Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful Read online

  As it connected with her left hand with a sickening crunch, she whirled and folded her entire body around hand and weapon, and went limp, carrying it away from him.

  She collapsed in a heap at his feet, hand afire with pain, eyes blurring with it, and waited for either death or salvation.

  And salvation in the form of Andre rose behind her attacker. With one savate kick he broke the man’s back; Diana could hear it cracking like green wood—and before her assailant could collapse, a second double-handed blow sent him crashing into the brick wall, head crushed like an eggshell.

  Diana struggled to her feet, and waited for some arcane transformation.

  Nothing.

  She staggered to the corpse, face flat and expressionless—a sign she was suppressing pain and shock with utterly implacable iron will. Andre began to move forward as if to stop her, then backed off again at the look in her eyes.

  She bent slightly, just enough to touch the shoulder of the body with her good hand—and released the Power.

  Andre pulled her back to safety as the corpse exploded into flame, burning as if it had been soaked in oil. She watched the flames for one moment, wooden-faced; then abruptly collapsed.

  Andre caught her easily before she could hurt herself further, lifting her in his arms as if she weighed no more than a kitten. “Ma pauvre petite,” he murmured, heading back towards the car at a swift but silent run, “It is the hospital for you, I think—”

  “Saint-Francis—” she gasped, every step jarring her hand and bringing tears of pain to her eyes, “One of us—is on the night staff—Dr. Crane—”

  “Bien,” he replied. “Now be silent.”

  “But—how are you—”

  “In your car, foolish one. I have the keys you left in it.”

  “But—”

  “I can drive.”

  “But—”

  “And I have a license. Will you be silent?”

  “How?” she said, disobeying him.

  “Night school,” he replied succinctly, reaching the car, putting her briefly on her feet to unlock the passenger-side door, then lifting her into it. “You are not the only one who knows of urban camouflage.”

  This time she did not reply—mostly because she had fainted from pain.

  The emergency room was empty—for which Andre was very grateful. His invocation of Dr. Crane brought a thin, bearded young man around to the tiny examining cubicle in record time.

  “Good god almighty! What did you tangle with, a bus?” he exclaimed, when stripping the sweatsuit jacket and pants revealed that there was little of Diana that was not battered and black-and-blue.

  Andre wrinkled his nose at the acrid antiseptic odors around them, and replied shortly. “No. Your ‘Ripper.’ ”

  The startled gaze the doctor fastened on him revealed that Andre had scored. “Who—won?” he asked at last.

  “We did. I do not think he will prey upon anyone again.”

  The doctor’s eyes closed briefly; Andre read prayerful thankfulness on his face as he sighed with relief. Then he returned to business. “You must be Andre, right? Anything I can supply?”

  Andre laughed at the hesitation in his voice. “Fear not, your blood supply is quite safe, and I am unharmed. It is Diana who needs you.”

  The relief on the doctor’s face made Andre laugh again.

  Dr. Crane ignored him. “Right,” he said, turning to the work he knew best.

  She was lightheaded and groggy with the Demerol Dr. Crane had given her as Andre deftly stripped her and tucked her into her bed; she’d dozed all the way home in the car.

  “I just wish I knew what that thing was—” she said inconsequentially, as he arranged her arm in its light Fiberglas cast a little more comfortably. “—I won’t be happy until I know—”

  “Then you are about to be happy, cherie, for I have had the brainstorm.” Andre ducked into the living room and emerged with a dusty leather-bound book. “Remember I said there was something familiar about it? Now I think I know what it was.” He consulted the index, and turned pages rapidly—found the place he sought, and read for a few moments. “As I thought—listen. ‘The gaki—also known as the Japanese vampire—takes its nourishment only from the living. There are many kinds of gaki, extracting their sustenance from a wide variety of sources. The most harmless are the “perfume” and “music” gaki; they are by far the most common. Far deadlier are those that require blood, flesh, or souls.’ ”

  “Souls?”

