The Hex Witch of Seldom (16 page)

“That Bissel!” she shouted. “He put some sort of a spell on Shane! He whispered at him and led him away like an old plow horse! When I told him to stop, he blasted me with his hammer!”

“There's got to be some mistake,” Witchie declared, regaining some of her usual forcefulness. “The smith would never go against me. I'm one of the Twelve, you know.”

“Ha! I told him stop by the Twelve of the Hidden Circle. That's when he knocked me down. Then he harnessed Shane to a buggy and drove him away.”

For a moment Witchie's face turned as pale as her hair. Then she flushed red, her nostrils flared, and she turned and strode strongly to get her walking stick. Or, more properly, her sorceress's staff.

“This is all I need,” she snapped at Bobbi. “Heft that bag and let's go.”

Witchie did pause long enough to grab her oversize, baggy purse and a white cardigan sweater off a kitchen chair. And she turned off the lights and locked the door after her, fishing the key out of the vast depths of the purse. Ethel next door was peering out of her window over a rank of potted African violets. Mrs. Fenstermacher waved at her, more of a defiant salute than a wave, then led Bobbi across the steep side yard to where the garage squatted half in the woods.

“Ethel has something to talk about now,” Witchie remarked grimly. “We'll take the car.”

She said that last with a certain panache, as if taking the car was an act of reckless daring. She heaved the heavy, wooden garage door open with a rumble, and with flair. Bobbi gawked at the vehicle inside.

“What
is
that?”

“A Kaiser.”

Massive, monumental, blimp-like, the color and somewhat the shape of a huge June bug, the Kaiser left scarcely space in the garage for Bobbi and Mrs. Fenstermacher to scrape through and embark. Once inside its capacious cabin, perched on the plump rondure of the front seat, Bobbi felt disoriented, dwindled, as if time had somehow turned backward and she was a little leg-dangling girl again. Witchie placed her sweater, bag and stick on the seat beside her with seemingly yards to spare. She unlocked the steering wheel, and her right foot stretched toward the starter pedal on the floor. She got the monster running, sent it bumbling backwards out of the garage and down the steep, rutted driveway to the road. Then her right foot clawed again to reach the accelerator and her cornstarched neck accordioned to its fullest stubby length as she tried to see over the steering wheel. She gave it up, peering through the narrow segment of glass available to her under the top of the wheel and over the swelling dash. Majestic, the Kaiser progressed out of Seldom and cruised through the woods, taking up the entirety of the narrow road.

“Now,” Witchie commanded as she drove, “you take that there pow-wow cane in both your hands and tell me what you see.”

The wooden snake on Kabilde's shaft turned its head to look at Bobbi.

She felt cold with fear of the weird thing. But she was so miserably afraid for Shane that she did not hesitate. Softly, so as not to anger the snake, she picked up the staff—the wood felt warm and muscular to her touch. She held Kabilde vertically in front of her, between both her hands.

The small globe of the handle began to glow pearl gray, then swirl. Then it cleared, and in it she saw the black buggy passing through the lighted streets of a town with the black mustang trotting between the shafts. It was so wrenching, unthinkable, to see Shane tamely in harness that for a wild-minded moment she believed it was not him, that she was mistaken, Bissel owned another black horse and had driven it off on some errand, they would find Shane safely in a stall in his barn. But the walking stick, seeing or sensing her doubt, showed her Shane's head, the white brand at the crest of his neck just behind the bridle's crown-piece, the blue eyes, vacant and staring, behind blinkers.

“That there is Parsimony,” Witchie said, glancing over to see the town going by behind him, and where the dirt road ended on a paved one she turned right. “You can lay that stick down awhile.”

Bobbi did, and the light from its handle faded. For some time Witchie drove in silence down a mountainside beneath dark trees. The crowned Pinchot road sent the Kaiser listing sideward as if in heavy seas. Bobbi hung on, feeling half sick.

“That ain't no smith,” Witchie spoke up suddenly, grimly. “That's the old villain, the trickster. And I should've knowed it long since.”

Bobbi had closed her eyes, and behind the lids she seemed to see a wheel-shape of bright-colored circular cards laid out on the darkness. But they would not stay still so that she could comprehend the pattern. They shuffled and swirled, changing like a kaleidoscope. And she, herself, was more than one thing at once—

“What fooled me,” Witchie went on, “that Amish business. A person gets so used to thinking of the Amish as the people of peace. Hard to think of anything in Amish form as evil.”

