An Ignorant Witch

by E M Graham

  “That is weird,” she said, sitting up. “Unless he snuck down to the house to recharge...”

  “He can’t leave the fairy hall,” I told her. “He’s enslaved by them, they’d never let him go. It’s fairy magic that is powering his phone right now.”

  She thought some more, then nodded. I was really glad to see the reasoning light in her eyes again.

  “So what are we going to do, if all this is true?”

  “The first thing I’m going to do,” I said apologetically as I reached over and took her phone in my hand, “is to confiscate this.”

  She gasped, as you would. A girl’s phone is her lifeline, so she tried to grab it back from me.

  “No,” I said, shoving it into my bag as I turned it off. “The fairies are using this to cast the spell on you, pretending to be Benjy and getting at your emotions that way, and trying to control you.”

  She got the seriousness of the situation now that I had taken the unprecedented step of removing her phone.

  “So, what do we need to do?”

  I thought for another moment. Now I had Alice on my side, even if her hold on this new reality was a little shaky and I might not be able to trust her around the fairies, I did feel better and stronger.

  “I know someone who can help us,” I said. “But I’m afraid I might not be able to trust him. He’s a witch.”

  I NEEDED TO TAKE some time to think before phoning Hugh, even though I had a bad feeling that every minute counted. I’d given my own phone to Alice with explicit instructions to keep in close contact with me if she saw anything weird happening. I couldn’t trust the fairies not to come down the hill to her house themselves even though they knew Nan Hoskins was still there. I also told her not to answer the door if she didn’t recognize the person outside.

  Mark was over for supper again that night. This was odd, him spending so much time with us and Edna allowing it. Not that I was complaining, as we were eating really well for a change. Usually she told me to forage and graze through the cupboards if I was hungry. I ate a lot of pasta with salad dressing sauce, and avocado on toast.

  He’d brought Indian take out with him, my all-time favorite. I really liked this guy.

  “So what’s the special occasion?” I asked as I undid the bags. “Not that it’s not nice to see you.”

  I saw the two of them exchange a significant glance, and I got a funny feeling in my stomach. My antennae went on high alert.

  “Mark just... wants to spend more time with us,” Edna said as she brought down three plates, and totally failing in her attempt to lie.

  “Right,” I said, my eyes switching back and forth between the two. “What’s brought this on?”

  I heaped a double helping of butter chicken over my rice, then placed a load of dahl next to it. Whatever the news was going to be, it was not going to interrupt my feast.

  Mark and Edna hadn’t even started to dish out their own food. This was getting really strange, because despite her reluctance to cook and nurture, Edna loved food that other people cooked and was usually the first one to dig in.

  “And I want the truth,” I added, at which Edna broke down.

  “Your father’s worried about you.”

  “Yeah, as if,” I said. Did I roll my eyes? Maybe.

  “He is,” Mark said. “He called me at work today. Said you might be having a little trouble.”

  Dad called Mark? What the hell? My fork paused halfway to my mouth.

  “He told him about your visit the other day,” Edna chimed in. “And your father thinks you’re into drugs.”

  The two were staring at me sorrowfully across the kitchen table. Drugs! Dad knew the difference. He was deliberately lying to them in order to... keep me from getting further entangled with the fairies.

  “And the other night,” Mark added. “That business with the baby. What was all that about, Dara? I spoke with Jane. She’s worried about you, too.”

  He had brown eyes like an old dog who’s seen everything in its day, and that soulful gaze was turned full force on me. He dug into the brief case he always carried with him and brought out some papers. Laying them on the table between us, he pointed at the photos on them.

  They were the standard before and after shots of meth users and their teeth, the ones they use to scare highschool kids away from going down the road to hell.

  “Oh come off it, Mark!”

  “I can understand your desire to experiment when you’re young, lots of people do that,” he said in that very kind and gentle voice. Edna found something pressing to do at the far end of the kitchen. Her experimental stage had lasted far into her thirties and she wouldn’t want to share that with Mark. “But you have to know what you’re getting yourself into.”

