Metal and Magic: A Fantasy Journey

by Steve Windsor

  Father Felixx held up his hand and the line behind him ran up and took up positions on both sides. They’d practiced enough to know exactly what was expected of them. There was a line of kneeling boys and girls with crossbows—the best shots—and a line of torch-bearing brothers and sisters standing behind them.

  The Father wasn’t about to waste an opportunity to speak ill at real evil, but he had a hard time believing. Maybe his spy had simply wandered into the wrong porch. It did resemble the way she had described. The smell was certainly a more intense scent of the same one hovering over his imp. But he’d had to whip the imp for lying before. The dwarf had broken into the Father’s stash of hoodoo hooch on occasion, clouding his judgment and his reports. He leaned down to Ironskin. “You sure this is the den? She went in there?”

  Ironskin knew better than to lie by now, but witches were crafty creatures and he hesitated. “I’m. . . I see little missy up them steps and she melt inside.” He pointed to the door, leaning off its hinges. “Right through that door.”

  “Very well then.” The Father straightened back up. “Brothers and sisters. . .”

  The two lines didn’t waste any time. The boys and girls in the front lines did a quarter turn to the right and angled up their crossbows to the right in front of them. Then the back row of torch-bearers stepped between each of them, lowered their torches, and lit the tips of the crossbolts. The sulphur on the tips sparked and smoked and burst into flame, and then the front lines took aim.

  Father Felixx held up his hand. “Let no magic in this house . . . live to see the moon on Sunday!” Then he dropped his hand.

  T’chi-t'chi-t'chi! T’chi-t'chi-t'chi-t'chi-t'chi! T’chi-t'chi-t'chi!

  The flaming crossbolts arced from the embankment and lit up the ground between the shore of Prien Lake and the porch. The very first one to reach the hovering cloud above the cabin—

  BA-BOOM! A wave of wind whipped back at the entire group, and Father Felixx fell backward and over Ironskin. Flaming pieces of wood, and dirt and mud from under the front steps, flew through the air, showering everyone on the embankment.

  But the worst of it came just when the Father and everyone else thought it was over. He watched Ironskin scramble to get under one of the larger pieces of burning wood and wondered. . . But by the time the rest of his pack of followers had picked themselves up off the dirt, chunks of dead skunks rained down on and around all of them.

  A few of the brothers and sisters vomited and that set off a chain reaction of retching that took a few seconds to die down. When they all finally stopped, several school students were on the ground, unconscious or dead. The remaining ones looked back at what had to be an open and smoking crater in the dirt.

  No one was ready for what they saw, least of all Father Felixx LaFavroux.

  I’m relieved, excited, and completely confused when we all come back into the sitting room. And Maxxine is just turning around from being up so close to the fire.

  Purple flames?

  I don’t know how she could stand the heat, but she smiles and we all sit down again. All but Broom, who’s now moved back by the pokers next to the fire.

  The four of us—Cat, Broom, “Auntie” Maxxine and I—have no idea how she escaped, but Magnolia had indeed done so. She arrived at the front door like nothing ever happened. I hug her again. I was sure she was dead. “I thought you were—for sure he was going to burn you. I’m so glad you’re here! Maybe you can make sense—” I look around the room and wave my hand at them. “They’re all talking gibberish, like a buncha Prien croakers.”

  But Magnolia’s acting strangely too, looking nervously at Broom, half-smiling at Baxxster, and then staring at Maxxine. “And who, Mister Boyette,” she finally says, “may I ask is this? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

  Maxxine smiles, but it doesn’t feel friendly. “It might surprise you to know differently,” she says. “Nonetheless, I am Maxxine Levine from the Black Lake, and as I’ve told your ‘friend,’ Mister Boyette here, I’ve been dispatched by the council to look in on our young Dixxon and ensure that she arrives safely on the other side of Sunday . . . as is written in the proph—”

  “Yes,” Cat chuckles a little, “well then, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?” It’s the first time Cat has interrupted or spoken ill-mannered since Maxxine arrived. “We are most grateful to have a representative from the council here to assist us. However, Miss Levine, as you’ve so eloquently noted, we still have five days until”—he looks at me and smiles, but quickly whiskers it away—“to prepare for—”

  “Prepare?” Maxxine says. Then she looks at Magnolia. “Is that what they’re callin’ pumping a princess’ heart full of passion potion and allowing her to drag mortals back from the black?”