  “Just so. ‘To feed, or when at rest, they take their normal form of a dense cloud of dark smoke. At other times, like the kitsune, they take on the form of a human being. Unlike the kitsune, however, there is no way to distinguish them in this form from any other human. In the smoke form, they are invulnerable—in the human form, however, they can be killed; but to permanently destroy them, the body must be burned—preferably in conjunction with or solely by Power.’ I said there was something familiar about it—it seems to have been a kind of distant cousin.” Andre’s mouth smiled, but his eyes reflected only a long-abiding bitterness.

  “There is no way you have any relationship with that—thing!” she said forcefully. “It had no more honor, heart, or soul than a rabid beast!”

  “I—I thank you, cherie,” he said, slowly, the warmth returning to his eyes. “There are not many who would think as you do.”

  “Their own closed-minded stupidity.”

  “To change the subject—what was it made you burn it as you did? I would have abandoned it. It seemed dead enough.”

  “I don’t know—it just seemed the thing to do,” she yawned. “Sometimes my instincts just work . . . right . . . ”

  Suddenly her eyes seemed too leaden to keep open.

  “Like they did with you . . . ” She fought against exhaustion and the drug, trying to keep both at bay.

  But without success. Sleep claimed her for its own.

  He watched her for the rest of the night, until the leaden lethargy of his own limbs told him dawn was near. He had already decided not to share her bed, lest any movement on his part cause her pain. Instead, he made up a pallet on the floor beside her.

  He stood over her broodingly while he in his turn fought slumber, and touched her face gently. “Well—” he whispered, holding off torpor far deeper and heavier than hers could ever be—while she was mortal. “You are not aware to hear, so I may say what I will and you cannot forbid. Dream; sleep and dream—I shall see you safe—my only love.”

  And he took his place beside her, to lie motionless until night should come again.

  There’s a deep association with Scandinavian mythology in this story, but Elizabeth Bear also offers an aspect of the witch that is probably more common today than ever: the benign healer and protector, the wise “good witch.” The tradition lies in the English “cunning folk” (men or women) who practiced folk magic. Similar figures are found in other western European countries: French devins-guérisseurs and leveurs de sorts, Danish kloge folk, Dutch toverdokters or duivelbanners, German Hexenmeister or Kräuterhexen, Spanish curanderos, Portuguese saludadores; in Swedish they were called klok gumma and klok gubbe, which translate as “wise woman” and “wise man.” In some areas these people functioned as folk healers into the twentieth century. For most of history, cunning folk were rarely persecuted as witches, for the simple reason that most common people felt what they did was helpful and useful, whereas other witches were thought to do harm.

  The Cold Blacksmith

  Elizabeth Bear

  “Old man, old man, do you tinker?”

  Weyland Smith raised up his head from his anvil, the heat rolling beads of sweat across his face and his sparsely forested scalp, but he never stopped swinging his hammer. The ropy muscles of his chest knotted and released with every blow, and the clamor of steel on steel echoed from the trees. The hammer looked to weigh as much as the smith, but he handled it like a bit of cork on a twig. He worked in a glade, out of doors, by a deep cold w
ell, just right for quenching and full of magic fish. Whoever had spoken was still under the shade of the trees, only a shadow to one who squinted through the glare of the sun.

  “Happen I’m a blacksmith, miss,” he said.

  As if he could be anything else, in his leather apron, sweating over forge and anvil in the noonday sun, limping on a lamed leg.

  “Do you take mending, old man?” she asked, stepping forth into the light.

  He thought the girl might be pretty enough in a country manner, her features a plump-cheeked outline under the black silk veil pinned to the corners of her hat. Not a patch on his own long-lost swan-maiden Olrun, though Olrun had left him after seven years to go with her two sisters, and his two brothers had gone with them as well, leaving Weyland alone.

  But Weyland kept her ring and with it her promise. And for seven times seven years to the seventh times, he’d kept it, seduced it back when it was stolen away, held it to his heart in fair weather and foul. Olrun’s promise-ring. Olrun’s promise to return.

  Olrun who had been fair as ice, with shoulders like a blacksmith, shoulders like a giantess.