The word chilled Bobbi. She opened her eyes and shook her head in the darkness as if Shane and Bissel and all that had happened were a dream she could shake away, she would wake up in her Grandpap's cabin. But she could not wake up. She was still blundering through darkness in a huge old car with a witch at the wheel.

“I wish I knowed what Bissel thought he was doing,” the old woman said. She did not sound grim any longer; her tone had turned shrewd, scheming, contemplative. “The way he's heading, looks like he's going to the Hub. Must be he means to use Shane somehow to give himself power in the Twelve.”

Bobbi asked, “Where's the Hub?”

Witchie seemed suddenly to realize that she was thinking aloud. “Never mind,” she snapped.

Bobbi was not put off. She had been raised by a Yandro, and Witchie's curtness no longer impressed her. “Use Shane how?” she asked.

There was a considerable silence. “As a hostage, maybe,” Witchie said at last, thoughtfully, “or maybe … I hate to say. The trickster's got even more power than I thought, if he could take control of Shane.”

“It wasn't fair! Shane was off his guard. He wasn't expecting an enemy.”

“I know that,” said Witchie.

Chapter Twelve

The Kaiser bumbled through Parsimony, and Bobbi held the walking stick again. This time it showed Shane pulling the buggy through darkened, featureless woodland. Shane was still trotting, but his black sides were slick and white-lathered with sweat. His cracked hoof had to hurt him still, Bobbi knew, though the shoe would keep the injury from worsening.… The buggy whip snaked out and flicked the horse, and then Bobbi understood “villain.” To the bottom of her heart she loathed and hated Samuel Bissel. The trickster, the bar, the black heart. The man was evil.

“Croyle's Summit,” said Witchie after a look at Kabilde's globe.

“How can you tell?”

“My glory days, girl. How can you tell a friend's face, when you see it? That there's Croyle's Summit, all right. Next left and then a two-mile hill.”

And Bissel was making Shane take it at a trot. Grandpap would never have done that. Bobbi had thought she hated her grandfather, but in the darkness of that night she knew that her feeling toward Grant Yandro was totally different from the horror and wrath she felt toward Samuel Bissel. How could she have called Grandpap a villain? He was no villain.

“We'll soon catch up to them,” said Witchie, the grim note back in her voice.

Straining mightily to reach the clutch, the old woman downshifted and turned off Parsimony Road onto the wider road up Croyle's Summit. Then with her right leg stretched to its fullest stumpy length she pressed the accelerator, pushing the Kaiser as fast as it would go on the hill, which was not much faster than a fast horse's trot. And every moment Shane suffered longer.

Bobbi demanded, “Do we have to catch them? Can't you just hex Bissel or something?”

The Kaiser's throaty roar hit top volume, faltered, coughed and died away into a silence that screamed. There was no chugging sound when Witchie pushed the starter. The big car drifted along a few yards further, noiseless as a floating shipwreck, then stopped.

“Looks like he put the hex on us instead,” Witchie said. She picked up her sweater, purse and stick and clambered out of the car into the late-night darkness. Bobbi took the paper grocery sack and did likewise. The screaming sound in the silence, she realized, was inside her mind. She let go with a yell.

“Jesus!” she burst out at Witchie or the world.

“Just one of his humble servants,” said the old woman mildly.

“SHIT! Can't you do anything?”

Witchie stood patting the Kaiser just above its left headlamp, like a cavalryman patting a fallen steed. “Curse Bissel, you mean? Not if you want Shane ever to be the same.”

Bobbi felt the yelling drain out of her. “You mean—if Bissel goes, he'll take Shane with him?”

“Smart girl,” said Witchie acidly. She turned her back on the Kaiser and started at her spraddle-legged walk upmountain, up the berm of the road, holding her walking stick like a long flashlight in front of her. Kabilde's globular handle glowed softly, giving her light. Bobbi jogged to catch up, then strode along beside her. The old woman moved surprisingly quickly, considering her cookstove-like build. Bobbi had to push herself to keep up.

“What now?” she asked after a while.