  Since she’s arrived, Maxxine has been content to sip her tea, remarkably calm and collected in the middle of—I can’t say I even know. Once this sip’s over, she looks at Cat while she speaks at Magnolia. “In my day, we called that blasphemy, Miss Magnolia. And there were a wicked wand full of white witches who got burned at the stake from carelessness like it”—she starts to take another sip, but then stops—“especially with humans. Or has no one informed you of the perils of potioning in public?”

  I’ve never known Magnolia to take that kind of reprimand without some reply. Well, at least not around us witch—

  BA-BOOM! The entire mansion rocks and shakes and Saucer and Smug rattle and fall off of my side table. Sparks fly up the fireplace flue and Broom swiffs sideways, stumbles and almost tips over. Cat jumps straight up in the air.

  Maxxine calmly tips up her cup the rest of the way and finishes her sip of tea.

  “Bile Island!” Cat says. “Mangy, what the devil was that?” Because the noise came right from the front steps of the mansion.

  Mangy moans out and then the front door starts a terrible, slow moan. When it does, I can hear shouts and voices.

  I’d swear Maxxine has the slightest hint of a smile on her face. “That,” she says, “will be those powerful perils, knocking at your front door.”

  The shouts are . . . familiar, and I look at Magnolia. Her eyebrows are up as I’m sure mine are. “Townies,” we say at almost the same time.

  Magnolia’s up and out of her chair. “I knew it was too easy.”

  “Easy?” I say. For days I’ve felt like I’m struggling to catch up—nothing’s been easy. Just when I thought I was starting to. . . I’m more confused now than I ever was. “What was easy?”

  Broom’s already swishing out of the sitting room.

  Cat’s right behind him. He shouts back over his shoulder, “He let her escape!”

  Magnolia’s moving now and I follow her. “Why would he do. . .?” I mutter.

  “So he could follow me here,” Magnolia says. “Come on, Dixxon, we have to hide you.”

  Maxxine sets down her tea and stands up. She holds her hands out to her sides and her purple cloak flies into the sitting room and twists its way around her like a swamp snake. “Oh, Miss White”—and her eyes roll back and turn the telltale purple of a black witch—“it’s far too late for that.”

  Magnolia grabs my arm and rushes me out of the sitting room. There are townies streaming through the front door, into the foyer. Broom’s casting their torches, putting out the flames, and Cat’s jumping and stabbing at faces with the tip of his tail, screaming and screeching like I’ve never heard him before.

  The door creaks wildly, and across the foyer my kitchen witchies are rushing out to help and everything’s gone mad!

  “Get her out of here!” screeches Cat. And he gets clubbed with a snuffed-out torch and goes flying across the foyer.

  “Baxxster!” I yell at him.

  But he’s up and back in the thick of the fight. He glances fast enough to say, “Now, Jaxx—”

  And one of the school boys grabs Cat by the back of the neck and stuffs him in a burlap sack.

  “Baxxster!” yells Magnolia, and then she
lets go of my arm and races at the boy.

  T’chi! I know that sound, and Broom’s hit with a crossbolt and then one of them touches a torch to his bristles and he catches fire. He runs, slams into the kitchen door and falls inside.

  Then Maxxine’s right next to me and she grabs my arm. “Alone at last,” she says. Then things go into slow motion. She waves her umbrella up in the air. “We’ve no time for this frivolity.” Her eyes are glowing purple when she casts us. “By black of night, where wrong is right”—and a swirl of purple engulfs us and I can barely see the fight in the foyer though the spinning torrent—“cast us now . . . and curse this fight!”

  Then “Auntie” Maxxine and I . . . are gone.

  Father Felixx sifted through the remainder of the wreckage in the wicked witch’s den, but despite several magical creatures damaged or destroyed, all he’d managed to recover was the same schoolgirl he’d allowed to escape. Somehow, even the bagged cat had managed to elude capture. He scoffed at the thought. They were filthy creatures. “Get her outside,” he said to the two schoolboys restraining her.

