back and tried to shove the covers down over them. Maglet yelled, “Oh, no, you don’t!” She grabbed at Lizbet’s ankle and pulled it free of the covers. She leaned over the foot of the bed and shoved her lamp in Lizbet’s face with the other hand. “Hold still, or I’ll make you taste fire, witch!”

  “I’m not a witch,” Lizbet said desperately. “I’m not really a witch at all. It’s just my legs. I’ll tell you all about it, if you’ll let me—”

  “Lies, lies, witches are all lies!” Maglet shrieked. “You’ve lied enough, no more of your lies! Wake up!” she called. “Wake up, all of you! Come see the witch!”

  Grunts and stirrings around the room, and the sound of mattresses groaning, and bare feet thumping onto the stone floor. Women and girls in their nightclothes appeared one by one behind Maglet. They stared at Lizbet’s feet, looked into her eyes, then back to her feet. Lizbet’s blood rose to her cheeks. She told herself she had nothing to be ashamed of, but it didn’t help whatever secret part of her was embarrassed.

  “It’s just my legs,” Lizbet said quickly, stammering. “I had blood poisoning and gangrene, so Strix had to make me new ones. I’m not really a witch . . .”

  “Gretchen, Isabelle, Sophie,” Maglet said to another of the women, “run for Gregor and Hansel and the Glucks, and tell them to bring rope to tie up the witch. I’ll bet she’s a spy from the Pope of Storms. And some of you, grab the witch girl beside her, before she escapes—”

  Lizbet, in her shock and fear and sleepy confusion, had forgotten about Strix. “Strix!” she screamed toward the curtain that separated their beds. “Run!”

  “She’s gone!” came a woman’s voice. From across the curtain, the sound of bedclothes being torn apart. “The bed’s empty,” the woman said. “She’s not here.”

  Strix had escaped! Thank heavens for that, at least. But Maglet’s bony fist gripped Lizbet’s ankle even more firmly. Having lost Strix, she was determined not to let Lizbet get away. “Don’t try any tricks, witchy,” Maglet said. “And don’t get your hopes up. We’ll find the other spy soon enough. There are miles and miles of sewers. We know ’em all, and she doesn’t. We’ll catch her, you’ll see.”

  Maglet’s smile was so smug, and she sounded so sure of herself, that Lizbet’s hopes sank.

  lizbet a tiny voice whispered in her ear. It was so low Lizbet could barely hear it.

  “What?” Lizbet said.

  “You heard me,” Maglet said.

  “I wasn’t—” Lizbet began.

  hush, silly, it’s me.

  It was Strix’s voice. Lizbet glanced toward it. There was Strix, crouching by her bed. Only she was transparent, ghostly. It wasn’t good enough. Maglet would be able to see her.

  you have to get free, Strix’s whisper said. just for a moment. then i can knit us into the shadows.

  “It’s still not working,” Lizbet said, trying not to look at Strix’s half-seen form.

  Maglet looked at her sharply. “What are you talking about?”

  it is working, Strix’s voice whispered.

  Lizbet had to admit that was true: Strix was right beside her, and Maglet obviously didn’t realize it. How could Lizbet see Strix and Maglet couldn’t?

  She had no time to worry about that now. She had to find a wa
y to make Maglet let her go. People were coming back with rope to tie her up, soon, and then getting loose would be hopeless.

  “Uhhhhhhh,” Lizbet groaned loudly. She put both hands on her stomach. “My insides! The pain! I think it’s that rat I ate.” She sat up and leaned toward Maglet. Her eyes rolled back in her head. Her mouth opened, and a thin drool of spittle fell onto Maglet’s hand that gripped her ankle. “Uhhhhh, I’m going to be sick. I’m going to throw up all over.” She made gagging noises deep in her throat and swayed her body toward Maglet.

  “You disgusting thing!” Maglet screeched. She flinched back. She didn’t let go of Lizbet’s ankle, though, but gripped it harder than ever. “You get one drop on me, and I’ll beat you senseless!”

  “Okay,” Lizbet said, “I won’t then.” She drew back her fist and punched Maglet on the nose as hard as she could.