  “Edna,” I called out to her. “Mark. Do you really think I’m into drugs of any kind?”

  “Well, Benjy Hoskins? You’re not keeping the best of company,” Mark began, then looked apologetically over at Edna as she came back with the salt and pepper. “I’m sorry, Dara. I’m not your father or anything close to it, but I care. I hate to see any kid go off the rails, especially you.”

  “I’m not doing drugs,” I said tightly as I scooped up dahl with my naan. “Dad made that up.”

  “He said you went over to his house and were raving about fairies or something.”

  I could feel myself turning red from embarrassment. My father was a bastard! How could he do this to me? I looked over at Edna, who shrugged and pointed with her eyes at Mark.

  She knew the truth, but no way was she going to tell her boyfriend.

  “I don’t even know how he knew to call Mark,” she said in a lame attempt to divert the conversation. “I mean, it’s not like we’re married or anything.”

  Me and him exchanged a glance now. Spending so much time in her own little worlds of fiction, Edna maybe didn’t have a deep understanding of this town and its intermingling grapevines. Mark wasn’t from here, but he knew.

  “Edna,” I said in a very controlled voice. “Tell him. Tell Mark why you don’t believe I’m doing drugs.” This was a confrontation and I was going to make her stick up for me, or I would tell Mark all about the whole supernatural business, and she knew it.

  “I know you’re not messing with drugs,” she said as she sat back down. “But, if you’re getting into... difficulties, perhaps you should do like your dad says and get out of town for bit.”

  “Dad wants me gone because he’s embarrassed by my existence,” I said. There could be no mistaking the bitterness in my voice. “Because I’m the accidental by-product of his affair with my mother.”

  I stared at them both, daring them to deny this truth. Mark looked back at me with a warm pity on his face.

  “Maybe there’s something more to this,” Edna said. “Maybe he thinks you should go away for your own good.”

  She gave me the wide-eye stare, the one that says ‘you know very well what I’m talking about, don’t make me say it out loud’.

  “Why now?” I asked. “Why does he want me gone now, instead of when I was a teenager? Why didn’t he send me away to some nice private school far away from anyone he knew?”

  “Because I wouldn’t let him,” she snapped. “Okay? I wanted you to stay with me.”

  “Oh,” I said, taken aback by the fierce look on her face. “I didn’t know that.”

  Dad had wanted to send me away but my aunt had fought to keep me here by her side. I finished the rest of my plate off in thoughtful contemplation.

  “So,” Mark said, glancing between the two us. He must have been aware he’d missed something in this conversation but he respected boundaries. “You know you can come to me if you’re having any problems, right? Anything at all. I don’t want you to end up as a statistic, I’ve seen too much of that. And whatever it is that’s going on, I want you to know – you’re not going to shock me. I’ve no doubt dealt with worse in my time.”

  I put down my fork. This was my opportunity, I could un
load on Mark and Edna, and tell them all about the trouble I’d gotten myself into. Explain why Dad really wanted me gone, and explain why I couldn’t go until I’d cleaned up my own mess.

  But had Mark really dealt with these kind of troubles? I doubted it and, judging by the apprehensive look in Edna’s eyes, she didn’t think it likely either.

  11

  MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE gone away like I promised Hugh, just packed off to his Hebridean island and learned how to harness my power. It would take, what, a year or two, and I’m a really fast learner as he pointed out. Then I could come back, save Benjy and the baby, undo the wrong I’d caused.

  But I had a bad feeling that even one year would be too late for either of them.

  In the meantime while I was hanging around in limbo not knowing what to do, there was a report in the news about another hiker disappeared off the Freshwater Bay trail. What sort of fool would go hiking alone on an exposed trail on the barrens in September when a hurricane was on its way? I didn’t know if it was the fairies ramping up their activity with their newfound strength or if it was a genuine case of a misstep too close to the edge of the cliff side path. The RNC, the RCMP, and the Search and Rescue Crews were combing the hill and the waters all day – I could hear the helicopters from the house. It was really dangerous for them to be out there near the cliffs, what with the rising winds.