  This girl could not be less like her. Her hair was black and it wasn’t pinned, all those gleaming curls a-tumble across the shoulders of a dress that matched her hair and veil and hat. A little linen sack in her left hand was just the natural color, and something in it chimed when she shifted. Something not too big. He heard it despite the tolling of the hammer that never stopped.

  “I’ll do what I’m paid to.” He let his hammer rest, and shifted his grip on the tongs. His wife’s ring slid on its chain around his neck, catching on chest hair. He couldn’t wear it on his hand when he hammered. “And if’n ’tis mending I’m paid for, I’ll mend what’s flawed.”

  She came across the knotty turf in little quick steps like a hobbled horse—as if it was her lamed, and not him—and while he turned to thrust the bent metal that would soon be a steel horse-collar into the coals again she passed her hand over his bench beside the anvil.

  He couldn’t release the bellows until the coals glowed red as currant jelly, but there was a clink and when her hand withdrew it left behind two golden coins. Two coins for two hands, for two pockets, for two eyes.

  Wiping his hands on his matted beard, he turned from the forge, then lifted a coin to his mouth. It dented under his teeth, and he weighed its heaviness in his hand. “A lot for a bit of tinkering.”

  “Worth it if you get it done,” she said, and upended her sack upon his bench.

  A dozen or so curved transparent shards tumbled red as forge-coals into the hot noon light, jingling and tinkling. Gingerly, he reached out and prodded one with a forefinger, surprised by the warmth.

  “My heart,” the woman said. “ ’Tis broken. Fix it for me.”

  He drew his hand back. “I don’t know nowt about women’s hearts, broken or t’otherwise.”

  “You’re the Weyland Smith, aren’t you?”

  “Aye, miss.” The collar would need more heating. He turned away, to pump the bellows again.

  “You took my gold.” She planted her fists on her hips. “You can’t refuse a task, Weyland Smith. Once you’ve taken money for it. It’s your geas.”

  “Keep tha coin,” he said, and pushed them at her with a fingertip. “I’m a smith. Not never a matchmaker, nor a glassblower.”

  “They say you made jewels from dead men’s eyes, once. And it was a blacksmith broke my heart. It’s only right one should mend it, too.”

  He leaned on the bellows, pumping hard.

  She turned away, in a whisper of black satin as her skirts swung heavy by her shoes. “You took my coin,” she said, before she walked back into the shadows. “So fix my heart.”

  Firstly, he began with a crucible, and heating the shards in his forge. The heart melted, all right, though hotter than he would have guessed. He scooped the glass on a bit of rod stock and rolled it on his anvil, then scraped the gather off with a flat-edged blade and shaped it into a smooth ruby-bright oval the size of his fist.

  The heart crazed as it cooled. It fell to pieces when he touched it with his glove, and he was left with only a mound of shivered glass.

  That was unfortunate. There had been the chance that the geas would grant some mysterious assistance, that he would guess correctly and whatever he tried first would work. An off chance, but stranger things happened with magic and his magic was making.

  Not this time. Whether it was because he was a blacksmith and not a matchmaker or because he was a blacksmith and not a glassblower, he was not sure. But hearts, glass hearts, were outside his idiom and outside his magic.

  He would have to see the witch.

  The witch must have known he was coming, as she always seemed to know. She awaited him in the doorway of her pleasant cottage by the wildflower meadow, more wildflowers—daisies and buttercups—waving among the long grasses of the turfed roof. A nanny goat grazed beside the chimney, her long coat as white as the milk that stretched her udder pink and shiny. He saw no kid.

  The witch was as dark as the goat was white, her black, black hair shot with silver and braided back in a wrist-thick queue. Her skirts were kilted up over her green kirtle, and she handed Weyland a pottery cup before he ever entered her door. It smelled of hops and honey and spices, and steam curled from the top: spiced heated ale.

  “I have to see to the milking,” she said. “Would you fetch my stool while I coax Heidrún off the roof?”

  “She’s shrunk,” Weyland said, but he balanced his cup in one hand and limped inside the door to haul the stool out, for the witch’s convenience.

  The witch clucked. “Haven’t we all?”