  Maglet howled. Blood spurted from both nostrils. She let go of Lizbet and shoved both index fingers into her nostrils to stanch the flow. Blood dribbled down both fists. “You’ve hurt me!” she screeched. “I’m bleeding!”

  Lizbet, her ankle free, hopped from the bed. She felt Strix’s crackly, leafy hand grasp hers. Her body faded to ghostliness. “Nicely done,” Strix’s voice whispered.

  “Thanks,” Lizbet whispered back. “What now?”

  “Get your clothes,” Strix whispered.

  Lizbet’s socks, boots, and dress turned ghostly as she touched them. Strix pulled her toward the center of the room, where the women and girls, still in their nightclothes, milled about, talking, and casting anxious glances into the room’s dark corners. “What are you doing?” Lizbet whispered. “We need to hide.”

  “We are hiding,” Strix whispered back.

  Lizbet felt exposed and helpless, standing in the center of the room with the others all around her. She feared that at any moment someone would touch her and know where she was.

  But she discovered that in a crowd of people, no one notices every time they brush against someone else. Also, Maglet soon had the braver women poking beneath the beds and into the corners with broomsticks. Odd as it seemed, it was safer to be the room’s center, right in the midst of your enemies.

  But it didn’t solve their larger problem. Where were they to go next? Maglet was right. Without knowledge of the maze of sewers, Lizbet and Strix would quickly become lost.

  The girls who had been sent for help returned, with men carrying weapons and rope. “They’re gone?” one man said when he heard the news. “Then good riddance.”

  “They’re not gone,” Maglet said. “I saw the one disappear. It’s some witchy trick. They might still be here, invisible. I tell you, if they’re witches, they’re probably spies for the Pope of Storms. If we capture them, we can ransom them back to the Pope. That’s what you do with captured spies.” Maglet’s tongue licked her lips eagerly, and she rocked back and forth from one foot to the other.

  “I don’t know how we’re supposed to find invisible people,” another man said doubtfully.

  “We’ll go hand in hand through all the sewers, covering every inch,” Maglet said. “No one will get past us. We’ll beat every inch with sticks.”

  Lizbet liked the sound of this less and less, but Maglet, obsessed with the idea of finding and holding them for ransom from the Pope of Storms, whoever he was, gradually had her audience nodding and agreeing.

  Kate had been standing back from the crowd, silent. She had a pensive look. She had not taken part in the broomstick search beneath the beds. When the women and men seemed to be agreeing with Maglet’s plan, Kate loudly announced, “In that case, I’ll guard the boats. If the witches wanted to escape, all they’d need to do is steal a boat and take it downstream and out the Grand Cloaca Ostium. In fact,” Kate almost shouted, “I’m going to the boats right now.”

  “You do that,” Maglet said. “You were being a little soft on the witch girl earlier. I’m glad to see you changed your mind. Now, the rest of you . . .”

  Kate loudly stomped off, through a stone arch at one end of the commons room.

  “C’mon,” Lizbet whispered to Strix, “let’s go.” She squeezed Strix’s hand and pulled her across the room, toward the stone arch.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re following Kate to the boats. That’s our way out.”

  “She’s pretty strong,” Strix whispered. “Are we going to fight her? Maybe we can slip past her. What if she comes after us?”

  “Kate’s not going to stop us,” Lizbet whispered. “Didn’t you hear her?”

  “She said she was going to guard the boats,” Strix whispered.

  “No, she said, ‘If Lizbet and Strix are listening, I’ll show them where the boats are so they can escape.’”

  “Is there something wrong with your ears? She didn’t say that.”

  “Oh, Strix,” Lizbet whispered. “So smart, and yet so dumb.”

  Strix looked puzzled. “Why would she help us? Is she your friend?”

  “No, she’s just . . . well, maybe she is, in a way. People are supposed to help other people in trouble. If we were among witches, wouldn’t they help you?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Why would they do that?”

  Because it’s nice, it’s good, it’s kind, it’s how people would want themselves treated, Lizbet thought. Witches didn’t understand that? “It’s every witch for herself, then?”

  Strix’s ghostly head bobbed. “Of course.”