“You got an idea?” Witchie sounded annoyed, as well she might, after losing her Kaiser.

“No.”

“Then just walk and hush up.”

There was really no choice but to follow Shane, even afoot. Bobbi walked and kept quiet.

“We got to catch up to him somehow,” the old witch added curtly after a while, “and we ain't going to do it this way.”

Bobbi kept her mouth shut.

“And if we can't do nothing else, we got to get to the Hub when he does. The others are likely to catch wind of this and come, or we can summon them, or he might.”

“The Twelve?”

“Of course.” Crabbily.

“They'll help?”

Witchie didn't answer, and Bobbi realized the old woman wasn't sure what might happen.

The two of them walked out the rest of that night in silence, leaving the road from time to time to hide from the headlights of cars. They topped Croyle's Summit and toiled their way through a convolution of ridges beyond, and made the long downgrade before daybreak. By sunrise they had come to the turn in the road where they could see the little town of Veto sulking in the valley below.

“Time to rest,” Witchie said, the first words she had spoken in hours.

Bobbi thought so too. And she was desperately thirsty, though her Yandro pride kept her from admitting it.

Witchie huffed up a steep slope into the woods, and Bobbi followed. Once the two of them had gone well out of sight of the road, Witchie stopped at a halfway-level place behind an outcropping of rock. Bobbi helped her heave away a few fallen limbs, and the old woman seated herself amid the twigs and dead leaves. She settled her faded, frumpy cotton skirt and her belongings with an air, as if making the place her home. “There,” she said.

Bobbi sat down and began listlessly to search in her paper bag for the bologna. Then she stopped and watched what Witchie was doing.

The old woman was unscrewing the handle of her cane at the silver ferrule. Out of the interior of the cane she drew a glass flask, long and nearly as fat as the staff itself. The globular handle of the walking stick formed the stopper of the flask. As Bobbi watched, wide-eyed, Witchie pulled the stopper off, raised the flask to her mouth and downed the contents in a single long and evidently satisfying draught.

The old hag had not even offered to share. Bobbi felt herself flush with fury. More than furious; she was nearly berserk, watching.

“Ah!” breathed Witchie. She replaced the stopper on the empty flask, put it back into the walking stick, and turned contented eyes on Bobbi. “Want some?”

“Now's a fine time to ask!” Bobbi raged. “Now it's all gone!”

Witchie smiled and pulled the flask out again, full. Bobbi did not take time to be surprised. She grabbed it—not even her Yandro pride could keep her from grabbing it. She drank. The beverage was as cold as if it had been kept on ice, crystal clear but faintly tangy, like spring water with a slice of lemon in it. When she finished she found that it had cooled her temper as well as her throat. She handed back the empty flash with a feeling of well-being.

“That was good,” she said, and she pulled a stick of deer bologna out of the bag and began gnawing at it.

“My stars,” Witchie chided. “Where's your manners?” She put the handle back on her staff, took it off again, and pulled out an ornate dagger with a long, slender blade. Kabilde's globe formed the butt to its hilt.

Bobbi stared, too amazed to be hungry for a moment.

Witchie was hungry. With an impatient click of her tongue she took the bologna away from Bobbi and expertly sliced it between her blade and her thumb so that the pieces dropped into her lap, where her skirt caught them. Then she put the dagger back into her walking stick and started to eat. Bobbi came out of her astonishment with a start, gathered her share and ate greedily. There was a loaf of Stroehman's Sunbeam Bread in the grocery sack also; she and Witchie each had several slices. Bobbi folded and compressed hers into little squares and popped each slice into her mouth all at once. It amused her to do this with soft breads. Fish baits, she called them. The loaf of bread was half gone before she stopped. Then she pulled out the bananas, already blackened by their confinement in the paper bag. Witchie had one, and Bobbi had three.

As if to signal that the meal was done, Witchie produced a gold toothpick from the shaft of her walking stick and began to pick her teeth.

Bobbi eyed the pow-wow staff, no longer astounded, but warily curious, like a colt. “What else do you have in there?” she inquired.

Witchie looked severe and did not reply. Instead, the old woman replaced the toothpick and unscrewed the round handle again. In her hand she now held a small cut-glass vial. She removed the stopper, inspected the contents, and a beatific smile creased her broad, soft face.