  It was while I was biking over to Alice’s later that evening that the idea came to me. I couldn’t ask for help from Dad or Hugh, but there were other supernatural beings in this town, ones without an agenda to get me far away from this place and who might also have a grudge against the fairies. I decided to blow off Alice for the moment – she was okay, there had been no further attempts to lure her up the hill, so I rode my bike past her house to the old tunnels under the Southside Hills.

  Some said they were World War II bunkers, used to store ammunition because if the gunpowder had blown up, the power of its force would be contained by the solid granite and slate of the solid hills. Others said the history of these tunnels was much older, that they’d started out as natural caves and had been enlarged by human activity, usually for a nefarious nature like smuggling and storing rum. One guy in the ‘Nineties had wanted to use them for marijuana grow-ops, but that was squashed pretty firmly by the powers that be.

  In real time, most of the entrances to the ten or so tunnels were either concreted over or covered with impenetrable metal doors to prevent vandalism, hooliganism and stoned people wandering in and getting hurt.

  But in Alt, these tunnels still had their original thick oak doors with the huge iron locks and metal hinges like medieval fortifications. I knew dwarves lived in some of them, or at least I thought they did. I didn’t want to go hunting them up but I didn’t see that I had much of a choice.

  The sun had long since gone down and the moon was not yet risen. In real time, the few streetlights illuminated bits and pieces of the road, but the ambient light from St. John’s downtown across the harbor gave plenty of light to see by.

  I rested my bike in the scrubby bushes by the biggest tunnel, the most likely one, and slipped into Alt full on. It was dark here, and chilly at the base of the hills. The burning torches of Alt Town did not lend their light this far across the water.

  My hand on the oaken door, I hesitated. Not because I felt myself to be in danger from dwarves, they wouldn’t want to eat me or anything, but on the other hand they didn’t much like anyone who wasn’t a dwarf. I was thinking that maybe I should go away and come back when I had a plan in mind, when the decision was taken out of my hands.

  The oak door swung outward on its heavy hinges, and before I could run away, I was caught in full view by the firelight inside.

  No turning back now.

  Twenty feet into the tunnel, lit by pitch torches placed against the walls, a dozen faces looked over at me from their dining table, a huge ancient pine plank sanded to a fine polish by elbows over hundreds of years. I had interrupted the evening dwarfen meal of porridge or some such thing, served in mismatched ceramic and wooden bowls. Each dwarf held an iron spoon.

  They were a funny looking crowd, even taking into account this was Alt. They dressed in woolen clothing styled from a long-ago era, each with floppy hats on their heads, and in soiled jerkins and loose trousers. Wool made sense for these beings since they lived and worked underground most of their lives, and the rock was cold and clammy deep within.

  The tunnel was warm, though, heated by the large cooking fire by their table, and the working forges at the entrance which were never allowed to go out. In fact, the heat was stifling.

  “Close the door, you’re letting in the draft,” shouted the dwarf closest to me, a querulous old guy by the looks of him. Then again, they were probably all old compared to me, for dwarves lived hundreds of years if the stories were to be believed.

  One slightly taller than the others walked over to inspect me where I hovered half in, half out of their cave, still uncertain if I would flee.

  “What are you?”

  Now that was an Alt question if I’d ever heard one. Not who are you, but what are you, what tribe do you belong to?

  “My name is Dara. I’m a witch,” I said, then hurriedly expounded. “The de Teilhard Kin.”

  The dwarf sniffed the air, his red hat bobbing and beard bristling. “You smell like one, but I’ve never heard of you.”

  “She’s not fully matured yet,” another one pointed out. “She wouldn’t be part of the Council.”