  By the time Weyland emerged, the goat was down in the dooryard, munching a reward of bruised apples, and the witch had found her bucket and was waiting for the stool. Weyland set the cup on the ledge of the open window and seated the witch with a little bit of ceremony, helping her with her skirts. She smiled and patted his arm, and bent to the milking while he went to retrieve his ale.

  Once upon a time, what rang on the bottom of the empty pail would have been mead, sweet honeyed liquor fit for gods. But times had changed, were always changing, and the streams that stung from between the witch’s strong fingers were rich and creamy white.

  “So what have you come for, Weyland Smith?” she asked, when the pail was a quarter full and the milk hissed in the pail rather than sang.

  “I’m wanting a spell as’ll mend a broken heart,” he said.

  Her braid slid over her shoulder, hanging down. She flipped it back without lifting her head. “I hadn’t thought you had it in you to fall in love again,” she said, her voice lilting with the tease.

  “ ’Tisn’t my heart as is broken.”

  That did raise her chin, and her fingers stilled on Heidrún’s udder. Her gaze met his; her eyebrows lifted across the fine-lined arch of her forehead. “Tricky,” she said. “A heart’s a wheel,” she said. “Bent is bent. It can’t be mended. And even worse—” She smiled, and tossed the fugitive braid back again. “—if it’s not your heart you’re after fixing.”

  “Din’t I know it?” he said, and sipped the ale, his wife’s ring—worn now—clicking on the cup as his fingers tightened.

  Heidrún had finished her apples. She tossed her head, long ivory horns brushing the pale silken floss of her back, and the witch laughed and remembered to milk again. “What will you give me if I help?”

  The milk didn’t ring in the pail any more, but the gold rang fine on the dooryard stones.

  The witch barely glanced at it. “I don’t want your gold, blacksmith.”

  “I din’t want for hers, neither,” Weyland said. “ ’Tis the half of what she gave.” He didn’t stoop to retrieve the coin, though the witch snaked a soft-shoed foot from under her kirtle and skipped it back to him, bouncing it over the cobbles.

  “What can I pay?” he asked, when the witch met his protests with a shrug.

  “I didn’t say I
could help you.” The latest pull dripped milk into the pail rather than spurting. The witch tugged the bucket clear and patted Heidrún on the flank, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and the pail between her ankles while the nanny clattered over cobbles to bound back up onto the roof. In a moment, the goat was beside the chimney again, munching buttercups as if she hadn’t just had a meal of apples. A large, fluffy black-and-white cat emerged from the house and began twining the legs of the stool, miaowing.

  “Question ’tisn’t what tha can or can’t do,” he said sourly. “ ’Tis what tha will or won’t.”

  The witch lifted the pail and splashed milk on the stones for the cat to lap. And then she stood, bearing the pail in her hands, and shrugged. “You could pay me a Name. I collect those.”

  “If’n I had one.”

  “There’s your own,” she countered, and balanced the pail on her hip as she sauntered toward the house. He followed. “But people are always more disinclined to part with what belongs to them than what doesn’t, don’t you find?”

  He grunted. She held the door for him, with her heel, and kicked it shut when he had passed. The cottage was dim and cool inside, with only a few embers banked on the hearth. He sat when she gestured him onto the bench, and not before. “No names,” he said.

  “Will you barter your body, then?”

  She said it over her shoulder, like a commonplace. He twisted a boot on the rushes covering a rammed-earth floor and laughed. “And what’d a bonny lass like thaself want with a gammy-legged, fusty, coal-black smith?”

  “To say I’ve had one?” She plunged her hands into the washbasin and scrubbed them to the elbow, then turned and leaned against the stand. When she caught sight of his expression, she laughed as well. “You’re sure it’s not your heart that’s broken, Smith?”

  “Not this sennight.” He scowled around the rim of his cup, and was still scowling as she set bread and cheese before him. Others might find her intimidating, but Weyland Smith wore the promise-ring of Olrun the Valkyrie. No witch could mortify him. Not even one who kept Heidrún—who had dined on the leaves of the World Ash—as a milch-goat.