  Magnolia’s head and shoulders were covered by a burlap sack and she could barely move, much less cast a spell to break free. “Spell sack. . .” she muttered.

  Then Father Felixx’s voice was right next to her head. “You’re familiar with them, then, devil? They make fine kindling as well.”

  In all the years she and Dixxon had attended school, she’d never seen the Father use them or even mention the bewitched burlap bags. During the Purge, humans had used the bags to capture cats, and then drown them in the lakes and rivers around the bayou. How they ever got hold of the enchanted sacks was part of the black witch inquisition that followed the Great Purge.

  Magnolia tried to struggle, but when she did, the spell sack tightened around her head and shoulders, almost suffocating her. Then the boys pulled and roughed her outside and down what was left of the front steps. The smell of burned skunks filled her nostrils.

  Father Felixx watched. “Hold her there, brothers”—he turned and looked at the door on the other side of the foyer—“while we clean up the kitchen.”

  The kitchen was an unholy mess. Father Felixx walked slowly, crunching bits and pieces of cups and saucers under his feet. Mabelle Mae Johnson and another Maplewood girl and boy followed him through the wreckage. The big cauldron in the middle of the kitchen still bubbled and boiled above a fire that smoldered, crackled and popped in protest at their intrusion.

  Mabelle Mae leaned in toward the cauldron, preparing to sniff the slow rolling puffs of green and purple smoke rising from it.

  “Careful, sister,” was all Father Felixx said.

  Mabelle Mae leaned back away, then she and her two schoolmates followed the Father to the far end of the kitchen. Lying there on her back, face frozen in fear, was one of their schoolmates. “Is she. . .?”

  Father Felixx looked around the kitchen. His eyes stopped at the oven and he tilted his head slightly, but then looked back to the girl on the floor. “Get her crossbow, brother,” he said. He made the sign of the Holy Trinity across his chest and then the voodoo “V” with the first two fingers on both his hands. “Peace find you, sister.” When he was through, he turned toward Mabelle Mae. “Casted to the black, sister. No one can help her now but the Saints.”

  Mabelle Mae knew different. Her eyes widened, but she forced them tighter. “They . . . they killed her.”

  “Worse,” the Father said, “they’ve cursed her soul for all eternity.” He shook his head down at the girl’s corpse. “Consorting with conjuring—dazzling devils be damned.” He turned to his three students. “We are stronger than this.” He nodded toward the door leading to the foyer. “You know what to do.”

  When we reappear, Maxxine and I are . . . deep in the swamp.

  The Frasch?

  Not two seconds later, Cat appears next to us. He shakes and shivers and arches his back. “Blasphemers on Bile Island,” he mutters. “I told that knotting nincom—and now they’ve bolted and burned him.” He looks at me and then at Maxxine. “Where’s. . .?”

  “And . . . there you are,” Maxxine says to him, “Yes. . . Sadly, I was not able to conja your”—she looks around the clearing and up into the treetops, and then back at Cat—“Magnolia clear of it in time. I believe Christ has her back in his clutches. Which begs me to ask the question of how you were able to escape . . . and leave her behind . . . again? Your failures are mounting, Mister Boyette.”

  “Burned. . .” I say. My head’s dizzy again, and I look up at the moon. “But what about O . . . and Saucer? . . . Mansion?”

  Cat hangs his head a little. “They put up a fierce fight.”

  “As was their duty,” Maxxine says. “Ours is to—”

  “About that,” Cat says to her. “You conjured yourself clear rather quickly.” He’s pacing now, like he does when he’s looking for the answer to his own question.

  “Don’t question me, Cat,” Maxxine says. “It’s clear to me now that the council has entrusted Miss Dixxon’s care to seriously lazy and limp wands. Luckily, I arrived just in time to conja her clear a your Broom’s clumsiness and your incompetence.”

  Cat stops. Surprisingly, he doesn’t defend himself.

  I shiver a little at the damp dark of the deep swamp.

  Maxxine whips out her umbrella and I don’t know what comes over me, but I make a grab for it. And she blocks my hand easily. “Child, please,” she says, “if I’d wanted him wanded to the black, I’d have done it years ago.”