  The Council, huh? Something else to be filed away until I had a chance to digest it. A council of supernaturals in Alt Town.

  He indicated I should follow him deeper into the tunnel. They all looked at me with suspicion, waiting for me to explain why I had come. The fire light cast long shadows over their faces, hiding the dozen pairs of eyes.

  “I’m not, I’m not part of the Council, you’re right,” I said, nodding to the last one who had spoken. “I’m here because I have information you might want to know.”

  “Not here on behalf of the Council?” The closest one looked shocked.

  Shit, I’d forgotten that dwarves were such sticklers for protocol. Their lives were guided by rules and ancient laws, and they would not look kindly on a renegade like myself. I decided to level with them for I didn’t have anything to lose. The worst that would happen would be they’d chuck me out and report me to the Kin, and then I’d be deported and Dad would win which was probably going to be the end result anyway, no matter what I did.

  Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, as the old saying goes.

  “I am the daughter of Jonathan de Teilhard,” I said clearly, drawing myself up to as much height as I could muster and trying to arrange my face in Sasha’s haughty manner. At least it was easy to look down my nose at these shorties.

  “This visit is irregular,” the main dwarf said, a frown creasing his already creased face.

  I desperately searched my mind for memories of Tolkien’s descriptions of dwarves and what motivated them. That guy sure had known his supernaturals, even if he did tend to go on and on about the boring battle details.

  Greed, of course. I needed to somehow work in about the fairy gold up inside the hill above their heads. Dwarves were notoriously avaricious for anything that came from the ground, believing it all belonged to them.

  “My visit is not sanctioned by the Council,” I told them honestly enough. “I have been sent to request your help in settling a dispute in an unofficial directive.”

  “You’d best sit and join us then,” he said in a grudging tone. “Make way there.”

  A couple of dwarves shuffled down the bench so I could sit at his left hand. A safety precaution I guess, so he could draw his short sword if I made any sudden moves against him.

  The dwarf to my own left nodded as I sat. He appeared to be younger than the others, his face less lined and grimed with rock dust.

  I was offered a bowl of evil smelling goo with dark chu
nks in it but I demurred, telling them I had already eaten. The rejected offering was dumped back into the black cauldron bubbling over the fire.

  “So de Teilhard sent you, eh?” The head dwarf had introduced himself as Lucas IronArms. He went back to slurping his meal, keeping a close crafty eye on me the whole time. “What is it that is so secretive that he has bypassed the Council?”

  I glanced around at the other dwarves, and he brushed aside what he thought was on my mind.

  “We are a cooperative society, the dwarves,” he said. “Unlike the witches and others. What one dwarf knows, all know. You can speak freely.”

  “The problem is ...” I started, then cleared my throat. My God, was I actually doing this, sitting down at a dwarven table and attempting to deceive them? I took a deep breath and plunged in. “Thursk is the problem.”

  There was much nodding and murmuring from the crowd at the table. Fairies and dwarves had never gotten along well. The dwarves lived by their Law, and the fairies, well, they didn’t respect any laws.

  “What has he done now? Surely any action taken against him needs to be sanctioned by Council, in proper order.”

  “There is a stumbling block there,” I said. I was trying my best to speak as I imagined an emissary from my father would. I paused, wishing I knew more about the Council conventions and the rules regarding what supernaturals could and couldn’t do. “You see, Thursk has taken some people, and we would rather he hadn’t.”

  “That’s not against Council rulings.” IronArms shook his head firmly. “All supernaturals are free to continue their activity as per their innate inclinations in order to sustain the balance of nature, inasmuch as they do not disturb said balance.”

  “And since Nan Hoskins’s untimely demise, they haven’t even been keeping up their allotted quota.” This was elderly dwarf who had first spoken I entered, the one who’d complained about the draft. He was seated directly across me, the remains of his porridge still dribbled in his beard. “So I for one would never begrudge them a couple of Nons. It is their wont, after all, and they need this intake to sustain their lifestyle.”