  Lizbet remembered Mrs. Woodcot’s most beautiful and peculiar house. How could you make a house like that and not want to share it with anyone? She squeezed Strix’s hand more tightly. She resolved to be the best possible friend to Strix that she could be.

  Under the stone arch, a rocky wet tunnel spiraled downward into darkness. The girls hurried, anxious not to lose the glow of Kate’s lamp as it disappeared down the tunnel ahead of them. The sound of rushing water that could be heard in the Women’s Commons grew louder the deeper they went.

  The tunnel opened into an immense arched sewer channel, twice as tall as Lizbet or Strix. A rushing river of sewage filled it almost halfway up. The roar, echoing off the tile walls, was deafening. At a tiny stone wharf at the sewer’s edge, a few flat-bottomed skiffs bobbed up and down on the roaring tide of black sewage, straining at their painters.

  “So here are the boats,” Kate said. She was nearly shouting, and even so, her voice was scarcely audible over the noise of the rushing sewage. Her gaze searched about, as if straining to see something hidden in the darkness. “If the witches should happen to steal them, they would find that the Cloaca Maxim empties into the river in a few hundred feet. That place is dangerously close to the stronghold of the Pope of Storms. The witches would be well advised to go in the opposite direction, westward toward the Montagnes du Monde, traveling only by day to avoid goblins, and cross the Montagnes du Monde back into their own country.

  “And,” she added (was it only the flickering of her oil lamp, or did Kate’s eyes become brighter, as if there were tears ready for release?), “if the two witches do cross the Montagnes, I hope they seek audience with General Wolftrow, and plead our plight, his army and their descendants, the ones he led on that terrible journey. Tell him we still love him, we are still faithful, and we wait steadfastly for him to return.”

  Dragging Strix behind her, Lizbet approached Kate and, bending down (the woman was a little shorter than she was), squeezed her shoulder and kissed her cheek. She tasted salty wetness. “We will,” Lizbet promised.

  “Tch,” Kate said, half laughing and half sobbing, “the place is afflicted with ghosts, I hear them talking to me.”

  Lizbet and Strix slid into one of the skiffs. Lizbet unshipped the oars and swung them in their oarlocks into the roiling tide of sewage. Strix loosened the knot that secured the skiff’s painter to the
wharf and pulled the painter into the skiff’s bottom. Immediately the current of sewage swept them out into its stream. “Farewell!” Lizbet called. “And thank you!”

  At this moment, Maglet appeared at the tunnel entrance. She sized up the situation in a moment. “The witches!” she yelled. “They’re escaping!”

  “Are they?” Kate asked innocently. “Did they slip past me? Oh dear. How could that have happened? Why don’t we discuss it at length, over a hot rat sandwich?”

  “No, you froppish trull! We have to chase them! I’ll get a skiff. Get out of my way!”

  As Maglet tried to push past the shorter but sturdier Kate, Kate did something with her foot, and Maglet’s legs went out from under her. Maglet’s feet flew up, her head went down, and she fell onto the stones with a whoof! “Oops!” exclaimed Kate.

  The river of sewage rapidly bore their skiff away. The current swept them around a curve in the tunnel, and wharf, Kate, and Maglet were gone.

  Lizbet and Strix were plunged into blackness. Their only light had been Kate’s oil lamp. In moments, even the last faint glow of that light upstream faded, and the darkness was complete. Lizbet had thought she would control the skiff with the oars, but when you couldn’t see, it was pointless to row.

  “Where are we?” Lizbet yelled over the roar of the current.

  “We’re being swept helplessly through a sewer in utter darkness,” Strix yelled back.

  The stink was intolerable. The roar of waters beat on Lizbet’s ears like a solid thing. She felt one of her oars touch a sewer wall. She shoved as hard as she could, to push them back into midstream. If they struck something solid here, the force of the rushing sewage would surely capsize them, and it would be all over.

  The dark. The stench. The danger. Lizbet had surely been in no more awful situation in her life.

  She almost regretted it would end soon.

  And it was ending already. Ahead, a faint glow of light, becoming stronger. The current swept them around a curve, and the circular end of the sewer pipe, bright with pink dawn light, rushed at them.