  She points the tip of her umbrella at the trees, and sticks and branches snap and break and fly to the center of the—we’re in my clearing! And they pile up in a tall triangle of twigs and branches.

  “It’ll be a spell before your Cat’s fur roasts in a fire,” she says. “For now”—her eyes roll back and glow purple again—“murder for hire and young love’s desire, give us the heat of a mansion fire.”

  A purple bolt of lightning shoots at the base of the teepee of twigs and it bursts to a purple inferno that shoots twenty feet high before crackling down to a flickering orange flame. A few more sticks and some bigger logs and stumps float in and land in the middle of the flames, bringing the entire pile closer to one of Broom’s boomers.

  “I suppose this is your idea of discreet?” Cat says. “A raging inferno that can be seen from the four corners of the forest?”

  Maxxine smiles at him, waves her umbrella at the ground, and wands up a stump from out of the damp forest floor. She sits down on it and a cup of tea appears in her hands. She sips and then motions her cup at the fire. “This little crackle?” she says. “A firefly compared to the blistering burn that’s coming.”

  Father Felixx had wasted no time in leaving the evil den of devils behind. His faithful followers put their torches to the entire mystical misery of it before they all left. He’d deal with the brother who’d lost the crafting cat later.

  Right now, his young brothers and sisters chopped and hacked and pushed and shoved on the edges of the Frasch Forest clearing. It had grown over since the last time he’d seen it, over fifteen years ago. They felled and cut in half and piled logs and limbs in the center of the clearing. A few of them lashed two of the largest logs into a giant cross. They all knew its purpose.

  Ironskin tried to at least appear to help build the stack that would burn the little white witchy back to the black where she and her kind belonged. He struggled with some smaller logs while school children giggled at his efforts.

  After a couple of hours of this, Father Felixx said, “That’ll do the deed, brothers and sisters. Enough.”

  The entire group of students and Ironskin took their places at the sides of the pile. Then two brothers dragged Magnolia up the stack to the cross. She tripped and stumbled on the uneven log pile that might as well have been a waiting cauldron of eternal “life” for an unwitting witch.

  Magnolia struggled and the spell sack tightened around her neck, almost choking her. This
wasn’t the plan, and she wondered if it would—it had to work. But no one was coming, and they lashed her to the big pole base of the cross.

  “By voodoo and hoodoo,” Father Felixx said, “and all that the Saints hold true. . .”

  One of the school boys touched a burning torch to the base of the pile of logs, and it slowly caught fire.

  The Father was finally going to get to burn one of them. One of his own choosing this time. “We cast thee to the wicked flames from whence you came. Back into the burning inferno that birthed you . . . and your kind.”

  Magnolia screamed—it sounded more like hideous howling—before the flames even reached her. And the entire group of school students, faced with the reality of burning someone whom they’d shared a room with for years, murmured. Some looked away.

  “Ow-ow-owoooooooooo!” a lone crocdog howled through the forest. Then several more joined in.

  “Steady, brothers and sisters,” Father Felixx said. “Ready yourselves, for if the blackness bay and bark in protest, we shall burn the crocdogs along with their brethren.” He knew that was a lie. . .

  When I hear the howl, I’m up and running across the clearing before I know what I’m doing. I only know I have to get to the sound. And I’m past the firelight and out of the clearing before Cat or Maxxine can get a word out.

  I run toward the howls, waving my hands in front of me. The forest trees and brush and even the swamp water at my feet all part to let me pass—nothing’s touching me. And my feet—I look down. I’m running, but my feet aren’t touching the ground! Faster and faster toward the calling, I . . . fly.

  I feel like I understand the howls, but I don’t like what they’re saying. They’re burning Magnolia!

  When I get there. . .

  It’s the clearing from my dream! Only this time it’s really happening and there are crocdogs attacking the students and crossbolts flying and the pile of logs in the middle are burning twenty feet high into the treetops, and I’m certain Magnolia’s being burned up inside that orange inferno, but when I finally find her in the confusion of the fight, a crocdog’s got his jaws on her cloak by the scruff of her neck, and he drags her into the darkness. Then she’s gone.